All Good Things... (Star Trek: The Next Generation) (audiobook) by Micheal Jan Friedman














Published by Simon & Schuster Audio in 1994
Read by Jonathan Frakes
Duration: 2 hours, 55 minutes.
Abridged
Based on a script by Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga

All Good Things... is an abridged audiobook presentation of the novelization of the two hour series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  There is a lot of room there for errors to be made. Will the reader interpret the material well? Is the abridgment done well? Is the novelization of the script done well? That's a lot of steps between the original authors and the audiobook listener and any of them done poorly could result in a poor audiobook presentation.
Jonathan Frakes as
Commander Will Riker
This audiobook was done quite well. The novelist is a prolific author of Star Trek books so he knows his material. The abridgment was done well. The reader was Jonathan Frakes. Frakes played Commander Will Riker throughout the show's run (and directed several of them) so he knows how everyone is supposed to sound, how the show is paced, etc.  Frakes does an amazing impersonation of Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, captures the voice of Q and Data very well. His Lt. Worf voice is laughable, however. Happily, Worf's lines are few and far between while Picard speaks throughout.

 In All Good Things... Picard is plagued by time travel. He is slipping backwards and forwards to three different moments in time. The earliest time is the time period covered by the first episode of the series. The second point is seven years later, the time period covered by the last episode of the series. The third point in time is in the far future when Picard is elderly and possibly suffering from a incurable dementia. The audiobook ties together the entire series (in a way) and let's the listener get a taste of the future lives of Worf, Crusher, Picard, LaForge, Riker and Data.

 Picard keeps sliding between these times and as he goes along he is confronted by Q who lets him know that if he does not figure out what to do he will be responsible for the disappearance of all of humanity from the galaxy. Picard works to solve the problem from all three times, each with its own set of challenges.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

 This audiobook is available through Amazon.com here: All Good Things...

 Reviewed on July 8, 2012.

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