Star Trek was a big part of my adolescence, which means so was Peter David.
Having already read several of his Star Trek novels, I vividly remember walking into a comic bookstore in the fall of 1989 and discovering there was a new Star Trek comic book series – two, in fact. The original series comic, the second for DC, was being written by David, while Michael Jan Friedman was handling writing duties for Star Trek: The Next Generation. The original Trek comic was set just after Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, which was a disappointing movie, but a good spot to set new adventures.
David was one of the most prolific writers during the late eighties into the early aughts when it came to writing Star Trek fiction. One of the things that I loved about his writing is that he made you believe that the Star Trek universe could be seriously changed despite it being tie-in fiction and that it really couldn’t contradict on-screen episodes.
Even though none of your regular characters were in serious jeopardy, the stakes were always high in David’s books. His Star Trek books tended to be big grand stories; rarely did he just write an episode-of-the-week style novel, and he always did a great job of using Star Trek lore in his novels and comic storylines.
Vendetta is an excellent example of a “big” Star Trek book, which I guess is why they called it a “giant novel” when it came out. It remains one of the greatest Borg stories and better than a lot of the Borg stories that have since been written and put on the screen. I prefer Vendetta over Star Trek: Picard‘s final season or any of the takes that Voyager did with the Borg.
Vendetta is notable because not only is it a Borg story, but it features the planet killer doomsday machine first seen in the original series. David’s concept for the novel was that the Doomsday Machine from the original series episode was in fact designed to be a Borg killer. It even had a pilot. He even references the nanites from the TNG episode “Evolution,” who lawyered up when they found out that Starfleet wanted to use them as weapons against the Borg.
It’s been years since I’ve read Vendetta. I feel like I want to read it again.
It was David who suggested that Q from The Next Generation and Trelane from the original series episode “The Squire of Gothos” were of the same species for his novel Q-Squared, and he also wrote a book about Q versus Lwaxana Troi, who gains the power of the Q.
(Riker: “She’s really beating the stuffing out of him. What do you think we should do?”
Worf: “Sell tickets.”)
This was typical of David’s humor. His books were funny, but they were also emotional, and again, big in scope.
David was also notable for creating his own Star Trek series, New Frontier, which includes many well-liked characters who appeared once or twice on TNG and formed the crew of the U.S.S. Excalibur under Captain Mackenzie Calhoun. It was probably the most diverse crew that Star Trek had seen at that point, and it was infused with David’s humor and big plots over the years.
My sense is that David and some of his peers at the time have fallen out of favor with Star Trek book editors, but his work on the Star Trek comics under editor Bob Greenberger are one of the reasons I’m a comic book reader because every time I opened a Star Trek comic book, there were ads for all sorts of DC titles, such as Green Lantern, Doom Patrol, Sandman and Legion of Super-Heroes.
I thoroughly enjoyed the seven-issue Atlantis Chronicles mini-series written by David as well as his run on Supergirl, but otherwise I’ve not read much of David’s non-Trek work; I’ve always meant to read his run on the Hulk character.
David’s had been failing for many years, and it was sad to see that he didn’t get the support from the comics industry, which is a common theme, even if you’ve created original characters.
It feels like an end of the era, and his passing is a reminder that life is short. Rest in peace, Peter David.
I stayed up late enough last night to catch Roger Ebert’s review of the new X-Men movie and it reminded me why I never listen to movie reviewers most of the time: they have no idea how to review a genre film.