TWICE IMPRISONED

 

Name: Dwellers in the Crucible

Author: Margaret Wander Bonanno

Publication Date: 9/1985

Publisher: Pocket Books (Star Trek #25)

Page Number: 308

Historian’s Note: Sometime during The Wrath of Khan

Cast of Characters:  Rear Admiral James T. Kirk       Captain Spock              Dr. Leonard H. McCoy AKA “Bones”              Commander Montgomery Scott AKA “Scotty”       Commander Hikaru Sulu              Commander Nyota Uhura            Lieutenant (junior grade) Saavik      Ensign Chen          Fleet Admiral Heihachiro Nogura           Commodore José Mendez             Commander Mai-Ling Hong            Commander Tamerlane Hong         Special Agent Gadj          Cleante al-Faisal               T'Shael           Jali'lar Kandowali              Krnsandor L'am                    Resh'da Maprida'hn                   Theras shoorShras              Salet              Sekal                 Sethan          Stalek             Stimm                  T'Pei               T'Sehn                   Dr.  Palmer     Admiral Korax                Lord Tolz Kenran              Lord Krazz                   Commander Kalor                 Imperial Security Chief Dr'ell             Imperial Defense Minister Lefv               Admiral-Superlative Meru'th                    The Romulan Fleet Commander                Subcommander Tal            Centurion Delar            Chamberlin Garefv m'kh                 Unnamed Sulamids

Starships and/or Starbases: USS Enterprise NCC-1701, Galileo III NCC-1701/3, Starbase 11, USS Horizon (registry unknown), IKS Flyer's Pride, ChR Gauntlet, IKS Irik, and IKS Kalash

Planets: Earth and Vulcan

My Spoiler filled summary and review: The story opens with a kidnapping.  The kidnaped are a human named Cleante al-Faisal, a Vulcan named T'Shael, and Andorian and some Deltans.  These individuals are the Warrantors of the Peace an idea the Vulcans came up with in the time of Surak.  The Warrantors are voluntary hostages of sorts.  They are family members of government officials of various Federation member worlds.  They would first to die if their worlds attacked one of its neighbors.  Realizing that kidnapping them could be used to destabilize the Federation the Romulans and the Klingons plan to do just that.   The Romulans do the kidnapping while the Klingons hold them.

Klingons and Romulans looking to kidnap

 

The bulk of the story is told between the two main warrantors Cleante and T’Shael.  The book often flows back and forth between the present and the past.  The audience sees Cleante and T’Shael’s backstory.  They met at the Warrantors headquarters on Vulcan and formed an unlikely friendship. T’Shael leads a lonely life with a distant mother and a father who is caring but dying.  Her father is a famous musician known as the gifted one.  Her mother leaves them to serve on the Intrepid and she dies when it is destroyed by that large single-celled organism from “The Immunity Syndrome.”  Her dying father has to break the news to her that she will soon have no parents at all.  Having no family leads her to volunteer for warrantor status.

The story shifts to our normal set of heroes, who have the entire situation explained to them while being told not to do anything about it.  This becomes a recurring thing whenever the audience comes back to the Enterprise.

Two Klingons in charge of the prisoners.  They are Lord Krazz and Commander Kalor.  Trusted with such important prisoners who may be able to allow the Klingons and Romulans to bring the Federation to its knees, the two Klingons decide their physical passions are more important and try to rape the prisoners.  They are stopped however because of the mental powers of the Deltans overwhelm the Klingons, so they abandon the rape attempt.

Klingons being evil

Despite the Deltan save, the Andorian warrantor dies.  This causes protest from Andor and the Romulans themselves are upset.  On the Enterprise the crew is briefed and does nothing.  Shortly after, the Deltans all die by suicide leaving only two hostages left, the main stars of the book.

 Subcommander Tal shows up for an inspection and is appalled by the conditions the prisoners are kept in. He reports this to his Commander—the same Romulan Fleet Commander from “The Enterprise Incident”—she agrees to check on the prisoners herself. 

Tal

An unexpected earthquake leads to the death of Lord Krazz, leading Kalor in charge.  The Romulan Commander ordered Kalor to treat the prisoners better under threat of death and Kalor agrees to her demands.  While this is going on it turns out T’Shael is going through the pon farr. She instructs Cleante to bind her, so she won’t hurt her friend.  This reminds me of a werewolf.  Spock was bad but he didn’t have to be tied up.  Tal suggests they get a younger Romulan male to sleep with T’Shael, but the Commander just helps her mentally get over it.

Fleet Commander

After the Romulans leave Kalor decides to start torturing the prisoners again.  He forces T’Shael to spend the night outside in the freezing temperatures to test the Vulcans resistance to the cold.  As T’Shael is suffering Cleante decides to seduce Kalor.   He resists at first and then agrees to take her offer.  Cleante at this point starts to exhibit major Stockholm Syndrome as she finds herself starting to fall for Kalor. 

This doesn’t last however because the Romulan Commander arrives and shoots Kalor with a disruptor after catching the two in bed.  Kirk and Spock show up and find the two remaining warrantors exactly where the Commander wanted them to be found.  It appears her strategy was to kill them with kindness.  She wanted Kirk and Spock to see how nice she was to the warrantors so they would feel bad about stealing her cloaking device.  In the end Cleante doesn’t have to be a warrantor anymore, she is just happy it turns out Kalor didn’t leave her pregnant.  She decides to go to Vulcan and hangout with T’Shael who has warrantor for life status.

Additional thoughts: I had a hard time taking this story seriously as I found the premise to be absurd.  The very idea that United Federation of Planets is held together by an exchanging of hostages amongst the member worlds is beyond weird.  Apparently, the author was inspired by the exchanging of hostages in the medieval world and some Cold War theory.  It doesn’t even work in story; the warrantors themselves are supposed to be the relatives of the high-ranking officials on the various planets.  If the leader of Earth decided to invade Andora that leader would have to face the reality that their loved one would be the first to die.  However, in story the warrantors are allowed to have substitutes take their place similar to a US Civil War draftee.  This defeats the entire purpose because now it’s no longer the leader’s loved one on the firing line but a stranger. It’s explained that T’Shael is a substitute for Spock himself, who would normally have to serve because of the position of his father.  Again, this doesn’t make sense as Spock’s father is not a leader of Vulcan government but rather a diplomatic representative.  Sarek represents Vulcan but he doesn’t decide what actions it takes. Also, all the warrantors live on Vulcan even the Vulcan ones, so how is this stopping Vulcan from doing anything?

Does the Federation need to exchange hostages?

Maybe 

The time period was also hard to place.  I had originally thought it would take place between the second five-year mission between The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan.  However, it seemed might have been during the second film. Saavik is here and McCoy mentions that they have a crew of all cadets.  The crew is wearing “the monster maroons.”  Kirk is referred to as “Admiral” rather than the temporary commission of “Captain” he received in The Motion Picture.  Yet, he is in command of the Enterprise and the only time he held that command and called “Admiral” was during TWOK.  That makes the story more improbable to me that on the ship’s way to Regula 1 they stopped by and picked up the warrantors.

The story also is one in which you are introduced to a situation or character and then the reader is treated to a long flashback explaining who they are, what they are about, and what their relationships with each other are.  This is not an illegitimate form of storytelling, but it does make moving the plot forward difficult.  Without the filler the story might be only a quarter as long.

We see the Romulan Fleet Commander from “The Enterprise Incident.”  She was in the last book I read too.  Star Trek novelists seem to find her fascinating.  I tend to judge her appearance based on how they explain the aftermath of her capture and loss of cloaking device.  In the last book it was explained that she was able to escape consequence because the Praetor was her father.  In this version she did have claw her back to prominence, but it was aided by her being the Praetor's mistress.  This is clear contradiction, I hope.

She has also seemed to have learned from her boss, the Praetor, as we see her happily bed her own subordinates that she finds attractive   This includes Subcommander Tal, who it is said in the book has refused promotions so he can stay with her.  I didn’t like that as I felt the relationship between her and Tal was based on professionalism and respect. I don’t have any issue with her bedding other subordinates though it’s clearly an improvement on her from the last book where she was dealing in love slaves.  This book at least has the Commander moving in the right direction.   

Speaking of love slaves, that was some serious Stockholm Syndrome we saw from Cleante.  When she started to have feelings for Kalor and even started to sympathize with him.  She is also very insistent to McCoy and everyone else that what went on between them was consensual despite the fact that they both his prisoners and he was torturing her friend.

Although I highlight in each of my reviews the most important character and second most important character from the crew during the story this one is a bit off.  In this book the two most important members of the crew are Kirk and Spock, but they do nothing in the story.  The regular cast of characters are completely useless.  They could have been written out of the story, and nothing would have changed except the name of the ship that Cleante and T’Shael leave in.  

On the last note I found it funny that the author tried to present the Klingons as opposite of the Vulcans in that they age faster than humans. Neat idea that Star Trek didn’t stick with.

Should it be canon: I am going to say no.  There is just too much weird stuff in this book to try and have it be canonical.

Cover Art:. The cover has two young women on the bottom of the image is Cleante on the viewer’s right and T’Shael on the viewers left.  Above T’Shael is the face of Kirk and above Cleante is the face of Spock.

Final Grade: Final Grade 2 of 5