Crossover (Star Trek The Next Generation) [Hardcover]

Michael Jan Friedman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1995 | Series: Star Trek: the Next Generation

In the bestselling tradition of Federation, this new adventure brings Spock, McCoy, and Scotty together with Jean-Luc Picard and his crew. Deep in Romulan territory, Starfleet Ambassador Spock aids in a daring underground movement to reunite the Vulcan and Romulan empires. When a Romulan spy joins the ranks and betrays the group, Starfleet dispatches the Enterprise, commanded by Jean-Luc Picard, to effect a rescue.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Veteran Trek scribe Friedman (All Good Things...) delivers the goods again with the most interesting and ambitious novel to come from this complacent franchise in a while. Friedman assimilates characters from the original TV series into a rollicking adventure/rescue story. Ambassador Spock, still working toward reunification of the Vulcan and Romulan cultures, is captured with several of his proteges by a regional Romulan dictator with delusions of grandeur. Viewing Spock's capture as a security risk, the Federation sends Captain Jean-Luc Picard's Enterprise to negotiate Spock's release, assigning 140-year-old Admiral McCoy to the ship because of his familiarity with Spock. Meanwhile, Scotty steals a starship and engages in his own one-man rescue attempt. The interplay is fast and furious, as is the action, while the political intrigues are sufficiently interesting, if not very complex. Readers will have a fine time second-guessing some of Friedman's claims (Scotty went to the Academy?), while nodding in agreement with most of them. The prose, like several of the rescue attempts, lacks subtlety and grace but is suited to its task of telling a story that stars characters of whom most readers have already formed full and sympathetic portraits.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The latest Star Trek novel, by one of the most seasoned producers of ST fiction, is aptly titled. Not only do members of both the original and the Next Generation casts appear in it, but it deals with a situation in which both the Romulans and the Vulcans are striving to cross over from their long-standing mutual isolation from and hostility toward each other to some form, at least, of reunification (they were once members of the same race). The story takes place during Jean-Luc Picard's command of the Enterprise but involves Mr. Spock, now a diplomat who is caught up in Romulan factional fighting that leads to his vividly described and nasty incarceration, among other things. Dr. McCoy and engineer Scotty, each of whom may be slowing down but has lost none of his ingenuity, must join forces, unofficially, with Picard and his crew, too, in order to bail out Spock and prevent the reunification effort from coming to a bloody end that would be disastrous for the United Federation of Planets as well as the two cultures directly involved. It's a classic helping of ST adventure (you can almost hear the ST theme, sawed out on schmaltzy violins, welling up between the lines) that ought to please the seemingly endless saga's legions of fans. Roland Green

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 305 pages
• Publisher: Pocket Books; First Edition edition (December 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671896776
• ISBN-13: 978-0671896775
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,097,382 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Crossover - Crossing over with Spock & MJ Friedman, February 14, 2003

By 

K. Wyatt "ssintrepid" (Cape Girardeau, MO United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Crossover (Star Trek The Next Generation) (Hardcover)

Crossover is definitely one of Michael Jan Friedman's best Trek stories. Given that he is the most prolific of the many Trek authors, he has attained a level in writing these stories that is both fluid and highly intriguing. Taking cues from a few different Star Trek The Next Generation episodes, where Star Trek The Original Series characters are brought into the twenty fourth century, Michael Jan Friedman carefully crafts a well told STNG story around them.

The premise:

As fans of Star Trek The Next Generation learned in "Reunification part II" Ambassador Spock decided to stay on Romulus to help teach members of the Reunification movement the ways of Vulcans. While on a trip to one of the Romulan Star Empires outlying worlds to instruct Reunificationists in the ways of Surak, Spock is captured by that world's governor. Fortunately for Spock, the governor doesn't initially know who he has in his possession.

As Starfleet learns of Ambassador Spocks capture, they dispatch the Enterprise commanded by Captain Jean Luc Picard, to negotiate the release of the Reunificationists, while hopefully not revealing that Spock is among them. To help with this effort they send along Admiral McCoy, who has become quite the stodgy old curmudgeon. Listening in on this communiqué is Scotty. Scotty, with the help of the shuttlecraft gifted to him by Captain Picard, deftly swipes a Constitution class museum starship and heads off for the Romulan neutral zone himself.

What ensues is certainly one of the best Star Trek hardbacks with a solid plot that is both intriguing and enthralling. I highly recommend this novel to any and all Star Trek fans, especially since the author cleverly blends members of the twenty third century Original Series into a Star Trek The Next Generation story.

The abridged audio tape version, read by Jonathan Frakes is exceptional and well appreciated as it helps three hours go by quite quickly on the highway. Also to be appreciated is the cover art, which is better than a lot of others in this genre. {ssintrepid}

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Crossover is the second best ST novel I have read, July 11, 2000

By 

Screendoor (The Prairie) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crossover (Star Trek: The Next Generation) (Mass Market Paperback)

Croosover is one of those books that you can't put down. (I finished it in two days.) It was a page turner that kept you the edge of your pants and you never wanted it to stop. The story revoles around spock. He is working on his mission for Unifiing (sp) the Vulcans and the Romulans. He gets captured by the romulans and he find out that it was because of a spy. (I'm not going to tell you who because it would ruin the book for you.) Starfleet finds this out and sends the Enterprise-D to negotiate the Unificationist's release. They send a rep to help. That rep is Admiral Leonard H. McCoy. Meanwhile Scotty (Who is flying around in his shuttle) overhears the messege from Starfleet and he divises his own rescue plan. It is the various plotlines and characters the keep you reading. I grade it *Burns a five on to the side of a cow* A FIVE! By the way, if you were wondering what the best ST novel I have read. It is "Fallen Heroes" (ST: DS9 book no. 5)

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent story, almost worth five stars., November 26, 2002

By 

James Yanni (Bellefontaine Neighbors, Mo. USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Crossover (Star Trek: The Next Generation) (Mass Market Paperback)

I'm very choosy about what gets a five-star rating rather than a four; if I wasn't, this book would have been rated five stars. (Admittedly, if I was rating the layout and copyediting job done on the mass-market paperback edition, it would have been lucky to get two stars; I've rarely seen such a sloppy job. NUMEROUS lines throughout the book are missing their first (or, occasionally, last) letters; page fifty alone is missing five first letters out of 30 lines, and while most of the book isn't THAT bad, it isn't the only page that has a problem, but cutting down a rating of a story for sloppy layout is unfair; still, I'm loath to give a high rating to such a sloppy book without a disclaimer. Hopefully, later editions corrected the problem, but I wouldn't count on it.)

The characters were handled marvellously, especially Scotty, who is given his due in a way that he was NOT in the episode/book that brought him into the Next Generation world, "Relics"; the plot works well and makes sense, and the writing moves well and is enjoyable to read.