In today’s episode, when a temporal physicist invents a stable portal to the past, it’s fair to say he did Nazi a twist coming. Now Jake, Nog, and Chief O’Brien must stop the time tamperer before he can put Reich what (he thinks) once went wrong. Is O’Brien exempt from suffering in kids’ books? Should this changeling be more melty? And is it really necessary to look at your dump before you flush it? All this and more in Trapped in Time, the book with a bold what-could-have-been in the casting department!

Trapped in Time
Author: Ted Pedersen
Pages: 111
Published: February 1998
Timeline: Unlike the other Deep Space Nine YA novellas starring Jake and Nog, which must usually be relegated by default to seasons 1 and 2, this one takes place in season 4, immediately after Admiral Leyton’s then-recent failed coup attempt in “Paradise Lost” (4×12).
Prerequisites: Events of “Paradise Lost” are explicitly referenced. Dulmur and Lucsly (consistently rendered as “Lusly” here for some reason) first appeared on TV in “Trials and Tribble-ations” (5×06), which aired a year and some change before this book was published. A fairly big twist near the end is better understood with some cursory knowledge of Star Trek Generations.
Not to be confused with: Timetrap (TOS #40)

Somehow I didn’t expect a book about time travel to open with an interview with everyone’s favorite temporal detectives, Dulmur and Lucsly, but we are indeed at the point where that is possible, and it’s a more-than-welcome start that got me very excited for the pages ahead. Their business at DS9 concerns the recent time-hopping shenanigans of one Jake Sisko, who, along with Cadet Nog and Chief O’Brien, has just finished saving the timeline from being changed into Nazi World.

The attempted coup has been quashed, and the changelings have been driven from Earth. Maybe not all of them, but definitely most of them. Most is good enough, right? Probably! Anyway, there’s only one order of business left on Earth for Miles O’Brien: do Dax a favor and deliver a bonsai tree to a beloved mentor of hers in France. Jake and Nog tag along with him to Paris, where the deed is done without incident. But as they leave, they run into the professor’s assistant. Wasn’t he just at the laboratory? No, he’s been in Provence all day on a family emergency. But if he’s here, then who OH CRAP THE ONE IN THE LAB IS A CHANGELING U-TURN U-TURN

They get back just in time to chase him through the time portal and land in a soggy field a few days before the invasion of Normandy is scheduled to take place. They take shelter in a nearby barn, but are soon discovered by the Germans, and during the escape attempt, O’Brien wrenches his ankle and is forced to stay behind and get caught, proving that even in novels for young readers, he must suffer. Jake and Nog don’t fare much better on their own, but at least manage to get caught by friendly company. There’s always a girl Jake’s age for him to glom onto in these books, and this one is no exception, giving us the unassuming, credulous Brigitte, along with her family, whose names might make your antennae perk up if you’re paying attention…

---

Trapped in Time moved away from the increasingly infertile ground of seasons one and two at the exact moment the DS9 YA series arrived at the finish line. Though Star Trek‘s Terracentricity can often be a bore, it might have been nice for Jake to visit Nog at the Academy a few times and get up to shenanigans in edutainment-friendly locales. Paris is a nice place to start, and the trip back to a pivotal moment in its history in 1944, though due to how lean these books run, there’s not much time to take in the scenery in either the present or the past. Neither does a reader get any indication of the true depths of the awfulness of Nazism; there isn’t time to develop German soldiers as much more than generic henchmen, and the ramifications of the changeling’s plan are largely left to the imagination. Kids of this age are ready to learn exactly why fascism should be stopped, and if anything, a more explicit explanation of that would be appreciated now more than it would have been at the time of publication.

I also got mildly hung up on one of the changeling’s tactical decisions. Instead of going straight to Normandy and executing his plan, he takes a detour to Brigitte’s shack. His logic is that Jake is in possession of the technological means to return to the present, and he wants to make sure his plan changed the future in the ways he hoped it would, so he needs to retrieve his MacGuffin. It’s easy to understand why one would want to be extra-double-for-sure-sure, but I think it was a fatal misstep that turned him into a victim of his own hubris. It can be tempting to stop and stare at a dump you took, to gaze upon your handiwork, before you flush it down the toilet. But you have to be more single-minded to pull off an evil plan than that. No more Great Link for you—Nazi Earth is where you live now, bro. No looking over your shoulder!

Despite those qualities, however, Trapped in Time goes down far more smoothly than the usual slop Ted Pedersen managed to get published. It’s better to have a familiar supporting character along for the ride than some girl for the boys to pointlessly fight over. Also, there are details in this story that are done subtly enough that probably only an adult would notice them, but if you do, they culminate in a solid payoff at the end. I know no one would care if I spoiled a 25-year-old kids’ book, but for some reason I don’t want to, probably because I thought it was reasonably well-executed and it’s easy enough to check out for yourself for free if you feel so inclined. Let’s just say if your Spidey sense tingles at Pedersen’s use of the names Jean and Robert, that’s not a coincidence. If that piques you sufficiently, it’s probably safe enough to say you should check the whole book out. If not, you won’t be too poorly served by moving on, though you will miss out on the only halfway decent Star Trek kids’ book Ted Pedersen ever cranked out.

MVP & LVP

• MVP in this one is Brigitte, mostly because of the fact that she has enough foresight to leave a note for the future that allows a certain character to trace their lineage directly back to that point, piece together what must have happened, and allow them to properly credit and thank Jake directly back in the present. She’s also more lowkey in a way that keeps her from being ogled by two teenage horndogs, which allows her to breathe as a character in a way that these books typically do not allow for, and I did appreciate that.
• I almost gave LVP to O’Brien because he’s out of commission with a wrenched ankle for a good chunk of the story and is more a burden than not when he is around. But he’s at least good for some useful information and context about the time period, and the scene where he’s being interrogated by the changeling is the only time you get even a moderately chilling flash of the villain’s fascist/eugenicist motivations. So I think unfortunately it has to go to Nog, who doesn’t have much to do but tread water somewhere just out of his depth. It wouldn’t have made much difference if he had gone back to the Academy and it had just been Jake and Miles.

Stray Bits

• An inexplicable P hooked to the front of the word “transporter” made me think of it as a transporter that can only transport pterodactyls. (49)
• Todd Cameron Hamilton’s artwork is typically not worthy of comment, but sometimes it goes off-model in unexpected directions. Take this rendering of Chief O’Brien below. Does he not look kind of like Bruce Campbell? Now how would that have been for stunt casting? Though if he had somehow been on Deep Space Nine, he wouldn’t have been available for The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., and that would have been a travesty—as much of a travesty as the fact that that show only lasted one season. (50)
  
• There’s a neat bit where the changeling is impersonating Monsieur Jean, one of the oddly various men Brigitte lives with, and you already know which one is fake if you paid attention to a somewhat minor detail from Jean’s introduction (he speaks broken English, whereas the changeling is fluent). The most amazing part of all is that Pedersen doesn’t belabor the point into oblivion, and if you could spot the difference, then bully for you, but they don’t before the changeling gets the upper hand, and it’s not mentioned why. Very well done.

Final Assessment

Good. Normally, three strikes means you’re out, but it’s the fourth time that’s the charm for Ted Pedersen, who finally turns in a humdinger that’s buoyed by a very fun narrative framing device and a twist that sticks the landing better than it has any right to. Like any subseries of Trek novels, the DS9 YA line had great moments and it had downright awful ones, but there were enough good times that it’s moderately sad to see it ride off into the sunset. The show (and the young men that headlined it) outgrew it fairly quickly, so it’s not too surprising to see it come to a somewhat abrupt end, but in the final balance, it’ll be missed.

NEXT TIME: Marvelous Mackenzie morphs from messiah to Martyr