** spoiler alert ** After the Rashanar fiasco, Picard is again captain of the Enterprise, but Starfleet doesn’t trust him and sends him and them on a milk run.
240 years ago Vulcans intercepted and ignored a buoy with a distress call coming from planet breaking apart. They think they’re going to see ruins, but find a civilization in unmapped space, a first contact situation, that’s learned to make do. They made some fairly amazing things.
But the Enterprise isn’t alone there. We don’t know who is sabotaging the Dokaalan mining colonies, but I suspect it’s former Obsidian Order agents, now employed by the Orion Syndicate.