Yeah, it tends to take these shows a while to get off the ground, but very likely moreso for a spinoff like TNG. It had to figure out what kind of show it was trying to be. The sad part about that is that Tasha Yar didn't make it into the later seasons--I think she would have been awesome later on. (She was pretty cool in that one episode with the alt timeline, even. All brave and willing to take a personal risk to save the rest of the galaxy and stuff.)

I was a little put off by the space dolphin because it seemed a little bit...self-congratulatory or something, if you know the 'verse he's drawn from, but after the first chapter or so things smoothed out and it was all about my favourite canon characters from that show, so that was good. And I really liked the contrasts drawn between the mirror versions of everyone and our characters--though at times the MU was sooooo horrible that it was hard to suspend belief. Our Troi (and Picard and Geordi) got to react in ways that were a lot of fun to read, though.

Diane Duane = awesome, in any case. :D