#the romulans were in the wrong

[sirfrogsworth]

Captain Spock?

So Spock originally started out as a Commander on TOS.

He was promoted to Captain starting in Wrath of Khan and started wearing the turtleneck uniform with the comfort flap.

Whenever they undid that flap it always looked like such a relief.

Like taking your bra off at the end of a long day.

Then Spock died, came back to life, and briefly became a monk.

And he finally elevated to Ambassador in TNG and the JJ movies where he went a bit monochromatic.

Hmm... I think TNG Ambassador Spock wearing Romulan street clothes is the closest.

Minus the pointy shoulders, of course.

He wore the clothes of the working class.

Interestingly, that storyline was about unification between Romulus and Vulcan. A race of people with a shared origin who were split apart by war. Spock refused to give up on peace despite how shitty and intractable the Romulan government was.

So, I think she got the rank wrong but inadvertently gave a great compliment to Zelenskyy.

Trump is a Pakled.

And Elon is that guy who kidnapped Data.

[quasi-normalcy]

Actually, you know what? Ever since I learned that Ira Steven Behr signed that grossly unfair letter against Jonathan Glazer, I've been forced to kind of reevaluate some of my interpretations of things in Deep Space Nine.

Like Section 31. I was willing to suppose that it was always and only intended to be villainous. But knowing as I do now that the showrunner who included it is perfectly willing to turn a blind eye to genocide, I'm forced to wonder...was it critical? Was it?

Like, let's consider canon here. In "Statistical Probabilities", Bashir and the other augments calculate, in no uncertain terms, that the Federation can't win its war with the Dominion. Their model even accurately forecasts things that happen later in the series: the Romulans declaring war on the Dominion; a full-scale revolt on Cardassia Prime. The end of the episode kind of pooh-poohs their model, like, "Well you couldn't even forecast what Serena would do in this room" but like...(1) the premise is basically lifted from Asimov's psychohistory concept, which works on populations rather than individuals, and (2) there's even a line of dialogue in the episode saying that the models become *less* uncertain the further you go in time. And indeed, the Federation ultimately wins the war not because any of their assumptions were wrong, but because there was another factor that they weren't aware of: the Changeling plague. The plague that had, of course, been engineered by Section 31 to exterminate the Changelings.

So again you have to ask: *was* this critical? Or was the real message that a black ops division willing to commit genocide is necessary to preserve a "utopian" society, no matter how squeamish it makes a naïve idealist like Bashir? And yeah, the war is ultimately won by an act of compassion, but only *after* Bashir sinks to S31's level by kidnapping Sloane and invading his mind with illicit technology. So...is this really a win for idealism?

And then we have the Jem'Hadar. They're a race of slave soldiers, genetically engineered to require a compound that only the Changelings can give them. By any reasonable standard, they're victims. And yet, the series goes out of its way, especially in "The Abandoned", to establish that they're irredeemable. You can't save them. Victims of colonialism they may be, but your only choice is to kill them, or else they--preternaturally violent almost from the moment that they're born--*will* kill you. And of course, I've long assumed that this was just a really unfortunate attempt to subvert what had become the standard "I, Borg" style Star Trek trope where your enemies become less scary once you get to know them, but like. I would say that there's pretty close to a one-to-one correspondence between this premise and the ideology excusing the mass murder of children in Gaza.

Or the Maquis. There's this line at the start of "For the Uniform" where Sisko tells Eddington that he regards the refugees in the Demilitarized Zone as being "Victims of the Maquis", because they've kept alive the forlorn hope that they would ever be allowed to return to their homes and...Jesus, when I write it out like that, Hello, Palestinian Right of Return. [The episode of course ends with Sisko bombing a Maquis colony with chemical weapons, though it is somewhat less objectionable in practice than I'm making it sound here].

And you know what...I get that DS9 is a show that's intended to have moral complexity, and to be kind of ambiguous in a lot places, and not to give you simple answers and so on. And I'm *not* trying to do the standard JK Rowling/ Joss Whedon/ Justin Roiland thing where a creator falls from grace for whatever reason and people comb through their oeuvre to show that they were always wicked and fans were stupid for not seeing it earlier or whatever. But I will say that these things hit different when you know that the series was show-run for five seasons, comprising every episode that I've just named, by a man who would go on to sign his name to a letter maliciously quoting Jonathan Glazer out of context to drag him for condemning an active genocide. And given that I've been a fan of DS9 for basically my entire life, this is deeply unsettling to me.

[stra-tek]

Lots and lots of random spoilerific things about Star Trek comics

Gold Key's old run was written by people who had never actually seen the show. Later they involved fans like Doug Drexler to make things a bit more authentic

This however made them, IMHO, amazing

Blond scotty. Wearing green.

Voodoo planet, with papier mache versions of Earth landmarks which, when blasted with a death ray, cause the real ones to collapse

Spock learns voodoo to combat this threat

The Enterprise completely razes a planet of hostile plant spore things. Like full on extermination of all life

There's a locked room on deck 7 full of evil Vulcan spirits. A yeoman blunders in and all hell breaks loose

Kirk doesn't know what a god damn black hole is

Spock is kidnapped by aliens, has their entire knowledge downloaded into his brain which makes him into a bobblehead for awhile

The Enterprise is briefly taken from Kirk and given to Captain Zarlo, who is a total bellend

Spock forgets to have pointed ears sometimes

The old UK newspaper comic strips were even worse. The first few issues feature "Captain Kurt" and he wears a red shirt. Bailey is also a lead character, giving away which one episode they had knowledge of

Depictions of the Enterprise in their very first strip will shock and horrify you, but after that the art becomes amazing and maintains a very high standard

Marvel did a series following The Motion Picture, and it was a vast improvement, although they technically had rights to the movie and not the series, which led to a little weirdness. Tons of references still were snuck in, though

There's a series of Book and Records, which you can listen to on YouTube and are goofy fun. The Enterprise desperately needs a meal in the art, though.

They draw Romulans as green wizards

They didn't have the rights to Nichelle Nichols or George Takei's likenesses, so get ready for White Uhura and Black Sulu!

They didn't have the rights to The Animated Series either, so M'Ress is a human with weird face paint and Arex is substituted for just some guy

There's an unlicensed Chinese adaptation of The Motion Picture's novelisation (made with zero prior knowledge of Star Trek), which features an all-star cast like O.J. Simpson as Decker and James Brolin as Kirk. It's called The Star Trek, which is a better name than The Motion Picture, IMHO.

DC comics' first run is considered some of the best Trek ever. They're made with love and a deep knowledge of the source material

You know how Star Trek III takes place right after II? WRONG. It was several months later and the crew (with Saavik taking over from Spock) had tons of adventures in the interim. It just seemed like it was right after😂

Before Worf and long long before Ash Tyler, Kirk had a Klingon on his crew

He was a cowardly Klingon named Konom who fled the Empire

He fell in love with a human woman named Bryce

They adopted an albino Klingon/human child with dwarfism which they named Bernie

Kirk has an unhinged, insubordinate crewman on board named Bearclaw and they hate each other

Tension escalates and eventually there's a stabbing

Sulu/M'Ress happens and I don't think people knew what furrys were in the 80's

You know how Spock comes back at the end of III but isn't his old self until the end of Star Trek IV? WRONG AGAIN. He came back just fine, and lost his marbles following an incident months later that just happened to line everything up to make it all seem like it was right after.

After STIII, Kirk becomes captain of the U.S.S. Excelsior NX-2000 and Spock becomes captain of the U.S.S. Surak. We get a few issues exclusively focusing on Spock's ship and his band of merry weirdos.

The U.S.S. Surak keeps changing design, starting off as a sort of Oberth-class ship, then randomly becoming an Excelsior-class ship and finally ending as the warp sled shuttlecraft from The Motion Picture

The Surak's crew include a giant chicken man, a Vulcan hating racist lady and a balding man with a bicycle

They all die horribly and a massive reset button is pressed so everyone is exactly where they were at the end of Star Trek III

In order to make that work they had to bs that the Klingon Bird of Prey was hidden in Excelsior's shuttlebay all this time despite it being way, way too big for that

There's a full on mirror universe invasion

Kirk becomes a celebrity from saving the galaxy all the time

Mr. Arex comes back and becomes chief of security but doesn't really do much

HORTA CREWMEMBER. It's as amazing as it sounds

The first Next Generation comic miniseries was made with knowledge of the first 2 or 3 TNG episodes and nothing else

Everyone is hench as fuck. Picard has washboard abs and bulging muscles

Data is emotional and Troi feels the emotions she senses a la "Encounter at Farpoint"

Wesley is drawn as if he's 10

The B-shift con and ops team are a husband and wife who wear caped superhero versions of Starfleet uniforms with bare legs.

They argue. A lot.

The crew meet an alien Santa Claus and Q loses his powers years before "Deja Q"

The whole Q Continuum visits the Enterprise and they're all John De Lancie but in Starfleet uniforms of every colour under the sun.

After that initial miniseries, the Next Gen crew lose a lot of their muscle mass and start resembling their on screen counterparts a lot better

Picard had a brother who fell down a hole and died as a child. Q offers to rewrite history so he doesn't die. Claude Picard grew up to be Space Superhitler and turns Starfleet and the Federation fascist.

Before all this Q turned Jean-Luc into a goat for the lolz

Marvel's The Early Voyages was very literally Strange New Worlds before Strange New Worlds.

They have a pyrokinetic security officer named Nano and he's awesome

Marvel lost the Trek license quite suddenly, and so the series ends on a cliffhanger where Admiral April is up to something iffy.

Marvel did a Starfleet Academy series featuring Nog and its utterly fantastic

A female Andorian cadet tries to make Nog feel at ease by greeting him in the nude, but Nog fails to take it as an innocent gesture and she immediately sends him flying across the room

Romulan agents with split personalities in Starfleet Academy!

They visit Talos IV and get help from Captain Pike, who's still alive

IDW comics did a prequel to the 2009 reboot where Picard is an ambassador, Data is captain of the Enterprise-E and Nero has hair. It was co-written by the movie writers and was considered sort of vaguely semi canon ish for a time

They originally wanted the Romulan supernova to destroy a lot more, including Earth and have Nero kill the TNG crew. It was the Star Trek Online devs that got them to scale things back because they'd have no universe left to set their game in.

Nero's ship looks like it does because after Romulus was destroyed he took it to a secret Romulan base and had it equipped with reverse-engineered Borg technology

You thought DC struggled to keep ship designs correct? IDW's comics keep using traced fan art from Google Images, and fan art (sometimes with unique ship designs) has shown up on multiple occasions as the Kelvinverse U.S.S. Enterprise

In one IDW TOS comic, the bridge is totally covered with TNG LCARS graphics.

In another, an Orion ship is a gigantic Stargate sticking out of the middle part of Battlestar Galactica.

Wanna see Kelvinverse versions of TOS episodes? That was their first comics run, picking up after the 2009 reboot movie. They start off very faithful and as the series goes on things diverge more and more

To the extent some stories have very different backstories and outcomes

We visit 2 Kelvin mirror universes and a genderswapped universe too. No, Kirk doesn't do what you're thinking.

Q visits the Kelvin Universe and brings the crew forward in time to their version of Deep Space Nine

Nero's time in Klingon prison (from the Star Trek 2009 deleted scenes) and escape is fleshed out

Nero meets V'ger.

Nero mind melds with V'ger.

V'ger turns away due to the sheer force of Nero's hatred.

I wish I was making that up.

Klingons get their hands on Narada's technology and go to war

We get a Khan backstory where the Eugenics Wars are a full on nuclear conflict and "Khan" is the title that little Noon Sing adopts when he takes power

After being revived in the 23rd century, Admiral Marcus has Khan surgically altered to look like Benedict Cumberbatch as part of his John Harrison cover identity

They did a series of shorts called Waypoint, and in the first one Geordi is captain of a future Enterprise and his crew is made up of holographic versions of Data and it's a really sweet concept (this was several years before before ST: Picard brought Data back twice)

There's a prequel series centred around Number One where nobody manages to say her name before being interrupted. If you put the bits together it seems her name was Eureka Robbins. Of course, this is long before novels and SNW made her Una Chin-Riley.

[crownedinmarigolds]

The Hidalgo siblings in our Star Trek AU! Joaquin and Noa (Names TBD) Joaquin is one of the main antagonists of our Star Trek story's plot - a half-Orion, half-Vulcan pirate captain who is viciously trying to get back his sister. Noa is the Chief Medical Officer aboard the SS Antumbra, trying to find a better life within the Federation after living through a very harrowing past. Lore Drop Beneath the Cut!

Joaquin and Noa's mother - a rich Vulcan socialite with ties to pirate fleets and an interest in xenobiology - figured out one day that Vulcan men were immune to the pheromone power of the Orion women that she frequently worked with. So she did what any normal person would do - commission a healthy and young Orion male from her contacts to have children with. Would her children carry Vulcan telepathy, Vulcan immunity, and perhaps the Orion pheromones as well? Why not, lets find out. With her Orion partner she mothered four children - three sons and one daughter. Her sons primarily favored their Orion father in looks and possessed her immunity to pheromones, and while Joaquin the eldest wasn't exactly the most powerful telepath, the other two sons were. Little Noa favored her mother far more, but was born with the ability to produce the pheromone as well as have powerful Vulcan telepathy. A dangerous combination if raised in the wrong hands. Word got to the ears of the major crime families within the Orion fleets, and to nip this experiment in the bud they had a hit placed on the compound to stop them in their tracks. Joaquin and Noa managed to hide, but the rest of the family were not so lucky. Their mother and two brothers were killed, and their father was critically wounded and left to die slowly - though thankfully they were able to staunch the bleeding long enough for help to arrive. They were rescued by a strange Romulan society (a contact of their mother's) loosely referred to as the Society of Balance, whose goals are to create SITUATIONS that would eventually balance the other out. Very strange people. A LOOOT more happens, but the leadership have twin Romulan sons, one who becomes good friends with Joaquin and they run off to revolutionize piracy, and the other son joins Starfleet as a black ops operative. Noa and the Federation son (who is considerably older) are betrothed, and she won't meet him until her assignment to the SS Antumbra. She meets Nyth in the Academy and.. YEAHHH. SORRY. SO MUCH LORE AND CONTEXT AND I DIDN'T EVEN GIVE ALL OF IT. We're going NUTS over here

[cruisedirector]

I was organizing Star Trek photos on Facebook in an album when I realized that I never wrote anything about the legendary fan writer Claire Gabriel, who was my friend in fandom intermittently for decades.

I met her because of her original series fan novels 'Simple Gifts' and 'The Porcelain of Twilight', which my longtime friend Vertigo had loaned me. Ironically, it was Claire's interpretation of a particular aspect of Vulcan society ringing entirely wrong to me that inspired me to write to her in 1988-89, back before the internet when we were reading paper zines with the authors' home addresses sometimes printed in the back. Claire thought that Vulcans would be opposed to terminating pregnancies in all instances, even to save the mother if the fetus would otherwise survive, because it was logical to preserve new life; I thought that was the most illogical thing I'd ever heard, and I told her so. She was very nice about it and we agreed to disagree!

It was a bit gutsy of me to write to her because Claire was already very famous among Star Trek fans as the author of the short story "Ni Var", published in the Bantam Books anthology 'Star Trek: The New Voyages'. Leonard Nimoy wrote the introduction to this story for the collection. I didn't know until Claire and I started corresponding, first about 'Simple Gifts' and then about her other writing, that the version of "Ni Var" in the Marshak-and-Culbreath anthology had been heavily edited, and Claire had a different, earlier version from a zine that she felt was more faithful to the characters. She sent it to me, we corresponded for several months about Star Trek and writing, then I moved to Chicago and -- as often happened in those chaotic days of mail forwarding -- we lost track of each other and didn't communicate for half a decade.

When Star Trek: Voyager premiered in 1995, it impacted nearly every aspect of my life. Within a few months, I was running a fan club, organizing a Usenet board, putting together an internet mailing list that in those days required ccing a lot of people, eventually getting a professional reviewing job...and I was writing and editing fan fiction, both for the fan club and for what we assumed would be zines but eventually wound up on web pages. I got an email from Claire under her professional name and it took a minute for the penny to drop, but then I realized who she was. She hadn't known she was writing to me, either, since I was using two different pseudonyms on the internet at the time -- one for my reviews and professional writing, one for fan-related activities and fanfic.

We were then in touch several times a day for several years, often ecstatically discussing television episodes. It started out being all about Voyager -- she wanted to know where the Janeway/Chakotay fans were, and it will shock none of you to know that I could answer that question -- but ended up covering most aspects of our lives, as well as other fandoms (notably La Femme Nikita, in which she wrote a novella that was at one time hosted on one of my web sites, like her Voyager fan fiction). Claire was a fantastic editor and always very generous with her time to younger writers.

I met her in person when I was passing through the city where she lived. We had a meal at a McDonalds so that my kids could play in the ball pit while we had a conversation. We followed each other on various journaling platforms, and later on, we friended each other on Facebook and chatted there about mostly fannish things while we were in different places in our lives.

At some point, Claire's Facebook page disappeared. I thought at first that maybe she'd blocked me over something political; we never agreed on some pretty big issues like the one that led me to write to her in the '80s in the first place. Then I discovered from a mutual friend -- another fannish legend, Kathleen Dailey of 'Unspoken Truth: The Romulan Commander's Story', to whom Claire had introduced me, along with Jacqueline Lichtenberg and other science fiction authors I had known of since childhood -- that Claire had passed away in May 2024 at the age of 91. We hadn't been in regular touch for a few years at that point, but I was still sad and am sad still. When I came across things I wrote when we lost BeccaO and lauawill and Sorbet, I wanted to remember Claire here, where I know other people who knew her.

[real-monty-scotty]

Hello there Scotty, Mr. Spock seems very weird he keeps smiling and laughing saying he’s gonna prank Captain Kirk and Doctor McCoy what’s wrong with him?

Uh oh... by any chance, did ye see 'im eatin' any chocolate? I heard from a crew member tha' there was a replicator issue recently where the' replicators were only replicatin' chocolate. If Spock decided t' have some... then we're all doomed.

Y' see, Vulcans dinnae get drunk off alcohol like we humans do. Alcohol doesn't affect 'em at all. Sucrose, however? Vulcans love th' stuff, but it gets 'em more wasted than an ensign who's had one too many sips of Romulan Ale on th' job. Not t' mention tha' Vulcans are about three times stronger than the average human, so you can surely see th' problem we have here.

Notify th' Captain on th' situation an' request tha' he gets security t' take Spock down t' Sickbay before things get any worse!!

[raisins-n-space]

I’m going off only what i’ve seen so this is mostly headcanon territory but

You know that headcanon where human/vulcan, red/green significances swap because vulcan blood is green and vulcan nature is red whereas on earth it’s the opposite? so green is like their angry/passionate colour?

As far as i’ve seen (which probably means i’m wrong but in a headcanon context just bear with me) there are no other vulcans with green eyes except for Saavik (her twok actress at least) who’s half romulan?

So if vulcans don’t really have green eyes, but do have hazel and similar colours, I think that gives Saavik lots of untapped slightly-uncanny vulcan potential? Like if you were to see someone with slightly-too-red brown eyes… I think she deserves to be a little bit creepy compared to other vulcans.

Especially since in the movies it’s not known/stated she’s half romulan? I think a bunch of vulcans would do a double take idk i just think it’s potentially neat.

[katesdaycabin]

Reading my second favorite Star Trek novel The Romulan Way for the upteenth time, and caught something new:

Since one of the generation ships the proto-Romulans leave Vulcan in was named Rea's Helm, the folktale the name comes from must have been already known on Vulcan, rather than being unique to the Romulans.

From the way Ael told the story in My Enemy, My Ally, I had assumed it was a Romulan myth; Spock certainly doesn't mention knowing it already. But if they were already using the name before they left Vulcan, the story behind it must have been older than their departure.

(I don't mean to suggest this is a continuity error, certainly Spock wouldn't know every single myth and folktale of his homeworld, any more that any of us do. This is about my preconceptions and how they were wrong.)

[trekkie-polls]

Yes I straight up plagiarized the plot of saga, but it would be good wouldn’t it? What are your ideas?

Soap box below the fold! You were warned!

To be honest I’m usually not excited about the new series rumors. Sometimes they turn out great, and I’m wrong. But they’re never about the stuff I really crave. There’s so much that’s unexplored in trek! So much we don’t know. I get really disappointed when I see another borg story or Klingon remake or tos prequel.

I want to know how trill symbionts reproduce, or what it’s like the first lifetime they join. I want to know what happened to the Denobulans in the 24th century. I want a post-dominion Vorta society. I want to meet the Iconians. I want more animal and plant biology. I want to know how giant spacefaring creatures evolved. I want to encounter cultures that aren’t just archetypes of peaceful! or warlike!, but who are so different they do things in ways I never would have thought of. I want mystery and exploration. I don’t want endless nostalgia. I want to be caught off guard.

[star-trek-fandom-confessions]

Re: many of the various about the Gorn or listing SNW's handling of the Gorn as one of its major problems.

Perception not matching reality, what is/is not a monster is a huge theme throughout SNW.

Ghost of Illyria – Those light monsters didn’t murder the Illyrians, they are the Illyrians and were trying to save Pike and Spock all along. Everyone (except Una ofc) learns a lesson that Illyrians can’t be lumped in with the Augments and need greater understanding Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach – Turns out that nice lovely civilization is literally torturing children. The terrorists are actually trying to save those children. The Serene Squall – Surprise the counselor is a pirate Ad Astra Per Aspera – Continues with the Illyrians deserve understanding theme. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow – That helpful reporter is actually a Romulan. Even notorious tyrant and mass murderer Khan Noonien Singh was once a scared child. Lost in Translation – Starfleet is the monster, accidentally torturing and killing a life form they didn't know existed. Under the Clock of War – Turns out the lovely ship’s doctor is actually the Butcher of J’Gal and capable of murdering someone in cold blood. War can make a monster of anyone.

Yet so many people seem to think they’re not going to pull something similar with the Gorn? Even though the show has taken time to establish that the Gorn are intelligent and have a religion?

The thing about the Gorn is that people have died - La’an’s family, Hemmer, some other members of the Enterprise crew, nearly the entire crew of the Cayuga, multiple colonies - and possibly Marie will be added to that list before the two-parter is done. That creates an environment where it’s understandable that the SNW characters would not want to have their perception that the Gorn are monsters challenged, because the harm they have caused is so personal.

It creates a really interesting conflict for the crew, because how do you find understanding, how to you fight the will for revenge, when there’s been so much pain?

I could be wrong about this being the route the SNW writers are going down, but I’m really excited to see if they do.

Posting this as a response to several earlier confessions.

[thewomancallednova]

Angel One

uhhhh well the big goodbye this isn't

I guess it's nice for Riker to confirm in dialogue that the Federation is a equal society, as far as gender is concerned

I really liked the banter between Geordi and Worf, and Geordi taking command. I don't think that's something we ever see happen again in TNG (although with seven season I may well be wrong). He's clearly inexperienced with that role and it's a really nice growing moment. I also liked that Geordi got to be one of the last to fall to the infection, as opposed to the last episode with a virus where he was the first

Oh and also I liked that they didn't categorically dismiss the possibility of Data contracting it

Oh hey Romulans mentioned!

Another great use of Picard as comic relief. That scene where Crusher realises what causes the virus and storms out of his quarters and he weakly goes "Dismissed!" when she's already out of the door is just perfect

Stewart is excellent at playing a sick man. I felt horrible myself whenever sick Picard was on-screen. Amazing job, please never do it again

Maybe it's the covid-19 of it all, but I feel like a doctor should have been able to figure out sooner that the virus is airborne. I mean, how many vectors for desease transmission can there be?

yeah so I've been doing a great job at not talking about the a plot, huh?

yeah i didn't love the whole "sexist society, but it's the women who are oppressing the men" angle. I dunno, it just always feels to me like when sci fi writers do this they always get out the most obvious and outrageous sexist sayings and behaviours and kinda fail to show how subtle and pervasive sexism can be. I dunno, maybe that's just the intention, but I think that makes it less interesting as an allegory.

I also thought Riker's speech at the end, while well-delivered was kinda weak in the context of this episode. I mean he basically says that the Odin's crew has already garnered sympathies in the general population, and inspired people to be less sexist, but we see exactly none of that. Until the moment Riker says this, we have no reason to believe the Odin crew had any influence on society at large at all.

Also incredibly funny that the episode start's with "The Odin is seven years overdue, so we were send to investigate." Like at this rate it's a wonder they even noticed Voyager was gone. But I can totally imagine some official in some Federation building going "Hey, when was the Odin supposed to come back," and the other guy goes "Oh like late February?" and the first guy goes "February 2364?" and the second guy goes "February 2357" and then they both look vaguely concerned and call the Enterprise.

[quasi-normalcy]

*Prodigy spoilers*

I actually really like how they handled the attack on Mars in Star Trek: Prodigy. Like, it wasn't the central focus by any means, but there were constant references to the Romulan evacuation and how thinly spread Starfleet had become throughout the Federation as something that was just going on in the background. And if you're an absolute timeline obsessive like me, you were just kind of eyeballing the Stardates when they appeared on screen, like, "Oh dear, we're getting pretty close to the point where everything goes wrong, aren't we?" And I almost figured that, maybe they would use some kind of timeline jiggery-pokery to get around it. But then they didn't, and it became what they used to set up the third season, and, ugh, I really love this show.

[lunarbreaksblog]

Note: Tumblr is being weird, so I can't edit drafts

Note 2: I basically grew up with RiD, I remembering staying up to midnight to watch the reruns lol

How RiD! Drift, Fracture and Thunderhoof react to Alien! Reader

Fracture

How did you manage to capture his spark is one thing but to make him not turn you in for a bounty was something new.

Your species is ancient, more older than Cybertron and perhaps the universe itself. You are but a ball of pure energy.

He met you when you were experimenting with using a dead mech as a vessel. That was some sort of war crime you were committing but he couldn't care less.

Quickly you fled, even if your species was old, you were a great source of energy for warp technology. He let you flee, after all you were spectacular, he never saw you kind.

Soon, he met you again.

You spoke to him

You spoke

You had no mouth but he could hear you.

Quickly he realized that maybe he shouldn't hand you into someplace so he could get credits even if it was a lot of credits.

You could be his. His energy.

Drift

You looked and felt cybertronian but you weren't

If he had met you as Deadlock, he would've claimed the bounty on your helm. However, now as Drift, he's curious about you.

How do resemble his people but some how are his people, there's something wrong with you. Not that it's big issues like wrong number of optics. Its the way that your face doesn't seem right if he looks close enough. How your mouth never seems to move with your vocals.

It terrifies him.

But he sees that as a thing to get over, to accomplish not being afraid of you, even if you say you're cybertronian.

Thunderhoof

He might not be into organics, but he will admit you have a very nice ass. He's doesn't seem like it but genuinely could care less about what race you are. As long as you listen to him and let him do his business with his dealings.

You seem human but what makes you different is the fact that you seem to have weird sharp ears and green blood.

Something about you being a Romulan, he knows that your species is secretive but he's glad he took the chance to speak with a Romulan, which was you.

You only come to his knee, but damn does he like what he sees.

You though, could care less.

[eidetictelekinetic]

Rewatching the episode where they contact a Romulan in the past by accident and I keep thinking

They didn't want to push the Maquis vs Starfleet thing, so they never would have done this, but imagine if there were others still around, maybe stranded and living among the Ocampa, or somewhere very near where the Array was so Voyager runs into them fast

Romulans, for example

I could be wrong because I haven't seen all of Trek but have Romulan major characters (who aren't antagonists) happened yet? Wouldn't it have been interesting?

Or just... some kind of other angles on mixed crew dynamics, I'm not a Trek expert but I figure there's a lot of options out there to throw in a twist

I love Voyager as-is but yes, I wanted more on that integration, and while I'm dreaming I want an even more faceted integration

[eveningspirit]

Hello! And welcome to my The Pitt Star Trek AU :)  This is Part Two. 

In this part I shall try to figure out the Star Trek Universe races for all the main (and maybe some important background) characters, as well as their ranks. As a reminder – The Pitt is officially known as USS Pittsburg. It’s an old boat, that should probably be decommissioned, but uh. Captain Robby served on her under Captain Adamson and he’s not ready to let her go yet. The Pitt is falling apart a little, but her crew patches her up enough to let her pass tests and examinations at the spacedocs. 

Also, someone in the admiralty must dislike Robby, because they often send The Pitt on shitty assignments and all the damage sustained during those assignments doesn’t help her condition either. 

Anyway. Let’s get to the chase. 

Captain Michael "Robby" Robinavitch is a human in my mind. I’ll gladly accept constructive crit on that, though. As I will for all the other characters ;) Bring it! 

Commander Heather Collins formerly a science officer, now the ship’s 2IC, is Bajoran. 

Lt. Commander Frank Langdon navigator and pilot, as well as the ships 3IC (as suggested by lovely @magnetic-rose , thank you) is... well that one I can’t quite decide. He could be human, I guess. Although I’m tempted to give him some sort of weird Illyrian or El-Aurian provenance. IDK. 

Lt. Commander Yolanda Garcia (should have a different name) is IMO, of one of the more aggressive races (or part of that race, actually). IDK, half-Klingon, half-Romulan, half-Cardassian even... Oh! I know! She’s half-Cardassian, half-Bajoran, raised on Bajor, but her Cardassian genes make her act up. I had her pegged as the ships second pilot, but now (after the 4th episode) I think she’d be better suited as the tactical officer. 

Doctor Lieutenant Samira Mohan the ship's very capable doctor, strikes me as Vulcan. 

Kiara Alfaro is a civilian counselor and a human. 

Lieutenant Cassie McKay the Chief Engineer of The Pitt I’d rather see as human as well... 

Petty Officer 1st Class Mateo Diaz(?) ...but her assistant could be, say, Orion. Or. It could be the other way around. Or, some other race. Let me remind you, I’ll appreciate any (well, most) suggestions. 

Lieutenant Melissa King I'm-- Yeah, I don’t think I’ll want to change that one, though. ;) Mel, the communications officer feels like Trill to me. I’m just not sure what would be the Symbiont’s name, and what would be the name of the before-the-Symbiosis Trill. But I’ll figure it out.  

Ensign Trinity Santos she was slated as the tactical officer, but with Garcia stepping up to that position (it makes more sense to not have a fresh-out-of-Academy Ensign as weapons specialist), Santos would be Garcia’s protege coming onboard. I thought she could be a Romulan (depending on the time period where my story would take place; if I’m not mistaken Romulans were in alliance with Starfleet at some point? I may be wrong, of course, so feel free to correct me), but with Garcia advancing to the main cast, Santos could be Cardassian, or Cardassian-Bajoran too. 

Master Chief Petty Officer Dana Evans the supply officer could be human. Or Lanthanite, I guess. I love that sense of her being something more, some larger presence onboard The Pitt, extending way beyond. Other than her being a thousand years old, she might instead be a Betazoid. 

Cadet Dennis Whitaker and Cadet Victoria Javadi feel like humans. For now, at least. Oh, Javadi’s parents (as—again—suggested by @magnetic-rose) are both Admirals. 

All the nurses, Perlah, Princess, Jesse, Donnie, IDEK, should also be humans, I think. Because, after all, The Pitt hails from Earth. Unless she doesn’t. 

I’m beginning to have the barest bones of the fic plot, so watch this space for updates. :) 

[anghraine]

I wanted to focus more on organizing the structure and details of the femslash Spirk AU in April, but... I was tempted to write a later part of the tropey fourth-year-of-the-mission scene where McCoy and S'paak get stranded, with S'paak severely injured, and McCoy forced to try a last resort experimental drug that was originally intended as a truth serum for species with copper-based blood and discontinued due to secondary clotting and memory loss effects, but not before M'Benga and McCoy got a hold of it and modified it for potential S'paak-shaped disasters:

S’paak was nodding off again, or the Vulcan version of it; her eyes had closed and her biometrics were dipping again, down to nearly human-typical readings. “Commander S’paak, stay awake!” McCoy snapped, not daring a hypo, and instead going for a good old-fashioned pinch. “You’d think that your Vulcan gobbledygook would be good for something.” Her eyes slowly opened, heavy-lidded as she returned to full alertness with a blessedly familiar trace of annoyance in her face. “You can’t sleep yet. Or … trance, whatever you all call it,” he told her, damning the shoddy manufacturing of the emergency dermal regenerator in his hand, angled at the visible muscle where the ungodly creature she’d killed had torn through a third of her leg.  The regenerators really were useless for anything more than minor injuries unless you were incredibly precise and steady. Which he was, but sweat was dripping from his forehead, even as he blessed the remnants of Vulcan repression that kept her motionless. But he really should have had Sulu stay to at least hold the damn thing; he could take orders well enough. “You’d better keep talking,” he grated out. “You were telling me about being in love with Jess because of her fine CV. All very logical reasons, of course.” “Yes,” said S’paak, self-satisfied and tight-lipped even with enough tricorapline in her blood to get a string quartet of Romulans to babble state secrets at him.  “Don’t know why I expected anything else,” he said. Exhaling through his clenched teeth, he added, “I bet you find her fascinating.” S’paak blinked several times, evidently struggling to focus her eyes on his face. Or on anything. Could have been the blood loss, but it was a possible effect of tricorapline, as well. No reason to assume the worst when there was plenty bad already. “Yes,” she said firmly. Sure enough, her pulse and blood pressures were climbing back up to at least recognizably Vulcan numbers as she hung on to consciousness. Not good numbers, but— “Like one of your anomalies,” he added. “She does resemble those anomalies that defy all known laws of physics,” said S’paak, in the same mildly intrigued tone as usual, but the words not as clearly enunciated. “Her continued survival seems … not unrelated.” McCoy laughed, nearly choked on it. Hell if he didn’t have bizarre and impeccable taste in friends. 

M’Benga, bless him, had mentioned the slurred pronunciation as a known and very common side effect of tricorapline among Romulans and Vulcans in particular, one of the only clear signs that it was being fully metabolized. They’d both worked on some modifications for S’paak, hoped it wouldn’t interact with her unhelpful one-of-a-kind neurology, hoped it would still fucking work without killing her. Getting an expected effect, at least, was good news of a kind. As much as anything could be good right now.

McCoy tilted the regenerator slightly to the left and darted a glance back at her face; S’paak was gazing dreamily at nothing in particular. 

“You’re not wrong, I suppose,” he said loudly. “Damned strange way of being in love, but you’re a damn strange person.”

“Thank you,” said S’paak.

“That wasn’t meant to be a compliment,” said McCoy. His arm ached, though far less than her injury had, or—even more probably—the sensation of regrowth must. It was visibly accelerating now, thank God.

If we both make it out of here with all our limbs, you’re going to owe me, he thought. And if they did, he knew exactly what kind of Vulcan nonsense she would say. It is illogical to collect debts on your professional obligations or some shit.

“I know,” she said.

He just groaned.