Aptly timed for a post-Election Day release, Greg Cox’s latest Star Trek novel goes political in A Contest of Principles.

The Enterprise is dispatched to serve as election observers to the Vokin in this new tale, a planet facing its first planetwide general election to decide the path of the planet out of authoritarianism. Meanwhile, Doctor McCoy is kidnapped and First Officer Spock and Nurse Chapel must team up to find him.

Cox is a master at turning out classic Trek novels that feel very close to being actual episodes of the show. His books hew pretty closely to the style and conventions of a traditional episode of the Original Series, but with a slightly larger scope afforded to the written word that the need for more sets and props would have precluded for the television show.

A Contest of Principles feels like an easy episode from a hypothetical fourth season, in which the ship is still carrying out its five-year mission but all of the character growth that took place during the three season run of the show is available to the author.

Cox never misses with his characterizations, always perfectly capturing the voices, mannerisms, and behaviors of our intrepid crew.

In recent novels — such as last year’s The Antares Maelstrom — Cox has adopted a story structure that involves breaking up the senior officers of the Enterprise and sending them off on different, but interrelated missions.

He continues that here, splitting the novel into three primary story lines: Kirk on the planet Vok working to oversee the election, McCoy’s kidnapping to Vok’s sister planet Ozalor to provide medical assistance to a dying princess, and Spock and Nurse Chapel’s efforts on the disputed planet Braco to find him.

This storytelling tactic is an effective one for allowing some of the supporting characters from the show to step out into the limelight from under the harsh spotlight of James T. Kirk. While Kirk is the focus of one of the three main storylines, his absence from the other two allows Spock and McCoy to take control of their respective plots and give us some great character moments for both.

But it would be nice perhaps for Cox’s next novel not to adopt the same structure a third time running. In this book, it can be difficult at times not to feel as though one is reading three novellas loosely threaded together. None of the stories feel like they quite get the attention that they deserve for the scope of plot and ideas that Cox is presenting.

For example, we spend a little time, but not enough, unraveling the mystery of Braco — contested between Vok and Ozalor — but whose real history might be far more interesting. Likewise, on Ozalor, we barely scratch the surface of that planet’s monarchy and the intrigue that drives McCoy’s kidnapping and his experiences on the planet.

And lastly, on Vok, the politics as depicted by Cox are interesting, but not terribly sophisticated. While they are nowhere near as obviously simplistic as the politics of an episode like “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” it feels like a misstep for a novel whose main pitch appears to be its political angle — and which was likely timed for an Election Day release — not to have pushed further in deconstructing the politics of Vok and what it means for a whole planet to be on the brink of emerging from authoritarian rule.

Cutting one of the three main storylines would have necessitated shortchanging at least one of the focus characters of the novel, but it might have been worthwhile to get to explore the remaining two stories in more detail.

But minor criticisms aside, I always love any time McCoy gets a character spotlight, as he does here. He is one of my favorite characters in the whole franchise, and it’s always exciting to see the character in a position where he has to rely on his own wits and smarts in order to get out of a particular situation, rather than serving in the advisory role to Kirk doing that as he does in so many episodes of the Original Series.

It is also really nice that Nurse Chapel gets the opportunity to take more of a leading role. A Contest of Principles, which is set towards the end of the Enterprise’s famous five-year mission, demonstrates very capably why Chapel would soon after decide to pursue her medical degree to become a fully fledged doctor by the time of The Motion Picture.

And despite being teamed up with Spock, it’s gratifying that the book chooses not to dwell on Chapel’s crush on Spock from earlier seasons of classic Trek, and instead highlight her skills and professionalism.

Overall, if you are a fan of the Original Series’ wider cast, and have enjoyed one of Greg Cox’s previous novels, you will enjoy A Contest of Principles very much. Sometimes, there’s nothing more comforting than a book that feels very much like an episode of the series, and Cox always delivers.

Looking forward to the next book, Greg!