In Time for Yesterday, we reunite with Spock's half-Sarpeidonite son, Zar, as the entire universe is being threatened by time running amok. Pockets of space are experiencing hypertime (or some bull): spaceships have been lost in black holes, suns are burning out in extremely accelerated rates, and the universe is going to end in a few months' time. Admiral Kirk and his friends are ordered to get the Guardian to stop fucking around, but there's only one person in all of time that could get the job done. There's time-fuckery, grundgy sword battles, and a bit of ship-teasing and power trio love. What else would you want from a Star Trek novel?
What's that? Space battles? Klingons? The hell are those?
There are no Romulans, either. The story revolves more around Zar, his life and predicted death, and his relationship with the crew and others, than it does about the setup that the book opens up with, which is, admittedly, a very typically Trek plot involving ulta-powerful beings wreaking havoc on the universe.
The book takes place in that space of time between The Motion Picture and Wrath of Khan. It explicitly says that it takes place after Deep Domain, though the only references to that book are mentions of Weinstein's annoying original characters. (Honestly, I don't see how a Horta can serve as a science officer, or any officer for that manner.)
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| Equal Opportunity at its best. |
Admiral Kirk is stuck pushing paper, finishing projects, and wants to do something more active, including but not limited to teaching. Part of it is boredom on Kirk's part, but he also would like to see more of Spock, who is teaching cadets full-time.
(So not joking on the seeing Spock thing. Why would I when Kirk tells Spock as much.)
Kirk actually does a bit of.... well, I wouldn't call it complaining. He mentally sighs over the fact the bridge doors are not red like in the original series. He bemoans his lack of relationship with his grown son, David Marcus. He wants to go back to
I'll try not to do that again.
Kirk and all the regulars take the Enterprise to the Guardian, the source of the time-displacement waves, with a telepathic marsupial, who is supposed to mentally ask the Guardian what's going on. 'She' tries to connect with the Guardian and fails, becoming overwhelmed by the Guardian's 'mind' and going catatonic. Spock reasons that, while the marsupial was a powerful empath, 'she' doesn't have the mental discipline to protect against that sort of thing, something that someone like, say, a Vulcan, has,
So who do we know that has spoken to the Guardian before, is a powerful empath/telepath, and is disciplined in Vulcan min- It's Zar. Let's just move on to the medieval part of the book already.
Spock manages to get the Guardian's secondary programming online (with Kirk crying out that
Ah, love.
Kirk, Spock, McCoy transport themselves back to Sarpeidon days before a major battle.They meet up again with Zar, the ruler of a technologically advanced culture being threatened by savages. His army is outnumbered four to one, the chief priestess of the land, Wynn, has prophesied his death (a death Spock saw via the Guardian), and once the ground was dry enough, the barbarians will storm in and burn down everything he had spent 20 years building.
He's in a rough spot, and now Dad and his friends are trying to convince him to come home. Help us, they say, and stay in the future with us. That way you won't die. But he refuses. He's a grown man, and he has a responsibility to his people to fight.
Whatever, let's get to the sex.
The priestess/oracle Wynn agrees to marry Zar. He hopes that her father, one of the invaders, will join his side, or at the very least not attack his son-in-law. She hopes to avenge her first husband and child, who were killed by another of the invaders, some ominous-sounding fuck named Rogran Death-Hand. Zar, with Spock standing at his side (AWW) and Wynn get hitched within the day, and then form a mind bond/have sex.
She gets pregnant by the way. Zar, like his father before him, has to be the luckiest/most virile man alive. One act of intercourse, and you get a chick pregnant? Like father, like son.
Zar does go to the future, and this leads to a big old useless scene with the ultra-omnisciently stupid aliens that built the Guardian, the Originators. Main point: They're old, mild-to-psychotically crazy, and they hijacked the Guardian to find their home, a place they don't even remember. It was this searching that caused the time-shit, but who cares about this B-plot bullshit when we have an epic battle between technology and savagery taking place back on Sarpeidon?
And it is a big, grimy battle. People are dying left and right. The ground gets mucky with blood and everything else. Zar is challenged on a hillock by Death-Hand and, via vicious one-on-one fighting, just manages to beat him, only to be attacked with a deathblow from behind. Spock follows Zar into the past, making it to the hillock just in time to fail at stopping the assailant. It's okay, though. Zar isn't dead, just stunned, and Spock was able to imitate his son to seal victory.
I would pay anything to see a picture of Spock in chainmail and cloak, holding a sword dripping with green blood, shouting 'Victory!' as a fork of lightning flashes in the background. Anything.
The day is saved, Spock and Zar say goodbye, Kirk and McCoy comfort Spock on his loss, and the book ends with some more foreshadowing for Wrath of Khan.
While doing a bit of research for this duology, I found out that back in 2003, Crispin said in an interview that she was working on a third book. What? Another book about Zar? Color me excited. (Un)Fortunately, that idea was nixed in 2004 by the publisher. Time ends with Spock refusing to see how Zar fared after the battle, so we don't know if he lived to a ripe of age or if he died almost immediately afterwards for fucking around with fate. And perhaps we never will.
Next time, I might or might not talk about Spock, Messiah!
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