Reviewing a Star Trek: The Next Generation Tie-In Novel
Q-in-Law by Peter David
Man contains multitudes. Once, I reviewed War and Peace for this blog. Now I will review Q-in-Law, a Star Trek: The Next Generation tie-in novel wherein the omnipotent space asshole Q and Deanna Troi’s overbearing mother Lwaxana both attend an alien wedding hosted on the starship Enterprise and, of course, hook up toxically.
You may think you know the joke of this review already, but allow me to level your expectations: I thought this book was cute.
Q-in-Law does not reach the upper echelons of Star Trek tie-in novels, reserved primarily for the twin Original Series interventions of John M. Ford. One of them is a legitimately good science fiction novel, distinct from its status as a book about Klingons. The other is a work of challenging experimental comedic fiction--it is a musical episode in print and a love letter to the cinema. And Spock is there, hating it all. Yes, I own a physical copy; no, you may not borrow it.
While Q-in-Law does not reinvent the Star Trek wheel or extend the boundaries of what’s possible, indeed reasonable, in print literature, it stays silly. As far as fanfiction bound and published goes, Q-in-Law possesses its share of merits, not the least being its lack of characters derived from Draco Malfoy.
A review of Q-in-Law would be remiss without a spotlight on its author, the late Peter David. As a contributor to not only the Star Trek universe, but also Marvel, DC, Babylon 5, and other major media properties, David likely holds a small claim over some story you love now, or once did. He died last year due to chronic health issues, which caused him to accrue a crushing amount of medical debt. It was very sad. The circumstances of his death are a testament to the nauseating greed of all the media companies for whom he did his creative work, each of which could have paid him more than enough to cover his healthcare needs and not felt the expense as the price of David’s health disappeared into their billion-billion dollar budgets.
So it’s nice to remember Peter David through projects like Q-in-Law. As a commercial writer his life’s project was to entertain people and put a soft edge on the vorpal blade of this miserable world. Q-in-Law did that for me.
When two rival families of traveling merchant aliens need a location for the marriage of their scions, they choose the Enterprise (obviously). As if this isn’t enough of a pain for poor old Captain Picard, Betazoid diplomat/mom-of-his-therapist/horny old lady Lwaxana Troi attends the wedding as an honored diplomat. Then Picard’s all-powerful homoerotic nemesis Q shows up to play the cheesy wedding guest as well! Mutually obsessed with sexually harassing Jean-Luc Picard as they are, Q and Lwaxana can’t help but hook up with each other, raining humiliation and dismay down upon the innocent dorks of the Enterprise. For goofy Rube Goldberg reasons, this also causes the alien wedding to break up, which then leads to a small shooting space war. Aw jeez!
This is a corny, horny book. The first few chapters unroll uneventfully through various crewmembers pondering why they can’t manage to hold down a relationship when they’re Starfleet’s most talented officers. This was dumb, but--and perhaps this says more about my frame of mind than the literary value of Star Trek tie-in novels--I did feel for them. The primary reason the characters of Star Trek: TNG can’t hold down a long-term relationship is that they’re 1980s TV characters, so nothing can last more than one episode. But also the galaxy is a lonely place. Why can’t I, Starfleet’s best warp core engineer, succeed with other people the way I succeed in my vocation?
For Deanna Troi, this anxiety intensifies when her mother shows up practicing a stupid Betazoid ritual which involves mourning your spinster daughter as if she were dead. I genuinely liked Deanna in this book, where she struggles with frustration at her mother’s expectations and frustration at herself for caring. She has a great job and a wonderful set of space friends and frequent one-episode hook-ups with hot aliens of the week; why does it matter to Lwaxana that she’s not married? Why does it mattering to Lwaxana matter to Deanna? These are the irritating questions our loved ones provoke in us, no matter how hard we try to ignore them.
There’s no question about why Lwaxana dating Q matters to Deanna. Q’s a dickhead and if Lwaxana weren’t so wrapped up in her own loneliness and the loneliness she projects onto her daughter, she’d see that. But it doesn’t annoy me that she made this mistake, because it’s a very human mistake to make (okay, technically she’s an alien, but not a very alien one). When Q finally cruelly dumps Lwaxana in front of everyone, she goes nuclear. If you’re a Star Trek: TNG fan, the whole book is worth reading for this moment. Lwaxana, who now has access to her own Q powers for silly reasons, tortures Q in a series of creative, comical ways. She stomps his dick. She turns him into a ping-pong ball. She throws him into the engine core. Nobody on the Enterprise crew tries to stop her because Q kinda has it coming. It’s cosmic slapstick and makes wise use of the tie-in novel form by doing things to Q which would have been impossible on a 1980s TV effects budget.
Like every other book--especially licensed tie-in novels--Q-in-Law has plenty of flaws. Peter David writes with the enthusiasm and panache of a very good commercial writer, but he is not a prose artist; he’s a prose handyman, in which there is no shame but no particular beauty either. There’s many moments of outdated cringe language or plotting. Wesley has a stupid subplot about accidentally acquiring a beautiful alien sex slave who constantly injures him in goofy ways as he tries to avoid sleeping with her. The conflict Q stirs up between the alien intendeds is 1950s-sitcom grade at best: “What if my wife gets old and ugly!?”; “What if my husband checks out other chicks?!” In fact, the aliens in general seem to be from the 1950s marriage planet, but the Prime Directive instructs me not to judge.
I’m just not that mad about the crappy parts of Q-in-Law, though. This book is dopey and dated, but it’s harmless. Some parts charmed me, other parts caused me to roll my eyes. I had enough fun seeing those crazy kids from the Enterprise in a mildly amusing, new-to-me adventure to say “Yeah, one thumb up. 3 stars and a heart.” It’s Q-in-Law. I’ve heard there’s an abridged audiobook read by John De Lancie and Majel Barrett that’s extremely entertaining. It sounds like the perfect distillation of this work, which is itself a variation on another work. We’ve jumped mediums several times now; we’re having fun because we can.
People read fanfiction for a reason and up to a point those reasons are fine. Even I, seething churning hellmind of a public intellectual that I am, sometimes just want to hear about my friend from TV feeling the same insecurities I do but in space. That’s enough. I appreciate Peter David’s willingness to invest a solid amount of writing craft and a shot of creativity in providing that for me. Those fuckers at Paramount should have Zelled him $20 every time they mentioned Star Trek in a board meeting. Writing Q-in-Law was an act a thousand times more pro-social than anything that’s ever transpired in a Hollywood studio conference room.
