Star Trek Social Club

The “half” refers to Spock, who is only half-Vulcan.

The Stardate is 3111.1, and Enterprise is headed for Purmantee III where the crew will take shore leave. Una says La’An, of all people would understand why she’s remaining on board, as she likes to do work when it’s quiet. Indeed, the two did that in SNW: “Spock Amok” when the crew was on shore leave in Starbase 1. This is the first mention of Greerian cocktails.

Vice-Admiral Pasalk is a Vulcan who headed the JAG office in SNW: “Ad Astra Per Aspera”. He also has an antagonistic relationship with Spock, although that is only apparent to people who can read Vulcan body language, like M’Benga. Batel was a JAG officer who was then promoted to command, being recalled to JAG duty for Una’s trial in that episode.

Tezaar is an M-class planet (Minshara-class, as per ENT: “Strange New World”), capable of supporting humanoid life, but are not warp capable, hence protected by the Prime Directive. Spock explains that the Vulcans made contact with Tezaar before the founding of the Federation (in 2161), but we know that Vulcans had their own non-interference directives long before before official First Contact with Earth in 2063 (see ENT: “Carbon Creek”), as La’An points out.

Spock was turned human and back again by the Kerkhovians in SNW: “Charades”. Pike being overwhelmed by emotions is an expected response, as Vulcans feel emotions much more intensely than humans, hence the necessity to practice arie’mnu (passion’s mastery) to control them. However, given this is a learned response, the sudden snap to “emotionless” Vulcans requires some explanation.

The song is “Reckless Youth” by indie group The Home of Happy. Pike is carrying a lirpa, a traditional Vulcan weapon first seen in TOS: “Amok Time”. Ortegas mentioned she had fought with a lirpa in “Spock Amok”. The away team also carries cylindrical hardshell duffle bags, which were first seen in TNG. Music reminiscent of the Vulcan fight music of “Amok Time” can also be heard as part of the soundtrack.

Pike’s opening narration for this episode is in a stilted manner, as a nod to his status as a Vulcan.

Una’s explanation for why the away team is acting so coldly is because the serum was derived from Spock’s “perceived experiences”, leading them to assume the manners that Vulcans normally years to develop. That being said, how a serum can be based on “experiences” is not explained.

Kirk’s mention of Sam reminds me that we haven’t seen him since SNW: “Wedding Bell Blues”.

It is well established that Vulcans have an enhanced sense of smell compared to humans and that they find human odors unpleasant. As mentioned in ENT: “The Andorian Incident” and “Spock Amok”, Vulcans take nasal suppressants/numbing agents to help with this.

La’An’s obsession towards martial matters and conquest is meant to seem Romulan in nature (as Kirk says, aggressive and manipulative) but as we find out later, it’s her Augment ancestry influencing her Vulcan state.

It’s interesting that M’Benga and Spock are now talking openly about katras, when it was first presented as a deeply personal thing to Vulcans (Sarek says in ST III that Spock would not have spoken of it openly). But then again mind melds were also supposed to be things Vulcans didn’t talk about (TOS: “Dagger of the Mind”).

Pike’s allusion to a mission he is not permitted to discuss is his knowledge of the Romulans gained on a trip into an alternate future (SNW: “A Quality of Mercy”). La’An learned about Romulans while also time traveling in SNW: “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”.

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of mending broken ceramics by filling in the gaps between shards with a metallic lacquer made from gold or sometimes silver. The philosophy behind the practice is to embrace imperfections and find beauty in them instead of keeping them hidden.

15 years puts the end of Una and Doug’s romance in 2244, a year before Enterprise was launched. My best guesses put Una at around 42 years of age (I’ll spare you the math) so she last broke up with Doug when she was 27.

Batel says Pasalk used to call Pike “the human with inappropriate hair”, which is clearly a meta joke as Pike’s hair is a frequent topic of conversation among fans.

Doug attributes Spock’s ability to lie to his human heritage and claims that as a full-blooded Vulcan he cannot lie, but full-blooded Vulcans have been known to lie (or at least obfuscate) before - especially T’Pol and Tuvok - on numerous occasions.

Kirk says he’s served under Vulcans. The current CO of Farragut is V’Rel, a Vulcan female captain.

Plomeek soup is a traditional Vulcan dish, which can be bland or spicy. Chapel made plomeek soup for Spock in “Amok Time”, although Spock, in the throes of pon farr, threw the bowl into the corridor.

It appears that we are meant to believe that it was Kirk who introduced Scotty to the pleasures of Scotch.

Of note in the post-credits scene is that the inability to use contractions was part of the character of Data in TNG (yes, it’s debatable). Also, while his smiles are often wry and subtle, Spock has grinned a number of times before, in TOS: “The Cage”, TOS: “Amok Time” and laughed in SNW: “Children of the Comet” and SNW: “Those Old Scientists”.

thanks to everyone for sharing about Star Trek books! i've never given them much thought but just thanks to your posts i've decided to dive in with my first two books!

i'm getting the first book from the Titan series because i've wanted to see Captain Riker since i was kid, and from the SNW series, since i can't get enough of this crew.

thanks all!

Any series

Treklit has some great offerings. The Relaunch universe books in particular developed coherent serialized storylines and a group of strong authors. There is also a deep library of standalone books from across all eras of the franchise.

By contrast, serialized Star Trek is struggling onscreen. Of the current era, only Prodigy has excelled in serialized storytelling.

So, why not look to the books? Not just to lift an idea like Control or the end of the Borg, but to actually tell a coherent narrative across a season or season?

On Netflix, Prime and Apple, it’s become established that successful streaming shows are often based on novels and novel series. Those streamers have come to understand that novelists, not scriptwriters, excel in laying out long form storytelling, and resources are often better put in having the screenwriters adapt than create from the whole cloth.

Reading a recent interview with Mick Herron, author of the critically acclaimed and popular Slow Horses on Apple, with a second show based on his other books launching this fall, I was struck by the interviewer’s assertion of this truism.

I thought about several of the non franchise shows I enjoy and how many of them are more or less faithful adaptations of books.

I was also struck by the thought that both Skydance and Paramount are quite capable of producing excellent book adaptations for Netflix and Apple. Murderbot is a very current example.

So, what’s holding back Star Trek from exploiting the Vanguard series or the Starfleet Core of Engineers books?

Why insist on giving showrunners resources to keep retelling franchise stories with legacy characters and tropes?

Why not exploit that IP that Paramount already owns by adapting the best of decades of TrekLit?

No answers like, "They're all from Earth", "They're all in some version of Starfleet or United Earth Fleet", etcetera.

Bonus if you can think of other weird ones.

Preface: This post may include spoilers for "A Stitch in Time".

I started on a DS9 re-watch a few weeks ago but paused about halfway through the first season so I could read Andrew Robinson's "A Stitch in Time".

If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. I'll spare you the book report/review, but suffice it to say it puts every one of Garak's scenes in the show in a new light. While I'm aware the novel is not necessarily canon, there's nothing in it that contracts established canon, and nothing since DS9 has contradicted anything portrayed in it. So, that's good enough for me.

There's a lot to take away from the read, but the biggest are all the blanks that are filled in. For starters, Garak's entire affable demeanor is a carefully constructed mask based on training, self-control, patience, and cunning. He's definitely still a good man, honorable even (in his own way), but due to Cardassian culture and its ingrained sense of duty to the state, things get a little gray. And that's before his time with the Order.

Some other takeaways include:

• A recount of his time as a gardener on Romulus which was only mentioned in the show as an offhand remark but you knew was a good story (spoiler: it is)
• His history with Dukat and why there's so much animosity between them (and the reveal of Dukat's non-canon first name)
• A more in-depth look at the emotional toil he was going through leading up to the invasion of the Dominion-controlled Cardassia as well as the lingering hostility toward him from the Bajorans. In the show, we mostly see this as his claustrophobia flares up, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.
• How he ended up in the Obsidian Order as well as some of his missions with them
• Why and how he fell from grace with the Order
• His early life and relationship with Enabran Tain and exactly how much influence Tain had over him from his early life and even after Tain's death.
• The exact circumstances and what it was like when he was first exiled to Terok Nor (he was forced to be a tailor rather than choosing that as a cover)
• How absolutely full of shit Dukat was when he described himself as benevolent toward the Bajorans. The show makes it clear he's not exactly remembering correctly, but the novel makes it clear he was "excessive" in his methods even by Cardassian standards. Marc Alaimo's extremely charismatic performance left you wondering if maybe there was some truth to the way Dukat remembered things, but the book puts that notion to bed.
• And just so much more.

The whole novel added depth to an already deep character that had hidden depths and still left you wanting more. I think my only gripe with the novel was that it wasn't 300 pages longer.

So yeah, looking forward to continuing my DS9 re-watch with Garak's full backstory in mind.

I just finished "A Stitch in Time" and started looking for some other Trek books.

Ended up buying the Millennium trilogy and the Destiny Trilogy.

Was going to start reading Millennium, but when I read the preview/prologue for Destiny before I bought it, it started out with Sisko and Jadzia discovering the derelict remains of the NX-02 Columbia in the Gamma Quadrant, and I was hooked and had to buy/continue reading that one.

Which ones have you read? Any other recommendations?

Oh, also, I'm gonna slightly plug ebooks [dot] com since they have a huge selection of DRM-free books, and all of the Trek books I was looking at were available without DRM. Saves me the hassle of jailbreaking an Amazon purchase or buying it from Amazon and pirating a DRM-free version I can actually use.

[Spoilers mainly pertaining to the framing device, not the underlying plot]

In 1976, the American comedy series M*A*S*H, set in the fictional 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, during the Korean War, produced “The Interview”, an in-universe documentary about the characters. Breaking the sitcom format, it was aired in black and white as the last episode of Season 4, consisting mostly of improvised in-character interviews.

“The Interview” is a milestone in television history, copied several times by other series - notably in the SF genre by Babylon 5 with “And Now For a Word” and (partly) “The Illusion of Truth”, as well as Stargate SG-1’s “Heroes” - except those were scripted rather than improvised. M*A*S*H itself repeated the format in Season 7’s “Their Finest Hour”.

A Star Trek fan-made production, Return to Axanar, also used the documentary format. Some licensed novels like The Final Reflection, Spock’s World, The Romulan Way and Strangers From the Sky have also used in-universe texts as part of the storytelling, but this is the first time it’s been used on screen.

Beto makes reference to “investigating the mysteries within ourselves.” In ENT: “Terra Prime”, Archer says, “[T]he most profound discoveries are not necessarily beyond that next star. They're within us, woven into the threads that bind us, all of us, to each other.” In DIS: “Brother”, Burnham describes space, the final frontier as “Above us. Around us. Within us.”

The length of Enterprise as 442.6 metres long is a recent retcon. For decades, the established figure was 289 m, or 947 ft as stated in The Making of Star Trek, but revised upward for the DIS era in production graphics, clearly seen in SNW: “Memento Mori” to the figures we see here. The crew complement of 203 is based on dialogue in TOS: “The Cage”. The dedication plaque states the dimensions as Length: 442 m (1450 ft), Beam: 201 m (659 ft) and Height: 93 m (305 ft), with Weight: 190,000 tonnes (209,439 tons). The caption also establishes the ship’s weaponry as 6 phaser banks and 2 photon torpedo tubes.

The Plain of Blood on Vulcan was first seen in ENT: “The Forge”, an arid expanse that legend holds was flowing with the green blood of battle until Surak cooled it with logic. This is the first time a Vantu blade has been mentioned. Other Vulcan weapons include the lirpa and ahn’woon. This is also the first mention of Kolaran blades.

The back of Uhura’s delta has her name and presumably her Starfleet serial number (and birthdate?). We saw similar name and serial number markings on the backs of deltas in DIS.

This is the first mention of Lutani VII and Kasar, and the stardate of the Kasar attack is 2177.9. The briefing takes place on 2191.4. PADD stands for “Personal Access Display Device” - while first named in TNG, ENT: “Terra Nova” established that the term PADD was used as far back as the 22nd Century.

Jikaru is the Lutani name for “starlight” and the species have lived on the oceanic moon Tychus-B. The transformation Uhura refers to allows it to move through space. Space-borne lifeforms have appeared several times in Star Trek, notably TOS: “The Immunity Syndrome”, TNG: “Tin Man”, TNG: “Galaxy’s Child”, VOY: “The Cloud”, DIS: “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad”, LD: “Grounded”, LD: “Upper Decks”, among others I’ve probably missed. The Jikaru sound is reminiscent of whalesongs (which were a plot point in ST IV).

This is the first time where it is stated that practitioners of Surakian meditation gain increased esper sensitivity and makes mind melds more efficient. The term esper to describe psychic powers was first used in TOS: “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, where esper ratings were part of Starfleet officer records.

Quadroline was first mentioned in TNG: “First Contact” as a drug used on Malcor III. Hyronalin was first mentioned in TOS: “The Deadly Years” as the accepted treatment for radiation sickness.

M’Benga chooses his words carefully when he doesn’t answer if Starfleet has ordered him to kill and says killing people is not a function of his “current job”, given his past as a covert ops wetworks specialist called “The Ghost”. Protocol 12 is a combat drug he developed that gave its user increased strength, endurance and pain resistance, but with side effects. He was present at the Battle of ChaKana which took place on J’Gal during the Klingon War (SNW: “The Broken Circle”) as well as the final Battle of J’Gal (SNW: “Under the Cloak of War”). M’Benga is also cagey about scrubbing sickbay’s surveillance logs (SNW: “The Elysian Kingdom”).

Uhura’s story of the death of her parents and older brother in a shuttle accident was first told in SNW: “Children of the Comet”. Her grandmother, who used to be in Starfleet, steered her toward Starfleet Academy. The USS Cayuga (NCC-1557) was a Constitution-class ship commanded by CAPT Marie Batel which was destroyed by the Gorn over Parnassus Beta in SNW: “Hegemony”. The stardate as stated in that episode and here was 2344.2.

Pike’s love of horseriding was fist established in TOS: “The Cage” and we saw him on horseback in SNW: “Strange New Worlds”.

Christine’s reference to how Vulcans abandoned “these kinds of psionics” centuries ago may be a reference to psionic resonator weapons like the Stone of Gol (TNG: “Gambit, Part II”).

Ortegas yells, “¡Quítame eso de la cara!”, Spanish for “Get that out of my face!”

Spock’s mission to mind meld with the Jikaru in space echoes what he will do years later with V’Ger (TMP). Spock will also meld with alien species like the Horta (TOS: “The Devil in the Dark”) and with humpback whales (ST VI).

Galileo is the most iconic of Enterprise’s shuttles, prominently featured in TOS: “The Galileo Seven”. I think this the first time we’ve seen one (there were a few) named on screen in SNW.

Anti-grav stretchers or gurneys were used several times in TNG, DS9 and LD to ferry wounded personnel to sickbay. Spock was also in a Vulcan healing coma in TOS: “A Private Little War”.

The birthday party is for a Bolian officer. Pike’s cooking for his crew was first seen in “Children of the Comet”, and we get a glimpse of Batel among the party as well.

Like SNW: “A Space Adventure Hour”, this episode does not have the standard opening titles but serves its credits at the end of the episode.

Written by: Kathryn Lyn & Alan B. McElroy

Directed by: Sharon Lewis

I don’t know if all their songs are parodies, but a majority of these songs are. They are fun to watch. When they are on stage, they sometimes play other covers including “I’m Ready”.

The game will remain in players’ digital library if it was purchased, and will continue to be fully playable after it is delisted. At the time of this writing, Supernova is on sale on the Xbox store for just $2.49. The game is still showing as full price ($49.99) across the other digital storefronts.

The game is published by German publisher Deadalic Entertainment and developed by fellow Hamburg based studio gameXcite. GameXcite so far only worked on Asterix games. It is developed in Unreal Engine 5 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S

The above photos are for reference. These are the image and recipe from The Star Trek Cookbook by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel. My soup was pretty messy. The immersion blender I meant to use was missing, so I resorted to a regular blender. 😅 Not going to do this again without one. The bread isn’t as green as I expected because I didn’t twist it enough. It seemed to me the filling of pesto was too much, making the dough too fragile. At least I tried.

If you are unable to read the text, I’m sure you are wondering who the Norellian are. They come from the DS9 novel “The Big Game”.

Here's your look at the Star Trek: Infection VR release window trailer for this upcoming narrative survival game set in the Star Trek universe. Step into the unsettling world in this Star Trek: Infection VR trailer and get a peek at what you can expect ahead of the game's launch on Meta Quest and Steam VR in 2025.