When CBS Paramount elected to move forward with the Star Trek Picard series on its streaming service it spelled curtains for a long-running Star Trek literary universe that tied together previous concurrently set Star Trek series of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. Like the Disney Star Wars sequels that relegated all those novels to ‘legends’ to make way for a new official “canon” so went Star Trek.
Just as those Disney sequels now make the whole endeavor seem so not worth it, so too would I argue went Picard. The series was very hit or miss, far too simultaneously over- and under-developed. And the official canon Picard novels were generally tangential and mediocre by way of avoiding to do anything of substance, as the show still went on its wild course.
Unlike the Star Wars novels, however, some of the biggest Star Trek literary universe authors were allowed to publish books that ended the continuity that they and their colleagues had built up, and pave the way (through the standard multiverse model of SF) to set up new canon continuity for characters and the setting. These were the Star Trek Coda trilogy by Dayton Ward, James Swallow, and David Mack. It too was wild, maybe a bit over-developed, but it was also glorious and a satisfying way to tie things up.
Now that Picard is over and we’re back into having novels that may or may not stay canon, Dayton Ward returns to the characters of those three older Star Trek series… and the newer streaming series of Discovery, Picard, and Strange New Worlds to pen a novel very similar in style to Star Trek Coda. Something that takes characters and ideas from all these franchises and puts them into a multiverse adventure that imagines where a new literary universe (or multiverse) can go from where things left off in Picard. This is Star Trek – Picard: To Defy Fate.
To Defy Fate starts off just following the finale of the Picard TV series (its climax at least, not epilogue) and the “devastating joint attack by rogue Changelings and remnants of the Borg Collective.” Honestly, I don’t even remember much about this plot element, and still get confused over who characters from the series were and what they did. Luckily, even just a passing familiarity with Picard, or the vaguest of memories as I have, is sufficient for getting into and enjoying To Defy Fate. However, one does need to be pretty fluent (or at least exposed) to the breadth of the Trek universe to appreciate this.
During a tour of the USS Titan A, newly promoted captain Seven of Nine and her first officer/lover Commander Raffi Musiker experience a strange temporal/universe shift that renders both unconscious, and Seven into a subsequent coma from its effects/interactions with her Borg implants. Meanwhile, Admirals Jean-Luc Picard and Dr. Beverly Crusher get a surprise visit from Traveler Wesley Crusher who warns them of an unknown agent or agents that appear to be disrupting time for “unknown and potentially catastrophic reasons”.
With Seven in a coma, Musiker joins Picard, Dr. Beverly, and Wesley in journeys through time and the multiverse, trying to identify the threat and undo/prevent damage to their timeline. In the meantime, other temporal-sensitive/experienced individuals like Guinan or Doctor Kovich (elderly Crewman Daniels) are targeted as Seven was, but kidnapped and held in containment out of play to prevent their interference.
The upside of To Defy Fate is that it is really a Wesley novel. It is nice to see Wesley act as a Traveler, which we’ve never gotten to really see in any series iteration. Another bonus is that Picard and Dr. Crusher have the secondary focus along with Wesley, and then Musiker. Fans of Seven will be disappointed, however, that she is in a coma and not involved for the majority of the novel. The other upside is that like in the previous novels of the litverse, Ward pulls in secondary characters (and inspirations) from all across the franchise (even the Kelvin universe) and uses them well in an exciting adventure.
The downside of this all amounts to just how ridiculously complex it all is. The time travel/multiverse idea is nothing new, but always is riddled with things that are just difficult to explain or get logically through our linear minds. It opens up so many possibilities you can get down a rabbit hole of why characters can’t just do x or y to solve the issue. Ward does a good job having it all make logical sense, including giving the antagonist a believable motive and other players having understandable reasons why they do or do not act. Nonetheless, it’s complex, and in some ways best not to overthink. It’s pulpy in the best of ways.
The best moments of To Defy Fate are those where the action slows down and you see Wesley take a breath and interact with his mother and surrogate father. Ward does a great job at writing Wesley as more mature and more exhausted, yet still with traces of his youthful exuberance. It’s a facet of The Next Generation that never really got a proper conclusion or continuation, and this brings it.
It will be interesting to see where Picard novels (and the other franchise series) go from here within a new litverse. Will they all stay mostly in lanes of being set in the ‘present day’ of when the shows or movies were, or will they begin to interlink more again with this as a springboard? This is very much a standalone, and I don’t see anything specific being born from it to continue on (aside from more of Traveler Wesley) but regardless, it’s wonderful to just have on its own.
