#DS9 Season 4 episode 2

[mistylacrimosa]

I'm not crying,you are

[alaiis]

Not me crying over Star Trek again

[mylittleredgirl]

buckle up folks, it's deep dive about chakotay hours!

season 2, "initiations"

@isthereintruthnobeauty1968 asked a question about chakotay in this post about the scene above:

for an infamous leader of an anti-federation rebel group he seems to firmly believe in its authority and ideals And to have (at least externally) adjusted to the blended crew seamlessly. what's the deal?

see, i don't think chakotay ever wanted to be a rebel, or even a leader for that matter.

he wanted to be a starfleet officer.

season 2, "tattoo"

chakotay enrolls in the acadamy as a teenager as young as he legally can ("tattoo"). he tells seven ("one small step") that he joined starfleet because of his love of paleontology, and he only turned away from that out of responsibility to the maquis and now to voyager.

[get a snack for this one y'all]

season 6, "one small step"

it doesn't come up often, but whenever chakotay talks about his pre-voyager starfleet career, it's always about first contact or archaeology. in "emanations," he compares their exploration of an alien burial moon to a mission he went on as an ensign, all while demonstrating his anthropology expertise. add that to him nerding out in "blink of an eye," "one small step," the dinosaur episode, and a bunch of other examples, he's a social scientist both by training and by inclination.

in the original star trek, they had an "A&A officer," a specialist in archaeology, anthropology, and ancient civilizations:

tos season 2, "who mourns for adonais?"

we never hear that term again, but that's the role chakotay often fills on voyager, and he's very happy whenever he gets to do it.

now, realistically, i don't know how much time pre-maquis chakotay would have spent in a blue uniform, because those skills would not make him an obvious choice to lead a maquis cell. ro laren sets up his character (unnamed) in tng as a tactical specialist who resigns to join the maquis:

tng season 7, "preemptive strike"

(which is a very polite and noble way to do it, as compared to eddington's defection in ds9.)

if he was in fact ro’s teacher (i think so, despite a stardate conflict in some later dialogue), it seems very in-character to me that chakotay could have started out pursuing a sciences path before showing an aptitude for piloting, strategy, and/or command. given what we know of him, regardless of his own passions or preferences, if a senior officer noticed his skills and encouraged him to change career tracks, he would do it.

teen angst era aside, he respects authority. he argues against dogmatic ideology when it's inflexible to the needs of the moment, but he likes working within a command hierarchy, and for better or worse, he is easily swayed by charismatic leaders.

season 1, "caretaker"

not only does he yield to janeway's authority on voyager before she even asks him to, and then molds himself into the kind of first officer he thinks will help her most, he does the same thing with annorax in "year of hell." tom is the voice of ethical conscience and reason in that episode, and he organizes the rebellion—against chakotay's orders!

there's so much going on here:

season 4, "year of hell part 2"

despite his father's perceptions of him as a contrarian, chakotay only rebels as a last resort. he would genuinely rather not. he clearly talked about the maquis cause with ro and others before he left—and i bet that's why he resigned to a starfleet admiral in person, to make one last appeal. his preference is to try and change systems from within.

not to west wing about it, but chakotay is only The Guy when he has to be—he wants to be the guy the guy counts on.

(hot take: with how he rationalizes the calculated sacrifices annorax is making in "year of hell," i don't think chakotay would have left starfleet for the maquis if it wasn't personal. but it was personal, so here we are!)

maquis chakotay is a disillusioned idealist, but he's never that disillusioned. he believes in the stated ideals of the federation, sometimes more than janeway does.

season 3, "scorpion part 1"

and it's a fundamental character trait that he looks for the best in people and situations, often to his own detriment (tuvok, seska, annorax, that time janeway and tuvok and tom all lie to him for half a season, the list goes on).

and it's easy to see good in starfleet, especially when most of his career was during the height of federation utopia before "the best of both worlds," at which point starfleet remembered it's also a defensive force and started building the defiant—which was the very first starfleet ship ever designed solely for combat.

the cardassian situation in tng is shown as an aberration in a largely peaceful era. the off-screen "border wars" were fought by officers who expected to go their entire careers never firing a phaser.

tng season 4, "the wounded"

for decades since making peace with the klingons, and with the romulans keeping to themselves, starfleet has been mostly goodhearted nerds who are committed to exploring and making friends. even if chakotay was a tactical officer, that was the starfleet he signed up for and served.

and, in fact, the reason why the federation abandoned the colonists in the dmz in the first place and wouldn’t help bajor during the cardassian occupation is because the federation and starfleet are devoted to the ideals of peace and noninterference to a fault.

tng season 5, "ensign ro"

chakotay doesn't object to starfleet's actions, but its inaction.

which, side note, is why janeway's choice in "caretaker" makes it easy for him to rally behind her. by choosing to protect the ocampa, even though it's a huge sacrifice and puts her in a prime directive gray area, janeway specifically addressed the exact trust gap he has with starfleet.

season 1, "caretaker"

that's what he wanted them to do back home!

chakotay defends his starfleet uniform in the kazon scene that inspired this whole essay, and he believes what he's saying, because he's right: that's not what a starfleet uniform represents, either in theory or in practice. especially in the mid-24th century, regardless of the political issues, the federation and starfleet do not conquer planets or enslave alien cultures by force.

(of course, they wouldn't have helped the kazon free themselves either, but that's not the question on the table.)

to op's main question: it's an interesting (or boring?) doylist choice to make chakotay such a platonic ideal of a Starfleet Officer™️ (which, for the record, has always included going off-leash at the expense of one's career whenever ethics overwhelm regulations).

season 1, "prime factors"

star trek went to a lot of trouble to create the maquis for the voyager premise of two crews... and then quickly brady-bunch'd them into one happy family and let deep space nine wrangle the maquis problem instead. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

chakotay being so willing to put himself and his crew into starfleet uniforms (even though some members of both crews objected to it) cheated us out of some potentially rich drama, but it does hold water with what we see of him as a character on screen, and his relationship with starfleet. it has disappointed him, but he still believes that it's a force for good, and chakotay will always err on the side of seeing the good in something and thinking he can change it for the better from within.

--

tl;dr: chakotay is a starfleet officer by training and at heart, who was temporarily out of uniform because his family and tribe happened to be directly in the middle of starfleet's messiest ethical quagmire.

he made a personal, moral decision to join the maquis, not because he was anti-federation, but because that was the only way to protect federation civilians—which was part of his starfleet oath to begin with. he worked hard when he was younger to earn this uniform and i think, in spite of everything, he feels honestly proud to get to wear it again.

[notcisko]

Watching DS9 Season 2 Episode 4 "Invasive Procedures" and Quark started fake moaning, and I got a little involuntarily flustered. So, that's where I'm at mentally.

[gay-disabled-characters-showdown]

LGBTQ+ Disabled Characters Showdown Round 4, Wave 2, Poll 2

A character being totally canon LGBTQ+ and disabled was not required to be in this competition. Please check qualifications and propaganda before asking why a character is included.

Check out the other polls in this wave and round here.

Julian Bashir-Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Qualifications:

Disability: Along with being generally awkward with conversation and not knowing how to talk to people, a part of his backstory is that he was “underperforming” in school so his parents got him illegally genetically enhanced to “fix” him (in the show this is treated as a horrible fucked-up thing that they did LGBTQ+: He has a relationship with another male character on the show that everybody behind-the-scenes (except the homophobic producer) treated as canonically romantic. The homophobic producer had to tell the writers to stop putting Bashir and Garak in scenes together because they got along too well and he didn’t want the audience to think they were a couple. The non-homophobic producer said in a documentary looking back on DS9 that one of his biggest regrets about the show is not making the relationship actually canon.

He was canonically intellectually disabled as a child, which his parents attempted to "correct" with illegal gene editing. This eliminated his intellectual disability, but he displays many many autistic traits still (socially awkward, infodumps, hyperempathetic, echolalia, blunt). This lends itself to the popular interpretation that the gene editing couldn't "correct" his autism, but it did change exactly which autistic traits he had. One of his closest onscreen relationships is with Elim Garak, a relationship that both actors have since said is romantic in nature, and Andy Robinson (Garak's actor) has explicitly said he played Garak as being attracted to Bashir. There is also some possible evidence of Julian being trans; in one episode, he says this of a situation in which he had to transfer a fetus from one of his friends into another due to an emergency (paraphrased): "The fetus was in distress, and the only available candidates were Major Kira... and me." This line potentially implies he is capable of carrying a fetus. Furthermore, he canonically has a name that his parents used to call him that he refuses to answer to now (Jules). In-universe, this is due to him finding out about his genetic engineering, but it is very transgender of him.

Propaganda:

- He uses all of his free time to role play historical events with his best friend - He intentionally got one question wrong on his finals so that he wouldn’t be valedictorian - On like 5 separate occasions he gets invited to medical conferences then kidnapped on the way - Season 2 episode 22 “The Wire”

He is so awesome. Very autistic, very interesting character. He's an extremely caring doctor, to the point he once stayed on a plague-ridden planet with no futuristic tech, mixing medicine by hand for weeks in an attempt to cure the populace. Which he succeeds at, by the way!! He also, after finding a rogue group of former enemy soldiers who have managed to kick their dependence on the drug used by the enemy government to control them, Julian agrees to try to formulate a way for all of the soldiers to be free of their dependence. He only fails due to interference. Also, when Garak is suffering withdrawal from a brain implant, he stays by his bedside for days on end, caring for him, and even going to the heart of hostile territory to ask the head of the Space KGB how he can cure him. And that's not all! In addition to being a very dedicated (if often unethical) doctor, he is also a space tennis player! He has a tendency to put his foot in his mouth immediately upon meeting anyone new, and not just because of his canonical foot fetish! I'm not joking about that. It is canon.

The qualifications and propaganda paragraphs correspond, @convenient-plot-device is the second submitter.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus-The Locked Tomb

Qualifications:

She's a lesbian and the author Tamsyn Muir has confirmed she's written as schizophrenic, based on her own experience.

Okay SO Harrow is a necromancer nun who is also a huge lesbian. She spends the books of TLT series being super gay and repressed about her emotions for 1. Butch lesbian Jesus and 2. Human Barbie the death of God. She narrates the second book (Harrow the Ninth) and is author-confirmed schizophrenic. She experiences hallucinations thru the whole book and has since childhood. She’s also WIDELY headcannoned as autistic by the fandom (me too) because. Because she IS SO FUCKING AUTISTIC (source: I am autistic too)

Schizophrenic lesbian with a traumatic brain injury

Schizophrenic and sapphic

canonically a schizophrenic lesbian. neither word is used in series, she isn't in a position to get a diagnosis and queer identities are so normalised in the universe that labels just don't get mentioned, but she is written as both by an author who is also both.

Canon schizophrenia

Canon lesbian with canon schizophrenia

She's a schizophrenic lesbian with a traumatic brain injury

Propaganda:

The Locked Tomb is pretty popular on tumblr but I might as well submit her anyway

She’s a lesbian necromancer nun. She’s a saint and also woke up the death of God, who is a human Barbie, who she is in love with, tho she’s also kind of married to lesbian Jesus. She’s schizophrenic. She’s scrungly. She puts bread in a drawer. She’s even autistic

Harrow first started hallucinating (visual and auditory) when she was ten years old! The traumatic brain injury and seizures are much more recent. Unironically gotta love a pov protagonist who makes you struggle along with her in sorting out hallucination and false memory to figure out what's going on. Also while Harrow's disability shapes the narrative, the book isn't at all about her being disabled. It's a fantasy/scifi gothic horror novel about being trapped at a work retreat with God.

so many women want her but she’s determined to be in love with the soul of the dead earth trapped in a 10ft barbie doll instead. she’s a lesbian disaster and is trying to deal with both schizophrenia and over 200 actual ghosts haunting her.

a schizophrenic lesbian, written by a schizophrenic lesbian! she's in love with multiple dead women, but she's also a necromancer so that's not as big of an obstacle as it sounds. weird little bone-obsessed necromancer lesbian. I care about her deeply

Author Tamsyn Muir has discussed how Harrow's schizophrenia is modeled after her own experiences. It matters a lot in her eponymous novel, where her inability to trust what she sees and hears is compounded by her self-inflicted lobotomy to save her girlfriend's soul from getting absorbed into her own.

Harrow is one of the protagonists of her series & both her lesbianism & her schizophrenia play major parts in the story. The author has spoken about how she wrote Harrow based on her own experiences, and the authenticity comes through strongly. Beyond that, she's a teenage gothic nun in love with a holy corpse & she's the greatest bone magician ever born. What more needs be said.

She's a lesbian, she's psychotic, she has seizures, she faints regularly and can't rely on her own memory worth shit. And the only reason she's not going to kill god is so she and her girl can escape the cycle of violence. Basically, Harrowhark Nonagesimus is the entire package.

Anything Else?:

Listen. Listen. I’m not doing Harrow justice here. I LOVE her (Submitter 2)

The author is also schizophrenic! Which is pretty cool. (Submitter 3)

The author of the series is openly schizophrenic, and has mentioned in interviews that she's drawing on that experience when writing Harrow :) (Submitter 8)

[fast-moon]

I'm 30 years late, but...

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine originally aired when I was 10 years old. I loved Next Generation when I was a kid, so I gave DS9 a try back then... and immediately grew bored of it. They weren't going to new planets or having space battles, they were just sitting around in one place discussing space politics, and there wasn't even anyone funny like Data to hold my attention. So, I stopped watching after a couple episodes.

But, since I keep hearing it ended up being the best Trek seres, I've decided to go ahead and give it a full watch-through. Maybe now that I'm 40 and have more life experience under my belt, I can appreciate it more.

Turns out I do! I've finished the first season, so I'll give a run-down of what I thought of the S1 episodes below the cut:

1-2. Emissary: All right, I actually understand the premise this time which completely went over my head as a kid. The Bajorans were under Cardassian occupation for decades, the Federation showed up and drove them out, now the Federation is in control of the Cardassian space station DS9 to help the Bajorans rebuild and return to self-governance. But wait! Turns out there's a wormhole that goes to the other side of the galaxy here and it's suddenly become prime space real-estate! And the wormhole is inhabited by... mysterious non-temporal entities that spit out a magic orbs from time to time and the Bajorans worship them as prophets.

3. Past Prologue: Garak is queer-coded like whoa and gives Bashir a taste of his own medicine about not respecting boundaries. Is also possibly like a quadruple-agent. And tailors a fine suit. Also, Kira got a haircut. There's rats on spaceships?! Oh, that's just Odo. Okay. Still, the fact that he considered that a convincing disguise means there's rats on spaceships?!

4. A Man Alone: A guy backstabs himself and blames Odo for it.

5. Babel: Poor overworked O'Brien gets so stressed out he starts speaking in tongues. Then it turns out it's contagious. And it turns out that it's because someone sabotaged the station decades ago with a dyslexia virus and then just kind of forgot about it.

6. Captive Pursuit: This actually touches on a moral question I'd been wondering about if we ever end up with sentient AI: If something is bred/programmed to like being oppressed, is it more moral to remove it from its oppression even if that makes it miserable, or to return it to its oppression if that's what makes it happy? This episode chose the latter.

7. Q-Less: A surprisingly boring Q-centric episode whose only shenanigans involved a space stingray Vash was trying to sell off. Q really does miss Picard.

8. Dax: Oh, another philosophical thought-experiment: If you committed a crime and then get reincarnated in a traceable manner and retain all the memories of your previous incarnation, can your current incarnation be held liable for your previous incarnation's actions? This episode decides it doesn't want to answer this because she's not guilty, anyway.

9. The Passenger: Bashir becomes even more insufferable and nobody notices.

10. Move Along Home: Samurai hippies come through the wormhole and demand everyone LARP with them whether they like it or not.

11. The Nagus: Quark falls victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is "Never get involved in a land war with Asia". But only slightly less well-known is this: "Never get involved with a Ferengi when profit is on the line".

12. Vortex: So... Odo just lets a guy get away with murder because he has a sob story and claimed he knew others of his kind? Just because he was wanted unjustly on his home planet does not change the fact that he murdered a guy for hire. Also, Odo can get knocked out by a rock?

13. Battle Lines: Remember that "Great Divide" episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender that everyone hated? No reason.

14. The Storyteller: O'Brien goes down to Bajor to fix the pipes, becomes God.

15. Progress: Kira has to go convince a Boomer to leave his land because they need the resources to rebuild the planet, but he's all "I got mine, screw them." She humors his sexist behavior all episode, then burns his house down.

16. If Wishes Were Horses: Bashir wishes for his own personal side-piece Dax, and real Dax is weirdly okay with this because "boys will be boys". The conflict in this episode is literally solved by thinking happy thoughts.

17. The Forsaken: Odo gets sexually harassed so reports it to HR who just laughs him off because they think it would be good for him to get laid. Then he gets stuck in an elevator with his stalker and it's revealed just how physically strenuous it is for him to maintain his human form all day, and yet he has never been afforded any accommodations beyond a bucket to sleep in. This poor space slime, no wonder he's always so grumpy. #JusticeForOdo

18. Dramatis Personae: TNG's "The Inner Light", but stupid. Once again Odo has to save the day because he's immune to the humanoid crazypox that seems to infect the station every half-dozen episodes, and yet they still just can't find it in their effects budget to adjust station operations enough to allow him the minimal comfort of not having to contort himself into human form every day until he collapses just to do his job.

19. Duet: I am a sucker for "Did the janitors on the Death Star deserve to die?" sorts of moral discussions, and this episode delivered that very well. Also, I'm in lesbians with Kira.

20. In the Hands of the Prophets: Lady who doesn't even have kids at the school nevertheless takes issue that the children aren't being taught in accordance to her religious beliefs. It's been 30 years since this came out and nothing changes.

All in all, a decent season 1. It does show its age in places, especially in its treatment of female characters, and being written before the internet and smartphones caused seismic cultural shifts that its vision of the future failed to take into account. But still, I'm liking it now that I actually understand what's going on. On to season 2!

[walkingstackofbooks]

Season 2 Observations - What the DS9 crew call each other

I'm back with my spreadsheet and armed with new facts. Let's go! (For Season 1 Observations, see here.)

This is a bit longer and there was still more I wanted to include - if you want to check out the raw data yourself, you can view the spreadsheet here!

Sisko

Is slightly more likely to introduce himself as "Benjamin Sisko" (6x) than "Commander Benjamin Sisko" (5x) - though this is often followed in both cases by "of the United Federation of Planets" or something similar.

Kira, Odo and Quark mostly call him "Commander", and rarely "Sir" - all are extremely consistent with season 1. (37:8, 16:2 and 11:0 as compared to in s1 35:8. 15:2 and 9:0)

Miles and Julian are more likely to call him "Sir", but use "Commander" often as well. How often has changed for them both since Season 1: > Julian has moved from using both equally, to using "Sir" twice as often. > Miles has moved from using "Sir" three times as much to almost using both equally (40:35)

Dax still uses Benjamin almost exclusively (24x), although she will use "Commander" on occasion (2x).

Is most often referred to as "Commander Sisko (22x), followed by Sisko (12x) - O'Brien is the only one to use "Sisko" more frequently.

Kira

Most often calls herself "Major Kira Nerys" (4x).

Everyone, apart from Dax, almost always calls her "Major".

Dax exclusively calls her Kira (2x) - Bashir and Sisko have both also called her this (2x and 1x respectively).

Is most often referred to as "Kira" (13x), followed by "Major Kira" (6x) - a change from Season 1 where the "Kira: Major Kira" ratio was 5:18 > Odo bucks this trend: as in season 1, he refers to her as "Major Kira" 2 times and "Kira" only once.

Odo

Introduces himself as "Chief of Security Odo" (2x).

Is called "Odo" by everybody; Kira (7x), Dax (7x), O'Brien (4x) and Quark (24x!!!!) will use this most often.

Sisko and Bashir are more likely to call him "Constable" - 13:8 and 2:1 respectively. > Kira and Dax never call him "Constable" > Miles uses it almost just as much as "Odo" (3:4) > Quark calls him it twice

Is almost exclusively referred to as Odo by everyone - Kira referred to him as "Constable Odo" once, and O'Brien as "the constable" once.

Trends are consistent with Season 1, apart from Kira stopping using Constable entirely, and Bashir, Dax and O'Brien actually speaking about/ talking to him more than two times this season!

Julian

Refers to himself most often as "Julian" or "Julian Bashir".

Sisko, Kira, Odo and Quark exclusively call him "Doctor" - apart from Kira calling him "Julian" once, on his request!

Dax and O'Brien more often call him "Julian" (9:1 and 12:5 respectively) > After Armageddon Game, O'Brien only calls him Julian.

He is still referred to as "Doctor Bashir" most often by Sisko, Kira and Odo

Jadzia still refers to him mostly as "Julian".

O'Brien now refers to him mostly as "the doctor" or "Bashir" (2x each), as opposed to "Dr Bashir" in S1 (2x) > Quark similarly uses "Bashir" most (3x), followed by "the doctor" (2x)

Jadzia

Refers to herself as "Jadzia" most often (5x), but 4 of those times are in the episode Playing God where she is talking in the third person about herself. > She also calls herself "Dax" (2x), "Jadzia Dax" (2x) and when talking to Klingons in Blood Oath, "I who was Curzon Dax" and "You knew me as Curzon Dax".

Sisko and Kira call her "Dax" most often, followed by "Lieutenant" (22:11 and 7:5 respectively). > No change from S1 for Sisko, but Kira only began to call her Dax this season. > Kira also first calls her Jadzia - unprompted! - in Blood Oath. > Sisko only calls her "Old Man" once.

Odo, O'Brien and Quark exclusively call her "Lieutenant".

Julian exclusively calls her Jadzia, but only twice.

Sisko, Kira and O'Brien usually refer to her as "Dax" - the latter two exclusively. > Sisko uses "Jadzia" just as much (6x), but only in the episode Invasive Procedures, when talking about her as opposed to Verad Dax who has stolen her symbiont. > Once again, this is same as S1 for Sisko, but a change from exclusively "Lieutenant Dax" (1x) for Kira.

Julian most often refers to her as "Jadzia" (4x), followed by Dax (2x).

Miles

Calls himself "O'Brien" most often (4x) - "Miles O'Brien" (6x) is skewed because of his repetition of it (4x) under torture in Tribunal.

Everyone most often calls him "Chief". > For Odo, this is equal with "Mister O'Brien" (2x each), and for Quark this is equal with "O'Brien" (1x each).

"Mister O'Brien" is still used at a similar rate by Sisko, being used about four times less frequently than "Chief" in both seasons. Kira only uses it once, in early s2, compared to "Chief" 14x - she used both equally in S1.

Sisko, Bashir and Dax most often refer to him as "Chief O'Brien", a change for all of them from S1. > For Sisko, this is followed by "Mister O'Brien", his most common use in S1. > For Bashir this is followed equally by "O'Brien", his most common in S1, and by "the chief".

Kira and Quark refer to him as "O'Brien" more often.

Odo uses both "Chief O'Brien" and "O'Brien" equally (2x each)

----------------------------------------

Thanks for your interest in this, it's definitely encouraged me to keep going! Not sure if this is the correct tag etiquette, but I thought I'd tag those of you who seemed keen to look at more data - let me know if you don't want this to happen in the future! (Or indeed if you want to be added to the update list!) But 100% thank you so much for your kind comments about this project - I'm glad to see it's not just me who likes to nerd out over cold, hard data! (Also feel free to talk about stuff in the comments, there were so many tag comments I wanted to reply to aha 😅)

@joelleity @elainemorisi @istherewifiinhell @dumbnerd13-42 @yourea--stubborn--man @writteninsilences @worfianism @mickstart @ilovefredjones @tomthefanboy @ds9official @ussdefiant @autisticburnham @daforged @loudfederationscreeching @deepacenine @thethirdromana @tocautiouslygo @transhologram

[stra-tek]

Kzinti and Star Trek

You don't see many Kzinti in Star Trek, and there's a very good reason for that: They're not actually Star Trek aliens, but a borrow from Larry Niven's Known Space series of books. And so Paramount don't actually own them. "The Slaver Weapon" episode of The Animated Series is an adaptation of Larry's "The Soft Weapon"

TAS' "Slaver Weapon" brought lots of Known Space lore into Trek. 4 Man-Kzin Wars were fought prior to the invention of faster-than-light travel, which really doesn't work in Trek where First Contact established, well, first contact and it was between humans and Vulcans after the first warp flight.

We also saw a Slaver, which have a rich backstory in Known Space where they're known as the Thrint and once ruled over the galaxy with their telepathy.

Some of Niven's backstory fits into Trek but other parts don't.

The Man-Kzin Wars don't. That being said, there have been attempts to bring Kzin back into Trek and several references to them. The Next Gen novel "The Captain's Honor" features the M'dok in the B-plot, a feline species who fought 2 wars with humanity one before the founding of the Federation and one after... sound vaguely familiar? They were originally the Kzin, and had name and details changed to avoid potential legal issues.

The Kzin exist in the Star Fleet Battles tabletop gaming universe (which is like a Trek splinter universe, licensed from TOS, TAS and the Star Fleet Technical Manual but nothing else), but they lack the distinctive bat ears.

Starfleet Command, the videogame adaptation of Star Fleet Battles swaps the Kzinti for the Mirak, again to avoid copyright issues.

But then came Star Trek Picard, where in season one Riker talks about an issue with the Kzinti (apparently permission was sought from Larry Niven and given for the mention) and then Lower Decks gave us Taylor, who is clearly Kzinti but likely will just never have anyone say it out loud just to be on the safe side

Oh, and the 1980 Star Trek Maps were cheeky and called them the K'zinti and hoped the apostrophe would make everything okay.

There have been attempts to bring the Kzinti back to Trek, like a planned Enterprise season 5 episode called "Kilkenny Cats" which was almost resurrected as a New Voyages fan film project. Here's the poster, where they'd replaced the Kzinti with the Kytharri (another Kzin-expy from the DS9 "Prophecy and Change" anthology

The "Kilkenny Cats" story read somewhat like a retread of DS9's "Armageddon Game". There were also attempts to get an animated Star Trek movie made called Lions of the Night, involving Sulu and the Enterprise-B dealing with a Kzinti invasion.

Oh oh, and read Ringworld. It's fantastic. And makes one wonder what the Kzin world is like in the Trek world... because they're unable to stop themselves launching violent wars on neighbours which they have no hope of winning, their world is essentially occupied by humans and that's very un-Trek (which of course makes it 10x more fascinating) indeed. How would Starfleet and the Federation deal with such a threat?

[isagrimorie]

i forgot that tilly was asked to be the first officer of discovery in the third season. and, I think how mind-blowing that is. i like discovery a lot but sometimes the writers make truly mind-boggling choices.

i forgot that tilly was just a cadet in s1 and then an ensign.

making her an (acting) first officer, while still an ensign, was a bizarre choice. (harry kim is crying somewhere)

especially since nilsson and rhys take control of the bridge when the command team is out.

unfortunately, the way discovery is configured we don't really know most of the bridge crew.

or, maybe it would have been better if a new character was introduced as their 32nd-century guide and as a temporary XO.

but also, who is the senior staff of discovery? do we know?

i assumed that culber was CMO all this time only to find out from interviews he wasn't the CMO.

stamets can't be the chief engineer since he's science division and he mans the spore drive function and not the whole ship. i assume its jett reno.

who was the head of security when nhan left? is it rhys??? why is booker (who I really like) memory alpha listed the head of security of discovery (season 4)??? he's not starfleet.

i just realized the whole problem why they got tilly as acting first officer is because I don't think any of the writers in seasons 2 to 3 of discovery sat down and solidified the hierarchy on the ship other than captain.

it's so nebulous and it doesn't need to be nebulous.

it's like how inconsistent the ranks are on SNW uniforms.

i know these are nitpicks but these are details that help build out the world. and it's such an easy thing to address too, it's frustrating they don't.

and this is on the discovery writers for not taking the time to iron it out. i understand they want to focus on different people and keep the heroics away from the bridge, other than saru and michael. but that doesn't excuse how lazily they went about it.

anyway this is just a bug bear that I stumbled on when I remembered how tilly was made into acting first officer of discovery. it didn't niggle at me back then but somehow rewatching voyager and a lot of other trek made me realize, I can actually pinpoint the line of command on each show but stumble on it when it comes to discovery seasons 3 and 4.

again, i think this is why season 5 is doing a great job. wilson cruz said that by season 5 he might as well be the CMO, so I'm taking that as canon.

this is what happens when every season and episode is just one story of crisis situations without any standalone downtime episodes.

(this is also a problem for picard s3. it's the single story and 10 episode thing. it ties the hands of writers.)

what i wouldn't give for a discovery episode where the ship is just doing routine maintenance. follow an engineering team down a jeffries tube, watch them have a boring senior staff meeting where all department heads report to michael.

(wait, have we seen discovery do a senior staff meeting scene?)

have rayner sit down and manage personnel.

honestly, i think the trek that does the best in doing personnel, handling extras, and making a realized world is still ds9.

[chaos-good-life]

ROUND 7: Julian Bashir's March Fashion Madness!

We are going through the outfits Bashir wore throughout Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to pick the number one outfit! Here are the previous polls:

Round 1

Round 2

Round 3

Round 4

Round 5

Round 6

Who is ready for Round 7?

The field hospital scrubs from the season 5 episode "Nor the Battle to the Strong..."

Vs.

THE original Deep Space Nine uniform, as seen through midway season 5

May the best fit win! Posting Round 8 next.

[elderly-worm]

Okay so I haven't trawled the tag but a friend told me that a new short film is being touted as canonizing Spirk, and I felt the need to compile a quick... not rebuttal per se, but provision of some much-needed context.

Disclaimer 1: I do think that the same clip of film can mean different things when aired at different times, and in the social context of the 2020s the new clip, despite showing stuff we've seen from Kirk and Spock before, means something potentially gayer than what we've seen before, since authorial intent is a thing and like... 2020s writers know what they're doing when they do That.

Disclaimer 2: I'm not the biggest TOS guy in the world (DS9 is my home turf; I've seen all of TOS and the movies once each, plus a few rewatches of certain episodes), but I thought I'd make the post in case assertions that Spirk has gone reach people with even less TOS knowledge than me and start being taken at face value by folks who don't realize Just How Gay Kirk and Spock have always been.

So.

Before you, oh imagined tumblrite with interest in the canonicity of Spirk but little contextual knowledge, applaud the newfound canonicity of such an important ship, I beg of you to take the following four instances into account. [Keep in mind through all of this that some sources say that Vulcan spouses kiss one another by touching the tips of two fingers together]:

Season 2, Episode 1, "Amok Time", 1967. Spock believes himself to have killed Kirk and tries to resign from Starfleet only to have Kirk reveal that he is alive. https://archive.org/details/star.-trek.-tos.-s-02-e-01.-amok.-time. See timestamp 46:58-47:39.

Season 3, Episode 24, "Turnabout Intruder", 1969. Kirk, transferred into a woman's body, convinces Spock that, contrary to appearances, he is in fact himself. Spock tries to break him out and they hold hands for a second amid the turmoil as the woman who has stolen Kirk's body tries to stop them from regaining control. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7q3l7t See timestamp 28:25-31:49.

"Star Trek: The Motion Picture", 1979. Spock, having briefly fused minds with an artificial intelligence named V'ger, is recovering from psychological overwhelm and tries to explain the experience. https://youtu.be/lxTaW8L_Pxo?feature=shared&t=113 The whole clip up to timestamp 2:50 is relevant, but note in particular 1:55-2:18.

"Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan", 1982. Spock sacrifices himself, dying of radiation poisoning to save the rest of the ship and crew. https://youtu.be/fHAOWLhrxhQ?feature=shared&t=101 See timestamp 1:40-4:56.

And finally, the new short film causing the uproar:

Now, by all means: draw your conclusions.

[spockvarietyhour]

In season 2, [Co-creator Ronald D.] Moore told Inverse:

Actually, I did spend some time thinking about that and in my head. None of this has been set down, I haven’t talked about this formally. But in my head, The Wrath of Khan is the first Star Trek movie [in the For All Mankind timeline]. They probably did the Star Trek: Phase II show that has always been talked about. The original Star Trek went off the air before the Apollo II landing. ... In my version of history, Paramount does make the Phase II show in the mid-seventies. And then they transitioned into Wrath of Khan and not Star Trek: The Motion Picture, because of the run of the lengthy and glorious, and critically acclaimed run of Phase II, it’s a year later that The Wrath of Khan comes out. But it’s still The Wrath of Khan that we know and it was essentially the same story. I love The Wrath of Khan and I couldn’t bear to change that. So it’s the same thing.

"Based on Moore’s explanation, Star Trek seems healthier in For All Mankind’s ’70s and ’80s than it was in our timeline, yet this also led to fewer iterations of the franchise. Does any version of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, or Enterprise exist in this alternate reality? Ron Moore worked on both Next Gen and DS9, so he may want to avoid references to versions of Trek he worked on."

[star-trek-dumb-comics]

Ranking the star trek openings (of series I've seen) bc I have nothing else to do :

1- TNG season 1-2

Perfect 10/10. Love the Patrick Stewart narration. The music is just straight up happy juice every time I hear it. Makes me really eager and energetic and gets me in the mood every time. Only downside is that I think it shouldn't be used as a end credit music, because it create a pretty jarring mood whiplash with the endings of some episodes

2- TNG season 3-7

Pretty much the same, except I like the sorta "reverb" sound and chords of the first one better.

3- Lower decks

The theme song slaps sooo hard it was one of the few things that kept me watching in season 1 when back then I really didn't like the show. The visuals are pretty fun as well and look very good

4- TOS season 1-2

This may just be nostalgia speaking but the relaxed and content "home" feeling I get when I hear this theme is unparalleled. Also I like how short it is, which means I almost never skip it even when binging.

5- TOS season 3

It's really almost on the same level as the first one but I like the singing a bit less than the instrumental. But idk the blue letters do look a bit better

6- Voyager

Voy may be mid, but it does have a dope opening music. Really engaging and emotional. The visuals are fine but the ship just doesn't look as good as Enterprises sorry

7- Enterprise season 1-2

Okey HEAR ME OUT HEAR ME OUT. The visuals are really cool, and this opening would have made top three if they used Archer's theme instead of Faith of the heart like they planned at first. But hey. Ik the song is bad but like Enterprise itself, I have developed a weird fondness to it. I went trough the classic arc of hating it - liking it ironically - liking it unironically back when I first watched the show. Now I just sing along and almost never skip it.

8- TAS

this theme funky af

9- SNW

Still not decided on my feeling about this theme (like the show itself funnily enough). Feels nostalgia baity with the TOS remix but at the same time it is different enough from the TOS theme to be its own thing, and it sounds pretty good. Very cool visuals and love that they brought back the opening narration.

10- DS9 season 4-7

This may be my controversial opinion of the day but as much as I love DS9 I don't really like the opening. It feels dragged out as fuck and the visuals aren't very engaging (+ that meteorite looks ugly as shit sorry). Idk it's the one I skip the most often. This version feels at least a bit faster that the first one but the trumpets are slightly offbeat which is kinda infuriating.

11- DS9 season 1-3

Its sloooooooooow

12- Enterprise season 3-4

Really don't like how they remixed it. I don't even want to sing along, the added rhythm section is so distracting.

Edit : I wanted to add the first Disco theme since I've watched most of season 1 but I have no idea where to put it. I really like the music and the visuals but it just feels like it belongs to a completely different show than Star trek. Even the little TOS notes at the end feel out of place.

[thegeminisage]

STAR TREK UPDATE TIME. last night we watched voy's "concerning flight" and ds9's "statistical probabilities."

concerning flight (voy):

this one sucked sooo bad this was the second-worst of season 4 so far after the racist one with chakotay in the woods

the sad thing is that as a bit character i really liked gimli i mean leonardo. it's one of only like a tiny handful of times when i didn't mind the holodeck as like a background device. so naturally we have to ruin it by giving him his own episode

yes he is a good actor. you saw gimli in him before he gimli'd. he didn't need his own episode because it didn't make any goddamn sense

firstly, playing the doctor losing his holo-emitter for laughs was MEEEAN please treat him very niceys. secondly, what was with that racist remark at tuvok...come on

like, whatever emotional arc janeway was supposed to be having about her childhood hero giving up on his dreams and then building the flying machine after all was lost under the weird pirate adventure that was boring and bad

all love and light to tuvok, whomst i love, whose outfit was perfect, but i think it was a bad idea to bring him along because what he did was point out how illogical the situation was in order for the writers to justify it, which they failed to do. there was no good reason to keep the hologram out when the emitter was needed on the ship except that janeway wanted to hang out with him

also, character assassination to say that tuvok wouldn't slay at small talk. he's very cunning and last episode he tricked the ao3 black market people into thinking he wanted to buy problematic fanfic but now he can't rustle up a distraction for a hologram??? come on

i did like seven in this episode. her moment with the emh was so good i love that she and b'elanna are like regularly almost coming to blows. but then pretty much all of seven's scenes are good

maybe this episode helped this guy get gimli...a small price to pay i suppose but sheesh

statistical probabilities (ds9):

WAH............................nobody look at me

i spent the first 15 or however many minutes of this episode going "boy this sure is heavy-handed commentary" and then we got to the scene where julian and obrien are playing darts and he's raving about how wonderful they are when they are some of the most horrifically offputting characters that have ever been on genuinely had me welling up

like maybe............sometimes people who are offputting and weird in an unpleasant way...............deserve to be shown compassion and understanding and deserve to connect with people who genuinely think they're cool. as someone who experienced the social consequences of being a weird and offputting child i love that this episode said with chest WEIRD OFFPUTTING PEOPLE HAVE PERSONHOOD AND RIGHTS!!!!!!!! good for them and good for me. i love to feel an earnest human emotion while watching star trek. that's probably the most authentic was to experience it

like forget all that shit about the war and surrendering. that was stupid. they presented us with like a handful of people who felt extremely difficult to care about and then julian cared about them and then we cared about them and by the end they seemed very charming in their own weird ways. you could stand this in for like autism, being ND, being disabled, whatever, but it's such a smart and good way to 1. illustrate julians compassion and 2. teach us that same compassion. for them. for ourselves. dont worry about it!!!!!!!

even though i thought the plot where they predicted the end of the war and tried to betray the federation was dumb (are we backtracking all that good work and making a point that autistic people/ND people/disabled people/etc ARE dangerous after all and should not be allowed in society?? come on), i DID like that it sort of touched on and played with development missing from the initial episode where we found out about julian being genetically modified

like, firstly that he got to go jesus christ i fucking lucked out SO good like what was done to me was horrible but at least i am able to pass in society and the privileges i got afforded as a result were MASSIVE compared to these people kept in an institute with very few personal freedoms who quite literally cannot function alone and whose living situations are actively making their various conditions WORSE

but secondly that he got to say aloud "yeah the reason they don't let us do stuff is because we could turn out like khan!" and believe that with his whole pussy (which shows that he HAS believed that for awhile) and then he gets to question his belief when they all do something good together. and like yeah in the end he has to sit back and go jesus christ like FOUR PEOPLE almost handed over the entire alpha quadrant to the enemy on a platter we ARE dangerous after all better send those fuckers back to the looney bin which i think negates the point of the episode somewhat but i do like that it gives him angst and problems. mwah.

like, i'd be lying if i said i'd be happy if his khan fears got cured in a single episode. live with that. marinate in it. have psychological problems about it. go have a deep space talk with garak about it and get him to work it out of you with his d--

TONIGHT: voy's "the mortal coil" and ds9's "the magnificent ferengi" both of which, love and light, look awful. manifesting strength.

[travllingbunny]

When should i begin Deep Space Nine when i'm watching Star Trek?

Oh, I didn't see this one and it seems it was sent a month ago! So I don't know if you still need this advice.

Anyway, Deep Space Nine started while season 6 of Star Trek: The Next Generation was airing, so it might be the best to start it after season 5 of TNG. But you can also watch it after season 4 of TNG. I don't think that season 5 of TNG adds anything that important to the backstory of the DS9 characters, nor would it be spoiled by DS9. You should definitely not start DS9 before you see at least the ending of season 3 and the beginning of season 4 of TNG.

However, there is a plotline in season 3 that directly follow up the episode "Second Chances" from season 6 of TNG (6x24), so you should watch at least that episode before season 3 of DS9.

But aside from that, the two shows don't overlap much, especially not in later seasons of DS9. Season 1 of DS9 is pretty weak, aside from a few great episodes, which include the pilot and especially the last two episodes of season 1. The show was imitating TNG too much in season 1 - and it's only from season 2 that it starts finding its own voice.

[gay-disabled-characters-showdown]

LGBTQ+ Disabled Characters Showdown Round 1, Wave 4, Poll 9

A character being totally canon LGBTQ+ and disabled was not required to be in this competition. Please check qualifications and propaganda before asking why a character is included.

Check out the other polls in this wave and prior here.

Julian Bashir-Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Qualifications:

Disability: Along with being generally awkward with conversation and not knowing how to talk to people, a part of his backstory is that he was “underperforming” in school so his parents got him illegally genetically enhanced to “fix” him (in the show this is treated as a horrible fucked-up thing that they did LGBTQ+: He has a relationship with another male character on the show that everybody behind-the-scenes (except the homophobic producer) treated as canonically romantic. The homophobic producer had to tell the writers to stop putting Bashir and Garak in scenes together because they got along too well and he didn’t want the audience to think they were a couple. The non-homophobic producer said in a documentary looking back on DS9 that one of his biggest regrets about the show is not making the relationship actually canon.

He was canonically intellectually disabled as a child, which his parents attempted to "correct" with illegal gene editing. This eliminated his intellectual disability, but he displays many many autistic traits still (socially awkward, infodumps, hyperempathetic, echolalia, blunt). This lends itself to the popular interpretation that the gene editing couldn't "correct" his autism, but it did change exactly which autistic traits he had. One of his closest onscreen relationships is with Elim Garak, a relationship that both actors have since said is romantic in nature, and Andy Robinson (Garak's actor) has explicitly said he played Garak as being attracted to Bashir. There is also some possible evidence of Julian being trans; in one episode, he says this of a situation in which he had to transfer a fetus from one of his friends into another due to an emergency (paraphrased): "The fetus was in distress, and the only available candidates were Major Kira... and me." This line potentially implies he is capable of carrying a fetus. Furthermore, he canonically has a name that his parents used to call him that he refuses to answer to now (Jules). In-universe, this is due to him finding out about his genetic engineering, but it is very transgender of him.

Propaganda:

He uses all of his free time to role play historical events with his best friend - He intentionally got one question wrong on his finals so that he wouldn’t be valedictorian - On like 5 separate occasions he gets invited to medical conferences then kidnapped on the way - Season 2 episode 22 “The Wire”

He is so awesome. Very autistic, very interesting character. He's an extremely caring doctor, to the point he once stayed on a plague-ridden planet with no futuristic tech, mixing medicine by hand for weeks in an attempt to cure the populace. Which he succeeds at, by the way!! He also, after finding a rogue group of former enemy soldiers who have managed to kick their dependence on the drug used by the enemy government to control them, Julian agrees to try to formulate a way for all of the soldiers to be free of their dependence. He only fails due to interference. Also, when Garak is suffering withdrawal from a brain implant, he stays by his bedside for days on end, caring for him, and even going to the heart of hostile territory to ask the head of the Space KGB how he can cure him. And that's not all! In addition to being a very dedicated (if often unethical) doctor, he is also a space tennis player! He has a tendency to put his foot in his mouth immediately upon meeting anyone new, and not just because of his canonical foot fetish! I'm not joking about that. It is canon.

The qualifications and propaganda paragraphs correspond, @convenient-plot-device is the second submitter.

Frankie Stein-Monster High

Qualifications:

Frankie has always had detachable limbs, that sometimes are useful and other times bothersome. Frankie has also often been hcd as some kind of queer. In G3 of Monster High, they now additionally to their detachable limbs, have a prosthetic leg. And Frankie is now canonically nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns. As well as apparently having something romantic going on with Cleo (idk i don't keep up with the cartoon) (but any relationship would be queer for them, as they are nb, lol)

Propaganda:

I love Frankie. I love Monster High. I have loved it since G1. And I do like a lot of the changes (although very much not all) that they made with G3. Especially Frankie. Having them be femme presenting nb is awesome. And also having a prosthetic leg!! I love this