The Vulcan Academy Murders

Kirk et al. land on Vulcan to seek out an experimental medical treatment for a wounded Ensign in critical condition. Spock’s mother Amanda also happens to be undergoing the same treatment and Kirk is quickly drawn into the complex web of Spock’s familial drama. Soon enough, patients start dying – the cause is written down to a catastrophic equipment failure, but Kirk suspects foul-play. With no official law-enforcement body on the virtually crimeless Vulcan, Kirk must take the investigation into his own hands and until the killer is caught, Amanda’s life is imperilled.

As others have said, the mystery itself is laughable. I was able to correctly guess the murderer and their motive within the first 20 pages. The remaining 250 pages are insulting not only to the reader but also to the characters, who are meant to represent Starfleet and The Vulcan Academy’s best and brightest and yet are too dense to figure out who the obvious culprit is. Kirk’s investigation is so inept, it’s almost embarrassing. “You work on the ‘how,’” he orders Spock and Sarek, “and I’ll work on the ‘who.’” This apparently absolves him of the need to collect forensic evidence, establish a timeline, chase up suspect’s alibis, or do any work at all really, except speculate wildly and make accusations based on nothing but his own personal grudges.

Given Kirk’s enthusiasm in playing parts in episodes such as A Piece of the Action, it seems a real missed opportunity to not have him lean in fully into the Private Eye role – I probably could have forgiven the weakly-constructed mystery had Lorrah thought to throw in a couple of pulpy Noir-isms. Philip Marlowe seems like the kind of figure that Kirk would admire – street smart, can hold his own in a fight, but still appreciates chess and poetry. And can’t you just imagine a Captain’s Log told in the style of a hardboiled detective monologue? Alas, despite the boast on the cover (Captain Kirk becomes an interplanetary homicide detective!) it feels all very half-hearted and in name only.

The family drama portion of the book has two components, the first being the relationship between Sarek and Spock after their 18 year-long estrangement. There are a few scenes where Sarek regretfully reflects on Spock’s upbringing and his many failings as a father. Throughout the book he endeavours in earnest to make amends and eventually comes to accept his son without judgement or pity, but pride. These scenes are genuinely very affecting and unfortunately far too few – Sarek and Spock’s reconciliation is eclipsed by the second family drama aspect of the book, the romance between the two original characters, Corrigan and T’Mir.

I’m surprised and a little concerned to read so many positive reactions to Corrigan and T’Mir’s relationship because to me it came off as utterly repulsive. One is a 73 year old human man, the other a Vulcan girl who has just reached “sexual maturity.” (Yuck) If that’s not bad enough, T’Mir is the daughter of Corrigan’s colleague and close friend, and he has apparently being lusting after her since her childhood! T’Mir says: “I have known since childhood why you turned down every opportunity for marriage: you were waiting for me to grow up.” It comes across less as May-December romance and far more as “creepy incestuous uncle.” I kept hoping that my initial prediction at the killer’s true identity was wrong, that perhaps T’Mir would turn out to be a femme fatale seducing this love-starved old man for some nefarious purpose but no! Truly stomach-turning stuff.

Corrigan and T’Mir’s relationship also serves as a window into the politics of Vulcan courtship and bonding, and more critically, the “Vulcan” understanding of gender and sexuality. I write “Vulcan” in quotations, because the views depicted are quite transparently the author’s own personal beliefs that read as bizarrely out of place in this futuristic alien society. Lorrah’s repeated comments about the inherent and immutable differences between men and women are exhausting, especially because they are almost always to the effect of “Women, am I right guys?” Sarek comments archly to Spock: “The differences your mother and I rejoice in have much more to do with being male and female than with being Vulcan and human.” Women: they’re practically another species!

Moreover, Lorrah’s worship of the perfect, inviolate sanctity of the heterosexual union is, frankly, nauseating. The bonding between Corrigan and T’Mir is described as a meeting between “the exquisite awareness of male and female, opposites drawn to one another deeply and strongly in the eternal plan of nature.” If I rolled my eyes any harder I’d be looking at my own grey matter.

I want to make it clear that I’m not particularly oversensitive towards this sort of thing. My tolerance for heterosexual bullshit is actually pretty high - but sentences like this happened every other page! I was constantly being battered with it. It almost felt like Lorrah was shoving her heterosexuality down my throat. (Ha!)

My personal objections to gender essentialism and heterosexism aside, it’s just lazy, uninspired, plain bad writing. I outright reject the notion that extra-terrestrials some hundreds of years in the future would uncritically subscribe to notions of gender and sexuality that were outdated and regressive on Earth even at the time of this book’s publication. Within the context of Vulcan, it makes zero sense. Surely a culture in which “Infinite diversity in infinite combinations” is a central philosophy would be able to conceive of innumerable gender expressions and sexual orientations?

TL;DR: this book is yucky, don’t read it.