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The bridge of the USS Excalibur NCC-26517 from Peter David’s New Frontier novel series.

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Excerpt ??? (I've lost count) from I Survived Kirk, my forthcoming fanfic autobiography of a bitter redshirt on Kirk's Enterprise

The entire reason this book exists is as a rebuttal of Risk is Our Business.  I’m not sure how much of that was written by Kirk himself and how much was his ghost writer, but the man depicted in that book is not the man I worked under for years.  Not in personality, not in reasoning.  Not in anything.  I see it as more whitewashing of history, more misinformation to pass along to the next generation.  This book exists as a counterpoint.  I’m no James T Kirk, I haven’t done the things he has.  I’ll never be as famous and this book will never be read by anywhere near as many people.  But if I can get through to just a few that’s fine by me.  So long as the truth as I know it is preserved in some way.

I first met James Tiberius Kirk when I reported aboard the USS Enterprise as a crewman in 2264.  He came in with a reputation, as the hero of what they were calling the “Gioghe Incident” where he’d taken command of the USS Lydia Sutherland, and although he lost his ship, he’d saved many lives.  He’d just been given a medal and a promotion.

The entire Enterprise crew was gathered in the shuttlebay for the change-of-command ceremony.  I was right at the back, in front of the mammoth clamshell doors.  At the other end of the bay, Captain Pike wished everyone well and Captain Kirk gave a short and completely unmemorable speech.

He seemed like a nice enough guy.  Young for a captain but confident in himself, enough so that you wanted to follow him.  And people would – for better or worse.

Our historic five-year mission was to begin with a routine patrol of bases along the Klingon border, ferrying a touring troupe to entertain the base personnel.  It was meant to be something nice and easy to get the crew accustomed to each other and their new commander.

Kirk’s mother and father both served in Starfleet.  Daddy Kirk rose through the ranks, becoming first officer of the Einstein-class deep-space scout USS Kelvin.  When James was born, George decided an assignment closer to Earth was preferable to years-long missions in deep space.  He transferred to become security chief of Starbase 2, the K-class space station roughly two weeks from Earth which I’d just left.

Apparently George and Winona Kirk’s Starfleeting was more important than raising kids, since they left Jimbo with relatives on Tarsus IV.

A teenage Jim Kirk survived The Tarsus IV Massacre, which cannot have left him without some serious psychological scars.

What was The Tarsus IV Massacre, you ask?  It was quite a big news story throughout the Federation at the time.  An alien fungus ruined an Earth colony’s entire food supply, and with help too far out to prevent mass starvation, the colony’s governor, a man named…Anton?  Arnold?  A-something Kodos decided the cull the “less useful” members of it’s population, so that the ones he decided were worthy of survival would survive long enough for help to arrive. 

So, he murdered half the colony’s population.  And then – here’s the kicker – rescue arrived much earlier than expected.  Early enough that nobody needed to be executed.  Except they already had.  Oh dear.

The scenes shown on the newscasts were shocking and graphic.  Far worse than anything I’d ever seen in my life up until that point.  Usually you hear just hear about murders and horrible events with options to click for more details and gross images.  Here we got shocking images of piles of charred dead bodies, many children, in our newsfeeds.  It was mind-blowing and harrowing to see things like this are still happening in Federation territory.  On a Federation colony world, no less.

It gets weirder, there were people asking how Kodos would be thought of had rescue arrived when expected, and his mass executions had saved half the population rather than doomed the whole?  While it’s an interesting scenario, the entire idea of this Kodos being the one to decide who lives and who dies is repulsive. Much more on James Kirk later.  And more on Kodos, too.

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When you finally track down an ancient fanfic you've been wanting to read for about a decade and turns out it probably remained elusive for so long because it's not all that😬

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The bridge of the CSS Archer, Renegades: The Requiem.

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lalalalalalalalalallalalalala

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"In the book which is my memory, on the first page of the chapter that is the day when I first met you, appear the words- here begins a new life." --- Latent Image is such a phenomenal episode, original concept for this drawing (orange sketch) by daunda4 (on Instagram)

Posted to Instagram January 10 2024

Progress shots under the cut

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Star Trek The Next Generation "Hide and Q"

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Tumblr's top 10 most strongly liked Star Trek characters

10. Elim Garak

With a "Strongly Like" percentage of 75.1%

9. Lieutenant Commander Tuvok

With a "Strongly Like" percentage of 75.8%

8. Alfa 177 Canine

With a "Strongly Like" percentage of 78.4%

7. Captain Benjamin L. Sisko

With a "Strongly Like" percentage of 79.3%

6. Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax

With a "Strongly Like" percentage of 80.8%

5. Major Kira Nerys

With a "Strongly Like" percentage of 81.6%

4. Spock (TOS)

With a "Strongly Like" percentage of 82.4%

3. Lieutenant Commander Data

With a "Strongly Like" percentage of 84.9%

2. Lieutenant Nyota Uhura (TOS)

With a "Strongly Like" percentage of 85.6%

1. Spot

With a "Strongly Like" percentage of 88.4%

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These are based on only the "Strongly Like" percentage. Summing the Strongly Like and Like columns of my spreadsheet naturally gives different results. I'll be doing a most hated characters as well.

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Never forget, this happened in a Star Trek episode.

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The U.S.S. Ingram NCC-2001 Excelsior-class general plans, by Star Station Aurora

IIRC, these exist because the author did not like the Excelsior-class design, so made their own version of it

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Fewer things make me more uncomfortable than Data wearing red

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B-4 (Before) in Nemesis 

F-8 (Fate) in Picard 

Now I’m wondering if Data was originally D-8A

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What happened to the Next Gen crew in the novels?

After Star Trek: Nemesis flopped and future Next Gen movies were shelved, the novels were free to do what they wanted with the TNG crew. Star Trek: Picard has invalidated most of it but let's see what happened...

Picard: Remained in command of the Enterprise 1701-E with a mostly new crew except for Worf and Geordi and went on adventures. Married Beverly and they had a son, Rene. Figuring danger always finds him anyway, kept his son on board the ship and carried on exploring space. Helped Q save the galaxy from annihilation again. Dealt with several Borg invasions in increasingly barmy ways, including voluntarily becoming Locutus again and acting so unhinged when battling a Borg cube led by recently-assimilated Queen Janeway (which was so big it ate Pluto and flew right through the sun like it was nothing), his new senior staff members mutinied. After dealing with that (turns out he was right and they should have just let him reactivate a Doomsday Machine), he got another new senior staff. Was key in stopping the final Borg invasion a few months later, which saw the collective finally freed and ascended to a higher plane of existence, but at the cost of a third of Starfleet, dozens of worlds and 60 billion Federation lives. Commanded the Enterprise-E for longer than he did the 1701-D from TNG.

Riker: Was captain of the USS Titan and went on adventures with his wife Troi (who was his diplomatic officer), security chief Tuvok (transferred from Voyager) and a bunch of weird nonhumanoid aliens in the Gum Nebula. Later promoted to Admiral and kept the Titan as his flagship. As Admiral, pretty much let Jean-Luc do whatever he wanted.

Troi: Became a commando during the Dominion War and helped free Betazed from the Dominion. Joined the USS Titan as Diplomatic Officer. Following several miscarriages, was de-aged by the Caeliar to her 30's and had a child (Tasha) with her husband and Captain, Will. No, Will Riker wasn't de-aged.

Data: Came back from the dead with a new, human-looking and better body which his father Noonien's conciousness had been living in. Inherited his father's fortune and gambling empire on Orion. Data 2.0 learned the secret of positronic brains and resurrected is daughter Lal. He has a new life outside of Starfleet, and declined to return when Picard offered.

Geordi: Left for awhile to captain the USS Challenger until it blew up. Took a voluntary demotion to come back and be engineer of the Enterprise-E again, having seemingly lost any ambition to progress back up through the ranks. Novels written by authors who didn't co-ordinate enough meant he was dating 2 women at once, which is a pretty good turnaround from his TNG days.

Worf: After Data's death and Riker's promotion in Nemesis, became Picard's first officer on the Enterprise. Occasionally leaves the ship to go on Klingon adventures. Once had to deal with most of Picard's new crew committing mutiny. Started sleeping with the new security chief but she died.

Barclay: Joined the Full Circle fleet, which was a mission led by Voyager (now equipped with a Quantum Slipstream drive making it a journey of weeks not 70 years) back to the Delta Quadrant. Used the MIDAS array to beam all the way across the galaxy one time to join Geordi and Scotty on the USS Challenger, which has to be some kind of beaming record.

Wesley: Used his traveler powers to erase the Maquis from history and that somehow made the Dominion War much worse, but DTI agents talked him into undoing it. Later, warned the Enterprise about a gigantic machine entity that was eating the galaxy, and along with Picard and Data 2.0, talked it out of annihilating everything.

Ro: Came back to Starfleet, pretty much no-questions-asked and moved to Deep Space Nine to become security chief after Odo rejoined the Great Link. Had an affair with Quark(!). Became captain and commanded DS9 when Kira left to become a Vedek. After the sinister Typhon Pact attacked and blew up DS9, Starfleet built a bigger, shinier, silver replacement and Ro commanded that too.

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Brent Spiner, as he appeared filming the dream sequences from "Rememberance" prior to the CG de-ageing.

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Data thinks you should spend money sensibly. (Rogue Saucer by John Vornholt, 1996)

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B4 hacks into The Matrix (Star Trek Nemesis, 2002)