I just recently bought the first two seasons of TNG, and I was wondering what books/comics revisited the planets, characters, events, ect from those two seasons? I know about quite a few of the biggies like Gomez and Soloman in SCE, Orion's Hounds, and I plan on reading Out of the Cocoon when I get that far in the Corps of Engineers books. Are there any others worth checking out?
One could say The Buried Age follows up on elements of "The Battle" and "Encounter at Farpoint," though more accurately it precedes them. The Jarada from "The Big Goodbye" were followed up intriguingly in Imbalance by V.E. Mitchell, and to a lesser (and incompatible?) extent in Demons of Air and Darkness by KRAD. The parasites from "Conspiracy" are followed up in the DS9 Relaunch. There was a sequel to "The Child" called "Prodigal Son" in Strange New Worlds IV. Klag from "A Matter of Honor" is the lead character in the Gorkon series. The Iconians from "Contagion" were followed up in the Gateways miniseries. Kyle Riker from "The Icarus Factor" was in A Time to Love/A Time to Hate. And there are various followups in SCE, but you sort of covered that.
I can't believe I forgot about Klag and Kyle Riker . As for the parasites, that was one of my favorite parts of the DS9 Relaunch, and I really enjoyed the TNG, DS9 and NF Gateways stories. Didn't Mission Gamma: Twilight also have a tiny bit with the Jarada?
A direct continuation of the plot in "Demons of Air and Darkness". The Jarada agreed to let the Defiant and the Trager aid in the evacuation of Europa Nova in exchange for the Federation sharing any information on the Gateways with them. At the end of the Gateways books, of course, the gateways all shut down, and the Jarada thought they had been tricked. So, "Twilight" begins with angry Jarada attacking Defiant
From memory, the books that were coming out as those seasons were on air (and in to transmission of the 3rd) tried to be pretty close in style and tone... Check out Voyages of Imagination which gives publication dates and look for the material from September 1987 through January 1990 or so. Paul
TNG novels that are set in the first two seasons: Season 1: #1 Ghost Ship #2 The Peacekeepers #3 The Children of Hamlin #4 Survivors #8 The Captains' Honor Season 2: #5 Strike Zone #6 Power Hungry #7 Masks #9 A Call to Darkness Giant #1 Metamorphosis The only one that really constitutes a followup to a TNG episode is Survivors, a Tasha Yar-focused novel that takes place mostly before "Skin of Evil" but has a final chapter or two set just after Tasha's death. The Captains' Honor is kind of an odd followup to "Bread and Circuses" from the original series, and Strike Zone is a followup to Peter David's TOS comics. Also, a couple of the early ones don't quite fit the tone of the seasons in question, since they were written before the show actually premiered. Ghost Ship was written based only on the series bible and the pilot script, and the characterizations are different from how they turned out. And The Children of Hamlin, while an excellent tale, depicts a Starfleet that I find a bit more militant than the one we know from TNG.
They also show up (or at least their technology does) in "The Worst of Both Worlds" in "Glass Empires" and one of the Myriad Universe stories (the one with Lore and Data).