Kirk Meets Seven Of Nine In No Time Like The Past - A Crossover Novel By Greg Cox

Star Trek: No Time Like The Past by Greg Cox

If you enjoy Star Trek crossover stories that involve lots lots of fast moving action and time travel, then you are going to love Greg Cox's No Time Like The Past.  Greg imagines what might happen if Seven of Nine from Voyager were to be unwillingly be sent back to the 23rd century to meet Captain Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise in a story that careens through time and space at breakneck speed.

The events of No Time Like The Past mostly take place about two years after the events of the third season episode, "All Our Yesterdays," in which Kirk Spock and McCoy are sent back into the history of the planet Sarpeidon.

The Crew of the USS Voyager, still in the Delta Quadrant, encounter a Starfleet distress signal from a small planet.  When an away team beams down to investigate, they discover a giant likeness of James T. Kirk carved into a cliff.  There is an opening and when the away team enters, three of them, Janeway, Tuvok, and Neelix are injured and Seven finds herself in the middle of a battle between Kirk and a group of Orions that are disrupting a diplomatic mission on the planet Yusub.

Seven left three injured Voyager crew members behind when she jumped through time and needs to return to her own time to rescue them, not to mention that she also needs to be near her alcove to regenerate.  Her time is limited and she has to find a way to return to her own time soon.  Kirk and the crew agree to help, but there are others who see an opportunity to exploit Seven's knowledge of the future including, the Orions and a Federation ambassador who has an axe to grind with them.

The only clue for how to return Seven to her own time is imprinted on a fragment of some device that Seven brought with her into her past.  On this fragment, Seven finds a stardate that refers to a past mission of the Enterprise that starts her, Kirk, and the crew on a quest that spans space and time to find three remaining fragments that when joined together will allow Seven to presumably allow Seven to return to her own time.

While this should have been a simple mission, there are many turns that keep getting in the way of the quest; a spy on the Enterprise and the Orions keep getting in the way until Kirk has enough of their interference and is forced to deal with them in a most clever way.

For me, one of the most compelling aspects of No Time Like The Past was the way that the author weaved old stories into this new one.  Along with the All Our Yesterdays episode of TOS, he also included references

to "The Apple" from the second season and "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield."  One of the best parts of the story is when Greg speculates on the history of the events that lead to the annihilation of the people of Cheron, the planet of Lokai and Bele; he take us right into the thick of what finally purged the population of the planet while the two characters from the episode were on their chase through the galaxy.  There is also a reference to another books series that I have not read yet, The Yesterday Saga novels which chronicle the aftermath of the events resulting from the relationship between Spock and Zarabeth in "All Our Yesterdays."

Any TOS fan will enjoy this story because it has everything we love in a Kirk-era story should have.  The pace is quick, the characters are larger than life, but yet remain human, there are space battles and phaser fights, and Scotty remains a miracle worker.  There is a great deal of the "final frontier" flavor that us TOS fans have come to expect in our stories.

In short, this is a good one!

Well, there it is...

Q'aplaH'!