Years before they served together on board the U.S.S. Enterprise, Commander William Riker and ship’s counselor Deanna Troi had a tempestuous love affair on her home planet of Betazed. Now, their passions have cooled and they serve together as friends. Yet the memories of that time linger and Riker and Troi remain Imzadi – a powerful Betazoid term that describes the enduring bond they still share. During delicate negotiations with an aggressive race called the Sindareen Deanna Troi mysteriously falls ill and dies. But her death is only the beginning of the adventure for Commander Riker, an adventure that will take him across time, pit him against one of his closest friends, and force him to choose between Starfleet’s strictest rule and the one he calls Imzadi.

We’re counting down to the January 2020 return of Jean-Luc Picard by revisiting some of the pivotal stories about the beloved Starfleet captain — and his crew — from across the last three decades of Star Trek: The Next Generation published fiction.

Welcome to the next entry in our retro review series Prelude to Picard!

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Jean-Luc Picard is not the only famous character from The Next Generation returning with the premiere of Star Trek: Picard on January 23 — longtime first officer William T. Riker and ship’s counselor Deanna Troi are also appearing in the new series, in their first on-screen appearance since 2005’s Star Trek: Enterprise series finale.

Author Peter David’s 1992 classic Star Trek: The Next Generation — Imzadi was the first in-depth exploration of the romantic backstory between Riker and Troi after their relationship was first introduced in “Encounter at Farpoint.” Even though some details of their history were contradicted in “Second Chances,” which aired a year after this novel’s release, Imzadi remains a seminal chapter in the Riker-Troi story.

And it is such a good book. Imzadi has time travel shenanigans, a deeper look into a new world hardly seen on screen — Troi’s homeworld of Betazed — the Enterprise orchestrating a peace conference with a hostile race, but all of that is secondary to the rich story of the relationship between Will Riker and Deanna Troi.

Televised Star Trek has often struggled to depict the real relationships between adults. Largely, I think this can be attributed to writers rooms in the 1990’s, stocked with young men who did not have a huge amount of relationship experience themselves. After all, who can forget the awkward post-marriage scene in “The Wounded” where O’Brien and Keiko seem like they hardly know each other?

Imzadi is very honest about adult relationships. In many ways, I am pleased that I personally did not read this book until I was older, married, and with some relationship experience under my own belt, so that I could properly appreciate how genuine many of the interplays between a young Riker and Troi seem.

For Riker, this is love at first sight — though Troi contends he’s not capable of more than lust at first sight — and together, they must reconcile being very different people in order to decide whether to pursue a relationship.

And ultimately, like so many relationships, it turns out that despite their deep and abiding feelings for each other, the circumstances of youth pull them apart. Riker does not seem fully able to subsume the ambition he feels for his career, and Troi is struggling to get out of the perceived responsibilities and path laid down for her by being the child of a prominent Betazoid house. Mix in some dumb mistakes of the kind only the very young make, that engender regrets that never quite goes away, and you have a potent combination.

Balancing the story that takes up the largest portion of the novel — Lieutenant Riker’s pursuit of a young Deanna Troi — is a story about a much older Admiral Riker, riven with regret and driven to try and change his past. With some similarities to the alternate future glimpsed by Picard in “All Good Things,” Admiral Riker is consumed by the guilt that he feels over the death of Deanna Troi mysteriously aboard the Enterprise-D a number of years before.

With the help of the Guardian of Forever, and in pursuit by Commodore Data of the USS Enterprise-F — who has been tasked with preventing Riker from changing history — Admiral Riker heads back in time to try and stop the death of Deanna Troi that set his timeline in motion. Ultimately, it is determined that the death of Troi is the aberration, caused by a hostile alien race who did not want the peace conference organized aboard the Enterprise to succeed and who went back in time to try and improve their own past.

Imzadi provides for an exploration of all stages of Riker’s emotions about Troi; his unyielding pursuit of her on Betazed, their somewhat comfortable friendship on the Enterprise, and his deep sense of loss and regret following her death. The three time periods allow us to really understand the nature of the term that they share for each other as partners: as each other’s Imzadi. And we also get a great look at Troi’s perspective too, though it is a little more limited since she is only around in two out of the three time periods included in the book.

Where October’s reprint of the Star Trek: The Motion Picture novelization was just crassly horny, Imzadi is largely successful at being tasteful, and in some places even quite racy.

There may be a little bit of excessive male gaze in a few places, but for being nearly 30 years old, Imzadi is largely a success at being both a serious and sensual exploration of the Riker and Troi relationship that contains some mature themes and does not shy away from sexual content in the way that most Star Trek does.

Imzadi is absolutely worth your attention to deepen your appreciation for both characters. I’m really excited to see how the Riker and Troi marriage has developed in the 20 years since Star Trek: Nemesis — it appears that in addition to being still happily married and possibly retired, they also have a child.

And it is comforting to know that, in the Prime Timeline, they remain Imzadi to each other in perpetuity.