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Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
Cadet David Forester has made it to Starfleet Academy's Command School, where the starship captains of the future are trained on mission simulators that make you feel as if you are really on the bridge of a Federation starship. But there's trouble at the Academy-- sabotage, conflict, and a series of "accidents" throw Forester's team of cadets into a scramble for their very lives. Determined to save his crew, Forester rushes to stop a plot to destroy the Academy itself, and is thrust into a mission with Starfleet legends Captain James T. Kirk, Captain Hikaru Sulu, and Commander Pavel Chekov. Together they must find the cause behind a series of ever deadlier raids on Federation outposts by an unknown enemy.
256 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1997
1 person is currently reading
212 people want to read
About the author
Diane Carey
80 books122 followersDiane Carey also wrote the Distress Call 911 young adult series under the name D.L. Carey.
Diane Carey is primarily a science fiction author best known for her work in the Star Trek franchise. She has been the lead-off writer for two Star Trek spin-off book series: Star Trek The Next Generation with Star Trek: Ghost Ship, and the novelization of the Star Trek: Enterprise pilot, Broken Bow.
For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Carey
Diane Carey is primarily a science fiction author best known for her work in the Star Trek franchise. She has been the lead-off writer for two Star Trek spin-off book series: Star Trek The Next Generation with Star Trek: Ghost Ship, and the novelization of the Star Trek: Enterprise pilot, Broken Bow.
For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Carey
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
November 13, 2017
This was awful, definitely a skip. Unbelievable characters and plot.
December 2, 2024
Diane Carey tries her best, but this adaptation of the CD-ROM game is pretty thin on the ground. I just didn't care about anyone in this class of cadets, who read as incredibly superficial at best. I think Pocket Books should have passed on this one...especially as the (at the time of writing) upcoming Academy TV series is bound to completely blow it out of the water.
July 30, 2025
Review 54. Star Trek Starfleet Academy by Diane Carey
Page Count : 223
Star Trek Starfleet Academy was one of my favourite PC games. In it, you take on the role of Cadet David Forrester who is attending Starfleet Academy's command school.
You get to command all aspects of starship operations including science, engineering, navigation, helm control and tactical while carrying out missions.
Now onto the book.
Starfleet Academy by Diane Carey is a stand alone book based around the story of the PC game.
Cadet David Forrester and his crew are central to the story, but you also have involvement of familiar characters including Captain James T. Kirk, Captain Hikaru Sulu and Commander Pavel Chekov.
Expanding on the story of the game, this book has a fantastic story, amazing characters, great dialogue and above all else HUMOUR.
This book had me hooked from the very start as the story is very different to the game's story and I really enjoyed it.
Definitely a book I will be rereading in the future and hopefully a game, I will be able to get my hands on soon to begin playing again.
5*
*****
Page Count : 223
Star Trek Starfleet Academy was one of my favourite PC games. In it, you take on the role of Cadet David Forrester who is attending Starfleet Academy's command school.
You get to command all aspects of starship operations including science, engineering, navigation, helm control and tactical while carrying out missions.
Now onto the book.
Starfleet Academy by Diane Carey is a stand alone book based around the story of the PC game.
Cadet David Forrester and his crew are central to the story, but you also have involvement of familiar characters including Captain James T. Kirk, Captain Hikaru Sulu and Commander Pavel Chekov.
Expanding on the story of the game, this book has a fantastic story, amazing characters, great dialogue and above all else HUMOUR.
This book had me hooked from the very start as the story is very different to the game's story and I really enjoyed it.
Definitely a book I will be rereading in the future and hopefully a game, I will be able to get my hands on soon to begin playing again.
5*
*****
February 7, 2016
Boring. Although chapter 7 was amusing - Kirk, Sulu and Chekov playing with the Academy simulator, with Sulu pretending to be Spock and Chekov pretending to Scotty, and Kirk being himself AND Bones. That made me chuckle, but the rest was utterly forgettable.
July 7, 2022
Novelizations are tricky beasts. On the one hand, being based on something pre-existing can be a creatively limiting exercise, yet it also offers a chance to expand upon the source material. Diane Carey's novelization of the 1997 computer game Starfleet Academy highlights both issues in 250 pages or less.
The tale of David Forester, a cadet in Starfleet's Command School undergoing training, combines a mix of coming-of-age with a thriller plot. After inadvertently tossing himself into the spotlight, Forester finds himself at the head of a crew of fellow cadets, going through classes and simulations. Learning to command and work together as a team, Forester and his team interact with notable TOS characters, including Chekov, Sulu, and Captain Kirk himself. All the while, a crisis brews in the Neutral Zone and a threat to the future makes itself felt within the Academy, shaping the future of Forester along the way.
Ironically it is Forester, the main character of the source game, that, along with Carey's choice of the first-person perspective, which is the most sizable problem with the book. Forester's over-enthusiasm is meant to be endearing, but instead comes across as unrealistic. As is the unlikeliness of being tossed into the thriller plot he finds himself in. In some ways the thriller elements is an equally weak point, with the threat of a potential war and undermining of Federation values never fully developed outside of giving Forester more opportunity to interact with the trio of TOS characters. The plot is further ill-served by its resolution in the novelization's closing chapters, which may have worked better in-game than on the page. Indeed, both of these elements are perfect examples of things working in one-medium but not in another.
Which isn't to write off the book, if you'll pardon the expression. The banter between the trio of TOS characters feels authentic, including a delightful sequence where they take over from the cadets in a simulator with Chekov and Sulu filling in for a couple of their shipmates with hilarious results. The simulated battles, including the legendary Kobayashi Muru test, are well-realized and the one place where the choice of first-person actually suits the story. They may be in a simulator, but Carey wonderfully puts on the bridge for the sights, sounds, and fears of a starship battle in the best portions of this short read.
Which just makes it a shame that so much of the Starfleet Academy novelization reads more like fan fiction than a licensed Star Trek book.
The tale of David Forester, a cadet in Starfleet's Command School undergoing training, combines a mix of coming-of-age with a thriller plot. After inadvertently tossing himself into the spotlight, Forester finds himself at the head of a crew of fellow cadets, going through classes and simulations. Learning to command and work together as a team, Forester and his team interact with notable TOS characters, including Chekov, Sulu, and Captain Kirk himself. All the while, a crisis brews in the Neutral Zone and a threat to the future makes itself felt within the Academy, shaping the future of Forester along the way.
Ironically it is Forester, the main character of the source game, that, along with Carey's choice of the first-person perspective, which is the most sizable problem with the book. Forester's over-enthusiasm is meant to be endearing, but instead comes across as unrealistic. As is the unlikeliness of being tossed into the thriller plot he finds himself in. In some ways the thriller elements is an equally weak point, with the threat of a potential war and undermining of Federation values never fully developed outside of giving Forester more opportunity to interact with the trio of TOS characters. The plot is further ill-served by its resolution in the novelization's closing chapters, which may have worked better in-game than on the page. Indeed, both of these elements are perfect examples of things working in one-medium but not in another.
Which isn't to write off the book, if you'll pardon the expression. The banter between the trio of TOS characters feels authentic, including a delightful sequence where they take over from the cadets in a simulator with Chekov and Sulu filling in for a couple of their shipmates with hilarious results. The simulated battles, including the legendary Kobayashi Muru test, are well-realized and the one place where the choice of first-person actually suits the story. They may be in a simulator, but Carey wonderfully puts on the bridge for the sights, sounds, and fears of a starship battle in the best portions of this short read.
Which just makes it a shame that so much of the Starfleet Academy novelization reads more like fan fiction than a licensed Star Trek book.
March 30, 2023
STAR TREK: STARFLEET ACADEMY was a very fund video game done by Interplay with the fairly obvious premise of you being a young cadet at the titular academy in San Fransisco. I really liked the game, dated graphics aside, and noted it had an FMV story that was pretty interesting. Basically, there was an attack on the Federation everyone thinks is the Klingons while a pro-human hate group called the Vanguard is gaining traction among the student body. So I was interested in what Diane Carey would make of it it. It's okay. It's basically identical to the game with all the stock characters and journeyman story. I was hoping for a bit more to be added to it but it was still entertaining.
September 5, 2019
A quick and simple bit of fluff, based on an early CD-ROM game. As such, not exactly the most complex or demanding of novels, even among Trek books, but that’s about what I expected, so no disappointment.
By far the best part: A scene in a combat simulator with Kirk commanding cadets standing in for Sulu and Chekhov, while Sulu and Chekhov stand in for — and mimic — Spock and Scotty. Nobody takes it too seriously, and Chekhov tries to add Scotty’s brogue to his natural Russian accent. A nice moment of levity that stood out.
By far the best part: A scene in a combat simulator with Kirk commanding cadets standing in for Sulu and Chekhov, while Sulu and Chekhov stand in for — and mimic — Spock and Scotty. Nobody takes it too seriously, and Chekhov tries to add Scotty’s brogue to his natural Russian accent. A nice moment of levity that stood out.
October 10, 2020
Delightful and quick. This book keeps its focus on the young characters moving from the solo work of their early cadet years to a position of teamwork in the year shown here. It builds just enough tension to make the reader rush through the final chapters as the cadets begin to discover dangerous secrets behind alien technology.
January 19, 2025
Ms Carey takes a thin and repetitive story and makes it entertaining. As a teacher, though, this kind of stuff annoys me: nobody behaves professionally and, like another fictional school that loads of other apparently sensible people would have loved to have gone to, the teachers seem quite happy to use their students as bait in a game they have no reason to be involved in.
January 3, 2019
Nice, easy read. Well thought out story with new and original Star Trek characters!
not-for-me
September 6, 2019Lots of "team building."
March 19, 2020
Interesting story. Never read anything with Kirk at the academy after he was a captain, so liked the spin this one put on things. Definitely want to read more like this one.
September 17, 2020
Such a fantastic little story. If the game was anything like this book it must have been highly enjoyable. The story was fun.
May 31, 2021
That was a god-awful mess from start to finish.
July 9, 2023
Not Diane Carey's best work, but possibly the best that could be done adapting a video game to book form.
June 18, 2012
Take 49 per cent of those highs chool series that tell plotless "stories" of successful, beautiful, popular young people. Add 50 per cent "Baywatch" and 1 per cent Star Trek, and Voilá! you have the novelization of the game Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.
We have the story of a young, cocky, white, human, American man named David Forrester who gets to command a group of (other) disagreeing stereotypical cadets. Including the most annoying Star Trek character I've ever seen: the rich guy who bought his way to the academy. As if that would be possible in the world depicted in Star Trek.
Cadet Forrester is described as perfect. His hero Captain James T. Kirk (surprise, surprise...) is written as a god. It doesn't help one bit that the other characters are portrayed too stereotypically to feel real.
The actual- weak and uniquely predictable- plot of the book is about a Federation-era Ku Klux Klan, and tries to make some points about racism, failing miserably. The issue is over-simplified and underestimated, without even really touching the matter, by stating only the obvious, thus denying the importance of the issue.
We have the story of a young, cocky, white, human, American man named David Forrester who gets to command a group of (other) disagreeing stereotypical cadets. Including the most annoying Star Trek character I've ever seen: the rich guy who bought his way to the academy. As if that would be possible in the world depicted in Star Trek.
Cadet Forrester is described as perfect. His hero Captain James T. Kirk (surprise, surprise...) is written as a god. It doesn't help one bit that the other characters are portrayed too stereotypically to feel real.
The actual- weak and uniquely predictable- plot of the book is about a Federation-era Ku Klux Klan, and tries to make some points about racism, failing miserably. The issue is over-simplified and underestimated, without even really touching the matter, by stating only the obvious, thus denying the importance of the issue.
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June 19, 2016Released originally as stand-alone comics, IDW Publishing and Diamond Book Distributors have gathered together all five issues of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy written by Mike Johnson and Ryan Parrott and illustrated by Derek Charm. The storyline, which occurs in the reboot universe of the most recent films, is set (no surprise here), at the Academy and mostly follows a new cast of young cadets, though the main figures of Kirk, Spock, Uhura, etc. are part of a frame. I don’t know if more will be forthcoming, but the potential is there, even if this first foray doesn’t fully meet it.
3 stars by Bill, read more at FANTASY LITERATURE
3 stars by Bill, read more at FANTASY LITERATURE
April 11, 2011
I read this years ago, and I loved it. I still pick it up from time to time to read it again. The new characters incorporated in with those already established, as well as the situations that they all fall into fits nicely with the established canon. A great read.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews