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Afterword

I first got the idea for The Brave and the Bold in 1999. It had its origins in the 1967 Star Trek episode “The Doomsday Machine.” I always liked the character of Matt Decker—William Windom’s layered performance had a lot to do with that—and I wanted to know more about him. He and Kirk obviously knew each other—they were on a first-name basis—so I started thinking about the idea of a previous adventure that had Kirk and Decker working together.

This got my brain going on the idea of “starship team-up.” Wouldn’t it be cool to pair up the familiar crews with some unknown—or barely known—other ships, and do it from the POV of the other ships? Goodness knows we’ve met enough other captains in guest shots. Why not see how they view Our Heroes? Having already had the jones to put Kirk and Decker together, I used the settings of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager to answer more questions. With DS9 there was the intriguing dislike between Jadzia Dax and Captain Keogh of the Odyssey, as seen in “The Jem’Hadar.” That episode made it clear that the Odyssey had just stopped over at Deep Space 9 recently and that Dax and Keogh didn’t exactly hit it off—so why not chronicle that adventure? It also gave me the opportunity to bring back one of the first Bajoran terrorists we ever met, Orta, from Star Trek: The Next Generation’ s “Ensign Ro.” And, while several novels (Double Helix: Quarantine by John Vornholt, Pathways by Jeri Taylor, and the Voyager segment of Susan Wright’s The Badlands) dealt with the Voyager crew prior to “Caretaker,” none of those tales told the story I was curious about: How and why did Tuvok infiltrate Chakotay’s Maquis cell in the first place? The “team-up” motif necessitated setting the story prior to the Voyager’ s disappearance into the Delta Quadrant in any case, and to my mind, that was the most compelling untold tale from that time period. It also gave me the opportunity to show more of TNG’ s Captain DeSoto, Riker’s former CO, and considered a good friend of Picard’s as well. We’d heard good things about him in “Encounter at Farpoint,” met him briefly in “Tin Man,” but hadn’t gotten a good look at him. This was a chance to do so, and also take another gander at the first Maquis we ever met, Cal Hudson (from DS9’ s “The Maquis Parts 1-2”), and have him join forces with Chakotay.

With the TNG segment, I had the opportunity to revisit a crew I’d developed—that of the I.K.S. Gorkon. In my TNG novel, Diplomatic Implausibility, I’d established the Gorkon, commanded by Klag (first seen in TNG’ s “A Matter of Honor”). Reader response to the Gorkon and its crew (made up of both original characters and past TNG and DS9 guest stars) was outstanding, so I was given the go-ahead to use them again in this duology and continue their stories forward (look for the first two books in the Star Trek: I.K.S. Gorkon series, A Good Day to Die and Honor Bound, in late 2003).

And, naturally, I couldn’t resist the best team-up of all: the “fighting ambassadors,” Worf and Spock.

This duology also has the distinction of being the first story to feature all five Trek TV franchises. The story called for a prelude to get the story going, and what better place to set it than on Captain Archer’s Enterprise?

Several people require thanks and praise for their help in writing these two books:

Top of the list are the nifty-keeno folks at Pocket Books, particularly John J. Ordover, who not only said yes but told me how to make it better, and Carol Greenburg, who molded the shapeless mass (or should that be “mess”?) of my first drafts into good pieces of work, as well as Scott Shannon, Marco Palmieri, Jessica McGivney, Margaret Clark, John Perrella, and most especially Pocket’s unsung heroine, Elisa Kassin. Not far behind them are Paula M. Block and John Van Citters at Paramount, who are truly deities among licensing folk.

As always, Gene Roddenberry, who got this whole schmear started; Gene L. Coon, Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor,