Headlong Flight is the Star Trek TNG Story You’ve Been Wanting

We all have that Star Trek series that will always hold a special place in our hearts. No matter how much we enjoy subsequent series or movies, when somebody says the words “Star Trek,” our minds will unwaveringly go to a certain crew and a certain starship. For this guy, that is the crew of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Enterprise-D. So when I was passing through a Barnes & Noble the other day and saw the relatively new Headlong Flight novel featuring MY Star Trek crew ? I’m no fool. That’s a slam dunk as far as purchases go, even though I’ve been out of the Star Trek book game for longer than I’d care to admit.

But, oh boy, as I dove into the Star Trek: The Next Generation’s story from Dayton Ward published in January by Pocket Books, it quickly became apparent that this universe did not remain static during my absence. While this book isn’t a sequel exactly, it does pick up on threads left dangling in the other books that happened after Star Trek: Nemesis. There has been about a dozen of them, so that leaves a lot of threads hanging. This story takes place seven years after the events of that movie, and a lot has changed  during that time.

Getting Up to Speed

Commander Riker is now Captain Riker and engaging in adventures not at all touched on in this book. Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Doctor Beverly Crusher have coupled up and even have a four year-old son together. Finally, Worf has been promoted and is now serving as the first officer aboard the Enterprise-E. There are numerous new crewmembers aboard that I’ve not encountered before, but seem to be holdovers from other books. Among these are first-contact specialist Elfiki, a Denobulan doctor, and a participant in an officer-exchange program with Cardassia. Ward did an excellent job bringing the reader up to speed on all these developments without bogging down the flow of the story.

The Good

But what really makes Headlong Flight remarkable and highly memorable starts to unfold as a planet shifting through dimensions and time uncontrollably is encountered and additional elements are put into play. Through some inter-dimensional travel the Enterprise-E is brought together with Romulan warbirds from a century earlier and from a universe where Kirk’s Enterprise was seemingly destroyed in the classic episode Balance of Terror. As if that wasn’t enough fun to play around with, the Enterprise-D from a time and reality where Picard died just months earlier in the events from The Next Generation episode The Best of Both Worlds is also added into the mix.

The Great

It’s the addition of the Enterprise-D that allows this story to elevate itself to a new level. The newly appointed Captain Riker and his freshly promoted first officer Data create a fascinating It’s a Wonderful Life type story opportunity. While the Enterprise-D seems to be faring much better without Picard than Capra’s Bedford Falls did without George Bailey, the introduction of this reality’s crew came across as an intriguing pilot episode for a series that will tragically almost certainly never be expanded upon. But the fact that we’re unlikely to revisit it is precisely what makes the story of Riker’s Enterprise in Headlong Flight so moving — it is able to have a sense of finality that these books necessarily lack due to their never-ending nature. While this is ostensibly the latest chapter in the adventures of Picard’s Enterprise-E, that crew serves as little more than as a way to get a foot in the door of the remarkable story that Dayton Ward had to tell about Riker’s crew.

The Not-As-Good

While the portions of the 352-page story dedicated to the Enterprise-D are outstanding, the portions set aboard the Romulan Warbird and on the planet itself are much less effective. The dimension traveling aliens aboard the planet come across as benevolent blank canvases only tangentially relevant to the story, but featured heavily with very little payoff. And while it was fun having long lost characters back as part of Captain Riker’s crew, the characters in the book bore little resemblance to the sardonic wit of Doctor Kate Pulaski or the hostile angst of Tasha Yar from the TV series.

Final Thoughts

This is the first book I have read from Dayton Ward, but it most certainly won’t be the last. But even more, this book was compelling enough to make me interested in going back and picking up the series back at Death of Winter, which was the first in the post-Nemesis world. Headlong Flight is a compelling story from beginning to end, but most importantly it captures the heart and soul of that television series that brought me into the Star Trek universe back in 1987. If Star Trek: The Next Generation has a special place in your heart, you aren’t going to go wrong with this book.

Dayton Ward’s Headlong Flight gets a perfect 5 mics on our 5 mic scale.

Headlong Flight by Dayton Ward is available through our Amazon portal

Also, be sure to check out our previous book review: Star Trek Cats by Jenny Parks.