#i FINALLY actually started watching ds9

[hitrone]

i’m gonna be insane guys

[captaincrusher]

A thought on a queer Star Trek timeline

Watching Star Trek from the original series to modern times is to fast forward through the evolution of queer rights through the 20th and early 21st century.

In the original series queerness must be imagined in the close relationship between Kirk and Spock. We can only see ourselves in what we hope and dream about for the future. We get Amok Time.

In the 80's queer people start to materialize in the background. TNG takes tentative steps towards telling our stories, still cloaked in the allegory. We get Outcast.

In the 90's Ds9 gives us Rejoined. Still cloaked in allegory, but the lines get sharper, the mist starts to lift. A character has a monologue about how two people that love each other should be able to be together. Hidden winks has turned into words.

Voyager, while a good show in other respects, does not give us a single crumb of queerness. Aside from the relationships we ourselves imagine.

In the 2000's we are on the cusp of actually having queer people on screen. Enterprise tries to tell stories of gender (Cogenitor) and the AIDS crisis (Stigma), two episodes that are still filtered through a limited understanding of both. When Enterprise ends in 2005 and this Star Trek era ends with it, queer representation in film and tv is still scarce.

The AOS era instead is where queer people, for the first time, stepped out of subtext. Sulu is married to a man - a nod to George Takei, the original series actor. Star Trek Beyond comes out in 2016, the year after same sex marriage is legalized in the US.

It isn't until 2017 that a Star Trek show officially, without subtext or allegory, gets queer characters, when Paul Stamets and Hugh Culber are married on Discovery. Discovery also adds further queer characters down the line, finally saying that yes - queer humans do exist in the future.

I know you all will have opinions on what is queer or not. But when tracking the evolution of queer representation it's important to separate subtext from text and to separate when something is allegoric verses not.

I interpret Jadzia Dax as queer - but she is not human. She is an alien wrapped inside a gender non confirming shroud of gray areas. That is the strength of her character - that it allows the writers to explore themes that otherwise would have been taboo. But the fact that they could only pursue queer storylines with non human characters tells you something about the times.

it really feels like Star Trek was late to the party with queer representation. I think there's multiple reasons for that. One is that when Enterprise was created, it still carried the legacy of shows created in the 80's and 90's. Enterprise itself is also literally a prequel - there seemed to be little desire to be bold and innovative.

Timing is I think the main reason why Star Trek trailed behind. Between Enterprise ending in 2005 and Star Trek Discovery starting in 2017 there's a whole era of representation. If Enterprise had dared make an actual queer character, like Malcolm Reed, it would have been just ahead of the wave of representation that started popping up in the late 00's - but instead it closed on a similar note as DS9 did 10 years earlier.

Feel free to add your favorite queer episodes. There are some "official" queer episodes - but there's a bunch more that meant a lot for us as queer people, for one reason or another.

[walkingstackofbooks]

My vision for endgame Data/Julian which has consumed me ever since I watched Picard 😅

A few months after the Dominion war, the Enterprise docks at DS9 for a short while allowing Data to meet his long-time pen-friend, Julian, again. Julian's not doing well, but since he seems to enjoy Data's company, Data decides to take a couple more weeks of leave to spend some more time with his friend. However, Julian starts becoming more and more withdrawn and anxious, and after an incident one evening where he becomes agitated to the point of storming out, Data reaches out to Deanna to see if she can give him any insight into his friend's behaviour. She has some ideas, but also suggests that Data ask Keiko, and after talking with the O'Briens, Data believes he understands what's wrong. When he asks Julian if he's correct in thinking that his impending departure is what's upsetting the doctor, Julian's surprise at the question is enough that he answers truthfully - yes. To Data, the solution is obvious: if Julian is distressed by the idea of someone else leaving him, then Data will not leave. (Julian begs him not to make promises he cannot keep, and has a minor breakdown when he realises that Data is deadly serious.) After a lot of conversation, some favour-cashing, and the fortunate coincidence that one of Beverly's doctors was beginning to look for a promotion to CMO, Julian ends up transferred to the Enterprise: technically a demotion, but after so long having so much on his shoulders, it's actually a relief.

While on Enterprise, Data and Julian get closer and closer. Their relationship brings some difficulties when it becomes public, though: some see the fact Julian's dating an android as proof that he's not really human; others wonder how Data's affection can be real, and feel that if he were as human as he wants to be, then he wouldn't be dating an augment. Julian's parents definitely berate him for wasting all the gifts they gave him by marrying an android - if only he'd talked to them before the wedding, they could have adbised him against it! - making him a zillion times more grateful Data talked him out of inviting them every time he started to feel guilty about it. But that's by the by. They're together, happily married, endgame Julian/Data achieved, right?

... Wrong. I hate Nemesis, but imagine Julian following Data down before he throws himself into space, knowing he could probably stop Data from doing this if he asks. Data saying, "I know I promised never to leave you," and Julian shaking his head and barely being able to choke out the words "It's okay," and then Data's gone. And Geordi's trying to reassure Julian (Geordi's trying to convince himself...) that Data will be alright, he's got the emergency tranport unit, and they get back to the bridge, and Picard transports in, and Data's still on the ship that's blowing up, and Deanna's asking what happened and Julian's sliding down against a wall, horarsely whispering "I let him go..."

20 years later... Picard season one. I haven't quite decided when I want Julian to appear, because the idea of Julian fighting for android rights is everything to me, but also I kind of like the premise of changing as little as possible in canon... (Maybe Julian had tried to be part of the movement for android rights, bu the media had really latched onto his augment status and used it as another reason to discredit the movement, and so he'd withdrawn from it, as it seemed his presence was doing more harm than good….) So the Picard crew all return to the Riker-Troi household after the final showdown and Deanna welcomes them in with a "Guess who we finally managed to get in contact with" and bring them into the lounge where Julian' anxiously waiting. And of course the initial introduction is awkward and Julian's talking a million words a minute until Will pokes him and then over the next few days he's trying to keep his distance so that Soji doesn't feel that she needs to let him into her life... And meanwhile Soji is still, you know, coping with ALL the feelings and trauma that the last - what, week? - have given her and so she has no idea what to do with this man, who was apparently her father's husband, especially as she has no clue how he feels about the whole suddenly-having-an-android-stepdaughter thing. But eventually they do manage to have a conversation (/are forced to talk it out) and they get on so well and Soji realises how much Julian genuinely wants to get to know her for her sake and while Julian's terrified at the prospect of having a daughter, he's also delighted (and Will and Deanna make them both stick around for a whole while, 1. because they do enjoy having them both around, 2. because Kestra adores Soji, and the two are pretty good for each other, and 3. because, while they have kept in contact with Julian over the years, they also know how long he's been on his own for, and they want to make sure he's got a solid base and people to lean on. As much as Julian wants to be a good father, Soji deserves more than one traumatised, lonely man doing a best that would quite possibly not be good enough...)

Picard season 3. Julian and Soji are visiting Geordi at the museum when the Picard crew come along, and are swept into the action... Julian learning that Data's alive - kind of... Julian tenderly kissing Data before they take down the partition, telling him he has to win so he can meet their daughter... The two of them barely having time to reunite before having to rush off to their respective duties in saving the ship... (I have VISIONS of Soji and Julian working desperately together to find a cure for the transporter virus, while Julian's augment physiology has done something weird to make it that he's turning, but very, very slowly. Julian making sure that Soji is armed, and making her promise to shoot him if he turns too quickly. Soji telling him he has to keep fighting it and refusing to think about what it might come to. Julian realising he's about to lose control and getting Soji to restrain him. Soji despairing that she won't be able to find a cure by herself - she's not a doctor doctor like he is - and Julian reassuring her that he believes in her, she just needs to do her best... but most importantly, if she doesn't find it, it's alright, it's not her fault, and he loves her. Resistance is futile. A phaser shot.) And afterwards, when Soji's found the cure and it's been distributed, Julian wakes up to find Data sitting next to him and Soji hovering nearby. He tries to scramble up and leave to help the rest of the crew, but Soji informs him that just as he took longer to turn, he took longer to get better, and he's the last one to wake up from it. And then she makes to leave, to give the two of them some time alone, and Julian tells her that's nonsense, she needs to meet Data, and Soji says that it's fine, they've been talking while he was asleep, and Julian replies that now he feels left out, so she definitely can't leave, come here, sit by me, I'm not letting either of you out of my sight.

[dragontamerno3]

DS9 S2 E22 - The Wire

HOW DOES ANYONE THINK THESE TWO ARE IN A STRAIGHT??!!!???!!!

Ahem.

Seriously. How?

The episode starts off with the two going to their weekly lunch having the gayest banter about books and food and there is genuine concern for Garak when he starts showing signs of illness. Yes, Bashir is the station Doctor but it's also very much a "my friend is in pain, whats wrong" look when it happens.

This is cemented when Jadzia brings her plant to him to diagnose. Their conversation was primarily about the plant he was examining but her "its not like you're friends" comment and them him agreeing angrily while he stabbed said plant? There was no mistaking that he does (at least on some level) think of them as friends. Honestly, that whole conversation kinda felt like a ton of "I'm not jealous" conversations where I've seen two friends discussing a third party who was hanging out with a new person. Or more specifically a crush starts to spend more time with someone new. I have had similar moments myself as a baby queer.

I applaud Quark for his ease of lying. He was so smooth with a line or two to give to Bashir to get him to walk away. Wonderfully done.

The other smooth part with Quark was when Bashir is trying to usher Garak out of the bar and convince him to go to the infirmary and how they just swapped the bottle without a word.

On that same note, when Quark called Bashir to the bar to get Garak and Garak was like "Yes, quiet is better, lets go to my quarters", I wondered how often he actually brought people back to his room. He is so secretive that it seemed to me that he'd rarely (or never) let anyone come by so it seems significant that he offered that.

Of course Odo has tapped Quarks bar to monitor his transmissions, so much so that he even knows when Quark makes his more "sensitive" calls.

From the moment they said Garak was having head pain I figured there was some kind of implant in his head that was either malfunctioning, it was finally deteriorating or something similar. That paired with the fact that Garak was most definitely a spy, whether he still is or isn't is questionable sure, but at one point he was somehow tied to the intelligence network. So it wasn't a surprise to find out that was what causing him pain. It was fun to watch Quark give the Cardassian dude a code for a highly classified piece of tech though that may or may not cause both of them some hiccups later. Karma.

What I WAS surprised by was that is was more of a drug like situation. The whole break down in his room about how he had spent years being tortured and so 2 years ago he decided to say fuck it and to just live in a drugged state permanently was well done. I felt for both men in that moment. I can't even imagine what Garak was going through but I can tell he was suffering even when he had been drugged. And then Bashir hearing that the man he had come to think of as a friend (even if it was reluctantly) claim he wanted nothing to do with the dear Doctor. But then the trust in Garaks face as he relented? There was no heterosexual reason for this.

I need more of Bashir being a guard dog for all those under his care cause clearly that's a pattern I enjoy. It was a great character moment when he protected Jadzia against the trill transfer earlier in the season and it was a great moment here where he told Odo to fuck off.

The whole withdrawals scene was a rough one to get through in that way that I could see where it was going and I could tell both sides of that were very uncomfortable but the "the problem is I DID enjoy it" gave me life.

Every single story Garak told in this episode was both contradictory and very much believable, to me. I believe he blew up a Cardassian ship that held civilians and his "friend" on broad because it sounds like to me that this was the moment that part of him died, the part where he was dedicated to the cause. I also believe he let the Bajorian "prisoners" go and his "friend" was angry/appalled because this might have been one of the first steps to him questioning his involvement in things and how he hated himself for having these thoughts. I also believe he tried to hack the Cardassian systems to self sabotage himself subconsciously while thinking he was fixing things only to discover he purposely screwed himself over.

"I need to know SOMEONE forgives me." 😭💔

The thing that I loved most about this episode though was how Bashir was willing to risk his own safety to go to Cardassia on his own for Garak, who is in exile, to confront a highly respected man of the deepest, darkest intelligence network. That took guts and he did it without even blinking. Hell, he did it without even flinching when it was clear Tain was giving him vague threats.

I am disappointed about how quickly this one wrapped up, it seemed like we were worried about Garak dying and he was just suddenly okay again and having lunch, but that's a whatever moment. We don't honestly know how much time had passed and we knew he was going to get the info he needed to remove the device. It just seemed... fast?

Overall very much one of my favorites so far.

9/10 - will watch a million times

[inthevoidzone]

okay so I'm just now FINALLY watching the ONLY trek I've never seen a single episode of and don't know many characters from -- Enterprise. Here is an exhaustive list of things I knew about Enterprise before starting it: - Captain Archer is a guy - T'Pol is a Vulcan - It's post Star Fleet but pre Federation - 9/11 That's it. So now that I'm a couple episodes in, here are some off the cuff observations of the only Star Trek I don't already know: Love the lo-fi tech stuff! When some basic, classic Trek tech doesn't work right. The way the med bay feels like a abattoir. The ship doesn't even have shields. Three tries at firing a photon torpedo and all three failed. Brilliant. Giving Archer that beagle was the best call ever, because he's kind of a dick but then he picks up that tiny dog and I am just filled with patience for him. No one who loves a dog that tiny can actually be a POS. I turned to my wife at the start of episode 4 to shake my head and sigh that I kinda hated Trip Tucker, only for him to spend the entire episode trembling and sweating and shouting and tripping balls. Then spend the first half of the episode after THAT... trembling and sweating and crying and tripping balls, before coming down and immediately getting pregnant. So okay, Trip Tucker, you know what? You can stay if this is what they're write for you. T'Pol is a Vulcan! I haven't much to say about her but I do have stuff to say about the Vulcans. Mostly that I imagined this show would be about how the humans need to grow to catch up to the Vulcans, and instead it's more about how they need each other to challenge their ideas and grow. I like that. There's a certain irony inherent to a prequel imo and here a lot of the good stuff comes from knowing that these judgey space guys who think each other are weird and gross end up becoming BFFs who found the ultimate BFF club. My wife says that this doctor is a Tuvix of Neelix and the Doctor. She was correct and also I love her for talking VOY to me.

I really like Hoshi so far, and I've gotten some really interesting conversations/thoughts about the role of the comms officer on the bridge of a starship and how interesting the surrounding history is. Hoshi is one of the most crucial members of the ENT crew, but in 200 years, her job will be so automated by the Universal Translator that fuckin Worf will do most of it. Not entirely -- those duties are actually spread between Captains, counselors, ops, and security, but it's definitely different! It's interesting seeing Hoshi build the UT. Does she know it'll eventually replace linguistics? How would she feel about that? Or how would Uhura feel about it, for that matter?? That generic british white guy who is the security chief sure is a security chief, isn't he?? Got me thinking about the inherent conservatism of the security chief, how the security chief tends to be the least 'evolved' person on a starship capable of seeing the least nuance. Maybe that type of person is cool if they're tempered and not in charge? Maybe a tiny little dose of fascism is good because order can be good??? God I fear a Captain who came up through security tho! Also, they tend to be some of my faves lol... Odo, La'an, Tuvok... sigh. They're always there stubbornly advising we shoot it and then learning you don't always have to shoot it. I have definitely noticed these guys seem a lot more flawed than the VOY or TNG crew -- more than DS9 too, I guess. Like, less likeable? But I think it's on purpose. T'Pol and Archer and Trip are all kind of awful to each other. Hoshi is scared shitless. British White Guy seems like a real dick. I think it works for me because I honestly just like unlikeable characters lol, but I hope it's in service of GROWTH. It excites me to imagine them coming to see how they're wrong. It excites me to imagine these NASA ass motherfuckers becoming the Federation. I hope I get to see it, and the coming 9/11 doesn't completely derail these arcs and the show doesn't become 24.

[thelongestway]

Star Trek Lower Decks, s05e10, notes on the watch

I really can't believe this is the last episode (for now! hopefully!)

Season long flashback! Please tell me it's all going to be relevant!

YES IT WILL KLINGON FLEET!

OH GOD WHAT IS THAT CHIHUAHUA

yeah, no, Klingon friend out for revenge, I'm sorry, but tachyons are always bad news

wait a second, that transformation. are they becoming Solanae??? WAIT WAS THAT A DISCO BIRD OF PREY FALLING OUT OF THE WORMHOLE??

ah my friend's favorite warp wasp, it is the saddest thing that this is the last time we're seeing you T_T

Shaxs and T'Ana doing well together, good for them!

What is up with Rutherford's implant. Is that like a steady through-line I didn't see in this season? Is his old self coming back a little?

Aw, captain Freeman!

okay yeah not sure if Kahless but that is a huge ass warbird

ahhh sudden Klingon vengeance

also this is why you have a first officer, Ma'ah! so they can overrule you if you're an idiot :P

ah yes quantum entanglement for why it's not the Enterprise (also please please can we get Va'Kel Shon showing up???)

Meredith, Olly, new engineer dream team go! Also, Rutherford, you keep complaining like that, Livik will outdo you!

poor Freeman saying "as long as there aren't any complications" but knowing full well what starfleet missions are like

bugs can be salty and sweet!

ahhh alternate universe intrusion

or the Klingons have actually gotten decent at fake video?

no, I think this is those glitches coming through. if so, I like it. realities bleeding together should be confusing and terrifying

as an aside, I really like the second-to-second pacing in this one. they've slowed down, very slightly, and it has such an effect

Thank you for the reaction shots, Lower Decks!

one nacelle, how fucked are they now?

thank you Tendi XD

but also the Klingons are going to be a lot more fucked

Rutherford, you're gonna wind up missing the Cerritos' trusty old build by the end of this episode

Aww Rutherford >_<

Also yeah, Tendi and T'Lyn didn't work out their problems fully, and now it is biting them

Terran Cerritos! Also Shaxs has no luck XD

AHAHAHAHAAHAHAAHA ok, the reason her ship isn't changing because Klingon ships are basically heirlooms is hilarious

Ransom, every time I need motivation to work out, I will use this shot:

She did fake the message!

Meredith and Olly DREAM TEAM!

Interesting look at proto-Klingons!

AHAHAAHA It's Another Enterprise!

What exactly did it turn into between the two Enterprises? Ship buffs, help me out here

Ok, I'm gonna need a rundown on all those ship types

Ok, wow, Livik comment - and reconfigurability as an asset of the Cali-class, very cool!

Ma'ah just casually sitting on the bridge, lol

Interesting thing there with the dam. What *did* Mariner do?

Also, looking good there, Ma'ah and Malor!

STARBASE 80 THE NEW DS9 PLS MAKE THIS HAPPEN

also please please please can we get them in STO please

Hi, Anaximander, good to see you!

Damn, that goodbye. T_T

"But I'm an admiral!" "So what, your arms don't work?"

Welcome to the Cali-class, admiral Freeman! And to Starbase 80!

Oh, what a finale speech, Mariner. Y'know what - you really are my faves. Cerritos strong!

Migleemo finally discovering that strange new food?

Damn, Ransom, congrats! You started out as my least favorite XO, but... I'm glad to see you get your four pips. You earned every single one.

JACK. OH MY GOD. GOOD PEP TALK, CONTEST NOT SURE IF TERRIBLE IDEA OR GOOD IDEA

but yes, now we can get these two XOs to talk to Dal XD someday there will be fanfic about this mwahahaha

"Engage the core" is the only one outside of plain old "engage" that I will allow XD

Beautiful. 10/10, no notes, thank you Lower Decks team!!!

[fast-moon]

DS9 Season 5 Thoughts

So, last season ended on... pretty much the same note season 3 ended on, which was that the Changelings had infiltrated positions of power across the galaxy. Let's see if this season they actually do anything about that.

1. Apocalypse Rising: Sisko, O'Brien, and Odo get to cosplay Klingons as they infiltrate the Empire in order to expose Gowron as a Changeling. But it turns out they had the right place, wrong guy.

2. The Ship: Sisko finds a downed Jem'Hadar ship and says "finders keepers", but a Vorta shows up and asks for it back. It takes half the crews of both sides dying before they realize that the Vorta just wanted to retrieve a sick Changeling from the ship, making the entire stand-off pointless.

3. Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places: WTF is this title and WTF did I just watch? Worf wants to make the moves on Quark's Klingon ex-wife, so Dax sexually assaults him to take his mind off it. Meanwhile, O'Brien has to keep removing himself from situations where he could cheat on Keiko with Kira because he totally would if he could.

4. Nor the Battle to the Strong: Good lord, this series was even prescient about putting yourself in dangerous situations for social media clout and then quickly getting in way over your head. At least Jake was able to admit he was a dumbass.

5. The Assignment: Keiko trolls the shit out of O'Brien by pretending to be possessed by a wraith in order to finally get some goddamn respect. That's my interpretation of this episode and I'm sticking with it.

6. Trials and Tribble-ations: lol. To be fair, I did see this specific episode back in the 90's because a friend of mine taped it and insisted I see it, but at least now I have context for who all the DS9 characters are, and it made it even funnier.

7. Let He Who is Without Sin: Dax drags Worf to Pornworld against his will, then calls him "controlling" when she does her own thing without any regard for his feelings. Then she acts all surprised when he sides with the people protesting irresponsible self-indulgence.

8. Things Past: Odo, Sisko, Dax, and Garak get Quantum Leaped into some Bajoran slaves in the past, but it turns out Odo was just having an anxiety attack over a mistake he'd made and dragged everyone else into it.

9. The Ascent: Odo and Quark get jealous of Kira and Dukat having gotten two "mortal enemies go road-tripping" episodes, decide to go on one themselves. Meanwhile, Jake and Nog become roommates, but now ironically it's Jake who's the undisciplined one while Nog is more responsible.

10. Rapture: Everyone gets new uniforms, causing Sisko to see obelisks, make maps out of his mashed potatoes, and go on crazy rants that are enough to deny Bajor entry into the Federation, eventually forcing Bashir to lobotomize him.

11. The Darkness and the Light: Someone who wasn't even part of the Cardassian military manages to covertly murder most of Kira's former resistance members, putting the competence of the actual Cardassian military to shame.

12. The Begotten: Odo's a dad... again, and has to lose the child... again. But at least he got his shapeshifting back from it.

13. For the Uniform: The Maquis start using chemical warfare against Cardassian settlements, so Sisko uses chemical warfare right back at them. And everyone's just... okay with this?

14. In Purgatory's Shadow: The episode opens teasing a Garak/Bashir road-trip, only to bait-and-switch it to a Garak/Worf road trip, only to Uno-reverse-card it back to Garak/Bashir. Also, if Bashir's been replaced by a Changeling since before the uniform switch in episode 10, then which one got frisky on Risa?

15. By Inferno's Light: Dukat gets tired of being the butt-monkey for the past couple seasons and joins the Dominion. Meanwhile, Worf spends the entire episode getting beaten up, as Worf does.

16. Doctor Bashir, I Presume?: One episode after getting the real Bashir back, the Doctor from Voyager shows up to offer to make a new fake Bashir, but then Bashir's parents show up to reveal the real Bashir has been a fake Bashir all along, so they're already all good.

17. A Simple Investigation: Odo gets his cherry popped by a woman who turns out to be a bit of a Changeling herself: in that she's actually a completely different person living under an assumed identity, and also already married.

18. Business as Usual: Quark gets roped in with some weapons dealers and sabotages the deal after learning the weapons would be used for genocide, deciding that financial bankruptcy was better than moral bankruptcy.

19. Ties of Blood and Water: Kira decides to copy Garak from a couple episodes ago and has her Cardassian father figure show up just so he can die in front of her of medical complications.

20. Ferengi Love Songs: Quark goes back to his mother's house to help other Ferengi come out of the closet.

21. Soldiers of the Empire: Worf takes an assignment on a ship with the worst Klingons in the galaxy, and Dax invites herself along because she can't imagine Worf being able to function without her telling him what to do all the time.

22. Children of Time: The crew find a planet inhabited by their descendants, who inform them they they're going to get sent back in time and then have nothing better to do but breed like rabbits. But Future Odo realizes they've already hit their time-travel quota for the season and stops it from happening.

23. Blaze of Glory: Sisko and Eddington go road-tripping to stop some missiles that don't exist, because it was all a ruse to allow Eddington to go down fighting for... basically no reason.

24. Empok Nor: O'Brien and Garak take some gold-shirts with them to go exploring a seemingly abandoned Cardassian station, with predictable results for the gold-shirts. Garak also realizes there hasn't been an outbreak of crazypox for a few seasons and wants to have his go at it.

25. In the Cards: Jake really, really wants a Pokemon card.

26. Call to Arms: The Federation is forced to abandon the station after the Dominion and Cardassians attack, but Sisko swears he'll be back because they're not about to change the title of the series to "Terok Nor".

So, now that we've left on a cliffhanger of the station being abandoned to the Dominion, I'm curious how long into the next season that status is going to remain. Even Picard getting kidnapped by the Borg only lasted until the first episode of the next season. Plus things are going to get pretty cramped if they have too many episodes with only the Defiant set to work with.

Bashir is finally growing on me now that he's abandoned his bravado and womanizing and focusing on being a doctor. He was single-handedly ruining the series for me in the first season due to being such an insufferable creep. But it's also been revealed that he's genetically enhanced, so he's still kind of annoyingly The Special in some way, but at least he doesn't rub it in people's faces.

Dax is also starting to finally develop a personality of her own, which is conceptually a plus, it's just that her newly-developed personality is really annoying. She's basically just a troll and a gossip and doesn't seem to care about how she makes other people feel. She forced herself on Worf, then he entered into a relationship with her out of what seemed like obligation, at which point she's just been incredibly controlling and manipulative of him. Which, maybe that's a Klingon thing and they go for that, but from a human perspective, it's uncomfortable.

Also, I recently learned that Nog's actor was nearly 30 while playing him here. All this time I thought he was, like, 12, but no, he is just the ultimate short king.

Also impressed at Kira's actress being able to fit back into that jumpsuit so soon after having a baby. Hopefully she'll get more episodes next season, since her pregnancy this season limited what the story could do with her.

So with that, onto the next season of Terok Nor Deep Space Nine.

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/740136068340482048/the-funniest-dni-i-ever-encountered-in-all-my-12?source=share

As a House Martell stan, it's been interesting to watch the evolution of that particular corner of the ASOIAF fandom over the years. For a while, because they were less present on the show (and their actual focus on the show was pretty bungled), they were mostly the favorites of superfans who'd read the books and therefore were deeply devoted to the whole ASOIAF universe, and given how much that means memorizing various types of Targaryen incest over the years, were almost never antis. A lot of people were also drawn to that they were the ~sexy, liberated house, as well as there being a fair number of POC who identified with some of the few non-white people in those books who were actually fully-realized characters (in the books, not so much in the show). IME it was usually people who were also shipping a lot of the other popular "problematic" ships in the fandom like Jaime/Cersei and Sansa/Petyr Baelish.

Then, at some point - particularly after the show ended and the fandom shrunk a lot - it got infected with a bunch of people writing long essays about how Daenerys and the entire Targaryen family were inherently "white supremacist" (previously, it had been more common for POC and other fans who focused on anti-racism to stan Daenerys, and point out that what the final season did with her was some white bullshit that tried to conflate killing oppressors like slavers with killing poor downtrodden people) and there ended up being a fandom fight between those people who saw the Targaryens as the more racist house or the Starks, but they all stanned Martells but in a very shallow sort of way just because they were the POC house. It's also worth nothing that Dorne has equal primogeniture - women can inherit, and in the books it's Doran's eldest daughter, Arianne, who is his heir, even though he has two younger sons - and it also is more accepting of LGBTQ+ people and bastards and general "sex outside of marriage" than most of the rest of Westeros, so it attracts a lot of people who are into them for that reason. I mean, I like them for that reason among others, but of course that's going to be a magnet to people who want to prove that they're extra special progressive for stanning them over like, the Lannisters.

Also, probably worth noting, the people in the second group were generally younger. Book-centric fans generally tend to be older IME in ASOIAF fandom. I feel like whenever a fandom is younger, there's more likely to be more anti behavior.

Anyway it was very weird to get back into ASOIAF when I read Fire and Blood and then when House of the Dragon started airing, and feeling like "my corner" of the fandom had become completely unrecognizable in my absence.

Also, I suspect it's probably drawing in some people who just really like Pedro Pascal. (It was better when it was drawing in the Alexander Siddig stans from DS9 fandom, snerk. Although even that fandom has had an obnoxious influx of younger purity-policing virtue-signalling types discovering it these days, writing stupid discourse about how Garak/Garashir is problematic and people should instead ship characters who don't like each other that much and don't interact much one-on-one because the combinations of them are more progressive or something.... sigh! Anyway, probably not helped by the fact that Game of Thrones completely wasted him, even though his character was one of the best ones in the books and a big one that drew me into loving House Martell. He would've been great as book!Doran, but alas....)

I'm also going to say that as others have pointed out, I'll always be mystified by the fact that ASOIAF even HAS antis. If you're that opposed to incest, age-disparate relationships, violence, etc. anything controversial, how can you stan the actual canon of that show? Or the books, which arguably have even more rape and incest and ephebephilia going on. It just seems like you'd have to have a very adversarial relationship with canon to a point that I just don't understand why you don't pick another fandom. Of course, it's probably really just that antis are hypocrites.

--

Hypocrites, yes. But also drawn to material that they're not comfortable being drawn to. The younger they are, the more the cognitive dissonance makes them act out.

I don't condone it, but I do understand it.

[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.

[multiverserift]

Why do so many people not like Star Trek Enterprise?

Different reasons.

The theme song broke the rules Star Trek traditionally had big orchestral arrangements as intro songs. Enterprise tried something different. The song “Where my heart will take me” is a pop rock song with actual lyrics. It also sounds like country music, which many fans associated with a rather conservative mindset. Many fans criticised the song for being campy, right wing, not Star Trek. I personally like the song, but I'm not from the US. They ruined it with a horribly worse version from season 3 on, though.

Enterprise right-wing mindset 9/11 happened two weeks before the first episode of the show aired. Especially Enterprise's 3rd season gets a lot of criticism for being too right-wing, it's basically an allegory for 9/11. This assessment seems a bit unfair. in contrast to the real US, the Enterprise crew went out of their way to clear the air and explain a misunderstanding. Not let their emotions and rage control their actions. In that regard, it's very Star Trek.

Character development The show focuses on Archer, Trip, P’Pol. Phlox and Malcolm Reed get their (fewer) moments too. But Hoshi Sato and Travis Mayweather are totally abandoned by the writers. And those two are the black man and the asian woman. Malcolm’s actor wanted to play the character gay, which was shut down by Rick Berman. So what we get from ENT (Enterprise) ist straight white characters, others get left behind. The Original Series (TOS) did the same thing. The show focusses on Kirk, Spock, McCoy. But time moved on since then. We had DS9, with a great diverse cast, a black, widowed father as the captain. Voyager with Janeway and a (sadly, fake) native American XO. After this, ENT felt out of date. The focus on the core characters gets also critiziced on Discovery.

Sexism Also out of date and forced felt the blatant “sex sells” attitude. Decon gel. Hoshi falling out of an air shaft, losing her shirt so she has to cover her breasts. Shower scenes. Star Trek in the past liked to code their sex stuff into alien metaphors. ENT was more like “look, sexy straight white people in the nude!” No nuance. Gets critiziced a lot up to this date.

Simply bad episodes Star Trek always had episodes that are really bad, since TOS. Spock's Brain is a good example for that. But ENT did worse: They even copied previous episodes. In season 1, we have an episode where a man fills his home with fake hologram people, for his daughter. Ironically the man is played by Rene Auberjonois, who played Odo in the Deep Space 9 (DS9) episode where a man fills his home with fake hologram people. Phlox in season 3 has to stay awake while the whole crew sleeps. For weeks. He starts hallucinating. In a precious Voyager episode, Seven of Nine had to stay awake while the whole crew sleeps. For weeks. She starts hallucinating. Even in the (liked and well received by many) season 3, there are episodes that are just bad, like Extinction. And they are so bad that you can't even watch them and have fun, like DS9’s Move Along Home. And the there are episodes where the solution of the ethical dilemma just feels off and un-Star Trek-y. Cogenitor. Dear Doctor. Yeah, some episodes of ENT simply suck. More than usual.

Akiraprise The NX-01, the titular ship of Enterprise, is just an upside down version of the Akira class from the TNG (The Next Generation) era. Felt like copy-paste. People were upset.

Enterprise is still good Finally, I want to tell you that , besides the bad stuff, I like ENT. I love the design of the NX-01. They had to ruin it with the refit, though. Although this doesn't happen in the show. Just in extended canon. There are great characters here, great stories, great retro design. The interior design, the retro bridge, the retro warp core were actually of the most expensive assets created at the time. For all of TV. So I recommend to watch Enterprise. It's mostly nice. It has Shran. The final episode never happened.

[tj-dragonblade]

Star Trek AU WIP

@introvertbibliophile you had asked about the Star Trek 'AU' for the WIP Titles thing! I am a lifelong Trekkie and a DS9 girlie and basically, I want to write a more-often-than-centennial meeting in the 24th century while Hob's on DS9 for one reason or another. I think I'm leaning away from having him enlisted in Starfleet; there are a dozen civilian reasons he can be there, I'll settle on one eventually. Here's an earlier write-up on it with a little more detail; largely it's just Vibes™ but I'm starting to see a sharpening of shapes for it. Possibly they aren't together romantically yet despite what I said in the linked post; maybe this can also be a confessional conversation after they've been building their friendship for another three hundred years. But! Thanks to this ask, I have roughly drafted an introductory snippet to share:

The view is excellent from up here. Hob leans back in his chair, eyes sharp, roaming over the crowds on the lower level of Quark's. It's busy this evening; station personnel and patrons from all over the quadrant are milling about the dabo tables, thick along the bar, haggling over holosuite prices in a cheerful cacophony of noise and high spirits that is as familiar as his own face. The centuries may come and go, but a pub is a pub. Even lightyears from home. He taps his fingers absently against his glass and swirls it around, watching as what he'd guess is a freighter crew tumble into the bar, rowdy and eager to be parted from their latinum for the promise of a good drink and a good time and the chance to unwind. It's comforting, how familiar it all is despite the differences. It's June 7th, 2372 as reckoned by the Earth calendar; he's lived a thousand years and seen scenes like this playing out thousands of times. People will always be people, even when they come from different planets or even different corners of the galaxy. But there's only one person, one entity, that he's truly looking for at the moment. And he has every confidence that Dream will come; his friend always does, but there's forever that little voice of 'what if'—born when he'd learned of Dream's 20th-century imprisonment—that only goes quiet once Dream actually shows. It's less chaotic here on the upper level and Hob's got a good angle on the second-floor entrance as well as the hubbub below. He sips his drink, soaks in the noisy flow of life all around him, and waits. Finally, he spots the moon-pale face and electric shock of black hair he's been searching for slipping through the upper entrance across the mezzanine, and he can feel the way his entire being just. Brightens. He smiles, unable to help it, and when Dream's searching eyes meet his it cracks into a full beaming grin. Dream's always-so-solemn mouth tilts up at both corners in return, and Hob waggles his fingers in a brief 'hello'.

WIP Title Ask Game

[thegeminisage]

star trek update time. earlier tonight, my eyes were cursed with star trek generations, a very very bad movie. if you don't know the big spoiler for this movie (the character death), please stop reading here. or keep reading actually i'm not your mom. fuck this movie anyway.

with the tos movies, i tried to keep notes on notepad as i watched so as to better type up a "liveblog" later. i was a bit spotty at remembering to do that this time, but i have enough to put together a reasonable write-up. here's kind of how it went

cried multiple times during this movie. first time was when kirk showed up because i knew it was the last time we were ever gonna see him. got bonus aftershock tears when i saw scotty and chekov - i was under the impression it was JUST kirk. second time, i THINK, was when he showed up again, though i just misted up a little. big boo-hooing when he mentioned spock, naturally. MORE crying when he finally bit it, though it was mostly because i was angry!!! and finally, even though i promised myself i wouldn't cry over data, i did start sobbing when he was reunited with his cat. gave myself a crying headache.

it was difficult watching kirk be on the bridge and want to be captain and he's not captain. and then crisis strikes and oh yeah he is. and really, the captainly thing to do WAS to go down to the lower decks and do whatever the fuck. needs of the many. he saved that guy's life. that would have been a fine death.

it was a little ruined by chekov going "was there somebody in there?" like to me it struck me more as funny than anything

oh, spotting guinan in the tos era made me absolutely thrilled btw. i missed her so much in s7 it was UNREAL.

OH YEAH AND. sulu's daughter. wah. ik aos sulu is gay do we think tos sulu is gay too. either way i;m very happy for him

apparently one of the guys in this is from succession. i'm choosing to blame this whole debacle on him.

switching directly to a fucking holodeck scene KILLED me. i HATE the holodeck. at first i thought they were giving worf a retirement party to send him to ds9 but they were just doing all of that for fun. deanna's outfit was hot though. also, data shoving beverly WAS FUNNY tng writers just hate autistic people

i have mixed feelings about data and the emotions chip. i was surprised they never covered it in tng proper and i think it would have been handled better there...data having the chip WAS the reason soren got away, which makes it plot-important, but it felt like a b-plot to a normal tng episode and this is supposed to be a feature film. instead it was a tng two-parter with a budget and william shatner. it was fun watching data experience emotions (happiness, terror) and struggle to control them, but there ironically wasn't enough time to really get into it, except when picard gave him the tough love speech, which i think was uncalled for. why is he so against suicide when it's data when he was out here telling worf to kill himself over an empty barrel??

titty klingon sisters. i never remember their names or their faces but i ALWAYS recognize those boob windows. at first it was really annoying because it is pretty sexist but honestly i've become very endeared. it's absolutely devastating that this movie killed them too. they were everything to me 💔

hey, sorry, side bar, were they watching geordi bathe through his visor? freaks.

also, geordi in the bondage gear while he was kidnapped. ALSO, wasn't he growing new eyes in the tng s7 finale? whatever happened with that???

stellar cartography looks better than it did in tng but it brought back memories of picard running around on poor beverly. idk what he's so worried about continuing his family line for wesley crusher IS his affair baby

hey, also, the lighting??? the "distant sunlight" atmosphere when the lights are off vs the brightly lit interior of the show? truly, the upgraded lighting was probably my favorite part of the movie. it looked SO fucking good. i really felt like we were on a spaceship.

no, wait, ACTUALLY my favorite part was data getting to say "oh, shit!" that was really good. they got one bad word for this whole movie and used it in the perfect place

no, my favorite part was the spock mention.

did not like kirk referring to picard repeatedly as the captain of the enterprise. kirk's the real captain here, bitch. picard doesn't have what it takes to die for his ship. he doesn't love his ship the way kirk loved his.

i did like the nexus reference to the tmp wife. in the novel she was named lori but she didn't show up in tmp proper much less get a name so i'm ok with them calling her the wrong name, but i just know it's the same woman. less okay with kirk's nexus dream being all about some random woman we've never met. he's in love with the IDEA of a woman to come home to, sure, but it's just lazy writing. we don't have any reason to care about this girl. at least if it had been carol ruth marcus or something we'd have SOME basis to give a shit on. the nexus was the perfect place for spock and bones! i wish they and uhura and sulu had had cameos...

i also liked him warning picard to NEVER retire/accept promotion, bc retiring wound up being so traumatizing for him. this is not really consistent but i'm making it that way in my mind palace.

also, kirk being a horse girl is FAKE. they just made him be into horses bc picard is into horses. gross. he was really good at chopping wood though lol

the scene with the kids evacuating the spaceship...WHY WOULD YOU HAVE CHILDREN ON THIS SHIP. i also worried about the pets the entire time, which is part of why i lost it when data found spot :(

it's sad that a piece of guinan was left behind in the nexus...does that happen to everyone? is a piece of kirk in there too? i really wanted to write a fix-it for this someday but they have given me so little to work with that it's hard to imagine a fixit that isn't just 80% "yeah we're ignoring that" which isn't very satisfying.

the crash was SO long. also, why was data holding troi? she's got 2 different boyfriends who could be doing that for her

since i was going into this knowing kirk died, i expected that he was gonna die because the nexus swallowed him or something. i was expecting something grand. instead it was like, tos scene, an hour and a half of very mid tng content, and then half an hour of rushed and poorly paced kirk and picard scenes. typical tng episode that it didn't get to the point until it was almost over, but jesus. i can't believe they got shatner for their movie and then barely had him in it. like, kirk at the end was a total surprise narratively (obviously everyone watching it knows bc of the opening at LEAST that he'll be back, but imagine if this guy had been some rando - it would have been so unsatisfying and weird).

see, this is the thing. the nexus actually has the potential to be incredibly compelling. the way picard's scenes were shot were very very good, if one could ignore the clothes from 1790 and the horrific portrait of himself looking like he stepped out of les mis and also how creepy his kids were and WHY WASN'T HIS WIFE BEVERLY I HATE HIM. kirk's were rushed and messy (he likes horses? his dog? none of this connects us to the character we knew in tos...), and picard's involved, well, picard. but the CONCEPT absolutely fucks, and i did love the creep factor in spite of it all. this whole movie had huge potential and instead it's a steaming pile of shit. i could have learned to live with a good kirk death but living with a bad one is gonna kill me. at least he had good last words. "oh, my" right before he dies kinda fucks tbh.

my final note is that i think sir patrick stewart got sunburnt filming some of those scenes near the end. there were a few shots where he looked quite pink. give the man some sunscreen. oh yeah also why did some people randomly wear the ds9 uniforms...what on earth

anyway, terrible movie, 0/10 stars, i'm never gonna recover. tng never disappoints in disappointing me.

NEXT TIME: back to ds9, thank god. we're doing "meridan" and "defiant."

[biblioflyer]

Discovery's character drama logic

Occasionally trips to Reddit are actually informative. Credit to MalleusManus of the Daystrom Institute subreddit for unpacking this in a way that finally gelled. I'm kind of kicking myself for not seeing it sooner. I always understood Discovery was more of a character drama than an adventure show. Yet the piece I was missing, the piece I think a lot of Trekkies are missing is that Discovery has always been a character drama first. Whereas most previous Treks were mystery/procedural/"competency porn" first.

The specific mix of characters involved rarely actually mattered (except in DS9) and you could lift the outline of the story and transplant it into more or less any Trek series or even an entirely different anthology series like Twilight Zone or Dark Mirror and only need to fudge some of the details. That isn't to say that the individual characters and their quirks didn't make us love them, but the characters were never the point of TOS & TNG except when it was a showcase episode written specifically to do a bit of character development. The point of the characters was to have the plot happen to them, to wax philosophic about the particulars of the ethical or conceptual conundrum, and then solve the problem. The problem, once resolved, largely leaves them and their fundamental conditions unchanged.

DS9 is what happens when you ditch the anthology style storytelling but are still largely plot driven rather than character driven as a first priority. The writers of DS9 had grand visions of things they wanted to happen to both the setting and characters, but the characters still evolved rather slowly.

Discovery started from the perspective of what sorts of situations it wanted to put specific characters in in order to have them react in a very particular kind of way, what sort of emotions they wanted to see emoted, and what mindset the showrunners wanted the characters to have when it was all said and done. The relationships between characters are what ultimately matters and the particulars of the plot and worldbuilding come after that.

I would have liked more attention to the particulars of setting and plot, but recognizing that Discovery's plots are the character journeys not the puzzle of the week, I definitely understand it differently now and why its always been a little tedious. Namely because I've never liked any of the characters all that much. I don't really dislike any of them, but other than Saru, I can't honestly say I have any favorites. Ariam, for obvious reasons, and Owo because of her past as a luddite I was always curious to learn more about....only to have the first one die in her first and only point of view episode and the other to only talk about her life outside of Starfleet when she needs to manifest a special talent related to her history to save the crew.

But again, its an insight that was on the tip of my proverbial tongue and I couldn't quite articulate it before. I finally get what I don't like about Discovery and why in a way this is more than just "bad show bad." It has never really worked for me precisely because the central focus isn't really why I watch Trek and what it was trying to make me feel, it didn't succeed at.

I'm still sorry to see it go, because I think it was starting to think bigger and try to situate itself better within the Star Trek storytelling tradition, its themes, and rhythms and it just got cut down as the ugly ducking was showing swan like tendencies.

[gossyreblogs]

I’ve finally started rewatching Star Trek DS9 with the vague intentions of maybe actually watching and finishing the last season this time.

I’m about halfway through the first season, and I had honestly forgotten just how prominent of a character Quark is from the get-go. He gets a heck of a lot of screen time!

Quite the journey for the Ferengi from their intro in TNG, hah.

Speaking of, I’m making a parallel attempt to properly watch TNG for the first time. The contrast is stark!

The first time I watched DS9, I had very little else from the franchise with which to compare. And I think I might have been coming fresh from Farscape, of all things, which — well. Was Farscape.

So to me, the DS9 characters were just the characters.

But now that I’ve watched TOS and more of TNG, it certainly stands out more that half the cast of DS9 turns to blackmail, bribery, and yelling as very early steps in their problem solving, to say nothing of their other personal flaws.

What I’m saying is that I can see why it may have been jarring for long-term Star Trek fans. 😂

[nazmazh]

Finally started watching The Acolyte this evening - First episode did a good job hooking me in.

Joking with my dad about how Carrie-Anne Moss was well-suited to play a Jedi due to her role in The Matrix - Familar with both sci-fi technobabble and wire-work fight scene choreography.

This led to a half-joke that at this point it does kind of feel it's sort of inevitable that *every* celebrity is going to make an appearance in the Star Wars universe.

Dad quipped - "Except Shatner"

Which, yeah, that's accurate.

And while I wouldn't necessarily want Shatner himself, given the turn towards being a real asshole these past few years (far beyond just the pompous egotist he kind of always was), I think honestly, in another world, it would actually kind of be a great bit to have a chair turn and reveal him as a Jedi Master.

And the thought occurs - Having any of the Star Trek cast members s appear as Jedi (or any other role) would be pretty great for a chuckle. Like, give Brent Spiner or Robert Picardo voice roles as droids. Marina Sirtis already knows the schtick for playing an empath, it'd translate completely well to being a Jedi.

Then, the thought occurred to me - Star Trek characters with their basic personalities, but in Star Wars (And I'm sure there's plenty of fanfic already written of this, out there).

Kirk as a hotshot young Jedi, on the frontlines with Anakin. Sisko and Janeway (I mean, assuming she's not a Sith...) running the strategy of The Clone Wars alongside Mace Windu, and proving absolutely ruthless in battle.

Archer doing his "Ah, Sucks" diplomatic routine alongside Obi-Wan, convincing the galaxy that the Jedi are toothless and will try to talk everyone into their way of seeing things, while Kira, Worf, and Seven are busy coordinating and organizing resistances alongside Saw Gererra, and Garak and Bashir work with Cassian Andor and/or The crew of The Ghost to steal all the Empire's secrets (I realize I'm heavily intermixing timelines here, I don't care).

Chewie and B'Elanna Torres either are best friends or bitter rivals.

Picard would rather be happily exploring and studying ancient Jedi ruins, but he keeps being called on by the council as one of their more effective generals. He's somehow found a way to avoid ever taking a Padawan.

Q and Yoda frequently debate all manner of things. It's often unclear how serious either of them is with *literally* anything they say. Mostly, it seems to be a game of who can frustrate the other most quickly/thoroughly. Nobody's quite sure how Q fits into things with the Force. He refuses to elaborate.

Quark is tending bar in Mos Eisley or somewhere similar. Or maybe still DS9/the equivalent of it - Which, either way, of course, ends up being in the outer rim near enough to Tatooine. He thinks he's a bigger deal in the Hutt syndicate than he actually is. He of course still is fundamentally not ruthless or craven enough to fully be an outright gangster/mobster. Nog bucks the trend of Ferengi generally not being Force Sensitive and is a Padawan (Perhaps to Obi-Wan).

[It still feels like a huge wasted opportunity that they never gave him another one on Clone Wars. Also makes the "a pupil of mine until he turned to evil" line in New Hope retroactively weird - "A" pupil, Obi? He was your *only* pupil!]

Anyway, like Toydarians, Ferengi are resistant to Force mind powers [I guess that's just something you get if you're a race of hyper-capitalists that have some unfortunate design implications?]. You would think they were likely to be members of the Trade Federation, and therefore part of the Confederacy - And many are - But, by and large, they're too individualistic to have their whole culture join any one side.

Vulcans, naturally, make for powerful Jedi - But, I'm sure to some people's surprise, so do Klingons. And their concern with honour means they have a shockingly low rate of turning to the Dark Side [Klingon Jedis are much more like Worf, having that formal, controlled environment they're raised in]. Of course, those without force powers get along swimmingly with Mandalorians. There's probably more than a few Klingon foundlings under those Mandalorian helmets.

[anotheruserwithnoname]

Some good news and some bad news regarding Season 3 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. The good news is that now that the strikes are over, production of Season 3 is set to begin next month! This is good because there have been rumours swirling around possible cancellation in the wake of Star Trek Discovery being ended after its 5th season. But SNW continues (Lower Decks has also been renewed for Season 5). The only caveat to that is Paramount Plus still cancelled Star Trek Prodigy even with its Season 2 complete, so nothing is a guarantee anymore. (And even then, it's been reported that Prodigy S2 will at least get some sort of Netflix release).

(Further good news is Season 2, with its amazing musical and Lower Decks crossover episodes, is set for Blu-ray release before Christmas.)

The bad news - though this is likely educated speculation on Screen Rant's part - is the possibility that the 10-episode 3rd season my be split, with only 5 episodes airing in 2024 and having to wait till 2025 to see the rest. Aside from that wrecking viewer momentum, those 5 weeks will come and go very quickly. If this news is correct, though, they could be telegraphing some sort of 5-episode story arc, which should be good but I actually prefer SNW's episodic format as it better supports the type of experimentation we got with not only this past year's musical and part-animated episodes, but the episodic format is what made TOS what it was. No official word on any cast changes, though I will be surprised if S3 doesn't reintroduce Dr. McCoy in some fashion.

I haven't written much about SNW but it's my favourite of the live action modern Treks. I stopped watching Discovery and Picard but SNW has kept me. I've had songs from the musical earworming for the last week or so after I rewatched it. And I greatly appreciated the time-travel episode "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" for finally canonizing an explanation as to why the prequel series haven't always lined up with what we know as canon from TOS, TNG, etc. which as far as I'm concerned frees the writers to deviate and retroactively serves to rectify canon issues dating all the way back to some episodes of DS9, never mind Enterprise, Discovery and SNW itself. I will explain for those who don't know but I will put a spoiler break here for those who might be waiting for the Blu-ray or haven't had a chance to stream season 2 yet. If the break doesn't appear below, stop reading now if you don't want the spoiler.

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The episode reveals that due to the many time travel events over the years (including ones we haven't seen on screen by enemies of the Federation; the episode relates one involving Mary Queen of Scots (in-joke for the actress) what we have been seeing in SNW etc. is an alternate timeline. Maybe not as extreme as the Kelvin timeline of the films, but events such as the Eugenics Wars - indeed, the birth of Khan himself - were delayed by decades. This major change to the timeline - and then you fill in the blanks by factoring in even minor changes such as the guy who accidentally killed himself with McCoy's phaser in City on the Edge of Forever, Sisko replacing Gabriel Bell in the Bell Riots, the Voyager crew going back to 1996, Archer and T'Pol heading off agents of the temporal cold war in the early 2000s, etc. - and you can see how it's possible that things progressed differently resulting in SNW and Discovery being more technologically advanced than TOS-era ships should be as established in TNG, DS9 and Enterprise that used the original tech and designs. Also character differences, like Pike's crew being aware of T'Pring and Khan when Kirk's crew in TOS did now despite Spock having worked with La'an Noonien-Singh and Kirk being aware of La'an's feelings for him. Or the lack of reference to Kirk's brother, who dies in a famous TOS episode, having been former Enterprise crew. And it literally stems from two lines of dialogue. It's exhibit A of how quickly and simply a show like Doctor Who can fix things.