Name: Death’s Angel
Author: Kathleen Sky
Publication Date: 4/1981
Publisher: Bantam Books
Page Number: 211
Historian’s Note:
Sometime between The Counter-clock Incident and The Motion Picture
Cast of Characters: Captain James T. Kirk Commander
Spock Dr. Leonard H. McCoy
AKA “Bones” Lieutenant
Commander Montgomery Scott AKA “Scotty”
Lieutenant Commander Greg Collier Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu Lieutenant Nyota Uhura Lieutenant Kyle Lieutenant Angela Mendoza Lieutenant Jeff Williams Dr. Joseph M'Benga Dr. Ruth Rigel Nurse Christine Chapel Ensign Pavel Chekov Security Officer
First Class Jamison Security
Officer First Class Matthews
Security Officer First Class Bobby Robinson Medical Technician Second Class
Miriam Raymond Crewman Grace
Temple Colonel Elizabeth
Schaeffer Colonel Alexis
Schaeffer Lieutenant Colonel Derek Gleason Ambassador Sarek Ambassador Agnatha of Jezero Ambassador Damu of Chiroptera Ambassador Edentata of Tandenborstel Ambassador Hotep
of Djoser Ambassador
Karhu of Hanaja Ambassador Naja
of Dalzell Ambassador Neko
of Gyuunyuu Ambassador Rovar of
Hemiptera Ambassador Sirenia
of Cetacea Ambassador Si-s-s-s(click)
of Gavialian Ambassador Spiracles
Ambassador Telson of Manteiga
Starships and/or Starbases: USS Enterprise NCC-1701,
XK Needle, Détente Station One
Planets: Delta Gamma IV
My Spoiler filled summary and review: The story begins with a mission that went haywire. The crew of the Enterprise were exploring an uninhabited planet for potential colonization. Delta Gamma IV had a planet species that shoots spores into the local indigenous slug-like creatures. Thus, the creatures go into a dream sleep and telepathically move the spores. (I think that was how it worked.) Unfortunately, if you were not one of that species the spores would mess you up real bad. That is what happened to the landing party of the Enterprise. Three crewmembers died and the everyone else was in a coma including the Captain and First Officer. McCoy desperately seeks an answer on the planet, Scotty gives him a deadline before they will have to report to Starbase and try to solve things there. One by one, however, the landing party wakes up. Spock seems to recover the easiest although he is not interested in talking. Kirk notes that he has a hard time telling if he is awake or still dreaming. Time goes on and the surviving landing party passed all tests allowing them to return to active duty.
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| Spores of death |
As things get back to normal the Enterprise is giving a new assignment. The Romulan Star Empire wants to talk. The Federation’s oldest enemy wants to negotiate and end hostilities. The Enterprise is tasked with transporting ambassadors to the conference. Leading the delegation is Spock’s father, Ambassador Sarek. The Ambassadors to this conference show the diversity of the United Federation of Planets. They are big and small, one looks like a vampire, one looks like a rock, one looks like a lobster, and another looks like a cat. Everyone likes the lobster, and everyone hates the cat. In the opening meeting the cat and the lobster nearly got in a fight. This is not off to a great start.
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| Sarek is back |
It gets even worse. Soon an ambassador is dead followed by another. Both murdered ambassadors in the anti-détente camp. Some of the ambassadors believe they have seen an angel of death when their fellow ambassadors were killed. At the request of one of the still living ambassadors, Kirk contacts the Special Security Division. The SSD is an ultra-militarized section of the Federation. They investigate all sorts of crime and threats to the Federation’s security. To most of Starfleet they are “outsiders”, and they typically have cold relations. The SSD officer arrives in a little one-person shuttle, and the first thing Kirk notices is she is very beautiful. Her name is Colonel Elizabeth Schaeffer, and she is considered to be one of the finer SSD investigators.
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| Ambassadors keep disappearing |
At this point the story shifts into
mostly Col. Schaeffer’s point of view.
We learn she is married to another SSD colonel, but their marriage is on
the rocks and set to expire. She is a little ahead on the career path than her
husband. They have the same rank, but
she got it first. He is also possessive
and throughout the book he tries to contact her and asks her to shorten her
investigation in order to be with him.
The first thing the Colonel does is she orders the ship to be put in
quarantine and to pull out of warp until the killer is caught. When Kirk objects she points out to him that
she has an explosive on her ship and if necessary to prevent this killer from
getting loose a the Starbase she will destroy the Enterprise and all
aboard her. Kirk decides it’s best to
defer to her investigation.
Schaeffer’s decides to spend the night with one ambassador who like the murdered two against becoming friendly with the Romulans. During the night the ambassador died of natural causes, so the Colonel was confident he wasn’t murdered. In between being harassed by her husband, Schaeffer also finds herself being courted by Captain Kirk. She finds Kirk very attractive and appealing, so interest is two ways.
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| The Federation has many groups of people |
Ambassador S-s-s-s (click) is very
helpful and offers to help the Colonel with her investigation. Together they host a tea party with other
ambassadors. Instead of tea they mostly
drink booze. Since the cat was one of those killed, the other ambassadors don’t
seem to care about finding the killer because they think the cat deserved
it. One goes so far to say whoever the
killer was deserves a reward for his hard work getting rid of the nasty
cat. Schaeffer doesn’t get any closer to
finding the killer, but she does get drunk.
Then while she is alone with her friendly ambassador, he shows off his
shape-shifting powers leading the reader to thing for a moment that he is the
killer.
However, we quickly learn that he
can’t because another murder occurs while the party is going on. Kirk is upset that Schaeffer was off drinking
when someone was getting murdered, but he quickly gets over it. This new murder seems to be the Mary Jane
Kelly of this killer. The Death Angel is
getting more viscous having literally just ripped apart his latest victim. While
this is going on Kirk, realizing Schaeffer’s marriage will soon end, proposes
to her himself. She tells him she won’t think about it until after her marriage
expires. Kirk then tells her about Delta
Gamma IV, and the weird dreams he has been having. In his dream he was following another woman
he had been hitting on, he decided to go back and tripped on rock and woke
up. Schaeffer’s investigation reveals
that Kirk was following her, and the “rock” he tripped on was an ambassador who
claims Kirk then disappeared. It appears Kirk can now astral project because of
the spore contract.
Schaeffer then checks with Spock
who also was having dreams become astral projections form from his dreams. Spock is ashamed to admit that in a dream
state he cannot control his emotions and as result his dream self seeks out sex
with a female crewmember and they have sex in her dreams. However, Spock makes clear its consensual and
his sex partner was more than willing, but he is still ashamed of his conduct.
Schaeffer’s husband uses his
authority to remove the quarantine of the Enterprise and have Starfleet
Command order her to resume mission. He
does this because he wants his wife to end the investigation so she can hang
out with him. Later Dr. McCoy goes on
with one of his famous tirades against the détente with the Romulans. He basically says that since the opposition
has been targeted it should now be supported.
Schaeffer stands guard in McCoy’s quarters. The Angel shows up and it turns out to be the
astral projection of Dr. Joseph M'Benga. In his subconscious with his desire for peace,
he targeted all those who stood against it.
Schaeffer tries to stop him but is unable due to his power. Kirk and Spock manage to break in and use
their connection to the spores to stop the out-of-control doctor.
All is well that ends well. The spores are finally out of everyone. No one blames M’Benga and he will be getting
treatment for his condition. The husband
Alexis Schaeffer is demoted to lieutenant colonel for his actions. Colonel Elizabeth Schaeffer expands her
reputation for solving the case. The remaining Ambassadors go on to their
discussions with the Romulans.
Additional thoughts: The dramatic ending saved some of this story for me, up into the last few chapters I was going to label this story a “2,” the exciting pace towards the end made a “3.” The whole book had a very “Journey to Babel” feel. There is an important conference, the Enterprise is required to transport ambassadors there, the ambassadors represent the vast diversity of life in the United Federation of Planets, and some ambassadors are murdered making finding the killer a priority. The author used the advantage of the print medium to expand on what the episode started. Since there is no television budget nor limited graphics and make-up the reader is treated to some of the strangest species the Federation has to offer. Unfortunately, that is also a drawback. There are so many characters who have extremely odd shapes and names that it is difficult to keep track of them all. I would have to re-read certain pages when I suddenly remembered that the character in the scene was not a humanoid but a slug, and just misinterpreted everything that happened.
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| The Federation |
Another issue with this story is when Colonel Elizabeth Schaeffer shows up, she starts to dominate the story at the expense of the title characters. This reminds me a bit of “Assignment: Earth” (an episode a lot of fans love but that I never cared for) where the main cast turns into supporting characters to showcase Gary Seven. In her last book the author introduced us to Dr. Katalya Tremain. The two characters have a lot in common. They are both women in the top of their fields, and they are both in a marriage that has gone stale, but their marriage contract is going to expire (an interesting concept in of itself) so they are just going to let it lapse, except Tremain’s husband died before that could happen. However, Tremain is different in two important ways. The first is Tremain is actually interesting. She was a genius that a bigotry against Vulcans and yet she didn’t come off like a typical bigot. Schaeffer is just boring. The only thing interesting about her was she threatened to blow up the ship. The threat was hard to take seriously, I kept waiting for her to reveal it as a bluff. That never happened and I thought that was dumb. “Someone is a murderer here and I intended to find them. The ship can’t go anywhere because the killer could get loose. So, in order to stop that I might have to kill the over four hundred people on this ship.” That would make her the bigger villain. I have to ignore that in order to make the story work. The second way the two characters are different is Tremain spends most of her time with Dr. McCoy or Mr. Spock. Schaeffer spends most of her time with Ambassador S-s-s-s (click), another character who means nothing to me. When I read a “Star Trek” novel I expect the “Star Trek” characters to be at forefront.
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| Who's show is this? |
I did find the Special Security
Division interesting. A Federation
police organization that’s run like the Army, as opposed to the Navy like
Starfleet. The two organizations are
somewhat rivals. I would like to know
more about them. I also thought there
should have been a note in text to check out the appendix at the end of the
book.
So, Kirk is confident in Sarek’s abilities. I don’t see why considering how badly Sarek screwed up last time. I did enjoy the scene with Schaeffer telling Sarek how dumb he is being. I also enjoyed Kirk’s apparent fear of vampires almost leads him to discriminate against one of the ambassadors. He needs to remember what he told Stiles in “Balance of Terror.” Kirk should keep his bigotry in his quarters.
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| Kirk needs the same |
Was the woman Spock was visiting in his ghost state Nurse Chapel? That would make sense, Spock insisted that the person was “very willing.” I wonder if Chapel even suspected her “happy dreams” were real. Why is Kirk so interested in Schaeffer? I kept thinking it was the spores. I don’t mind him flirting but why go head over heels? It’s the Rayna problem all over again. I did appreciate that McCoy was not surprised at the revelation.
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| Why does Kirk like her so much again? |
Just like the last book keep
mentioning the Klingons only to never have them show up it interesting that
this book does that with the Romulans.
So, the guess the conference for better relations didn’t work out after
all. The Romulans are going to keep
being a problem.
Should it be canon: I don’t know. Mainly I don’t
like what happened to M'Benga. I really
feel the book and any other extended universe items should stay clear of making
major life altering things to occur in the lives of the regular cast. Granted
they said M'Benga was not responsible for what happened, and he would be
treated.
Cover Art: The cover art is nice. You have the figure of death with a skull
under a good. Between the skull and the hood are stars and planets. The figure
is holding an hourglass with the Enterprise trapped inside.
Final Grade: Final Grade 3 of 5
