Star Trek: Picard Trailer Brings Back Data and Seven of Nine; Riker and Troi Also Confirmed to Return - Reactor

#5: It occurs to me that the trailer’s-eye view of that exchange between Data and Picard is very, very tightly shot.  I am wondering if in fact Picard, rather than reassembling Data completely, didn’t simply steal , er, borrow his head.

#12: I have previously recommended Jeffrey Lang’s The Light Fantastic, which I believe to be the last Data-centric novel in the extended post-screen continuity.  While it builds on story developments developed in several previous novels (which I had not read at the time I acquired The Light Fantastic), it is at once broadly self-contained and very wide-ranging, drawing in story elements from all over extended Trek video canon — most notably picking up the threads of the two Moriarty episodes of TNG and spinning a plot in which it is sometimes hard to tell which of Data and Moriarty is the protagonist and which the villain.

#16: I will preface this by observing that in the past few years, what I’ve read of the novels has been decidedly scattershot, so that my observations should be taken as being somewhat limited in perspective.

First of all, what you describe as “sad” I would tend to characterize as “noir”; that is, I think that particular novel is drawing in part on the traditions of “noir” detective fiction, which is deliberately introspective and often (but not always) prone to Eeyore-like cynicism.  [Note that Picard’s “Dixon Hill” holodeck simulations are also pulled from the “noir” playbook, and to some extent so are the “Vic Fontaine” character from DS9’s holosuites…and for that matter, Quark and his bar.]

That said….

The novel program took something of a soap-operatic turn some years back, sparked in large part by a long and complicated series of political developments in the Romulan Empire, which both tied into and spun off from the TNG series’ developments on Romulus in the mainline filmed continuity [NOTE: edited to incorporate a correction noted in a subsequent comment].  A secondary extended thread, developed largely in the DS9 continuity, has incorporated significant activity by Section 31 and other dissident forces within Starfleet and the Federation.  (I have noted but mostly not read a number of books involving a particularly complicated and dark set of intrigues involving Andorian internal affairs.)

On one hand, I have not run into any Trek novels — even in the darker shades of these waters — that I would characterize as badly written, and there’s a lot of powerful character development going on in some of this material.  But one of the reasons I haven’t read as widely in the novels as I once did is that there is, in fact, a good deal more dark political intrigue (some of it openly featuring xenophobic themes) than I really like in my Trek fiction.   For that reason, I think readers who are looking for old-school adventure should tread very carefully in the late-period DS9 and TNG novel lines.  (The sub-series starring Riker as captain of the USS Titan is mostly an exception here.)

OTOH, what the novel program has done in the TOS era — particularly a subseries called Seekers, and a cluster of connected titles from Dayton Ward taking place largely in our own nominal present day — is, by and large (and not surprisingly) much more consistent with the tone and spirit of TOS, even when individual books venture into rocky thematic territory.

I have not yet had a chance to look at the brand new line of books spun off from Discovery, but I am somewhat encouraged on that front by the authors picked to write them, most of whom have produced prior Trek fiction that I’ve enjoyed.