Star Trek: 10 Things You Need To Know About The Lost Era
4. Picard And Other Manoeuvres
The USS Leondegrance was created and named as a direct nod on the part of designer John Eaves to Patrick Stewart's role in the film Excaliber, so named on "The Speed of Light Club" certificate in the Starfleet Museum Quantum Archives in Remembrance.
The full, de-blurred version of the certificate was tweeted out by Dave Blass in 2022 and had also been included in the Jean-Luc Picard: The First Duty exhibit at the 2019 San Diego Comic Con. It read that, on "04 April 2327" aboard the USS Leondegrance,
Cadet, Jean-Luc Picard flew THREE-HUNDRED THOUSAND KILOMETERS PER SECOND […] Thus qualifying as a member of the speed of light club.
In fact, according to Picard co-creator and writer Kirsten Beyer in a 2020 interview with TrekCore, when writers and producers were coming up with the idea for Short Treks, they had wanted to start with a story about "a meeting between Uhura and Picard — a very, very young Picard." In the same TrekCore piece, Alex Kurtzman added that, "The original idea was that a young Picard had been called to a hospital where Uhura had a mission for him, and it was related to the Borg." Go figure!
As for the actual Picard manoeuvre, there is a whole Star Trek: Stargazer book series out there. Riker also got his own Lost Era novel, Deny Thy Father, alongside Anbo-jyutsu obsessive Kyle Riker. In Deny Thy Father, we see Will go from Academy cadet to ensign on the Pegasus.