The Star Trek Journal Episode 11: The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard Book Discussion

 Greetings fellow Trekkies! I'm back with another Star Trek book discussion. I finished reading The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard the other day and I'm here to talk about it. Like with my last post on The Autobiography of James T. Kirk, I'll be focusing on what parts of Star Trek canon were used, what parts weren't used, and what parts were changed from how they were either depicted on screen, or from how they were described on screen. Engage!

Published in hardcover in 2017, The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard paints a very different version of Picard's life following the events of Star Trek Nemesis than what we saw in the novels being published at the time, or what we'd see in Star Trek: Picard only a little over two years later. In fact, Picard's childhood is depicted very differently from the way we'd see it in Picard season 2.

David A. Goodman, who wrote The Autobiography of James T. Kirk returned to handle Picard's life story. Like with the Kirk book, I find it interesting what parts of Picard's life (as seen on TNG) that he chose to ignore. He also kind of fixed a problem that I had with the Kirk book. In my last post I mentioned that there is no way Kirk would've been able to include classified material in his autobiography due to the events of the movies from The Wrath of Khan to The Voyage Home being considered classified by Starfleet and the Federation Council. In this book, Picard (as written by Goodman) mentions briefly his reuniting with Richard Galen, his Archaeology professor at Starfleet Academy, as depicted in the TNG season 6 episode, "The Chase", but goes on to merely mention that nothing came of it following Galen's death. Of course, as a reader I know that that wasn't true, since "The Chase" had long reaching consequences for Star Trek storytelling going forward, even as recently as season 5 of Star Trek: Discovery. 

I find it interesting that, like with Star Trek V in the Kirk book, Goodman completely ignores the events of Star Trek: Insurrection in this book. He skips from First Contact right to Nemesis without even mentioning the events of the ninth movie (third in the TNG series of films). Again, I get it, Insurrection was disliked by a lot of people when it first came out back in December, 1998, but Picard played a huge role in that film, so for Goodman to ignore it entirely, without even so much of a mention as he did with Star Trek V in The Autobiography of James T. Kirk, is, at the very least, disrespectful to the people who made that movie. Especially because he framed his mention of Star Trek V as a movie on a planet that Kirk and the crew had visited during the Five-Year Mission, and were revisiting during the latter stages of the TOS movie era. 

Surprisingly, the book also completely ignores the post-Nemesis series of novels that Pocket Books had been publishing at the time, starting with Death in Winter by Michael Jan Friedman in 2005. Which is interesting because Paramount hadn't chosen to end that continuity of books at the time Goodman was writing this book because Star Trek: Picard hadn't been announced yet, and nobody, not even Alex Kurtzman, knew how much Voyager and DS9 would play into Star Trek: Picard or any of the other late 24th Century/early 25th Century shows that we've had over the last six years. Discovery's first season was just starting to come out when this book was published, so they hadn't even decided to send the Discovery into the 32nd Century yet. So those novels were still the prominent Beta Canon source for information on Picard's life after the events of Star Trek Nemesis.

What Goodman doesn't ignore is the four issue comic book miniseries, Star Trek: Countdown published by IDW in 2009. This comic served as a backstory for the 2009 movie, and what Picard and the Enterprise's involvement with the destruction of Romulus and the supposed disappearance of Spock and Nero from the 24th Century, before we see either of them in the movie. Countdown is the one comic that was canon prior to the development of Star Trek: Picard due to it being tied into the 2009 movie and the fact that the story for the comic was created by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who had written the movie.

I like that this book spends a lot of time with Picard and his friends at Starfleet Academy, leading up to Picard getting stabbed by the Nausicaans, which we first heard about in the season 2 episode, "Samaritan Snare" and then saw in the season 6 episode, "Tapestry". There we got a better sense of Corey and Marta and their friendship with Picard than the episode allowed for. It was interesting to see how their friendship began.

Unlike the Kirk book, there isn't as many timeline gaps to fill with the Picard book, since TNG had four more seasons of TV than TOS had, and not as much time passed between the end of the series and the first movie, or even between the first and second TNG movies. However this book shows how Picard met Tasha Yar, Geordi La Forge, Deanna Troi, Worf, and Data, as well as Beverly Crusher (she wasn't married to Jack yet, so she was still Beverly Howard).

The 2007 novel, The Buried Age by Christopher L. Bennett, covered the period between when Picard was forced to abandon the Stargazer in 2355 and when he took command of the Enterprise-D in 2364. This book actually covers similar territory, though like most of what this book covers in comparison to other Star Trek media depicting this era, it covers it in a slightly different way than how The Buried Age portrays it. Which is fine. In this book Picard is a freelance troubleshooter for Starfleet Command, going to trouble spots that a starship couldn't necessarily go to.

Goodman does a decent job in trying to narrow down the big important moments in Picard's life. Particularly during his Academy years and during his time as captain of the Enterprise-D. For instance, even though Jason Vigo appeared in "Bloodlines", there's no mention of Miranda Vigo, Jason's mother during the pre-Enterprise days. Or even during his Stargazer days.

This is a really good book, and I actually like it better than the Kirk book. However, having said that, Goodman had a much harder job with this book because we know so much about the life of Jean-Luc Picard, even back in 2017 when this book came out. Goodman had a lot more information to go through and decide what would be included and what had to be left out.

That is it for today. I'm going to try to put out my post on The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway sometime between now and Monday, but I can't make any promises. As you know I'm taking next week off for life reasons, so me getting that post out before Monday will depend on when I finish reading the book. We'll see though. Live long and prosper my friends.

The Star Trek Journal: Episode 10: The Autobiography of James T. Kirk Book Discussion

 Greetings fellow Trekkies! I hope you are all well in this difficult time. I'm back for another Star Trek discussion. Today's discussion is going to be on the 2015 novel, The Autobiography of James T. Kirk by David A. Goodman. I reviewed this book almost two years ago over on Josh's Geek Cave, but this time around I'm going to focus on what parts of Star Trek canon were used in this book, what parts weren't used, and what parts were presented in a different format than how we were presented with it on screen. Engage!

As I mentioned in the intro, this book was published in 2015. Back then Discovery was in the very early stages of development. I don't think it had even been announced yet. Naturally, that means that this book doesn't include anything from Strange New Worlds since that show didn't exist yet. However, the early parts of Kirk's life were lifted from the Prime Timeline version of the events seen at the very beginning of the 2009 movie. Kirk was born on Earth, not on the Kelvin, but both George and Winona, Kirk's parents, served on that ship under the command of Captain Robau, played by Faran Tahir in the movie. But, being that the rest of the movie takes place in an alternate reality, none of the events of the movie itself are included in this book.

As I mentioned in my original review, I was very glad to see how Goodman connected the dots between TOS, and the first six movies, as well as events that Kirk mentioned throughout the three seasons of TOS, that took place years before we met Kirk in "The Man Trap". Though with the book being free of network scheduling stupidity, Kirk brings up the events that led to Gary Mitchell's death from "Where No Man Has Gone Before", the second pilot episode produced for TOS, first. Though, "The Man Trap" isn't mentioned at all in the book. Obviously the events from all 79 episodes couldn't be included in this book, but I do find it interesting that certain episodes weren't brought up at all. Being that this is Kirk's autobiography, it makes sense that certain episodes would have more focus since he was the central character in those particular episodes. However I do find it interesting that while Goodman writes Kirk's first meeting with Captain Koloth, who was played by William Campbell in "The Trouble with Tribbles", as a cadet at Starfleet Academy, "The Trouble with Tribbles" isn't mentioned at all.

I also find it interesting that certain events would be allowed to be included in the book at all. From an in universe point of view, Kirk shouldn't've been allowed to include the events of The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock in the book because everything surrounding Project Genesis and the Genesis Planet was classified by the Federation Council in 2285. And with this book having been written and published in 2293, shortly before Kirk joined Scotty and Chekov on the Enterprise-B, as seen in Generations, that's only eight or nine years after the events of both movies, therefore they should still be classified and unable to be included in a personal account of events.

Obviously from a real world perspective, they had to be included because they're important parts of the TOS series of movies. Nevertheless, using the in universe perspective of it being a document written by Captain Kirk himself, there's no logical explanation as to why Kirk would be allowed to include classified information in an autobiography being released less than a decade after those events occurred.

Star Trek V isn't included in the book in terms of the actual events of the movie. However, at one point, Kirk, McCoy, and Chekov return to planet 892-IV probably just before the events of The Final Frontier and discover that Kirk got Drusilla, the slave girl presented to him by Claudius Marcus and Merik, pregnant during their intimate moment in the episode, "Bread and Circuses", and she gave birth to a son, Eugenio. Eugenio became a movie director and directed a film, "The Final Frontier", where the Enterprise goes to the center of the galaxy to find God. Which is the plot of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, minus Sybok and everything going on on Nimbus III and on the Enterprise-A in the actual movie. 

I get it, Star Trek V has been the most hated Star Trek movie to ever come out, before Star Trek Into Darkness came out in 2013, but I've seen more understanding towards The Final Frontier in recent years than I have in the past, because people know what kind of restrictions that Shatner was under as a director, with a reduced budget and working with an effects house that clearly didn't know what they were doing in comparison to ILM (who were unavailable to work on the movie). So to have it omitted from this is a very glaring one simply because Kirk does have a character arc in the movie.

Another thing that I found very interesting about this book is how it portrays the character of Admiral Nogura. As in many TOS novels, Nogura has an expanded role in this book, being that he was a character only mentioned in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which came out in 1979 and basically started the modern era of Star Trek, beginning with the 26 constant production of Star Trek movies and TV shows that ended in 2005 when Enterprise was cancelled. We never saw him on screen. 

In books such as Enterprise: The First Adventure and The Lost Years he was portrayed as this old wise admiral who gave Kirk command of the Enterprise prior to TOS, and then promoted him to admiral upon his return from his historic five year mission. Here though, he's portrayed as a Bad Admiral, like Cartwright, Leyton, Pressman, Kennelly, and Dougherty, who attempts a more militaristic stance against enemies such as the Klingons and Romulans, or makes alliances with those enemies in order to maintain the status quo in some circumstances (Cartwright with factions of the Klingons and Romulans). Which is something I never got from The Motion Picture or the novels that he was an actual character in, as him being, despite the Federation being in a state of cold war with both the Klingon Empire and the Romulan Star Empire at the time of the V'GER incident as depicted in that movie. Though it would give Kirk an actual reason for wanting to return to commanding the Enterprise in the movie or to resign from Starfleet as he mentioned he did at some point as mentioned in Generations, with most material stating that period of Kirk not being part of Starfleet as taking place between The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan, which is why Kirk was an admiral in The Wrath of Khan even though he was still a captain at the end of The Motion Picture.

I also like that Kirk's pre-TOS timeline is made a bit clearer. Especially because in TOS his time in Starfleet Academy and when exactly he met Gary Mitchell and Ben Finney and when he served on the Republic and the Farragut. Again though, this book was published in 2015, long before Strange New Worlds ever went into development, so the Farragut was still being depicted as a Constitution-class starship rather than the Bellerophon-class starship that it's depicted as in Strange New Worlds.

What I appreciate the most though is depicting and making clearer the periods between The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan and between The Final Frontier and The Undiscovered Country because those eras in both Kirk's history and the history of the Enterprise and the Enterprise-A are the two most obscure eras of the ships under Kirk's command. While the various comics published in the '80s and '90s were set during these eras, very few novels were set between The Final Frontier and The Undiscovered Country, so it was nice to see these eras covered here.

As a Star Trek fan I love this book. However, I'm definitely more a fan of Spock rather than Kirk, which is why I actually like The Autobiography of Mr. Spock more than I like this book. But they're both really well written and well researched and planned out. Particularly in the scenes that Goodman had to make up for this book as they weren't based on footage from TOS or the TOS movies. I must also reiterate that I love what the book was trying to do in filling in the gaps of Kirk's life that we didn't see on TV or in the movies. At least we hadn't up to that point. I suspect that the end of Strange New Worlds will have Kirk replacing Pike as the captain of the Enterprise. 

I think that's going to be it for me for today. I'm currently doing a reread of all five Star Trek autobiography books that are out so far and I'm starting The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard, which I also did a review of on Josh's Geek Cave, and I'm planning on reviewing all five books as I finish reading them. Though I'm taking the week of the 23rd off for surgery as I'll be in the hospital and unable to do any blog posts. Live long and prosper my friends!