Enterprise: Shockwave - novelisation by Paul Ruditis

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Enterprise: Shockwave - novelisation by Paul Ruditis

pub: Pocket Books/Simon and Schuster. 244 page hardback. Price: £12.99 (UK), $19.95 (US) and $31.50 (CAN). ISBN: 0-7434-6455-9.

Check out website: www.simonsays.co.uk and www.startrek.com

We've already given you the review of the Enterprise episode 'Shockwave' (Parts 1 and 2), now we present the review of the book of the episode 'Shockwave'. We're still waiting for the film of the book of the episode and the accompanying T-shirt...

In true 'Star Trek' style, 'Enterprise: Shockwave' has been given the novelisation treatment. As an end of season cliff-hanger double episode, it does have enough merit and action for this. Ruditis does attempt to make the most of the differences between film and text to expand on the events and characters.

With little background story, the novelisation begins with Admiral Forrest's thoughts of Archer, Enterprise and the ever-invading question of what the Vulcan counsel really thinks of Starfleet's mission, just as Enterprise is caught up in the destruction of the Paraagan colony and the Admiral's day just gets worse from there.

There is some interesting and sensible delving into Archer's character after the accident. His guilt and gradual loss of control over himself and his crew really comes through, as does his officers' disbelief and disappoint that the Vulcans have cancelled their mission.

Archer's trip back ten months and meeting with Crewman Daniels is written in much the same way. What is lost from an obviously visually effective scene is made up by Archer's thoughts and emotions, together with a well-detailed flashback to the episode 'Cold Front'.

Their discussion of time-travel and Archer's contacting Trip, along with his questioning of where his younger-by-ten-months self remains close to the script and manages to create the right amount of confusion, tension and hope. There is, of course, the genre in-joke of Scott Bakula and time-travel and sadly there is no mention of an imaging chamber where his younger self may be or even an admission that they have swapped places.

We stay with Archer as he returns and begins to describe Daniels' plan. This is portrayed in much the same way as in the actual episode, with the crew having trouble understanding Archer's orders and we only 'see' their reactions to it, with just enough stress on T'Pol's disbelief in time-travel.

The uncloaking of the Suliban ships and the capturing of their data-disks is dealt with quickly. This is all intermixed with Admiral Forrest's reaction to hearing Enterprise is returning to the Paraagan colony and the book's introduction to the Silik and his mission. His master from the future remains an intriguing shadowy character, portrayed largely through Silik's responses to him.

When Archer disappears from the turbo-lift on his way to the Suliban ship, there is a realistic sense of confusion from the point of view of Enterprise's bridge crew, Silik - who is worried about what his master will now do to him and Forrest - who is concerned that Archer is not reporting in and has to defend his actions to the Vulcan Ambassador again.

We follow Silik's increasing anger and T'Pol's logical arguments that Archer left for Silik's ship, ending with her agreement that Silik's men can board Enterprise.
We return to Archer when he is with Daniels on the ruined remains of thirty-first century Earth.

Archer's disbelief and distrust of Daniels is well written and Archer's character comes through as Ruditis takes us through his thoughts and feelings of being so far from everything he has known, especially his feeling of helplessness when he is told that Daniels' actions have resulted in what he was trying to prevent and that returning to his own time is about more than just him wanting to go home.

This is coupled with his reaction to the library and the idea of future knowledge and information. Daniels' comments regarding the Federation, his own involvement in its creation and the Romulans stay with him.

Next, Ruditis skips carefully between Archer and Daniels trying to find a way back without the necessary technology and Enterprise as their annoyance of being invaded grows. Confined to quarters, Travis Mayweather gives us another detailed flashback of his meeting with the Suliban in the episode 'Detained'.

Trip's ability to jerry-rig the door communications systems is portrayed as something of a convenience and plot device but this is counter-balanced later by some exploration of Hoshi and T'Pol's characters as they react to having to crawl through the air ducts and being tortured by Silik and then making sense of seeing Archer's image suspended in mid-air respectively. Hoshi comments to Reed about needing a way to access the ducts for repairs.

He suggests writing to Commander Jeffries of the Starfleet Design Centre. A nice Star Trek in-joke to well-versed fans and a reminder, together with the earlier comments regarding the beginnings of the Federation, of Enterprise's place in the scheme of the universe, Starfleet and 'Star Trek'.

The determination and desperation of Archer and Daniels is very detailed. Ruditis shows mainly Archer's thoughts and emotions as their situation continues whilst we still get a sense of Daniel's guilt and sadness at the loss of his world. As in the actual episode, we do not know of their plan before T'Pol does.

Once the plan is formed the pace of the story picks up, much as it would when nearing the end action of an actual televised episode. A nice tone of suspense and tension is created as we follow Trip, Reed, Hoshi and T'Pol through the workings of the plan, not knowing what the plan actually is until we 'see' it.

There is the same confusion over whether Reed's confession about the future device when captured by Silik is real or not, the same feeling of the Suliban being lost without their future-based masters and Silik's growing desperation over this is well done, and the same feeling of well-its-fairly-predictable-but-looks-good when Archer materialises from Silik's contact beam and takes him hostage.

The text version continues to follow the visual closely in the wrapping up of the story. Archer clears Enterprise's name, the Vulcan's still want to send them back to Earth and T'Pol speaks up on Archer's behalf. There is the idea of Archer and T'Pol's growing friendship and respect for each other.

This being a book though there is a short epilogue, cleverly linking the beginning and end of the book and leaving the question of Enterprise's, and indeed Starfleet's, future perhaps a little more open and undecided than the visual episode did.

It sounds a fairly difficult task to create a book from a heavily visual piece of work without resorting to just writing out the script. There are of course many aspects of an action-based episode such as 'Shockwave' that are lost in some ways in its conversion to text, but others are well expanded on.

The tone and pace of the episode comes through, as do the characters. It does perhaps loose a lot in that it is essentially two episodes combined into one and the tension of a cliff-hanger is gone. The tension is instead dragged out over the long-running desperation of both Archer on one side of time and his crew on the other.

Despite the lack of visual drama created by real-life action, the book sticks to the script and interprets the action well enough for us to 'see' it, especially if familiar enough with Enterprise and its characters. And let's face it, it is unlikely that anyone going to the trouble of buying this book as well as watching the episode will not be.

Saying that, it is a reasonably good buy for hard-die Trek fans and a good working of one of the more memorable episodes of Enterprise's first season.

Laura Kayne

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