#commander t'ana

[cat-cosplay]

"Studying is good. But in real life, there’s going to be times when you need to make a mess of things before you can fix them." ~ T'Ana

[faithful-grigori]

LOWER DECKS STORY IDEAS

I have a lot of ideas when watching fiction sometimes. Unfortunately, I currently lack the skill and discipline to really get to work on putting these ideas into reality, especially since much of my Star Trek knowledge outside of Lower Decks and Prodigy is from wikis and scattered episodes and it’ll probably be some time before my on again off again watch through is complete. Thus, I write some of them down here in the hopes some people will at least enjoy the thoughts as they are. 

~Mirror Mirror

•One of my earliest and biggest ideas, the core thought is of course Mirror Universe shenanigans.

•My current thoughts is that this is a Mariner and Rutherford adventure, both because they’re the ones I have the strongest idea of what their mirror selves are like and because they need a team up.

•For Mariner’s counterpart, Beckett Freeman is a captain serving on an alternate universe Cerritos in the name of the Terran Resistance Forces. Coming from humble origins, like many Terrans she grew up in slavery. Her dad died when she was too young to remember it, her mom died as a result of doing something noble shortly before the camp was liberated, and frankly I’m guessing her separation from her Ramsey was also less than consensual and very permanent. As a result of this and many other wartime losses she’s become just as lonely and afraid of being vulnerable as Mariner; unlike Mariner Beckett Freeman responded not by embracing her passion and presenting herself as a two fisted wildcard but instead by emotionally withdrawing, becoming an icy, stoic lady of war who practices iron discipline and who refuses to let herself acknowledge that she cares about her crew because then it’ll hurt if they get hurt. In some ways she’s the Picard to Mariner’s Kirk.

•She and Mariner get off on the wrong foot, of course, and spend most of the story (the first, at least, more on that later in the post) at each other’s throats, their clashing responses to trauma leaving them thinking the worst of each other. 

•In the end there’s some big moment where they’re trapped alone and looking like they’re going to die which results in a massive blow up where all their dirty laundry with each other is aired and they get to reach a place of reconciliation. 

•One additional thought I’ve had for them that’s waned in import as time’s gone on but which I still want to include is the idea that the two are also jealous of each other; Beckett Freeman is jealous of how Mariner grew up in the “perfect” universe, how she gets to be frivolous and go on dates and play board games and get drunk and get to go home and tell tales of her time “slumming it” in the mirror universe rather than ever having to deal with the consequences like Starfleet officers get to do in these circumstances while Mariner is jealous of Captain Freeman for being a version of her who “womanned up” and became the responsible officer Mariner admitted back in season 1 that she thought everyone expected her to be and how much she felt like she was letting everyone down by not being.

•I also like the idea that Mirror!Jennifer is on the Ceritos or otherwise regularly in Mirror!Beckett’s orbit in this timeline and Captain Beckett has a growing crush on her she refuses to acknowledge for fear of vulnerability; Mariner encourages her to go for it, teaching the lesson she’s learned to show how she’s grown.

•Mirror!Rutherford crystalized in my head the day I finished Reflections. I’m definitely thinking he’s “old”/“Red” Rutherford as a Han Solo type small scale interstellar rogue with a heart of gold, possibly with (to our Ruthford’s great concern) a non-homicidal (…at least to his creator and allies) Badgey as a support A.I. in his ship or his implant, if he got it as part of a non-coverup dimensional rubberbanding thing.

•I imagine our Rutherford wanting to try and help his angrier, more isolated self find community in the Mirror!Ceritos crew in part as a way of atoning for not being able to save his other self.

•My thoughts regarding an external antagonist for the first of them is perhaps to bring in Mirror Billups, “King Andarithio”. I’m thinking that the Mirror version of Hysperia is much more “Game of Thrones” than “Ren Fair”, with Mirror Billups having grown up as a massive momma’s boy who then stabbed her in the back to claim the throne, a cackling, scenery chewing sadistic lunatic who managed to earn Hysperia’s place as a minor Alliance vassal state through So, So Much Murder, with the Mirror Ceritos, with the assistance of Mariner and Rutherford (and maybe Mirror Rutherford) the only ones who can respond in time to some murderous plan to strike a blow against the resistance.

•The idea I had for a second one involved the concept of Captain Riker sometime later coming onto the Ceritos only for an attempt to call him and the Titan into the Mirror Universe to instead pull him and the Ceritos with crew instead as a result.

•Turns out the Rebellion is dealing with a new and growing threat in addition to the Alliance in the form of a group of human supremacist revanchists who decided the Terran Empire was Cool, Actually, and are fighting against both Alliance and Rebellion in the name of going back to the bad old days with worrying levels of effectiveness under the command of “Emperor” Buenamigo. 

•The big problem is that the revanchists have managed to build their own big bad counterpart to the Titan as their flagship, captain by the Emperor’s best captain, an appropriately evil and twisted Mirror Riker (aka all of Riker’s morally worst qualities but made the dominant aspects of his personality mixed with some Terran Empire brutality). With the Rebellion struggling on multiple fronts, they ended up attempting an ambitious plot to call Riker and the Titan over to even the field, only to end up with the two Ceritos, their crew, and Riker forced to work together to cleverly fight against a vastly stronger opponent (Riker has practice at this sort of thing, after all, and this time the foe isn’t wearing the body of a friend).

•The big twist I was envisioning is that like main Buenamigo was an evil man who seemed good and who died when the A.I. he controlled slipped his leash, “Emperor” Buenamigo seems to be a murderous xenophobic megalomaniac but it actually a virtuous man puppeteered through invasive cybernetic implants by an A.I., managing to slip his leash at a crucial moment to help the heroes but dying for it.

•That A.I., in this case, is Mirror AGIMUS, just as vile as his main universe counterpart but never defeated by the Federation and now plotting to take advantage of the chaos the Mirror Universe is in to continue his divide and conquer scheme on a galactic scale.

•I do like the idea that Mirror Riker’s final fate coming at the hand of an enslave Mirror Troi, spurred on by a chance encounter with main universe Riker that convinces a pregnant Mirror Troi that she doesn’t want her baby to grow up with Mirror Riker for a father.

~Workforce Tendiford Pastiche

•The idea for this one is much more small scale and interpersonal. 

•The essence is that it is set shortly after the crew of the Ceritos has been through a series of events loosely pastiching the Voyager two parter “Workforce” (S7E16-17), kidnapped and implanted with fake memories by a planet looking for workers. Unlike the Voyager crew, the method used was low quality enough that while things were dealt with much easier there’s still lingering memories and impressions left over after the fact. 

•Mostly, the main plot thread I envisioned was that as a result of their alternate identities being a married couple and their deep, probably platonic closeness as their real selves, Tendi and Rutherford keep causally forgetting that they haven’t been hitched for many years, and are forced to question what that means about how they feel about each other in a way that leads to the first steps to an eventual actual romance.

•I do feel like more threads going on in the background might be useful, with considered ideas including Boimler’s memories including a childhood working in “The Mines” as grounds for a bit of “Hard Time” (Deep Space 9 S4E19) parody (though that might be a bit too mean spirited), nobody going to counseling (making things worse and threatening issues from Starfleet command) because Migleemo’s persona two-timed a worrying amount of the crew and it’s left things very awkward, or T’Ana remembering she and Shaxs were trying for kids while deluded and discovering a whole minefield of “fear of becoming a parent” based neuroses she didn’t even realize she had.

~Tendiford green card marriage 

•One of the oldest ideas on the list, and one that would need an understanding of all canon and secondary canon materials regarding immigration into the Federation and Federation citizenship in order to format in a way that plausibly leads to the required circumstances.

•The idea is that some series of power plays in Orion space or just in the Syndicate mean that some or all of Tendi’s family wants her home to take part in these events, now. Tendi refuses due to moral concerns about what they’re specifically asking her to do, so the relevant family try to exploit some ambiguity in Federation legal matters to get her declared a criminal on Orion and demand the Federation return her to receive “Justice”. It’s highly unlikely to work, the Federation seeing right through it, but Tendi is terrified. 

•Thus, she sets to formally becoming a Federation citizen in the name of protecting herself from her family’s plans. Worried (unjustifiably) about whether she can prove herself to have built enough of a life in the Federation, she and Rutherford seize upon the idea that if they get married, that’ll cinch the deal, and then a few months after both the completion of the last of the paperwork and the threat blowing over they can fake a fight and divorce. 

•After all, they’re such good friends, that means they should easily be able to learn to fake a relationship well enough to fool some bureaucrats without making things weird or messy or complicated, right?

•…They cannot.

•What follows is the story of the duo learning to live the lie of being a couple, like attempting to have a properly romantic and public date or getting over how cringe-inducing they initially find referring to each other by first name, only to catch feelings along the way.

•an unreasonably large portion of the reason for this concept is the idea of a pastiche of a romantic climax where Rutherford rushes to catch Tendi when she’s about to do something rash as a result of hurt feelings born of their ruse, stopping her in a place that happens to have people milling about, gives a big dramatic speech about love and taking chances and how he wants to be a part of her life that has the crowd going “Awwww!”… only to end it with a proposal parodying exchange along the lines of “Tendi… no, D’vana; will you not divorce me?” “No… no Sam, I won’t!”, leading to a still touched but much more confused “…Awwww?” from onlookers.

~Nightmarish silent hill psychodrama near death “Coda” Mariner story

•A story based on exploring the depths of Mariner’s psyche in an action context as inspired by an episode of Voyager (S3E15) and much more loosely by Silent Hill, a series I have never engaged with and do not really have an intention to, because there is something wrong with me.

•The idea is that the day starts normally for Beckett, who miraculously survived a dangerous incident that left her trapped planet-side with her mom and Boimler, but as time goes on, odd things start happening; a photo of her and Ramsey is taped to the wall of her bunk she hasn’t seen in years, she see a bloody Angie walking around in her peripheral vision only to vanish when she turns to look, she keeps hearing indistinct but distressed voices speaking to her as if from a great distance, and so on and so forth.

•And what she initially dismisses as nothing grows increasingly intense as logic starts to break down, eventually leaving her trapped in a hellish nightmare dungeon forged of her fears and despairs and regrets, fighting her own inner demons and traumas for survival and the desperate hope for escape.

•At the end of Coda Janeway wonders if more of that species (I’ll call them Matrix Harvesters for the purposes of this post) exist in the Alpha Quadrant; the basis of this fic is that they do and Mariner’s finding out first hand, having not “miraculously survived “, instead on the threshold of life and death from her injuries as Carol and Brad struggle to keep her alive, the voices she hears. Unlike the other Matrix Harvester, this one is both much more blunt force and a self-proclaimed artiste, focusing not on “lowly” deception but instead on using Beckett’s psyche as the paint and easel for a masterpiece designed to break her so thoroughly that she’ll depart to the horrors of their Matrix of her own free will just to make it stop.

•Boimler’s fanboying of Voyager is going to be a crucial factor here, his study of comments made by the crew and the declassified portions of the logs allowing him to identify the odd tricorder readings, which lets him and Freeman keep Mariner alive in spite of not being medical specialists and lacking in tools.

•Similarly to how Janeway’s Harvester took the shape of her father to deceive her, I feel like the sapient cave Mariner mentions in episode 1 might make a good avatar for the Matrix Harvester trying to break Mariner (it knows things), possibly pairing it with an attempt at a “You never left, the years since were a denial-fueled hallucination!” fakeout.

•That last bit, Mariner seeming to wake up in the cave and offered a “real” way out that’s actually a gate to this Matrix only to be rescued at the last minute, might make a good one shot on its own.

~Riddle of the Self (Conundrum character study) 

•This one was inspired by disappointment in the fact that TNG’s Conundrum (S5E14) wasn’t as much of a character study as I liked and my enjoyment of the potential of plots where the cast has to puzzle out who they are.

•The contrivance that sets the plot into motion is after the end of s3 some sort of unstudied stellar phenomenon interacts with some other causation unpredictably, launching the Ceritos outside of Federation space, damaging or scrambling lots of computerized components, and ultimately knocking out and wiping the memory of all the sapients active on the ship.

•The result upon waking is a mad scramble to fix the most important systems, after which they have just enough computer access to gather that they’re part of a greater organization, a rough route to Federation space (a month or two’s journey), and the names of some members of the crew; unlike TNG they don’t get to actually look at profiles until they fix more of the ship later.

•The idea for what follows is the story of how they grapple with the challenges and freedom of not knowing who they are and how their reactions bounce off each other interspersed with some peril courtesy of the difficulties of their damaged ship and their struggle to get home.

•For Boimler I’m envisioning his arc centering around the idea of a series of further contrivances that mean he’s on the bridge and Jack isn’t, meaning he gets mistaken for First Officer Ransom; retaining much of the growth he’s made as a person and without the context needed for his eagerness to please authority figures to flare up (not sure if phrasing this right?) he performs exceptionally, meaning even when enough memory emerges and records are recovered to prove his real identity Captain Freeman is able to earnestly reassure him it was an honor to work alongside him, affirming he has potential so long as he’s able to continue growing a spine and getting out of his own head.

•Mariner I imagine gets the biggest arc, one about relationships platonic and romantic. An additional contrivance has her and Jennifer in the same hallway (possibly with Jen trying to avoid conversation while Mariner tries to get closure about some uncomfortable topics) when the event hits, the turbulence leaving them sprawled on the same bunk when they wake without memory; combined with some physical photos of them together that they haven’t gotten rid of they conclude they may be a couple, and end up falling in love even more than they did before, because there’s no fear of closeness or knowledge of past behavior holding them back.

•Similarly, Beckett and Carol rapidly find themselves attaining a mentor/mentee relationship, a close, pseudo-familial bond that’s “clean” and “smooth”, free of the messy tangle of arguments and regrets formed up over their decades of knowing each other. One thought that’s come to mind is after a certain point in their journey enough data is recovered to start playing some personal logs, with both Mariner and Freeman gaining access to logs venting about their mom/daughter (respectively) without giving enough details to put two and two together; accepting their own complaints uncritically, they commiserate over their seemingly lousy families (probably unknowingly critiquing themselves in the process of reassuring the other) and take each other up as “honorary” mother and daughter.

•And then near the emotional climax of the arc enough memory and data is recovered that they DO start putting two and two together, and the angst really starts. Face to face with the relationship failures of Mariner of Mariner and the two who turned their backs on her, the question is “Why do I know you better, why do you know me better, when I don’t know myself?”

•I feel like I need plotline(s) for Tendi and Rutherford but I’m drawing a bit of a blank. In line with the other two threads the ideas would probably revolve around the setup of discovering their potential without their past pains and hangups to hold them back. For Tendi maybe play something with how she’s the only Orion aboard and how nobody remembers enough to have any preconceptions, something in the same vein as that one scene with Data and Geordi in the inspiring episode? 

~ET/First Contact Pastiche

•Loosely inspired by episodes like “First Contact” (TNG S4E15), Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planetary Development, and movies like E.T.

•The idea starts with an au where either the Federation came into existence without humans becoming a member species, or an au where the human members of the Warp Core Four and a splash of a few other human characters are not part of the Federation, but live on a world similar (in every way that benefits the plot at least) to Earth in the 1980s.

•Thus, Mariner, Boimler, and Rutherford are college students looking to get into the space program, Mariner and Boimler as astronauts, Rutherford as an engineer. They’re living their lives, studying, shooting the breeze, ribbing Mariner for her obvious crush on classmate Ramsey… then an alien crash lands when they’re out stargazing or something.

•Turns out the Federation starship that Ensign D’Vana Tendi was on got caught up in an attack that had Tendi captured, only to escape and end finding herself on this pre-warp planet in a way that’s left her unconscious and wounded and which gives these three a front row seat, resulting in them taking her to safety and her stuck unable to hide her existence from them, so she ends up convincing them to swear to secrecy and ends up taking their offer to get back home.

•Unfortunately, her pursuers are still after her, and while circumstances for whatever reason demand at least a degree of discretion they are still ruthless and well armed. Perhaps worse, they are also Orions, members of some Syndicate family seeking to spite her parents through doing something nasty to her.

•Part of the reason why this is worse is that the government quickly finds out about the existence of aliens and would be unwilling to accept that Tendi comes in peace even if the Syndicate members weren’t more than willing to kill in the name of their goals, providing another foe to flee. Complicating matters further is that Carol Freeman is the officer put in charge of hunting down and “dealing with” the so-called invaders, her relationship with Mariner and her canon personality flaws producing a lot of friction, though I’m imagining she pulls through and does the right thing in the end.

•The result is an action comedy romp as the quartet dodge government goons and killer space pirates to get Tendi home, all the while learning about who they are along the way. 

•I’m unsure if I would pursue a Tendiford angle; having Rutherford and Tendi bond over their mutual nerdery is a given, especially given a thought I have for the ending, but whether it stays platonic or I go for the sweet romance angle I’m less sure about.

•If it does go romantic I like the idea of a scene where Mariner encourages Rutherford to go for the girl while also making it clear that in addition to being his friend and wanting him to be happy she will also be furious on the principle of the thing if he doesn’t because meeting an alien space babe with a weird skin color who’s into you is something she’s pretty sure every female attracted sci fi fan has dreamt about at least once and she refuses to let him spit in their faces by refusing to even try and shoot his shot.

•Either way, my idea is that in the end Rutherford pulls a First Contact and choses to go with Tendi to seek life in the Federation, unable to resist the siren song of all that knowledge and tech, while Beckett and Brad stay behind to do what they can to build a better world that’ll one day reach the stars and all that.

~Fairy tales Beckett and Carol team up action drama Strange New Worlds inspired

•The newest and maybe the weakest of the ideas, as the section heading suggests it was inspired to capitalize on some threads from the S3 finale and by the episode description of Strange New Worlds S1E8, “The Elysian Kingdom”, a series I have not reached in my on again off again efforts to watch all Trek.

•At its core this is a story about the tensions between Mariner and Carol after the events of the last few episodes of S3, because while Beckett has insisted that everything is fine, the terrible things that were said (“I don't even know if I can call you my daughter anymore!”) still lingers unmended, as do all the years of friction which those words were a culmination of.

•For the purposes of this fic, Mariner does mean it about having no grudge against the crew of the Ceritos as a whole. Her mom, Jenifer, maybe even the rest of the Warp Core Four (who clearly also assumed that she did it with zero evidence, they just liked her too much to think she should be punished for it), on the other hand, did hurt her dearly, but she’s trying to be a better officer, trying to be more mature, and so isn’t a better thing to choke down her rage and sorrow and pain and bottle it up like a professional, to let the questions of why someone like Ransom (who hated her so much he was willing to risk Rutherford and Billups dying just to spite her) showed more trust in her character that the woman she thought loved her as much as Mariner loved Jen or (more importantly for this fic) the woman she’s literally known all her life, who tucked her in at night and read her stories and who told her she loved her little Becky to the moon and back (what does that say about Mariner’s loved ones? What does that say about Beckett herself?) wither and die in her throat rather than cause a scene for the sake of rebelling.

•It doesn’t occur to her that she’s reverting to old unhealthy methodologies of building up walls to hide from the pain of vulnerability, just now with a more responsible sounding coat of paint.

•Things start coming to a head when an encounter with a odd extrastellar anomaly or some reality warper ends up twisting the Ceritos into a giant holodeck based around a fantasy story Carol read to Beckett when she was young, twisted and alloyed with memories that are emotionally charged for the both of them, with everyone but the mother daughter pair brainwashed to fill the cast.

•What follows is the two of them puzzling and fighting their way through a wild and chaotic landscape designed to evoke memories both sweet and bitter, struggling to save ship and crew from this phenomenon even as the spark travels across a trail of powder until the metaphorical keg goes up in flames, a massive, ugly heart to heart that ends with both stripped of all defenses, bloody and raw and vulnerable, hurting and ragged and finally on the same page in a way they haven’t been since Mariner was a child.

•As an aside, I feel like one idea is that Carol never learned about Jennifer, with her only finding out about all that when the phenomenon casts Jen as some sort of villainous character or archetype that lends well to sultry flirtation, leaving Mariner on the backfoot and flustered in a way that results in Carol trying to get answers from her daughter, putting her further off balance.

[lieutenant-bradward-boimler]

How much coffee is too much coffee?

[quasi-normalcy]

Lower Decks season 5 predictions!

Shaxs/T'ana wedding!

Relatedly: Kira is a wedding guest

Possibly related: We get to see the Caitian homeworld

William Boimler returns, seemingly as a villain, but actually he's infiltrating Section 31 on Riker's orders

Mariner needs to be in command of a group of ensigns, at least one of whom is obnoxiously insubordinate towards her

The alternate reality version of Rutherford from the trailer has all his original memories

Another Crisis Point episode! Or, rather, I'm thinking that there will be a fake epilogue at the end of the finale where it looks like it's a few years later and one of them has been given their first command, but then it turns out to be on the holodeck

Ferenginar joins the Federation

There's an actual serious episode where some supporting character gets "redshirted"

A Planet Killer joins the battle in the opening credits

Everyone gets promoted up to lieutenant in the finale

Not quite a cliffhanger ending, but something that demands closure occurs in the finale

Something happens that's relatively innocuous on its own terms, but ties directly into the backstory for 'Prodigy' or 'Picard'

Avery Brooks guest stars. (I'm not actually expecting this, this is blatant wishcasting. But even so.)

[antigrav-boy]

My favourite quotes from The Cerritos Command Crew

Captain Carol Freeman

"Ugh. I don't know why I keep giving alien street food a chance. It's always such a gamble"

Commander Jack Ransom

"Hey! I'm supposed to press the button, you sexy bastard!"

"This is my universe, you steamy hunk!"

Lieutenant Shaxs

"I'm going to fight! I'm going to get revenge! I'm… going to make a cute little ashtray for my incense. It's going to look like a puppy."

Chief Medical Officer T'Ana

"Oh come on. I just revived him. Everybody out! Give me 30 cc's of whatever just worked a [bleep] minute ago"

Lieutenant Commander Andy Billups

"I'm fine! The doc just needs to stay in her lane because I don't go down to her sickbay and tell her how to hypo her sprays!"

[morns-fevered-dream]

Back to live blogging Lower Decks so obviously Spoilers✨️ but I'm yet again excited

Season 4 Episode 3

Ransom kept critiquing the sculptures lol

Yes being supportive of the old super computer

It's looks so tired

Boimler Commanding?!?

Yet again I love the amount of different aliens in the background I'm pretty sure I saw a Zakdorn and in past seasons their has been Arkonian and those TMP aliens and so many more I love looking in the background for the different aliens

Oh the earlier seasons tng Betazoid box thing

Dr. T'Ana has been in here lmao

I love hearing Tendi talk about Orion stuff it's fun

I enjoy Ensign Taylor a normal amount

Mariner going for the "less stabby" solution?!

Let it out Dirk :)

Slop Jazz? Sign me up

The god damn Wadi game!

The Wadi being disappointed in how fast Rutherford going is funny

Boimler?

The Ensigns immediately bursting into tears was funny

That damn koala

"Give me 30cc of whatever just worked a minute ago" killed me

Jazz Mariner

Poor Dirk

WHat DAMN YOU DIRK!

I too fell for Wadi story

Besides the great Dirk betrayal it was a real fun episode perhaps my favorite of this season yet

[u2fangirlie-blog]

I made a thing! First real attempt at sharing a meme with a group.

Recently, I started watching Star Trek: Lower Decks. I unashamedly love it. As a lapsed Star Trek fan, it helped bring me back into the fold. I started following the Facebook "gronp" Star Trek Shitposting. I had an idea to make a meme about the Caitian characters M'Ress, from Star Trek: The Animated Series, and Doctor T'Ana, from Lower Decks. Here's the original post and photo.

I made a thing. New OC. What would Caitians think about Earth cats? Are polydactyl cats from outer space?

22 Sept. 2023 on Facebook group Star Trek Shitposting

Within the first hour, it had 100 likes and 75 comments. This went on for hours! I felt endorphins and happiness! I liked and replied directly to comments to encourage participation and show my appreciation for people interacting with my meme. I wrote a lot of comments! Lost track of how many comments are mine. So here's what I wrote on my timeline:

OMG GUYS! In an hour, it got over 100 likes and the discussion has 75 comments. I'm a Star Trek Shitite! Everybody wants to talk about Star Trek and cats! All the science nerds and weirdoes are commenting! Look, Mom! I'm not the only damn weirdo!

22 Sept. 2023 on Facebook.

Then the next morning I realized I needed to create an alternate text description of the image for people using text-to-speech readers, so I wrote one.

Image description: Two pictures. Right Panel is M'Ress from Star Trek: The Animated Series at her communications station on the bridge of the Enterprise. Left panel is Doctor T'Ana from Star Trek: Lower Decks in sickbay treating a patient on the Cerritos. Caption across the top. "Xenobiology Report on Caitian Anatomy: Polydactyl Traits." Caption above left panel: "Communications Officer Lieutenant M'Ress: 3 fingers, 1 thumb." Caption above right panel: "Chief Medical Officer Commander Doctor T'Ana: 4 fingers, 1 thumb."

23 Sept. 2023 on Facebook group Star Trek Shitposting

After 24 hours of trying to keep up with responses and comments, and boring my parents with talking excitedly about how freaking cool it is to find a group weirdoes who think about the same stuff, I made another post on my timeline.

STSP meme 24 Hours - 235 likes. 214 comments. My favorite comment so far. "Y'all are WAY overthinking this." No, my dude, we are not way over thinking it. My response: "Nonsense! I've been thinking about this for years. It's about time people started talking about cartoon science fiction feline species' fingers. LOL!" Everyone is having a good time. No one is fighting. So far people shared photos of their polydactyl cats.

The nerds have dug into deep lore in what is or is not canon for felinid species in Star Trek and depictions of Caitains and Kzinti in other ST books and media. We've discussed seafaring history of 6-toed Earth cats, and the frequency of polydactylism in big cats and domestic cats. Based on sex characteristics of lions, does that make M'Ress trans because she has a male lion's mane? That's valid headcanon! What advantages do extra toes provide for cats? Are they more stable and agile?

Are the differences between M'Ress's and T'Ana's fingers an oversight by the artist (working on 2 different shows 50 years apart) or was it a deliberate choice by the Lower Decks artist? A lot of people are talking about different animation styles depicitng people with 3 fingers and a thumb (as seen in Disney cartoons and The Simpson and Futurama) as opposed to 4 fingers and a thumb, which is artistically messy. The nerds confirmed that all the main characters in Star Trek: The Animated series, where M'Ress originated, are drawn with 4 fingers and a thumb. So the Caitian hand with 3 fingers and a thumb was an artistic choice. What explains the anatomical differences among Caitians? Living on different continents? Alternate universes? Or natural diversity within a species? Infinite diversity in infinite combinations.

Other differences between M'Ress and T'Ana people pointed out: Their feet. As one person wrote "digitigrade caitians vs. plantigrade caitians and their use of shoes." M'Ress walks on her toes and does not wear shoes. T'Ana walks flat-footed and wears shoes. Someone else pointed out that footwear would be a requirement for a medical officer. Their pupils: Someone pointed out that M'Ress's pupils are vertical slits, where T'Ana's pupils are round but can change into vertical slits. My final thought of the night is on the evolution of Caitain hands and whether or not the fingers and palms have hairless textured skin to better manipulate tools or if they adapted tools for hairy fingers. I need to know!

Next time we'll talk about the number and position of Caitian mammary glands. Stay tuned for future content!

23 Sept. 2023 on Facebook

[thelesseroftwoweevils]

So after the Strange New Worlds crossover I finally did something I've been putting off for a long time and watched Lower Decks. Avoided it for similar reason as I did SNW that it's praised as saving Trek from improper things like Disco and Picard and liking those that didn't sell me on SNW and LDs.

Which is a shame because both of them are decent and for the same reason, the main cast is reasonably charming and likable and good natured.

Anyway, I'm now up-to-date all the way to season 4 and the new cast and changes lead me to think about a couple of the new possibilities for story arc and will the show take full advantage of them:

To-whit: T'Lyn and the Lower Decker's promotions.

T'Lyn wants to get back to the Vulcan Fleet, and I wonder if her arc will be learning to accept Starfleet and how much cooler and more accepting it is. Or the others having to learn to accept her and her goals and support her in getting back to where she wants to be.

Like Tendi's all over her at the moment and not respecting her boundaries, that could be just their comic dynamic, or it could be a point Tendi learns that she has to have a different relationship with her than she does say... Rutherford or the others in Beta Shift.

And the Lower Decks promotions will they take advantage of the theoretical greater responsibility and authority over others that the promotion entails or will they stay lower deckers with a similar roles just more pips and nice rooms.

Like they should be bossing teams of ensigns about at least a bit. And I'd really like to see them have to handle and adapt to that. Jen the Andorian would be perfect for Mariner (or Boimler who could also dislike Jen for not supporting Mariner) to be in command of, same department and they'd struggle between professionism and personal conflicts. Just a thought.

-

oh and a complete tangent one of Lower Decks other very rare couples: Shaxs and T'Ana. Shaxs needs to dump her. He just seems really unhappy. In s3 there seemed to be some give and take but not in the most recent holodeck scene.

[hedonicghost]

I really really really like meddoks shes commander t'ana to me

Yeah, I can see it

[cal-1maf]

It's all in the paperwork.

Sickbay reports the metrics of the diseases it treats. Dr. T'ana knows exactly which strains of Denobulan Supergonorrhea are going around the ship and can probably track who's banging who by the mutations in bacterial samples. The who and why probably doesn't move up the chain (patient confidentiality) but the captain will know when there's an outbreak, and so will command when they review the ship's logs.

We know from SNW that when officers enter a romantic relationship (a committed one, not just banging), they're supposed to report it, too. This is probably so that the person making the duty roster (Ransom, probably) can schedule things to minimize the risk of people needing to put their partner in harm's way. Also so that the couple can petition to have joint quarters later or apply for transfers to follow each other through the fleet. Also so command staff can track how fast the gamma-shift polycule is expanding and when it will take over the entire ship.

That it's tracked doesn't feel weird to me, a child of the 21st century surveillance state. That Ransom knows the metrics in comparison to the rest of the fleet though is funny. I guess Starfleet's just transparent with their data.

"statistically the horniest and least romantically committed crew in Starfleet" bro how are they measuring that

[zawazawanightmares]

Commander T'Ana & Elias

[rob-demers-art]

Commander T'Ana from Star Trek: Lower Decks.

SHOP: https://robdemersart.com/ etsy: https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/RobDemersArt patreon: https://www.patreon.com/RobDemersArt instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robdemersart/ facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RobDemersArt

[muse-inn]

Here’s a little Inbox Call for Commander, MD, T'Ana. Like this post and I search your meme tag for a fitting prompt to toss into your inbox. Or I do a prompt of my own if I can't find anything that resonates with the muse. Please don’t forget to specify for which muse/blog if you’re a multimuse or hub.

[mazamba]

"We made too many guns, didn't we?" sighed Ransom.

"I don't suppose you can vaporize these guys like you did that dragon?" suggested Shaxs.

"Not unless we have another transporter here!" yelled Tendi back.

In the meantime, T'Ana was busy with Vixen.

"Hold her down!" she ordered as she headed to the replicator, "I'm not dealing with any more fucking zombies here!"

She tapped out a command and gathered the hypospray that came out.

"Is that the same shot you used on the rage virus back then?" recalled Boimler, "From the spider milk slime? Would that even work here?"

"If anyone has a better idea I'm all ears!" she snapped back, "No? Shut the fuck up!"

She injected Vixen and watched her vitals on the biobed.

"Ok, looks like it's working," she declared, "Captain! This is a strain of the rage virus! If we can mist this over the zombies, it should take them all out!"

"Can you make enough?"

"Yes, but we'll need to take the shields down. It's the only way we'll have enough power to dose them all."

Closed RP w/mazamba

This planet Jason was on was once thriving world. A planet full of trees, water, animals, and people. All who lived peacefully on the planet, until a war broke out in this sector. This left the planet in ruins, all of its resources plundered, and its people nearly wiped out. Centuries have passed and the planet has been nearly forgotten.

Jason was told the planet was under the control of a group called the Klingons. He didn’t think too much about it and knew he would be out of here before they found out or one of their allies.

He walks over towards his prize. A box containing a valuable item that he knew would come in for a pretty penny…or whatever currency the people of this universe use. He walks over and begins to disable any security systems around, before getting his prize. He wipes away the dirt from it, opens it, and smiles when he saw what’s inside.

“Just like the buyer said,” Jason whispered before putting the box in his bag. 

@mazamba

[cat-cosplay]

Here's to T'Ana!

The best Chief Medical Officer in Starfleet!

[motherfingtitan]

Counter-Clock Incident Redux

When the Senior Crew comes back from an away mission, they mysteriously start to become younger. It’s up to Mariner, Boimler, Rutherford, Tendi, and Westlake to figure out what’s going on before it’s too late.

Click here for Chapter 3

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Carol paced back and forth in her ready room, trying to think of what had happened yesterday. Starfleet had ordered the entire Senior Crew to go on a diplomatic mission down to Cosma IV. The inhabitants of the planet were very hospitable and were happy to potentially be joining the federation. Afterward, the crew boarded a shuttlecraft back to the Cerritos. The planet’s atmosphere had too much interference, and Billups felt that it was too much of a risk to beam down. When flying back to the ship, the shuttlecraft was engulfed in bright white light with black dots. Just as soon as the shining light had come, it had gone. Just to be safe, Nurse Westlake scanned the Senior Crew to make sure that nothing was wrong, and they all came back clear.

Ransom was the first to walk into the ready room. Much of his bulky muscle mass was gone, and he had compensated by replicating a slimmer uniform. He still had his facial hair, but small amounts of acne littered his face. Jack had never told anybody, but he suffered from massive acne up until his late 20s.

He looked up at his now younger appearing captain. "Alright, this is definitely not good."

Both Shax and Dr. T'ana walked in next. The doctor's hair was remarkably more pigmented, and her eye bags were gone.

"F*ck, we all look 20 years younger," Her voice was less gravelly.

Shax let go of T'anas hand, not wanting to push the captain's limits on what was appropriate affection

"Last time I felt this good, I was bashing Cardassian's heads against each other!' He fist pumped the air, obviously excited for his new appearance.

"And last time I felt like this, I was up at 4:00 a.m. cramming for an engineering final at the academy," Billups walked in last, looking over various notes on his PADD

The senior officers all sat down at their respective chairs and took a moment to acquaint themselves with how they now looked and felt.

The Captain spoke first, "Is there any data on something similar like this happening on another ship?"

T'ana pulled out her PADD and glanced over the medical notes she made, "Something similar did occur on the Enterprise during the late 2260s. Kirk logged about going into an inverted dimension, where time goes backwards."

"So this happened during the TOS era," Ransom pointed out.

"It stands for those old scientists," Shax interjected before anyone else could question the strange acronym.

T'ana continued "I believe the same thing may have happened to us yesterday. Thing is, the crew stopped aging backwards once they left the dimension, and we haven't. I've got Westlake analyzing samples of my DNA as we speak."

'Wow' Ensign Kristina Chang mouthed as she looked into the microscope.

Under the microscope, she saw Dr. T'ana's cells do a reverse mitosis. The cells were either morphing together or dying, but not reproducing. She went to take notes as Tendi walked in.

"Have you figured out why Dr. T'ana is getting younger?"

Chang replied "Her cells are not reproducing. They are simply evolving in reverse and dying. I still don't understand it completely"

Westlake looked up from his notes at that moment "I want the rest of the senior crew in here so I can get samples from them. I'm gonna try to see if I can get some sort of hypospray made up to stop the de-ageing, but I need to make sure it works across all of them, Human, Bajoran and Caitian." He tapped his combadge "Westlake to senior crew, I need all of you to report to the quarantine area of Medbay for further testing,"

Though the comm, Freeman respond "Understood,"

The five senior officers soon were all dressed in Medbay gowns and on biobeds. Westlake had Tendi and Chang take blood, saliva, and skin samples. Every sample taken was going through reverse mitosis.

Tendi was helping Chang use the new medical tricorders. She was enthusiastic, loving the new and brighter screen that was on the interface.

"Don't worry doctor! We will get this whole thing solved and get you back to your age!" She bounced around the T'ana, waving the tricorder around.

"That's great," T'ana replied "but what are you using?"

"The new tricorder," Tendi slowed down.

"You just showed her how to use it yesterday, it's been authorized for use on support ships," Chang added.

T'ana shrugged, "I don't remember that at all"

Westlake walked behind the two Ensigns, "Do you remember who we are?"

"Only vaguely"

Tendi started to panic and ran over to Freeman "Captain, do you remember any of us, or what is going on?"

Carol squinted "No, not really, the only person I know in this room is Andy," Billups nodded in return.

Tendi started "They served together on the Enterprise D back in 2363,"

"That means that they aren't only de aging, they are losing their memories" Nurse Westlake realized

"And it's accelerating."

Edit: name change that slipped past me when editing