Star Trek: TNG — The Buried Age
{4.5/5} “We must learn to accept that we were simply not meant to succeed at everything. We must accept our failures… and we must forgive ourselves for them. Otherwise… we may become so obsessed with our efforts to repair our mistakes that we are blinded to other priorities and end up causing more harm.”
Star Trek: The Next Generation — The Buried Age by Christopher L. Bennett, published in 2007
After the presumed destruction of the Stargazer, Jean-Luc Picard goes back to school to study archaeology. When Guinan pays him a visit she tells him about legends of mysterious objects from 250 million years ago surviving inside protective fields. Picard tracks down rumours of such an object to a specific system, ad he convinces his advisor to launch an expedition to investigate.
The story involves Kathryn Janeway, and provides a deeper understanding of her decision in the 1st episode of Voyager. It also involves Data, and shows the 1st meeting between him and Picard. Deanna Troi and Tasha Yar also show up later.
This is the perfect book to read if you’re about to rewatch TNG — it leads right into the 1st episode. It ties things together cleverly, and presents an astonishing story of aliens who are unthinkably old.
This book was published with the tag line “a tale of The Lost Era.” This is the 8th and final Lost Era book in terms of internal chronology.
I’ve read 11 books by Bennett. I previously reviewed Star Trek: Enterprise — Rise of the Federation: Patterns of Interference.
The previous novel in the Lost Era series is Catalyst of Sorrows.