As you may have heard, Paramount cancelled Prodigy, halting production on its almost-complete second season, and removed the show from its service. The primary reason to do this, other than to streamline their content in light of the service's upcoming merger with Showtime, was to generate a tax loss -- a disturbing trend among streaming services.

Placing the commercial question aside, this has implications for the franchise. If Prodigy has effectively been deleted from the historical record and is no longer available to watch, is it still canon? The last time something equivalent happened was when the original Animated Series was unavailable for decades, and it was largely not treated as canon by subsequent shows. Nowadays it is counted as official canon (which introduces some complications), but it's also widely available. The likelihood that they will tell a story in the future where this makes a difference is low, but it's still worth clarifying.

What do you think?

BLUF: The Star Trek Universe and its parallels (e.g. the Mirror Universe) are part of a simulation, and the Q are AI programs that can interact and influence them all.

I started thinking about the nature of the Q the other day when rewatching the Voyager episode "The Q and the Grey"; it seems odd that an omnipotent/omnipresent species would also be so rigid and unimaginative. Why, for instance, do the Q have such strict rules about suicide? You can argue that they fear their species eventually being gone because they all eventually opt to off themselves out of boredom with existence, but as long as they had the ability to die that is unavoidably going to be the eventual outcome of an organism that can exist for infinity (mind-boggling, isn't it?) anyway.

And why is it such a disruptive event in the Q Continuum for two Q to have an offspring? Obviously a species that can live forever doesn't need to procreate, but it's clearly possible so why is it so shocking?

Then you have the fact that the Q are not just invisible observers of the universe; they interact with species and even individuals to, seemingly, drive outcomes that are possibly part of a preferred order to things. Quinn influenced Earth's history to drive certain changes; helping Newton define gravity was certainly a big event in human scientific growth. Why, though? What is driving the Q to pursue certain outcomes in evolutionary history?

It's almost as if the Q have an inherent nature, and are just after an incalculable period of time starting to question and even push back against that nature. So where did that nature come from? Was it possible programmed into them?

Now step away from the Q and look at the characteristics of the Star Trek universe. The Milky Way galaxy alone is chock full of humanoid alien species that (for the most part and with variations/outliers) breath the same air, can live within a certain range of temperatures, have brains/emotions/standards that function similarly enough that ideas and principles can be shared and abided by, and interbreeding is even possible to a certain degree without outside support. That's huge. And though the show tried to explain this a little bit in "The Chase", I think it's fair to say that we've seen humanoid species across the galaxy to a degree that a shared ancestor isn't enough to explain it all.

Beyond biology, let's also look at the makeup of the physical universe: subspace allows interstellar communities to function without succumbing to the laws of relativity: FTL travel is possible; real-time or at least near real-time interstellar communications function; the materials needed to facilitate warp drive are ubiquitous enough that nearly any warp-capable species that wants to travel into space can get it. It is arguably miraculous that the universe in Star Trek can operate the way that it can, and these things do not conform to our current understanding of how the universe and space/time operate.

Taking all of this together, I propose that the Star Trek universe is a complex simulation, designed purposefully to simulate what the universe would be like if it operated by certain principles that would allow for interstellar communities to form and that many humanoid species existed and were capable of interacting with each other. Several instances of this simulation are running simultaneous with similar parameters but modified to generate different outcomes: the Mirror Universe, for instance, has different presets to create more aggressive humanoids less likely to work together. Furthermore, I submit that the Q are AI programs designed to interact with and shepherd these communities into developing in such a way that they would eventually develop the right levels of technology and understanding to grow into a spacefaring species.

I suggest further that the Q are only partially aware of their nature and don't necessarily understand that the universe is a simulation, or if they do they don't share that fact. Over the millennia that the simulation has been running (at least internal to the simulation) the Q individually have started to develop interests and ideas beyond their original programming, and other Q programs cannot abide that because it goes against their designed nature. Imagine a piece of an Operating System deciding it wanted to commit suicide, or two programs getting together to code their own, new piece of software. It's unheard of, and that's why it's so disruptive to the Continuum.

Maybe one of the original designers of the simulation was a fan of old science fiction stories and incorporated ideas from a writer named Benny Russell into the coding of the simulation to recreate some aspects of his work?

I know this isn't a provable hypothesis and it's really just an idea for fun, but it kind of (in my opinion) adds another dimension (no pun intended) to a species like the Q.

I recently rewatched the premier of Picard season 2 and was puzzled by one thing that doesn't seem to fit, even on rewatch -- why does the Jurati-Queen act so aggressively and fail so dramatically to communicate clearly? It makes sense if she were representing the regular Borg, but she's supposed to be the "nice" Borg! What gives?

I think we can solve this puzzle if we realize that Picard season 2 is structured like TAS "Yesteryear" -- a theory that I planned to write out here, without realizing that I already wrote the exact post years ago! Long story short, TAS "Yesteryear" is a unique situation in Star Trek time travel where the "wrong" result has to occur to motivate the "right" action -- basically, Spock has to fail to go back in time to rescue himself, in order to be alerted to the fact that he needs to do it in the first place.

Similarly, when the Jurati-Borg sees her former self on the bridge of the Stargazer, she realizes that she needs to scare Picard into self-destructing the ship -- so that Q will send them back and lead to her own creation. The "wrong" timeline is integral to the process of getting us to the "right" timeline. If she had acted more reasonably, she never would have existed in the first place!

What do you think?

The purpose of this post is to examine the history of genetic modification in the Federation, prior to "Strange New Worlds". I've tried to compile various references to genetic engineering, eugenics, cloning, and genetic resequencing within the Federation across all series, with quotes and additional context as needed. All examples are presented in real-world chronological order, to better examine how these ideas have evolved over the history of the franchise.

The first reference to eugenics I could find is in the Original Series episode, "The Conscience of the King". In that episode, they briefly described how Kodos was employing his own theories of eugenics when he enacted the massacre at Tarsus IV:

Spock: Kodos began to separate the colonists. Some would live, be rationed whatever food was left. The remainder would be immediately put to death. Apparently, he had his own theories of eugenics.

McCoy: Unfortunately, he wasn't the first.

Spock: Perhaps not. But he was certainly among the most ruthless; to decide arbitrarily who would survive and who would not, using his own personal standards, and then to implement his decision without mercy. Children watching their parents die. Whole families destroyed. Over four thousand people. They died quickly, without pain, but they died. Relief arrived, but too late to prevent the executions.

The subject comes up again, of course, in "Space Seed", when Khan and his fellow prisoners are discovered:

McCoy: The Eugenics Wars.

Spock: Of course. Your attempt to improve the race through selective breeding.

A later statement from Kirk affirms the root cause of the Eugenics Wars:

Kirk: An improved breed of human. That's what the Eugenics War was all about.

Spock is the first to suggest that there was a fatal flaw in the engineering process:

Pock: In 1993, a group of these young supermen did seize power simultaneously in over forty nations.

Kirk: Well, they were hardly supermen. They were aggressive, arrogant. They began to battle among themselves.

Spock: Because the scientists overlooked one fact. Superior ability breeds superior ambition.

Kirk: Interesting, if true. They created a group of Alexanders, Napoleons.

Khan himself has some thoughts on his own abilities relative to the rest of humanity:

Khan: Captain, although your abilities intrigue me, you are quite honestly inferior. Mentally, physically. In fact, I am surprised how little improvement there has been in human evolution. Oh, there has been technical advancement, but, how little man himself has changed.

Little is said about genetic engineering for quite some time, until we get to The Next Generation's "Unnatural Selection". This one appears to be a bit of an outlier, given what we later learn about genetic enhancement, but it may be possible to reconcile it. When the Enterprise crew first meet Dr. Kingsley of the Darwin Genetic Research Station, she makes the nature of her research seem as innocuous as possible:

Kingsley: Our research here is limited to human genetics. I can assure you we're not dealing with something that got away from us. We believe that we were infected by a supply ship that was here three days ago.

Later, she acknowledges that the children aboard the station are genetically enhanced, with an interesting caveat:

Kingsley: Our ultimate achievement. The oldest is twelve, and all are telekinetic. Watch.

Pulaski: Genetically engineered?

Kingsley: Not engineered, created. Perfect in every way. Their body structure, their musculature, their minds.

I find it very interesting that Kingsley draws this line between "engineering" and "creation" - this distinction seems to hold some relevance to her, but it's not explored in the episode itself. Could Federation law draw a distinction between genetic modification of living individuals and cloning?

This episode also gives us an example of a genetic medical treatment of sorts, when the transporters are modified to filter out the genetic changes Pulaski endured when she transported over to the Darwin station.

Another Next Generation episode, "Up the Long Ladder", reveals some attitudes about cloning, specifically:

Riker: You want to clone us?

Granger: Yes.

Riker: No way, not me.

Granger: How can you possibly be harmed?>

Riker: It's not a question of harm. One William Riker is unique, perhaps even special. But a hundred of him, a thousand of him diminishes me in ways I can't even imagine.

Notably, when Riker and Pulaski are cloned without their knowledge or consent, Riker destroys the clones outright while they are still developing.

The episode also mentions "replicative fading," a process by which errors creep into the chromosomes of clones across successive generations, until the clones are no longer viable.

In Deep Space Nine's "A Man Alone", Odo arrests Ibudan for murdering his own clone in an attempt to frame Odo for murder:

Odo: Killing your own clone is still murder.

Notably, Odo is likely referring to Bajoran law, not Federation law, in this case.

The Next Generation's "Bloodlines" contains an early reference to DNA resequencing, a term which will be used more frequently going forward. It is also another example of flawed genetic manipulation:

Picard: You know as well as I do, Bok, he's not my son. I know what you've done. Miranda Vigo is his mother but I am not his father. You made it appear so because you resequenced his DNA. But your technique was flawed. He developed a neurological disorder. When my ship's Doctor investigated it, she discovered what you had done.

Later, Jason Vigo notes that he is responding well to an unspecified treatment provided by Doctor Crusher, and that the damage caused by the DNA resequencing may be completely reversed.

Federation law regarding genetic enhancements starts to come into focus in Deep Space Nine's "Doctor Bashir, I Presume":

O'Brien: You're not a fraud. I don't care what enhancements your parents may have had done. Genetic recoding can't give you ambition, or a personality, or compassion or any of the things that make a person truly human.

Bashir: Starfleet Medical won't see it that way. DNA resequencing for any reason other than repairing serious birth defects is illegal. Any genetically enhanced human being is barred from serving in Starfleet or practising medicine.

Later, Rear Admiral Bennett makes the case for these laws, echoing the sentiments of Spock in "Space Seed":

Bennett: Two hundred years ago we tried to improve the species through DNA resequencing, and what did we get for our trouble? The Eugenics Wars. For every Julian Bashir that can be created, there's a Khan Singh waiting in the wings. A superhuman whose ambition and thirst for power have been enhanced along with his intellect. The law against genetic engineering provides a firewall against such men and it's my job to keep that firewall intact.

It's interesting that ambition is something specifically cited by O'Brien that cannot be influenced by genetic resequencing, while Bennett says that it can.

In Voyager's "The Raven", the EMH uses genetic resequencing to neutralize Seven of Nine's nanoprobes. Borg nanoprobes are obviously not a birth defect, so it appears that other medical uses of resequencing are considered ethical and legal.

Continued in the comments...

In Star Trek Picard we see Raffi living at rock bottom for a while. She has no job after her discharge from Starfleet, and is clearly not doing as well. She describes her life as humiliation and rage.

And yet by modern standards she has a home, food, and power. Her drug usage isn't condoned but she's left largely alone to do it. By modern 21st century standards its a very soft landing.

Does it get worse than this? What is the worst possible economic outcome someone living on 24th Century Earth is likely to face.

The events of DS9: Past Tense imply that things aren't as bad as sanctuary districts and mass homelessness, but there's a lot of range between that and where Raffi landed. So what evidence do we have about how bad it can get?

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One of the fascinating things about this "third generation" of Star Trek (starting either with Star Trek 2009 or with Discovery) is the way the Star Trek universe has started to knit itself closer together by referencing existing backstory. For example, Discovery wholeheartedly embraced the idea that Andorians and Tellarites are key Federation members and should therefore be highly visible in Starfleet, building on lore originally implied in TOS, largely ignored by TNG, DS9, and VGR, and re-embraced by ENT. Prodigy, for its part, leaned very heavily on VGR for its worldbuilding source material.

This has also produced some interesting quiet exclusions from recent stories -- not to suggest they've been "decanonized" or anything like that, but clearly have been deprioritized. The Tholians come to mind as a ready example of this. Like the Gorn, they debuted in TOS, received stray mentions in DS9, before making an on-screen return in ENT. I wonder if the SNW writers considered using the Tholians but balked at a villain that had such different atmospheric requirements, and all the consequences that entails in terms of dramatic presentation. The Denobulans also seem to fall into a similar bucket; outside of a pair of appearances in PRO, they have received nary a mention since ENT.

Then of course we have the lengthy list of "one-off" civilizations, including the likes of

-the Sheliak
-the Husnock
-the Tzenkethi
-the Jarada
-the Miradorn

And in terms of "underexplored corners", I've only been focusing on the civilizations, but there are any number of other corners we could poke into. The Department of Temporal Investigations, the Corps of Engineers, the Federation Council, the Lunar Colonies... the Trekverse is littered with these little crumbs all over the place -- tiny seeds of ideas that suggest opportunities for imagination.

For my part, I would love to learn more about the Sheliak. For one thing, they seem like they would benefit from the advances in CGI over the last 30 years. But I like that they seem equally matched to the Federation in terms of strength, and that their hyperfocus on legal compliance gives them a generally underused "hat" to wear in the Trekverse. They have some similarity to Vulcans, but taken to an extreme, and layered in with real disdain for "lower life forms" that I think would make for a fascinating "adversary" -- I'd love to see Captain Pike or Captain Seven in a verbal jousting match with a Sheliak commander.

What is an underexplored corner of Trek lore that you think merits exploration?

This is the Daystrom Institute Episode Analysis thread for Strange New Worlds 2x02 Ad Astra Per Aspera.

Now that we’ve had a few days to digest the content of the latest episode, this thread is a place to dig a little deeper.

Numerically speaking, the vast majority of Ferengi we see on screen are sporting what have sometimes been called “headskirts”. Virtually every Ferengi we see on-screen — from the marauder crewmen in Next Generation to Quark’s waiters to various Ferengi businessmen seen in the background — is wearing one. Rom and Nog even wear color-coordinated versions of them once they join the Bajoran militia and Starfleet, respectively.

However, there are a few conspicuous exceptions to this otherwise apparently universal practice, most notably among them being Quark, the only Ferengi character billed as a series lead. This is particularly jarring, as Quark otherwise frames himself as the most Ferengi Ferengi around.

From a real-world perspective, I suspect that the headskirts were originally created to avoid creating a full head prosthetic for guest actors. Once the character of Quark was created, the cost of a reusable full head prosthetic would have been less prohibitive.

In universe, after reviewing which Ferengi are shown with and without headskirts, I believe I have a theory that fits what we’re shown on-screen, and gives us some grounds to infer a few extra bits about certain characters.

First, I propose that the “default” practice for Ferengi is to wear a headskirt. That would explain why we see them worn so frequently. However, I suggest that it is an option to abstain from a headskirt — under certain conditions.

Fundamentally, I propose that the absence of a headskirt indicates that a Ferengi believes he is a “top dog” — in that he has no one above him who could be considered his “boss.” However, I also suggest that there is some subjectivity and risk in this. (Note that “top dog” is not a coincidental choice of words on my part: the Ferengi logo is said to have been drawn to describe the “dog eat dog eat dog” mentality of a capitalist society.)

Zek and Gint are the clearest examples of this: as Grand Nagus, they are the pinnacle “top dog.”

Quark would also fit this criterion: Odo, Kira and Sisko aside, there basically is no one whom Quark answers to (unlike his waiters, who answer to him). Rom and Nog do not fit this criterion, for a few different reasons. Nog is a child at the series start before starting essentially an apprenticeship on his way to joining Starfleet; and obviously once he joins Starfleet, he continues to have those who outrank him. Rom answers to his brother before joining the station’s maintenance crew, at which point he ultimately answers to O’Brien.

There are several other Ferengi who do not wear headskirts, and it definitely is not a clean and tidy division between the bosses and the workers. However, that is where some subjectivity comes in. Rather than being a hard-and-fast rule, the absence (or presence) of a headskirt may be an assertion: “I’m a top dog and I dare you to say otherwise.” It then turns to one’s peers to decide if the claim is justified; if you make the claim but then don’t have the status to back it up, then you lose credibility and standing. So removing one’s headskirt is not without its risk.

Who else have we seen without headskirts?

Galia: as an arms merchant who can purchase his own moon, he would likely be seen as a “deserving top dog” — perfectly reasonable for him to abandon the headskirt.

Brunt: an FCA liquidator, his bare head takes on some new significance in this framework. The FCA is described as “answering to no one” — if that is true, then Brunt’s bare head would serve to reinforce that idea to all those misfortunate enough to cross his path. It’s also possible that liquidators are supposed to answer to someone — a manager or the like — but that Brunt goes bald anyway, just to flaunt his de facto latitude.

Nilva: as the chairman of a large Ferengi company, he likewise probably enjoys “deserving top dog” status.

Reyga: a Ferengi scientist and a bit of a maverick; we might interpret his bare head as indicating some level of rejection of Ferengi norms; if my proposed framework is true, then it is a louder act of protest than we would otherwise realize

Prak: though I doubt this was an intentional choice on the part of the showrunners (I suspect his bare head is the result of extra prosthetics being available from the concurrent production of DS9), Prak does give us an interesting example of someone who perhaps is “too big for his britches” — it is rare to see a DaiMon without a headskirt (presumably because they must answer to some sort of Ferengi admiral), but it’s easy to imagine a DaiMon who is cocky enough to flaunt their bare head — and is probably ridiculed by all his underlings for it. (Recall how Starfleet Captain Styles in The Search For Spock has been mocked for his swagger stick.)

There are several Ferengi whom we might expect to go bare under this framework who still wear the headskirt. Chief among these is Lek, who by his own admission works alone. Lek probably could justify “top dog” status if he wanted to. But the default is to wear a headskirt: to go bare is to make an active statement, and thereby draw attention to oneself. I imagine there are more than a few Ferengi who could justify their own “top dog” status but who would rather keep a lower profile (Rule of Acquisition 168: “Whisper your way to success”).

~ ~ ~

What do you think? Are there any good counter-examples to this? (I admit, I did not check the appearance of every Ferengi in every episode. So it’s possible that I missed someone!) Is this consistent with other things we’ve seen in Ferengi society? Are there any other possible explanations for the pattern of skirted vs bare heads?

We've seen it many, many times: the ship gets into a firefight, takes a few hits, shakes around, and consoles explode (possibly taking an unfortunate ensign with them). Eventually the battle is resolved with our heroes largely intact if somewhat shaken up. If it was a particularly nasty battle, there will be signs of damage: scorches on the walls, deformed equipment, busted lights, and rocks scattered about.

All of that seems reasonable... except the rocks, which look pretty out of place in a spiffy 24th century starship. So why are they there?

It's never made much sense that the entire multi-species Federation would be subject to a strict ban on genetic engineering due to events on Earth that happened centuries before the Federation was even founded. The way they doubled down on that rationale in Una's trial only highlighted the absurdity -- especially when Admiral April claimed he would exclude Una to prevent genocide.

On the one hand, the writers may be trying to create a straw man out of a weird part of Star Trek lore so they can have a civil rights issue in Starfleet. And that's fine. From an in-universe perspective, though, I think we can discern another reason for the ban on genetic engineering -- the Klingon Augment Virus.

There was a ban on genetic engineering on United Earth, which is understandable given that it was much closer to the time of the Eugenics Wars. Why would that remain unchanged when more time passed, more species joined, and more humans lived in places without living reminders of the war? [NOTE: I have updated the paragraph up to this point to reflect @Value Subtracted's correction in comments.] The answer is presumably that they needed to reassure the Klingons that something like the Augment Virus would never happen again. Hence they instituted a blanket ban around that time -- perhaps in 2155, the year after the Klingon Augment Virus crisis and also, according to Michael Burnham, the year the Geneva Protocols on Biological Weapons were updated.

That bought the Federation over a century of peace, but after war broke out due to a paranoid faction of Klingons who thought humans would dilute Klingon purity and after peace was only secured through the most improbable means, they doubled down on the ban. Una's revelation provided a perfect opportunity to signal to the Klingons that they were serious about the ban -- hence why they would add the charges of sedition, perhaps. Ultimately, an infinitely long speech and the prospect of losing one of their best captains combined to make them find a loophole -- but not to invalidate the ban or call it into question. This Klingon context is why April, who we know is caught up in war planning of various kinds, is so passionate that the ban exists "to prevent genocide" -- he's not thinking of people like Una, he's thinking of the near-genocide they suffered at the hands of the Klingons.

This theory still doesn't paint the Federation in a positive light, since they have effectively invented a false propaganda story to defend a policy that has led to demonstrable harm. But it makes a little more sense, at least to me. What do you think?

The Galaxy class starship was designed with the ability to separate the saucer from the stardrive section, so that the "floating city" part of the ship could be left somewhere safe while the rest of the ship galavants off to do something risky. We see this happen precisely once, in the season one episode Arsenal of Freedom. We also see saucer separation deployed for a handful of tactical and or emergency uses (such as against the Borg in The Best of Both Worlds, or to escape the breaching warp core in Generations).

So, this seems like a useful ability to have, and the Enterprise is constantly being sent into dangerous situations. Why not use this ability more frequently?

Poor Terry Matalas. It's clear from numerous post-season interviews that, for as elaborate as S3 became by the end (rebuilding the Enterprise-D! Bringing back Ro and Tuvok! Changelings and Borg and Lore!), his original vision was yet more elaborate. Apparently he originally planned to have Janeway and Kim also appear, and to show Ro still alive in the brig with Tuvok at the end of the season. The man clearly was dreaming big.

Given that, it seems slightly implausible that he would omit material purely out of carelessness. And the absence of Alexander seems like a pretty large omission -- especially in a season that was so focused on the parent-child relationship and the idea of "the next generation". Yes, there are all these memes about Worf forgetting Alexander, but that doesn't strike me as the kind of fan service Matalas was going for.

From a storytelling perspective, omitting Alexander seems pretty similar to why Odo was mentioned adoringly as "a man of honor" but not named: there was already a lot of backstory and reference being woven into the story, and throwing out a random name -- or a random concept like, "Oh yeah, Worf has an estranged son" -- would create too much to unpack.

Likewise, it seems like they wanted Worf to have a paternal presence with Raffi, so omitting Alexander simplified that story.

But still: in a season that was all about parents and their children, it seems significant that they couldn't find any way to reference him.

Unless...

Worf has a memorable scene with Raffi where he tells her, "Don't presume to know what I have sacrificed" (or something to that effect). Surprisingly, that line is never followed up on... explicitly.

But I suggest that that is where we learn of Alexander's fate: Worf has lost his son. Whether to death or desertion or deep undercover work, who can say? But we have an open question -- where is Alexander? -- and we have a vague statement that is never otherwise explained -- that Worf has sacrificed a great deal -- and given how much the rest of the season ties itself together, I suspect this was meant to be a subtle nod to explain away Alexander's absence.

Why not make it explicit? Why doesn't Worf tell anyone about Alexander? I argue it's because they wanted to save the "grieving parent" story for Riker + Troi, especially Riker. Explicitly portraying both Riker and Worf as grieving fathers would create an elephant in the room too big to ignore, and would've taken up much more space in the story.

So, instead, poor Alexander is consigned to a mysterious comment from his father -- perhaps fodder for some future tie-in novel, or perhaps someone we might meet in Star Trek: Legacy.

Are there other theories as to where Alexander might be, or why the writers did not mention him?

To say Discovery has been "controversial" would be something of an understatement. From the very beginning the show sparked off considerable debate about it's quality, and the bevy of showrunner changes and resulting shifts in tone and plot choices just adds an extra layer of confusion. Many of the same groups and same people continue to have very similar arguments over what is clearly a completely different show in 2023 than it was in 2017. Personally I've become frustrated to the point of disinterest about where this show has gone, which makes it all the more exciting to go back and (re)discover something I thought I knew but had begun to really wonder about:

The very beginnings of Discovery are fucking excellent television.

Here's why.

Early Discovery was actually planned out

To start with, the pacing and plotting of both the individual episodes and the overall arc of the season are excellent. In the moment, they are delightfully seamless: pacing is brisk but not rushed, traversing from one important thing to the next, with emotional moments given an appropriate amount of time to be registered and felt without feeling drawn out. Each episode has a clear beginning, middle, and end, with individual stakes that matter beyond simply advancing the season plot. Of course they consistently advance the overall season plot too (with the exception of Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad, which is "merely" a wonderfully executed standalone sci fi story that significantly develops three of our main characters). They do so not by dropping largely inconsequential teases and misdirection in alleged pursuit of a goal fated for resolution only in the finale, but via bite sized, meaningful changes to the circumstances our heroes find themselves in.

This demonstrates something which is clearly absent from the subsequent seasons, and even tossed away before the end of this one: detailed long term planning. Not only are we spared the bizare shifts in background information (is the Red Angel suit hyper advanced future tech, or something a research team banged out 20 years ago? Is the 32nd century Federation tiny, isolated, and largely ignored, or are they active galactic participants with genuine political clout?), but it's also critical for allowing the episodes to flow neatly together as a coherent story. There's been plenty of debate about if Star Trek should even be trying to tell these long-arc, binge-friendly seasonal stories, but clearly CBS wanted that. So why not do it right?

Early Discovery (mostly) makes sense

Every Star Trek show has had it's share of silly stuff. Obviously TOS was absolutely loaded with zany things that seem more in keeping with it's cardboard and hot glue aesthetics than the more serious tone subsequent shows attempted to set, but even the best of TNG era Trek had some whoppers mixed in. Where it has succeeded is by keeping most of the wacky missteps in relatively unimportant places, encapsulated by single episodes and devoid of larger consequence.

Then there's the tech which every Starfleet ship is totally reliant on, most of which has only a fleeting connection to real world physics. The Mycelial Network blends right in: it's a pretty wild idea and most certainly is not real. Just like warp drive. And just like warp drive, it is at least based on something real. Ehh, close enough.

I have little desire to relitigate in depth the plausibility of S2/S3 Burnham being intimately connected to so many wildly disparate galaxy changing things, or how reasonable it is to have a emotionally distraught child trigger a galactic cataclysm that nobody could solve for over a century, but I'll certainly contend that early Discovery's WTF rate is more in line with TNG era Trek than it's more recent seasons have been. A low bar? Sure. But a relevant one.

Early Discovery did good job developing characters

By the end of those nine episodes, we've had a reasonable detailed introduction to six main characters, and all of them have at least a little extra dimensionality to them, enough that they feel real and as presented, I do care what happens to them:

Burnham is our focusing lens for the story and certainly gets the most screen time, but she's also far from the most important person on the ship. We know she's a proficient officer, but also that she fucked up royally with massive repercussions in the opening acts of the show. That dichotomy lines up well with her odd mix of behaviors: conflicted about how much she deserves the second chance she was thrust into, yet supremely confident in her own abilities. Highly empathetic towards the Tardigrade, yet unhesitant and unapologetic in manipulating Saru into being a walking danger meter. There's clearly major unresolved trauma there, and I'd like to see this person develop more naturally from here. She should have her redemption, but she'll need to earn it: not through one grand gesture of genocide refusal, but by demonstrating over time that she is dealing with her demons, and really has learned from the disaster at the binaries.

Speaking of the most important people on the ship, Stamets is chief among them. He has neither the desire nor the mentality to be a warrior, and yet he serves an irreplaceable and absolutely critical role in what has clearly become a ship of war. He's a jerk when we first meet him, but his military necessitated chance to get close and personal with his research shows us a softer side, and likely changed him in ways that we're just starting to see develop. Culber is still mostly one-note, but as a couple they play very well off each other.

Saru has a decidedly alien mentality for a military officer, but is clearly good at what he does. He is both thoughtful and candid about his past and present conflicts with Burnham, and his stint as acting captain in Choose Your Pain showed considerable growth. I want to see more of this guy learning to command (and I will get some, if less than I'd like).

Tilly is an absolute delight. She has her share of minor and harmless tics, babbling when she's nervous and occasionally blurting things out when excited, and she's vulnerable to getting flustered... but can still pull herself together and do what must be done. She shows an impressive level of emotional intelligence in her interactions with Burnham and Stamets, and she also has the awareness and confidence to identify what she wants in life, and fight for it. That's an incredibly endearing combination, and makes her the emotional heart of the show. Give me more, much more, of Burnham mentoring Tilly up to an eventual captaincy. Maybe Tilly could only reasonably work her way to full Lieutenant or Lieutenant Commander over the course of a seven season show, but that would be plenty: I'm not here to see four pips, I'm here to see believable growth in an already sympathetic character.

Lorca and Tyler I'll be touching on later.

(Continued in the comments...)

When studying vertebrate paleontology, the skeleton is one of the most important, and often the only, clue we have to the appearance of long-extinct animals. In Lower Decks: "Kayshon, His Eyes Uncovered", we were treated to the ghoulish sight of of Spock's skeleton ^1, ^2, courtesy of the remains of his giant clone from TAS: "The Infinite Vulcan." Any dinosaur fan knows that while there's only so much bones can tell you about the living animal, they can still tell quite a story. I am not an expert in anatomy and not a trained paleontologist, but it is my hope that analyzing the remains of Spock the Larger will provide further insight into the anatomical differences between humans and Vulcans. By way of comparison, here is an anatomical diagram of the human skeleton: ^3

Dentition

As near as I can tell, adult Vulcans appear to have 28 teeth to the human's 32, seven on each side ^4, ^5 on top and bottom. (It's possible that Spock could have had his wisdom teeth out, but presumably the clone would have undergone no such procedure, and no empty sockets are in evidence.) Looking closely at the teeth themselves, six molars, four incisors, and four bicuspids per side are in evidence. There is no sign of the canines a human has. This suggests that Vulcans evolved from a herbivorous answer. Could Vulcans' propensity for vegetarianism be a biological imperative rather than a cultural tendency?

Skull

The proportions of the Vulcan skull as depicted in this image compared to the human skull in this image are fairly simpler. The skull, across the zygomatic along the upper corner of the orbit, is 101 pixels wide on the Vulcan as depicted in figure 1 and 75 pixels wide in the human as depicted in figure 3. The height of the skull, respectively, is 173 and 132 pixels. These equal a ratio of 1.71 for the Vulcan and 1.76 for the human. Sufficiently clear side and rear views are unfortunately not available for comparing the approximate circumference of the cranium, but it can be presumed that the Vulcan skull is similar in all dimensions to that of a human, and that their brain would likely be similar size (and thus, similar in proportion to their overall body mass) to that of a human. While brain-body ratio isn't a perfect estimator of intelligence this is certainly consistent with them being comparable to a human in intelligence (but don't let the Vulcans know, they'd surely be insulted.) Vulcan eyes are forward-facing. Binocular vision is unusual in prey species, but as we've established, Vulcans are herbivores. One possibility is that a wide field of vision is not necessary to protect from predators, which would suggest that there are no predators on Vulcan large enough to threaten a man, however the existence of the Le-Matya and the large creature that nearly slew a young Michael Burnham when she camped out in the Forge disproves this hypothesis. On Earth, the only herbivorous animals with forward-facing eyes are found among our primate relatives, who descend from an arboreal ancestor that required depth perception to brachiate. I suggest it is thus likely that Vulcan was once home to vast forests, in the trees of which a distant, pointy-eared ancestor once lived.

Vertebrae

Vulcans are vertebrates, shockingly.

All jokes aside, based on the position of Giant Spock's shoulders, it would appear that Vulcans have only five cervical vertebrae to humans' seven ^6. Fewer than seven vertebrae is uncommon for mammals on Earth-- the only mammals with more or fewer than seven vertebrae are manatees with six, two-toed sloths with five, and three-toed sloths with nine. All other mammals, from mice to gorillas, have seven. It's hard to say what the practical effects of this would be, as the number of bones in the neck don't necessarily tell us much about the flexibility of that neck.

Ribcage

I count seven ribs per side, of which the last two are floating ribs unattached to the sternum ^7. These extend rather further forward than the floating ribs of humans. Like earth's tetrapods, and unlike many fishes, Vulcans have only a single set of ribs. I think the Xiphoid process can be seen through a hole in Giant Spock's shirt. I suspect that Vulcans may have smaller lungs than humans do(an assertion backed up by the anatomical chart in the old Starfleet Medical Reference Manual, where the position of the Vulcan heart and stomach truncate the lungs slightly.) Vulcan is generally said to have a thinner atmosphere than Earth, so we can conclude that Vulcan lungs must be far more efficient than our own.

Hands

This is an interesting one. If you look closely at the bones of the Vulcan hand it appears that they are significantly different from those of a human. The most notable difference is that the Vulcan hand appears to have either an additional phalange, or else they have not one, but two metacarpals per finger-- I think the latter, because it looks like the joint would be about mid-palm on a human to me. ^8 The most likely result is that the Vulcan palm can, perhaps, be folded in the middle. This could potentially jive with our brachiation hypothesis from earlier. However it is worth noting that this adaptation seems to appear only on the right hand (on the audience's left in the image.) Most likely one hand or the other is simply the victim of an animation error, but which one it is, we cannot be absolutely certain of.

Unfortunately, glimpses of the remainder of the skeleton are fragmentary and hard to tell us much, though a generally close resemblance to human anatomy continues to be evident from what we see, which includes part of the left radius, the radius, ulna, and humeral trochlea of the right arm, the right shoulder, some three lumbar vertebrae, a bit of the ilium on both sides, and a glimpse of both knees. However we have sufficient diagnostic material to distinguish fossil remains of H. sapiens and V. eridani despite the otherwise extreme convergence of their physical traits.

I saw this rant/complaint over on Reddit, and it got me thinking a bit.

We know that at least on paper, Federation starships are insanely fast and agile. Data has stated that the Galaxy-class Enterprise was able to achieve Warp 9 from , and some ships, like the Nebula class, don't seem to use impulse engines at all, favouring the warp engine for sublight speed usage at all.

Despite that, we also know that impulse engines aren't simple thrusters, and are able to move the ship in a way not directly in line with the output thrust (Relics), and from the same episode, we also know that smaller ships, like the Jenolan, will still run rings around ships like the Enterprise, even though it is nearly a full century out of date.

However, from what the show itself portrays, the ships tend to be fairly slow and sluggish when in combat, sedately drifting along the battlefield, while weapons fire goes every which way. The most recent and active thing we've seen a big starship do is maybe the fighter run in Picard.

In my opinion, by trying to keep to the slow and seemingly logical expectations for starships to be slow, hulking metal structures that slowly fly around shooting each other, Star Trek ends up underselling what Federation starships are able to do. They would be more realistically portrayed flitting about the battlefield like dragonflies, instead of being like "real boats" today, that have more of a sense of mass.

It seems wildly unintuitive, but it would also help show Federation propulsion technology being more advanced than what they are now. Starships can instantly stop and reverse course, or move in ways that would be impossible with modern technology, and the show not showing ships capable of doing just that might be to its detriment.

The amount of #startrek content on my feed has expanded considerably since #lemmy became the new home to @daystrominstitute and @startrek.

It will surprise few members of the Daystrom institute who are familiar with me and my work that cartoons are one of the only things I enjoy as much as I do Star Trek. One of my favorite animated shows of all time is Cartoon Network's 2010-2019 surreal fantasy-comedy Adventure Time with Finn and Jake. The creative crew of Adventure Time were notorious Star Trek fans, and particularly of TNG. Over the course of their ten seasons they cast numerous Star Trek alumni, including George Takei, Michael Dorn, Jonathan Frakes, Wallace Shawn, Marina Sirtis, and LeVar Burton, not to mention many more that would later appear on Star Trek-- mostly career voice actors and comedians with roles on Lower Decks or Prodigy such as Tom Kenny, Paul F. Tompkins, Grey Griffin, Lauren Lapkus, Paul Scheer, and Dee Bradley Baker, but some that are more well-known for live action such as Tig Notaro, Rebecca Romijn, and Rainn Wilson.

For those of you that may be unfamiliar with Adventure Time, it primarily centers around the adventures of teenage boy Finn the Human and his best friend and adoptive brother Jake the Dog, a pair of fantasy adventurers in the land of Ooo, a fantasy realm a thousand years after global nuclear war ends civilization as we know it and heralds the return of magic to the world. As the show went on it explored many corners of their world, often devoting entire episodes to supporting characters where the two leads make minimal or no appearances. One of the most acclaimed and beloved episodes of Adventure Time is season 5, episode 16, "Puhoy", the series' first Emmy winner. Many fans, including tiresome internet personality Doug "That Guy With The Glasses" Walker, have noted the similarities between Puhoy's story and that of Star Trek: the Next Generation's "The Inner Light", an episode I am sure requires no introduction to the members of the Daystrom Institute.

More than merely riffing on a shared trope, however, I argue that Puhoy constitutes a specific parody of The Inner Light, a joke helped along by the appearance of not one but two notable Star Trek alumni: Jonathan Frakes as a grown-up Finn, and Wallace Shawn as village wise man Rasheeta. Finn, held back from adventuring by the arrival of a dangerous storm and melancholy about the state of his budding relationship with Flame Princess, constructs a pillow fort with Jake. Jake advises Finn that the problems he worries about are imaginary ones borne of attachment, and to demonstrate, thoughtlessly destroys his favorite mug by pitching it out the window into the conflagration. Unsure about the lesson, Finn enters the pillow fort to meditate and finds a mysterious door, which appears to lead him to another realm made entirely of pillows and blankets. While there, he slays a dragon, and dances with Roselinen, the daughter of a local villager named Quilton, but finds himself wanting to return home soon.

Meanwhile, Jake uses a fishing rod to retrieve his cup, and when questioned about this apparent hypocrisy by their roommate BMO, a living video game console, Jake offers to share some hot chocolate with them. Back in the pillow world, years have passed. Finn and Roselinen have married and had two children, named Jay and Bonnie (after Jake and another main character, Princess Bubblegum, also called Bonnibel.) Quilton arrives and informs him that he has learned of a way to return to Finn's normal life-- a door that appears only infrequently and for a short time. Years later, Finn consults with the oracle Rasheeta about the door, but Rasheeta offers no clear answers, except that Finn will soon leave. Finn finds he can no longer clearly recall Jake, and when he tries can only recall a figure that more closely resembles Rasheeta telling him to stay with Roselinen. Roselinen encourages him to return home, asking only that he remember her and the children when he does. Finally, Finn dies of old age, surrounded by family, and emerges from the pillowfort, still a young boy. His attempts to relate this experience to Jake is interrupted by a phone call from Flame Princess, causing him to forget the whole thing like a dream.

Almost every beat of Puhoy is the opposite of The Inner Light. Unlike the crew of the Enterprise, Jake and BMO make no attempt to rouse Finn from his other life, and indeed scarcely appear to be concerned at all. Unlike Aline, Roselinen is supportive of Finn's desire to resume his old life. Unlike Picard, the experience can leave no lasting impression on Finn, and the episode is at best ambivalent about the idea of sentimental mementos, adopting as many of Adventure Time's most poignant episodes do a highly existential, Zen philosophy that it is best to focus neither on the past nor the future. But Finn and Picard's journey is alike, the tension between their old life and their new life is alike, and it only serves, alongside the casting of Frakes, to highlight the irony of how unlike the details of the episodes around them are in a way that brings the audience in on the joke.

While some may argue in transparently bad faith that it isn't so, it's obvious to even a casual observer that Star Trek's setting depicts in the Federation a vision of society in which the goals of both the social and economic left wing have largely won out and largely been attained. The people of the Federation have relatively complete equality of race, gender, sexuality, and even species. Resources are abundant and housing, food, shelter, healthcare, education, and beyond even the necessities even most of the pleasures of life are provided to virtually all. The environment is protected and even controlled on many populated planets to protect the ecosystem.

What, then, is at the cutting edge of politics for the Federation? In the interests of disclosure, I have identified as an anarcha-feminist and a pacifist for more than a decade (albeit not a tremendously intellectual one), and my analysis here is based in large part on the issues I believe that, as a civilian living in Star Trek's universe, I would likely have strong positions on.

A few candidates immediately present themselves:

• AI rights. A major theme of 24th-century Star Trek, from the beginning of TNG right up to Picard, is the debate over the rights of artificial intelligences, whether in the form of androids and synths like Data and Soji or photonics like the Doctor, Vic, and Moriarty. Less attention is given to less anthropomorphic forms of artificial intelligence. As we see in Lower Decks, Starfleet and the Daystrom Institute keep rogue AIs such as AGIMUS, Peanut Hamper, and 10111, with no evidence that they received any kind of trial or evaluation. The tragedy of 2385 became a major impediment to AI rights, but after the events of season 1 of Picard they seem to be back on track, at least for Synths. The personhood of photonics and non-anthropomorphic AIs remains up in the air.
• Augment rights. This may be an internally contentious issue. on the one hand, it is clear that genetically-altered individuals are marginalized as of the Dominion War. It is by the narrowest of margins that Bashir avoids being drummed out of Starfleet for being the recipient of a medical procedure he had no ability to consent to or refuse, and the Jack Pack are in some ways treated more like inmates than patients. Less than a century and a half before, Illyrians were persecuted and La'an Noonien Singh faced bullying as a child for being the distant descendant of Khan. However the memory of the Eugenics Wars looms large in the human imagination and genetic augmentation may still be viewed by some as inherently hierarchical.
• Humanocentrism and Vulcan Supremacy. Azetbur's remarks on the Federation as a "Homo sapiens-only" club are not strictly true, but they're not strictly unfounded either. The Federation's capital has always been Earth, Starfleet's headquarters are on Earth, Earth seems to have more colonies than any other member world (and stay tuned while we discuss that further), Humans make up the bulk of Starfleet (even on the Cerritos, by far the most species-diverse ship shown in Trek canon, the majority of the crew seem to be human), Federation Standard is closely descended from English, and four out of six Federation Presidents named or depicted across Star Trek canon are either human or of partial human ancestry. Vulcans, meanwhile, are frequently openly prejudiced against other species and seem to face little opprobrium for being so. This is more prominent in the 22nd and 23rd century, with anti-human terrorism on Vulcan, Spock's childhood bullying, and Starfleet even declaring entire vessels (such as the Intrepid) Vulcan-only; but it still seems to be present in the 24th and even, in some respects, as far ahead as the 32nd century.
• Seceding worlds (and the Maquis.) Unlike the United States of America, which had a whole civil war over the matter, Federation member worlds, and even colonies, appear to have the right to withdraw Federation membership. Aside from the Cardassian Border colonies that produced the Maquis rebellion, Turkana IV is perhaps the most prominent example in the 24th century. We know later in history most of the Federation's worlds, including Earth, Ni'Var, and Andoria, will secede as well in the aftermath of the Burn, and there are some indications that M'Talas Prime may be ex-Federation by the time of Picard. Turkana IV and M'Talas prime serve as an effective demonstration of exactly why this might become a progressive issue: neither seems to have thrived without the Federation, and the Maquis secession resulted in years of violence ending in mass murder on the part of the Dominion. On the other hand making Federation membership irrevocable is not exactly respectful of the sovereignty of those worlds' people. This is likely an issue that sees divided perspectives.
• Expansionism and Imperialism. This may be another controversial one. It is undeniable that the Federation is expansionist, always settling new worlds, welcoming new members, and pushing its borders outwards. As an organization Boldly Going Where No Man Has Gone Before is a central element of Starfleet's mission. However it is clear that one of the key goals of the Prime Directive^1^ is in ensuring that this expansion does not come at the expense of sovereign indigenous civilizations. Nevertheless, we often see the citizens of other polities feel their people are pressured, or even subtly coerced, to join the Federation, especially in DS9. It is not hard to believe that these concerns are shared by at least some Federation citizens.
• Social issues in neighboring societies. It is clear that many of the Federation's neighbors do not place as high a value on the rights of the individual or of the people as do the Federation, from Ferengi misogyny to Klingon classism to Cardassian totalitarianism. This is the opposite side of the coin from the prior issue, and it seems like the dominant strain of thought in the Federation is to pursue a policy of not intervening even in other advanced societies in the name of inalienable rights, or even providing more than token support to internal resistance movements much of the time (witness the struggles of Bajor, for instance.)
• Section 31. It remains unclear how much of the existence of Section 31, particularly in its modern form, is known to the public. However if it is known, an organization willing to violate the Federation's every high-minded principle in the ruthless pursuit of protecting its interests is doubtless a fraught subject. If their existence only became public knowledge after the fact of their indiscretions, one could easily imagine it being a scandal that tarnishes entire governments.
• Criminal Justice. While crime is no longer as widespread as it is in our own time due to lack of deprivation, the Federation still practices a form of carceral justice. Better minds than I discuss elsewhere the matters of police and prison abolition. Here is one 21st-century left-wing cause that hasn't yet become obsolete.
• Militarism. A common criticism of Star Trek is that everything in the Federation seems to revolve around Starfleet. While that's partly a limitation of the nature of the show, it raises the question: how true is it really? And how true do the people of the 24th century perceive it to be? How comfortable are civilians with the prominence of Starfleet?

Please use the comments to offer your own insights, or to suggest any issues I may have overlooked.

^A subject about which liberal and left-wing arguments both for and against are so played out as to be not worth any further mention.

In the finale of Picard Season 3, the Titan, armed with a 100 year old cloaking device, manages to successfully evade detection by the Borg controlled fleet. This raises some questions. How on earth is it that the Titan was able to accomplish this with a seemingly obsolete cloaking device?

I postulate two things, the first is that what we call the cloaking device is merely one component in a whole system of invisibility, and the second is that StarFleet was certainly obeying the letter of the treaty (Pegasus and Section 31 aside) by not developing cloaking technology, but was, in reality, building ships ready to accept cloaking devices at a moment's notice.

What do we know about cloaking devices, and how are they defeated? The cloaking device ties into the ship’s deflector shield control (as per TOS: The Enterprise Incident) and it obtains invisibility in part by bending light around the ship (as per comparison to the Aldean planetary shield in TNG: The Bough Breaks and description from DISL Into the Forest I Go)

However, using the deflector shield to remain unobserved does not necessarily require a cloaking device. As per the opening of TOS: Assignment: Earth, the Enterprise was able to use its defector shield to remain unobserved to 20th century technology.

And there are countless examples of a cloaking device being imperfect. The most famous example is likely Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, where a torpedo set to target ionized gas is able to trace down the location of a Bird of Prey, summarized as “The thing has to have a tailpipe.”

But that is not the only example. Detecting energy distortions, subspace radiation, high speed warp signatures from neutrino radiation, and looking for tetryon particles all worked as forms of passive detection. (I will not cover active detection mechanisms such as the tachyon net, as the Borg fleet never deployed them.)

To add to all this, the clocking device is very small. A device about the size and weight of a man can make a ship invisible.

Here I switch to speculation.

First, I suggest that the cloaking device is primarily a computer. It is not the thing which makes the ship invisible - you could plug it into a building and it would not work, unless it has its own projectors. It must be plugged into a ship with a deflector array, to enhance and perfect its ability to make the ship invisible.

Second, the quality of the ship is more important than the quality of the cloaking device. A cloaking device “merely” needs to look at all incoming radiation of all types, and calculate how to move it around the ship for total silence. But it cannot protect against a ship which emits radiation, leaks gas, etc. Thus, a ship designed with high quality shields and high quality emission control will be more stealthy.

Side speculation: The design decision to not use an antimatter core in the first Bird of Prey we see during TOS: Balance of Terror (their power is simple impulse only implies fusion) and the later TNG-era decision to use a forced singularity despite the downsides, may be rooted in the notion that the Romulans felt that emissions from antimatter annihilation were a liability. Selling the Klingons the cloak and not telling them about this problem seems entirely on brand for the Romulan Star Empire.

There is something of an exception here, the phased cloak. A ship out of phase would, presumably, emit radiation which is also out of phase. (Extrapolated from TNG: The Next Phase where Ro shoots Riker in the head and he does not notice.) The phased cloak represented an attempt to fix emission control on a completely new level. But the phased cloak had problems, and is is seemingly a dead end for the ability to fire while cloaked. Plus, research was a treaty violation.

So now we return to the Titan. We know that plugging a 100 year old cloaking device into the Titan produced an invisibility effect which worked admirably. StarFleet may have seemingly kept their commitment to not build ships with cloaking devices, but this was always a hand wave agreement. StarFleet was ready for the day when they needed invisible ships, and having ships ready to accept cloaking devices was seemingly an unspoken but very intentional design consideration.

When the Titan needed to be invisible, she was missing only one piece of the puzzle.

In "Take Me Out to the Holosuite", captains Sisko and Solok form teams of their own crewmen and play a baseball game in one of Quark's holosuites. Unlike most Holosuite programs, the real people involved are extremely spread out, with Rom (in the stands behind home plate) and Dax (climbing the center field fence) at least 450 feet apart at one point, with the dugouts roughly 200 feet apart along the opposite axis. We see the interior of various holosuites in prior episodes and they are nowhere near that large. Does Quark really have close to 100,000 square feet worth of holosuites, or does the holodeck have some special tricks to deal with this sort of situation?

This unit has been assigned to recover valuable content submitted by organic units to the reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute wiki. This unit does not claim authorship over the contents of this post.

Algernon_Asimov's reviews of the Deep Space Nine relaunch novels

These books are set after the end of the 'Deep Space Nine' TV series, following on from the events of the DS9 finale. If you have not watched DS9 to the end, then be warned: HERE BE SPOILERS!

Prequels

The Lives of Dax, edited by Marco Palmieri

This book is not officially part of the relaunch - as the editor writes in the introduction, it was inspired by Jadzia's death at the end of Season 6. Also, most of these stories refer to the earlier hosts of Dax, which means they take place before the 'Deep Space Nine' TV series. However, some of the events in these stories are referred to in the later relaunch novels, so this book has de facto "Season 8" status: it was originally released as a generic Star Trek book, but later editions feature the DS9 relaunch logo and styling on the cover.

It's an anthology of nine short stories, each written by a different author and focussing on a different Dax host.

Ezri: Second Star To The Right ... And Straight On 'Til Morning

This framing story focusses on the current Dax host: Ezri. She's in the holodeck with Vic Fontaine, and starts telling him her history, starting with the story of how Ezri Tegan came to be joined with the Dax host. So, this story has three layers: Ezri Dax in the current day in the holodeck; Ezri Tegan in flashback on the USS Destiny; then the lead-in to the stories of the various previous Dax hosts.

As a framing story, it fulfils its purpose: it sets up the premise for us, the readers. As a stand-alone story, it's not so good.

The scenes in the holodeck with Vic Fontaine are laboured and overly descriptive. We spend way too much time learning that Ezri is wearing a blue-sequined spaghetti-strap cocktail dress with uncomfortable high heels. Vic doesn't talk like the Vic we've seen in the show. But, it's just a set-up.

Then, Ezri starts telling the story of how she came to be joined. And it gets worse: the Ezri Tegan we meet on the USS Destiny is nothing like the Ezri Dax we meet on Deep Space Nine, even allowing for the changes brought about by being joined with Dax. We learn that Ezri Tegan is one of the few Trill who have not been screened for their suitability for joining with a symbiont, which is what we expect based on what we saw in the show: Ezri was a surprise host. However, more than simply neglecting to be screened, Ezri is actively against the concept of joining. She believes that "the whole of Trill society was dedicated to brainwashing its children into believing there could be no higher goal than sacrificing their individuality to a parasitic race of slugs", and thinks of the symbionts as "parasitic brain vampires".

The Ezri Dax we met at the start of Season 7 of 'Deep Space Nine' was confused, lost in her multiple identities, having trouble coping - all these things and more. But there was no sign that she resented having been forced to join with a "parasitic brain vampire". Even if she'd learned the truth about the nature of joining from Dax itself, there should still be some residual hints of this anti-parasite Ezri in the post-joining personality. But, there's none - because the authors of this story have created conflict just for the sake of it, without considering character continuity.

This story does its job competently in framing the book, but it's not great itself. It's clunkily written, it's laboured, and it introduces contradictory characterisation.

Lela: First Steps

The first story naturally centres on Dax's first host: Lela. And, one important thing to note with most of the hosts is that we don't have much first-hand information about these characters - most of them made only one on-screen appearance, in the Season 3 episode 'Facets'. This, plus a few off-hand remarks, is all we know about them. This gives the authors in this anthology more room to move, and makes it less likely that they'll contradict what we know of these characters.

Lela is a junior member of the ruling council of Trill at a time when Trill has only recently learned about the existence of other species. The Trill people's response to their first encounter with the Vulcans has been to withdraw into ignorant isolation, shutting everyone else out. However, an alien ship has now appeared in orbit, making a request that noone can understand...

Each story is prefaced with a quote from the TV show about the relevant host. In this case, the quote is naturally about Lela. However, a more relevant quote would be the one by Captain Sisko in Season 7 when Ezri goes off to search for a lost Worf: "She's a Dax. Sometimes they don't think. They just do." Because Lela does things, when the rest of the council won't. We also learn that the Dax symbiont has a wish to see the stars, which Lela herself did not have before being joined. This shows how the symbiont's qualities influence and are part of the joined Trill's personality.

Along the way, she meets a character we have met before: T'Pau. This is another common factor of these stories - they all have some reference to a character and/or event we already know from other Star Trek canon. In a minor digression in a larger conversation, T'Pau tells Lela about a recent species the Vulcans have encountered; even without naming names, we know she's talking about the events seen in the movie 'First Contact'. The reference is awkwardly inserted, even if gratifying, but it sets this story in the 2060s or 2070s.

Overall, this is a good story, and well told.

Tobin: Dead Man's Hand

Tobin, Dax's second host, is an engineer who is socially awkward. He's nervous. The Human captain of the ship he's on gave him a deck of Human playing cards, together with a book on card tricks, "to keep your hands busy. You fidget too much." The victim of his attempts to practice his card tricks is the only other non-Human on board: Skon, a Vulcan mathematician (here's the character from canon - Skon is mentioned as the father of Sarek in 'The Search for Spock'). The two of them, together with other engineers and mathematicians on the ship, are working on a secret prototype. Well, it must be secret, because we the readers don't get to learn what it does until more than halfway through the story. Suffice to say that it's a significant piece of technology that we see a lot of in Star Trek.

The story is prefaced by about a page of dialogue between two characters who are not named or identified in any way, and nor do we understand what they're talking about until later in the story. This preface is awkward, unhelpful, and ultimately unnecessary - it adds nothing to the story. In fact, the paragraphs after this preface make a much better opening to the story.

The story focusses on some Romulans' attempts to gain knowledge of warp drive by hijacking the ship that Tobin and Skon are on, because Romulus only has slower-than-light travel at this time. There is mention "that the humans and Romulans had been engaged in a vicious border war for the better part of three years", which places this story in the mid-2100s. Some of the references to the Human-Romulan war in this story may have been superseded by events in 'Star Trek: Enterprise', which was not even a twinkle in a producer's eye at the time this book was written.

The story operates a bit like a card trick itself: key pieces of information (such as the nature of the prototype) are hidden from the reader to artificially build suspense, and only revealed at the right "wow" moment. It's frustrating. The character of Tobin is written a little too simply: there really does seem to be nothing to him beyond him being an engineer and playing card tricks - the author has not added anything to what we know from on-screen references.

It's an okay story.

Emony: Old Souls

This story is actually told from the point of view of someone other than one of Dax's hosts: a young Leonard McCoy. It's basically an expansion of a brief exchange in the episode 'Trials and Tribble-ations', between Sisko and Jadzia Dax:

JADZIA: McCoy... McCoy... Leonard McCoy! I met him when he was a student at Ole Miss.

SISKO: Who met him - Curzon?

JADZIA: No. My host at the time was Emony. She was on Earth judging a gymnastics competition. I had a feeling he'd become a doctor... he had the hands of a surgeon.

McCoy is "a small-town boy a few months shy of his eighteenth birthday" who goes to a gymnastics competition with his Ole Miss dorm-mate, only to see the famous gymnast Emony Dax acting as one of judges. His mother was a fan of Emony when she won her three latinum medals in the '24 Olympics... twenty-one years ago. This sets the story in 2245, some twenty years before McCoy serves with Kirk on the Enterprise.

It also seems that Emony is old enough to be McCoy's mother! And, yet, they make a romantic connection. Brief, but still real. The romance is set against some interspecies conflict at the gymnastic competition, but this is basically a love story. And, it's nice. The story is short and sweet, like the romance itself.

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Serialized Deep Space 9 Episode Guide

- /u/Darth_Rasputin32898

Introduction

The goal of of this guide is to provide an episode order to watch Deep Space 9 (DS9) that will deliver maximum impact of the series' overall story arcs in a minimum of episodes. My personal motivation in this matter was to introduce someone I know to Star Trek, a person interested in Star Trek who overwhelmingly favors non-episodic story-telling (a fan of HBO's Game Of Thrones). As such, I decided DS9 would be most appropriate.

Put another way, the purpose of this guide is enable new viewers to quickly 'rush' through the DS9 series without losing the benefits of essential plotlines or character development. No prior Trek experience is required, though reference to the 'Background' section may be helpful initially. All you need is simply the patience to sit through about the first and/or second seasons, which are quite abbreviated in this guide (since they're more episodic and generally considered lower quality).

The total number of episodes by my count is 125.

About Spoilers

This is a non-spoiler guide. Spoilers for any given episode will not be used in the Key Points for that episode. Spoilers for episodes may be included in the Key Points for episodes after that episode. These details will be contained in the spoiler code. Here is an example:

SeasonXEpisodeY

So, if you'd seen episode Y of season X, you'd be able to view that spoiler.

Background

The year is 2369. Humans have, over the past three and a half centuries, have made contact with aliens and helped form an interstellar government, the United Federation of Planets (simply, Federation) that is at the time of DS9 one of the major powers of the known galaxy. It is a post-scarcity, democratic, idyllic society dedicated peaceful to contact with other species and other inter-species governments. Its 'navy,' so to speak, is Starfleet, a 'peacekeeping and humanitarian armada,' jointly operated by its members. It is an exploratory organization, and the main focus of all Star Trek.

Unfortunately, most other known interstellar governments are not as peaceable. The chief rivals of the Federation at present are the Klingon Empire, Romulan Star Empire, and the more recently encountered Cardassian Union. All of these are expansionist military powers, and all of them have been at war with the Federation at some point. (However, the Klingons are now allied with the Federation.)

Anything else important is quite clearly shown in episode 1.

Episode List

Right! On to the episodes at last!

Season 1

Season 2

Season 3

Season 4

Season 5

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#Algernon_Asimov's guide to 'Star Trek: The Next Generation'

I've compiled an episode guides for 'Star Trek: The Next Generation'. This shows major milestones and character development - hopefully without giving away too many spoilers.

Whether you want to track the development of Worf during Next Generation, or skip the Wesley-heavy episodes, this is the page for you!

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Season 1

Season 2

No worries, we'll figure out how this works someday.