Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Best and the Brightest (1998) Book Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Saturday. I'm back with another book review. This time I'm taking a look at the 1998 Star Trek: The Next Generation novel, The Best and the Brightest by Susan Wright. As usual there won't be a ton of spoilers, but there might be some, so if you're interested in reading this book, be aware of that. Let's get into it.

The Best and the Brightest is one of those rare Star Trek novels where select members of the main casts of the TV shows show up as cameos throughout the book, but don't have major roles to play in the story despite Star Trek: The Next Generation being on the front cover. According to Memory Alpha the book was originally supposed to be part of the young reader series, Star Trek: The Next Generation: Starfleet Academy, but was turned into an adult novel in the main Star Trek: The Next Generation series instead. 

There isn't a single story that goes through the book. Instead we have a series of events featuring a group of six cadets - Moll Enor, a newly joined Trill, Jayme Miranda, a human with a history of Starfleet in her family, Starsa Taran whose race doesn't enter puberty until adulthood and who live in an environment different from the majority of Federation worlds, Bobbie Ray Jefferson, a member of the felinoid Rex species, Nev Reoh, a former Bajoran Vedek, and Hammon Titus, a human with a need to prove himself. 

The book opens with a prologue set in the summer of 2371, where the news of the destruction of the Enterprise-D, depicted in Star Trek Generations (1994), has reached Starfleet Academy and the cadets are informed that one of their own was killed. Jayme is upset because Enor, who is her girlfriend, was onboard, along with Titus and Reoh.

The rest of the book goes through all four years, starting in 2368, just before the Enterprise is called back to Earth following the discovery of Data's head in an ancient cavern near San Francisco, as depicted in the season 5 finale, "Time's Arrow, Part I", and goes until sometime during the Federation-Klingon War in 2372, as depicted in season 4 of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. 

One of my favourite vignettes is during their third year, 2371-2372, Jayme and Starsa are assigned to Jupiter Station to help Lewis Zimmerman finish the Emergency Medical Holographic Program, including taking holographic images of Zimmerman for the visual template for the Doctor. Naturally, I imagined hearing Robert Picardo's voice whenever Zimmerman and the Doctor had dialogue. 

Speaking of characters from the various TV shows appearing, we don't get many of them, but we get Guinan, Captain Picard, Jadzia Dax (from DS9), and the Doctor (from Star Trek: Voyager), and Wesley Crusher, Harry Kim, and B'Elanna Torres are mentioned as well. As I said in the opening of this review, it was very unusual for original characters to be the focus of a novel. Aside from Peter David's novella series, New Frontier, the novels tended to focus on the TV show characters. 

Jayme Miranda is probably the character we get the most focus on throughout the book. We get bits and pieces of Bobbie Ray and Hammon Titus, but the main focus is on Jayme, Enor, and, to a lesser extent, Starsa. Which is fine because focusing more on one character helps the book be less chaotic, given that we have six main characters and doing an ensemble cast is really hard to do. Especially in books. I don't really have a favourite character, but this is probably the most likeable original Star Trek characters that weren't created for one of the TV shows. Though Nev Reoh, the failed Bajoran Vedek, is the most interesting of the six. Simply because he was born on a Bajoran colony, not on Bajor itself, and ended up not working out as a Vedek. Also, he's always referred to as Cadet Reoh, not Cadet Nev as Bajorans have their family names first and their given name last. I don't know if that's because the author, Susan Wright, who has written other Star Trek novels, knew that and just went with the naming conventions that western humans have where the given name is first, and family name last or if there's a specific reason she did it that way.

I first read this book back in high school. My best friend, Brad, lent it to me, along with a few other Star Trek books, and I think I read through it twice before returning it to him. Then a few years later, he was getting rid of his Star Trek and Star Wars books and gave them to me. Including this one. It's also one of the few Star Trek novels I kept when I was getting rid of stuff in 2015 and 2016, when my parents and I were getting ready to move. This is actually the first time I've read it since before we moved. 

Overall The Best and the Brightest is a good Star Trek book and I hope that the Starfleet Academy series that's been greenlit for production on Paramount+ takes some inspiration from this book because it would make for a good TV show. Amazon or a used bookstore would be the best places to find this book if you're interested in reading it since it hasn't been reprinted since 1998, and this original paperback edition has been out of print since probably about 1999 or 2000. 

That's going to be it for me for today folks. I'll be back soon for more reviews. I'm halfway through season 2 of Star Wars Rebels, so that's likely going to be my next review. So until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.