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Star Trek: My Brother's Keeper #3
Enterprise
The gripping conclusion to the story of Jim Kirk's lost friend, the man who helped shape a Starfleet captain.... Captain Kirk has returned to Earth to attend the funeral of Gary Mitchell -- the man he was forced to kill. As he wonders what he can possibly say in eulogy, he thinks back to the first time he had to do without his friend, several months earlier.... Kirk has just taken command of the U.S.S. Enterprise™ and brought along Gary as navigator. Kirk has learned to depend on his friend's good sense and advice, but when Kirk confronts the Klingons for the first time in his career, Gary is taken captive and cut off from Kirk. Now the young captain has no choice but to rely on a man he barely knows, a Vulcan named Spock.
227 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1999
28 people are currently reading
336 people want to read
About the author
Michael Jan Friedman
374 books205 followersMichael Jan Friedman is an author of more than seventy books of fiction and nonfiction, half of which are in the Star Trek universe. Eleven of his titles have appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list. Friedman has also written for network and cable television and radio, and scripted nearly 200 comic books, including his original DC superhero series, the Darkstars.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
January 27, 2019
Good...but inferior to the previous novels in the trilogy.
March 17, 2017
Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of listening to my Nerd Ramblings about Jim Kirk knows that I have a particular fascination with him, largely because I feel that the Carefree Playboy Kirk that permeates pop culture is an egregious misreading of the character. That fascination has led to an interest in Jim's best friend Gary Mitchell, the navigator who was killed in the series pilot. I always imagined Gary to have quite an influence on a younger Jim Kirk and on that front this trilogy didn't disappoint. We see Gary's hand in transforming Jim from an uptight lieutenant to a...slightly less neurotic captain. The fact is, Jim never really lightens up. He's far too critical of his abilities and always blames himself for things that go wrong, even (and especially) the things he can't control.
If anyone actually embodies the popular culture's interpretation of Jim, it's Gary as the incorrigible skirt chasing adventurer. The "My Brother's Keeper" trilogy is about Jim's friendship with Gary and the lessons he learns from it. If the first book was about Jim learning to trust Gary, and the second was about learning to lean on him, the last book is fittingly about learning to let Gary go. Gary doesn't feature quite as prominently in this book, which works because the character focus is on Jim's need to stop being so dependent on his best friend. (I won't even get started on Jim Kirk's knack for codependency or we'll be here all day.)
I wasn't terribly impressed with the actual plot for this book. It wrapped up a tie to the other two books that I never felt was terribly important. The conflicts from the "Republic" and "Constitution" were centered largely around duty and when a leader should accept protocol or buck the system. After that, generic plotlines like genetically modified Klingons loose on the ship don't seem as interesting. The best part of the end, naturally, is not the resolution of Jim's emotional state or the defeat of the Klingons, but Bones and Spock's meetcute at Gary's funeral.
If anyone actually embodies the popular culture's interpretation of Jim, it's Gary as the incorrigible skirt chasing adventurer. The "My Brother's Keeper" trilogy is about Jim's friendship with Gary and the lessons he learns from it. If the first book was about Jim learning to trust Gary, and the second was about learning to lean on him, the last book is fittingly about learning to let Gary go. Gary doesn't feature quite as prominently in this book, which works because the character focus is on Jim's need to stop being so dependent on his best friend. (I won't even get started on Jim Kirk's knack for codependency or we'll be here all day.)
I wasn't terribly impressed with the actual plot for this book. It wrapped up a tie to the other two books that I never felt was terribly important. The conflicts from the "Republic" and "Constitution" were centered largely around duty and when a leader should accept protocol or buck the system. After that, generic plotlines like genetically modified Klingons loose on the ship don't seem as interesting. The best part of the end, naturally, is not the resolution of Jim's emotional state or the defeat of the Klingons, but Bones and Spock's meetcute at Gary's funeral.
October 20, 2021
Friedman wraps up his retrospective on Kirk and Gary Mitchell’s friendship with a novel that balances more flashback memories with Kirk actually having to face his dead friend’s family at the funeral. I thought the family was more forgiving of Kirk than I would have expected—he did confess to killing their son, after all—and they were barely fazed by the revelation. The main plot about a battle with a group of genetically modified Klingons didn’t really catch my interest as much as the emotional crisis of confronting Mitchell’s parents did.
If you liked this review, you can find more at www.gilbertstack.com/reviews.
If you liked this review, you can find more at www.gilbertstack.com/reviews.
March 17, 2013
Michael Jan Friedman is amazing when it comes to TOS Trek stories. Great ending to this three book series. Like the two books before this one had a great flow and was difficult to put down. The characters remained true to their expected rolls, more trek stories should be written like this.
January 31, 2023
A strong conclusion to the post-Gary Mitchell death trilogy. I wasn't sure how much one could milk out of the detritus left behind by the episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before" but Michael Jan Friedman proved me wrong.
August 31, 2013
i'm a doctor, not a diplomat
June 20, 2024
I very much enjoyed the last book in this series so I have high hopes for this book.
It starts, like the others in the aftermath of the Where No Man has Gone Before incident and it’s quite effective on how profound an effect it has on Kirk.
”Before long”, he said, “we came to the edge of the galaxy—or at least, what the Federation have come to think of as the edge of the galaxy.”
I’m currently also reading These Are The Voyages” which is a super-detailed ‘Making of’ for Star Trek. It talk about how Gary Lockwood the actor who played Gary Mitchell could hardly see out of his glowing contact lenses — which is why he had such an arrogant, superior mien, which worked perfectly for the character!
Her antennae leaned forward in position of alertness—not that they would help her in the least. Over millions of years, her people’s cranial appendages had become as vestigial as a human appendix.
As he had pointed out to Gary, there was an emergency phaser locker a few meters down on the left. They paused long enough to open it with a command code and extract two of the phasers within.
The Enterprise under Captain Kirk, with Spock, McCoy and Gary are called back to the same place they were when they were younger officers on the Republic and the Constitution (last two books).
There they uncover the mystery of their previous trips and the reason the Klingons are there as well.
It’s a very good mystery, and in theory answers questions that have never been answered to anyone’s satisfaction about the Klingons.
”My ship is programmed so that certain command codes will shut down her engines and key operating systems. All I have to do is transmit those codes at a frequency theEnterprise’s comm system will recognize and the computer will take care of the rest.”
But before the Klingon could land his blow, another gold and black figure came hurtling at him, slamming him into the bulkhead behind him.
The captain looked up and saw that it was Spock.
Sometimes whose absent I didn’t notice until it was present was a ”Captain’s log, supplemental.” I rather like it.
It’s a very good book. A very personal book and a great tribute to Gary Mitchell (and Gary Lockwood).
I’m giving this book 5 stars and keeping the whole series. This book makes it essential.
It starts, like the others in the aftermath of the Where No Man has Gone Before incident and it’s quite effective on how profound an effect it has on Kirk.
”Before long”, he said, “we came to the edge of the galaxy—or at least, what the Federation have come to think of as the edge of the galaxy.”
I’m currently also reading These Are The Voyages” which is a super-detailed ‘Making of’ for Star Trek. It talk about how Gary Lockwood the actor who played Gary Mitchell could hardly see out of his glowing contact lenses — which is why he had such an arrogant, superior mien, which worked perfectly for the character!
Her antennae leaned forward in position of alertness—not that they would help her in the least. Over millions of years, her people’s cranial appendages had become as vestigial as a human appendix.
As he had pointed out to Gary, there was an emergency phaser locker a few meters down on the left. They paused long enough to open it with a command code and extract two of the phasers within.
The Enterprise under Captain Kirk, with Spock, McCoy and Gary are called back to the same place they were when they were younger officers on the Republic and the Constitution (last two books).
There they uncover the mystery of their previous trips and the reason the Klingons are there as well.
It’s a very good mystery, and in theory answers questions that have never been answered to anyone’s satisfaction about the Klingons.
”My ship is programmed so that certain command codes will shut down her engines and key operating systems. All I have to do is transmit those codes at a frequency theEnterprise’s comm system will recognize and the computer will take care of the rest.”
But before the Klingon could land his blow, another gold and black figure came hurtling at him, slamming him into the bulkhead behind him.
The captain looked up and saw that it was Spock.
Sometimes whose absent I didn’t notice until it was present was a ”Captain’s log, supplemental.” I rather like it.
It’s a very good book. A very personal book and a great tribute to Gary Mitchell (and Gary Lockwood).
I’m giving this book 5 stars and keeping the whole series. This book makes it essential.
July 26, 2022
Jim Kirk was forced to kill his best friend, Gary Mitchell, after Mitchell was irrevocably altered by an energy field and became a malevolent danger to the Enterprise and her crew. Now, asked by Mitchell's parents to deliver a eulogy at the fallen man's funeral, Kirk wrestles with the decision to tell them the truth of their son's death and his role in it. As part of his reflection, he looks back to another time when he thought Mitchell was dead -- to a time when Enterprise was ordered by Starfleet Command to deliver a small team to a barren wasteland, where waited a Klingon cruiser. Kirk knows this is not the first time Starfleet and the Klingons have rendezvoused here, but he has never been privy to the details of these secret meetings -- not even now, as captain. Disaster strikes and Kirk soon loses the Enterprise to a small band of augmented Klingons, and must work with Klingon legend-in-the-waiting Kang to free his people and eliminate a threat to the Federation. As a Star Trek novel, this is perfectly fine; it's an enjoyable adventure with good characterization and humor. As the ending part of this trilogy, though, it suffers for want of Gary Mitchell: he recedes far into the background for most of the book. It's essentially a Kirk and Kang struggle, with Friedman making an attempt to explain why TOS had human-like Klingons and TNG had Klingon-Klingons. Amusingly, Friedman uses genetic augmentation in the story -- taking it the complete opposite direction that ST-Enterprise did.
April 28, 2020
Very cool conclusion to this trilogy of books focusing on Kirk's evolving friendship with Gary Mitchell. Kirk and the Enterprise have gone to Earth, following the events of "Where No Man Has Gone Before." He's to speak at Gary's funeral service, but finds himself full of conflicting emotions, given he was the one who killed Gary. After a lunch with McCoy, Kirk goes to the Gary's parents' apartment the day before the service to tell them the truth about what happened. As he finds himself unsure whether to the tell them about the incident, he flashes back to his last big adventure with Gary.
This book concludes this series with the teases author Friedman set up in the previous two books regarding their ships' secret missions to deep space, with the last book revealing a Klingon Bird of Prey orbiting a planet. What's on the planet was great--I enjoyed all the characters, with their leader being a wonderful antagonist. Events from one of the television series makes some of this backstory non canon, but it's still a fantastic read.
As with the previous two books, this is a must-read for Trek fans.
This book concludes this series with the teases author Friedman set up in the previous two books regarding their ships' secret missions to deep space, with the last book revealing a Klingon Bird of Prey orbiting a planet. What's on the planet was great--I enjoyed all the characters, with their leader being a wonderful antagonist. Events from one of the television series makes some of this backstory non canon, but it's still a fantastic read.
As with the previous two books, this is a must-read for Trek fans.
May 21, 2021
This book is ALMOST a return to form for Friedman. Something I haven't seem him pull off in quite some time... a good Star Trek story. But again, the are problems with flashback stories. ZERO stakes. More so than usual with a Trek book. Not only that... but the real emotional thrust of the book-- the one the sorta carries the entire trilogy- takes up four chapters.
Really, you could have taken the real hard hitting punch in the gut parts of this whole story arc- ripping a few chapters out of book one, the first and last chapters out of book two and three.... stapled them back together and had a 100 pages right there. The rest of this saga has no real to exist.
Really, you could have taken the real hard hitting punch in the gut parts of this whole story arc- ripping a few chapters out of book one, the first and last chapters out of book two and three.... stapled them back together and had a 100 pages right there. The rest of this saga has no real to exist.
August 11, 2021
As with the first two parts of this trilogy, this was a fast read. It puts to bed how Kirk met Mitchell until he spoke at Mitchell’s funeral after letting Gary’s parents know a streamlined version of what happened in the Star Trek episode Where No Man Has Gone Before. I find it interesting how the friendship would have taken place with the story embellishing what few clues there were in the episode. Definitely recommended for those who are Trek fans and also for those who are curious about what would be one version of what could have happened.
May 7, 2020
Ok ending to the trilogy. I liked how the book tried to show the crew transitions between the pilot episode and the actual first season of the show. Also tried to explain how the TNG-era Klingons came about, though it was later addressed in an Enterprise episode a few years after this book was written. As an ending to the "Gary Mitchell" trilogy, it's honestly more of an Original Series adventure, with Mitchell as one of the characters... which is OK.
January 31, 2021
I enjoyed this conclusion and was glad that it wrapped up the threaded mystery. It was a good end to a great series.
I must have been too caught up in the drama during book one to notice but when Kirk thinks about what drove him to leave Phelanna back then I was a bit disappointed to realise it was such a shallow move.
This series did a lovely job of illustrating the relationship between Kirk and Mitchell and adds a great deal of depth to the one episode we had featuring Gary Mitchell.
I must have been too caught up in the drama during book one to notice but when Kirk thinks about what drove him to leave Phelanna back then I was a bit disappointed to realise it was such a shallow move.
This series did a lovely job of illustrating the relationship between Kirk and Mitchell and adds a great deal of depth to the one episode we had featuring Gary Mitchell.
June 17, 2023
Mystery revealed and a friend laid to rest
Keeping the pace of the previous two books in this trilogy we see another memory of Kirk that reveals the mystery that began in book one. We also see Kirk say his final goodbye to his friend, Gary Mitchell. These three books together make for a very enjoyable read and good insight into Kirk - how he became the man we know and his relationship with Gary.
Keeping the pace of the previous two books in this trilogy we see another memory of Kirk that reveals the mystery that began in book one. We also see Kirk say his final goodbye to his friend, Gary Mitchell. These three books together make for a very enjoyable read and good insight into Kirk - how he became the man we know and his relationship with Gary.
August 8, 2024
Well I have to say the big reveal of what is going on in the mystery system is kind of disappointing and the main villain is kind of an idiot but everything else is quite good. The through line of this series is the death of Gary Mitchell and Kirk resolving how that played out and how he ultimately is the one that killed him and I think that is resolved well. Enjoyed the series overall and like how they shined a spotlight on an often overlooked part of the Original series.
March 23, 2025
This is another one where I was honestly more invested in the aftermath of Gary’s death than in the flashback story itself, as good as it was. I really liked seeing the recruitment of Bones for the Enterprise. He even says “Dammit Jim I’m a biologist not a doctor!” The Chateau Picard wine was a nice touch, not as cheesy as a cameo from Picard’s ancestor would’ve been. Kirk’s talk with Gary’s parents? I had mixed feelings about that, but it’s still sad regardless.
June 23, 2024
I believe that this volume was the best book in the Star Trek: My Brother's Keeper trilogy. I don't understand why this trilogy isn't considered canon for Star Trek, but it definitely should be. The storytelling in this trilogy was the most fun, engaging, emotional, and interesting space opera I have ever read in the Star Trek TOS universe of books.
September 13, 2020
A fun lighthearted read.
November 3, 2025
The story concludes as Kirk discovers the secret the Federation has kept from his time on The Republic.
An entertaining re-read
An entertaining re-read
August 29, 2013
“Enterprise” is the final book in the “My Brother’s Keeper” trilogy by by Michael Jan Friedman which explores the friendship between James T. Kirk and Gary Mitchell. As with the previous two novels in the series, it utilises a framing story set after the events of the TV episode entitled "Where No Man Has Gone Before" in which Gary Mitchell dies.
The framing story is based around following Kirk’s journey back to Earth where he meets Gary’s parents and decides to tell them the truth about what happened to their son. However, whilst there he ends up thinking over one of his first adventures as captain of the Enterprise in which Gary continues to help shape his career. This flashback follows Kirk and his crew as they finally unravel a mystery that had been building through both the previous novels. What they find is a secret that both the Klingon’s and Federation have kept hidden and will result in Kirk having to work with a Klingon commander named Kang if he is to save the Enterprise.
I initially struggled to get into this book as once again Friedman decided to use a portion of the novel to describe Mitchell’s death. I can’t imagine anyone reading without having picked up the previous novels in the series so don’t understand why he felt the need to subject me to another re-telling of the same story. It doesn’t help that the best telling of Mitchell’s death was in the first novel anyway.
However, once we get past this the novel is actually quite an enjoyable read and I was happy to finally see the conclusion to the mystery that had been progressing in the other novels. There is plenty of action and fun throughout, but in addition there is some character development in regards to Kirk as he tries to learn about accepting everyone’s opinion, not just people he may have known closely in the past so that he can be a great captain.
Another nice little element to story is Friedman’s attempt at trying to explain the physical differences between Klingons in the Original Series and in the Next Generation. This book of course was written prior to the “Enterprise” TV series which gives a different reasoning, but I think that I actually prefer this version.
Overall, this was an enjoyable and entertaining conclusion to the trilogy and I probably found the core story to be the best out of all three novels. There is plenty of action, adventure and excitement packed into this novel in addition to its attempt at exploring Kirk’s growth into a good captain.
The framing story is based around following Kirk’s journey back to Earth where he meets Gary’s parents and decides to tell them the truth about what happened to their son. However, whilst there he ends up thinking over one of his first adventures as captain of the Enterprise in which Gary continues to help shape his career. This flashback follows Kirk and his crew as they finally unravel a mystery that had been building through both the previous novels. What they find is a secret that both the Klingon’s and Federation have kept hidden and will result in Kirk having to work with a Klingon commander named Kang if he is to save the Enterprise.
I initially struggled to get into this book as once again Friedman decided to use a portion of the novel to describe Mitchell’s death. I can’t imagine anyone reading without having picked up the previous novels in the series so don’t understand why he felt the need to subject me to another re-telling of the same story. It doesn’t help that the best telling of Mitchell’s death was in the first novel anyway.
However, once we get past this the novel is actually quite an enjoyable read and I was happy to finally see the conclusion to the mystery that had been progressing in the other novels. There is plenty of action and fun throughout, but in addition there is some character development in regards to Kirk as he tries to learn about accepting everyone’s opinion, not just people he may have known closely in the past so that he can be a great captain.
Another nice little element to story is Friedman’s attempt at trying to explain the physical differences between Klingons in the Original Series and in the Next Generation. This book of course was written prior to the “Enterprise” TV series which gives a different reasoning, but I think that I actually prefer this version.
Overall, this was an enjoyable and entertaining conclusion to the trilogy and I probably found the core story to be the best out of all three novels. There is plenty of action, adventure and excitement packed into this novel in addition to its attempt at exploring Kirk’s growth into a good captain.
December 20, 2010
Good ending to the trilogy. Plausibly explains how the main crew members came together, and could even serve to reveal how Klingons came to have 'bumpy heads'! There were of course some elements that were quite a stretch of the imagination, but overall it worked.
Characterizations were quite well done.
Characterizations were quite well done.
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July 28, 2011Book 3 in this excellent series ties up all the loose ends, and solves a mystery thread first started in book 1. It's been a long time since I enjoyed a "classic Trek" book as much as I did these three books.
July 30, 2013
Better than the first two, it wraps up everything in a nice little bow. The ending is a little too abrupt, but it's still the best in the series.
May 3, 2018
Very good all 3 books. The Impact one person can have on anothers life and what that person can teached you about your self
October 30, 2024
A much better book than the first two. I really enjoyed the new relationship feel with Spock, as he is dealing with the situation with Mitchell.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews