Star Trek Writer Comments on the Future of the Relaunch Timeline

Star Trek: Picard on CBS All Access takes the Star Trek universe past its previous endpoint, the 2002 film Star Trek: Nemesis. But before Picard, there were other stories that carried Star Trek's torch for decades after Nemesis's release. Those stories exist in the novels that are part of what is sometimes referred to as the "relaunch" series. Each of the 24th century Star Trek shows received new novels that continued their adventures past where their series finale left off. Can these novels exist alongside Star Trek: Picard, which paints a very different vision of what Star Trek's future looks like?

ComicBook.com posed that question to Dayton Ward. Ward is an author who has contributed several stories to the relaunch timeline. We asked what the impact of Picard on the novel line has been like. "I think we all can agree by now that the show has had an impact," Ward says. "I think there's no hiding from it anymore. The other side of that discussion is I was aware of that when they announced the show. I knew that this day was coming. Myself and a small group of people behind the scenes have been slowly and surely developing a plan for how to carry the books forward. Of course, we were hampered by a lack of information for a great deal of time and now that we have a direction, there are plans afoot to continue the book line and see what happens from there. Hopefully, we'll get to a point here in the coming months where we'll be able to talk more about it, but yes, we have not abandoned the novel line as it currently exists. We do have plans for it."

Plans are in place to see the relaunch timeline continue alongside Picard. That's good news for fans of the novels, which are roughly the Star Trek version of the slightly-better known Star Wars Expanded Universe of old. Being novels, these stories don't have to be concerned with the logistics and budgeting that goes into making a television show or movie. That means there's been a lot more crossover between various Star Trek casts, and events happen on an even larger scale. For example, Voyager's Tuvok now serves aboard the USS Titan, which is Admiral Will Riker's flagship. A sneak attack led to the destruction of Deep Space 9, which was later rebuilt wholesale by the Federation. Though the long-running series can be daunting to jump into, the novels are well worth giving a chance if you're a fan of the Star Trek universe.

Ward's next Star Trek book isn't a novel but a guide to the art of Kirk Fu. You can read our full discussion with Ward here.