Star Trek - Midnight Son

Shortly before his death in 1991, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Gene Roddenberry for a chat about - you guessed it - Star Trek. Our meeting took place over coffee at a Denny's outside of a little desert town called Nightvale. While there were no witnesses to our encounter, I totally promise that it happened. Honest.

One of the things we discussed was the original vision for the series and the character of Captain Robert April. Gene (he told me to call him that) was nice enough to give me a tattered folder with all manner of notes, story outlines, and other information. It was a real treasure trove.

MIDNIGHT SON was his original pilot concept. It introduced Captain April and the crew of the newly launched Enterprise. In many ways, the series resembled the more familiar pilot (the Cage) and, not surprisingly, the movie Forbidden Planet. Of special note was the lack of an alien aboard the Enterprise. Sadly, Mr. Spock had not yet been envisioned. On the other hand, the character of Number One was almost exactly as she appeared alongside Christopher Pike.

The basic premise of Midnight Son involved Enterprise moving to record the collapse of a "gravity nebula" into what can only be called a black hole. The rough outline calls for the crew to discover that the nebula is, in fact, a living "colony creature". Having reached the end of its life, the nebula has been consuming matter (including, almost, the Enterprise) to prepare for its next stage of existence. After the collapse, a tremendous explosion rips open the fabric of space and a new swarm of infant creatures is born.

While neither this story nor the others in the folder were ever made into television scripts, they provide a wonderful insight into the history of Star Trek. I hope you like my humble effort at creating a cover for this book that never was.

Special thanks to Chris Martin (Evil_Genius_180) for his wonderful re-imagined Enterprise. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to use this super cool ship. And also a big space five to Mattymanx for his conversion into a format I can use.