Star Trek: 10 Things You Need To Know About The Lost Era

Trakor's Third Prophecy might well have been misinterpreted and misapplied, but "nest of vipers" is still a pretty accurate turn of phrase to describe Terok Nor during the Occupation of Bajor. The exact length of the Cardassian military's brutal expropriation of the planet is somewhat up for debate, but by general consensus, it lasted 50 years — from 2319 to 2369.

We saw the immediate aftermath of Cardassian withdrawal from Bajor on screen, but we've never witnessed the initial invasion, nor, indeed, much of the Occupation itself outside of flashbacks, telepathic rememberings, and Orb time-travel experiences. By its own description a "three-book saga of Star Trek's Lost Era…", the first of which is titled Day of the Vipers, the 2008 Star Trek: Terok Nor series is most notable for its detailed exploration of the Occupation of Bajor — from the arrival of the Cardassians (in 2318) to Bajoran liberation in 2369, thus redefining the end of the Lost Era itself in this case.

And as if that weren't enough of the Cardassian wreck trick for any time period, there's still the massacre of Setlik III, the Federation-Cardassian Wars more widely, and the Betreka Nebula Incident to consider. The Cardassians were pointedly viperous from the get-go: Snake-like down to the make-up, Michael Westmore designed a look for the then new species which gave them "a strange, menacing appearance, like a praying mantis, or a king cobra," as he stated in Star Trek: The Next Generation 365.

Though little more than a couple of throw-away lines between Garak and Doctor Bashir in The Way of the Warrior, the Betreka Nebula Incident apparently caused 18 years of conflict between the Cardassians and the Klingons and forms the basis for the Lost Era novel The Art of the Impossible.