History Literature / NoTimeLikeThePast

* AssInAmbassador: Commissioner Santiago is a {{Jerkass}}. When it comes to trying to get the Yusubi to stop letting the Orions camp on their planet, he's got an excuse: he lost family to Orion raids in that sector. When it comes to pressuring Seven to violate the Temporal Prime Directive, he comes off rather less reasonable. [[spoiler:Witnessing the lengths the Orions will go to in order to capture Seven so they can auction her and her future knowledge to the highest bidder, he realizes how wrong he was.]]

* TheMole: [[spoiler:Cyril Hague, Commissioner Santiago's aide, is a [[MagicPlasticSurgery surgically-altered]] spy for the Orions.]]

* ResetButton: [[spoiler:Upon finally completing the time machine, Seven meets a hologram of its creator, who explains the mystery and offers Seven a choice: take and use the device, or destroy it in the past so it never exists in the future. Out of time herself, Seven selects the latter, and her whole trip never happened. . . though she still remembers it. A very ''Voyager'' end to a jaunt through ''The Original Series''.]]

* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: Unintentionally. [[spoiler:After hitting the ResetButton, Seven looks for deviations in time caused by her trip that didn't happen, and discovers the book's first RedShirt was her maternal grandmother, and there is no record of her death on Yusub. Because Kirk remembers Seven's trip, as well, and the ResetButton sent him back to the start of the novel, where he uses his foreknowledge to thwart the Orion ambush that claimed Elaine Bergstrom's life initially.]]

* WeWillNotUseStageMakeupInTheFuture: Averted when Kirk and Seven use exactly that to pass as native Cherons, of the dominant black-on-the-right-side race. It comes off as Kirk and Seven have an altercation with some guards, revealing them as aliens.

* DarkActionGirl: K'Mara, an [[GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe Orion]] [[PirateGirl pirate]]. Lacking the [[LivingAphrodisiac pheromones]] of most Orion women, she decides she likes the life of a pirate, and more so being the NumberTwo for the male Captain. The crew might not as readily follow her, but she can manipulate him into more lucrative courses of action than he could come up with on his own. K'Mara is no slouch in a fight, skilled with disruptors and [[KnifeNut knives]], and has several concealed weapons. . . [[spoiler:one in her [[PoisonRing ruby tongue stud]].]]

* {{Fanservice}}: [[SubvertedTrope Sadly, Seven does not]] don the [[DangerouslyShortSkirt standard 23rd Century Starfleet uniform]], nor one of the typically {{Stripperiffic}} female civilian outfits, instead wearing a blue suit that explicitly fits over her usual catsuit. This makes her possibly the single most-dressed female of the entire TOS era.

* FinalSolution: The black-right Cherons had one prepared, a biological weapon meant to kill all the white-right Cherons. Unfortunately, the two races are NotSoDifferent as religious and cultural dogma insists; the virus affects both equally. White-rights storming the building where the virus is being developed disable the sterilization protocols that could have destroyed it. Then a crashing bomber (unknown and irrelevant if was White-right shot down by Black-rights or vice versa) releases the virus. And that's how everyone on Cheron died before Bela and Lokai got there.

* PoisonRing: Or, [[UnusualWeaponMounting Poison Tongue Piercing]]. [[spoiler:K'Mara has a ruby tongue stud that's actually a miniature hypospray containing a deadly toxin; she uses it to kill a RedShirt in a brawl.]]

* ContinuityCavalcade: Chalk full of references to previous adventures of both ''Enterprise'' and ''Voyager''.

* DistressCall: The ''Voyager'' portion of the plot is kicked off by finding a 23rd Century Starfleet distress signal in the Delta Quadrant, where and when a 23rd Century Starfleet distress signal has absolutely no business being.

* DarkActionGirl: K'Mara, an [[GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe Orion]] [[PirateGirl pirate]]. Lacking the [[LivingAphrodisiac pheromones]] of most Orion women, she decides she likes the life of a pirate, and more so being the NumberTwo for the male Captain. The crew might not as readily follow her, but she can manipulate into more lucrative courses of action than he could come up with on his own. K'Mara is no slouch in a fight, skilled with disruptors and [[KnifeNut knives]], and has several concealed weapons. . . [[spoiler:one in her [[PoisonRing ruby tongue stud]].]]

** Debating whether or not coerce Seven into revealing information about the future, Kirk posits that "[[Film/StarTrekVTheFinaLFrontier perhaps we need our pain]]."

* CentralTheme: The danger of knowledge as power. Seven being from one hundred years in the future, is a vault of extremely dangerous knowledge. Everyone, at some point in the book, is tempted to crack open that vault and see what's inside. Even Seven herself considers, briefly, how many lives she might save by giving the Federation advance warning of the Borg, and sharing some of the technologies developed to fight them, almost fantasizing about the prospect of preventing her own assimilation, of who she would become if the Hansens had never met the Borg. There are debates about if any of Seven's knowledge can be used responsibly, to do good, or if it's all essentially ThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow.

** The trip Sarpeidon brings up Spock's son Zar, from ''The Yesterday Saga'', placing this novel outside the Franchise/StarTrekNovelVerse.

Stranded in the 23rd Century, Seven must complete a scavenger hunt across space and time to assemble a mysterious device that she can only hope will return her precisely when and where she left, allowing her to save Janeway, Tuvok, and Neelix. And without polluting the timeline, even in the face of a Federation diplomat and a band of Orion pirates intent on using her future knowledge themselves. And with no regeneration alcove on ''Enterprise'', Seven's Borg implants are slowly but surely breaking down. . .

* TemporalParadox: {{Invoked}} as a bluff by Kirk. [[spoiler:The Orions threaten to kill a captive Spock if Kirk doesn't hand over Seven. Kirk claims Seven told him Spock in the future invented the device that brought her back in time, thus killing Spock would make Seven vanish from the current time she could never have traveled to it. The Orion captain, being no great thinker or expert on temporal mechanics, is precisely as confused by this as Kirk hoped.]]

* HilarityEnsues: Putting [[TheCasanova James T. Kirk]] and [[MsFanservice Seven]] [[TheStoic of Nine]] in the same room is a recipe for comedy gold. [[SubvertedTrope The novel plays their interactions seriously]], but there's still a lot of humor in the fundamental premise.

** The Yusubi landing party consists of Kirk, Commissioner Santiago, his aid, and security guard Lieutenant Bergstrom, a rare Red Skirt. She doesn't make it past Page 13.
** Alien security guard Lieutenant Jadello joins Kirk, [=McCoy=], and Seven for their trip to Gamma Trianguli VI. [[spoiler:He's also vaporized by Orions shortly thereafter.]]
** Spock, [=McCoy=], and security guard Lieutenant Tang beam to the Mavelan ship to respond to their distress call. [[spoiler:Tang dies preventing K'Mara from killing [=McCoy=], she even calls him "Red Shirt" before delivering the fatal blow.]]

* DistractedByTheSexy: {{Downplayed}}. Perhaps predictably, Kirk's perspective frequently mentions how [[MsFanservice attractive Seven is]], but he doesn't let that influence his decision-making. Kirk makes a grand total of two passes at Seven (one debateably just Kirk being charmingly friendly) and when she fails to respond to either, is content for their relationship to remain warmly professional.

** The "scavenger hunt" for time machine pieces leads them to [[Recap/StarTrekS2E5TheApple Gamma Trianguli VI]]. [=McCoy=] is less than enthused at the prospect of a return visit. After this, their next stop is [[Recap/StarTrekS3E15LetThatBeYourLastBattlefield Cheron]]. Then they get pointed at [[Recap/StarTrekS3E23AllOurYesterdays Sarpeidon]].

* AssInAmbassador: Commissioner Santiago is a {{Jerkass}}. When it comes to trying to get the Yusubi to stop letting the Orions camp on their planet, he's got an excuse: he lost family to Orion raids in that sector. When it comes to pressuring Seven to violate the Temporal Prime Directive, he comes off rather less reasonable.