#sarek absolutely failed them

[lazersharksfromspace]

Sarek's three (gay) loser outcast children

(total butthole quality what the fart Tumblr)

[marxistgnome]

Usually i dislike it when newer treks put loads of focus on developing the backstory of a character from an older trek that was already quite well established and explored but my god i love what discovery is doing with sarek. Like ive only got to lethe so if they make it worse do NOT tell me but so far im obsessed with his mission to raise unique children with unique challenges in order to change vulcan society and fucking it up every single time. Im desperately in love with his fail aura that can only come from being a niche shitty dad that cares deeply for his children but can only nurture them in the most repressed distanced manipulative way possible. This is NOT because he is vulcan vulcans CAN be good fathers he just sucks 💞💞💞💞💞. Your daughter broke into ur mind to fistfight u into admitting fault in the way you raised her and all u could do afterwards is bring up the fact shes adopted sarek i know why spock was so petty about that life saving blood transfusion now. The image of michael at the end of lethe texting spock on subspace whatsapp is sooooooo clear in my mind. Absolutely perfect shitty father rep no notes.

[whovianwatchingstartrek]

A Whovian Watches Star Trek for the First Time: Part 097 - Surprise Dreadnaught

Star Trek: Discovery - Season 1 Episode 2 - Battle of the Binary Stars

We open with a Flashback to Michael meeting Captain Georgiou for the first time, specifically the moment she was handed off from the Vulcan Academy to the become a member of the Shenzhou's crew. Flashback-Michael is basically a walking Vulcan Stereotype, I'm interested to see how she got from this to the much more impuslive Michael we're seeing in the present.

We're given just enough to intrigue me about her character development before we cut back to the situation in the present. Apparently the number of Klingon ships correlates to the number of great klingon houses, and we're talking about the Reunification of the Klingon Empire again, which like I mentioned yesterday, the Empire was intact last time we saw in Enterprise, so what happened in the century between the shows? It's a huge development, and without much of an explanation, I can only assume it was the forehead mutation thing that just shattered the entirety of Klingon Society.

We're treated to a scene with the Klingons after the intro, and we do find out some information. Apparently, the Klingons fought the federation at some point after it's founding, although the details of that conflict aren't given, and the Klingons view the Federation as an expansionist threat. The Klingon who's trying to unite the Klingon empire also start spouting some fascist racial purity rhetoric.

The Federation fleet arrives and communications open, but the Klingons don't listen. A battle ensues, and it does not go well for the Shenzhou. I'm not sure what to make about how Discovery is depicting this battle, we get a lot of shots from the Shenzhou's bridge, which are great, but space-shots are a bit over-stimulating for me, I definitely preferred how Enterprise depicted it's space combat. I do love that, for whatever reason, the ships themselves feel a lot heavier in this though.

While she's locked up in the Brig, we cut to another childhood flashback for Michael. It's a very brief flashback, showing some destroyed room, I think it was the same place as the academy flashback last episode, and Sarek initiating a mindmeld with her as a child, and as we later find out, him transferring his Katra, to her. Apparently, this creates a similar mental communication bond that Trip and T'Pol had, albeit without the Romantic context.

The Shenzou is rescued from near destruction by the Europa, the ship that the Admiral of this fleet commands. The Admiral requests the Klingons for a Ceasefire, which they accept, but it's all a ruse for a surprise attack. T'Kuvma's fleet has advanced cloaking devices on this absolutely huge ship. When T'Kuvma mentioned invisible ships, I was expecting hundreds of small ones, to the visual of the absolutely Titanic battleship carving through the Europa like butter was really unexpected striking visual. And of course, a tonne of small ships along side it to mop up the Federation's fleet. Apparently, this display is enough for the Klingons to declare T'Kuvma their emperor, and all of their ships except T'Kuvma's return to Klingon Space.

We get some really good thinking, both from Michael, trying to escape he Brig cell which is entirely contained by a forcefield that will soon fail, and From Saru who figures out a way to do damage to the Klingon flagship eventhough all of Shenzhou's weapons are offline! Michael eventually arrives at the bridge and also makes the point that capturing T'Kuvma is a lot more valuable that creating a martyr out of him.

The finalised plan is to plant explosives from Shenzhou's torpedos onto the Klingon dead, then detonate them when the dead are retrieved. I'm pretty sure that constitutes as a war crime, but hey, it's a creative idea at least, and it works. Georgiou and Michael then transport aboard the klingon ship to extract T'Kuvma, and we're treated to a really nice sword fight between Georgiou and T'kuvma. I wasn't expecting the captain to be killed off in Episode 2! This twist got me good!

We end the episode with Michael's mutiny charges being read, and her court martial. She is found guilty and sentenced to prison, and I'm interested on where we go from here. Is Discovery gonna be a jailbreak show following Michael's path after her trial? Is it gonna follow Saru? This episode has proved a huge turning point, and I'm here for it!

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: Beverly Crusher

By Ames

Paging Dr. Crusher to medbay. Dr. Crusher to medbay. We have a character spotlight procedure to perform, so get your medical scrubs on and refresh yourself on the hippocratic oath as A Star to Steer Her By reviews the vital signs of Dr. Beverly Crusher, The Next Generation’s Chief Medical Officer for six out of seven seasons of the show. Plus the movies (I guess?).

She may have taken a full season off, and you know what: it’s painfully obvious why. Her character probably gets less to do than Troi whom we recently discussed, and she more often than not defaults to just being the mother of the resident boy genius, which isn’t saying much. So what can we say about Bev? We definitely scraped together some moments to highlight, so read on below and listen to this week’s episode on the podcast (jump to 1:00:49 for Bev chat). Stat!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

Say no to drugs, kids As we’ve said when covering doctors like McCoy and Pulaski, Starfleet CMOs are at their best when they put their patients before the Prime Directive. So when Crusher brilliantly figures out how the Ornarans are exploiting the Brekkians’ addiction to felicium in “Symbiosis,” she uses it to pressure Picard to intervene. His response wasn’t NEARLY enough, but Bev was 100% right.

Set phasers to BAMF I love it when the doctors get to kick some ass in an action scene, and Crusher proves herself capable of absolutely owning enemies on occasion. Especially awesome is the scene in “Conspiracy” after the alien-possessed Admiral Quinn beats up Riker, throws Geordi through a door, and swings Worf around like a ragdoll, Bev just walks in and phasers him like it’s no big deal.

The longer we argue, the longer it’s going to take me to save them In the middle of the terrorist attack in “The High Ground,” Crusher puts her foot down and puts her patients first, defying orders to stay with the injured casualties. And though the Federation’s position is to stay neutral (though they fail at this), Bev diagnoses the terrorists willingly and ably despite not agreeing with their insurgence against their government.

I’m here, Jean-Luc. I’m not going anywhere. Though it’s pretty clear that Patrick Stewart and Mark Lenard steal the show in “Sarek,” we’ve got to give some commendation to Dr. Crusher as well. She’s the one who figures out that Sarek’s Bendii Syndrome is causing disturbances around the ship, even when the Vulcan party tries to conceal it, and her devotion to helping Picard through the mind meld is nothing short of beautiful.

Separating the man from the machine Not only does Crusher get to go on the away team to the Borg Cube to find the captured Picard in “Best of Both Worlds” and proceed to shoot Borg drones like she’s swatting flies. But she also defies all odds and deprograms Locutus after they’ve rescued him and destroyed the Borg Cube. She’s so good, there’s nary a scratch on him for the rest of the series.

If there’s nothing wrong with me, maybe there’s something wrong with the universe Pretty much everything Bev gets to do in “Remember Me” is stellar. It makes you realize that Crusher doesn’t get a lot of episodes that are deep character pieces like the other characters get to (even Troi, though those are mostly problematic). But “Remember Me” gets to show off the doctor’s shrewdness and problem-solving abilities in one of the most original episodes of the show!

Correction: Blown out While her and Geordi’s subplot in “Disaster” is probably the most disconnected of the lot, it’s actually pretty impressive that Crusher is able to survive the decompressed cargo bay and get to the panel to repressurize everything. She knows exactly what to do to prepare for the absolutely lethal conditions inflicted on them, keeps her cool, and gets them both through it alive.

Then Deanna has to die I’m not going to even pretend to understand how everything worked out in the end in “Man of the People,” but it was all thanks to Beverly Crusher. She figures out Alkar’s psychic vampire deal, risking everything by performing an autopsy against orders. But even better than that, she makes the batshit decision to kill Troi and then revive her to break the link, and even crazier: it works!

Someone in this morgue is a murderer! Later the same season we have Crusher yet again performing an autopsy against the wishes of the deceased’s culture, but in “Suspicions,” there are consequences. Bev’s tenacity in sleuthing out Dr. Reyga’s murder, her flying into a damn sun to prove him right, and her killing the hell out of Jo’Brill make an otherwise forgettable episode into a great showcase for her character.

Let’s make flying into the sun a thing And somehow, that’s not even the last time Bev flies into a sun using Dr. Reyga’s metaphasic shield technology! In “Descent,” she avoids a Borg attack by hiding in a sun’s corona, even while her security officer Barnaby (who’s played by the same actor as Jo’Bril; that can’t be just a coincidence!) is over her shoulder doubting her and tactical officer Taitt’s every decision.

You’re not Nana! Nana’s dead! Okay, hear me out. Even though “Sub Rosa” is a notoriously bad episode of TNG and it even swept our worst of the series list (we’ll hear from it again in this blogpost in the Worst Moments section), there’s some stuff to love about Crusher in this episode. Watching her stand up to Ronin in the end when she’s figured it all out is some great work from Gates McFadden!

Please state the nature of the medical emergency Finally, we get to the movies, which seem to mostly forget that Bev is a character sometimes, but we know the truth! Bev is a rockstar who saves her entire medical staff AND Lily Sloane in First Contact by thinking to have the Emergency Medical Hologram create a diversion while she leads everyone through all the various ducts like an absolute boss.

—

Worst moments

I haven’t the comfort of a husband Another week, another mention of “The Naked Now,” which has come up in pretty much every character spotlight except Riker’s (maybe he should have gotten a mention for not getting space drunk). And for Beverly, it’s just another case of the female characters all getting horny for the various male characters in that tropey, sexist way the show had, and it’s just bullshit.

Get out of my mind It’s not every day that someone on the Enterprise gets possessed by some entity or other. It’s more like every other day! So when Crusher gets possessed by the entity in “Lonely Among Us” and suddenly finds herself on the bridge with gaps in her memory, you’d think there would be some kind of protocol to submit yourself for examination, but she just goes back to work like an amateur!

Shut up again, Wesley We gave Picard some guff about this in “Datalore” and we’re going to do the same for his mother later that same episode. Sure, we’re ALL thinking it at pretty much all times this first season of TNG, but Starfleet officers should not be saying “Shut up, Wesley” to their crewmembers on the bridge, especially when he’s just imparting important knowledge about Lore!

The future the AI bots want I’ll always question Crusher’s leaping at the opportunity to assume Yuta is the woman from some impossibly old photo in “The Vengeance Factor” because the computer overlaid her face on top of it when they asked it to. Like we’ve never seen the same actor play different roles before. Call me faceblind, but I wouldn’t have even noticed the resemblance.

No wonder we retconned the Trill... Probably the most questionable thing Crusher does is continue her relationship with Odan after his symbiont is put into Riker’s body in “The Host.” Odan gives her an out several times, but Bev decides to keep romancing him, which seems really squicky to us since Riker didn’t have the ability to consent to the happy couple using his body in… that way.

First, do no harm... by doing nothing at all Cultural differences make the episode “Ethics” a very complicated one, since Worf refuses palliative care for his paralysis and would rather die. What’s a doctor to do in such a situation? How about make matters worse by ignoring every request of her patient, treating him like a human instead of a Klingon, and withholding the experimental procedure he’s requested?

This is a recipe of the Captain’s Aunt Adelle In the very first aired episode of The Original Series, “The Man Trap,” we see McCoy taking a sleep aid of some kind to help him sleep. And it works! So when Riker is suffering from sleeplessness in “Schisms” and Crusher just prescribes a hot milk toddy instead of actual drugs, I just have to call bullshit. You’re a doctor, Bev, not a barista.

The lobes for business Ugh, we’re not even on Deep Space Nine yet and I’m already fed up with oomox. I find it gross how often the women of these shows have to effectively demean themselves by giving a Ferengi oomox like Bev does to get information out of Solok in “Chain of Command.” Sometimes, I swear this show was written for sex-starved teenaged boys and no one else.

Put ze candle back! While I gave Beverly some credit for defeating Ronin in the end in “Sub Rosa,” I also need to take her down a few pegs first for getting so infatuated with the guy in the first place! Sure, it’s some level of minor mind control, but she’s treating her crewmembers terribly, gushing at Deanna about her grandma’s erotic diaries, and quitting her job all for some guy who banged Nana. Gross, Bev! Real gross.

AITA, Enterprise edition While we like to see our two medical crewmembers looking out for each other, Crusher’s devotion to Lt. Ogawa somehow leads her to accidentally spreading a rumor that Powell is cheating on her in “Lower Decks.” Ogawa tells her in confidence that she’s upset he canceled a recent date, and in the next scene Crusher is gabbing at the poker table about every time she saw him in the same room as another woman!

Captain, I believe the crew is de-evolving While we could blame Reg Barclay for making the crew “de-evolve” in “Genesis,” it’s also on Dr. Crusher for elevating his T-cells in the first place. The rest of the episode is a mess that Bev can’t be at fault for because Worf knocked her out with his venom breath early on, but the initial outbreak could have been entirely avoided if the good doctor hadn’t gone tampering with his DNA.

Not that we care about such things in this day and age Another quick repeat that we also brought up in the Troi spotlight, but wow, we must harp on how the writers seem to have no idea what else to do with their female characters. Dr. Crusher has about 20 lines in all of Insurrection and two of them are wasted talking about her and Deanna’s boobs just to titillate the men in the audience.

—

With this blogpost wrapped up, let’s blow out this candle for good. We’ve got more character spotlights on the way, with another Crusher to discuss next week, so make you’re following along! We’re also still flying along through Enterprise over on SoundCloud or wherever you pick up your podcast frequencies, maintaining our universe bubble over on Facebook and Twitter, and flying into a sun every chance we get!

[pipelinelaserraygun]

Subscribe/MUST 👀 SEE x4:

"The mind meld can be a 🧠 TERRIBLE intimacy." --Sarek.

Each interaction is unique...

When God's veil is lifted, the mind-meld (God/Man) can be WONDERFUL, as well.

What do you get your Dad/s, during Father's Day weekend when they already have it all?

Our Father in Heaven and our Patriarchs deserve our 🎁 VERY best. That's the ⬆️ one thing we ought to give them.

Parents talk to their downline protegé 🖖🏽 UNIQUELY.

The human mind can ONLY handle SO much!

God's mental capacity is BEYOND 🔄 BEYOND.

--"To WHOM much is given, much is required."

Referenced up 🔝, X2: 🎬🍿 "DO SOMETHING (for Dad)!!"

Full disclosure is wanted, to hold 👺👺 demonic operatives accountable. There's no ⏪ rewind, but God is keeping tabs on EVERYBODY. For the remorseless, punishments 🔥 MUST FIT THEIR crimes.

Lawfare ⚖️ HAS and will 🪃 CONTINUE to have on 👺👺 demo-🐀 RATS a boomerang effect. We are seeing public reactions, where NEGATIVES are turning to positives x2 for Donald Trump & Alex Jones.

🕎✝️🛐 Father God, please protect the whistleblowers‼️

MUST ⏰ WATCH, x3 ⬆️🤔.

I always take VERY seriously the task of helping to explain Scripture 📖, as it relates to what's happening in our time.

Bible Scholars call these series of time signatures "CONTEXTUALIZATION".

Keeping tabs: Enemies of the Lord have doubled down on Judeo-Christian war rhetoric.

On one of my recent video posts, I pointed out an uptick of responses from leftists: 👿 👺 they're paying attention.

Keep in mind that MANY demonic operatives have a Seminary-level knowledge of Scripture, *unlike sheeple 🐏, and 👺 they know how to 🌀 TWIST narratives.

"🎵 How can you stand there and let people do what they do, when you know that it can mean hurt for us all?"

[frecklenog]

rewatching tas yesteryear for the second time today to pull some of the stuff that Stuck Out To Me

"i regret you were witness to that unfortunate display of emotion on the part of my son"

sarek this is why people say you're a bad father. he's being mercilessly bullied by the other kids and chastised for being upset by it? HES SEVEN.

"is something wrong, [sarek]?" "no no. it was only that... it seemed i know you."

yeah. you do. that's your son age 35 lmao (and spock brushing it off as looking like a shared ancestor he's so. i'm biting himgn,)

why do the adults wear full clothes and the kids wear speedos and seatbelts. what's happening on this planet

"once on the path you choose, you cannot turn back"

actually-

"it is difficult for a father to bear less than perfection in his son"

babygirl you have so many problems. what edition of the dsm are we on in 2269 or whatever the hell because i think you need to look through it

still so insane that vulcans do the kahs-wan at all tbh. like yeah sure it keeps them connected to their roots but these are prepubescent boys and you're just leaving them alone in the wilderness for over a week with zero supplies. how is that not institutional child neglect.

"to fail once is not a disgrace -- for others. if you fail, there will be those who will call you a coward all your life."

but like. no pressure or anything. single digit age baby child boy.

"i do not expect you to fail." "what if i do, father?" "there is no need to ask that question. you will not disappoint me. not if your heart and spirit are vulcan."

this fucking. exchange. it's so short. combined, it's all of six sentences. but even the first time i watched it i could pick up on the two distinct interpretations by both sarek and spock.

sarek seems to think that this is a comfort. an affirmation. he believes in his son. he has complete faith in his abilities. there's no doubt in his mind that spock will succeed. it's the logical conclusion.

spock however. spock has anxiety borne of his status as a mixed, neurodivergent child and his actual life experiences. he's so used to people thinking less of him. used to not being good enough. not being vulcan enough. he's been bullied by his peers his whole life, and earlier in the episode the other vulcan boys openly insult his mother by saying that sarek brought shame to vulcan by marrying her. he knows how people think of him, and he's reaching for reassurance that it's okay if he, like many other vulcan children, needs to undergo the kahs-wan again. just telling him that he will succeed, and leaving no other option, only puts further pressure on him and increases his anxiety, as is evicenced by him immediately going to i-chaya to vent and seek comfort. no wonder he runs away all the time, fucks sake.

in other news, i still hate this fucking fountain. we're on a desert planet where the only oceans are of lava. what the fuck are you doing, sarek? this thing is a massive waste of resources for absolutely no good fucking reason! where is your precious "logic" now, you green blooded cunt?

"of course. i should have remembered. it wasn't the actual kahs-wan ordeal."

bold for emphasis, and. i. how fucking spotty is spock's memory of his childhood??????

"you don't think he'd harm spock?" "i don't know, amanda."

[anguished groan as i think too hard about time travel implications]

..when spock does the nerve pinch to that big green bastard its fucking head vanishes for a few frames SDJFJSD

"do you think i'll ever be able to do that neck pinch as well as you?" "i dare say you will."

"...you are worried about the kahs-wan ordeal." "i had to see if i could do it. a personal test. i cannot fail." "that is your father's wish?" "yes, and my mother's. they... they confuse me. father wants me to do things his way, and mother says i should. but then she goes-" "she is a human woman, with strong emotion and sensitivities. she embarrasses you with those traits, and you are afraid when you see them in yourself."

spock really took "reparent yourself" literally with that whole speech about the reality of vulcan emotion huh

also. who did baby spock prank that one time lmao i bet sybok played a part in it

the zoom on amanda when baby spock says he chose vulcan.

and then he goes off to get in another fight after announcing his intentions to both of his parents and his alleged cousin. none of them stop him. vulcan is such a mess of a planet

"one small thing was changed this time. a pet died." "a pet? well that wouldn't mean much, in the course of time." "it might to some."

post over thank you for listening.

[jillianallen14]

Here we go, y'all. It's not even page 1 of this book (The Motion Picture Novelization), and it's already intensely gay and full of subtext. As a literature major I would like to do a little bit of analysis here, and I would like to remind you all that this book was actually written by Roddenberry himself; so everything in this book is actually canon in the truest sense of the word. Here we go:

1) Spock's dedication to Earth. Spock was raised on Vulcan, looks mostly Vulcan, has accepted the Vulcan way of life. Spock is, for all intents and purposes almost completely Vulcan with very few human features. Although, yes, of course, he does have a human mother, being raised on Vulcan largely purged that part of him. That is, however, until he was aboard the Enterprise and met Jim. Through his years with Jim, it is clear Spock came to love Earth, to want to protect Earth, to be drawn to Earth and its people. Earth (and humans) had accepted him far more than his home planet of Vulcan ever had, and acceptance was what he largely craved all his life. He wanted to be accepted for the half-human, half-Vulcan hybrid he was and not just for one of those halves. His mother gave him that acceptance, but when faced with the rejections of his father it simply wasn't enough. His father and other Vulcans expected him to be only Vulcan. McCoy and many other humans (though McCoy came to accept both of Spock's halves after many years) expected him to be only human or not human enough or too Vulcan. Jim, however, accepted both of his halves almost immediately. Jim, the shining, bright star of Earth, the constant hero of Earth. Suddenly, Spock's loyalties shifted to this man and to Earth, though, of course, his Vulcan heritage and planet were still incredibly important to him.

2) In the novel The Vulcan Academy Murders by Jean Lorrah, Sarek (at least I think it was Sarek) mentions that kolinahr was undertaken only by the extremists in Vulcan culture. It was only undertaken by those who were the most stringent followers of Surak and who interpreted his teachings in a more extremist way than most other Vulcans. Now we know Spock highly respected Surak and considered him largely a "hero", but was Spock really ever a "stringent follower" of Surak? No. Spock goes against logic constantly for the love of his crew and his ship and his family and his captain. Spock is a rather emotional being, though he often disguises it well. We also learn from Sarek in TVAM that Spock has exceptional telepathic, empathetic abilities that far surpass his own and that Spock had to build practically indestructible mental shields to protect himself and others from those telepathic abilities and intense emotions. To put this differently, Spock feels deeply at a level few humans or even Vulcans would ever understand, and it hurts him. My theory is that is it that intense pain of his emotions that caused him to follow the path of kolinahr, rather than believing that it was the "right" or "logical" path. So what would cause him so much pain?

3) To me, the answer is very simple: Jim, the man whose name Spock invokes at what could be one of the most important moments of his life. He calls Jim his t'hy'la, a word that we've already unpacked the meaning and weight of a million times, so I will focus on something different - Spock's pause, his stutter. The pause could mean 2 things: either Spock is in so much pain at the idea of never seeing or thinking of Jim again that he can't get the full phrase out or Spock is in pain over or unsure about calling Jim his t'hy'la. I believe both of these contribute to Spock's pause, but I believe the latter contributes the most. So why would Spock be in pain over/unsure about calling Jim his t'hy'la? Because he is not used to it. Because he has been madly and deeply in love with Jim for years at this point, yet he has never said anything. They are not bondmates (at least yet anyways), they are not lovers. And his love for Jim had begun to cloud his judgment since it was not logical for him to run after Jim and protect him at all costs, since they were not bondmates. He had no logical reason to do that, which upset the Vulcan half of him. The human half, however, was upset by the unfulfillment of his love for Jim. I understand that this may be a bit of a stretch here, but think of what Spock says, "I will never permit myself to think of you or even your name again." Hence, Jim's name is too emotional for Spock. Even Jim's name carries too much weight, too much emotion, and too much pain for Spock, enough to push him into the most extreme path a Vulcan can undertake. Does this sound like the mind of a man who is thinking rationally? To me, it absolutely does not. It sounds like a man dealing with deep, painful unrequited (or at least Spock sees it as unrequited) love for someone he has grown distant from. Remember, Spock is an incredible telepath and empath; he knows his own emotions, he is able to distinguish what he feels. And here he calls Jim his t'hy'la, and pauses and stutters while doing it. His "last goodbye" to Jim is full of pain, almost as though Spock doesn't want to be saying it, almost as if he's going against himself in order to do this.

4) I argue that Spock had found that ever-desired and needed love and acceptance of both of his halves in Jim (and consequently in Earth), but that it was no longer enough for him. He wanted Jim, he wanted a bondmate in Jim, he wanted a marriage with Jim, but he couldn't have it. And he recognized the illogic of achieving what he had wished for and still not being satisfied, but he also realized his own pain. And so he gave up Earth and Starfleet and Jim because, yes, it had become illogical to pursue it further, but also because it had begun to cause him pain he didn't know how to control, even with the help of his "indestructible" mental shields. So he took the most extreme, devoted path a Vulcan could take for mostly human reasons. And, in the end, he couldn't do it. He fails. He can't give them up, can't give Jim up. And it's a good thing he didn't because, subtextually, in all the novels and movies that come after The Motion Picture (including Spock prime's depiction in the new Star Trek movies), it is pretty clear to me that Spock and Kirk do end up bonding and marrying (at least in the Vulcan sense).

[alarajrogers]

The original series has no continuity; it was created for syndication and the episodes can be watched in any order. However, if you have never seen it before, it’s incredibly cheesy, the special effects are garbage, the fight scenes are laughable, and there is occasionally some absolute cringe (like, there really is an episode where an evil version of Kirk attacks and attempts to sexually assault a crewwoman, and Spock really does ask her if maybe she liked it. That is a thing that happened. I’m sorry.) On the other hand, a lot of it stands up even today.

TNG has minimal continuity; most of the episodes can happen in any order. The problem with it is that the first season Sucks. Balls. It’s pretty uniformly horrible. But you sort of have to watch the first episode, which introduces Q, even though it’s, um, very bad. It’s a total rehash of TOS stuff and Q himself has very little of his trademark humor (although he is very, very queer. De Lancie is proud of this, by the way; at a con I attended, he read us an article from the Advocate that said that the Q stands for Queer and he was very happy about it.) The second episode is also a total rehash but features Data saying “Not sucked, sir. Blown.”, and also has him saying he is fully functional and programmed with multiple techniques of pleasuring. I’d advise watching the first ep, the second ep, the second one with Q, and the one where Tasha dies, to get established with the continuity, what little there is; every other episode can go die in a fire, unless you feel like watching something really stupid. Starting with the second season, most episodes are decent and relatively uncringey (relatively.)

DS9 is actually really good. Its first season is a little stiff, but much better than TNG’s first season, and its second season starts with a bang and is pretty excellent.

Voyager: I am sad to say this because I love Voyager, but don’t watch Voyager. All the characters are potentially wonderful and very few of them live up to that potential. In particular, Chakotay is just a massive missed opportunity in almost every regard. Also I am not sure any Native Americans were consulted on developing his culture. If you get hooked on Star Trek, then you can watch Voyager because by then you know to go read the fanfic if the series is being really stupid.

Enterprise: Don’t watch Enterprise. It didn’t start out great and then 9/11 came along and the series, like every other television show back then, turned into rah rah let’s kill the terrorists, because frankly that’s what almost every American turned into, even the progressive ones. (A lot of us woke up before the Iraq war, but I’m not gonna lie and say the rah rah kill the terrorists part didn’t happen.) Notable for the most appalling and evil applications of the Prime Directive possible in a series that does not yet have the Prime Directive. Like, Berman, Pillar and Braga had such massive hard-ons for “moral ambiguity around the Prime Directive” that they set a series before the Prime Directive was a thing and then had Enterprise doom a race to a genocidal disease and turn away an asylum seeker (two different episodes) for the sake of a Prime Directive that hadn’t happened yet. Also, an attempt to be all “girl power” with the Orions turned super cringe with “Orion ‘slave girls’ are actually all powerful manipulators using their feminine wiles to control their supposed ‘owners’!” Gag me with a spoon.

Discovery: Not everyone agrees with me on this but I love Discovery. It does have a piece of incredibly amazingly stupid pseudo-science that huge amounts of the plot depend on. A lot of people were butt-hurt over “Spock has an adopted foster sister” because why did she never get mentioned in TOS, then? Apparently they failed to remember that Spock has a half-brother he never mentioned until like 20 years after TOS, claimed he had human “ancestors” rather than admitting his mother was human, and would not admit that ambassador Sarek and his wife were his parents until Kirk tried to insist on him taking shore leave on Vulcan while they were picking up the ambassador to go see his parents. The man is weirdly and obsessively secretive about his family, in other words. Discovery does not follow the formula of the other series completely in that the main character is not the captain and there is a different captain every season, and each series has an overarching story arc and a fairly tight continuity. If you’re gonna watch Discovery you gotta start at the start, and I recommend that it not be your first foray into Star Trek.

Picard: Is not anything whatsoever like any other Star Trek series. Much darker -- Starfleet has done some unforgiveable shit that led Picard to resign. Tight continuity and series story arcs, without any filler episodes. I am extremely butthurt about the ending of the second season but that’s personal. Don’t watch until you’ve seen TNG. Probably don’t watch until you’ve seen a lot of the more normal Treks. Especially DS9. You won’t recognize Starfleet unless you see some of the shit they pulled on DS9.

Prodigy: I haven’t seen this one yet. It’s a cartoon for kids. I do really want to see it; I love cartoons for kids. But from what I hear it’s also really, really different from other Treks.

Lower Decks: This is not a good place to start. It is a hilarious parody of pretty much all the Trek series from TOS - Enterprise, and you won’t get it if you haven’t seen a lot of Trek. Is a cartoon, but for adults.

Strange New Worlds: Is only 5 episodes in so hard to say much about it. It’s trying to be a faithful recreation of the type of show TOS/TNG was, and so far, it’s succeeding pretty well. Nothing yet has been awful. But you’d get a lot more out of it if you saw TOS already because it is a prequel to TOS and some of the stuff, like the fate of Christopher Pike and what’s gonna happen with Spock and T’Pring, would feel entirely different if you hadn’t seen TOS and thus known what was going to happen. On the other hand, Nurse Chapel bears no resemblance to the character she was in TOS, so she’d probably be more fun if you weren’t thinking all the time “but, but, Chapel never acted like this...”

The movies: Don’t watch any of the movies. Either they are bad, or they depend on knowing TOS or TNG continuity. You can watch them when you’re an established Star Trek fan.

For anyone interested in getting into Star Trek but doesn't know the right place to start: There isn't one. Every place you could potentially start is the wrong place. That is the Star Trek experience. The only way to get into Star Trek is the wrong way. There is no right way. Wherever you start, you will find yourself lost, confused, disturbed, unsettled, baffled, and perhaps a bit turned on. This is normal. Congratulations, you are one of us now. I'm so sorry.

[douxreviews]

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) Review

Kirk: "The needs of the one outweighed the needs of the many."

Fans refer to this movie as "The search for a plot", and yes, they have a point. The Search for Spock suffers from the high crime (or possibly just a misdemeanor) of being the middle movie in a trilogy, a bridge between the outstanding Wrath of Khan and the outstanding Voyage Home.

And yet, I realized during my rewatch that this is not a bad movie. There's a lot to like about it.

It's great fun to see the characters we love pulling off a starship heist. And like The Wrath of Khan, this movie features a major upsetting death, and I'm not talking about poor David, a good character who met a pointless (or pointy) end. It was the death of Enterprise herself. I can remember the first time I saw this movie, the destruction of our beloved ship really got to me. It echoed the theme of loss and rebirth in The Wrath of Khan.

But (and you knew there was a 'but' in there) as much as I love Spock, and I love him so very very much, bringing him back from the dead after killing him off so spectacularly was just a little bit wrong. So was retconning the beautiful, symbolically pure Genesis planet into a hopelessly screwed up mess. It was sad that it was all David's fault for using 'protomatter', as if they were giving the writers a reason for killing him off, although it did work as a device to make Spock's body age somewhat believably. If they hadn't started with regenerated Spock as a child, the other option would have been Vulcan zombies, and we can't have that. And I liked that Genesis turned into a "galactic controversy" because in real life, it would absolutely happen. It was interesting and somewhat disturbing that Starfleet was being just a little bit Gestapo about the whole thing.

But (and you knew there was another one a'comin') the fact that Vulcans had mind-meldable transferrable souls had never been mentioned before. You'd think that in all the years Spock served in Star Fleet, his comrades would have known that, just in case something happened to him. You'd think that Saavik, who was right there at the funeral, would have mentioned it in passing in between bars of "Amazing Grace." Okay, it was a fun plot point having Spock, already a divided being, with a disconnected body and soul to put together. But it did sort of come out of nowhere.

It was a cool plot point that the recovery of Spock was tied to saving McCoy as well. (Imagine if Kirk had lost Spock, McCoy and David all at the same time.) Loved DeForest Kelley mimicking Leonard Nimoy, up to and including an attempt at a Spock pinch. And of course, it was lovely in the end seeing Spock repeat his own dying words to Kirk: "The ship. Out of danger?" And Kirk giving him that "Needs of the one" response.

There were other bits that I loved, too. Even in his overwhelming grief over David, Kirk kept thinking and planning, very in character. The way he finally lost it with Kruge is still satisfying, not matter how many times I've seen it. "I... have had... enough... of YOU." One of my favorite bits was Scott, Sulu and Chekov trying to figure out the Klingon controls of the Bird of Prey, too, also wonderfully in character. And the self-destruct sequence was virtually identical to the same scene in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield."

So it's not The Empire Strikes Back. The Search for Spock got us where we needed to go. Good enough.

Casting bits:

-- Merritt Butrick (David Marcus) also appeared in an episode of Next Gen. And he died way too young.

-- It seemed a bit cheap of them to redo the Genesis presentation because they didn't want to pay Bibi Besch. Seriously. What happened to Carol Marcus? She wasn't even mentioned.

-- Christopher Lloyd did his usual good job as Kruge, a slimy Klingon who (of course) had a slimy dog.

-- Dame Judith Anderson played Vulcan matriarch T'Pau... excuse me, T'Lar. And with jarringly bright lipstick and and way too obvious eyeliner that I just couldn't see a Vulcan matriarch wearing.

-- Robin Curtis got the difficult job of replacing Kirstie Alley as Saavik, plus she had to talk about pon farr, too. I remember wondering at some point if she had remembered to bring her birth control to the Genesis planet.

-- We got a glimpse of Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney) at the space station.

-- And we got Sarek! And he even mentioned his lineage -- son of Skon, son of Salkar. I thought Vulcan society was matriarchal?

-- Five actors played Spock. And Leonard Nimoy directed.

Bits and pieces:

-- Star date 8210.3. We visited Earth, the Federation Science Vessel Grissom (which was destroyed), Enterprise (which was destroyed), Excelsior (which was screwed up), the Genesis planet (which was destroyed) and Vulcan. Which ... I'll shut up now.

-- Why a red alert if there were only five of them on the entire ship?

-- Why didn't Uhura get to go along and nearly die, too?

-- McCoy went to a shady bar full of freaky aliens to hire a ship. I don't know why they didn't just call the place "Mos Eisley."

-- The Excelsior with its new transwarp drive was introduced, but all we saw was it failing.

-- Why did Sulu decide on a Peter Pan cape as a fashion accessory? Only marginally worse was Chekov's shirt, which I bet came from the Little Lord Fauntleroy collection.

-- If Mount Seleya is the only place for a Vulcan's soul to go, you'd think it'd be a very busy place.

-- This movie is surprisingly quotable. So there's that.

Quotes:

Kirk: "It seems I have left the noblest part of myself back there on that newborn planet."

Kirk: "Have you always multiplied your repair estimates by a factor of four?" Scott: "Certainly, sir. How else can I keep my reputation as a miracle worker?" This is one of my favorite Star Trek quotes ever.

Kirk: "My friends, the great experiment: The Excelsior. Ready for trial runs." Sulu: "She's supposed to have transwarp drive." Scott: "Aye. And if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon."

Kirk: "If there's even a chance that Spock has an immortal soul, it's my responsibility. Just as surely as if it were my own."

Alien with huge ears: "Oh, Mutara restricted! Take permits many, money more." McCoy: "There aren't going to be any damned permits! How can you get a permit to do a damned illegal thing? Look, price you name, money I got." Alien with huge ears: "Place you name, money I name, otherwise bargain, nooooo." McCoy: "All right, dammit! It's Genesis! The name of the place we're going is Genesis!" Alien with huge ears: "Genesis?" McCoy: "Yes, Genesis! How can you be deaf with ears like that?"

Kirk: (showing the Vulcan salute) "How many fingers do I have up?" McCoy: "That's not very damn funny."

Kirk: "You're suffering from a Vulcan mind meld, doctor." McCoy: "That green-blooded son of a bitch! It's his revenge for all the arguments he lost."

Elevator voice: "Level, please." Scott: "Transporter room." Elevator voice: "Thank you." Scott: "Up your shaft."

Scott: "All systems automated and ready. A chimpanzee and two trainees could run her." Kirk: "Thank you, Mr. Scott. I'll try not to take that personally."

Scott: "The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain."

Kirk: "Gentlemen, your work today has been outstanding and I intend to recommend you all for promotion. In whatever fleet we end up serving."

McCoy: "His mind is a void. It seems, Admiral, that I've got all his marbles."

Kirk: "Klingon Commander, this is Admiral James T. Kirk. I'm alive and well on the planet surface. I know that this will come as a pleasant surprise to you. But our ship was a victim of an unfortunate accident. Sorry about your crew, but as we say on Earth, c'est la vie."

Kirk: "You! Help us or die!" Maltz: "I do not deserve to live!" Kirk: "Fine. I'll kill you later."

Three out of four of Spock's marbles,

Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

[tincanspaceship]

Per Aspera Ad Astra, ch.3

(ch.1) (ch.2)

Thanks to @onaperduamedee, @elissastillstands, and @speedygal for their input!

Word count-3485

rating-t

Philippa’s suitcase shut with a satisfying thunk. Michael perched on the edge of her bed, elbows balancing on her case. She reached out and slipped Philippa's hair out of its sloppy bun. Philippa held still as Michael rearranged her curls, slender fingers combing through her tangles, pressing against her cheek.

Do you have everything, Michael?

Michael shuffled forwards to plant a kiss on Philippa's cheek. Her unease leaked into Philippa's mind.

Are you all right, my love?

...I was just looking at the Vulcan studies on mind-melds…

Philippa reached for Michael's hand, her fingers working their way between Michael's.

And what?

Our meld–specifically, the lasting strength of our meld–shouldn't be possible. Many people who are quite close do sometimes pick up on the other’s emotions well on into their life. But thoughts...never, never after two weeks have passed, let alone six months. And we're human, only one of us has Vulcan training.

Gays do it better.  

What?

Accept it for what it is. A statistical improbability that just happened to fall on us by sheer coincidence. I know you're worried.

Philippa’s subtle smile and her flushed cheeks were enough to make Michael's anxiety fade a little. “You're right.”

“The captain is always right, Michael. When will you learn?” Philippa's brilliant grin tugged at Michael’s self-control. “Now, checklist. Do you have everything?”

“Yes. I will only partake in your unnecessary checklist if we're going to–” Michael sighed in distaste, “–cuddle.” Philippa absolutely beamed.

“You said it!”

“Yes, I said it. Shut up and move over,” Michael grumbled. Philippa's eyes gleamed as she shuffled over and patted the free side of the bed. Michael swivelled and hopped over their luggage, ending up with Philippa's hand on her forearm, sprawled on the mattress. She flipped onto her side and wrapped her arms around Philippa's waist, guiding Philippa's head to the hollow of her neck, jaw resting on her collarbone and hair tickling her throat.

“Ready, Burnham?”

“I still think this is unnecessary.”

“Toothbrush?”

“Check.”

“One week’s worth of clothes?”

“Check.”

“Swimsuit?”

“How long is this list?” Michael muttered.

“Hush. Swimsuit?”

Michael sighed. “Check.”

“Walking shoes?”

“Check.”

“Girlfriend?”

Michael squeezed Philippa a little tighter. “Check,” she chuckled.

“Good. I've taught you–” The beeping of the computer cut her off.

“Incoming call to Commander Michael Burnham,” it announced. Michael disentangled herself from Philippa, with a sigh. She sat up and ran her hand through her hair, grabbing her display PADD off her shelf, straightening her collar.

“Route call through PADD, computer,” she ordered, adjusting the angle to hide Philippa from view. Philippa managed to slip her hand into Michael’s while still remaining hidden.

Amanda's face flickered into view. Michael's sharp inhale was not lost on Philippa.

“Michael!” Amanda smiled. Michael tightened her grip on Philippa's fingers.

“Hello, Amanda.” Michael's smile was convincing.

I'm here, Michael, I'm here, Philippa soothed, brushing her thumb across Michael's.  

“I'm sorry to call you right before your shore leave, but...your father needs to talk to you.” Amanda's eyes crinkled as she talked, her mouth turned upwards slightly.

Michael, make up an excuse. In case you...need to hang up.

“I may have to leave. The transporter room can't wait for me forever.”

“Of course. Sarek?” Michael stiffened. Philippa stroked her back, tracing circles along her spine.

I've got you. Promise me that you'll hang up if you need to?

I promise, Philippa.

Sarek appeared on the screen, face blank. Michael's breathing hitched.

“Greetings, Michael.”

“Hello, Sarek,” she managed, through her teeth. Her knuckles turned pink from her grip on the display.

“I am sorry to delay your departure, however, I must discuss my behaviour six months ago.” Michael hand trembled around Philippa's.

Michael. I love you.

Philippa's voice echoed in Michael’s head as a quiet reminder. Michael swallowed and nodded, solemn. “What must we discuss?”

“I behaved irrationally.”

“You did,” Michael stated, blunt.

“I behaved irrationally because of an extreme imbalance of my mental state, due to a lack of sleep and exposure to an unknown virus that destroyed my rational thinking,” he explained.

Philippa...oh, is he serious?

Michael suppressed a sarcastic snort.  “Really,” she said, voice just slightly too loud.

Keep yourself together. And listen.

“I...take it you don't believe me. Please, Michael, I did not mean to say what I did.”

“Swear on Amanda,” Michael demanded, shaking slightly.

Michael?

I'm just making sure, Philippa.

Sarek took a deep breath. “I swear on Amanda Grayson’s life that what I have said was not trickery.”

Michael felt her chest tighten.

Michael, are you going to be okay?

Yes...I hope. I'll hang up if I have to.

“Okay, Sarek. I believe you. And Captain Georgiou–she is nothing if not protective, and she exaggerated the amount that you have affected my life negatively.”

Did I really?

Not as much as I would have him believe, but yes.

Hmph.

“My apologies for my behaviour. No caretaker should act like that to their ward.” Philippa felt Michael's anger rise.

Caretaker and ward. I am his daughter!

Michael, keep your head on straight.

“Did you try your hardest to support me, as a child? I can answer that for you, because I know you didn't. Did you think that letting me be human may have been a better choice?” Michael's voice sharpened. She felt Philippa's palm press between her shoulder blades, massaging the spot that pleasantly forced her to straighten her spine.

“I...believe I did everything in my power to raise you well,” Sarek responded.

Michael's expression softened. “I don't think you could do your very best. I was, after all, a small child, a human, with post-traumatic stress disorder, with anxiety, with demons. One who ended up in fights she didn't want to be in, who came home with broken bones.” Michael was thoroughly shuddering at this point, her hand entwined with Philippa's, grounding her.

Do you want to go, Michael? I think I can feel your nausea.

I need to finish this.

She took a shaky breath and continued. “But you tried. You tried what you thought was best. It wasn't, but it was something. You had two other children to take care of. It was a family, a disastrous one, but a family still.”

A long pause spread between them, Michael's ragged breathing compressing her in her quarters.

“And…and when Philippa came by and gave me a new family, I was integrated immediately, with no bias. I came to love the Shenzhou family as much as ours.”

Philippa, will you keep drawing on my back? It calms me down.

Of course, Michael. Her finger began drawing swirls across the plane of Michael's ribs.

“When I was on a mission as a lieutenant, on which my mental state deteriorated, I had a…breakdown, of a sort. My training failed me. Philippa noticed me, she came over and sat with me, kept me in her arms and talked to me until it passed, until her shoulder was thoroughly tear-stained, and I fell asleep on her lap while she held my hands and told me stories. She cared so much, she cares so much still. And she would do the same for any member of this crew, current or past,” Michael whispered.

Michael, you should leave. I think you're about to need my shoulder to cry on again.

I just--I need, I need, I need a minute more.

“You sat by me in silence until I could calm down, you even left when I cried. Which, I suppose, makes sense to a Vulcan. And of course I didn't want you to leave, so I stopped crying. You tried to make me Vulcan, and it didn't work, it forced me to focus everything I had on grades and school, it isolated me. And you did love me, I know that you did and you do. But there's no friend-making when you're always studying or learning, a hundred different things to keep yourself safe and make sure you didn't fall behind.” Michael inhaled at the end of her sentence, soothed by Philippa tracing constellations down her spine. Still, she felt her throat tighten and a stabbing pain settled at the bottom of her rib cage. Her hands shook and she stared at Sarek with wide eyes, who seemed to be in shock. He gaped at her for a moment.

Transporters, Michael.

“I have to leave. The transporters are being disabled for maintenance in fifteen minutes,” she blurted. Sarek nodded.

“Amanda and I are staying on Earth, in Paris for the entirety of your shore leave. You would be welcome to stay with us.” Michael raised a wobbly eyebrow.

“I am staying in Pulau Langkawi. With Captain Georgiou.”

An almost-silent oh came from Sarek’s direction. “Of course.”

“I am sorry, Sarek. I need time. Live long and prosper.” She hung up before Sarek could respond. The PADD flew across the room, clattering into the doorway. Michael collapsed. Philippa shot up to catch her.

Michael, I'm here, I love you, it's going to be okay because I'm here and I love you.

Michael's whole body shook, her eyes shut and spilling over with tears. She crumpled, muscles tense and Philippa's arms holding her tightly, breathing quick and jagged.

“Computer, turn off lights!” Philippa ordered. She flicked back the covers, and let Michael cling to her as she leant back.

Is there something I can do, Michael?

Just...please don't go, please?

Of course I won't go!

She shuffled around and managed to pull herself into bed with Michael, tugging the blankets to cover them. Philippa tightened her grip on Michael. She felt Michael's hands slip up into her hair, rhythmically stroking the waves with trembling fingers.

Michael, try and synch your breathing with mine, if you can. I think it'll help.

I-I'll try–please…

It's okay, my love. We can stay here as long as we need.

Philippa felt one of Michael's hands leave her scalp. It came to rest on her stomach, palm flat against her muscles, the pads of her quivering fingers across Philippa's ribs. Michael took a careful, slow breath, hovering on her exhale. It matched Philippa's measured breathing.

Just like that. Deep breath.

There's too much...there's too much–, it's-

Michael whimpered. Philippa's heart strained.

Do you need-uh...what's the word? Sen-sensory deprivation?

I–suppose that's...maybe? I just try to–focus on one thing-uh...

Michael buried her face farther into Philippa's neck. She felt the damp splotches on Michael's shaking cheeks, the gentle pressure on her abdomen lifting. Michael's fingers spread across Philippa's biceps, squeezing the stiff muscles.

Will you...sing for me?

Of course. I'm not good, though.

Philippa coughed. Her voice filled the silent room, a quiet whispering of Malay into Michael's ear. Philippa's throaty whisper slipped into Michael's mind.

Philippa...it’s helping. A lot.

Good.

The familiar inflections of Philippa's singing calmed Michael. Her shaking ebbed and faded, hands still clutching desperately at Philippa's shoulders. She sank her teeth into Philippa's collar in an attempt to mute her sobbing.

Philippa looked down at her partner, face contorted with screams, tears spilling everywhere and eyes bloodshot, holding onto Philippa as if she would be hurled into the vacuum of space if she let go, fabric balled in her mouth.

Time slowed.

Philippa's voice faded.

“Oh, Michael!” she breathed. Her hands reached for Michael's cheeks, pulling her closer. She pressed their foreheads together, the tip of their noses touching. Michael opened her eyes a crack, lashes heavy, tears trickling. She mirrored Philippa's grip. Her hands pulled carefully on Philippa's hair, curling the strands around her fingers.

“It's going to go away, Michael. And we'll go down to Pulau Langkawi and go swimming. And you're going to meet my mother, and she'll make you the most delicious laksa. Okay?” Michael nodded, a tiny jerk of her chin. “But first, we’re gonna stay right here until you feel better. And I'm not ever going to leave.” She adjusted her position to plant a kiss on Michael's vague smile, wiping away her tears.

Philippa. I love you.

I love you, Mikey. Do you mind...not chewing on my uniform?

Michael's weak chuckle as she spat out Philippa's collar mixed with the sound of shuffling blankets.

I'm so sorry. I didn't realise–I'm sorry.  

Are you feeling better?

I need…

“Fifteen minutes,” she finished. She melted into Philippa's torso, hands resting gently on her shoulders. Her toes curled and relaxed in her boots. Philippa could still feel Michael's erratic heartbeat, shaky breathing matching Philippa’s.

“Okay, Michael.” She nuzzled Michael’s forehead, inhaling the Starfleet soap that Michael insisted on using. Her grip left Michael’s face and dropped to her waist. She clung to the textured fabric across Michael’s back, fingers spread.

“You're...you don't mind waiting?” Michael mumbled, muffled by Philippa's jacket.

“Of course not. Michael, I love you, and I don't mind at all. Just let me know when you're ready.” Michael's tiny hum of happiness warmed Philippa's heart. She grinned into Michael's curls.

“And I'm making you take a picture in front of the eagle in Langkawi.”

•

Philippa poked Michael in the shoulder. “Put that book down, and get swimming! I'm going to drag you into the water with your clothes on.” She wrung out her hair over Michael's face, who sighed, leaning her head back and tilting her book away. “You can read on the Shenzhou.”

“It would be logical to continue reading. The end of the chapter is near.” Philippa groaned and slammed the book down into Michael's abdomen. She received a somewhat-insulting glare from Michael, who gingerly picked up the book and rested it on the arm of her chair while placing the bookmark in the correct position.

“Come on. The water is beautiful and no one’s around.”

“Because it's raining, Philippa.” Michael adjusted her umbrella to expose Philippa to the heavy drops.

“Like I said. The water’s beautiful, and no one’s around.” She grinned and wrapped her fingers firmly around Michael's wrist.

“Hey!” Philippa yanked her out of her seat, dragging her directly into the rain. Her bare feet dug into the sand. Michael sputtered as she inhaled a raindrop, desperately searching traction against the soggy ground, fully soaked. “Let me go!”

Never!

Philippa shifted her grip and bent down, slinging Michael over her shoulders. Michael's squeal hit Philippa's ear. She scrabbled at Philippa's stomach, trying to find her ticklish spot, feet flailing wildly to her right. She felt the gentle pressure of Philippa's arms holding her in place, wrapped around her neck and the inside of her knee. Michael's fingers made contact with the bottom of Philippa's ribcage. Philippa snorted and swung Michael's arms away, laughter creeping out of her mouth.

“Ah! You are ticklish!” Michael exclaimed, reaching with spidery fingers to her side.

“That was a mistake, Michael!” Philippa responded to Michael's attack by hurling her into the blue-grey waters. Michael surfaced and sputtered. Her loose pants floated around her legs, yellow contrasting sharply with the water. She yanked them off, revealing the bottom of her Fleet-issue wetsuit, and balled them up before tossing back to shore.

“No, that was a mistake, Philippa,” Michael teased. She lunged for Philippa's waist, who dodged it and sent Michael flying into the water. She wiped rain out of her eyes.

“You know, Michael,” Philippa began, sending a wave of water in Michael's direction, “by bathing suit I didn't mean a Starfleet wetsuit meant for caving.” She knocked Michael's leg out from under her and flicked water at her rain-soaked face.  “I meant a more...human bathing suit. That doesn't hide all your lovely muscles.” Michael paused her attack.

“You wanted me to wear something so you could...admire me?”

“I'm your girlfriend. I'm allowed to admire the fact that you could toss me halfway to Vulcan.” She avoided Michael's spray with a deft sidestep.

“As am I. Although you have made it...much easier.” Philippa's bathing suit showed her strength while still being rather modest, her stomach half-covered by the crimson bottoms. Michael brushed a finger across Philippa's raised abdominal muscles. “You look good in red.”

“You look good in anything, Michael.” Philippa's hand twisted into Michael's, and she raised them to her lips and pressed a kiss to Michael's toughened knuckles. She made eye contact, smirking, other hand coming to snatch Michael's elbow. Michael caught a whiff of Philippa's plan.

Philip–PHILIPPA!

Michael was tossed over Philippa's shoulder again, this time slamming into the sea headfirst. She forced her eyes open and made a desperate attempt to grab at Philippa's foot. It worked. Philippa tumbled into the water, Michael shooting up and towards the shore. She pulled herself back onto the sand, lying with her legs in the waves, letting the downpour soak into her bones. Philippa crawled up next to her, shaking out her hair.

“Feeling okay?” Philippa's head rested on Michael's ribs, with her arms wrapped around her waist. Michael's hand played with Philippa's soaked curls.

“I'm okay.” Michael's chuckle bounced Philippa's cheek. “I take that back. I'm cold.” Philippa rolled off Michael, shivering.

“Ditto.” She extended a hand to Michael. They headed back up to Philippa's cottage, Michael pausing to retrieve her pants and collect her book and umbrella. She huddled with Philippa under the waterproof dome. Their footprints filled with rain seconds after they left them in the sand. Philippa clutched the railing tightly as Michael opened the door, closing the umbrella under the protection of the the porch. Her book was held tightly to her chest.

“My mother would say we'd catch our death of cold.”

“Your mother would be correct,” Michael responded, throwing her book on the couch and leaning the umbrella up against a window. “The chances–”

“I don't need to hear statistics. I need dry clothes.” She tossed Michael a protein bar off the dinner table and gnawed on one as she dipped into their bedroom. Michael threw her soaked pants across a chair, biting off a huge chunk of her granola bar. She shivered.

“Do you want your sweater, Michael?” Philippa called, accompanied by the rustling of clothes.

“Yes, please, Philippa.” A lump of fabric shot out the door. Michael picked it up and untangled her warm sweater, a SHENZ shirt, socks, underwear, and Philippa's oversized fuzzy pyjama pants. Michael sighed. She slipped into the washroom and emerged a minute later, her hair still dripping across her sweater. Philippa stuck her head into the central room.

“Are you warming up?” Michael nodded and pushed the door open. Philippa promptly fell backwards into their bed, curling under the duvet. “Good. Join me?” Michael smiled and sat on the corner of the bed, stroking Philippa's forehead with damp fingers.

“You're so adorable,” Michael cooed, brushing her damp hair out of her face. Philippa covered her face with a pillow and groaned.

“No I'm not,” she grumbled, muffled by the sheets. “Stop.” Michael draped an arm over her shoulder.

“I think you deserve a little flattery, Philippa,” Michael said, smirking. Philippa made an unintelligible noise and threw her pillow at Michael. “Is that how you treat your girlfriend?”

“Yes,” she mumbled, retreating under the blanket. Michael ran her hand through the chunks of hair that peeked out.

“You're still adorable, Philippa. Accept it.” She peeled back the covers and kissed Philippa's forehead, tucking her legs in and sliding in right next to Philippa.

“Never,” Philippa groaned, nestling herself in Michael's arms. “You're the pretty one.” She felt Michael's heavy exhale.

We can both be adorable, Philippa.

Hmph.

Philippa's hand wrapped around Michael's face, her palm gently shoving her away. Michael detached Philippa's spidery fingers, leaning in for a quick kiss. She took it with a smile.

“I love you, Philippa.” Michael whipped the stark white cover over them, sealing them inside a deflating dome. Philippa poked at the top of the impromptu tent.

“I love you too, ya dork,” Philippa admitted, nose bumping against Michael's neck.

Don't call me a dork, Philippa. It's unoriginal.

Okay. Nerd!

Seriously?

Philippa snorted and made herself sneeze. Michael chuckled, and tousled Philippa's hair.

“Dork,” Philippa grumbled, half asleep.

“Says the person with an honest-to-god telescope, Philippa,” Michael retorted.

“Oh, fuck off,” Philippa spat, with little force. Michael laughed at the unusually rude words.

I take it we won't be seeing your parents on our last day?

Michael's breath caught in her throat.

...no. I feel bad for Amanda, but I can't risk breaking down in front of Sarek.

All right. I'm sorry my mother wasn't around most of this week…

It's okay. I did meet her. She's a carbon copy of you, just thirty-odd years older.

“Hey! Should I be offended by that?”

No. Although there are some differences…

If you're about to make a dig at my cooking skills, I'm gonna force it down your throat.

Point taken.

Philippa snuggled into Michael. “Good night, Michael.”

“Philippa, it's noon.”

“Good night, Michael.” Michael sighed.  

Philippa's soft snoring filled the room a few minutes later.

[boomdeyadah]

TOS tag game wowe

@ashayamspirk was kind enough to tag me in a thing, so here we go;

1. Favorite TOS episode and why?

It has to be Journey to Babel. Close runners up are A City on the Edge of Forever and Amok Time, but Journey to Babel is my fav for many, many reasons. The most obvious being that we’re introduced to Sarek and Amanda. They are both vital pieces of world building for tons of aspects of tos, as well as incredibly important and fantastic characters in their own right. They tell us things about Vulcan culture and society, who Spock came from and his backstory, and showcase in their own right the struggles of being a biracial couple, of loving your family in different ways, of anger and forgiveness. In the episode we also get to see a bunch of other aliens (that reception scene is like early star trek’s version of the cantina scene), a peek into the democracy of the federation, McCoy is an absolute gem, Spock and Kirk are SUPER INTO each other and their ship. It’s got a bunch of what I love about Star Trek.

2.  Favorite character’s (theoretical) most cherished childhood memory?

This is a really abstract question. It’s tough to try and dream up things like this and pick a favorite... in lieu of thinking of something like a story, I’m going to think of sensations. And since I love all of the trium, let me do it like this.

For Spock, his cherished childhood memories are full of warmth. The heat of Vulcan, his mother’s embrace, the steady connection to his family through his bonds. He feels hot sand under his feet, and it’s soft and crystalline and compresses under him and he sinks his toes into it, just for the feeling. I-Chaya’s fur is soft, but it conceals firm muscle and withheld strength that would only be used to protect him. He hears whistling wind through craggy rock faces, and the quiet whoosh of hovercars and trains in ShiKahr, the white noise of a thousand quiet and logically efficient conversations. He smells warm, dry air, his father’s robes (incense, paper, his hygienic products), his mother baking cookies. 

Jim’s are more about the mood, I think, and vibrancy. His memories could be set anywhere, but his favorite ones would be when he brought grins onto everyone’s faces... and when he learned something new. It could be on a summer vacation, at a beach or water park, with bright yellow sun and cerulean waters, or in a vast green field, and everyone is hot and sweaty but they smile because there’s so much time to explore, so many things to see and Jim won’t rest until they’ve done everything they can and they’re bone tired and satisfied with the adventure. I bet he did the 23rd century version of boyscouts. He felt pride with each new merit badge. It could be in winter, and I hear Iowan winters are rough, and there’s stark white everywhere, and it’s freezing, but there’s no time to rest when you could be having a snowball fight, beating the pants off of someone at board games during a snowstorm, reading a book with hot cocoa. It’s quiet and warm in the kitchen, and he’s helping cook dinner. It’s 5 o’clock in the morning, and he’s helping with the cows. 

Bones... his childhood was quiet, I think. I feel like there’s a lot of similarity between his childhood and that of DeForest Kelley’s. Georgia, the church, community, family. Knowing everyone in town. Grieving with them and celebrating with them. He makes it clear that at least where he’s from, Southern hospitality and culture is thriving, and I love picturing him growing up in that. Going to cotillion, having to learn how to ballroom dance at 13, nerves in his throat because he’s holding someone’s hand or touching someone else’s waist for the first time and looking at someone he’s known his whole life in a different way and also trying not to step on any toes. Sitting under a tree somewhere or in a rocking chair on a porch with a frosty lemonade (it’s a recipe that’s been in his family for generations) and snacking on peaches. Making house calls with his dad. Going to the Fall Festival and the whole town is there and it smells like hay and pumpkin pie, it’s just starting to get nippy and jack-o-lanterns flicker in every windowsill. 

3. Going off the last one I was tagged in, what do YOU think happened between the end of their five year mission and Spock’s (failed) Kohlinar?

Wellllllllllll. I don’t know if I like to think that Spock and Kirk had a fight or if they just parted with shit unspoken. I think I like the fight, or at least that they parted and felt wronged by each other. Especially because of how Spock and Kirk are acting when they first see each other, and how the simple feeling scene feels like a forgiveness and a making up. It’s really hard to think of what happened. It seems like Jim wouldn’t have willingly taken the promotion, and Spock wouldn’t have willingly left Jim. A lot of people go the route of Spock not being able to take his feeling for his captain anymore and leaving, because he doesn’t want to force his unrequited love or because he can’t accept his feelings in himself or such and so, and Jim being heartbroken and allowing his wings to be clipped in the process. I think that makes sense, although it is pretty weak. I’m down for more exciting versions, as long as it doesn’t involve Jim doing something to break Spock’s heart that he fully knows would break Spock’s heart (like them being in a monogamous relationship and him cheating). 

=======>o

I guess I have to make questions now? Sorry, I’m not really up to date on a lot of things!

1. When you watch TOS, do you enjoy the camp and the plot holes, or do you wish they’d had a little more foresight? What parts of TOS’s 1960′s hokie-ness annoy you or bring you joy? 

2. Which TOS ‘moral lesson’ episode do you like the best and why?

3. Do you have a favorite way for Jim to loose his shirt, or a favorite profession Bones is not a part of, or a favorite sassy Spock comeback? I guess I’m asking which meme do you vibe with the most?

Anybody can answer these if they want! Sorry if I’m repeating any questions, I haven’t been keepin up. And I’m not very close with any trek bloggers (because im bad at being opinionated on the internet), so sorry if I bother you guys and you totally don’t have to do these q’s, but I guess I’ll tag people I look up to and have enjoyed trek stuff from/with before, so @greensarek @spodiddly @future-subjunctive @klmeri @tribbleclefs

[writesandramblings]

The Captain’s Secret - p.65

“The Stars, Broken”

A/N: Covers the events of episode 6, "Lethe."

Sorry for the delay in posting these latest chapters, writing while rewatching the episodes can be a bit time-consuming, and I've been spending so much time working on the fic, my DVR filled up to 5% and had to be attended to! Rest assured, the delay does not indicate any faltering enthusiasm on my part. We're so close now, the home stretch is nearing, and I'm as excited and determined as ever to see this thing through to the end.

Full Chapter List Part 1 - Objects in Motion << Part 64 - Where the Wild Things Are Part 66 - Past and Present Tense >>

You could learn a lot about a person in times of peril, and the experience aboard the Klingon prison cruiser had given Lorca a very good measure of Lieutenant Ash Tyler. That measure was only clarified after a round of target practice against holographic projections of Klingon adversaries. Despite staring straight into the faces of his former tormentors, Tyler held himself together well.

Lorca already knew all the facts and figures of Tyler's life from his file. Hearing Tyler tell them himself, the takeaway was that the young lieutenant possessed a potent resilience, that tragedy did not define him, and through it all he maintained a strong, centered sense of self.

Much more telling than any of the biographical details was the fact that, at the end of their target practice, Lorca had racked up twenty-four kills and Tyler reported he'd gotten twenty-two, which was a lie. Tyler's kill count, when Lorca checked, was thirty-six. Tyler started to apologize for the deception. "Don’t apologize for excellence!" said Lorca, in a tone that was as much an instruction as a warning that lying to him again was not advisable. Then his tone softened. "I want my chief of security to shoot better than I do."

Seven months in Klingon prison and Tyler had not given up. Instead he had fought, learned, and adapted to survive. Exactly the sort of person Lorca wanted on Discovery and a more than capable replacement for Ellen Landry. Slightly less fun in terms of recreational possibilities, but no one could be everything, and Lorca rather thought he was going to make some inroads on that particular front soon enough without requiring anything of any security chiefs.

Lorca was in his ready room trying to think of a way to get Discovery into battle "accidentally" when an alert came that Michael Burnham had collapsed in the mess hall. He beamed directly to sickbay, startling Cadet Tilly, who stood at Burnham's side.

"What happened!" Lorca demanded of Tilly, a degree louder than he should have.

"I don't know, sir!" said Tilly. "We just, we sat down to eat, and then she collapsed!"

"I'm reading an abundance of neural activity," said Culber.

Burnham sat suddenly up and shouted, "Sarek!"

Culber quieted Burnham and gently eased her back down onto the biobed.

"What's the matter with her?" asked Lorca, looking to Culber for some sort of clue.

Burnham answered herself. "It's not me, it's Sarek. He's in trouble." Sarek was Burnham's adoptive father, a Vulcan ambassador.

There seemed to be no immediate reason why Sarek being in distress would cause Burnham to collapse. "How do you know that?" asked Lorca.

Burnham explained. The majority of Burnham's past was already known to Lorca. Her parents' deaths, her adoption by Sarek and his wife Amanda, her studies at the Vulcan Science Academy, where she had outperformed all the Vulcans and graduated top of her class. What Lorca did not know was that, as Burnham described it, she shared a piece of Sarek's soul, his katra, which he had infused within her to save her life when she was a child. Now, twenty years later, that link remained. It had even helped Burnham survive the events of the Battle of the Binary Stars.

Now, the link was telling her Sarek was endangered. Burnham looked at Lorca, her face as close to a plea as her Vulcan upbringing allowed it to be. "Captain, help me find him."

Lorca nodded his head. "The full resources of Discovery are at your disposal."

The first step was finding out where Sarek was and why he was there. Admiral Terral was entirely forthcoming with the details of Sarek's mission. Two Klingon houses, fallen out of favor with the main faction, were offering secret talks to strike a deal with the Federation that had the potential to turn the war in their favor.

But when Lorca suggested Discovery could rescue Sarek before the Starfleet could scramble any other rescue operations, Terral's rejection of the offer was immediate. "Absolutely not. There are protocols to be followed, captain!" Namely, that block Cornwell had put on Discovery actually doing anything.

This was not a battle, this was a rescue operation. There was no good reason for Starfleet to deny Discovery the chance to save a life when there was no real risk to the ship. Most importantly, he had already told Burnham they were going to rescue Sarek.

"You can tell the Vulcans they're welcome, happy to clean up their mess. Discovery out," said Lorca, and closed the channel on Terral.

He reached into the bowl of fortune cookies for a sign as to the likely outcome of this newest insubordination, crushing one between his hands and munching on the remnants. "You are filled up with a sense of urgency. Be patient or you may end up confused," it read.

Lorca twisted the fortune into a tiny curl of paper. The cookie was immaterial. He had already decided on their course of action. The look on Burnham's face was the closest he had seen to true humanity in her, and it was an expression of suffering he did not want to see again. He would endure all the stony-faced, unemotional Vulcan nonsense so long as it meant not having to see her suffer.

Burnham was different than he expected. He had hardly expected her to fall over herself with gratitude at his getting her out of prison, but she had impressed him with a poise and strength entirely unbroken by her conviction and imprisonment. She was like Tyler in that regard. The universe might try to change her, but her inner self was entirely unassailable. She was savvy, too, even if she jumped to conclusions a little too quickly. That quickness was another wonderful trait of hers and it had served her well during the Glenn incident. She hated waiting. So did he.

It was impossible not to admire her. That Starfleet at large had failed to appreciate fully her talents and potential in light of her lone act of informed disobedience was a travesty. There was something truly amazing about this Michael Burnham, and he intended to make full use of it.

They scoured the Yridia nebula for signs of Sarek's ship, but it was not along the course it should have been, and the nebula's gases made the warp trail impossible to follow. Lorca sat in his captain's chair fighting the feeling of helpless frustration that came from not having a clear path to resolving the problem.

Burnham arrived on the bridge, looking slightly worse for wear. He was surprised to see her. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"I still sense Sarek, but it's growing erratic. Think he's getting worse," said Burnham. This was not the question Lorca had asked. It was a little sad how oblivious Burnham was to simple human kindnesses.

"Don't worry," he assured her, "we'll get him back."

But the nebula was immense. Their sensors were ineffective in its radioactive gases and probes could take months. Saru was making little progress on his scans.

More frustration. "Well, any other options, number one?" demanded Lorca.

"Me," said Burnham. When Lorca looked in her eyes, he saw again that fervent devotion and love for her adoptive father.

The plan was crazy, but it was the sort of thing that just might be crazy enough to work. Lorca accompanied Burnham down towards the engineering lab to pitch it to Stamets. Mischkelovitz would have been a better choice, but no way was Lorca going to make the mistake of trying to put Burnham and Mischkelovitz together on a project. Mischkelovitz was useless if she crawled back into the walls.

In the turbolift, Burnham suddenly staggered slightly as if dizzy and Lorca caught her arm to steady her. "Halt turbolift," he barked to the computer, and asked Burnham a second time, "you okay there, Michael?"

"Sarek is..."

"Not Sarek," he said, "you."

Burnham straightened with one hand on the wall of the turbolift, pulling slightly away from him as she did, and he released her. Something seemed to say that, even if there was good reason for him to have taken her arm, she did not appreciate the gesture on any level and it was as unwanted as it was unexpected.

"We're wasting time," said Burnham. "Computer, resume turbolift." Lorca had not issued a command lockout and the computer responded to Burnham's command.

"You know, it's all right to be human," said Lorca as the doors opened. He saw a momentary hesitation on Burnham's face in response, but then it was replaced by that steely, faux-emotionless mask she wore and she strode out of the turbolift and he followed.

"As any Vulcan will tell you, simply because I was raised according to Vulcan teachings does not change the fact I am human," Burnham declared as they walked down the hall.

Could've fooled me, thought Lorca, but bit his tongue.

Stamets was, oddly enough, happy to see them.

"You're talking about building a synthetic mind-meld augment," he exclaimed upon hearing Burnham's proposal. "Groovy!"

"Clearly your trip down the mycelium path has lightened your mood, lieutenant," observed Lorca with a touch of wry amusement.

Normally, this sort of jibe would have elicited some sort of obstinate pushback from Stamets, but today, the astromycologist smiled benevolently at Lorca. "Once you're past getting stabbed by needles, it's pretty great!"

Lorca narrowed his eyes in assessment. Since when did Stamets have a sense of humor?

At least one thing hadn't changed. Stamets responded to this revelation about the Vulcan katra with excitement for the pure research opportunities of such a network, immediately enchanted by the possibilities and threatening to go off on a scientific tangent. Lorca directed him back to the task at hand with the firm admonition that there was no time for them to explore the metaphysical implications of Vulcan katras. Sarek was out there in that nebula and they needed him, now.

The only problem was, for this plan to work, they would need to put Burnham inside the nebula. The radioactive interference was not just a problem for the ship's sensors, but also Burnham's connection to Sarek. Lorca relentlessly shot back at every problem Stamets presented with attempts to find solutions. "So we take the Discovery inside the nebula and get closer to him."

"Ooh, bad idea," said Stamets delightedly. "Guess what happens if we mix those cosmic gases with the concentration of mycelium spores we have on board?"

"Um," said Lorca, staring at Stamets and wondering if maybe Stamets had taken something before starting his shift. Perhaps tetrahydrocannabinol concentrate. He might need to check the security feeds later to see if Stamets had started eating his precious mushrooms.

Stamets imitated an explosion. Then, he looked at Lorca knowingly and said, "I know, I know, get to work."

Lorca stared after Stamets as Burnham rattled off some mission specifications. Stamets had just willingly set himself to do the actual task he had been assigned to do. What in the hell was happening. There might actually be something seriously wrong with Stamets. Whatever it was, it seemed like an improvement. Lorca found he actually sort of liked Stamets now.

He was only half-listening, still perplexed by this complete change in Stamets' personality, but he heard Burnham request Cadet Tilly's assistance and promised her whatever she wanted or needed for this mission. He gave her Tyler for a pilot, too, and before sending them off he pulled Tyler aside on the shuttle and said, "Bring her back in one piece."

"Not a scratch," promised Tyler, patting the shuttle's controls, and Lorca's smile softened.

"I'm talking about her," Lorca clarified, glancing over at Burnham, and then offered Tyler a piece of his trademark gallows humor: "Or don't come back at all." As usual, despite the smile, there was something very real in those words.

Finding himself in yet another one of those depressing waiting patterns while Burnham flew off to save her adoptive father, Lorca examined the latest iteration of Mischkelovitz's mycelial map from the privacy of his quarters. It was coming along slowly but surely. Each jump added something new, some detail, some revision, some elimination of a previous possibility.

Unfortunately, with an absolute dearth of reasons for them to jump anywhere at the moment, there was really nothing Mischkelovitz could add to the map, so she was back on the Klingon cloaking problem.

An alert from the bridge interrupted his examination. Admiral Cornwell wanted to talk to him.

In person. Her cruiser was here. This, he knew, was not going to be good.

It was even worse than he expected. Cornwell wasn't just mad, she was furious, because the rampant insubordination she had been putting up with for far too long had just spread to his interactions with other admirals.

"You are captain of the most advanced ship in the fleet. The cornerstone of our entire defense against the Klingons!" she proclaimed, her every word a judgmental reprimand. (Could Cornwell even hear herself? Yet again, Lorca was reminded of the fact they would not let him deploy Discovery in battle where it was truly needed. Was the cornerstone of their defense supposed to be empty air?) Her accusations went on and on: he had launched an unauthorized rescue mission with a convicted mutineer and a POW of questionable trustworthiness (unfair; Tyler had proven himself both true and capable to Lorca), he was treating Discovery like his own fiefdom (fair; as far as Lorca was concerned, the ship was), Stamets had engaged in illegal eugenics modifications (but he had gotten the spore drive working in the process and saved everyone on the ship). "There are rules—"

"Rules are for admirals in back offices," he said to her, face set with fierce determination. "I'm out there trying to win a war."

"Then don't make enemies on your own side!"

As strained as things had become, he was stunned by the implication she might now be in some way his enemy. "What are you doing here? What's really going on?"

"I came to see my friend," she said.

There were two ways Lorca could interpret that. One way was to challenge whether or not she truly understood the meaning of the word, because these days he was no longer sure.

He went with the other. "Okay," he said softly, and decided to remind her exactly what sort of friends they were. "Why don't we stop talking like Starfleet officers, Kat, and, ah, start talking like friends?" He produced a bottle of whiskey from under the table and offered a tiny smile of invitation.

He could see the reluctance, but also the hope.

"If you don't want to, that's fine. But it's the end of my day, and it's been a long one, so..." He put a glass on the table next to the bottle and poured himself a measure.

Cornwell stared at the alcohol as it went in the glass. "There are better ways to unwind," she said.

Lorca picked up the drink with a smirk. "Are you offering?"

"Reading, music," corrected Cornwell, kicking herself slightly for walking right into that one.

He took a sip of the whiskey, felt the initial bite of the alcohol dissolve into a smoothly satisfying, earthy warmth, and put a second glass on the table. "You gonna make me drink alone?" Her will to resist dissolved a little more with each passing moment, but she was still not at the tipping point. "You came an awful long way to see me. These days, there's no telling when either of us'll get a chance like this again, to share a drink with a friend."

He said when, but they both knew full well that he could just as well have said "if" and the statement would have been just as if not more true. She stepped forward and he poured her drink. A little more than he should have, so he poured some more in his own glass to balance things out.

"I really hate how we left things on that starbase," said Cornwell.

"Yeah," said Lorca. "Me, too." He sighed and took another sip, leaning his free hand on the surface of his desk.

Cornwell tilted the glass in her hand, admired the amber color. "This war has made things difficult in more ways than I think any of us expected."

"That it has." He watched her take a slow sip of her whiskey. "Do you mind if we adjourn to a more comfortable setting?" She shrugged at him faintly, not saying no. He picked up the bottle. "Computer, two for site to site transport. Captain's quarters."

He closed his eyes as they rematerialized in a shimmer of white light.

"I still can't believe you won't get your damn eyes fixed," she said.

"They're my damn eyes," he said. "And I—"

"You're keeping them, I remember." She rolled her eyes at him and sat down on the chair next to the coffee table. Intentionally, because it only had room for one and kept this encounter more firmly on her terms. He sat on the couch across from her and put the bottle on the table, clinking his glass against hers. "Nothing like a single malt, straight from the motherland."

She recalled a bottle of the same they had once shared while watching the Perseid meteor shower. Lorca smiled at her as she reminisced, but somehow it felt less than fully genuine and slightly distracted.

"We were so young, with grand plans for the future," she said, and lifted her glass with a faintly giddy motion.

"Well, some of us still have," he boasted.

"I know," she said, and sat there, looking at him intently. Her face shifted from the fond sweetness of distant memories to the sharp focus of the here and now. "I worry about you, Gabriel. Some of the decisions you've been making recently have been troubling." She said it with a small laugh, but Lorca could see she was not joking.

"Well, war doesn't provide too many opportunities for niceties," he countered, and framed his response just as jokingly in the hopes of eliciting more of the same.

Instead, the levity evaporated on her side of the conversation. She began to list off some of her concerns: the way he pushed his crew, his recent disregard of Starfleet's orders, of her orders. To him these were mild rebukes. To her, they were serious questions as to what he thought he was doing out here in the reaches.

"Starfleet needs you at your best," she said, trying to soften the blow with a return to a more lighthearted tone. "I'm not sure we're getting it."

"I'm not sure the Klingons would agree," he said with a smirk, raising his glass to his lips, still stalwartly dismissive. Besides, if the Klingons were getting less than his best, it was only because Cornwell kept trying to tie his hands behind his back and stop him from doing what he knew was needed.

"I don't think you've been the same since the Buran."

There it was, of course. Lorca shook his head and chuckled faintly. If this were a drinking game, he would have lost right then and there, because it always, always came back to the Buran. Predictable to a fault. He leaned forward, reminded her he had passed every test, every psych eval, and she admitted that was true. "So what's really the problem?" he asked.

"Less than a week ago, you were being tortured. Now you're back in the chair. How do you feel about that?"

He laughed. They had a bottle of single malt, they were in his quarters, and she was dime store psychoanalyzing him with the greatest known cliché of her profession. "Are we in session?" He put his glass down, shifted his position so he was sitting on the edge of the couch, and leaned in even closer. "'Cause if I have your undivided attention for fifty minutes, I can think of a whole bunch of other things we can be doing." His hand reached over and touched her knee, fingers lightly tracing the fabric of her uniform.

She could not help but smile. Between the alcohol, those clear blue eyes, that devilish smirk, the relentless pursuit and focus that accompanied it, and the way he did everything in carefully-calculated escalating steps to get exactly what he wanted, it was like twenty years ago all over again.

Cornwell stood up, removed her insignia, and put it on the table. The signal was clear. As of right now, she was no longer an admiral, they were just two people in a room with a bottle of single malt.

Fifty minutes turned out to be an exhausting goal. Which wasn't to say that it wasn't fun, and that Lorca didn't enjoy every minute of it, but after a very long day and in the blissfully exhausted satisfaction following, he drifted off into an almost happy sleep.

He awoke to the sensation of something touching the triangular-shaped scar upon his back and with the loss of his sleep state came a surge of panicked adrenaline.

For a moment, he was not on Discovery, he was somewhere else entirely, and it terrified him beyond anything. He instinctively felt someone was trying to kill him. His fingers were already wrapped tightly around the phaser under his pillow and he rolled over onto his perceived attacker with the phaser drawn. His other hand closed around her neck as the phaser pressed against her chin. His breaths were a series of rapid, panicked pants of overwhelmed anxiety.

He saw Cornwell. He was still on Discovery. He looked at the phaser in his own hand almost incomprehensibly. It was hard to tell which of them was more shocked, her for the phaser pointing at her face, or him for the realization he had drawn it on her.

He released her, tried to calm the wrongness of the moment. "I'm sorry," he gasped.

Cornwell pushed him off her, jumping out of the bed. "You sleep with a phaser in your bed and you say nothing's wrong!" she exclaimed.

"Kat!"

She grabbed her clothes, frantically pulling them on. "I have ignored the signs. I can't any more."

He listened with rising alarm as she decried him as a stranger, a liar, someone who had changed in ways that made him unrecognizable to her. He watched the anger and fear on her face and was helpless to stave off the deluge of condemnation. She said, "Now I see it's worse than I ever thought. Your behavior's pathological. That's what tonight was, right? Trying to get me to back off?"

She was fully dressed now. She picked up her insignia from the table and clapped it back onto her uniform.

"I can't leave Starfleet's most powerful weapon in the hands of a broken man."

She went for the door.

For all that he had been scared upon waking, his was even more terrified now. He scrambled from the bed after her, stopping short of reaching for her, because it was impossible for him to unmake her memory of his hand around her neck and he had no wish to reconjure it for either of them. His voice cracked as he pleaded with her, "Don’t take my ship away from me! She's all I got. Please, I'm begging you." She did not respond to this. Lorca changed tactics, attempted to give her what he thought she wanted. "And you're, you're right. It's been harder on me than I let on, I lied about everything and I need help."

He stood there, completely exposed, desperately looking for some sign of forgiveness or understanding or compassion that would signify she was not really going to take Discovery from him. She was supposed to be his friend, she kept insisting she was, and he needed this ship because it was his everything.

"I hate that I can't tell if this is really you," she said, unmoved.

The look on his face was so lost, so scared. She left him standing there like that. As the doors closed, he felt like the universe was about to come crashing down on top of him.

It surely would have had not the comm beeped a priority message from the bridge. It was Saru, reporting the return of Burnham with Sarek. Lorca tried to process this news and everything that had just unraveled around him. "On my way to sickbay," he said, a tremor in his voice.

He had thought she would be putty in his hands, but he'd squeezed too hard, and it had slipped right through his fingers.

Cornwell beelined to Lab 26, not caring if Lorca tracked her movements at this point, intent on ending this farce once and for all and making sure everyone she held responsible for this mess knew they had played a part in it.

O'Malley was outside the door alongside the big Swedish man who had served with Lorca on the Triton and whose name Cornwell did not remember. "Colonel, with me!" she barked, and O'Malley followed her into the lab, not certain what was going on. He found Cornwell entirely not in the mood for small talk as the doors cycled them inside.

Mischkelovitz was startled to see Cornwell come through with O'Malley and beeline for Lalana's room. Lalana was similarly surprised to find Cornwell on her doorstep. Cornwell did not bother to wait for an invitation. She charged straight in and O'Malley trailed after in a continued state of confusion.

Lalana was typically cheerful in her greeting to Cornwell, but as the door slid shut, Cornwell was not having any of it.

"You told me you would tell me if there was something wrong with him," Cornwell said. "There is something very wrong with him!"

"What are you talking about?" asked Lalana, beginning to knock her hands together.

"Come again?" said O'Malley, confused for more reasons than the fact that he had not been privy to the referenced conversation between Cornwell and Lalana.

"After the Buran!" clarified Cornwell, repeating, "You said you would tell me if there was anything wrong with him."

Lalana tilted her head. "That may be what you heard, but that is not what I said."

Cornwell stared, aghast. "Excuse me?"

Lalana's hands stilled. "I told you I would look after him and let you know if there was anything of concern about Hayliel."

Cornwell breathed in, shaking from the combination of anger and adrenaline she was still feeling. It suddenly seemed very important, the exact words Lalana had used in San Francisco, but Cornwell could not remember precisely what they were. "Don't you dare try to downplay this with word games."

"Words are not games," said Lalana. "Words are the most important things humans have because words are used to tell stories."

Cornwell was utterly flabbergasted. After all these years, Lalana remained unmistakably alien and the limited extent to which she understood humanity had clearly failed both Cornwell and Lorca in the most spectacular and unfortunate fashion. "There is something very, very wrong. That is not the Gabriel Lorca I know."

O'Malley began to wonder what he was doing in the room. Bearing witness in the event of legal proceedings? Preventing one of Lorca's lovers from murdering the other?

"There is nothing wrong with him," said Lalana. "He is exactly who he is."

Cornwell exploded. "He pulled a phaser on me!”

O'Malley's mouth fell open in shock. "What? Who?" He did not mean to ask who, because it was entirely self-evident who they were talking about, but O'Malley could not believe it. Cornwell shot O'Malley a look that said his momentary obtuseness was extremely not appreciated and O'Malley hastily replaced it with another question. "Why?"

"Is there a good reason for a captain to draw a phaser on an admiral?"

There were, in O'Malley's experience, several. Admirals were not immune to mistakes and corruption, even if their shortcomings tended to be slightly above his colloquial pay grade. He tried again to elicit an answer that would make sense of this horrifying information. "Why on earth would he do that?"

Cornwell did not appreciate the colonel's questions. It felt like he was interrogating her and from her perspective, the reasons for the offense were not so important as the fact it had happened in the first place. "You tell me. I sent you here to assess him, colonel, and you're telling me you missed that?"

"I—" O'Malley was really struggling with this. "I don't know what you're talking about! He's never pulled a phaser on me. Nor anyone on the crew so far as I know. Why would he? What the hell happened?" Lorca had not even pulled a phaser on Groves, despite having more than ample motivation to do so.

"It was under his pillow," said Cornwell.

"His... His pillow? His..." O'Malley paled, making his freckles stand out in sharp relief. He seemed to come to a full and total stop and stared at Cornwell with a vacant expression on his face.

It was clear what facet of this exchange O'Malley was now processing. "You're focusing on the wrong thing," said Cornwell bluntly.

"No, you are focusing on the wrong thing," said Lalana. "Why are you upset? He did not shoot you. There is nothing for you to be upset about because there is no problem."

Neither human could quite believe their ears. Lalana had yet again found a way to thoroughly demonstrate her utter lack of human morality in a horrifying way.

"We need to remove him from command at the earliest opportunity," said Cornwell. "I'm authorizing you to arrest him."

O'Malley shook his head, mostly to get rid of the idea that Lalana thought pointing phasers at people was no big deal. He focused his attention on Cornwell. "With all due respect, I can't possibly do anything of the sort without conducting a proper investigation. This is a very serious accusation, admiral."

"Accusation?" repeated Cornwell. "I'm telling you what happened." She jerked her head as she said this, emphasizing the bitter truth.

"If I ask Captain Lorca, will he tell me the same?"

"Are you really turning this into a he said, she said situation?" said Cornwell. "I am an admiral and I just had a phaser pulled on me by a man who is completely unfit for command." She was really getting tired of repeating herself for them both. How O'Malley could possible stand there and not immediately declare Lorca in need of arrest, Cornwell did not know.

"Vice admiral," said O'Malley automatically, meaning it only as a technical clarification and not a disparagement, but it came off that way all the same. "And I'm a colonel in Investigative Services. Admiral, I cannot eschew my duties based on the word of anyone. This is literally the foundation of what Investigative Services is built upon. Now, if you want to remove him through command channels, that's entirely your prerogative, but I do not make arrests until after I have investigated the events in question." (There was one exception, if the suspect in question posed a flight risk, but in this instance, Lorca was less likely to flee Discovery than to flee with the ship and O'Malley on it.)

Cornwell could hardly believe what she was hearing, wondering how O'Malley could possibly downplay the magnitude of Lorca's transgression, but O'Malley wasn't done.

"Which isn't to say I won't investigate, I certainly will. I'll take your statement into consideration, and his statement, and, if the evidence bears up, which I should think it would because I do place great importance on your statement and I certainly don't question it, then and only then will I arrest him. But the man has a regulatory right to defend himself and respond, and I'm not the person to strip away anyone's right to a defense." This right to defense was the only thing that had saved his sister.

Cornwell chewed her lip. She was slightly concerned about the optics of removing Lorca in the middle of a warzone and O'Malley was going to adhere to his protocols. There was also the issue that there was no telling how Lorca or his crew would respond to an attempt to remove Lorca by force. The look on Lorca's face when she left him had been that of a cornered animal, and in Cornwell's experience, cornered animals were the most dangerous kind.

Lalana's tail twitched back and forth in catlike agitation. "If you are quite done, you may leave my home now, admiral."

The look Cornwell gave Lalana would have withered anyone else, but it had no effect on the lului. "I should never have trusted you," Cornwell said.

"I believe the human phrase 'you have made your own bed and now you must lie in it' may apply," said Lalana, "as it seems your own bed would have been a better place for you to lie down than in Gabriel's." She had the audacity to click her tongue once.

"Fuck you," said Cornwell, turning on her heel, and left. O'Malley trailed after Cornwell again, offering Lalana one last confused glance as he did.

"I want full updates on everything in your investigation," said Cornwell as they bypassed Mischkelovitz once more.

"With respect, admiral, as you are a part of the investigation, it wouldn't be right for you to be involved to that degree. I'll direct my findings to my superior and she'll be in contact as needed."

"Fine, but don't wait," said Cornwell, and strode away, leaving O'Malley standing next to Larsson.

Larsson watched the admiral go. "What was that about?"

O'Malley just shook his head. "I have no bloody idea, but I'm damn sure going to find out."

Standing in the hallway with Burnham, Lorca looked at the figure of Sarek lying in sickbay, but he was only halfway attentive to the issue of the unconscious Vulcan ambassador. Part of Lorca was still back in his quarters having everything stripped away from him.

The talks Sarek had been delayed from attending represented a very real chance for the Federation to hold its own and even turn the tide of this war. Sarek was never going to make the meeting in his present state.

"The window for the talks closes in a few hours. Even if the Federation wanted to step in, they couldn't get there in time," said Burnham.

As she spoke, the wheels turned in Lorca's head. There were so many things up in the air right now and he was barely keeping it together, not that Burnham seemed to notice. Her appreciation of human emotions was largely stunted because of the Vulcan lying on the biobed.

Something slightly mad occurred to Lorca. "Admiral Cornwell could." He could scarcely believe he was saying it. "I know her. She'd do anything to keep the chance of peace alive."

Even if Cornwell had lost all faith in him, decided he was a stranger, and was now trying to ruin his life, this war was too important and he was not going to take away any hope the Federation had of surviving it. Even if it meant giving someone who was actively trying to destroy him a feather in her cap.

It might actually play in his favor, show Cornwell that he was still worthy of his command because he could appreciate the bigger picture. Make her see the bigger picture, too.

Burnham turned to Lorca. Her expression was still so steely. "Sir, you didn't have to mount this rescue mission for Sarek."

"I didn't do it for him," said Lorca, and for a moment there was something gentle in his eyes. "I need a team around me that's gonna help me carry the day. And that includes you." If he was going to find a way to keep Discovery, he would need such a team more than ever.

"I'm grateful," she said, "to serve under a captain like you." He smiled, nodded, and left her to watch over her father.

This was a shit day, but at least he had managed to make good on one miracle. Time to try for another.

There was precious little time to waste, so even though he received a message requesting his presence at Lab 26 urgently, he went to the actual guest quarters Cornwell had been assigned. She was gathering up the handful of personal effects that had been transferred over from her cruiser, namely a toothbrush and change of clothes.

She was not pleased to see him again this soon. "You have a lot of nerve—"

"The talks on Cancri IV," he said quickly, aware he had to get as much information out before she tried to cut him off or close the door on his face. "Sarek can't make it. No one can, except you. We're halfway there already."

She stared.

The helplessness filtered onto his face once again. "Kat, please. I'm sorry, but this is bigger than either of us."

"You're goddamn right it is," she said, and meant it on two counts. These talks were a real and tangible chance for her to make a difference in the greater scheme of things. Then there was also the fact his command of Discovery was never intended as a personal favor, it was supposed to be for the good of Starfleet, and she no longer believed at all that it was.

He recognized she was agreeing to attend the talks, which was good news, but he had to keep trying to save himself. "And when you're back, then we can..."

"It won't change anything."

He stood there, breathing shallowly. "A bit of perspective might—"

Her eyes were cold and her voice was unyielding. "You're only delaying the inevitable."

"Just tell me what to say to fix this!" His voice rose, startling an ensign at the far end of the corridor. "I'm trying to do what's right. For the greater good." If only he could make her realize how much that applied to his captaincy of Discovery.

"I can see that you believe that," said Cornwell, and closed the door.

There was still the request for him at Lab 26, but he continued to ignore it, instead focusing on preparing supplies and a shuttle for Cornwell's departure. This gave him an excuse to be in the shuttlebay when Cornwell turned up.

One last try. "I'm sorry," he said. "It's unforgivable, I know, but please don't ruin me because of one night."

"I don't want to ruin your career," she told him, intended it as a reassurance. "But when I return, we'll talk about how you step down. And after you get some help, maybe we'll get you back in that chair."

There were a lot of words in that Lorca did not like. Step down, maybe, and even help. He bit back anything that would give her more ammunition to destroy him with and said simply, "May fortune favor the bold, admiral. Good luck with your negotiation." He did not wait around to watch the shuttle launch.

He had a destination in mind but he did not reach it. O'Malley appeared in his path. "Captain, a word?"

"Not now, colonel," said Lorca.

"Yes, now," said O'Malley, and Lorca swallowed, because he knew O'Malley had a connection to Cornwell and had a pretty good guess as to what this conversation was going to be about. "We can go wherever you like, but we are talking right now."

Lorca chose his ready room, as he always did, thinking as they walked towards it how he was going to get out of this seemingly impossible situation. Was he at the point now where he had to be figuring out how to neutralize threats he had thought were his allies?

The dimness of the ready room was comforting and more so the stars, but Lorca was tense and jumpy as the doors closed. He prepared to attempt to defend himself from O'Malley, but before he could, O'Malley spoke.

O'Malley's voice was surprisingly soft. "I heard what happened with Cornwell. Are you all right?"

It was not a demand for explanation but the same question Lorca had asked Burnham, and offered with the same intent. There was nothing in O'Malley's stance or expression that suggested he was here in an official capacity, and everything to suggest he was here as a friend. That thing Cornwell kept claiming to be.

Still. "What, so you can rat me out to her?" Lorca asked, eyes wide. He wanted to sneer but his mouth was not quite managing it.

"I wouldn’t rat you out to Cornwell if she paid me in cheese," said O'Malley, entirely serious and sincere despite the ridiculousness of the words.

Some part of Lorca still worried this was some sort of trap or trick, but he decided to take a chance on O'Malley. His head shook back and forth in small, repetitive denial and his face took on the same hopeless and lost expression it had worn when Cornwell left his quarters. It was an expression he had been struggling to contain ever since that moment. "Mac," he said, and swallowed. "I fucked up." His mouth twisted into an anguished grimace. "Big." Lorca closed his eyes and covered them with his hand, then dropped his hand and turned to look at the stars. It felt like he was on the verge of losing everything that mattered to him right now.

They did not have the sort of relationship that permitted one man to hug another, but O'Malley moved to join Lorca at the window, his freckles reflected in the windowpane, dark specks on pale in a perfect inversion of the spacescape.

"Tell me what happened, in as much detail as you can, and don't leave anything out."

Lorca discovered that, as much as O'Malley was a great talker, he was an even better listener. Patient, attentive, sympathetic. He did request clarification on a few points: "I thought you were sleeping with Commander Landry."

There were a lot of jokes Lorca could have made in reply and he managed to muster up the capacity for absolutely none of them. "There was no actual sleep involved," he said blandly.

"And Lalana?"

"I don't bring a phaser in her room," said Lorca. Being restricted to the lab, Lalana had never been to his quarters on Discovery.

"But you keep one in yours."

"It helps me sleep!" managed Lorca, but even though it was true, it sounded pathetic to them both. "I can't lose my ship, Mac." Lorca's face twisted into an expression so pitiful he looked away from the window so he would not see his own reflection.

O'Malley could see clearly how devastated Lorca was by that possibility, but he would not and could not lie to Lorca. "Gabriel, I'm not sure you have a choice. But it may not be as bad as it looks. Certainly you're among the best tacticians, in a moment when we happen to need that area of expertise. It may be possible for this action to be deferred, at least for the time being, and then we can sort it out after the war."

"If that's the case, then I don't want this war to end," said Lorca bitterly.

"You don't mean that," said O'Malley, but Lorca did mean it a little bit. "You're just lashing out, and understandably. Look, put it to you this way, if it comes out that a war hero has been under a lot of stress and needs some time after the war, no one would judge you in the slightest. It's just a matter of us all getting to that point so everyone can appreciate it. Cornwell isn't the absolute authority of all things Starfleet, she's just your direct supervisor, and from what I can see, that relationship is well and truly compromised. Step one, have Cornwell removed from supervising you. We'll start there."

Lorca almost smiled at that. He had been hoping sleeping with Cornwell would demonstrate to her he was perfectly fine, but now that it had blown up in his face, at least there was still some tactical advantage to the event. It reflected poorly on her, too. Not as badly as it did him given how it ended, but still.

"I don't understand one thing," said O'Malley. "We finally have Stamets acting as a pilot for the drive and it makes the whole thing tenable, but they haven't rolled the technology out even now that we don't need the tardigrade?"

There was something infinitely calming about being directed away from thinking about the pending loss of command and back to the usual set of problems.

"It was a eugenics augmentation," said Lorca. "I don't think Cornwell wants that getting out, and we don't have any more tardigrade DNA to merge into another human." That was another thing Saru might have considered before letting Burnham and Tilly release Ripper, but it was too late now.

O'Malley sighed heavily. "How much simpler my life would be if we didn't have this unilateral ban on genetic engineering."

He finally made it to Lalana. "Something happened," was how Lorca began the conversation, and Lalana listened with just as much attentiveness as O'Malley had, but with fewer interruptions. "There's a chance..." It was hard to say it, even now. "They might take Discovery from me."

Lalana did not hesitate. "Then don't let them. You are most yourself when you are on a ship. You belong here. Don't let them take it from you."

His look was one of utter helplessness. "I might not have a choice." There was no guarantee any part of O'Malley's thought process would actually work. It largely depending on him finding an ally in Starfleet higher-ranking than Cornwell, and the only other admiral he had any particular working relationship with at the moment was Terral, whom he'd angered by rescuing Sarek, in so much as Vulcans could be angered. "Maybe your friends in Starfleet?"

"I will ask," said Lalana, and cupped the side of his face with the broad end of her tail. "I was given the stars by this face. I have not forgotten that. You will always be the man with stars in his eyes to me."

Saru woke Lorca from his bed. Aware his first officer might be coming to try and remove him from command, Lorca slipped the phaser under his pillow into the band of his trousers, hidden at his back, and answered the door.

The news was something else entirely.

"It was a trap, sir. The Klingons have taken the admiral."

The Klingons' invitation to talk had been a ruse from the beginning. The Klingon houses in question had not split off from the main leadership, they were looking to hook a fish to curry prestige and favor. In lieu of the high-ranking Vulcan they had expected, a human admiral from Starfleet made just as good a prize.

"Notify Starfleet Command," ordered Lorca. "Ask for orders."

Saru's head turned, indicating confusion.

"Is there a problem?" asked Lorca.

"No, sir, uh... Just, in the past, we have engaged in alternative thinking on these matters."

"What if we go after her and it's another trap, Mr. Saru? Did you consider that? Starfleet can't afford to lose the Discovery. She's bigger than all of us. If so ordered, we will try and rescue the admiral, but not without authorization."

"I will hail Starfleet now, sir," said Saru.

Lorca closed the door and went to the window, looking out at the stars.

It was everything Admiral Cornwell had ever wanted from him. Obedience, caution, and adherence down to the letter of the regulations.

She could choke on it. It seemed fate had given him a second chance.

Part 66

[whovianwatchingstartrek]

A Whovian Watches Star Trek for the First Time: Part 096 - Return of the Klingons

Star Trek: Discovery - Season 1 Episode 1 - The Vulcan Hello

We open this new chapter in my Star Trek Journey with a Klingon talking about reuniting the Klingon empire, which begs the question: What happened to it in the last Hundred years? It seemed pretty united when we last saw it in Enterprise. Corrupt and biased in favour of one Caste, but definitely united. Later in the episode we find out Klingons haven't been seen in Federation space since the Time of Enterprise either, so something big must have happened.

We're then introduced to two of our new characters, a Captain Georgiou and a Commander called Michael Burnham. The pair are on a mission the desert to release some water for some locals, which they do easily, but they can't transport out because of an incoming storm, but with some clever thinking from Georgiou they get out easily.

Then we get a new intro. I liked it, the kind of blueprint sketchbook aesthetic for the intro was great. The Music didn't quite get me as hyped for exploration as Faith of the Heart did though

After the intro, we're off to fix some damaged satellites on the edge of the Federation's borders, and introduced to another member of our crew: Lieutenant Saru, our Kelpien friend from that short trek! Apparently friction between Saru and Michael is common on this bridge, and from what I've seen from these two so far, I love their dynamic of just constantly trying to one up eachother in front of the captain.

Michael ends up volunteering to taking a solo space flight to investigate a strange object, which turns out to be a really old ancient structure. She lands on it, and the structure unfolds to reveal that it's a Klingon ship. An inhabited Klingon Ship, and she ends up in a brief fight, then with her helmet cracked and her unconscious, drifting through space.

We're then treated to a flashback to her childhood, specifically her education. Apparently she was educated by Vulcans, who tried to push her towards their whole emotional-control logic thing, but the way they went that is absolutely wild, they just straight up just kept asking her questions about a Klingon attack on a Science Outpost that seems to be connected to some trauma, then failing her for having an emotional response, then just straight up calling her "human heart" the problem. Lovely to see the Vulcans haven't changed that much.

After the flashback, Michael pushes herself out of sickbay to warn the crew about the Klingons, and the ship goes to Red Alert. Meanwhile, the Klingons start talking about some kind of Prophecy. The Klingons in Enterprise didn't seem this religious, so I'm assuming this is some new group of Klingons. They seem to worship something called the Kahless, I'm curious to learn more about.

Eventually, both ships end up calling for backup, but a firefight doesn't start just yet. Michael returns to her quarters to call her old Vulcan Teacher, Sarek, for advice. Apparently, the Vulcans recommend engaging the Klingons in battle, but Georgiou shuts the idea down. However, Michael Burnham takes the decision to mutiny, and we're left on a cliff-hanger of a standown on the bridge while the Klingon fleet arrives ready for battle

Commander Burnham is a fascinating character for me here. I love that she acts rashly and impulsively, and I can't wait to find out more about her, and see what being raised by Vulcans does to a person. Saru and Captain Georgiou were also great, but I don't have much of a vibe on them yet. No one else in the crew has left much of an impression on me, but as introductory episode, this was good!

[janeykath318]

The Vulcan In The Elevator

Prompt: “We take the same elevator everyday and due to a misunderstanding, I think you can’t speak English and I’ve been talking to my friend about how hot I think you are.”

The only time she’d heard him speak, it had been in Vulcan over his blue tooth device so she figured he didn’t speak Standard yet and was probably part of the Ambassador’s contingent that occupied the floor above the legal firm she worked at.

Smiling, she offered the Vulcan greeting she’d seen him show the mornings he did notice her existence.

He returned it with a nod and the barest hint of what might have been a smile. Jemma swooned inside. He really had beautiful expressive dark eyes, she thought. Too bad they couldn’t communicate better. Maybe she should learn some Vulcan phrases.

“He smiled at me!” She squealed to her aide, Gaila, when she returned to her office, practically floating on air from the joy of such a favorable outcome.

“Yeah!” Gaila enthused. “He say anything?”

“Nope. I️ don’t think he knows English,” she sighed. “If I️ want this to go farther, I’m going to have to learn some Vulcan. But hey, I️ like a good challenge. There’s no such thing as a no-win scenario.”

“So you tell me everyday, darling,” Gaila said. “Good luck Wooing Mr. Tall, Dark, and Vulcan!”

She’d first seen the dreamy man two months ago and had been smitten instantly. That height! (He towered over her 5’4 frame) Those eyes! (So gorgeous and mysterious!) Those hands! (Super long, dexterous fingers!) That posture! (Absolutely flawless!)

“What are plotting, Kirk?” Asked the wary voice of the senior partner of the firm, who’d helped Jem get a leg up in the place starting out.

“Nothing you need to be concerned about, Chris!” She answered sweetly, hiding the Vulcan For Dummies book she’d been looking at.

“Whenever you say that, I️ always suspect something,” He said, fixing her with a look that said “Don’t take me for a fool.” “I️ know you too well.”

“Oh, I’m just doing a little research on Vulcans,” she said casually. “Never know when you might meet one, especially since they’re right above us.”

“They’ve been there for twenty years,” Chris said dryly. “Why are you just now interested?”

“I️ have my reasons,” she said evasively.

“Okay, Okay,” Chris sighed, throwing up his hands in defeat. “I️ won’t ask. Just please don’t cause an international incident.”

“Have some faith, Chris,” She implored him. “You know I️’ve been behaving myself lately.”

“You have,” he admitted. “Keep it up. If you’re gonna crush on a Vulcan, make sure you study that book thoroughly. There’s a lot that could go wrong if you aren’t up on their culture.”

With this parting shot, he vanished, leaving Jemma gaping after him and wondering how in the world he’d read her mind.

Nevertheless, she continued to study Vulcan during her breaks and downtime and eagerly anticipated greeting the man in his own language the next time they met.

Unfortunately, he did not appear the next day, or the next or the next. In fact it was nearly two weeks before she saw him again and ended up being too flustered to say anything, shaking her head in extreme frustration at herself afterward.

She was sitting in a nice restaurant having an evening out with friends as she spilled her feelings over the encounters.

Gaila was very sympathetic, but Bones didn’t look encouraging.

“Smitten with a Vulcan,” he sighed. “Are you out of your corn-fed mind? Don’t you know how stiff and uptight they are? Everything’s about logic, logic, logic and feelings are a big no-no. I didn’t think that would be your type.”

“They do too have feelings!” She protested. “They’re just really self-controlled. Besides, he’s super hot and good mannered.”

She related to them the Vulcan greetings she’d learned.

“There’s at least three kinds,” Jemma said. “I’m trying to decide between two of them. The first is super formal: <i>t’nar pak sorat y’rani.</i> The second is commonly used among Vulcans and more casual: <i>tonk’peh</i>. Then there’s <i>Nashaut</i>, But that’s only used for close friends or bondmates. I should probably go with the formal one, but it’s the hardest to say. My mouth just hasn’t quite got a handle on it yet.”

Gaila snickered at this last statement and Jem gave her an exasperated look.

“Not helpful, Gaila!” She sighed.

“My apologies for disturbing you, but I may be able to assist you in your language efforts.”

Jenna looked up and was struck speechless at the sight of her crush, the tall Vulcan from the elevator. He was speaking to her? And in Standard?

“Um....you’re the guy in the elevator!!” She blurted out. “I thought you didn’t speak Standard!”

The Vulcan’s slanted eyebrows raised and he almost looked amused.

“It would be most unseemly for the son of an ambassador to not speak the language of his adopted planet. You are a member of the Enterprise law firm, I believe?”

Jemma blushed at her lack of thinking skills. “Yes, I am. And Wow, I didn’t know you were actually related to the ambassador. If I wasn’t such an idiot, I would have struck up a conversation a long time ago. The name’s Jemma Kirk.”

“It is an honor to meet you, Ms. Kirk. I am S’chn T’gai Spock, son of Sarek.”

If she’d thought the Vulcan greeting was challenging, she couldn’t make heads or tails of his surname.

“Please, call me Jemma,” she smiled, stifling the instinct to shake hands. Much as Bones told her she had no shame, she did like to think she had a basic sense of propriety.

“And you may call me Spock. I would not ask you to attempt my surname, given that it is unpronounceable to most non-Vulcans.”

“Nice to meet you, Spock,” she said brightly. Gaila took one look at the situation and dragged Bones away. Jemma would be sure to thank her later.

“So, as I was asking my friend here, which of the greetings would you prefer I use for our little elevator encounters?”

“<i>Tonk’Peh</i> would be appropriate, given we are not in a ceremonial or formal situation. If you wish to continue your studies in Vulcan, I can provide assistance.”

“Really?” Jemma asked excitedly, jumping at the chance to spend more time with the gorgeous Spock. “That would be great, if we can work around our schedules. I’ve got some big cases coming up and I imagine you do a lot of diplomatic stuff.”

“I do, but right now, my schedule is very accommodating. Shall we begin the attempt?” He pulled out his sleek and high tech phone.

“I’m game!” She said happily, then seeing the eyebrow quirk up in confusion quickly added, “in other words, I’d be happy to. It’s just a human saying. We have a lot of weird language quirks.”

“So I have observed,” Spock said evenly. “Perhaps our tutoring session can be a mutual exchange of cultural and linguistic information,” Spock suggested.

“Sounds good,” Jemma agreed and reached for her own mobile device.

A few months later, Chris Pike went into Jenna’s office while she was out to leave her an important message pertaining to a case, when he caught sight of the writing on a yellow legal pad lying on the desk.

<i>Ask about Vulcan Courtship customs</i>

[sepdet]

Star Trek Discovery: ep 2

Okay, I absolutely adored the premiere, which I liveblogged Sunday night. But I’ve been feeling rotten and groggy and didn’t watch episode 2 until tonight. 

I’m kind of glad I waited.

I’m transcribing remarks I made to a friend in a private chatroom while watching, and then I’ve added some thoughts afterwards.

SPOILERS.

Ep 2.

Raw remarks transcribed from private chat while watching (slightly edited)

So, our cliffhanger ended with Michael committing mutiny trying to save them, her captain betrayed and pointing a gun at her, and a whole Klingon fleet warping in like several buckets of shit flying towards a fan.

I’m still trying to get used to Sarek being nicer to a human trying to Vulcan than he was to a son whom he practically disowned for leaving Vulcan to join Starfleet. But I love Sarek so will try to muffle the "buts." I want Amanda to show up.

Parting word to Michael: "Behave." On the bright side, seems like it took her seven years before she LOL NOPED.

I hope the Klingon fans are happy. This is a very ponderous language to listen to when it's whole scenes of dialog and not just quick commands or insults. But I know there's a whole branch of fans who embrace Klingon culture and language, and I hope they're as thrilled as I was to hear Sindarin Elvish spoken.  (And that they're not too perturbed that the Klingon look has mutated again.)

Oh SHIT. I know the Captain was trying to defuse situation with diplomacy, but did they not have their shields up? Or was this just an old ship and/or Klingons managed to puncture shields. Ouch ouch ouch.

Wow, Michael is not having a good day. Waking up in remains of brig with failing containment fields around her — whole sequence is impressive and sad.

I like the way they're employing FX in service to story. It's hard not to let CGI overwhelm. But here, no matter how spectacular FX are, they're functional, rather than an end to themselves: like incidental music the Big FX moments help set mood/tone and give audience catch breath to process what just happened. As opposed to only using FX to foster one mood, maximum adrenaline, and keep audience off-balance so they have no time to catch breath and reflect on situation.

Intense telepathic scene with Sarek. Man he really likes this kid. He is one crazy ass Vulcan, even if he won't admit it: sharing a katra with a near stranger, especially a human child, is pretty drastic. (Also I'm confused: thought he adopted her after parents died in attack, but it looks like Michael was already his ward during attack?

ARGH.

Sarek: "I did not come here to judge your actions. I came here to—"

*Pumpkin, who likes to snooze on desk next to keyboard and occasionally use it as pillow at inconvenient moments, carefully and deliberately stretches out paw and plants it over ESC key, backing up browser window to several URLs ago, losing livestream.*

Cats. Such exquisite timing.

Back online.

Okay yes [STC sounded slightly noncommittal when I was enthusing about restraint of FX] now they're getting a little show-offy. But yikes. First time I've ever seen a space battle using classical Greek naval warfare maneuver. Trireme beak-ram!

...although it could be coincidence, and I'm reading it that way because of my classical studies background. They might've come up with that unusual and dramatic visual independently. At any rate, impressive.

OOOOO. Just hit scene where Captain, out of options, sees Klingons beaming up their dead, and she sees option.  I've been kind of waiting for her to be proactive instead of reactive. Earlier her hands were tied by trying to avoid conflict (following orders).

...DAMMIT. Just Googled to find out spelling of Phillipa's last name and saw the kind of spoiler I really hate to see. Stupid, stupid me.  I really honestly didn't know, since I had been so strenuously avoiding behind-the-scenes stuff. 

—

[At this point I stopped babbling in the chatroom to watch final scenes, so rest is post-watch thoughts.]

At least we have one great sequence between Burnham and Captain Georgiou, although the lull to confront one another and devise a strategy was a little forced— Klingons being very polite about not finishing them off. And YES, YES YES, finally seeing Michelle Yeoh fighting, which believe it or not I never have. (I don't watch many films or really much media.) 

:( Ouch. So close. Just a second or two longer.

So that's that. Man, that's gotta be a record even for Trek; can't even get through two eps without ship's destruction and crew evacuation. (Mom and I used to get annoyed at destroying Enterprise for shock value; first time was so dramatic and meaningful, whereas repeat felt gimmicky.) 

Not sure Michael's Expository Speech is did her any favors at this trial, but at least now we hear what she thinks.

Teaser for next episode (or "real" Discovery show) follows. Kinda confusing that they're convicts but on a Federation ship? Or did she get transferred from prison?

I am still mourning the captain and really not in the mood to parse the trailer. DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT. I was wary of this show, but after watching Ep 1 I let my guard down and was SO EXCITED.

I had seen one article about this series last spring showing what looked like a predominantly white-dude bridge with generic-looking white male captain and a few tokens, just like TOS. That had dampened my enthusiasm for this show and prevented me from getting into it or looking forward to it.

But recently I saw posts saying, "Yo, WOC captain and first officer!" (or rather, in Tumblr's usual WE MUST MAKE YOU FEEL GUILTY FOR NOT SUPPORTING THIS THING YOU WEREN’T AWARE OF, SHAME ON YOU!!! way, there was a post berating Tumblr for lack of photosets and buzz and excitement over Michelle Yeoh and Sonequa Martin-Green, and why weren't we getting behind WOCs when we'd been all excited for Gal Gadot?) And I thought, Wait—what?! I thought this was going to be generic white dude captain with token black female first officer which is okay but not ANYTHING LIKE as cool as what you're saying?

And since I do try to avoid spoilers and PR I didn't know Yeoh wasn't going to be the regular series captain. Or rather, I was confused why the hype I was seeing now differed so drastically from that one article I’d started to skim and then closed thinking, “Nah, I’m going to avoid spoilers.” Had the showrunners changed their minds and decided to bring in Michelle Yeoh as an upgrade after seeing their version of Captain Pike wasn’t good enough to anchor a series?I was just going to wait and see.

I forgot any doubts when Episode 1 gave me EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED: Two great female characters with a friendship and professional working relationship. Banter. Excellence. Skills and wits. Clunky TOS tech and new shiny bridge set. Smart captain. Brave first officer. With two WOC they couldn't be tokens; they had to be expanded as just... 3 dimensional characters.

I was so here for that. I loved that whole opening minisode, and also the Captain sending Michael off to play in a brief voyage of discovery and enjoying that her first officer was enjoying herself.

Their friendship was perfect, legendary Kirk and Spock material. It was distracting me from the other bridge crew— even Saru, who is an interesting character, but I was focused so much on these two women— but I figured other characters would get filled out in subsequent episodes.

And now?

"Here. Here's what you really wanted. Two women being superbly competent officers with a meaningful friendship, leading a show just the way Kirk and Spock did. And it's going to be about discovery and an older woman mentoring another one, and tackling difficult ethical problems without providing easy answers and— PSYCHE! 

“...FOOLED YOU! Two leading women in a Kirk-Spock dynamic? Oh, we could never do that. So we're killing off your already-favorite character. As consolation prize, here, have an incarcerated and demoralized WOC who has to be 'grateful' to a white dude for letting her out of jail. Power imbalance between her and captain, no close friendship, and oh yeah, instead of voyage-of-discovery and complicated-ethical-problems Star Trek, it's going to be various people being macho and angry, and a depressing Federation-Klingon War."

 I hope I'm wrong.

It feels like they gave me everything I'd hoped for and more, and then, once I'd let my guard down, they took it away. I'm left with a character and actor (Sonequa Martin-Green) I like enough that I'm going to watch anyway...for now. But I'm back to being wary. And here we have yet another WOC/minority being killed to make way for generic white dude. So now I'm disillusioned and won’t trust this show, and we're only at the end of ep 2.

Okay, yeah, I'm pissed. 

Discovery could redeem itself and turn out to be fantastic. There is a lot of potential here and a lot to like. Saru and Burnham are good characters, and I assume some of the others will be too. But they're going to have to pull off a miracle now to keep me from fantasizing about the better show that COULD HAVE BEEN.

ETA: so maybe I should have read the behind-the-scenes stuff beforehand so I’d be prepared for this premiere to be backstory, in effect. I guess everyone else knew her death was coming, and could appreciate the drama while anticipating this would be a tragedy. Either I’m naive, or too groggy/tired to pick up the Obi-Wan vibes.

[psicygni]

It's 2022 in the Another Shot universe. What are McCoy, and Harold (ok, fine, Spock) and Jim and Nyota up to? :)

OH GOSH are you truly ready, my friend??

(for you kids in the back who want to follow along, read it here!)

Post that phone call at the end (spoiler alert, they talked for 2 hours up until the flight attendant was leaning over McCoy telling him to shut his damn phone off, sir, thank you (whatever, the fact he and spock were still talking helped him forget he was about to fly in the air) (spock was freezing in that park and both wanted to die and also to never hang up)), they had a very tenuous and sassy relationship of snark-filled texts that came in waves of either a bunch in the course of a single day or nothing for a week… a week they each spent convinced the other one had grown bored, moved on, met someone, etc etc, with lots of checking their phone even though they knew nothing was there, and forlornly scrolling back through previous texts and attempting to figure out a suitably casual message to send that properly conveyed: I want to spend my entire day talking to you but I don’t actually want you to know that.

McCoy is utterly sure Spock is banging several dozen dudes (he’s not).  Spock is utterly sure McCoy has found someone - anyone - better than him and as is only reasonable, has moved on to fairer pastures (he hasn’t).  Both of them are entirely frustrated they can’t even begin to forget about the handful of hours they spent together over the course of two days and torture themselves by continuing to keep in contact instead of cutting ties like they tell themselves they should.  Do they talk on the phone?  Maybe.  If they do, do their conversations last for hours? Definitely.  Is it more intensely personal than most conversations they have with anyone else in their life? You bet your butt it is.  Does it happen often?  Not nearly as often as either of them would be down for.  Is the entire conversation 90% sarcasm? 99% would be more accurate.

Queue: McCoy moving to SF, as we all knew he would.  Things that happen include:

Waiting until awkwardly the last minute to let Spock know he’s heading out there

Interviewing for jobs during which Spock attempts (and fails) to not ogle McCoy in a suit

They have no idea where they stand with each other and solve their feelings of discomfort by both being enormous assholes who throw lingering stares across the room

McCoy finds a job.  Then, he finds a place to live (let’s have him staying with Jim for the interim because he’s not quite able to ask Spock if he can bang his brains out crash with him).  He’s convinced himself that Spock is definitely getting some on the reg. and doesn’t want McCoy in the picture.  Spock’s sure that if McCoy wanted anything with him, he’d have said literally anything to indicate that.

(In the meantime while they are busy getting in their own way, things that occur are 1) Spock finds out McCoy is not just a doctor but he’s a Doctor and kind of a Big Deal in the medicine world (which I know nothing about so just nod along with me here) and hospitals are falling over themselves to have him which makes everything so much worse for Spock because um, can you say hot single doctor?? 2) McCoy finds out that everyone joking about Spock being a genius is not a joke at all and is uncomfortable in the pants region every time Spock starts talking, 3) they spend an Unfortunate Amount of Time together because both are determined to be absolutely and utterly casual and are both winning their private game of caring less and what better way to do that than be absolutely blasé that the other one is hanging around).

And then, of course, their carefully constructed ~thing~ crashes and burns and if it’s weird I have so many head canons for my own story I don’t want to know it, because the thing that happens is: innocuous hang out of the entire gang at McCoy’s (are they helping him move? New couch? Something like that? Maybe.), Jim orders pizza, filches Spock’s wallet to pay for it, and of course doesn’t hand it back, so several hours later, the scene is: mccoy finding spocko’s wallet, Spock elsewhere in the city patting his pockets and very logically cursing Jim Kirk, and McCoy texting him to come back and get it ONLY TO REALIZE that he could have just dropped it at the cafe in the morning, and Spock literally jetting back across the city slowly realizing the same thing. Spock protests he didn’t mean to leave it behind. McCoy is too busy trying to be super casual about the fact that they’re actually alone. together. in private. 

They talk. They snark. They flirt. They bang. The end. 

Just kidding, defo not the end. They have a several month adventure in poor communication but excellent sex, in which they spend copious amounts of time together but never quite manage to talk about what they’re really doing even though clearly, to anyone except these two dumb butts, they’re in love and dating. There are late night talks, early morning talks, half living out of each other’s apartments, shared food in fridges, fights about who gets the left over take out food, Spock making coffee for mccoy at all hour of the night and day due to his complicated work schedule at the hospital, mccoy bumming around the cafe waiting for Spock to get off work finally, cooking together, stealing each other’s socks, and mccoy declaring Spock had better get a bigger couch because seriously Spock, find somewhere for your knee to be that isn’t jabbing into my knee. 

And then at some point they get over themselves.  How?  Unclear.  Possibilities include

A discussion about condom use, STIs, and if you’re not bumping uglies with anyone else, and if I’m not… then we could get tested… and stop using condoms… and if we continued to not take any rolls in the hay with anyone other than each other we could continue to not use condoms… and then it’d be like we’re exclusive… and committed… right. k. logical, probably.

Spock gets hit by a car.  I don’t know why I have to be so dramatic about everything.  But, still.  McCoy working in the ER.  Spock biking around the city to his heart’s content.  It’s such prime fodder for someone bursting in (chapel, let’s be real, it’s chapel) and yelling ‘mccoy your boyfriend’s here!’ and he’s all ‘hahah i don’t have a boyfriend! that guy? who i kind of love? he’s not, gosh, he’s not my boyfriend, we only are practically living together hahaha what no, no no no’ and then 180s it when he realizes it’s actual Spock and there’s obviously an entire hurt/comfort fic in here and McCoy is Distraught at the thought of losing Spock and Spock is like oh my god I’m fine ok sure let’s hug oh ok this is nice

Then, they finally really date.  

They have one terrible fight in which McCoy is on Spock’s case to get a Real Job because he could do literally anything with that brain of his and pouring coffee? Really? Which sounds an unfortunate amount like Sarek and Spock is like wow, you’re a huge asshole which only confirms mccoy’s greatest fear that anything good in his life he’ll end up ruining, while meanwhile Spock managed to not hear McCoy wishing the best for him and all he can get out of his life, but that McCoy doesn’t think he’s good enough.  There’s an awful spell of time in which they are on the outs and are sure the other is about to break up with them - or worse, they should be the one to end it because the other can do so much better - only to have a sassy and tearful reunion.

And then they move in together and it’s the first place that’s felt like home for either of them in approximately forever and they buy a fantastic mattress after spending three weeks arguing about which one to get, the actual end, goodbye.

Jim and Nyota are in love.  Except Jim is the only one who can admit it to himself.  Nyota is still trying to sort out that stomach thing she gets around him and is Horrified that it might be what she thinks it is.  They spend entirely too much time together cause their best friends are constantly making out with each other’s faces.  Nyota knows Jim is into her and is slowly realizing that maybe, just maybe, if she doesn’t come around to the idea of him and her, he’s not going to stick around forever waiting, so her life is edging precipitously closer to a reality in which she actually does something about Jim Kirk and she’s terrified and exasperated at the fact that of literally anyone she could be with, her dumb boss is the only one she could possibly see herself with and both hates that fact and is learning to be ok with it.

Demora works at the cafe all through high school.  She’s constantly mortified by the antics of the grownups around her.

The actual end.