61: John Jacob Jingleheimer Harriman

Serpents Among the Ruins. The Tomed Incident is a famous event in Star Trek history. But like so many such incidents, it's something we've heard in passing dialogue but never really learned much about. It was mentioned in three episodes of TNG—"The Neutral Zone," "The Defector," and "The Pegasus"—and one episode of Enterprise—"These Are the Voyages…" Okay... so four episodes of TNG. But what actually happened? This is what David R. George III answers in his Lost Era novel, Serpents Among the Ruins. In this episode of Literary Treks, hosts Matthew Rushing and Christopher Jones are joined by Drew Stewart and Dan Gunther to discuss the novel, what led to the Treaty of Algeron, why the Romulans retreated from galactic politics before resurfacing on TNG, and to the ban on Federation cloaking technology. In our news segment we take a look at the final covers for Star Trek: Seekers 1 and 2 and get set for John Byrne's New Visions "The Mirror, Cracked."