A great starship captain once said, “Don’t let them promote you. Don’t let them transfer you. Don’t let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you’re there, you can make a difference” – the implication being that when you’re not in command of an Enterprise, you can’t. But now, for the first time, Jean-Luc Picard, steadfast captain of the USS Enterprise-E, is beginning to realise that he could make a difference away from his defining command, be it as an admiral; an ambassador; or even as a full-time father to his newborn son. In a galaxy torn asunder by an apocalyptic war, a weary starship captain is weighing his options. And, believe it or not, this isn’t even the most shocking thing about Paths of Disharmony.
Following the third book in the series’ telling of the reunification of the Romulan Star Empire and the Romulan Imperial State, which strengthened the eponymous coalition of antagonistic Alpha Quadrant powers, the fourth makes its focus the weakening of the opposing United Federation of Planets. Dayton Ward’s narrative is borne of the inevitable finger-pointing taking place in the wake of the Borg devastation, despatching the Enterprise on a diplomatic mission to a disgruntled Andor, where the now-commonplace cries of Starfleet desertion are topped by claims that, for more than a century, the upper echelons of Starfleet Command knowingly withheld a meta-genome from the Andorian people – a meta-genome that the Pact-aligned Tholians have now helpfully provided, and that might well prove to be the cure to the reproductive problems threatening the extinction of the Andorian race.
I enjoyed this book on both its levels. From a character standpoint, Ward’s portrayal of the TNG mainstays manages to break new ground without adversely affecting their essences. It was a particular joy for me to read of Picard and Crusher’s struggle to balance the demands of work and childcare as my wife and I have been through the exact same thing in the last couple of years. Ward has a knack for weaving the artlessness of parenting into otherwise-standard TNG situations – there is one scene, for instance, in which Picard and Crusher are having the sort of conversation that they might have had in any TNG episode, but here it’s punctuated by evocative little touches such as Picard pushing his chair further and further away from their dining table because his baby son keeps kicking it. It’s so well-observed, and Picard’s calm and not-commented-upon action is so very him. Worf is also brought on some – he’s now so comfortable filling Will Riker’s shoes that not only can he enjoy a powerful sexual affair with the ship’s sultry security chief without trying to marry her, but he’s also adopted his own tongue-in-cheek style of Klingon command, which includes threatening to kill those serving under him should they let the captain overrule his orders when it comes to matters of the captain’s safety, for instance. Textbook Worf, yet at the same time new and progressive. Even Geordi gets a long-overdue girlfriend.
Politically, the terrorist activity depicted on Andor serves as a frightening reflection of the world that we live in. This benefits the book by giving it a sharp, uncomfortable edge that the finest Trek tales possess, though I do wonder how the patent lack of metaphor will sit with those who turn to Trek for pure escapism or good, old-fashioned hope. Gene Roddenberry would turn in his grave, no doubt, if he saw what Ward does in the final act here. Sound the spoiler alert…
For me, the real pull of these ongoing ‘post-finale’ novels is that almost anything can happen in them; save for Spock’s date with Nero, there’s no continuity that they have to lead into, and Paths of Disharmony is the first book since the Destiny series to really exploit this. It helps that Ward presents his story so subversively; it follows the TNG formula almost to a fault, only to pull the rug out from under the reader in the last act. Throughout this book, it looks very much like Andor is being groomed by the Typhon Pact, and it seems inexorable that the planet is going to secede from the United Federation of Planets – which is exactly why you don’t expect it to happen. Yet Picard doesn’t pull a rabbit out of his hat here. The Enterprise crew are out-manoeuvred by the Tholians. Andor leaves the coalition that it helped to found; the organisation that, it turns out, really did hush-up its discovery of the meta-genome, albeit for fathomable - if hypocritical - reasons. It’s devastatingly brilliant.
My only real complaint about this book is that it is so steeped in the continuity of Pocket Books’ Star Trek: Vanguard series that passages of it read like a thinly-veiled advertisement for it. Whilst thanks to the author’s numerous recaps, you don’t need to be familiar with the relevant Vanguard novels to follow this book’s developments, I was still scratching my head for a while trying to remember Star Trek episodes that I eventually realised never happened. It wasn’t Kirk’s Enterprise mixed up in the meta-genome business; it was the Vanguard.
Overall though, Paths of Disharmony thrills both politically and personally. The Typhon Pact series needed something as monumental as Andor’s secession from the Federation to maintain its momentum, and likewise TNG needed something as shattering as Picard’s newfound despondency to revitalise it. For the first time since the mini-series began, the Typhon Pact saga seems to be headed somewhere, and I’m genuinely intrigued as to where.
