Star Trek: The Higher Frontier Returns to the Era of The Motion Picture

Star Trek: The Motion Picture celebrated its 40th anniversary this year. Now the Star Trek: The Original Series Pocket Book novel series is returning to the era of the film. Star Trek: The Higher Frontier will be set between the events of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The novel is written by Christopher L. Bennett. He’s explored the era before in novels such as Star Trek: Ex Machina, Star Trek: Mere Anarchy: The Darkness Drops Again, and Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations: Forgotten History. Star Trek: The Higher Frontier is available for pre-order now ahead of the novel’s March release.

The novel also connects to the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Is There In Truth No Beauty?” It features the telepathic Doctor Miranda Jones and the Medusan, who first appeared in the television episode.

Here’s the synopsis for the Star Trek: The Higher Frontier: “Investigating the massacre of a telepathic minority, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise confront a terrifying new threat: faceless, armored hunters whose extradimensional technology makes them seemingly unstoppable. Kirk must team with the powerful telepath Miranda Jones and the enigmatic Medusans to take on these merciless killers in an epic battle that will reveal the true faces of both enemy and ally!”

Star Trek: The Motion Picture returned to theaters in 2019 to celebrate the anniversary. Simon & Schuster also reprinted Gene Roddenberry’s novelization of the film.

The film brought back the Star Trek: The Original Series cast. Ray Wise directed from a screenplay by Harold Livingston, based on a story by Alan Dean Foster. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry produced. Paramount hired acclaimed visual effects artist Douglas Trumball, hot off of his work on 2001: A Space Odyssey, to work on Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Speaking to ComicBook.com in August, Trumbull looked back on the experience of bringing Star Trek to the big screen for the first time.

“I feel now that I’m more happy with the picture than I ever was. And I’m beginning to understand the film better than I did at the time because I’ve had to rewatch it, getting ready for interviews, and I had to kind of brief myself getting ready for the Star Trek convention last month in Las Vegas. A couple of things happened to me, about not just the film but the whole Star Trek universe and the Trekkies, as they call them, the whole phenomenon of Star Trek as a whole, It’s a profoundly important kind of cultural event of some kind that I – it’s hard for me to describe. I’m not a writer, but people who love Star Trek are intrinsically very sweet and very thoughtful, and very much looking forward optimistically to the future. I just think it’s just so charming and so sweet and so endearing. Being in an elevator at a hotel with a Klingon and a star trooper or whatever you want to call them, is really fabulous. I just have nothing but good things to say about it. In the days that I was coming off 2001, as I was saying, I was kind of arrogant about what I thought science fiction should be or could be. Now I realize that Star Trek really is bigger than I thought it was at the time.”

Are you looking forward to Star Trek: The Higher Frontier? Let us know in the comments. The novel goes on sale in March.

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