by Greg Cox
KD: Let’s look at the centerpiece of the books, which obviously is Q. What in your mind is the appeal of Q, not just as a writer but as a fan. Why do writers keep coming up with reasons for him to show up on the Enterprise?
GC: For one thing, he’s very, very fun to write. I was amazed at how easy it was to get into that voice.
KD: And when I read it, I can’t help but hear John de Lancie’s delivery.
GC: You always want to do a literary impression, if you will, to try and capture the voice of the character. I remember noticing within a paragraph or two that Q was really easy to get into. And yes, it sounded like John de Lancie in my head, too. One of the fun things about Q is that he’s got this snarky sense of humor and he allows you to say all of the things that you really want to say but can’t. He can make all of these snarky comments about Star Trek that otherwise couldn’t be made—stuff about Troi’s psychobabble or Riker’s macho posing or whatever. He in some ways is poking gentle fun at the franchise just to be a little wacky and silly. Lord, he’s also easy for scene transitions. You need to get from point A to B? Bang, you’re there.
KD: See, you have no worries at all about distances from one barrier to the other.
GC: [laughs] Not when you have Q involved, no. I do remember going back and watching all of the Q episodes, so I could throw in references to them, such as his one and only visit to Deep Space Nine.
KD: When he gets decked by Sisko. It was the punch heard ’round the galaxy.
GC: [laughs] I think he makes this snide comment like “Dismal place. I’m never going back.” I wanted that to allude to his popping up once and never appearing again.
KD: Do you think that part of the appeal of Q also is his interaction specifically with Picard?
GC: Oh, yes. He and Picard have this weird, quirky relationship. In The Q Continuum books, there are great chunks of time when it’s just the two of them wandering around in time and space, but that works because we have seen it before. I also try to remember the fact that Q occasionally can be dangerous and has gotten Enterprise crew members killed. That’s easy to forget about because there are a number of lighter, clown-ier Q episodes. But if you go back and look at [the ST: TNG second-season episode] “Q Who,” he does, in fact, get people killed when he throws them up against the Borg.
KD: It’s an interesting dynamic. There are some moments when he plays the all-powerful buffoon, and others when he borders on malevolence. Do you think Q works better as a comic foil or as a true villain?
GC: Ideally, you want to keep an edge of danger to him. Picard always seems to take him seriously. They may be out palling around, but he knows there’s some potential for getting into serious trouble. That’s what makes “Q Who” one of the great, all-time Q episodes. Q is funny; he has a great sense of humor, but ideally you want to keep that edge of danger to him as in [the ST: TNG series finale] “All Good Things…” or “Q Who.”
KD: Do you think that [the ST: TNG sixth-season episode] “Tapestry” is in keeping with that edge-of-danger premise, too? I’m thinking in terms of his ability to shape history and change Picard’s life.
GC: Yes, that is one of the more intense ones, too. I’ve always thought that you could look at these books as sort of the flip side of “Tapestry.” In the episode, Q takes Picard into Picard’s past and confronts him with his mistakes. In the books, Q takes Picard into his own past and we get to view his mistakes. Here, it’s time for the guided tour of Q’s past.
KD: So, do you think that Q and Picard might ever become friends?
GC: I don’t know. Picard is always wary of Q; he always sees a potential for things going awry. And Q seems somewhat cozier and more friendly with Janeway, which was, in fact a problem because I never could figure out entirely why he didn’t just send them all home. The Q episodes on Star Trek: Voyager were fun but to watch them, you had to sort of take away the whole issue of “Q could get them home in five seconds. Why doesn’t Janeway really seem terribly interested in this prospect?” They usually would create a threat to distract her when getting home should be number one on Janeway’s agenda. If you remember, the episodes always ended with Janeway helping out Q, so why she didn’t go ahead and twist his arm a little and have him send them home, I don’t know. It was a different relationship even though Janeway can find him just as exasperating.
KD: Maybe Janeway handled Q the way Kirk might have handled Q?
GC: I don’t know. I imagine that Kirk would be fairly antagonistic toward Q because Kirk never liked weird, glowing balls of energy coming in and messing with his crew. One of the dangers [of a Kirk-Q story] is that you would end up doing [the original series episode] “The Squire of Gothos” again. Trelane really is sort of like an early draft of Q.
KD: And some of those issues are addressed in Peter David’s book Q Squared.
GC: I went back and read the other Q books as well as watching the episodes, if only to try and avoid contradicting them. It’s not mandatory, but I didn’t want to shamelessly contradict anything. I see why we would not want to get too self-referential because then it feels like a closed universe and too club-ish. I would have liked to mention Trelane in my books at some point, but it didn’t work out. There were certain subjects that I was told were off-limits in terms of Q’s past.
KD: Oh really?
GC: Yes. At one point, I wanted to reveal how he met Guinan for the first time, but Paramount preferred to keep that mysterious for the time being. I think I also was going to bring in Wesley Crusher, who at that point was somewhere off traveling the universe, and again was asked not to deal with that right now. I think there’s a throw-away reference somewhere when Dr. Crusher asks Q to keep an eye out for her son.
KD: Yet again, that harkens back to your desire as a Star Trek writer to tie up the loose ends that are left dangling. Is that part of the appeal that keeps you going back to writing Star Trek books?
GC: Oh yeah. You’ve got 400 or 500 hours of stuff here in this great, big universe that you can flesh out and make connections. It always seems redundant to invent a new race of energy beings when there’s sixteen other races of energy beings already running around the Alpha Quadrant. Besides that, there’s sort of a nifty, fannish appeal of “Ooh boy oh boy, I managed to tie that one in.”
KD: I know you do a lot of research for your writings. The whole process must be fun for you, especially at that “a-ha” moment when you see something and think, “I can put this over here.”
GC: I love looking for loose ends and holes and realizing that they never did resolve what the issue is between Guinan and Q, you know, and that there’s room for a book there. I’m bad about it. [laughs] It’s gotten to a point where I’m watching this stuff, let’s say Star Trek Nemesis, and Shinzon mentions that he and his Reman buddies fought in the Dominion War, and I’m thinking “Hmm, book idea. File that away.” I’ve got a file in the back of my head for Star Trek loose ends, such as “Whatever DID happen to Geordi’s mother, whose mysterious disappearance never has been explained?” You sort of keep these packed away for dreaming books out of one line of dialogue.
KD: There are a lot of unknowns to explore in the printed side of Star Trek storytelling.
GC: Speaking of unknowns, and bringing us back to The Q Continuum, one problem I had writing was that at that point in the ST: TNG series, I did not know who the security officer was on the Enterprise. At that point, Worf was on Deep Space Nine, and whenever it was time for a movie, Worf conveniently would be dropping by.
KD: [laughs] “Well, what brings you back into this neck of the woods, Mr. Worf?”
GC: “Oh, well, I heard you guys were shooting another movie.” [laughs] We just didn’t know at this point in the continuity who the officer was; he or she had not been named. I remember asking John [Ordover] just who the hell was the security officer when Worf was not dropping by for vacation. John said, “Go ahead and make someone up, Greg, but he has to be dead by the end of the trilogy.” And that’s how we dea
lt with that.
KD: [laughs] Do you remember other potential problems?
GC: I remember living in mortal fear while I was writing the trilogy that Voyager was going to run a Q episode that would contradict my entire plot. The third-season episode “The Q and the Gray” was the most recent episode when I was writing the books. That’s the one that introduced “Mrs. Q” played by Suzie Plakson. Incidentally, I was not to call her “Mrs. Q.” It got very clumsy calling her “the female Q,” but contextually I was able to write around it. I have heard some fans refer to her as “Suzie Q.”
KD: Very clever.
GC: Yes. So as last seen, Q had gotten married and had a kid. And as far as the trilogy books went, thankfully, Voyager left Q alone for a year and a half. So it fits in very nicely. There also was a bit of a problem in that the books were set on the Enterprise-E, which at that point I had seen for all of four scenes here and there in a movie. There was a lot we didn’t know about the Enterprise-E. Occasionally, I’d get a note back from Paramount with something like “There is no Ten-Forward on the ship.” Oh, well, that’s news to me. I also had a daycare center in the book, but then found out that there are no children on the Enterprise-E. I think I invented a holographic daycare center just to keep those scenes alive. That’s a difficulty with the weird universe of The Next Generation when we see that universe for only two hours every three years.
KD: I’m guessing that can simultaneously inspire and hamstring a story.
GC: It’s easiest doing classic Star Trek because that’s finished; it’s done and we all know that. Then again, there’s always time travel and they can do the episode where Nichelle Nichols guest-stars on Enterprise. My doing Deep Space Nine and Voyager were interesting because I had to write the books while the show was just starting up and we all were still learning just who the hell Sisko was.
KD: If you had to make a choice, would you be able to pick a favorite crew to write?
GC: I’m not sure. Obviously I’m showing my age, but I always seem to end up going back to the original series and dragging in Hortas or Mugatos or Isis the Cat. But there are things I haven’t done yet, pieces of Star Trek I haven’t touched. I have yet to do a Seven of Nine book because my Voyager book was back in the Kes era. Kes is actually on the cover. I think I got one of the last “Kes-centric” novels in right under the wire before she left the ship.
KD: Your strategies just underscore, at least to me, that there’s nothing that cannot be blended in Star Trek in a good story.
GC: Oh, yeah. Sometimes, it seems very, very logical for it to be blended.
KD: So in all, The Q Continuum books remain a good experience for you?
GC: Yes. I think The Q Continuum is still the best-selling book or books I have written. It hit the New York Times list for a week, which is unprecedented for me.
KD: That’s a great indicator of fan response. And I assume that you have gotten positive feedback from readers over the years.
GC: Yes, but it’s funny. There are a great number of fans out there who can’t remember which Q books I wrote and which ones Peter David wrote. It’s very amusing to me when people tell me how much they loved Q Squared. And I’m sure Peter David is told a lot how much people love The Q Continuum. He’s done three Q books; I’ve done three Q books. I think the two of us are the only people who honestly remember which of us wrote which books.
KD: [laughs] Thanks so much for your time, Greg. It was a lot of fun hearing your take on the Q books.
GC: Thanks. I enjoyed it, too.