“Any idiot can die for his ship, James; what takes real genius is surviving!” (58).
Stardate: 4496.1
Written by Star Trek legend David Gerrold (famous for penning the classic episode “The Trouble With Tribbles” along with a couple other Trek episodes), The Galactic Whirlpool was originally conceived as a two-part episode for the original series. In it, Starfleet has received reports of a Klingon vessel in the vicinity of mining colonies near Mordred and Guinevere, two moons of the gas giant Arthur (and a scientific station on the third moon, Lancelot) so the Enterprise has been sent to the quadrant. But after the Enterprise spends twelve days investigating the sector with no sign of the Klingons, the crew quickly discovers something else, a mysterious “anomaly” that turns out to be a huge swirling civilization of sorts, the size of an asteroid. Is it an alien ship? Or a multi-generation colony ship? A derelict machine? Or something from earth’s past?
The crew determines that this strange vessel has been traveling for centuries and likely still has centuries left to go. Unfortunately, the vessel is unresponsive to communications and the Enterprise is unable to use the transporter to beam a landing party down due to the relentless spinning motion (something tells me this would be possible in more recent iterations of Trek literature). And Chekov determines that the vessel is actually on a dangerous collision course with the “galactic maelstrom” or “galactic whirlpool,” where two gigantic swirling black holes are absorbing everything in their periphery with nearby neutron stars. There are only a few weeks left to redirect the vessel’s course before it’s too late (collision will strike in three years). Thus, several ensigns take a shuttlecraft down to the vessel and set up a “portable airlock” which will allow for transporter usage.
Shortly thereafter, the crew is attacked by a group of humans in costumes with bearlike arms, huge metal claws, scaly armor, and masks. Lt. Kevin Riley (famous for his appearances in a couple TOS episodes, including his singing scene in “The Naked Time”) accidentally fires a phaser at one of the attackers and she turns out to be a woman. She is beamed back aboard the Enterprise from the portable airlock and cared for by Dr. McCoy in sickbay. We later learn her name is Katholin “Katwen” Arwen, a warrior, and her world is called “The Wanderer.” When she wakes up on the Enterprise, she unsurprisingly experiences a ‘culture shock’ and tries to escape, but she is eventually calmed down by Lt. Riley (in fact, they steadily fall in love and Riley even quotes the old song: “I’ll take you home again, Katholin”). She then explains in broken English that nobody on The Wanderer has any conception of a world outside their own. They have been pumped full of propagandized mythology.
When the crew returns to the surface, we learn that The Wanderer was originally constructed as a large nation to inhabit the L5 orbit around earth. It contains an elaborate terraformed ecology capable of large-scale farming. It left earth some 185 years ago, first aimed for Sirius-B but they were unable to inhabit the world and so headed onward to Wolf 359 (a real red dwarf star that features prominently in the TNG two-part episode “The Best of Both Worlds”) but in the grip of a mutiny and internal civil war, The Wanderer lost its deceleration capability. The echoes of the civil war still linger as the upper levels and the lower levels of the ship are still locked in endless conflict, even generations later, with even different gravity levels between upper and lower. The upper levels control the farms and electricity (they believe the people in the lower levels are “savages” and “demons”) while the lower levels live in darkness and possess the fusion engines that are currently turned off. The problem, however, is that no one in the lower levels has any knowledge of how to use the engines. The records are all contained in an upper level library.
Up above, The Wanderer is effectively ruled by a tyrant named Captain Frost. When a landing party finally invades The Wanderer (with help from Katwen), Captain Frost still refuses to listen to reason, until a sudden transporter incident occurs. Frost’s phaser starts to shimmer since it is being transported away but he fires at the last moment and incinerates himself. Then his associate, Dr. Hobie (head of the late Captain Frost’s science council), assumes command and, after much persuasion from Kirk, he at last agrees to work together with Gomez, a leader of the rebels from the lower levels, to fire up The Wanderer’s fusion engines and hopefully steer clear of the galactic whirlpool. Chekov directs the Wanderer straight for the “Ellison’s variable” (a little jab at Harlan Ellison?) so that The Wanderer will be looped around the gravitational pull of Ellison’s Star and head toward the nearby colony on Malcor’s Pride which has been requesting more colonists from the Federation. In the end, Lt. Riley and Katwen embrace each other in an emotional farewell, mutually agreeing to go their separate ways despite their love. And the Enterprise speeds off toward deep space station K-7 for some much-needed rest.
The Galactic Whirlpool is an engaging early Star Trek novel. It is packed full of inside jokes and little references. For example: Admiral George La Forge is mentioned (this was a result of a ten-year-old boy with multiple sclerosis at a convention who desperately wanted to be a Starfleet Admiral; Geordi in TNG was later given the same name). There are many other references Trekkies will pick up on, like “The Great Bird of the Galaxy,” a brief cameo from both Arex and M’Ress (from TAS), and there is even a notable claim that Kirk’s middle name Tiberius was really more of a nickname from his Academy days, a result of a popular rumor that Kirk was “the last of the Claudians” (as in the Roman Claudian dynasty). There are tons of other references: Spock’s great-great-grandmother, a Vulcan satirist named T’Pshaw, a Terran philosopher Solomon Short who is quoted several times, a Chekov reference to a Gagarin Station incident, the mention of Baba Yaga, an island civilization with no permanent dwellings and rising waters on the planet Musourgsky. Kirk’s backstory is explored a bit, such as that his first year as a captain was spent collecting the sum total of knowledge in the universe, his famous maneuvers at Starfleet Academy (the “Kirk Evasion” and the “Tiberian Reverse”) and an infamous “MacMurray Encounter” (I’m sure many of these little drops are just excuses for David Gerrold to add more wordplay and in-jokes to the novel, many of which go over my head).
In The Galactic Whirlpool, David Gerrold successfully captures the tone and characterization of the main crew members, Kirk and Spock play a central role while Chekov, Scotty, Uhura, and Bones make minor appearances (Bones delivers a few familiar quips like “I’m a doctor, not a semanticist” or “I’m a doctor, not a theologian”), but the real standout is Lt. Kevin Riley! His lead role in this novel was certainly a surprise. There are also several new ensigns introduced –Garcia, Stokely, Omara, Sprecks– as well as a librarian named Specks, and a legal analyst named Munker. The Galactic Whirlpool presents a very familiar premise –the Enterprise happens upon a large ship filled ancient earth technology and two warring factions—and it has far too many large exposition passages. But at least there is a thoughtful examination of the Prime Directive and it feels like Star Trek again (the same cannot always be said for these early Bantam books). All things considered, The Galactic Whirlpool is another quirky Bantam Star Trek novel that I quite enjoyed at least more than others from this era.
Gerrold, David. The Galactic Whirlpool. A Bantam Spectra Book, New York, New York, 1980. Dedicated to: Jon, Molly, Matthew, and Cindy.