Double, Double (Star Trek: The Original Series Book 45) Kindle Edition

As a fan of the original TV series for 5 decades every once in a great while I like to read one of these Star Trek pastiche books. In the handful I’ve read several have proven to be above average reads, and others downright dreadful. Double Double however has turned out to be a really pleasant surprise, it is the first of this series of books that I have read that was quite excellent.I’ll start with what it doesn’t have, the failings that many of these books have. It’s doesn’t have a Mary Sue; it doesn’t have the Big 3 acting out of character; it doesn’t have a plot that contradicts anything in canon; and it doesn’t have any discernable agenda inserted into it.What it does have is crew members acting and saying the types of things they would have in the TV show; it does have a very real sense of menace; it does have a plot that very organically ties to a first season episode (What are Little Girls Made Of?); it does have solutions to problems which rely on interpersonal relationships & action to resolve; and it has those pesky Romulans up to no good in the Neutral Zone. In short, this novel reads and feels like a lost episode of the first season of TOS. Higher praise to Michael Jan Friedman I cannot give.There is only one flaw with the book and it is not the author’s fault but rather the editor’s, so I am deducting no stars. About 4/5ths of the way into the book, another starship which figures prominently in the plot goes from being called the Hood, to suddenly being called the Dunkirk. I can only presume that a decision was made to rename the ship into one of the original Constitution Class starships and that the Search & Replace function was not used on all chapters. Hopefully this will be cleaned up in future printings.Other than that one small failing this is the near perfect book for fans of the original series.

I love the old Star Trek TOS novels like this one for TWO major reasons. 1.) They're not OBSESSIVE about avenging the perceived wrongs of TOS with overcompensation -- that is to say you're not beat over the head, for example, with bossy women admirals and women aliens or even humans who can out-think Spock and out-fight Kirk. Hey, I have no problem with a strong woman in any novel--but for some of the later TOS writers it's almost like its a crusade to avenge those earlier episodes where they felt compelled to right old wrongs. Just about every role except that of the ones from TOS we're most familiar with (Scotty, McCoy, Spock, Kirk, Uhura, Chekov, Sulu, Chapel) is trivialized in favor of the avenging characters--go figure! and 2.) They are not equally OBSESSIVE about being so politically correct on everything. Chekov speaks with a thick Russian accent: "Keptin, there is an enemy wessel heading our way"... That''s how he TALKED. Same for Scotty's brogue, McCoy's brashness, Uhura's just plain unapologetic sweetness with an equally strong "but don't push it" attitude. All these elements are STILL in this novel. Your main characters actually are TOS mainstays. Of course they bring others into play, but not to beat up on Spock or Kirk to avenge past wrongs... but to develop a new story or plot.In this one, the story centers around the episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" in season one. We thought that when Kirk left, all the androids had been destroyed--but at least one was not! Apparently Dr. Korby created more than one replica of "Brown"; and this one returns to the original setting to discover the "creator" (Korby) was gone. In desperation he uses the machine, which still had its last duplicated android program still in it. And that android was KIRK. When the new android Kirk comes to life (more or less), schemes are drawn out to fulfill the vision of the creator (Korby). They lay in a plot to lure a starship to Exo III, and bit-by-bit, replace the crew with androids. The android Kirk (written in italics in the novel to distinguish it from the real Kirk), makes it his goal to get command of the ship and to begin a colony where more androids could be developed on some distant planet. The starship they take over is the Hood... from there the plot thickens when the Enterprise is sent on leave to a "Pleasure Planet" and while on Shore Leave in one of the more tacky parts of the planet, the real Kirk gets involved in a ruckus wherein the android Kirk manages to take his place without Kirk being aware of it. Before you know it, the android Kirk is on the bridge and commanding the Enterprise, and the real Kirk is totally at a loss to explain how and why his ship left him stranded on a planet where one of the unsavory citizens has put a price on his head. I won't go on any further with plot so it doesn't "spoil" the entire narrative.The reason I gave it four instead of the five it probably deserved is because the text I got on my Kindle is so rife with errors, misspelled words, grammar mistakes and outright missing letters like " he" for the, that I almost felt, in some passages, like I was decoding as I read. Still.. they weren't on every page, and I was anxious to get on and see what would happen next. If you're like me, and like the REAL original series, as opposed to the REVISED original series books... you'll enjoy Double Double.