#Star Trek TNG: Through the Mirror

[obsidianmichi]

The crazy part about Star Trek Online is that it's stuffed full of cameos and missions that repeatedly star characters from the main cast of every major Star Trek show except, I think, Enterprise, Strange New Worlds, and Lower Decks.

Like you can go on a fully voiced adventure with Michael Burnham and Seven of Nine in her Fenris Rangers era to decide whether the Excalbians will embrace good or evil and fight Seven's evil simulation created body double.

Worf, voiced by Michael Dorn, Worf is in the major Iconian missions and a central figure for Klingon players as they shoot up the ranks.

Martok, voiced by John Garman Hertzler Jr. (rescue him from the Tzenkethi and go on so many missions together as random space adventures, and he's just like he is in DS9.)

Almost the entire cast of Deep Space Nine, including René Auberjonois's final voicework as Odo before his passing, the same for Aron Eisberg as Nog, Nana Visitor as Kira Nerys, and there's an entire episode where you play as Quark and his Ferengi friends stealing from Iconians. Even Salome Jens pops up as the Female Changeling to play a villain in the Gamma Quandrant arcs. Plus, Chase Masterson got in ahead of them all to chew through the scenery as Leeta's Mirror counterpart, Admiral Leeta!

Levar Burton as Geordi LaForge!

Janeway and Mirror Janeway voiced by Kate Mulgrew. (Mirror Janeway is a Borg Queen!)

Denise Crosby as my Romulan main's new adopted mother, Empress Sela and her mother, Natasha Yar. There's also Tuvok (my love!), Tom Paris, Harry Kim, Seven of Nine, Jason Isaacs voicing Prime Gabriel Lorca (!!) in the Discovery missions, Tilly and my much beloathed nemesis Mirror Tilly, Stamets, and Michael Burnham. Most recently we've gotten Mirror Wesley Crusher and Mirror Doctor Crusher during Picard's third season, and Ezri Dax in the latest episodes.

There's also Leonard Nemoy, who voiced the major exploration sections and Fed character level ups in the initial game but that's been in at launch.

It's honestly impressive. Every time I turn around it feels like another Star Trek alum is lending their voice to the game. Star Trek Online is somehow the most blessed and the most cursed tie-in game in existence. The dream and the hellscape for Star Trek fans.

Also, the space combat is genuinely really fun.

[stra-tek]

Big random list of things that NEARLY happened in Star Trek with no context or citation...

Harry Kim was to appear in Picard season 3 as a Captain (possibly of the Voyager-B)

Sarek was to use the Guardian of Forever to go back in time to become Surak of Vulcan, in a Next Gen episode

An episode was pitched where an NX-01 med tech played by Alice Krige was captured and assimilated by the Borg, becoming their queen

A Star Trek movie was almost made about undoing the Kelvin Universe, and would have had Shatner and Nimoy appear

They considered having Will Riker die, Data become first officer and Thomas Riker the Ops officer in TNG's "Second Chances"

JJ Abrams wanted Nichelle Nichols to cameo as the mother of Zoe Saldana's Uhura

The first season of Enterprise was to be set on Earth, culminating with the launch of NX-01 at the end of the season

They considered a shock reveal in ENT season 4 that it was actually the Vulcans who split off from the Romulans, and Romulus was their original homeworld

William Shatner wanted to return as Kirk from the Mirror Universe, in an Enterprise episode that involved time travel and creating the mirror universe with the transporter

Elnor was going to "explore his sexuality" in early Picard season 2 plans, before a change of showrunner and his character mostly vanishing

The ENT writers wanted Shatner to play Chef, a Kirk look-a-like hired by Daniels and trained to act Kirk-like to give an important speech at some point in history the real Kirk is mysteriously absent from

Data was originally created by mysterious aliens, and was to have a twin sister

Prodigy season 2 writers discussed having Chris Pine's Kirk from the Kelvin universe join the crew for a few episodes

In the originally filmed cut of Star Trek: Generations, Kirk is shot in the back and dies

Very early discussions for what eventually became Star Trek: Picard considered an adaptation of the Star Trek: Destiny novel trilogy

These discussions span off from a Short Treks pitch where a young cadet Jean-Luc Picard met Nichelle Nichols' Uhura

Early plans for the 2009 movie had wholesale destruction of the Prime universe, including the destruction of Earth. Thank Perpetual Entertainment for getting the destruction scaled back to Romulus so Star Trek Online had a Federation left to feature

There's was a story treatment written for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock where Spock stays dead

This one might be a little sus, but Christopher Pike in Discovery season 2 was planned to be very religious and fall to his knees at one point before the Red Angel, and clash with Michael over science vs faith

Early ideas for Star Trek Into Darkness had Benedict Cumberbatch as Robert April, former Enterprise captain turned rogue

Seven of Nine was going to sacrifice herself in order for Voyager to get home

A time travel Justice League of Trek movie by Brent Spiner, bringing together all eras of goodies vs all eras of villains, was considered

Spock shot JFK to fix the timeline in a proposed sequel to The Motion Picture

Ripper/Ephraim was originally going to be a regular, if giant tardigrade, crewmember on Discovery

Prior to Leonard Nimoy's involvement in what would become the 2009 Star Trek movie, a story outline was written about prime-universe cadets Kirk and Spock, in a story inspired by TNG's "The First Duty"

The Enterprise crew went through a black hole, back in time and introduced primative man to fire in another 70's movie script

A TNG movie was written where Picard summons a hologram of James T. Kirk for advice

George Kirk was to be found in the pattern buffer of the wrecked U.S.S. Kelvin 30 years later and resurrected

Voyager's EMH was originally to take on the name of his creator early on in the show, and the first Voyager novels call him "Doc Zimmerman" assuming it would have happened by publishing time

There's concept art where the U.S.S. Cerritos is a Galaxy-class starship

Riker was planned to dislike Data, and treat him poorly because he was an android

They considered making Troi's loss of powers in "The Loss" a permanent thing, because of how much hassle they caused the writing staff

Harry Kim wasn't originally planned to survive Species 8472

[lostyesterday]

I made the following graph because I was interested in which words show up most often in the titles of Star Trek episodes and movies:

I included episode titles from all twelve canon TV shows and all thirteen movies. I only counted nouns for the graph to avoid including boring words like “the” or “and”. I also counted plurals of a word as the same word (“stars” counts as “star”) and compound words where the singular word still carried the same meaning (“starship” counts as “star”). A complete list of episode/movie titles for each word listed in the graph is below the cut.

Time:

Amok Time (TOS)

The Time Trap (TAS)

The Naked Time (TNG)

Time Squared (TNG)

A Matter of Time (TNG)

Time’s Arrow (TNG)

Timescape (TNG)

Hard Time (DS9)

Children of Time (DS9)

A Time to Stand (DS9)

Time’s Orphan (DS9)

Time and Again (VOY)

Once Upon a Time (VOY)

Timeless (VOY)

Time Amok (PRO)

The Time Devouring Scavengers (PRO)

Star

Beyond the Furthest Star (TAS)

Starship Mine (TNG)

Starship Down (DS9)

Far Beyond the Stars (DS9)

North Star (ENT)

Battle at the Binary Stars (DIS)

The Brightest Star (Short Treks)

The Girl Who Made the Stars (Short Treks)

The Star Gazer (PIC)

The Stars at Night (Lower Decks)

Starstruck (PRO)

A Moral Star (PRO)

Man

The Man Trap (TOS)

Where No Man Has Gone Before (TOS)

The Schizoid Man (TNG)

The Measure of a Man (TNG)

Manhunt (TNG)

Tin Man (TNG)

Man of the People (TNG)

A Man Alone (DS9)

Our Man Bashir (DS9)

Inside Man (VOY)

Renaissance Man (VOY)

Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad (DIS)

Home

The Voyage Home (movie)

Home Soil (TNG)

Homeward (TNG)

Move Along Home (DS9)

The Homecoming (DS9)

Homefront (DS9)

Homestead (VOY)

Home (ENT)

Far From Home (DIS)

Coming Home (DIS)

Child

Friday’s Child (TOS)

And the Children Shall Lead (TOS)

Plato’s Stepchildren (TOS)

The Child (TNG)

Galaxy’s Child (TNG)

Children of Time (DS9)

Child’s Play (VOY)

Children of the Comet (SNW)

Children of Mars (Short Treks)

Life

Half a Life (TNG)

The Quality of Life (TNG)

Life Support (DS9)

Lifesigns (VOY)

Real Life (VOY)

Life Line (VOY)

Life, Itself (DIS)

Eye

Wink of an Eye (TOS)

The Eye of the Beholder (TAS)

The Mind’s Eye (TNG)

Eye of the Beholder (TNG)

Eye of the Needle (VOY)

Blink of an Eye (VOY)

Kayshon, His Eyes Open (Lower Decks)

Light

The Lights of Zetar (TOS)

The Inner Light (TNG)

The Darkness and the Light (DS9)

By Inferno’s Light (DS9)

In the Pale Moonlight (DS9)

Point of Light (DIS)

Light and Shadows (DIS)

War

A Private Little War (TOS)

The Dogs of War (DS9)

Warlord (VOY)

Warhead (VOY)

The War Within, the War Without (DIS)

Under the Cloak of War (SNW)

Night

Night Terrors (TNG)

Wrongs Darker than Death or Night (DS9)

Night (VOY)

Two Days and Two Nights (ENT)

A Night in Sickbay (ENT)

The Stars at Night (Lower Decks)

Game

The Gamesters of Triskelion (TOS)

The Game (TNG)

Armageddon Game (DS9)

The Killing Game (VOY)

Endgame (VOY)

The Least Dangerous Game (Lower Decks)

Shadow

Shadowplay (DS9)

In Purgatory’s Shadow (DS9)

Shadows and Symbols (DS9)

Shadows of P’Jem (ENT)

Light and Shadows (DIS)

Through the Valley of Shadows (DIS)

Mirror

Mirror Mirror (TOS)

Shattered Mirror (DS9)

In the Mirror, Darkly (ENT)

Mirrors (DIS)

The Mirror Universe (PRO)

Enemy

The Enemy Within (TOS)

The Enemy (TNG)

Face of the Enemy (TNG)

Silent Enemy (ENT)

Behind Enemy Lines (PRO)

Battle

Let that Be Your Last Battlefield (TOS)

The Battle (TNG)

Battle Lines (DS9)

Nor the Battle to the Strong (DS9)

Battle at the Binary Stars (DIS)

Mind

Dagger of the Mind (TOS)

The Mind’s Eye (TNG)

Frame of Mind (TNG)

Mining the Mind’s Mines (Lower Decks)

Mindwalk (PRO)

Blood

Bloodlines (TNG)

Blood Oath (DS9)

Ties of Blood and Water (DS9)

Blood Fever (VOY)

Flesh and Blood (VOY)

World

For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky (TOS)

The Best of Both Worlds (TNG)

Strange New World (ENT)

All the World’s a Stage (PRO)

Strange New Worlds (SNW)

Ship

Ship in a Bottle (TNG)

Starship Mine (TNG)

Starship Down (DS9)

The Ship (DS9)

One Little Ship (DS9)

Day

Day of the Dove (TOS)

Data’s Day (TNG)

Day of Honor (VOY)

Thirty Days (VOY)

Two Days and Two Nights (ENT)

[startrekprodigyfan]

Incoming Rant.

I feel weird as a Star Trek fan because right now there’s more Star Trek than even when I was growing up… and yet… so much of it doesn’t feel like Star Trek to me.

Picard was awful all the way through. It’s bleak, it’s depressing, it’s inconsistent tonally, and it’s just flat out boring. It doesn’t add anything new to the universe and instead just mercilessly kills off many beloved characters for no reason. From Icheb, to Hue, to Q, and even to Bruce Maddox.

Section 31 is an interesting idea. A rogue mission impossible style agency within the federation doing covert missions? That’s fun… but this whole mirror universe Terran empire stuff has no appeal to me and the show looks nothing like Star Trek.

Discovery keeps doing the universe is in danger and spent so much time with the main character that we never got to know anyone else in the show. Then it just randomly jumps forward several hundreds of centuries. It’s so far removed from the Star Trek content I like, in both directions.

I’ve been wanting a Starfleet Academy show since I was a kid. Having a series follow cadets as they learn each week about different starship dynamics and regulations and protocols? That’s fun. I like that. But I do not want it set in the Discovery universe so far into the future. I always felt Starfleet Academy should be around the Wrath of Kahn era in between the old and the new Trek series.

Strange New Worlds is the closest we have to monster-of-the-week style classic Trek storytelling.. but due to streaming’s limited number of episodes we’ve barely surpassed Season 2 of TNG in terms of episode numbers after 3 years and a lot of the times the writing feels to just fall short of being good.

Both Prodigy and Lower Decks which both feel the most like Star Trek and focus the most on the ideals of classic Trek were cancelled and brought to an end far too soon. There’s so much more we can do with either series but the big-wigs don’t seem to care.

I’m convinced more than ever now that Star Trek flourishes when it’s animated and aimed at kids. I think the media landscape for adult oriented TV shows has moved so far into darkness and shocking content that doing Trek now doesn’t feel the same. The sense of joy and wonder at exploring space and sci-fi concepts is gone.

Everything has to be a universe ending storyline.

Everything has to be grim dark and depressing.

There’s no time to spend with any of the characters because we’ve gotta keep moving the plot forward because we only have 10 episodes to tell everything in.

Bigger budgets allow different looking tech and scenery, but they still want to be nostalgic for the past while not giving us the stuff we want.

I feel like getting Star Trek isn’t hard. Yet it’s weird how many of the people in charge don’t seem to get it at all.

[thoughts-i-have-had-in-passing]

The Spock Universes Theory of Star Trek

Recently I made a very quick, late-night reply to a post in which I mentioned my ‘Spock Universes’ theory which to my surprise ended up being somewhat popular with the people, and so I have decided to give it its own post.

The theory is simple. Every time Spock is played by someone different on screen you are watching a different universe’s timeline.

Why does this work? First off it is canon that there are different universes. For one, the Animated Series was disavowed by Gene Roddenberry as not canon, which by extension means it had to have taken place in another universe, but we also have the mirror universe  which continues to exist even when we occasionally wish it didn’t. So Star Trek was doing a multiverse from almost the very beginning. So what is the easiest way to tell them apart?

Spock.

Spock is the key to the whole multiverse. Behold:

TOS: Nimoy Spock, Prime universe

TAS: Voiced by Nimoy but disavowed by Roddenberry, ‘Animated Prime’ universe in which everything that happened in Prime Universe also happened here, but everything that happened here did not automatically happen in Prime.

Star Trek Movies I through VI: Nimoy Spock, Prime universe

TNG: Nimoy Spock appeared in Unification Parts 1 and 2, therefore TNG is in Prime universe

Star Trek: Generations: No Spock. NOT PRIME UNIVERSE.

The evidence: In the TNG episode Relics the crew discover Scotty, played by James Doohan, trapped in a transporter buffer on an infinite loop. This is considered god-tier engineering by Geordie, who did not believe it was possible despite 70 years of advancements in the engineering space (more on that in the SNW section).

Scotty makes a comment that he thought Kirk got the original Enterprise out of mothballs to come looking for him, and was saddened to find out this was not the case. In Generations, Scotty is present when Kirk get pulled into the Nexus and everyone think he is dead. In Prime universe Scotty was not there or he would not have made this assumption, however there is one person who has to be there in order to determine if the universe is Prime: Nimoy Spock.

Who was originally supposed to be there according to the original script? Nimoy Spock.

Who forced a change to the universe by not showing up? Nimoy Spock.

In Prime universe Spock was there instead of Scotty, who had not delayed his retirement to see off the Enterprise B and instead was already on his way to the Norpin colony when Kirk was ‘killed’ the news reached the colony but not the ship, which because it never made it meant Scotty never knew Kirk was gone.

It is important to note that everything else happened the exact same way, except Lursa and B’Etor got hold of a much better ship solely because I said so.

DS9: In the episode Trials and Tribble-ations, the crew was thrown back in time to the days of the original Enterprise, in which Nimoy Spock appeared, even without the various TNG crossovers it’s still Prime universe

Voyager: No Spock, but pilot episode crossed over with DS9, and the character of Barkley crossed over from TNG on more than one occasion. In addition, in the episode Flashback there was an appearance by Captain Sulu, played by George Takei, who was last seen playing his character opposite Nimoy’s Spock. Most likely Prime universe

Enterprise: Predates the Spock schism and therefore theoretically belongs to all universes. It has been referenced in several of the newer series in various ways, however there is a continuity issue in regards to the Klingons, which may mean that the event which lead to Spock being played by someone other than Nimoy happen even further back in the timeline, with the majority of changes being negligible by the time of Enterprise other than the Klingon ridge thing, which Discovery and SNW do not follow

‘Kelvin’ movies: Two Spocks. Nimoy Spock is specifically stated to come from the future Prime universe and the events featuring Quinto Spock are now a new, branched timeline. Further proof for the theory.

Discovery: Peck Spock, new timeline. Other notable changes include the style and advancement of technology and the fact that the Klingons appear to have solved their forehead ridge-flattening troubles, plus added extra for good luck.*

SNW: Peck Spock, crossover with Discovery. Peck universe. This also means that major continuity changes like the Gorn being both known and evil monsters are due to the different universe. In addition, Dr. M’Benga hides his daughter in a transporter buffer to slow down her illness. As previously mentioned, this was god-tier engineering when Prime Scotty did it in 2294, however in this universe technology is more advanced as no one bats an eye at the doctor’s technical prowess when they find out what he did.

Prodigy: Nimoy Spock facsimile which uses Nimoy voice recordings, Prime universe

Picard: No Spock, pick your poison. Basically because there is no Spock this could be Prime or it could be the same universe as Generations. Clearly there are a lot of similarities between Prime and Generations universe, but as the ending shown in All Good Things is not the one we see in Picard, it’s possible, likely even, that we have crossed universes again. I blame Q.

Lower Decks: Somehow exists in a universe where all shows are simultaneously canon, including TAS, probably due to some weird phenomena  

*Challenges to the theory and how it has adapted.

It was pointed out to me that Michael Burnham watches a recording of old Spock once she goes to the future, and that this recording was of Nimoy Spock, and so I have had to alter my theory slightly.

The Spock Checkpoint can only be done when Spock is a young man. This is because once Spock approaches old age, regardless of who has been playing him, he begin to morph into Nimoy Spock. As Mr. Nimoy himself claimed in his second autobiography: I am Spock.

Dude wasn’t kidding.

Personally I find that this theory helps me deal with the more extreme continuity issues that NuTrek has brought to the show. It's easy to pretend that Turnabout Intruder's claim that women can't be captains never actually happened, harder to believe that everyone met the Gorn except Kirk, and that somehow they demonsterfied in about five to ten years, or that a doctor could rig a transporter as well as a master engineer with technology forty years more advanced. Spock theory has calmed my mind and soothed my soul so I can better enjoy Trek. I hope if you felt the same way then it can do the same for you.

Thank you for reading my waffle.

[elephant-in-the-pride-parade]

Prodigy Recap

I love it I love it I love it I could watch it forever

I'm truly irrevokably in love. I'm done for. I'm probably going to rewatch this all month before I am satisfied I've fully taken it all in. I NEED to rewatch Mindwalk and Supernova again ASAP because knowing what I know now about the memories HJ had just recovered. I know it is going to wreck me to watch her in those episodes with S2 in mind.

My ship HELD HANDS GUYSSS. HE TOLD HER SHES HIS HOME. HE DIDNT FEEL LIKE HE BELONGED ANYWHERE UNTIL THEY MET. SHE BROKE TIME FOR HIM AGAIN AND AGAIN. HER EYES GOT SO BIG! THAT HUG LOOKED SO GOOD. (I'm getting off topic a lot but i need to get the "my ship is canon - in a way i don't hate!!!" fangirling out of my system.) breathe. breathe. okay gonna keep going.

Its gonna take me a few more watch throughs to fully wrap my head around the paradox. And around how you fit a humpback whale in the original ISS Voyager (seriously. has that been there the whole time? does OG Voyager have a whale? was she retrofitted in the AQ? did Mirror J steal a whale from 1996?) And if that timeline where KJ was lost on the infinity means shes also trapped on future solum with Chakotay or just dead. and and and... so many things. so many fic ideas. so many plot bunnies

(wait no -- shoves the plot bunnies away -- go away. not ready for more wips yet)

There. was. so. much. that I loved. it was such an ambitious story to tell in 2 seasons and oh my god, i really feel they mostly pulled it off. They brought back Voyagers legacy characters and put them to work in a plot that fit them, and it was such a joy to see them again. They stay true to who they were on Voyager - thoroughly wonderfully 100x better than on Voyager in Chakotays case. and i really believe theyre the same characters with a few more years of life since ive last met them.

And the new characters too. I love Dal and Gwyn and Rok and Murf and Zero and Jankom and Maj'el to pieces. (Majel!!! is such a perfect tribute!) I want to see so much more of Noum and Tysses. I am in tears over Adreek. God how much i want Season 3 just to see how their stories continue.

But I think... what strikes me most and what I appreciated the most was how much this show wholeheartedly respects its fans!!!

It never dumbs things down or babies it's younger audience. its very mature for a kids show. it is a great introduction to star trek and the universe without over explaining. there are storylines in these 40 episodes that would be right at home in TNG or Voyager. it's really more of a fun for the whole family show than a kids show in that way. (it says something that it's the first "cartoon" my parents have ever cared for and they are watching it wholely for themselves.) It really manages to tell the story in a framing thats aimed at kids without taking anything away from the story its telling for all ages.

And it's adult audience...

I worried about how it would feel to have enjoyed such a rich fanon universe in the 3 decades since the show ended. There were advantages to having a ship with very little canon. the fan universe thrived on how much room there was to work within. After that - having headcanoned and written and imagined so many futures for the characters - I feared having some new canon come in and make a new story for them that would invalidate so much if that imagination, or create something so unsatisfying or rigid or antithical to their last canon encounter that nothing new would be inspired by it. (P/C in Picard was like that for me)

Prodigy didnt do that. Prodigy made no grand sweeping canon for the years in between Voyagers homecoming and the new show. Prodigy didnt shoe horn any character into a rigid relationship status. Prodigy picked them up, set them on a new adventure, sprinkled in tantalyzing new details, and left a wealth of room around the events of the season and the relationships between the characters for so much fan imagination to thrive. The possibilities before and during and after the seasons for the characters are bountiful and perfect for imagining their other adventures. I couldnt have imagined my ship becoming canon (or maybe affirmed by the canon is a clearer way to put it) in a better way.

And then they went and added Tank Top Action Janeway in there as a treat.

Truly a masterpiece. i'm so grateful for this show. i hope it gets the 3rd season it so dearly deserves.

[sapphosewrites]

top 10 ds9 fan fics you've written, ranked?

Oooh, tough question, friend! I don't even know what the criteria for this would be, because the most AO3 popular ones are not always my favorites... Okay, you know what, here we go. I'm just going to go for it and make some decisions. I'm giving myself a rule, though, that I can only chose one from a series, so I'm not just listing everything in the Terok Nor AU. I'll also try to hit different kinds of fics I've written.

10.) After the End of the World: A Survey of Seminal Works of Cardassian Post-Apocalyptic Literature from cross-posted to tumblr. 533 words, "An examination of the Cardassian post-apocalyptic literary genre before and after the Dominion War." This isn't my most popular or my best written but it's one of my favorites; I like in-world diegetic texts and worldbuilding and I'm obsessed with the idea of post-canon Cardassia as post-apocalypse.

9.) Never Have I Ever from The Game Is Afoot, 1,294 words, T, "Julian introduces Garak to the human game never have I ever." This was fun to write and is fun to reread every time! I often spend a lot of fic space on angst and identity and all the reasons why it's a bad idea for Julian and Garak to get together, but in this one we just get to spend time seeing them be clever and enjoy each other's company.

8.) Tribbles, Togetherness, and the Great River, 1,742 words, G, "In their shared quarters, Nog and Jake discuss tribbles, pets, and telling their families about their relationship." This is my only full standalone Jake/Nog fic, and it's another that was a pleasure to write and still makes me smile. It's fun to spend a sweet moment with two young people figuring out how they fit together.

7.) Del Floria's Tailor Shop, 336 words, also known as the space tumblr one. I think this is possibly the funniest thing I've ever written.

6.) Push Me Til I Break, 4,653 words, M, also known as the one where Garak interrogates Julian, and the role play goes wrong. Maybe the most tense thing I've ever written, and really leans into the ways in which two deeply hurting people can choose to hurt or hold.

5.) Growth, 45,843 words, T, "Julian and Garak grapple with their pasts and their feelings for each other at the end of the series." My super long post-canon Cardassia fic, back when I had no idea how to string a multi-chapter idea together. There's a lot I would change if I wrote this now (I've grown as a writer in many ways, including my ability to have scene transitions), but some of the conversations and moments in here are still absolute favorites of mine, particularly around ideas of self-forgiveness, the clash between values and actions, and the importance of choice.

4.) Predetermination, 22,200 words, T, Mirror Bashir arrives at the station and suddenly the nature/nurture debate has never had higher stakes. This is one of the places I think I've been most successful in using sci fi to ask big questions that hopefully resonate in the modern day, about who we are and how we become. Also, the ending takes inspiration from one of my favorite TNG episodes, and that was cool too.

3.) Especially the Lies, 13,019 words, T, "Something is going on with Garak, and no one knows what, except for possibly Julian Bashir." This is my only archive-warning-applied fic and it was really important to me to tell a story about care, for a character who I think doesn't believe he's allowed to have any, in a real world circumstance that too often people have to go through alone.

2.) Necessary Storms, 15,149 words, T, Julian and Starfleet Spouse Garak get entangled in Trill politics. I feel like this is one of the things I've written that most feels like it could be an episode of Star Trek, and is also a fairly unsubtle (though initially unintentional) way to explore populism, demagoguery, resource distribution, and revolt at a very particular moment in national politics with the aesthetic distance that sci fi offers.

1.) Old Friends: An Enigma Tale from Terok Nor AU. I'm exceedingly proud of this whole series, which started as just "what can I do with the idea of dabo boy Julian" and has turned into a sweeping journey covering how Terok Nor becomes Deep Space 9. This most recent installment is perhaps not indicative of the series as a whole, but it was a lot of fun to write and is also a dip into my other favorite genre aside from sci fi (murder mystery).

[onemuseleft]

Can I ask for some Star Trek book recs?

Absolutely!

Disclaimer: I'm not familiar with the more recent ones, so I can't give any recommendations there.

Also Disclaimer: I know I've left out a few classics and fan-faves, but if I went on any longer I'd just be telling Anon to read all of them.

Ongoing Disclaimer: Some of these are classics and enduring stories... and some of these are dumb fun that I really loved. You're just going to have to arrest me.

Star Trek: TOS

The Price of the Phoenix and The Fate of The Phoenix are like... not good exactly but if you're into Kirk and Spock at all you really should read them. Mostly just so you know when people mention them, but also because no one believes me when I tell them how completely over the top gay they are and how apparently no one called them on it at any point before they were publised.

The New Voyages and the New Voyages 2 are anthologies and both have some really fun short stories in them.

Enterprise by Vonda MacIntyre

Spock's World by Diane Duane - this is just classic, if you're into TOS or Spock at all, you should read this one. It's very good too, Diane Duane is extremely good and her ST:TOS novels are extremely true to the characterization.

My Enemy, My Ally by Diane Duane - I cannot recommend this one strongly enough holy shit just read it even if you aren't super into TOS. I read this as a little kid and it was the first "adult" Star Trek book I had read and it blew my tiny mind. Also the story is just so good, and it has a lot of great moments with the supporting cast, and some phenomenal original characters.

The Vulcan Academy Murders by Jean Lorrah is one of my favorites of all time. I still own a copy and have replaced it several times. Excellent Kirk & Spock interactions, a good plot, and interesting supporting characters. She also wrote The Idic Epidemic which is another good one set on Vulcan.

Windows on a Lost World by V. E. Mitchell - this one had a lot of Chekov, who was my favorite after Spock ^_^

Memory Prime by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens

Shell Game by Melissa Crandall - this is another one I still own and reread to this day. Also lots of Chekov ^_^

Ice Trap, Death Count and Firestorm by LA Graf - they tend to write about Chekov, Sulu and Uhura and I really enjoy the friendship between them. Also they liked to really put Chekov through the wringer and I was all about that.

The Great Starship Race by Diane Carey

There are The Lost Years books, which take place between the TV show and the first movie which explain everyone's new ranks and what they've been up to.

Prime Directive by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens

Best Destiny by Diane Carey

The Janus Gate books by LA Graf - I loved the shit out of these

Star Trek: TNG

Q-In-Law by Peter David - everything else aside, this one is hysterical

Q-Squared by Peter David - ditto

I, Q by Peter David and John de Lancie - saaaame

Requiem by Michael Jan Friedman and Kevin Ryan

Foreign Foes by David Galanter

Imzadi by Peter David - if you were into Riker and Troi at all this is a must-read. And even if you weren't it's a great book that contributed a ton to the backstory/lore of their relationship

ST: DS9

I remember really liking the Millennium series by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens but I cannot for the life of me remember what happened in it aside from the fact that it was about an alternate universe so take that as you will.

Fallen Heroes by Dafydd ab Hugh was my jam for a while there, I read it to pieces.

I also really liked the Mirror Universe books, but that's about when I stopped reading.

I never read any novels for Voyager or the newer series so this is where I have to give up.

There are so many other good ones that didn't get mentioned - anything by AC Crispin, for example, and Brad Ferguson wrote a really good one about Kirk's Admiral days.

[eponymous-rose]

So I've been rewatching Star Trek: TNG as comfort TV during/post-move and just got to Yesterday's Enterprise, which I remember liking well enough, but man, it's really unusual in the context of the rest of these early episodes. For one thing, the violence shown is a lot more stark than we've seen in the show thus far - Riker with his throat cut, Captain Garrett with the metal shrapnel in her head, lingering close-ups on dead faces. It's dark and moody and the "happy ending" resolution (as far as we know at this point, anyway) is saving the few survivors of a brutal battle, patching them up, and then shipping them straight back into that battle to be killed.

Given the show's not-so-great track record with its female characters, it's weirdly refreshing that we get a re-do for Tasha Yar. And yeah, she falls in love with a dude and goes off with him on his ship, but she was ready to say goodbye to him and that would've been that - what finally prompts her to step willingly into the meat-grinder is the realization that she had an "empty death" (Guinan had some really raw lines in this one) in the other timeline, and that now her death can have some meaning. It's nicely done, if a bit of a self-flagellating "mea culpa" on the writers' parts.

The alternate timeline isn't the gleeful, campy evil of the Mirrorverse, it's just an exhausted grind through the final days of a losing war. Lots of little touches show how desperate things have become - Wesley's been fast-tracked to a full ensign, Picard is a tactician first and foremost (he takes officers' opinions under advisement, yes, but he's also keeping from them the inevitable, imminent surrender), the bridge is laid out so the captain is front and center with everyone else in the background. As a contrast with the actual Enterprise's chill 90s living room lounge vibe, it's pretty striking. It's like a sneak preview into the bleak and war-heavy sci-fi that would start saturating pop culture a decade or so later, and then it's a firm rejection of that premise - "This isn't a ship of war. It's a ship of peace."

I have a long, long history with TNG - DS9 is my favorite Trek on balance, but TNG is encoded in my DNA. From around ages 3 and 5, my brother and I were watching and rewatching TNG constantly. (My parents would laugh over the fact that my brother didn't know how to read yet but had memorized the episode titles of the first couple seasons.) We had pajamas. We scoured every garage sale and had a giant metal can full of action figures and phasers and tricorders and ships and even, shockingly, that transporter toy that made things disappear using mirrors.

The tactile experience of those toys is burned in my brain - the loose nacelles on the Enterprise model, the click of the left phaser button, the little hole at the bottom of the Borg cube that we once stuck a pencil in and had the tip of the graphite snap off and rattle around forevermore. My brother and I played incessantly with our action figures, to the point where most of them had the paint at least partially rubbed off - we created hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of new episodes over the years. The first time I ever used a touchscreen was at some sort of Star Trek exhibition in Canada in the early 90s that we stumbled across on our way to visit my grandparents.

I'm always fascinated by how kids interact with fictional media - my brother and I were so young, but we obviously knew Star Trek wasn't real. Except... I just always assumed that important people watched it, realized "well, that seems nice", and were actively working to make that future happen. I was (perhaps a little embarrassingly) older when I realized that no, we weren't gonna be out there on science missions to the stars during my lifetime. At least, not in an Enterprise kind of way.

At any given time, there's just this Star Trek filter over how I experience the world - when I got to go to college thanks to scholarships, I had that weighty feeling of responsibility and awe that came with daydreaming about Starfleet Academy. I saw my career shift from the gold of engineering to the blue of science to the red of command. And the older I get, the more I appreciate a show that, for all its flaws, managed to make a utopia interesting and complex.

Because TNG was such a phenomenon when I was a little kid in the early 90s, a lot of my family relationships also have TNG tied up in them. I remember going to my grandparents' apartment and my uncle showing us a fan magazine about the show. I remember another uncle who didn't really "get it" but gifted me and my brother astronaut ice cream because he knew we liked that space stuff. I remember watching most episodes curled up on the couch or my parents' bed with my brother and my mom and dad. When Mom got sick and we talked about death, I remember the way she wistfully brought up the Nexus from Generations or how she hoped she could see the next season of Picard (she didn't, sadly, but she really enjoyed that first season). Hell, one of the first real bonding moments I had with my otherwise hyper-professional and businesslike PhD advisor was when she made a TNG joke, I laughed at it, and she said, "I just love that show, everyone's so nice to each other."

It's just been a lot of fun coming back to this show, is all. I think I periodically forget how much it's affected me and the extent to which it was a fundamental, formative influence. While a lot of it either hasn't aged well or fails to hold up to modern media analysis, so much of it is still lovely, and occasionally there are these moments of shockingly good storytelling.

Star Trek good.

[thecurioustale]

Childlike Solutions to Serious Problems

When I was very young—just three or four years old—we were driving one day on Interstate 10 in the wests of Los Angeles, and we came upon road construction:

Beginning with the right-hand lane, one by one each lane was blocked off by big, bright orange cones, taking us further and further to the left, until there was only a single lane passable on the entire westbound carriageway. And, of course, it so happened that this was the left-hand lane.

Something in my young little mind was lighted and delighted.

From that day on, my adorable little neurodivergent brain became gloriously hung up on left versus right. Not political left and right, but the actual, physical left-hand side and right-hand side of things. Of course, it also turned out that I myself was left-handed. So you better believe that I knew where my loyalties lay. And, golly, did I ever have lots and lots of loyalties to spare on this particular matter—for there are few matters in the world of greater importance!

Accordingly, one of my biggest complaints as a kid about TV Star Trek (both TNG and TOS) was that we usually only get to see the USS Enterprise from its starboard side. This was a concession to the practicalities of filming ship models, and they had just so happened to pick the starboard side as the filming side of the ship in both TV shows.* But it made me so resentful!

You can imagine my glee, therefore, when, in Star Trek: The Motion Picture we almost exclusively see the ship from the port side, from the dozens of Enterprise visuals in that beautiful film. That Enterprise is way more beautiful than the '60s TV model anyway. =P

However, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was a dark betrayal. Even though the movie features more port side shots than starboard side ones, and the port side shots are more beautiful, the nefarious Khan exclusively targets the port side of the ship in his attacks. By the end of the movie the Enterprise's majestic and noble port side is utterly ravaged, while the starboard side is unblemished and pristine.

This made me so upset that, after years of seething, eventually my patience burst. On one occasion of rewatching the movie in my parents' bedroom (on their VCR), I took down an ENORMOUS and expensive antique wood-framed mirror hanging in another room of the house, dragged it all the way to the bedroom, and propped it up on the bed, freestanding, so that I could watch the movie flipped and see the port side get its rightful ahem LEFTful due, which is to say being spared of damage and getting to deliver the fateful torpedo blows against the nefarious Khan's nefarious ship.

But it wasn't to be: My dad got home from work and walked in before I had gotten to the end of the movie. At seeing his mother's ENORMOUS and expensive antique wood-framed mirror precariously balanced on his bed in a base of pillows, propped up by my own little arm, he grew devilishly angry and ended my entire endeavor then and there. I was not even allowed to explain myself, which at the time I thought would have been quite convincing of a rationale.

Now I laugh about it whenever I think back on the absurdity of it all. Dad was right to be upset! But, to this very day, I have never seen Star Trek II all the way through in the way it was meant to be seen.

I happen to own that mirror now, though.

Perhaps one day...

~~~

* With regard to the original 1960s Enterprise model, it has become something of a quest for the Holy Grail to find photographs of the original port side decoration and livery before that side was ruined in order to streamline the filming process. There's a YouTube video about the search to find these photos.

[zaycheese]

seeing star trek tos stuff on my dash and then realizing it’s from you is TRIPPING me OUT but like in a good way sobs

anyhoo how r you liking it so far!!!!!!! favourite episode/character? :D

You don't understand I'm losing it, hyperfixation hitting HARD.

Also I absolutely cannot pick a favorite episode, but The Menagerie episodes were a personal favorite, it was really interesting to see characters react to this side of Spock and get a deeper look at him as a character. Balance of Terror, Galileo Seven, and The City on the edge of Forever, were other favorites from season one story wise This Side of Paradise made me laugh my ass off. (Shore leave originally had me kinda rolling my eyes at first in the "Ah star trek" sort of way but I really enjoyed Bones in that episode.)

I'm only like halfway (?) through season two so far

Amok time goes without saying I feel, I also really enjoy all the evil computers we get in this season. MIRROR MIRROR WAS SO GOOD!! I always loved the episodes where they end up in Evil Star Trek (It's funny cause it happens in like every series they end up in the same evil universe and theres never any reports for them to reference back to??)

I actually really enjoyed Metamorphosis, that man and his formless alien wife are queer somehow I won't be elaborating.

Journey to Babel, I love Spock's parents, they are so funny to me, my ass hole rebellious son who i hate and it's Spock.

Obsession was great fun, watching Kirk lose his shit was really cool from a character perspective.

The implications Wolf in the Fold had were really funny to me, every serial killer ever was just a TMA style fear entity actually lol don't worry about it.

TRIBBLES!!! THE SOUNDS THEY MAKE IN TOS ARE SO MUCH SADDER/CUTER THAN IN TNG AND I DUNNO HOW TO FEEL ABOUT IT

A Piece of the Action is probably my favorite episode at the moment, Kirk and Spock trying their best to blend in by using shitty gangster lingo that none of the others know what the fuck they are saying, even the gangsters will never not be funny to me.

I'm only on season 2 episode 21 RN but I plan on doing a binge tonight cause it will be good for my soul.

SORRY THIS BASICALLY BECAME A REVIEW FOR EVERY EPISODE MY BAD

Also my favorite character has always been whatever Vulcan is in that particular series, and when there is none the most serious unserious guy I can find (Data, Odo, Tuvok, The Doctor )

So yeah it's Spock, Scotty is a close second, Uhura dosent get a whole lot in this series but as a Strange New Worlds enjoyer she has to be up on this list, and then Bones and Kirk are tied in third, Checkov and Sulu are awesome too, every one is great I just :grabs:

Anyways sorry for going insane I'm response to your ask, 🙏

[azazelsazaleas]

I finished watching through DS9 a few weeks ago and I’ve been meaning to do a rundown of my thoughts on it. Here goes:

- Oh my god that was fantastic. I really wish it’s given it a fair shake back when it was on the air; I was a dumb teenager who resented it for not being TNG and was going through a weird self-loathing phase where I didn’t want to admit to myself that I was the massive nerd that I am. This seriously lived up to the hype. I may have to do a TNG rewatch because this might just have upstaged it as my favorite 90s Trek.

- Andrew Robinson should’ve been made a full cast member. Ditto Max Grodenchik and Aaron Eisenberg.

- Damar’s transmission at the end of The Changing Face of Evil lives rent-free in my head. I cheered out loud at that.

- One thing the show did fantastically that a lot of other SF/fantasy properties don’t quite get right is that it lands a pitch-perfect balance of “these characters are major, important figures in the larger multinational conflict” and “this conflict is absolutely massive and not everything revolves around the same small group of people.” The fact that Sisko, Worf, Kira, Odo, et al are so important is entirely plausible and it never feels like the writers are trying to gratuitously bring everything back to them.

- That said, I kind of love that Admiral Ross’s leadership approach during the Dominion War eventually consists of doing whatever the hell Sisko tells him to do.

- God, the acting was incredible. Andrew Robinson, Armin Shimerman, Nana Visitor, Marc Alaimo, and Louise Fletcher were real standouts, but everyone was just so damned good.

- Actually, I really need to give special mention to Shimerman. The man went above and beyond to make Quark be something more than a joke character, despite how obvious it was that basically the entire production team wanted him to just be cartoonish comic relief. He worked harder to flesh out his character and show his race as a race of *people* (not just caricatures) than just about any actor playing an alien on Star Trek before him except for maybe Nimoy. Give the man a goddamn Emmy. Don’t believe me? Go rewatch the iconic root beer scene from The Way of the Warrior.

That said: I do have a few criticisms:

- Pretty much all of the (canon) romantic subplots were just…yikes. The only major exception I can think of Sisko/Yates, where they actually seemed to have a healthy dynamic, fall legitimately in love with each other, and generally treat each other like adults in a serious relationship, not bickering teenagers.

- Seriously, Worf/Jadzia got so hard to watch and then the fallout with Ezri was just ugggghhhhhhhhh stop please for the love of god

- Why did the writers need to try to romantically pair off all the female characters? Just, why?

- Kira had more sexual tension with that Romulan lady in half an episode than she did with any of her bucket-of-paint boyfriends over the course of seven years.

- I totally get the behind-the-seasons reasons why things panned out the way they did, but (hot take) I think Dax’s whole arc would’ve worked better if they had killed Jadzia off after the first season or two and brought in Ezri earlier. Jadzia was fun, but she was just too perfect to get many interesting stories and her relationship with Worf felt too much like manufactured drama. Having a trill who didn’t want to be joined, agreed to in a life or death emergency situation, and now has to reckon not only with taking on this symbiotic relationship with no preparation whatsoever but also succeeding this beloved person in the eyes of her loved ones is such a better setup for a character and it’s a pity we didn’t get to see that play out properly.

- Sisko deserved a better conclusion to his story. Give the man his damned house on Bajor and let him raise his kid with Kasidy. He’s more than earned it.

- Next time I rewatch the series, I’m skipping the mirror universe episodes and the ones with the genetically enhanced walking-90s-neurodivergent-stereotypes.

Other random thoughts:

- Dukat’s storyline should’ve ended with him getting killed at the end of Waltz. Either by Sisko, or by deluding himself so thoroughly that he does something suicidal. The pah-wraiths subplot felt like a lazy afterthought (except for the episode where he pretends to be Bajoran and starts fucking Kai Winn) and as much as I liked watching Marc Alaimo act, his story arc was basically over at the end of Sacrifice of Angels….which, incidentally is when Damar actually starts to get interesting.

- I loved the O’Brien must suffer episodes but I thought Hard Time was kind of overrated. Mostly for the plot line with the cellmate; I think I’m a little burned out on seeing stories that have a moral of “deep inside us is a line between humanity and savagery and when pushed to the limit, even the best of us would turn to murder.” It’s been done to death, and it’s really not truthful, at least for many people.

- I think I may have a little bit of a crush on Major Kira. It would never work out if I met someone like that in real life, though. I’m a laid-back, atheist, creative type; she’s a deeply devout former insurgent. Given certain real-life crushes I’ve had recently; maybe I’m just into strong women with big, expressive eyes who wear their hearts on their sleeve and have a spine made of fuckin’ steel. I have no idea what this says about me.

- MORN

- Favorite Episodes: In the Pale Moonlight, The Visitor, Improbable Cause/The Die is Cast, In Purgatory’s Shadow/By Inferno’s Light, In the Cards, Duet, The Wire, Civil Defense, The Magnificent Ferengi, basically the entire Dominion War arc.

[stra-tek]

Big List of Universes in Star Trek:

Prime

Where most of Trek takes place. TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, DSC, LWD, PRO, PIC, SNW etc. Gets a bit complicated in that the Temporal Wars from Enterprise have explicitly rewritten some events but for the most part it's all one enormous continuity. Just don't ask about the Eugenics Wars

Kelvin

Where the rebooted movies take place, essentially Prime until the day of Jim Kirk's birth, when a Romulan from the Prime future appears and begins wreaking havok, sending events on a familiar but different path with more running and explosions

Mirror

The morally inverted version of the Prime universe. Often the same people in the same place at the same time as Prime except under radically different circumstances. The Kelvin timeline has it's own mirror universe and the Coda books imply they're different sides of the same coin so perhaps every universe has it's mirror. Everyone dresses very slutty and all the women are at the very least bi. Almost as if it was written by men to appeal to teenage boys.

The First Splinter

Where the entire Star Trek novelverse takes place. Essentially Prime up until First Contact, although many events after that tie into ones hundreds of years before so it's all a bit complicated. Hundreds of stories exist here, as varied and amazing and sometimes awful as the TV shows and movies. Erased from history in 2387 but everyone you've loved and read about for years die horrible, horrible deaths first

Megas Tu

Accessed through a portal at the centre of our galaxy, a universe where magic is real and the source of many Earth myths and legends. Lucien is Satan but he's actually a pretty cool guy. Kirk and Spock learned to use magic there.

Parallels

300,000 universes converge, ranging from ones where Worf has a different painting in his quarters to him banging Troi to the Borg having conquered the Federation

Reverse

Black stars on a white void, ships fly backwards, at warp 36, the elderly grow young and live backwards and I'm afraid to ask how this reverse life ends

Second History

From the novel Killing Time. Super gay and angsty. Romulans alter history, leading to Spock being captain and Jim Kirk being a drug addict ensign on the V.S.S. ShiKahr

Renegades

A bootleg version of Star Trek in a fan film universe, altered on day two of filming after the Axanar drama began. It's Star Trek with the serial numbers just barely filed off. The Confederation instead of the Federation, Sector 6 instead of Section 31, Kovok instead of Tuvok, Jemison instead of Uhura, Rigillians instead of Romulans and so on. 2 novels were released which try to differentiate the universes more clearly, and the last Renegades film Ominara re-reboots the whole thing and features an Uhura-ish character and the Star Trek ish sets, but otherwise everything else is different.

Fascistverse

Created by Q to test Jean-Luc and friends in season 2 of Picard, this was along the lines of the Mirror universe but with a divergence point in 2024, if Trump wins the election if Picard's ancestor Renee goes into space or not.

Musical

A crossover with this universe in SNW "Subspace Rhapsody" leads to the quadrant singing uncontrollably, accompanied by music and with full choreography.

[lostyesterday]

As a visually disabled person myself, one thing I wish TNG had done with Geordi is show his disability actually affecting how he functions in his daily life. For example, I can’t remember a single time in TNG where Geordi is shown as needing accommodations in his work environment. You might say that’s because his visor means that he can basically “see” normally and so he wouldn’t need accommodations, but I find this explanation frustrating.

For one thing, real life visually disabled people absolutely require accommodations to do most jobs, so if Geordi’s meant to be any kind of accurate reflection of the experiences of blind people, he should require some accommodations. For me at least, it isn’t some kind of wish fulfillment fantasy to see a visually disabled character who can do anything a sighted person can with no accommodations whatsoever. Instead, it feels like a denial of everything that being disabled has meant to me over my life. Disabled people are disabled. We have more difficulty doing certain tasks than an able-bodied person would – that’s what makes us disabled. We require changes to our environment in order to function well.

Also, literally just based on the in-universe information given about Geordi’s visor, it doesn’t make any sense to me that he wouldn’t require accommodations. Geordi’s visor is not really described as simulating vision, it is described as providing completely different sensory information about the physical properties of the world around him. I like to imagine the visor’s input as a kind of enhanced spatial awareness with a precise knowledge of where certain objects are, what their shape is, and what they’re made of. As TNG mentions several times, Geordi’s visor provides much more information than human eyes do, but, importantly, in the few episodes where the details of how Geordi’s visor works are discussed at all, it’s never described as providing purely visual information such as the color or reflectiveness of an object. I think that if Geordi faces a mirror, his visor will tell him there’s a piece of glass in front of him and he’ll know about how large it is and what material it’s made of, but he won’t be able to see his reflection in it, because the visor doesn’t provide that kind of visual information. This distinction is important to me, because it means that Geordi is still functionally blind with the visor, and it should mean that he interacts with the world differently from a sighted person.

For example, I would have loved if Geordi had been shown to be unable to recognize particular people until they spoke. All his visor tells him is that there’s a person in front of him and about what size and shape they are, but this isn’t generally enough information to determine a person’s identity. He canonically perceives Data as looking very different from an organic person which makes sense because Data is made of fully different material. And maybe Geordi can generally tell different species apart based on different body temperatures or something like that. But I really wish that Geordi had been shown at least a few times to need the sound of a person’s voice or some other cue to tell him who they were.

I also think it doesn’t make sense that Geordi can apparently read text on computer screens. How can he read if the visor doesn’t really provide visual information? A computer screen should just register as a flat piece of material. Geordi should have required some kind of accommodation to be able to use the computer screens. For example, maybe Geordi could use the computer entirely through voice commands, something that obviously already exists in the star trek world. Or he could use some kind of tactile display. The Voyager episode The Year of Hell shows that computer terminals on starships are able to utilize a tactile display that I’m guessing is somewhat similar to braille. I loved this mention in Voyager of tactile displays, because it indicates that Starfleet ships are probably automatically equipped with such accessibility devices. Geordi needing an accommodation as small as this would have gone really far in terms of making him feel like a genuine representation of a disabled character, at least to me.

[fast-moon]

Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Thoughts

Pretty much the entire reason I started watching Picard in the first place was because I'd heard: 1) Season 3 was actually really good, 2) Season 3 followed up on the end of DS9, 3) Season 3 got Kevin Feige interested in tapping Terry Matalas to head the Vision Quest D+ series. So, did it deliver on those expectations?

Compared to the first two seasons, hell yes.

So, first and foremost coming straight out the gate, the intro has been simplified, returned to more classic Trek stylization, and most importantly, back to playing the original Trek theme.

It's not like there was anything particularly bad about the music in seasons 1 and 2. But for something to feel like Star Trek, it needs more than a couple people in rubber foreheads spouting some technobabble keywords. There's a specific visual and audio style that people associate with it, too.

And friggin' hot damn, season 3 knew what that musical style was. Including call-backs to things like the Klingon theme from the TOS movies, the Voyager theme when Voyager or its crew were referenced, and the liberal usage of TNG's original theme. I am an absolute nerd for leitmotif and the association between a character or event and a particular piece of music, and I give mad props to writing staff who understand how to use that effectively.

Although, it almost feels like they went, "You know what, scrap seasons 1 and 2, we're starting over." Pretty much all of the new characters from the first two seasons are gone. Rios's absence can be explained by him staying back in 2024 to help fight against the upcoming ethnic cleansing of Latinos. Jurati went all Borg and then went to sit in front of the Anomaly of Great Future Plot Importance (No Really Trust Us). But Soji and Elnor just kind of disappeared off the face of the universe with no explanation. And pretty much the entire point of Season 2 was to let Picard come to terms with his feelings and open up to Laris. But in this season it's like, "lol, bye, going back with my baby momma." Raffi is the only new character still around.

Also, how did she get the La Sirena back (also, is "the" La Sirena redundant)? Last we saw at the end of Season 2, it was commandeered by the Borg queen in 2024 and then flown off never to be seen again. Or are we assuming that was the Mirror Universe version of the ship and the Prime Universe version was still floating around somewhere?

But they're facing a new threat this time around and it's... the Changelings! Yeah, turns out when Odo returned to the Great Link to deliver the cure to the Section 31 virus and teach them to play nice with solids, a portion of them were like "Hell no" and broke away to keep on Guerilla Dominion Warring.

I get why Odo wasn't a guest appearance in the series proper due to Rene Auberjonois passing away before the series was even produced, but it's weird that they didn't even mention him by name the several times he and his actions were directly referenced. Doubly weird that there were no DS9 cameos at all despite this season being about the DS9 overarching villains (I don't count Worf since he's not a character who was first introduced in DS9). No calls to Bashir in reference to Changeling physiology or his work on the cure for the Section 31 virus? No reaching out to non-Starfleet like Kira or Garak while they were on the run and hiding in the Chin'toka system? Or use the opportunity to canonically confirm that Sisko came back? At least Worf receiving intel from Odo confirms that Odo at some point re-established contact with the Alpha Quadrant.

Though, I was a bit disappointed that the Changelings were mostly a red herring and by the end it was just "but wait, more Borg". Although, the revelation that the Borg had been performing stealth assimilation via patching in rogue genetic code through the transporters was pretty clever. And in true TNG fashion, the ending is "the transporters can fix all that ails you".

But not content with the mere cameos in the previous seasons, this time we're bringing the entire original TNG crew back together for one last hurrah. Including like the eleventeenth incarnation of Data, because there's always a spare Data lying around when you're missing one.

And not only the entire original crew, but the original Enterprise-D, too, including a rebuild of the original TV bridge set. And the main thing that struck me about that is how bright it was. I seriously don't understand the modern production habit of having very dimly-lit sets where everything in it is some shade of grey, and all the characters are wearing black. But the Enterprise-D set is like... colors! And wood! And light! Like Picard said, "I missed the carpet".

Yeah, maybe my approval of this season is being clouded by the rampant nostalgia bait, but I also feel it was more tightly-written than the previous seasons. It still suffered from quite a bit of "this conflict is only happening because people refuse to talk to each other" and "I made a terrible decision because aaaaaangst", but it didn't feel quite as overbearing as the other two seasons. That and it completely re-used the "character hallucinates about a colored door that teases you for 90% of the season" from season 2.

So it certainly ended on a high note with a heartwarming send-off to the original crew (who thankfully don't get stupidly killed off for drama). It did make its attempts at light-hearted banter once the whole crew was back together for the final two episodes, but I still felt like the series as a whole still had a pall of cynicism hanging over it, where I preferred Trek when it was more bright and campy. DS9 showed that you can still tackle tough topics without sacrificing the energy that makes you care about the people whom those topics are happening to in the first place. And I do wish more modern productions that are stuck in their "edgelord" phase could learn from that.

[fox-stuck]

I'm sooo interested in Riker's comments at the end of Schisms (6x05) re: the invasive and violent operations being proof that this group of aliens was, and he says this in a harsh and resentful tone - "more than curious." Because whoa, what a line to end this episode on!!! Obviously completely fair but also what a pointed reflection on contemporary scientific practices and mindset?

Human methods of scientific study (although I recognize we are several centuries behind tng) have been are brutal and cruel. Even if we ignore (which is a bold choice) the dehumanization we weaponize to perform procedures, testing, and experiments that are eugenic in nature on actual human beings, we are also horrid to creatures and things we do not view as having a worthwhile life or consciousness.

Like... scientific studies are notoriously cruel to jellyfish. Which I know may be a weird hill to die on but I will die on it. (sidenote: it's not actually a weird hill because we should treat every thing better regardless of internal structures and consciousness.) A short and simplified jellyfish brief, if you don't know, when jellyfish die their bodies age backwards and sink to the seafloor; growing into a polyp which will sprout numerous more jellies. This earned them a bit of a reputation for being immortal even though that's not really what's happening. In reality when they endure an intense enough amount of trauma to disrupt their body or its functions they regress, sink, and start the life cycle anew. As a result the methods by which we study jellyfish are violent.

“Scientists who study the regeneration of the immortal jellyfish know this well, and have developed a roster of abuses to “induce rejuvenation,” as one study calls it. One standard method of traumatizing the jellyfish is to place the creature in a solution of cesium chloride, a colorless salt. An alternative, called the needle treatment, asks you to pierce the gooey umbrella with a stainless-steel needle. Some scientists drag the needle through the creature’s body in a scribble, removing the needle as burst cells coagulate like cumulus. Others stab repeatedly, up to fifty times per jellyfish. You can also heat shock the jellyfish, raising the temperature of the surrounding water to nearly 100 degrees. Or you can simply starve it. If you do not give the jellyfish more than it can handle, it will not begin to regrow. If there is not enough cesium chloride in the petri dish, if there are not enough needles or there is too little heat, the jellyfish will remain adult, alive. So you have to ensure there is enough stress, enough trauma." (chapter: Us Everlasting, How Far The Light Reaches, Sabrina Imbler, 2022)

Our methods of research almost always emphasize getting information as quickly as possible; explaining away our egregious violations of autonomy as necessary. Something about that has always felt really cruel to me and its part of the reason I pivoted from the specific career in biology I had wanted. I know it's "just a jellyfish" but it's also not? They are an important part of an ecosystem and landscape that we have chosen to define as a nuisance. Targets of aggression and anger in the wild fishermen often choose to destroy their bodies unknowingly creating hundreds if not thousands more. Our violent actions against them manifest worse conditions for ourselves and the ocean's ecosystem - it's a nauseating cycle.

I often end up thinking about jellyfish when I watch Star Trek: TNG. So many of the people flying through space "to explore strange new worlds" get so hung up on a being's experiences of consciousness if they don't explicitly mirror their own. I cannot get over everything that happens in Schism being such an interesting thought experiment on autonomy? Like the same episode where Data reads "Ode to Spot" and everyone sort of fails to recognize the beauty in his poetry, is also the episode where the crew is being kidnapped for experiments and reflecting on it, is also the same episode where Dr. Crusher (in a rare case!) doesn't do the extra tests right away and sends Riker home with hot milk before bed as a treatment, is also the episode where in the end Riker has resentment for being experimented on and the loss of a life... I just don't even know if they meant there to be this much thought about autonomy to be honest.

None of this is an in-universe criticism about the crew because I think having these kind of hiccups and topics in character development are interesting! I just think it's almost comical when the era a science-fiction show is written in rips through it's world building so hard it just sort of stares at you. Which is a great method of reflecting on our current times but it also a little funny in a show universe that claims to have moved past inequality when it's like, "ah yes but do you experience your emotions and consciousness like I, a human federation officer, no? then how do you know you even have them?!"