I haven’t seen Picard and actually find myself reluctant to watch it(how did that happen?). Does that impact on this book?
As long as you have a heads-up about the "eye-scream" scenes (in particular, avoid actually watching the beginning of "Stardust City Rag"), there's no reason to avoid watching it. I haven't seen any of the succeeding episodes simply because for the past few weeks, when I wasn't too busy, I wasn't really in the mood to watch anything.
TBH I have always disliked those “Return of...” stories.Not just Trek but every time it’s done in popular culture. Even writing that down I’m psychoanalysing myself.
It's the same timeline. It's all the same single continuity. The 2009 movie established that the supernova happened in 2387 in the Prime timeline, which caused Nero to go back in time and create the Kelvin timeline. Picard elaborates on what led up to the supernova and what its aftereffects were.
Is Livnah supposed to be the same species as Jaylah from Star Trek Beyond? The physical description seems to match (ash white skin with black tattoos) and both names end with the same two letters. I was surprised to see a Garidian (from the PC game A Final Unity) and a Taurhai (from the LUG RPG book The Way of D'era) aboard the Romulan ship. But how did the Taurhai Unity become a client state of the Romulan Empire? If I remember correctly, the RPG described the Taurhai as a powerful nation, which was a major threat to the Romulan Star Empire. Most of the old Titan characters are gone, but I'm glad the crew is still diverse, with a Vulcan doctor, a Denobulan at the helm, an El-Aurian diplomatic officer and even a Kelpien in security.
The stories mesh fine, and Picard's version makes enormously more sense than the movie's anyway. It doesn't matter if the details all fit exactly; they never have. TOS alone has hundreds of inconsistencies, and the later series and movies contradict it and each other in a bunch of ways, but we choose to play along with the fictional conceit that it's all a single reality. This is no different. Whatever the details, the intent of the narrative is that Picard elaborates on the supernova established in the '09 movie. They are meant to be one and the same -- just as the Khan of The Wrath of Khan is meant to be the same Khan who was in "Space Seed" despite the massive contradictions between the two (like Khan's people going from an ethnically diverse group to a bunch of blondes, and somehow being in their mid-20s despite being stranded as adults 15 years earlier). What about the Saurian first officer we glimpsed in Lower Decks?
That's disingenuous. The entire premise of Picard is obviously based on the 2009 movie's supernova backstory. There is no reason to suspect otherwise; you just don't want it to be, for some reason.
We see the Titan for barely any time at all on LD, and they never said the Saurian was the first officer. Plenty of wiggle room.
I'm going to skip this. The Picard series is the only Star Trek that I've genuinley disliked, to the point where I wish they hadn't made it. The future it presented is just not reconcilable as the future of the TNG/DS9/VOY era. I mostly enjoyed the Titan series, so reading a book where most of the characters from that series have disappeared doesn't appeal.
She does indeed like the beats and shouting. I'm showing my game-nerd here a little...! A Romulan starships manual was in the works for the Last Unicorn Star Trek RPG line before it got cancelled, and material from that was later released online by one of the writers. In that text, it stated that the Romulans had eventually defeated the Taurhai, so I extrapolated from that. With the Othrys, I wanted to show a Star Empire ship with a crew that wasn't Romulan-only, as a way to mirror the Titan.
For anyone being put off from watching Picard by the casual criticism, I loved it. It may not be perfect, but what is ? It was a very welcome show and I'm looking forward to season two immensely.
Yep. Every Trek series has been imperfect. They're all flawed in their own ways, but their good parts enable us to forgive the flaws. And Picard had quite a lot going for it, even if it didn't stick the landing. Besides, this isn't even a Picard novel, despite the branding. It's a Titan novel in the Picard continuity.