I’m beautiful and tough like a diamond…or beef jerky in a ball gown.

  • 95 Posts
  • 472 Comments
Joined 6 months ago
cake
Cake day: July 15th, 2025

help-circle

  • Awesome. I really enjoyed it as well as the other tie-in novels for PIC.

    If you’re planning to buy (you should but I won’t judge lol), here’s a tip if you use ebooks [dot] com. Put everything you’re interested in into a wish list (might need to register an account) and check in on it every few days. Sometimes books randomly go on unannounced sales for $1.99. It’s listed at $13.99 now, but I got “The Last Best Hope” for $1.99 by sheer luck when someone recommended it to me a few months ago.



  • I had similar thoughts on it, but then I read the prequel novel which fills in a LOT of blanks. The backstory in PIC S1 is only touched on in dialog but I feel like it should have been the first half of the season. It makes so much of the story in the show make sense.

    Specifically:

    • Why Picard had such a dramatic, passionate, and public split from Starfleet
    • Who Raffi is, why she’s actually way more awesome than she was portrayed in S1, and why she and Picard are such BFFs now (and their falling out / why Raffi is angry at Picard)
    • How Worf got command of the Enterprise-E (not really relevant until S3 but still good addition to the backstory).
    • The full scope/scale of the aborted Romulan evacuation
    • Bruce Maddox’s role in the creation of the synths, why the synths were created (because certain starship components required hand fabrication), how the synths were different from the Soong-type androids, and his relationship with Dr. Jurati.
    • The absolute political shitstorm that was happening within the Federation because of the amount of resources being (re) allocated for the effort. In the show, we got one line from Admiral Clancy but it’s a very important part of the backstory that’s covered in detail in the novel.
    • Why neither Picard nor Starfleet Command are really in the wrong. The situation was shitty / “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” no matter what way you looked at it. The show clearly takes Picard’s side, but it’s much more complex than that.

    All of that context was lacking in the show and only vaguely touched on in either throwaway lines or cryptic dialog.

    I read the prequel novel (and the rest in the series that happen between seasons) and am on ep 3 of a PIC S1 rewatch. Everything just makes more sense this time around with all of that in mind.

    So if you’re only a few episodes in, do yourself a favor and pause that. Go buy, pirate, and/or otherwise obtain the prequel novel and read it first.

    Link: https://www.ebooks.com/en-us/book/209722657/star-trek-picard-the-last-best-hope/una-mccormack/