#commander paul Stamets

[best-star-trek-character]

Round Three

[flownwrong]

Star Trek: Discovery / Mirrors (5x05)

[defconprime]

Discovery Season 5 Poster

[adiraofthetals]

Hi,

I would like to peer pressure you all into reading @ajtal fic "Wind Chime"

This fic is so CUTE!!! And it will be the death of me!!! It makes me giggle like a little girl and want to swing my legs everytime.

Go give his fics love cause I can only give Kudos once and that is a crime.

(Also registered ao3 users only)

[fortheloveoflatinum]

Disco Thoughts

Hey there, don't let me be the one to spoil it for you. Click at your own discretion, because here there be spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery.

When are we going to see Detmer and Owosekun? Are they even going to come back for the finale? I feel like we have a whole new bridge crew and as much as I respect the idea of the Bajoran pilot - what was her name again? - she's just a stand-in. She has had a few lines of sub-standard dialogue by this point and I am unimpressed. Detmer at least had some tension to her - she was a very angry character, to the point where that was her defining character trait (I can't remember the episode but I can't forget the scene where Saru is leading the crew in a dinner and Detmer makes up a rhyme about Stamet's blood. I think it was shortly after they jumped to the future.) 💔

Um since when are so many Commanders allowed on one ship? And why were they all passed over for promotion, having loyally followed Michael into the future - as Paul reminds us right before she blasts him out of an airlock - so she wouldn't have to be alone? Rayner seems like a wild card. I would have loved to see one of the original bridge crew who followed Michael to the future get a chance to shine as her Number 1. Just because Rayner needs a second chance doesn't mean that others don't deserve a first! 🌻

Who else loved seeing Bryce command the ship? That was a first I think, and speaks to my earlier point that he would have made a great Number 1. He stays level and calm - unlike, ahem, a certain Commander *coughs* Rayner. 😂

Part of me really wants to see Michael save the galaxy yet again, but don't you think it would be more fun if, say, she failed and Stamets did it single-handedly for a change? 😉

I was talking with my neighbor (he's also a Trekkie) and we were thinking about the choice to make the Breen liquid. Why? Well, because of the Founders, of course. If all the changeling-like, Founder-esque species allied together during the Dominion war, this adds exactly no layers of nuance to DS9 canon because one can throw one's hands quite neatly in the air and say, "Heh. Our old enemy, xenophobia strikes again. Thank goodness we have our own personal savior conveniently captaining a ship capable of going anywhere in the galaxy at the press of a spore drive button, right?" 🙏

Also I personally think answering the question of, "What does a Breen look like under their helmet?" takes away from their mystique. And their fearsomeness. It humanizes them, okay, and that was the one thing the Breen didn't need. They're Breen! Also, heheh, green. ❇️

Just kidding. Imma miss the ever-living daylights out of Disco when it's gone. I was kind of hoping for it to end with a bang, but it seems a whimper is all we'll get. 😭

[samnotsammy12]

Rewatching Discovery and i just realized that Nhan’s dress version of the Discovery uniform has ZIPPER POCKETS

And I don’t think the pants version has any pockets so that’s a hilarious reversal of the current common dress vs. pants situation that most people have problems with

Also the scene where Georgiou is like “in my universe Stamets was pan and we had DEFCON-level fun together” and she leaves and Tilly just goes “What just happened?” SHE’S SO CUTE I LOVE HER

[trashymycology]

The first book I’ll be reading and posting about was written by Paul Stamets in 1996: Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World: An Identification Guide, with forward written by Andrew Weil, M.D.

Paul Stamets is a renowned American mycologist who received an honorary Doctorates degree in Mycology, as he left college upon receiving a bachelor’s degree. Prior to and during this time, Stamets taught himself much of what he knows of fungi in his home state of Washington throughout the late-mid century boom of psilocybin mushroom growth. Stamets now cultivates and distributes supplemental mushroom products throughout the country with his business, Fungi Perfecti.

Fun fact!! The character of Lieutenant Commander Paul Stamets of Star Trek: Discovery was largely based on his real-world counterpart. The character of Lt. Commander Stamets is an Astromycologist who completes research over extraterrestrial fungi-like organisms throughout the run of the show!

[quasi-normalcy]

Modern Star Trek has made meaningful advances in the area, with the inclusion of Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp) and Hugh Culber (Wilson Cruz) and the introduction of characters like Adira Tal (Blu del Barrio) on Star Trek: Discovery. However, nostalgia for 1990s Star Trek can have frustrating results. The third season of Star Trek: Picard, essentially a nostalgic revival of The Next Generation, marginalized its preexisting queer characters and scrapped its central transgender metaphors. However, modern Star Trek also — like a lot of modern fan service- and nostalgia-driven media — struggles to engage meaningfully with its relationship to a complicated history. Modern Star Trek shows tend to treat Rick Berman’s Star Trek shows as a lost and idealized past when everything was perfect. This is perhaps most obvious in the way that these shows fetishize Starfleet, an institution of which The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine were frequently and justifiably critical. That’s why “we are Starfleet” has become something of a mantra for these shows, a way of treating Starfleet as a stand-in for the franchise and its values. However, treating Starfleet as a stand-in for the larger Star Trek franchise, particularly in the context of this 1990s nostalgia, means wrestling with that complicated history in a meaningful way. It is something that Deep Space Nine did regularly but that most of these modern Star Trek shows have been unable to do. “Ad Astra Per Aspera” is an episode the franchise should have made decades ago. This is what makes “Ad Astra Per Aspera” so bracing. It’s an episode that puts the era of the show that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is so nostalgic for on trial. It’s notable that the first witness is Captain Robert April (Adrian Holmes), not only the first canonical commander of the Enterprise but also one explicitly modeled on Gene Roddenberry. Una protests to her lawyer, Neera Ketoul (“Ketoul” spelling TBA, Yetide Badaki), “What was that? You’re supposed to defend me, not attack Admiral April, not indict the Federation.”

[whovianwatchingstartrek]

A Whovian Watches Star Trek for the First Time: Part 112 - Search and Extraction

Star Trek: Discovery - Season 2 Episode 1 - Brother

On to Season 2! When last we left off, Discovery had just answered a distress call from the Enterprise! Still Captained by Christopher Pike from the Original Series Pilot.

We open with a retelling of the story from the first Short Trek I watched before season 1, followed by a new flashback to Michael's adoption by Sarek, and we also get to see her meet Spock as a child for the first time as a child.

It feels really weird to have the entire crew of Discovery just be in awe at the Enterprise when by all means the Discovery's experimental tech should make it the impressive ship. I know the Enterprise, this specific Enterprise, is like behind the scenes important, it is the Original Series ship, but I guess I was under the impression that in-universe Enterprise is just a normal ship, tech-wise.

A small team from Enterprise beam aboard Discovery, including Pike himself, and it appears they're here to take command of Discovery under some sort of emergency regulation. Michael was expecting Spock to be the Science officer who beamed aboard, but it's some other guy.

Pike here seems a lot more upbeat than he did in The Cage, but I'm here for it. I like that he takes the time to learn the Discovery Crew's names, and also takes time to listen to his crew's suggestions. Pike's mission is to investigate some unknown signals, but Enterprise's systems failed for unknown reasons en-route.

We get to catch up with are own crew for a while, and my heart is going out for Paul Stamets, and his absolute grief for Dr Culber. Apparently, he's been offered a teaching position at the Vulcan Academy, which means we'll be without an engineer for a while. It also seems like all the Spore Drive tech has been shut down, which is sad, they set up a lot of possibilities with it. I suppose a scientific block ops research ship doesn't have much purpose without the war though, so it makes sense.

Discovery arrives at the signal's coordinates, and some weird happenings are occurring. There is a huge gravity well, a huge asteroid field, and in the middle of it: A Starfleet ship, a medical ship that was supposed to have been destroyed in the war. Also, apparently the remaining spores have been reacting weird near the signal position.

The small enterprise squad are joined by Michael as they go down to investigate the ship's wreckage. The team's flight through the asteroid field was a pretty fun sequence. Unfortunately Pike's Non-Spock Science Officer doesn't make it to the wreckage, Michael and the Captain do manage to touch down even if Pike's pod isn't in one piece.

On the asteroid's surface, the ground crew find a set of small drones in the ship's wreckage. The drones lead the trio to their creator. She's an engineer who's been keeping the wreckage of the medical ship barely functional, and apparently isn't aware that the war is over. From here, the episode becomes an extraction mission for this engineer and her patients.

Unfortunately during the extraction, Discovery starts to take damage from the Asteroids, but the patients and most of the ground crew do manage to get transported out safely. Michael is initially left behind, and winds up impaled through the leg during the escape, but she very very briefly catches sight of a red shadowy figure, presumably related to the anomalous signal, before she's pulled out by discovery.

This episode was a fun season opener, a relatively unimportant side mission, but it established a fun new mystery around the 7 mysterious signals, and I'm glad the series seems to be taking on a tone more akin to Enterprise season 1, 2 and 4, now that the Klingon War is over. Pike was great, not particularly stand out, but it's nice to have a more standard captain around after both Lorca and Emperor Georgiou's brief command of the ship. I'm looking forward to this season, and I'm happy Pike seems to be sticking around to help train up Saru into a more Captain like role.

[ljones41]

Remembering "STAR TREK DISCOVERY"

REMEMBERING "STAR TREK: DISCOVERY"

Seven years ago saw the premiere of the seventh television series from the STAR TREK franchise. "STAR TREK: DISCOVERY" premiered on September 24, 2017 on the CBS All Access streaming channel. The latter was renamed four years later as Paramount+. Created by created by Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman, the series starred Sonequa Martin-Green as Commander (later Captain) Michael Burnham.

"STAR TREK: DISCOVERY" followed the crew of the Federation starship U.S.S. Discovery, beginning a decade before the franchise's first series, "STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES", in the mid-23rd century. At the end of the second season, Discovery and its crew traveled to the 32nd century, which remained the setting for the last three seasons. The main character, Michael Burnham, began the series with the rank of Commander and as the First Officer of the U.S.S. Shenzhou. An encounter with the Klingon Empire led Burnham to suspect the latter had plans to attack the United Federation of Planets. When her commanding officer, Captain Philippa Georgiou dismissed her suspicions, Burnham committed mutiny, killed a Klingon leader and started the Federation-Klingon War. Her actions led Starfleet to court-martial her and sentence her to life in prison.

Six months after her court-martial, Burnham ended on a prison transport encountered technical difficulties. The U.S.S. Discovery, commanded by Captain Gabriel Luna, rescued the transport, Burnham and her fellow prisoners. While the other prisoners continued on to another prison, Luna retained Burnham aboard the ship after she helped the crew obtain a dangerous space creature. Thus, began Burnham's life aboard the U.S.S. Discovery. She started as science specialist and became Discovery's commanding officer by the end of Season Three.

I had encountered negative comments on the Internet from television critics and STAR TREK fans about "STAR TREK: DISCOVERY". But I had been determined to watch the show. Twelve years had passed since the cancellation of "STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE" and my curiosity had to be appeased. To be honest, I never really became a major fan of "ENTERPRISE", but I had been willing to give this new series a chance. Like "STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE" and "STAR TREK: VOYAGER" before it, "DISCOVERY" made history by its casting. The series featured the second person of color as the lead of a TREK series. And it featured the second female lead. However, "DISCOVERY" went beyond both "DEEP SPACE NINE" and "VOYAGER" by featuring the first woman of color as the lead. "DISCOVERY" also made history by featuring the first LGBTQ couple, Lieutenant Paul Stamets and Dr. Hugh Culber, as part of the cast. And Season Three featured the franchise's first openly non-binary character, Adira Tal.

I had watched the first season of "STAR TREK: DISCOVERY" and instantly fell in love with the series. "DISCOVERY" started out in serialized form from Day One by following the narrative formula of "BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER" - a multiple episodes arc within one season. Most of the characters struck me as ambiguous and complex, including the leading lady. I also loved how that first season set up the conflict between the Federation and the Klingon Empire; and how the starship's foray into the Mirror Universe affected the war for the Federation. There were times when I found myself wishing Michael Burnham had been Discovery’s commanding officer from the beginning. Her rank as Commander at the beginning of the series, followed by her eventual promotion to Captain by the end of Season Three, bore a strong and uncomfortable similarity to Benjamin Sisko's rank within Starfleet. I say uncomfortable, because like Burnham, Sisko was a person of color. And this seemed to be some kind of formula for non-white leads.

Despite the similarities between Burnham and Sisko's Starfleet careers, there were differences. Burnham's Starfleet rank underwent changes, due to her roles in the Federation-Klingon War. And if Burnham had began the series as Discovery’s captain, I wonder if I would have enjoyed her Season One arc as much as I did. The casting of Martin-Green as the series’ star proved to be controversial on many levels. Certain fans had resented her position as the show’s lead. They especially resented the revelation of her character, Burnham, as Spock’s adoptive sister. These fans had accused the showrunner of forgetting that the half-Vulcan/half-Human officer had never mentioned an adoptive sister in previous TREK productions. This is true. But these same fans had forgotten Spock’s penchant for never discussing his family, unless circumstances forced him to do so. This happened when the Enterprise (NCC-1701) crew first met his parents in an episode from "THE ORIGINAL SERIES". And history repeated itself when they met Spock's older half-brother for the first time in the 1989 movie, "STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER".

Despite the hullaballoo over Burnham’s character background and the series’ serialized arc, Season Two of "DISCOVERY" featured another season-long arc - the Federation’s conflict with a a rogue artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, this season also featured Captain Christopher Pike as Discovery’s temporary captain and the unnecessarily long presence of Spock aboard the starship, thanks to some contrived writing. Although many fans and critics had enjoyed Anson Mount’s portrayal of Pike, I found his performance dull and pretentious. Pike seemed to reek of what many had regarded as the traditional Star Trek leading man, but without any real spark.

Matters grew worse for me when the showrunner made the decision to send Discovery and the series into a new direction - namely 900 years in the future. Why? I had already written about that decision in another ARTICLE. Just because Burnham was Spock's adoptive sister, did not mean it would have been necessary for the series to make a concerted effort to connect with the 1966-69 series. Both Burnham and Spock had served aboard two completely different starships. Their chances of the occasional "family reunion" seemed fleeting at best. What made this decision even more ridiculous to me was the creation of a new series featuring Spock and Pike aboard the Enterprise (NCC-1701). This meant "STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS" was the actual prequel series and had the real task of connecting to the 1966-1969 series. And it did not always succeed. Needless to say, this decision to send Discovery into the future had changed the series’ style and tone and made it difficult for me to enjoy the rest of the show’s run.

I tried to stick with "DISCOVERY" during its third and fourth seasons. But I gave up every time I tried. For several years I never understood why the showrunner had decided to keep the Ash Tyler aka Voq character in the 23rd century, especially since he was Burham's love interest. I eventually discovered that the franchise had plans to create a series or movie about the Section 31 intelligence agency and Tyler had joined it sometime between Seasons One and Two. Tyler had remained behind as the agency's new leader. This never made sense to me. Ash Tyler never struck me as the type to command Section 31, let alone be one of its operatives. The showrunner kept Tyler in the 23rd century and allowed the Mirror version of Philippa Georgiou. I found this even more puzzling since Georgiou was supposed to be the lead in the Section 31 series. She was more Section 31 material than Ash Tyler. And unlike Burnham and the rest of the Discovery crew, she returned to the 23rd century in mid-Season Three. The TREK franchise eventually produced a movie about Section 31. Although Michelle Yeoh, the actress who portrayed Georgiou, was cast as the lead; the actor who had portrayed Ash Tyler, Shazad Latif, was never cast. Yeah . . . the actor got screwed over by the franchise.

With Ash Tyler out of the picture, "DISCOVERY"'s showrunner created a new love interest for Michael Burnham - a courier named Cleveland "Book" Booker. The two had become a romantic pair in very short time. Too short, in my opinion. Once Burnham and the Discovery crew realized that the Federation no longer existed, they set out to help Earth recreate the organization. Honestly, this goal bored me senseless. I had hoped the series would take another direction and try something new. But it did not. Even worse, the series gradually replaced its serialized format with more episodic writing over the last seasons. Its handling of Burnham's clash with Discovery's new captain and former First Officer, Saru, led to her being replaced by none other than Sylvia Tilly, a junior officer in Engineering. Yes . . . Saru had replaced the experienced Burnham with the inexperienced Tilly and very few people had complained about this scenario. Tilly had been a very popular character. Fortunately, the showrunner allowed Saru to face Starfleet's displeasure over such an idiotic decision. He was transformed from Discovery and Burnham became its new captain. To be honest, I never viewed these episodes. I learned about this particular arc from a relative of mine, who tried to stick with the series.

I made an attempt to resume viewing "STAR TREK: DISCOVERY" for Season Four . . . but my interest did not last. The series had become so boring to me by this point that I forgot what the fourth season was about. Did it have a season-long arc? I do recall various episodes that featured the occasional supporting character undergoing some kind psychiatric counseling, which bored me senseless. And honestly . . . I realized I had no interest in Earth or any other planet re-creating the Federation with the Discovery crew's help. At this point, I had simply given up.

There were aspects of "STAR TREK: DISCOVERY" that pleased me. Michael Burnham proved to be a very complex leading character. She had eventually been promoted to captain. Despite my issues with Season Two, I found it entertaining. And I loved the Season One. In fact, it is one of my favorite television seasons in the TREK franchise. However, the showrunner's decision to send the U.S.S. Discovery some 900 years into the future led to some bland and sometimes implausible storytelling that prematurely ended my interest in the series. Pity.

[quantumstarpaths]

i do think snw is a very interesting environment to see paul in bc hes just come from discovery where he was the worlds most specialest scientist and now hes here and hes just...not. hes just another guy. his drive has been taken and classified and now hes just. commander stamets. guy.

[best-star-trek-character]

Round Two

[defconprime]

Commander Paul Stamets

[adiraofthetals]

Discovery Christmas fic for you all!!!

I hope you enjoy it!!!

[fortheloveoflatinum]

Disco Predictions?