Q-Squared

Plot

Trelane, first seen in the original series episode "The Squire of Gothos", is revealed as a member of the Q Continuum. He taps into the Continuum's power to tamper with time and reality, causing three parallel universes, called tracks, to intersect. Track A is a universe where Jack Crusher commands the Enterprise and Beverly Crusher is divorced from him; Track B is the standard Star Trek: The Next Generation universe; Track C resembles the militaristic alternate universe from "Yesterday's Enterprise", with the Federation at war with the Klingons.

Q, tasked with mentoring the adolescent Trelane, enlists Picard and the Enterprise-D crew across all three timelines to teach Trelane discipline and prevent him from collapsing the universes. As the tracks merge, characters from different universes encounter each other, sometimes with fatal results: Tasha from Track A meets her Track C counterpart; Jack Crusher confronts Beverly about her affair with Track-A Picard, accidentally killing her; Track C crew members try to kill Worf, mistaking others for Klingon impostors. Q eventually overpowers Trelane and separates the universes, though Track-A Data appears stuck in Track C. Q himself spends part of the novel lost in time and space, trapped by the galactic barrier.

Parallel universes

The novel shifts among three parallel universes, each labeled a track. Track B is the normal Star Trek universe.

Track A differs in several ways: James Kirk's middle initial is R; Jack Crusher commands the Enterprise-D, divorced from Beverly, and their son Wesley died as a toddler; Geordi La Forge works as a nurse with cloned eye implants; Jean-Luc Picard, demoted after the Stargazer incident at Maxia, serves as first officer and has an affair with Beverly; Data has a positronic brain in an organic body and an affair with Tasha Yar; William Riker and Kira Nerys are Romulan prisoners, with Riker married to Deanna Troi and father of a son he never met; Worf was raised in the Klingon Empire. Track C is a variant of the "Klingon war" timeline from "Yesterday's Enterprise", but the Enterprise-D encountered the Enterprise-C hours after it passed into the future, so the rift had closed and the Enterprise-C crew were dead, preventing the ship from being sent back to avert war. The final chapter, "Derailment", ties the plots together as the realities coalesce into a single timeline, concluding with Q's confrontation with the deranged Trelane.

Did You Know?

• Peter David previously wrote the novel Q-in-Law, also featuring Q.
• In Track A, the bartender in Ten-Forward is named Caryn Johnson, the birth name of Whoopi Goldberg.
• Trelane brings to life the character of Winnie the Pooh in one sequence.