In today’s episode, the moment Riker decides to stand up for his love is the same moment Worf takes a knee. But the love he hopes to proclaim might not be so undying when some old adversaries roll up to Betazed at the same time. How many of the padds that cross Picard’s desk are time cards? Can Deanna sense Data’s chip emotions? And is it really fair to compare this book to the first Imzadi? All this and more in Triangle: Imzadi II, the book that’s really more of a square, if you think about it.

Triangle: Imzadi II
Author: Peter David
Pages: 375 (PB)
Published: October 1998 (HC)
Timeline: After the end of Next Generation but before Worf reports to Deep Space Nine
Prerequisites: Generally, one should be familiar with the fact that Worf and Deanna Troi briefly had a relationship in the later seasons of TNG, starting with “Parallels” (7×11). “Face of the Enemy” (6×14) is also regularly referenced. Thomas Riker recurs from “Second Chances” (6×24), and his arc continues forward from his fate in “Defiant” (DS9 3×09). Sela made a handful of appearances in TNG, most notably the “Redemption” two-parter (4×26 + 5×01) and “Unification II” (5×08). Characters, concepts, and memories from Imzadi, Q-in-Law (TNG #18), and the New Frontier novels also make brief appearances.
Not to be confused with: Imzadi or Triangle (TOS #9)

One of the potential problems with tie-in media is the occasional drive to make monumental mountains out of molehills that are small, unworkable, and sometimes poorly thought out. After a time, once many of the more major characters and scenarios of a work have been explored, expounded, exegeted, and exhausted, fans and authors start fishing among the leftovers, hoping to fill in the tiniest of nooks and crannies. Sometimes these turn out brilliant, and you didn’t even realize you wanted them. Other times, they raise questions no one would have ever asked had they never been brought into existence. Triangle, which is nominally a sequel to 1992’s Imzadi (though in truth the books have little to do with each other and share no connective tissue other than a recurring minor character and a few callbacks), runs into even bigger problems than that.

Peter David had a lot of complaints about this book’s journey to publication, including the egregious overemphasis of the Imzadi II subtitle on the cover and the editorial mandate to rewrite his original ending in which Will proposed to Deanna. These are fair complaints. Oddly, however, he glosses over the biggest problem, which is that the core of Triangle concerns a relationship that most fans did not want, did not ask for, and were largely confused by, and which, even worse, had already been canonically supplanted by a Worf relationship that was much more satisfying, made much more sense, and had started, developed, and reached its conclusion by the time Triangle reached publication. David talks in Voyages of Imagination about how when Worf reported for duty at Deep Space Nine, “there was no sign of Deanna and she was never mentioned and he looked pissed off. There was a story there.” Was there, though? Worf always looks pissed off. But even though the need to conjure endless stories about beloved characters and make the money machine go brrr often results in books that are every bit as much filler as 75 percent of Trek episodes, few of those books are as misbegotten as Triangle.

Triangle spends nearly four hundred pages crawling to a conclusion that many fans had already very easily and comfortably arrived at even before TNG went off the air—namely, that the Worf/Troi relationship is a goofy idea that doesn’t work on any level. It starts with Worf proposing to Deanna after the destruction of the Enterprise-D and her accepting, seconds before Riker finally makes the decision to pull up his big-boy britches and extract himself from the friend zone. He tries to tell himself he had his chance, but neither he nor any of his closest confidants really believe it’s over, so while Worf and Deanna sell their parents on the engagement, he sets about figuring out how to worm his way out of a teaching assignment and give Admiral Jellico the slip to go handle personal business.

The best scenes are those concerning domestic matters, in which the newly affianced couple visits their parents—and even though they spend much more time with Deanna’s mom than with Worf’s parents, there are also more excellent scenes to justify that extra time spent, particularly those where Lwaxana offers Worf a crash course in “Betazed philosophy and harmony” after he becomes overwhelmed by a debate at a banquet. Unfortunately, these are undercut somewhat by the fact that, despite framing it in the usual Klingon bluster, Worf is right about the fact that Betazed is ripe for takeover, both in the short term (as Sela descends upon the Fifth House and captures Deanna and Alexander) and the long run. But they’re fun while they last.

In comparison to those scenes, the villain plot, in which Sela breaks Thomas Riker out of a Cardassian labor camp and teams up with him, is perfunctory, and for a while, the true scope of it is actually kind of difficult to suss out. Somehow I didn’t add up that Sela wanted to genocide all Klingons until near the very end, though I admit that may be more of a me problem. On the other hand, maybe not: an entire chapter of the endgame is devoted to Gowron spelling the entire thing out in case it proved too convoluted and/or you missed any of the finer details. Sela and Thomas Riker do make an interesting enough pairing, however. David does prove rather astute by observing the strong common thread connecting Sela and Thomas Riker—i.e., that their unique status as flukes of time (her) and science (him) make them outcasts in their own respective societies.

Even though the book as a whole isn’t great for most of its duration, PAD’s facility as an author is enough on its own to keep it more or less afloat throughout. But the ending is indeed as rancid as he says it is. Worf calls off the engagement and runs off to spend a while at the Boreth monastery, which seems like a perfect opportunity for Riker to slip in and finally make his move. Instead, he reaches new lows of rizzlessness so astonishing that it calls into question how he ever made it to third base with anyone at all. I genuinely did not think Riker was capable of fumbling the bag that badly, both as a prospective lover and a decent human being. I wonder if David made it that bad on purpose because of how upset he was about not being allowed to do the Riker/Troi proposal and he wanted to be petty, but that’s speculative.

Personally, it was easy enough for me to treat Triangle like its own thing and not compare it unfavorably to Imzadi while reading it, mostly because it was five years ago that I read the latter. But I think people would have compared the two whether this one was explicitly called Imzadi II or not, and despite Peter David’s distaste for doing so, I think it’s perfectly fair. David was able to make such an incredible story with the first Imzadi because the idea of Riker and Troi being empathically bonded soulmates had good bones to begin with, and their onscreen relationship and chemistry made it believable.

Writing a book about the Worf/Troi relationship, on the other hand, only serves to underscore how undercooked it was, as well as how much worse an idea cramming that relationship into the back half of a mostly mediocre final season was. Triangle does its best to make their short time together seem like more than the nothingburger everyone had already (correctly) written off as, but a thought experiment about what happened between Generations and season 4 of Deep Space Nine never had any hope of being anything more than fine. It was built on sand from the start, and it was never going to do anything more than sink.

MVP & LVP

• I love the way Peter David writes Lwaxana Troi. I don’t have a lot of time for re-reading with this project, otherwise I would probably go back and have another look at Q-in-Law, which her badassery in this book reminded me of. She is astonishingly patient with Worf, stops calling him “Mr. Woof” acceptably quickly, and has an excellent dynamic with him. I think Worf eventually does learn some things from her, despite his best efforts.
• There is a Cardassian sub-villain in this book named Mudak, but I didn’t think much of him. He has the same tired motivation that a lot of Cardassians do where he’s incapable of recognizing common sense because he’s too blinded by how good this W is going to look on his service record. Plus, it’s hard not to default to hearing Marc Alaimo’s voice in my head when I’m reading Cardassians.

Stray Bits

• More than once, PAD treats serving on the Enterprise almost as a 9–5 job, with Riker talking about making “a week’s pay” at the senior officer poker games and the Enterprise being “more than simply where I went to work every day”. It’s kind of odd. I guess military service is in a sense a job, though it feels a little reductive to frame it as such.
• Worf recommends Romeo & Juliet to Alexander—in the original Klingon, of course. (60)
• Deanna senses Data’s emotions now that he has the chip activated. But should she be able to do that? I would argue she shouldn’t be able to. They aren’t actually emotions, after all; they are programmed approximations of emotions. They scan as genuine to outward human appearances, but that doesn’t make them not programming. Deanna shouldn’t be able to empathically pick up on that. (61)
• Sela, to Thomas Riker, about her scheme: “Are you under the impression you can just pull out at any time?” Given that he’s (a) Riker, probably yes? (250)

Final Assessment

Average. Triangle is about as good as it can be for something that was doomed from conception, mostly owing to the fact that Peter David is so talented, he could make reading privacy policies fun. The scenes that test the strength of the newly engaged couple’s bond easily rank among the book’s best; everything else is tacked-on and needlessly convoluted. It does the book no favors to compare it to Imzadi, but it might not be that difficult not to, depending on how long it’s been since you read that one, and anyway it’s more than within bounds to do so. I had heard vaguely a few times through the grapevine over the years that this one was going to be a disaster, but really it’s not awful—it just doesn’t have much to work with in the first place.

NEXT TIME: Once Burned, twice Peter David