In today’s episode, the Enterprise’s special guest is hiding a dirty little secret that will put their 24th-century enlightenment to the test. But they’ll need to put their squirmies aside when a new threat declares war on the Federation and a nasty virus violates humanity on a deeper level than they ever thought possible. Can Federation science cure the virus? Can it exterminate Worf’s arachnid problem? And can it pump my stomach after a wild night at Olive Garden? All this and more in Infiltrator, the book where diamonds are for never.

Infiltrator
Author: W.R. Thompson
Pages: 279
Published: September 1996
Timeline: Early to mid-season 7
Prerequisites: “The Drumhead” (S4E21) gets mentioned a lot, but just as a comparative thing, plus an extremely general grasp of how the Federation feels about genetic engineering, but otherwise none

For a regular old numbered installment, Infiltrator is gravid with shenanigans and intrigue, such that it’s actually a bit difficult to narrow the focus of a summary. Two threads run parallel throughout, one on the Enterprise and one on the planet Hera. Naturally, the former receives more attention, featuring Our Heroes and such, but we pop in on the latter often enough too, and so alongside each other they run, never touching until at last they elegantly dovetail toward the end. It’s easy to feel like you’re missing something or being kept in the dark a bit more than comfort would dictate, but it’s very tightly constructed and a treat to read.

On the Enterprise, they’re reviewing a supposedly uninhabited region for potential colonization and hosting a scientist named Astrid Kemal, who is brilliant, witty, very strong, and rather clumsy. Of course, one of those things is not like the others, which makes Worf uneasy. But the discovery of a derelict ship called the Temenus doesn’t leave much time for such suspicion. The Temenus worries Astrid because she knows it’s from Hera, a world of genetic superpeople originally hailing from Earth, which we all know how the Federation feels about that. And she knows it’s from Hera because she herself is the child of Heran refugees who emigrated to Zerkalo, a world of anarchists whose president is a tree. (There’s nine words you don’t see together every day.) So naturally, she’s not especially thrilled about how public sentiment will turn against her if that little secret gets out.

Meanwhile, in the other thread, Marla Sukhoi is arrested for treason by the Modality, Hera’s government. She and her now late husband sabotaged the Temenus in an effort to stop Operation Unity, a plot that involves infecting the “primals” (i.e., old-style unaugmented humans) with some kind of virus. The Modality is also concerned that she may have viewed the “originator file”, the contents of which are heavily implied to be the sort of thing that would change Herans’ minds about old-humans and thus completely eradicate the Modality’s legitimacy. A cocktail of truth drugs convinces them she hasn’t seen it, which stays her execution long enough for a band of like-minded rebels to bust her out, along with their psychic cat (it makes sense eventually).

Soon enough, a couple of survivors of the Temenus sabotage spread that virus throughout the Enterprise, though Dr. Crusher isn’t too worried about it at first. But Worf’s sustained suspicion gets him close enough to the truth to make him the target of an assassination attempt by one of the survivors. Astrid has to blow her cover to save Worf, then figures she may as well go all-out and explain to Beverly that the virus inserts Heran DNA into old-human genes so that their eventual offspring will be enhanced. The revelation deals a somewhat devastating blow to crew morale, as many feel shock and anger about being violated on such a basic level, which only intensifies when Dr. Crusher admits Federation science may not be up to curing the virus.

Admiral Trask soon arrives to arrest Astrid, but Picard manages to stay his hand, though only barely. Trask remains on board, and his intransigence exacerbates existing problems and creates new ones. He jeopardizes the potential admission of Zerkalo to the Federation when he goes after Astrid’s parents, drawing the ire of the tree president. He’s also spoiling for a fight, which the Herans are gladly gearing up to give him. Picard maintains that a peaceful resolution is possible; can he beat a task force to Hera and work things out his way before war breaks out?

Although there are plenty of galactic threats in this story, much of the drama is small-scale and personal, dealing with the senior officers’ feelings about Astrid being an augment. Infiltration narrowly predates Deep Space Nine‘s exploration of the same subject, but that show is of course well-accustomed to moral ambiguity. It hits different in squeaky-clean TNG. More than any of the other shows, I believe, The Next Generation really tries to put humanity’s best face on display—and it needs to do that—but I also generally enjoy it when writers allow those characters to be less than perfect. Riker’s bigotry is the most outsized and explicit, but there are subtler gradations. Geordi has a minor thing for Astrid that’s compromised by the reveal, and he’s conflicted, because he likes her, but he’s also well aware of what a society of genetically perfect people would do with someone like him. The nuance on display is pleasing.

Infiltrator is the second of two Trek novels by W.R. Thompson, and while it’s not quite the bracing breath of fresh air that Debtors’ Planet was, it’s quite excellent in its own right, with the same wry humor and a galaxy with a not-insignificant variety of non-hominid races that recalls the creativity of Diane Duane. (There’s also an unfriendly neighborhood spider-man named K’Sah, temporarily serving under Worf in the officer exchange program, whose struggles to understand and not be disgusted by human civility form an amusing subplot.) It can be a bit overstuffed at times, but there’s very little about it that isn’t on point, and it makes me sad that we won’t be getting any more from the talented Mr. Thompson.

MVP & LVP

• My MVP for this one is Geordi. Thompson effortlessly autocorrects many of the things that cause Geordi showing interest in a woman to set off alarms in many viewers’ and readers’ heads. It’s very light and refreshing and mature and not at all off-putting. Also, he’s active enough in the story for not making the cover to be a legit snub. Overall, I simply enjoyed him the most this week, and it wasn’t a close race.
• Our LVP in this one is Admiral Trask. Sometimes you think he’s going to turn out all right(ish), sometimes you think he’ll break bad, and sometimes you don’t know what he’s going to do. Ultimately, he turns out bad. Very, very bad. Like, “how much latinum did it cost to fudge your psych eval” bad. Also just constantly in the way, no matter how he’s leaning. It’s apropos that I accidentally typed his name as “Admiral Trash” twice while typing this up. Also, speaking of breaking bad, I imagined him being portrayed by Bryan Cranston for some reason.

Stray Bits

• Between Infiltrator and Debtors’ Planet, it’s clear Thompson has a fascination not with the Khans and the Eugenics Wars themselves, but by the society surrounding them and the ripples caused by them. He says he isn’t a fan, but I’m not convinced.
• One especially interesting observation about the virus is made by Barclay. He’s actually glad for it, because he’s happy his progeny won’t inherit his anxiety and stammering. At first I thought this was a clever twist on the usual Federation outlook toward genetic engineering, but as I ponder it more, it seems more that it reflects outdated ideas about those with neurodiverse qualities needing and/or desiring a cure. After some deliberation, I’ve decided Barclay wouldn’t feel this way; I think ultimately he’d make peace with the idea of his peccadilloes making him who he is and reject the idea of augmentation.
• Marla Sukhoi’s namesake is Marla McGivers, a connection so obvious in hindsight, I’m a little embarrassed I made it 80 percent of the way through the book without it registering.
• Dr. Crusher, p. 14: “Your friend has a near-lethal amount of tetrazine in his system…” — At first I read this as “Your friend has a near-lethal amount of tetrazzini in his system”, and I was like, yeah, been there, I can pack away the pasta too.
• Picard, p. 89: “Admiral, the Federation is not a twentieth-century police state. We cannot suspend our principles for vague reasons of ‘national security’ or ‘law and order.'” — Oh, God. Those sure were more innocent times, weren’t they?
• “Geordi got even less sleep than he had hoped for; he woke up after a dream in which he had been a cat burglar robbing an ancient combination safe. It had been a safe in his own office, and it had been packed with diamonds. A strange dream, he thought. Even if he’d had a safe in his office, why would he keep diamonds in it? There was nothing valuable about diamonds. You could replicate a ton of them in a minute, and their simple crystalline structure held no data. Information was the only valuable thing in the galaxy; everyone learned that in grade school.” — An interesting passage about the devaluation of material goods in the future, and a much better-written one than a certain line from a certain movie whose novelization we will be talking about in the near future, a line I will probably try to restrain myself from talking about and will fail miserably. (p. 170)
• “Data had noted that certain humans defended erroneous positions with increased vigor when confronted with superior logic; his research suggested that this was connected with something called ‘ego.'” — Quite true, Data. Your research might also have shown you that those people are called “conservatives”. (p. 182)

Final Assessment

Excellent. For a numbered installment, Infiltrator is packed to the hilt with material, and almost all of it is on point. The two parallel threads eventually come together in a rousing finale, and along the way there’s plenty of great galactic intrigue and small-scale drama in equal measure. It’s a shame W.R. Thompson only ever wrote two TNG novels, because he had a sharp understanding of what made the series work.

NEXT TIME: Checking in at the Academy with Cadet Kirk