The eagerly anticipated Star Trek: Picard will be preceded by both a short comic series and a prequel novel. The TV series, which sees the return of arguably the greatest captain in Star Trek history, follows Picard almost 20 years after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis, in which he faced a Romulan-created clone of himself and Data sacrificed his own life to save the entire population of Earth.

Haunted by an event from his past, Picard is retired from Starfleet and lives alone on his family vineyard with his dog Number One. The appearance of a mysterious young woman being pursued by hunters kicks off a chain of events, resulting in him being pulled back to the stars, and with a crew assembled from assorted renegades and outcasts he returns to the life that made a legend out of him.

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News of Picard’s set up material was reported by THR, who also briefly detailed what we can expect from it. The comic, subtitled Countdown, is a three-issue miniseries revolving around a mission Picard undertakes that was significant enough to alter the whole course of his life. Its first issue will be published in November, and it'll run to January 2020. A month later sees the release of The Last Best Hope, a novel by veteran tie-in scribe Una McCormack that will directly lead into the TV series by introducing new characters who'll appear on the show.

Star Trek Picard Borg Cube

Like the show itself, comprehensive plot details are being kept under wraps, but some information can be extrapolated. In 2009 a comic miniseries titled Star Trek: Countdown acted as a prequel to the J. J. Abrams reboot movie, featuring the destruction of Romulus by a supernova and Nero’s rampage against those he held accountable before he and his ship and crew were thrown back in time along with Spock. It’s possible that the new comic series, with a full name of Star Trek: Picard - Countdown, retells part of this story from the perspective of Picard as he “commanded the greatest rescue armada in history” to save the surviving Romulans. Since the mission had such a profound effect on Picard, its events and fallout are most likely to be what led to his decision to leave Starfleet and spend the rest of his life Earthbound.

As for the novel, while for sci-fi fans the words “last best hope” typically invoke the spoken introductions of the first three seasons of Babylon 5, they originate in a message to Congress from Abraham Lincoln prior to the Emancipation Proclamation, in which he declared that allowing freedom to those over whom you hold power assures greater freedom for everyone. It’s likely a reference to the former Borg drones on whom the Romulans are experimenting, released from one kind of subjugation only to find themselves trapped in another, spending 16 years at the hands of a people who want someone to blame for the destruction of their homeworld. Since it’s unreasonable to expect all viewers to read tie-in material, the events that play out in the comic and novel will doubtless be recapped in the show proper, but those who want to experience them as full narratives in their own right will have ample opportunity to do so before Star Trek: Picard begins.

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Source: THR