Star Trek: 10 Things Picard Has Wisely Avoided (Or Forgotten)
1. The Missing Years
Not to be confused with the Lost Era which is defined as the time between Generations and Encounter at Farpoint. In this case, it is the time period between the loss of the USS Stargazer and Picard taking up the command of the Enterprise-D. For completists, this is from 2355 until 2363.
Conjecture indicates that Picard did have some form of command during this time since he first meets Tasha Yar as stated in Legacy but other than that these eight years are as yet unaccounted for.
Star Trek novels and by that nature beta canon have taken a hard exit into this territory in the last 20 years ultimately with everything coming to a neat tie-up in the recent Coda series. Even before the end of TNG we had Michael Jan Friedman's superlative Reunion novel which chronicled Picard's time aboard the Stargazer and introduced us to some of its crew besides Jack Crusher.
Both this and those Missing Years account for a great deal of Picard's character which Trekkies have still not seen explored on-screen and would provide a vital account of his early years as a captain aboard the ship and in the era that forged him.