Diane Carey’s Enterprise: Broken Bow adapts the first episode of Enterprise written by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga. The story introduces Captain Jonathan Archer, Sub-Commander T’Pol, Commander Charles “Trip” Tucker III, Dr. Phlox, Lieutenant Malcolm Reed, Ensign Travis Mayweather, and Ensign Hoshi Sato as well as their ship, the United Earth Starfleet vessel Enterprise NX-01.

Archer’s father, Henry Archer, worked with Zephram Cochrane to develop the warp engine that powers the vessel, making it capable of warp 4.5 at the outset. The process was long, however, as humanity developed most of the technology on its own due to Vulcan hesitation to provide too much assistance following First Contact on 5 April 2063. Their first mission is to return a Klingon to Qo’noS after he crashed on Earth. Along the way, the Enterprise crew discovers that the Klingon was bringing a message to the High Council proving that the Suliban had been orchestrating attacks to heighten factionalism within the Empire. The Suliban, a genetically-enhanced species, receive information and technology from an unknown benefactor in the far future as part of the Temporal Cold War. Captain Archer and crew must adapt quickly to prove their mettle and ensure that Earth’s first deep-space mission doesn’t become its last.

Carey’s novel recalls the work of other adaptations of Star Trek pilot episodes, including David Gerrold’s Encounter at Farpoint, J.M. Dillard’s Emissary, or L.A. Graf’s Caretaker. In the time before on-demand or streaming, these novels helped to drive interest in new Trek series and catch new viewers up from the beginning if they didn’t hadn’t recorded the pilot episodes on their VCR. To that end, Carey includes details that help explain some of the characters in greater detail than shown in the pilot. Broken Bow also includes a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the show written by Paul Ruditis. ( )

The only good parts about this are the bits where Carey grows so frustrated with the script she's adapting that she either a) directly quotes a particularly bad turn of phrase or b) uses a character's internal monologue to comment on the clunky dialogue. Mostly, like its source material, it's crap. ( )

Broken Bow is an adequate, though bland, novelization of the Enterprise's pilot episode. There is no deviation and very little additional material from the original episode. This is a rather disappointing retelling of rather mediocre episode. ( )