As a continuation of "WHAAAAALES IN SPAAAAACE" this was GREAT. It dealt with linguistics, with actual problems of first contact (do you even recognize the things you're trying to contact), with Federation diplomacy...everything I want from a Star Trek story. Highly recommended.

Considering the insults the original author had to endure, the quality here is actually pretty good. Any review of this book is liable to get side-tracked by the stories behind the story. Like, how the author is not actually the author because of editor machinations and rewrite duties handed elsewhere multiple times for no discernable good reason. How you can read the original manuscript for free online, titled 'Music of the Spheres' (see Member Recommendations.) Or, on another topic, how this was the obvious premise to have written a script for the movie Star Trek V around, naturally continuing the story that had developed since Wrath of Khan, until Shatner came up with his televangelist-inspired "searching for God" idea and pursued that instead.

My kids are of an age to re-trigger my Star Trek fandom as they try to parse its complexities. One of them tried to read this first and wasn't pulled in. Still, I decided I wanted to try it myself for a glimpse of the ST5 movie that might have been. It reassures me quickly that the Federation doesn't simply let the probe drift away like the movies suggest, they actually track its subsequent movement. Its wandering carries it toward the Neutral Zone, which coincides with a kind of Romulan perestroika that invites new diplomacy between Romulans and the Federation. Happily the probe plays a significant role throughout the novel, and several of the guest characters are interesting. The Enterprise crew is the only bland element, at least until the climax nears when it finally becomes their show. A movie script would beef up their roles throughout, especially for Chekov and Scotty, and remove some of the other people. Would it have led to a better Star Trek V than we got? Not much wouldn't, so yes. There's a massive coincidence involving crystals that kind of guts the whole plot, but that sort of thing usually plays better on screen anyway. ( )

Margaret Wander Bonanno’s Star Trek: Probe takes place shortly after the events of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, following the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise-A as they undertake a diplomatic mission with ambassadors from Romulus, where the death of the Praetor has opened up the possibility of glasnost and perestroika in the Romulan Empire. Simultaneously, the probe that had attempted to contact whales on Earth now travels through the Neutral Zone, where it attacks Romulan ships and installation that threaten alien leviathans on a Romulan-held planet. While the book does offer a backstory for the probe and its creators, much of the story focuses on the diplomatic with some emphasis on the political intrigue of Romulan society. In many ways, the novel serves as a better link between Star Trek IV and Star Trek VI than Star Trek V did, as the diplomatic story and Cold War parallels foreshadow the events of The Undiscovered Country.

According to Jeff Ayers’s survey of the Star Trek novels, Probe had a difficult road to publication: “All the parties involved have different recollections of those events, as well as different ways of interpreting them, and the various accounts are contradictory” (Voyages of the Imagination, pgs. 125-125). Margaret Wander Bonanno has stated that the novel is not the manuscript she submitted, which Gene Roddenberry’s office rejected, but rather the work of Gene DeWeese, who re-wrote the novel at Pocket Books editor Dave Stern’s direction. The book had steady sales upon its release and, while superior to the story of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, it is still a bit slow at the beginning, with much of the Romulan portion dragging and not matching depictions of the Romulans in the 1990s-2000s Star Trek series and films. Overall, however, the story feels like an extended episode of The Original Series, which will likely appeal to most readers. ( )

I've read this before, but I picked it up because I didn't own it and I hadn't reread it since I'd heard of the infamous "Probe debacle"-- I was interested to see what I'd think, knowing it was actually the work of J. M. Dillard and Gene DeWeese. I enjoyed it. It's a pretty lightweight and inoffensive book, but it's still a pleasant enough read. The origin of the Probe is interesting, though the titular object feels pretty shoehorned into the plot about the death of the Praetor and the resulting Romulan peace conference, which I think could have been interesting enough to sustain a novel on its own. The regulars are pretty much spot on, and most of the additional characters are fine; Commander Hiran is the best of them. Now I'm finally reading Music of the Spheres to compare Bonanno's original book to what we ended up with.

The probe from the fourth Star Trek movie, "The Voyage Home", returns to threaten the Romulan Empire. Kirk and crew intervene, perhaps laying foundations for a future cessation of hostilities between the two peoples. A quite good expansion of events from possibly the best Star Trek movie, and a good read in its own right. ( )