If you are disassembled in one place, then reassembled elsewhere, are you still the same person, even if every atom of your body is different? What would there be to stop you from being beamed into a body with a different shape or form? It really starts to break down our ideas of what space is, and what our bodies are. The notion of using transporters as doors is very interesting. They served as wardens essentially, keeping the population stuck on their planet. If the native peoples became space-faring, the pods would zap them back to earth. They turn out to be part of a vast network of pods left in orbit around habited or once-habited planets, and served as a means of watching over the planet’s inhabitants. It is outfitted with a bunch of transporters itself, but they’re all set to beam only out, not to receive. Secondly, the pod itself has no airlock and no way in other than via direct beam-in or out. First-off, the ancient alien tech has the power to send transporter signals via subspace, possibly over vast distances. Instead we are faced with a simple conundrum that must be unraveled- a high-tech but derelict space pod grabs Geordi and Data and teleports them out of sensor range, bringing them into contact with a man who reveres them as ‘The Builders’ and wants nothing more than their approval for his use of their ‘gifts’. We occasionally dip in and out of characters heads, but never for extended periods. The Peacekeepers is the second Next Generation book, written by Gene DeWeese, and feels much more like a run-of-the-mill episode than the previous one Ghost Ship.

The Peacekeepers by Gene DeWeese