Star Trek: The Next Generation - "The Buried Age"

“The Buried Age” by Christopher Bennett finally tells the of the events in Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s life from the time of the Ferengi ambush that led to the loss of the Stargazer up until the very beginning of him taking command of the Enterprise. “The Buried Age” refers to the discovery of previously unknown history of the galaxy, but also to that buried age in the Star Trek timeline that had remained ignored until now.

It’s always been intriguing, as it was teased in the first season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where we saw the return of the Stargazer and the revelation that it was the Ferengi behind the attack. Other episodes also alluded to the fact that Picard captained The Stargazer for quite along time. But in classic Next Generation style of never bogging things down with character development, as they really disliked anything other than standalone episodes, they never discussed that era of Picard’s life in greater detail.

It begged to be written and now all these years later Christopher Bennett has filled in that gap. This was not a classic “Starfleet” story either. Picard’s love of archeology comes to the forefront. We also get some insight into the psychology of the man, what makes him tick, and why the Picard we would later see remains by and large aloof from the rest of his crew.

Another of the shows mysteries, the character of Guinan, gets a little exploration as well. We also get to see Picard’s first meetings with a couple familiar faces, which meshes very well with the show’s feel that Picard had a slightly higher level of trust or relationship with these characters.

Bennett obviously did a good amount of research into the show itself and offered up answers to a lot of loose ends or unexplained questions regarding how certain things came to be on The Enterprise. The story itself was very engaging, but tying things into the show that we know was also a nice treat.

Picard is on the trail of perhaps the most significant archeological find in the history of the galaxy. Still he manages to discover more than he had expected. Probably the biggest revelation of the book came well before the end of the book. In reading the story and knowing the show, I expected something. That something came before the very end of the book which managed to add surprise to it. To a small extent the last section of the book were somewhat anti-climactic and maybe a bit more typical of a Star Trek book with some Starfleet ship combat and of course another win for the Federation. However, that led to a couple unexpected characters getting to come to the forefront. As a fan of the show that did add to the book. Those were the sort of surprises that the book had to reveal, as opposed to huge plotline surprises, since the events had to remain consistent with the history established on the show. So no visits to the homeworld of The Borg for Picard in this book.

I liked how great effort was made to develop Picard and some of his relationships and give the story the feel of belonging in the history of the characters, as opposed to it just being another adventure they went on that didn’t happen to make it to the TV screen. This book added a fullness to the character of Captain Jean-Luc Picard that was not there before. I could see Bennett doing additional novels on behalf of some of the other characters. Perhaps someone else will take the torch from him, but I would like to see Bennett take on Lieutenant Worf or Commander Data. If he does I will be watching the bookshelves for those novels.