I finally found good pictures of his awards at the First Duty exhibit: http://www.startrekpropauthority.com/2019/12/admiral-picard-awards-and-honors-from.html Honorary Olympian, 2333 Federation Allies Diplomacy Silver Medal, 2349 Betazoid Loyalties Award for healing and enveloping new nations, 2350 Humanitarian Award of Federation Planets, 2351 Klingon Planetary Humanitarian (!) Award for leadership, 2355 Grankite Order of Tactics for the Picard Maneuver Annual Fundraiser, 2360 Distinguished Record of Service on USS Reliant, 2364 Rising Phoenix Award for ending the Klingon civil war, 2367 Vulcan Award for stopping the Romulan invasion, 2368 Bajoran Award for post-occupation assistance Circle of Galaxies Award for maturity, 2375 Vulcan Dignified Person Award, 2380 Vulcan Crystal Planet Award for Peace Negotiations, 2386 Undated: Andorian award Legion of Honor
"Vulcan Dignified Person Award"... is that the Vulcan equivalent of "person of the year"? (I'm loving this, of course. Jean-Luc deserves ALL the awards.)
I also like the "Circle of Galaxies Award for maturity". It almost sounds like a Starfleet meeting got so out of hand that they just up and gave an award to the only person who didn't lose his cool throughout all of it.
I’m still curious as to how Picard as captain won an award in 2364 for service on a ship named the Reliant when he was already captain of the Enterprise in 2363. Unless the Reliant was a ship he served on immediately before the Enterprise and he just never spoke about it.
The time between his captaincy of the Stargazer and that of the Enterprise-D was never really much of a focus in canon, so it's very possible the award was indeed referring to him serving on a ship named Reliant before he took command of the Enterprise-D. In "Legacy", he refers to "his" ship responding to a distress call that ultimately led to him meeting Tasha Yar for the first time during a rescue mission.
Yep, I’m aware of the “Legacy” issue (that the original idea seemed to be that he was in command of the Enterprise at the time, but AGT clearly shows that that wasn’t the case. Also, Picard served on a ship called the Reliant, but he was only an ensign. I doubt it took 37-some years for him to receive a service award.
Two possibilities: - Picard served on the Reliant as an Ensign (presumably his first assignment in 2327 before transferring to the Stargazer), and later, much later, took over as Captain, perhaps from 2355 to 2364 (it may have been a different Reliant). He was assigned to the Enterprise-D in 2363, per onscreen info, but AGT shows him taking command in 2364, so this award may have been a going away present for their Captain of almost 9 years. - Picard, in 2364, is now the distinguished Captain of the Federation flagship. Since he started his career on the Reliant, the 2364 crew of the Reliant decide to give him this award. Like small, podunk towns giving Keys to the City to Governors, Presidents, billionaires, or movie stars who left as soon as they were able.
Or then it did. It's possible that nobody else from that ship got any sort of an award (why would they?), but when Picard made it big, the ship's commemorative association decided to send him this "remember us" placard, complete with Picard's current title. Not for anything he would have achieved on the Reliant (he probably achieved nothing there and then), but for what he had achieved since. Edit: ah, ninja'ed. But the Stargazer was explicitly both his first captaincy and his first starship assignment. Not necessarily in one continuous stretch - and indeed it might be he left that ship pretty soon after getting assigned there, did the Reliant stint, then fifteen other ships, and then got the Stargazer captaincy. Timo Saloniemi
If that’s the case, I would prefer that the Reliant he served on in circa 2327 was the same ship as his former command in 2360-something. It’s not an unbelievable scenario, as we’ve seen older ships in TNG before. Heck, the Stargazer might have even been an older ship than the Reliant.
I found it well-written and it had nice depth concerning his life before the D. Many pictures from this book are in the First Duty exhibit that is explicitly tied to the Picard show. I just checked - while he was a science officer on the Reliant, his first post as an ensign, he saved the ambassador on Milika III (as referenced by Q in Tapestry).
Not only that real production photo, but also new pictures made for the book that show him as a younger man