In this series, we’ve talked about events in the Star Trek Universe between the years 2379 and 2399, as portrayed in Star Trek: Online as well as in the literary continuity. We’ve seen significant differences between the two, notably that a Borg invasion in 2381 depicted in the Destiny trilogy of novels, which altered the trajectory of many Alpha and Beta Quadrant nations and killed billions, never happened at all in STO.
Today, we’re coming full circle and will discuss the Alpha Canon reckoning of this time period, as shown in the tie-in comic Star Trek Picard: Countdown and the novel Star Trek Picard: The Last Best Hope (according to CBS, all tie-in media for the new Star Trek series are considered canon), both set before Season 1 of Star Trek: Picard. For this article, the spoiler alert refers to the tie-in fiction only; I will not progress beyond the year 2399, more specifically the pilot episode of Picard, so there will be no show spoilers.
Note that as this era in canon has only just started being explored, the information available thus far does not cover all the various races and factions of the Star Trek Universe, so much of what follows centres on relations between the United Federation of Planets and the Romulan Star Empire.
Finally, at the end of this instalment, I’ll talk a bit about the recently completed Star Trek: Coda trilogy of novels. No spoilers, of course!
Without further ado, let’s fly!
A Promotion and a New Mission
In 2381, Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise was recalled to Earth for a meeting with Starfleet’s commander in chief, Admiral Victor Bordson. During this meeting, Bordson informed Picard that Federation scientists had confirmed the imminent supernova of the Romulan sun, a catastrophe that could cost billions of lives as the blast radius is estimated at ten light-years. A rescue mission is being drawn up but would require extensive physical resources and personnel to pull off.
Starfleet can only think of one person to lead this monumental humanitarian effort, and Picard accepts without hesitation and is promoted to Admiral. He never returns to the Enterprise, instead of relaying his final commands to the ship via subspace before turning the centre seat over to his trusted first officer, Commander Worf. Admiral Bordson’s attache, Captain Kirsten Clancy, does not agree with Picard’s decision but relents upon realizing the political benefits of having a Klingon in command of Starfleet’s flagship less than a century after the Khitomer Accords were first written.
Picard also reassigns his longtime chief engineer, Geordi LaForge, to Utopia Planitia under the auspices of the rescue mission in order to help design the warp-capable ferries essential to the mission’s success. LaForge and his team are eager for the challenge in spite of some engineers’ resistance due to being pulled off of existing projects to help a long-time enemy, but they quickly notice that the shipyard suffers from a lack of skilled personnel for the construction project.
Their solution is to develop a series of limited capacity synthetic androids to supplement the workforce. Doctor Bruce Maddox is then pulled onto the “synth” project, although he makes it known he dislikes abandoning his life’s work of developing a sentient android. Soon after, Maddox begins working with graduate student Agnes Jurati and they succeed in developing the Daystrom A500 synths.
The Evacuation
Picard takes command of the new starship Verity and a fleet of available transports and other starships to begin evacuating Romulan civilians from the planet Ectis II to Arnath, outside the blast radius. He selects Lieutenant Commander Raffi Musiker as his new first officer, a noted intelligence expert in Romulan affairs, and quickly she makes herself indispensable. Raffi commits herself fully to the mission at the cost of her relationship with her husband and son, who are upset that she has jumped into yet another long term assignment.
Picard’s team resolves to treat the Romulan refugees with dignity and respect and provide more than just transportation to a new home by ensuring they have both hope and security for the journey and their new lives, although some Romulan elites resent receiving the same treatment as mere commoners.
Upon arrival at Arnath, the Verity fleet and the refugees find the accommodations set up by the Romulan government to be little better than a prison camp. Starfleet protests against the Romulan government and is ignored, as the government informs them the refugees are no longer their concern. The Federation colony on Torrassa offers to house the refugees and Picard accept on their behalf, settling the first group of refugees within Federation space by 2382.
This decision proves to be controversial, but Admiral Bordson supports Picard’s call. In response, the Romulans insist on sending a “cultural liaison officer” to work alongside Picard; the officer is clearly a Tal Shiar spy.
Picard’s mission is complicated not only by the Romulans’ duplicitous nature but by resistance within the Federation itself. Olivia Quest, the new councillor from the Federation planet Estelen near the Romulan border, establishes a commission in 2382 to scrutinize the expenditures of the relief mission. She believes major worlds like Earth and Tellar are getting disproportionately more resources and benefiting from the latest technologies significantly sooner than frontier worlds like Estelen and others near the Neutral Zone, and she is not alone in this sentiment.
She stokes popular opposition to the mission by questioning whether more frontier worlds will be required to accept Romulan refugees. Admiral Picard shows Quest some of the advancements the mission has made in ship design, and he shows her the A500s as a new breakthrough that could benefit the entire Federation. She’s impressed and suggests their use in domestic and agricultural fields, much to the chagrin of Maddox who believes the A500s are a mockery. He begins to neglect them in favour of the fledgling work on fractal neuronic cloning he and Jurati have started.
With the first wave of Wallenberg Class transports nearing completion, the Verity fleet heads to Inxtis where they are welcomed by the Qowat Milat, an order of Romulan nuns which emphasizes openness and truth instead of secrecy and deception. Picard makes a longtime friend of Zani, leader of the Qowat Milat sect on Inxtis, and bonds quickly with Elnor, a young boy in her care.
Thanks to the order, the passage to the Federation world Vashti proceeds smoothly, where the refugees are welcomed with open arms and quickly establish a peaceful settlement. The success of the resettlement on Vashti became a success story for the rescue mission, and Picard would often reflect on the good work his team did there in times of difficulty.
The evacuation of Nimbus III, the former “planet of galactic peace,” however, is an unmitigated disaster. The world had failed its original mission and had been ceded decades earlier to the Romulans, who neglected it and allowed it to become a haven for the criminal element in the region. In recent years the inhabitants had worked hard to rebuild their society into a respectable, law-abiding one, and thus were hesitant to leave that work behind.
Tal Shiar forces arrived shortly after Admiral Picard’s fleet and demanded Starfleet leave the planet. As proof of their resolve, the Tal Shiar execute a belligerent citizen; realizing that there was nothing else he could do to prevent further bloodshed, Picard orders the Starfleet contingent to withdraw.
Further Complications
In early 2385, Picard and the Verity are sent to the Romulan colony on Yuyat Beta, a world previously thought uninhabited in another example of the Romulans’ continued secrecy. While there, Picard and Musiker discover native Yuyatis working the fields and realize that the Romulans, who frequently colonized inhabited worlds, have no desire to evacuate non-Romulans from the blast radius.
After the planetary governor attempts to steal the Verity, Tal Shiar forces arrive to destroy the ship and prevent an evacuation. Picard works with Laris and Zhaban, two former Tal Shiar agents who committed the forbidden act of falling in love, and they successfully turn the Tal Shiar away and begin evacuating the planet. Laris and Zhaban, fearful of retaliation by the Tal Shiar, accept Picard’s offer of alternative accommodations to a new colony.
Olivia Quest and councillors from several other frontier worlds near the Neutral Zone met to discuss their concerns that the Federation’s focus on the relief efforts are neglecting their worlds and consider secession from the Federation and the formation of their own alliance for protection and trade. Quest resists this but uses the threat of secession to try to pull relief ships and resources to the frontier worlds.
With Starfleet believing the risk of secession to be strong enough to give in to the councillor’s demands to prevent the region from becoming more unstable. Picard dives even deeper into his work in the face of increased resistance from within the Federation, as does Musiker, which results in her husband petitioning for divorce as he and their son are tired of waiting for her.
Meanwhile, on Romulus the situation is rapidly deteriorating as climate change from the impending supernova, among other issues, have caused a near-total breakdown of infrastructure. The elites of Romulan society have already evacuated, leaving the commoners to their fate. The Verity fleet is finally allowed to help in the evacuation of the nearby world of Vejuro, but upon arrival Picard gets stalled for two weeks waiting for permission to establish a field base before ordering its construction anyway.
After navigating his particularly labyrinthine Romulan estate, Picard and his team meet with the planetary governor who refuses to allow his people to leave, saying that he did not believe Federation propaganda regarding their motivation for the rescue mission. A small batch of refugees are eventually brought to Vashti, but Picard is recalled to Earth immediately after.
On April 5, 2385, the Utopia Planitia Shipyard on Mars was destroyed in a rogue synth attack. The attack ignited the Martian atmosphere, killing over 90,000 people on the planet in a fire that continues to burn fourteen years later. In response, the Federation Council unilaterally bans synthetic life and all research into such life.
LaForge was spared as he was in transit to Earth, but his entire team was killed; he blames Maddox for the attack as he had neglected the wellbeing of the A500s. Maddox himself is unsure, but with the ban in effect, he leaves the Federation to continue his work; Jurati elects to remain at the Daystrom Institute.
The Aftermath
Upon hearing of the synth attack, Picard quickly comes to believe that the synths had attained sentience and violently objected to their enslavement. Confident in his conviction, he presents a revised rescue plan to Starfleet Command. The admiralty focused on the immediate aftermath of the attack as well as the threat of secession from fourteen Federation worlds, had already decided to end the relief mission. Picard insists that Command either accept the revised plan or his resignation; he resigned.
Hearing this, Musiker, already distraught from the loss of her husband and son, falls into a deep depression coupled with substance abuse. She tries to make sense of the whole situation and comes to the conclusion that the attack had to have been staged by some foreign polity, eventually weaving an elaborate conspiracy theory. Picard, rudderless without Starfleet in his life for the first time in sixty years, retires to his family vineyard in Labarre, France with Laris and Zhaban.
In time, Olivia Quest becomes senior councillor for Estelen after helping draw up a new deal to increase the influence of the frontier worlds on the Federation Council. Meanwhile, personnel operating and supporting the refugee camps near the Neutral Zone are reassigned or outright quit, leaving a vacuum which unscrupulous opportunists waste no time in filling. Millions more stand by on their homeworlds waiting for a rescue that will never come and is consumed by the supernova in 2387.
In a last-ditch effort to reduce the damage caused by the supernova, which the Vulcan Science Academy among other scientific authorities has determined will be significantly greater in magnitude due to subspace interactions, Ambassador Spock petitions the Academy to help their Romulan brothers directly. They refuse, so Spock steals a prototype high-speed starship from the Academy with a payload of experimental red matter to try and contain the explosion.
He succeeds in creating an artificial black hole that consumes much of the supernova’s energy, though unfortunately not before Romulus, Remus, and many other worlds are destroyed. Spock’s ship is never seen again and is presumed destroyed; the ambassador himself would be honoured for centuries after for his sacrifice in trying to save the Romulan people.
Wow, that was an awful lot to go over! I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. But we’re not quite done yet!
Star Trek: Coda
Earlier this year, Simon & Schuster announced that this fall, they would release a trilogy of novels called Star Trek: Coda written by veteran Trek authors Dayton Ward, James Swallow, and David Mack. The three have been working on the overall plot of the trilogy, which they refer to as ‘The Plan,’ for several years, and with it, they intend to change the direction of the Star Trek litverse forever.
But what exactly does that mean? I have a pretty good idea, having finished the first two Coda novels by the time this piece is published. But I’m not going to talk about it here!
One thing I will do here is talk a little about some interesting character developments within this timeframe in the novels. Picard and Beverly Crusher got married and had a son, Rene Robert Jacques Picard (bonus points if you know the three people his name references!). Riker and Deanna Troi have a daughter named Natasha, which is a slight change from Alpha Canon, and of course, Riker himself is an admiral already.
Ben Sisko had quite a time since his return from the Celestial Temple after about a year: Kasidy Yates gave birth to a daughter, Rebecca, who was kidnapped by extremists and nearly killed, Sisko believed for a time that the Prophets had abandoned him and so he divorced Kasidy to keep her and Rebecca safe from unknown threats, then after a vision which followed Kira Nerys’ return from the wormhole he learned that he had finished his work for the Prophets and they’d selected Nerys as the new Emissary.
And Ezri Dax had become one of Starfleet’s most celebrated captains. Much, much more than this happens as those sentences barely scratch the surface.
The rest will be saved for the final instalment of this series of Exploring Beta Canon, coming in January 2022!
Read The Novels That Cover These Events…
- Star Trek: Picard: Countdown miniseries from IDW Publishing
- Star Trek: Picard: The Last Best Hope by Una McCormack
Read The Complete Beta Canon Series
- EXPLORING BETA CANON – STAR TREK UNIVERSE POST NEMESIS – PT1
- EXPLORING BETA CANON – STAR TREK UNIVERSE POST NEMESIS – PT2
- EXPLORING BETA CANON – STAR TREK UNIVERSE POST NEMESIS – PT3
- EXPLORING BETA CANON – STAR TREK UNIVERSE POST NEMESIS – PT4
- EXPLORING BETA CANON – STAR TREK UNIVERSE POST NEMESIS – PT5
- EXPLORING BETA CANON – STAR TREK UNIVERSE POST NEMESIS – PT6
