Name: Ishmael
Author: Barbara Hambly
Publication Date: 5/1985
Publisher: Pocket Books (Star Trek #23)
Page Number: 255
Historian’s Note: In between the last episode of Star Trek season 1: “Operation Annihilate” and the first episode of Star Trek season 2: “Catspaw”
Cast of Characters: Captain James T. Kirk Lieutenant Commander Spock Dr. Leonard H. McCoy AKA
“Bones” Lieutenant Commander
Montgomery Scott AKA “Scotty”
Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu
Lieutenant Nyota Uhura Lieutenant
Kevin Riley Lieutenant
Gilden Dr. Aurelia Steiner Ensign Pavel Chekov Commander Maria Kellogg Trae
Khin Khlaru Colonel Nch'rth Jason Bolt Jeremy Bolt Joshua Bolt Captain Roland Francis Clancey Biddy Cloom Dr. Sarah Gay Lottie Hatfield Elizabeth Darrow Donnelly Katy Hoyt Robin Manderly Sheila Meyers Joshua Norton Mrs. O'Shaughnessy Candy Pruitt Aaron Stemple Dulcie Wainright Elizabeth Stemple unnamed Klingons
Starships and/or Starbases: USS Enterprise NCC-1701,
Starbase 12, IKS Rapache, and IKS Schin'char
Planets: Alpha Eridani III and Earth
My Spoiler filled summary and review: The adventure begins with the Enterprise being summoned to Starbase 12, to study the nearby Tau Eridani Cloud. However, the Klingons are also there, and they don’t seem to be there to observe a white dwarf star. The pair of Klingon ships are a transport and a cruiser and the transport gives off a lot of power. Spock, with Kirk’s approval, sneaks aboard disguised as a worker from the Starbase there to unload equipment. When it comes time to rendezvous later, he never arrives, and it appears he is still on the transport.
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| Klingons making trouble |
Any attempt to rescue him is shot when the transport suddenly accelerates to a high warp speed and vanishes into the cloud. All is not lost however because Spock was able to send a cryptic message. That message is “White dwarf. Khlaru. Tillman's Factor. Guardian" and along with the numbers eighteen, sixty, and seven.
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| Aaron Stemple |
The story moves to 19th century Seattle, Washington. Long before it was major American city instead it was just a logging town. Aaron Stemple, a local businessman, finds Spock unconscious and appears to have been tortured. Stemple is taken back that the land around the injured man is itself undisturbed, as if the stranger appeared out of nowhere. Upon looking at Spock’s green blood and pointed ears, he realizes an alien from outer space. (Which, I’ll take more about in my Additional thoughts section.) Stemple realizing the intolerance of his world—US Civil War being only a few years ago—decides not to return Spock to a local doctor. He takes it upon himself to save the stranger so, he brings back Spock to his isolated cabin at Eagle Head Point.
Lottie Hatfield, owner of a local saloon bar, becomes Stemple’s confidant about Spock’s existence. Stemple shares his concerns about what Spock’s existence means for their planet and humanity itself. Later Lottie sees two Klingons. She wants to go back and warn Stemple, but the weather kills that plan.
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| Gets help |
Spock wakes up with no memory of
who he is, but he knows he is an alien.
He is also very depressed to the point of almost suicide. Stemple tries to cheer him up and offers him
a job as an accountant.
Back in the 23rd century Kirk is still trying to figure out what happened to his friend and first officer. He teams up with Commander Maria Kellogg, who is the commanding officer of Starbase 12. Kellogg points to that there is a Klingon historian named Khlaru, currently on this very Starbase. Tillmann's Factor is a mathematical constant to do with acceleration past light-speed, and the Enterprise this year accidentally created at time warp and was sent back to Earth during the 1960s. Maybe the Klingons have used the white dwarf star to create their own time warp. To Kirk, the number 18-6-7 sounds like a date.
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| Kirk and crew trying to find Spock |
Kellogg has a Vulcan historian Trae
on staff. Trae explains that the
Klingons were conquered by the Karsid Empire centuries ago. Karsid strategy was
to locate preindustrial societies and offer them economic and other help. This
would lead to increasing interference on their part in those societies until
they took over completely. The Klingons overthrew the Karsid Empire before
founding their own and this is the reason the Karsids were never able to try
this on Earth.
Spock is given the name Ishmael Marx and is introduced into town as Stemple’s nephew. They visit Lottie’s place where Spock learns about the town’s big situation. Jason Bolt, who runs a lumber mill with his two brothers, Jeremy and Joshua, had to overcome a shutdown of his operation as his lumberjacks are upset that there is no female population to speak of in Seattle. In order to save his business, he promises to find at least a hundred single young women willing to come to the frontier town and stay for a full year. Problem is he doesn’t have the money to afford it. So, to meet that second desperate situation he makes a literal gamble. Stemple puts up much of the money not as a loan but as a bet the Bolt brothers will not succeed. If the Bolt fails to marry off all the women Stemple wins Bridal Veil Mountain, with their logging company at a fraction of the costs. (This is the overall plot of the Here Come the Brides TV show.)
Spock is more than successful as Stemple’s accountant, and his skills amaze the town. It appears the memory plagued Vulcan is fitting in very well on 19th century Earth. Spock challenges his benefactor to the morality of this bet of his. He convinces Stemple to offer the Bolt brothers a way out of the bet by just buying him off. The Bolt brothers don’t have the money, so they head to San Francisco to gamble, and Spock comes up with a method for them to gradually win money. In a few days they were going to be able to get the $50,000 to pay off Stemple. While this is going on they are attacked in the street, but they manage to fight them off. They run into a woman named Sarah Gay. Gay is a doctor but because of prejudice at the time she was not allowed to be one. Joshua takes a liking to her.
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| Spock tries to help the Bolts out |
Spock’s system was working but they got greedy and Jason risks everything on poker but loses. This means they have to leave San Francisco empty handed and the bet between the Bolts and Stemple is still on.
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| The ladies of the bet! |
Kirk, McCoy, Maria Kellogg, and
Trae investigate what the Klingons are trying to achieve. They found that the
Klingons tried to destroy the relevant records, but was stopped by Khin Khlaru,
who wanted to preserve the integrity of the historical record. The records
reveal that the Karsids began their attempt to subvert and take over Earth in
1868, but their efforts were stopped by government of the United States. Before
they could overcome that resistance, the Klingon rebellions began that brought
about the downfall of the Karsid Empire.
The person most responsible for the US Government being able to resist
the Karsid Empire, was no other than the United States representative from
Washington Territory – Aaron Stemple.
The Klingons are hoping to stop Stemple thus allowing them to conquer
the Earth and prevent the Federation from forming. The Klingon Empire will still come into
existence with no Federation to stand in the way of their territorial ambitions.
During the celebration of Jeremy Bolt and Candy Pruitt’s marriage, Jason proposes to Biddy hoping to finally win the bet. She turns him down, although she was very flattered by the proposal, but she thinks they would not be a good match. Sarah Gay arrives unexpectedly, having changed her mind about marrying Joshua.
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| Spock doing his best to fit in. |
Stemple then asks Biddy to marry him, and she accepts. This means Stemple gets the love of this life but loses the bet, this means that everyone is happy with all they have. At this point in the plot this is the perfect time for Klingon assassins from the future to show up. Seeing Klingons restores Spock’s memory and he sees them go after Stemple. He gives chase but Spock is not in time to prevent the Klingons shooting temple who is badly wounded but not killed. Spock stops the Klingons finishing Aaron off and they leave, convinced that they fatally injured him.
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| Stemple gets his girl! |
Spock tries to nurse him back to health with blood transfusions enthusiastically donated by the community. It doesn’t save him only delays the inevitable, Spock is convinced that he failed in his primary objective. Just when he is about to come to terms with his failure Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy arrive. They took the Enterprise back to the past via firing the warp drive around a star and here they are. Stemple is brought back to the ship, and his life is saved. Spock, restored to his previous self, thanks Stemple for all he had done for him. Stemple is sent back to his own destiny.
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| Kirk and McCoy show up to rescue Spock! |
In his final evaluation Spock
conceded that he believes they have always been living in the altered
time-line. The Klingons, in their
attempt to change what had happened, ended up bringing the exact events about.
Spock also concludes that his mother and therefore himself are the descendants
of Biddy and Aaron Stemple. Stemple is
Amanda Grayson’s middle name.
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| Spock restored! |
Additional thoughts: This was a fun story. In a way it reminded me of the earlier story
“Mind Sifter” that involved Captain Kirk after Klingon torture being sent to
Earth’s past with no idea of who was. This
was better. Spock might not have had his
memory, but he was clearly himself. It
also did not take place of an impossible timetable.
This is not just a Star Trek book; it is crossover with another TV show from the 1960s called Here Comes the Brides. All the characters that Spock interacts with in the 19th century are from this series. Now I never even heard of the series before this book, so I did some reading up on it. Like Star Trek, Brides often would deal with real world issues such as racial discrimination and the importance of tolerance. The show lasted for two seasons and had over fifty episodes. I suspect that the show never had a resolution for its characters because the shows main premise: women being brought in for marriage prospects and a bet between Stemple and Jason Bolt is still on going at the start of this story and finally resolved by the end of the book. All the Brides characters are in a good place at the end, with this probably being their last appearance—as unlike Star Trek they didn’t give birth to a franchise—their fans can rest easy knowing how it was all resolved.
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| Hopefully fans got their resolution |
When I was a kid, my sisters, my
cousins, and I use to play a game we called “Mix up.” We would all play
characters from various franchises and come up with stories on how they could
interact together. So, Luke Skywalker could team up with Captain Kirk, the
Ghostbusters, and a superhero. This book kind of reminded me of that.
The scene when they were talking
about the old Earth Gregorian calendar dating system and since they didn’t use it,
they were unaware that BC and AD weren’t used in everyday speech. I like how Kirk and McCoy used their
experience with Edith Keeler to explain that to the base commander. Although later in the series would make this
scene not make sense as the calendar is still used by humans.
I learned something about math that
I didn’t know prior to reading this book.
X²-1=(X-1) *(X+1) I thought that was very cool. Thank you, Mr. Spock.
We learned a bit of Klingon
history. The Karsid Empire is the Mongol Empire to the Klingons’ Russia. The Klingons were once the victims of space
conquerors until they overthrew them and used their empire to start the
foundation of their own interplanetary empire.
Seems this is history that they probably shouldn’t be messing with.
I thought it was funny that the
United States Library of Congress is still around despite the unification of
Earth Government.
Although Spock says he thinks they
were always in the alternate timeline I have a different opinion. This reminds me a lot of the first Terminator
movie where it was a closed time loop. The attempt to change the past is what
caused the very events that you didn’t want to happen to actually happen. Hence, while the Klingons stop focusing on
time travel.
So, Aaron Stemple, who was played
by Star Trek Legend Mark Lenard, turns out to be one of Spock’s human
ancestors. Amazing that Spock, he always
has relatives coming out of nowhere. It
was bit of stretch that Stemple was so quick to deduce that Spock was not of
this world. I mean what would even
inspire him to believe in life on other planets? There is nothing about that in the culture of
Earth at the time at least that I am aware of.
They do point out that such a world did produce H.G. Wells and his stories
so I suppose it could make sense but still seemed that Stemple had formed these
beliefs because of plot smarts. Unless, does
anyone who watched this TV show know if Stemple was always going on about aliens
trying to invade the Earth?
Should it be canon: I have no issues with this, I
think it would be a great addition to Star Trek canon.
Cover Art: The cover has Spock in 19th
century dress playing chess with a man from that time period. A beautiful woman looks on standing slightly
behind the middle of them. The cover has
a slight deception as in the story Spock grew his hair longer to cover his ears
while he was in 1867.
Final Grade: Final Grade 5 of 5
