Jean-Luc Picard. His name has gone down in legend as the captain of the U.S.S. Stargazer and two starships Enterprise.
But the nine years of his life leading up to the inaugural mission of the U.S.S. Enterprise to Farpoint Station have remained a mystery—until now, as Picard’s lost era is finally unearthed.
Following the loss of the Stargazer and the brutal court-martial that resulted, Picard no longer sees a future for himself in Starfleet.
Turning to his other love, archaeology, he embarks on a quest to rediscover a buried age of ancient galactic history…and awakens a living survivor of that era: a striking, mysterious woman frozen in time since before the rise of Earth’s dinosaurs.
But this powerful immortal has a secret of cataclysmic proportions, and her plans will take Picard—aided along the way by a brilliant but naive android, an insightful Betazoid, and an enigmatic El-Aurian—to the heights of passion, the depths of betrayal, and the farthest reaches of explored space.
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 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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Christopher L. Bennett is an extremely talented Star Trek author, and 2007’s Star Trek: The Next Generation — The Buried Age shows him at the absolute top of his game. The Buried Age is a book of The Lost Era, a series of novels charting the largely unexplored period of time between Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and “Encounter at Farpoint,” the premiere of The Next Generation.
Bennett uses his book to tell the story of a period of Jean-Luc Picard’s life between starships Stargazer and Enterprise.
Beginning with the destruction of the USS Stargazer in 2355, this book charts the nine-year period in Picard’s life between abandoning ship in the Maxia Zeta system (a tale recounted in “The Battle”), and taking command of the USS Enterprise-D in the Next Generation pilot episode
The Buried Age has a number of stories wrapped into one, but each are in turn both captivating and absolutely riveting. Following the destruction of the Stargazer, Picard is court-martialed — as referenced in “The Measure of a Man” — and prosecuted by his former lover, Phillipa Louvois. After suffering the loss of his ship and a humiliating court martial that ultimately cleared him of all wrongdoing, Picard effectively leaves Starfleet to pursue an academic career in archaeology.
Following a tip from Guinan, whose role in the novel is largely to help push Picard back to Starfleet — and the Enterprise, to ensure he would be in a position to travel back to 19th Century San Francisco and meet her for ‘the first time’ in “Time’s Arrow” — the captain sets off on an archeological expedition to discover evidence of an ancient race from millions of years in the galaxy’s past, when an unexplained galaxy-wide cataclysm caused most sentient life to be extinguished.
With a little help from Lieutenant Kathryn Janeway — this book is chock full of great cameos that do not feel out of place — Picard finds a stasis field containing several preserved aliens from that era. He rescues one, an ancient alien who is near immortal belonging to a race called the Manraloth. Lacking her memories, Picard names the empathic alien Ariel (after “The Tempest” – this book is also chock full of great Shakespeare references), and they ultimately begin a relationship while trying to determine her origins.
It all begins to unravel, however, when — with the help of Starfleet — Picard and Ariel set off to find more of her people trapped in stasis fields across the galaxy. They succeed, but at a terrible price: Ariel has been deceiving Picard for some time. Her species, the Manraloth, once managed a galaxy at peace with itself, but in their hubris they caused a major cataclysm that destroyed most of the Manraloth and much of the sentient life in the galaxy.
Determined not to allow the Federation to repeat their mistakes, and convinced of their own superiority as near-immortals who once shepherded the galaxy to a long lasting peace, Ariel and the Manraloth become convinced that the only way to avoid other races repeating their error is to effectively end their space programs and encourage them to become supplicants to the Manraloth’s advanced knowledge and technology.
Picard, who feels deeply betrayed by Ariel, becomes obsessed with finding and stopping the Manraloth. Ultimately, Picard learns a number of important lessons about himself, with help along the way from a curious android Starfleet officer named Data, and a Betazoid counselor named Deanna Troi. By the end of the novel, Picard has rediscovered his purpose in life, love of exploration, and sense of duty to Starfleet, and takes command of the Enterprise as it embarks on a deep space assignment.
So much about the personality of Jean-Luc Picard as seen in the first few seasons of The Next Generation is explained by the events of this novel. Picard’s aloofness with his crew, and particularly his distance and lack of desire to engage in romantic relationships, are explained by the deep wounds inflicted by Ariel’s betrayal. He shared a deep emotional and romantic relationship with her, and it seems clear that Picard needs significant time for those wounds to heal.
It is also a fascinating experience to see this character who, for the vast majority of The Next Generation is so confident and assured of himself, laid low and exploring career options other than Starfleet. This novel significantly builds out where Picard’s deep knowledge and love of archaeology derive from, and how he was able to stay so informed on the subject despite more than two decades of starship command.
Bennett has always been the master of weaving real science into Star Trek science, and he capably does so here with aplomb. His storytelling always benefits from mixing the two, making the Star Trek universe feel the most real that it ever has. Bennett is also the undisputed master of getting stuck right into the Star Trek canon, knocking down continuity problems with ease.
If you’re as much of an obsessive detail-oriented Star Trek fan as I, the little Easter eggs embedded throughout this novel are an absolute delight. However, there are also plenty of fascinating original ideas, races, and planets that The Buried Age never feels like fan fiction.
Where Star Trek: Picard appears to be readying to tell us the story of a Picard who becomes disillusioned with Starfleet at the end of his career, The Buried Age tells the story of a Picard who is disillusioned with it in his prime. Ultimately, though, the character and his commitment to Starfleet is strengthened by the events of the novel, and sets him up well to transition from losing his ship to being assigned as captain to the most prestigious ship in the fleet.
The Buried Age is a fabulous book. In addition to being a great character study for Jean-Luc Picard, it is a gripping story that stretches from one side of the galaxy to the other, and uses science and history to tell a book that is full of smarts, heart, and adventure.
I highly recommend you give this a read if you’ve never read it, and give it a re-read if you have!