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#Romulans Schisms
frontier001 · 1 year
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Interesting post from production designer Dave Blass. Those little ships are Elachi - a species from Star Trek Online. They're a mysterious baddie race, I think linked back to either the killer aliens in Enterprise's 4th episode and/or the clicker aliens in TNG "Schisms" abducting crew in their sleep.
This doesn't mean we'll see them! Just that they soft canonized them in backdoor fashion to use the ship design. The ships in question seem to be salvaged/sold, according to this "letter" from a Romulan.
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biblioflyer · 11 months
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Five Episodes Later: Reevaluating Picard
I started this rewatch to refresh my memory so that I could tackle the question of whether the fandom had judged Picard too harshly and if it was as dark and dystopian as was commonly accused.
Through that process I have discovered much that is praiseworthy, some implications that bother me, and more than a few questions that pivot on one’s own subjective response to particular cues about whether and when the protagonists are objectively correct or if there is far more room for them to be messy.
For more like this check out my other essays reevaluating Star Trek Picard and interrogating the widely held fandom criticism that Picard made the Federation into a Dystopia.
The Dystopia Question
Ultimately what I’ve found is that Season One is less of a deconstruction of core ideas about Star Trek, than a richer exploration of the premises of Voyager and Enterprise: what happens when decent people are caught in ambiguous situations and without the resources of an entire Federation behind them? 
The backdrop of the failure of the Romulan resettlement effort after the destruction of Utopia Planitia also has resulted in a schism of sorts in the fandom wherein most people are horrified and immediately saw fit to draw analogies to Brexit or the Trump administration, while a disturbing minority shrugged off the catastrophe as the Romulans getting what they had coming to them and have argued the Federation had no moral obligation to help the Romulans.
My own examination of the evidence has led me to feel that there is a strong case for a murky middleground. We could presume for instance that Admiral Clancy is a reactionary who is overstating the case for Starfleet minding its knitting and having too many domestic obligations.
On the other hand we could steelman her case with a very large body of evidence consisting of a vast number of instances where it falls to Starfleet to provide timely disaster relief and protection to the Federation’s vast and underserved frontiers. We need look no further than perhaps dozens of TNG plots to support the idea that an overextended Starfleet would come with a bodycount.
This certainly pushes back on the metanarrative of the Federation and the implication of limitless resources. Although that has always been exaggerated. There’s material abundance enough to provide everyone who doesn’t intentionally seek to rough it on a colony with a comfortable life, even if you’re a disgraced former attache to an embittered former hero turned recluse. What there isn’t enough of is whatever handwavium and skilled personnel are needed to snap one’s fingers and produce a new rescue fleet without depriving others of humanitarian relief and protection.
Again, that assumes we steelman Clancy. There is a lot of narrative weight pushing us to trust Picard’s assessment of the situation post-Mars: he is the hero after all. The hostile interview of the first episode was loaded with a lot of not so subtle triggers for humanitarian minded viewers that seem very intentionally designed to place them in the emotional space of that creeping dread that empathy is dead, having been replaced by an unapologetically narrower conception of who is deserving of respect, comfort, and even life.
However, I think that given Picard the character will spend the first five episodes questioning his own place in the narrative of his life and the lives of others, I think the Federation as a character is owed a serious examination of whether we should simply throw out everything else we have ever known about the society the first time someone is rude to a father figure to many of us. 
That doesn’t necessarily mean the Federation was actually in the right to leave the Romulans twisting in the wind. It wouldn’t be the first time a judgment on which many, which few, and what needs results in painful and potentially unvirtuous choices: just ask the Maquis. 
Radical Kindness in a Dark World
If I could sum up the theme of Picard the series, this would be it. In the very first episode Picard the character is moved from despair to man of action by the opportunity to help a troubled soul. 
This message is something I think that really got lost. The part of the audience that was offended by the callousness of the Interviewer and Clancy and the implication that to be risk averse and reluctant to risk being the frog in the story of the scorpion and the frog was already primed to be irked by this theme. 
I suspect that the element of the audience that felt itself keenly under threat by forces outside the Star Trek setting that the series was gesturing at may also have missed this theme in their annoyance at sci fi Paladin, Jean luc Picard, being portrayed as defeated, depressed, and content to marinade in luxurious misery.
Quite a few people seem to react poorly to being told that a minimum level of mercy extended to a known villain might be virtuous and a long term investment that might create conditions of real peace.
Nor does anyone like being accused of sequestering themselves in comfort and nursing their grief when direct and easy solutions to vast and pernicious problems don’t miraculously appear.
So in this way, Picard called out a lot of its potential audience practically in the first episode.
These are hard questions to grapple with and I don’t want to trivialize them. When do we risk our safety to take advantage of an opportunity to end a conflict, make an ally, or even to simply show mercy with no expectation of benefit? 
We can't know with certainty when we're playing the part of the frog in the parable of the scorpion and the frog after all. Read that again with different emphasis.
How harshly should we judge others or ourselves for not being able to imagine a better world or being unable to find the steps we could take to make it happen when the easy steps like voting, protesting, signing a petition, or threatening to resign fail?
If TNG primed us to expect simple answers, those aren’t found in Season One. There is a mostly self consistent moral clarity that mercy and kindness are praiseworthy but the show’s world building doesn’t support the idea that these are always going to lead to just outcomes. 
The people who adhere to these ideals are generally, in my opinion, the more fun hang but whether they’re always right or not according to the narrative is troublingly ambiguous at times.
I have a suspicion that part of what appeals to people about Season Three, aside from the fact it brought back beloved and relatively uncomplicated legacy characters and largely benched the characters invented for the show, is that the morality of the show is just generally way less ambiguous. Unless you’re taking Shaw seriously that is.
Notably, the show by the end of episode five does step on this message just a bit. The midpoint of the season leaves us weighing whether or not Seven executing a gangster notorious for chopping up liberated Borg is harm reduction or a reduction of her humanity. The implications of this I found rather uncomfortable for the way the bleaker side of the scale seemed to have a lot more narrative weight.
Character Housekeeping
I have largely not really discussed Jurati, Rios, Elnor, Soji, and Narek up to this point. The reasons for this are relatively straightforward. None of them have really done anything that I feel the need to explore more deeply. This is not necessarily a dismissal of the characters, if you adore them we are not enemies, I’m simply just less interested in them than other topics at this point in the season.
Rios is a fun character and I love his holograms….and that’s about it. Up to this point he is interesting in terms of his relationship to Picard and what it says about Picard that he can clock a troubled ex-Starfleet officer within a minute of meeting them and, like Raffi, Picard seems to be inexorably drawn to people he can try to remold in his image.
Elnor is himself not very interesting to me, I don’t dislike the character, but he seems to function mostly as a narrative device to illustrate Picard’s failings after Mars and his tendency to struggle with expressing authentic emotions rather than praising people in the modality of a performance evaluation. He is also, if I recall, rather underutilized and developed as his own person going forward. He is almost entirely muscle and comic relief in episode five instead of making any meaningful connections to any other characters.
Soji was originally interesting the first time I watched the series largely because of the mystery she represented but I know the ending already. The character herself doesn’t provoke any response from me. That doesn’t invalidate someone else’s experience and if someone wants to write up a comprehensive analysis of Soji’s identity crisis as a metaphor for dysphoria or whatever, have at it. That’s not really my wheelhouse though and I’m content to let the people for whom that is a passion project do it infinitely better than I ever could. 
I may revisit Soji later because I am still troubled by her and Dahj’s story due to being somewhat unconvinced that it was necessary to conceal their memories and identities from themselves. It's unclear to me if there was a plan in place to recover them and then permit their true selves to reemerge in a gentler, more compassionate way after their mission was complete.
I’m far more sympathetic to Jurati this time around because I think her performance of being deeply disturbed by the Admonition is well done, but like Soji, at this point in the narrative I just don’t see anything I really care to talk about in any greater depth aside from observing that Jurati is a good surrogate for a particular kind of fan. Her performance of being unmoored by Oh’s psychic shenanigans was strong, but on a meta level if you feel like Maddox’s death was largely for shock value and unnecessary “edge” then I’m moderately sympathetic to you.
Screw Narek and his affected mental distress and gaslighting and double dumbass on his weird sister. I still don’t know who thought the implied incest stuff was a good idea or if there’s just something I’m missing, but its incredibly distracting.
Unanswered Questions
What is Seven’s arc like for the rest of the season? I don’t actually remember. Oh I remember what she does, I just don’t remember how it feels and to what degree it moves her closer to the less rampagey version who seems to be clinging harder to her humanity in Season Three.
What was the Synth plan? As Agnes notes, Maddox got a little “secret planny” so does this mean that no one else was in the loop for the plan to send Soji and Dahj out to uncover the truth behind the attack on Mars and the subsequent Synth ban and thus Maddox’s death screwed everything up? Was there a plan to recover them and restore their identities without the need for the traumatic rediscovery of their true selves through crisis and stress?
After Seven decided to solve her own personal trolley problem through summary vaporization, where does that leave the default moral assumptions for Star Trek Picard? Is this still a show where what is good is what is just or is virtue a luxury and justice is liquidating a mass murderer who can’t be practically brought to justice?
Is everyone, both the characters and the fandom, right about the Federation? Has it been irredeemably debased? Or is Picard, the character right, and what’s needed is to find the right sort of appeal to conscience?
For more like this check out my other essays reevaluating Star Trek Picard and interrogating the widely held fandom criticism that Picard made the Federation into a Dystopia.
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el-im · 1 year
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Whoa whoa whoa, how could the Romulan War plot line POSSIBLY be more of a drag than the Xindi-Iraq-yeehaw-space-revenge plot?
an excellent point. however! i think (at least for me personally) if you could set aside the Very Obvious American War On Terror Analogy (i know that's near impossible, but bear with me), the xindi as a collective of several intelligent species evolving on the same planet was something that trek hadn't explored in depth before, and allowed for there to be some fascinating investigations into a theoretical society, whereas i think there was less to work with with the romulans (arguably)
the xindi's own political infighting/social hierarchies/development of behavior based on evolutionary history (the arboreals being characterized as slow/ponderous, akin to earth tree sloths, the insectoids being quick to anger/make agreeable/do anything--due to their comparatively shorter lifespans/consequent necessity for fast decision making) i think made their defensive war all the more interesting, and by showing the scenes with the xindi council, we get to see this enemy "humanized" ("xindi-ized"? -- meaning, provided with individual characters and not just represented as a faceless, ruthless enemy)
but! i think most importantly, that showing them as beholden to the sphere builders made their motives comprehensible (being told they would be attacked if they didn't strike first)--i think the great schism here is that the romulans are kind of just portrayed... more or less... as evil vulcans. i've kind of blocked out the last season of picard (which explored romulan society/culture more than i think has ever been done before so i'm using that as a baseline here) so frankly don't remember if they give an in-universe reason for this but... isn't their whole society kind of based off of espionage/expansionism/colonialism, but for no explained reason?? if this is the case (it might not be, honestly--i don't remember) it just seems that they're a lot easier to vilify without real reason, which i imagine makes for a worse arc. so, in terms of rationale for warfare, i think this at least gives the xindi the upper hand/claw/fin (EH?)
that said, i'm kind of biased against the romulan war because i read andy mangels' the good that men do recently, which was written to sort of carry enterprise on after the ending of the show, and in it, they use trip as a section 31 agent, who is physically made to look like a romulan and sent to infiltrate romulan territory. i know they likely wouldn't do this in the show but... god. i shudder to think of what they'd have come up with had they gone down that road.
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chequerootlurks · 8 months
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Star Trek Fan Theory:
I firmly believe that the El-Aurians were once of the same species the the Q.
For whatever reason, the El Aurians chose to renounce their immortality, and chose to no longer use their powers. Or maybe the surrendered them as they left. (Like the Amish or Mennonites rejecting English culture.)
Regardless of how it came to pass, it is canon that the El-Aurians and the Q had a war or similar event, something that could hardly be possible -unless!- they could be a match for the Q. This split probably happened millions (billions?) of years ago. We know Guinan is more than half a millennia old; we also know from canon that her parents are alive and well. It’s not unreasonable to assume a 4,000+ lifespan for El-Aurians. Possibly much longer.
It is canon that El-Aurians can manipulate the appearance of their age, and that they are sensitive to space-time disruptions. They also come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and skin tones.
I don’t believe they are the hypothesized ‘founders,’ progenitors for the humanoid races of the Alpha Quadrant.
There is no evidence that El-Aurians can interbreed with other races. I don’t personally think they could. I headcanon that they have a 4-strand DNA helix that makes them utterly incompatible with the 2-strand, 48 chromosome genetics of humans, vulcans, klingons, romulans, etc.
I think the Q known from TNG and Guinan have a history that goes back to the schism, or on Guinan’s side at least, very close to it. Maybe her grandparents were members of the Q Continuum.
It is canon that she’s met many Q entities, and describes some as “almost respectable.”
I say “schism,” rather than “civil war,” because I don’t think the El-Aurian split caused a war; not exactly. Maybe individual battles here and there, sect against sect, family member against family member. I think the El-Aurian Schism caused a lot of hostility between the Listeners (El-Aurian), and the Wielders (Continuum). — Think the strife between parents and their adult children when one says “screw tradition! I’m going to go be a [hippy, artist, etc],” when the parents insisted the child become a doctor or lawyer.
El-Aurians will always have extrasensory ability to sense Q entities, and vice versa. They might’ve lost their powers in the traditional sense, but I believe them more than capable of using a Q’s own force against it. — Think martial arts: it’s not about being the most bad-ass, it’s about directing your opponent’s force back at them.
Q is scared of Guinan because he knows he can’t hurt her. She can’t hurt him offensively, but were he to try -anything!- at her she’s pivot the force and basically send it right back at Q kung-fu style.
He couldn’t teleport her out of the ship and into deep space. (He could destroy the ship with her in it, but that’s not his motivation.) He probably introduced the Borg to her group because it was a way to attempt to eliminate her / the group of El-Aurians she was running with.
Why does he have a particular dislike towards her / her family group? Well, who knows. Maybe they were cousins, or maybe he was there when the Schism happened. Maybe before Guinan or her group left, they did some harm to Q, or to his pride. Maybe he vouched for them, and felt betrayed when they left.
Personally, I think whatever harm she did to him was against his ego, not physical.
Anyhow that’s just my theory; but I’m sticking with it until disproven.
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spockvarietyhour · 4 years
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Commodore Una’s Dress Uniform, which is just a gold wraparaound with fancy piping. 
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johnbyrnedraws · 5 years
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Star Trek Romulans: Schism #2 cover by John Byrne & Lovern Kindzierski. 2009.
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laukrskegg · 3 years
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Rewatch Star Trek series, listing my favourite episodes per seasons, along with movies, alien/species and characters.
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S1-"The Andorian Incident" "Dear Doctor"
(honourable mention) "Unexpected"
S2-"Dead Stop" (hm) "Carbon Creek" "Judgement"
S3-"Carpenter Street" S4-"Affliction" (hm) "Storm Front"
A/S- Andorian C- Hoshi Sato and Doctor Phlox (hm)Shran
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"The Cage"
A/S- Human C- Number One (hm)Christopher Pike
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S1-"Balance of Terror" "The City on the Edge of Forever"
(hm)"The Man Trap" "Miri" "The Conscience of the King" "Operation- Annihilate!"
S2-"A Piece of the Action" "Patterns of Force"
(hm)"Mirror, Mirror" "The Doomsday Machine" "Journey to Babel" "Friday's Child" "Bread and Circus"
S3- "For the World is Hallow and I Have Touched the Sky" "Whom Gods Destroy" "All Our Yesterdays"
(hm)"The Enterprise Incident" "The Tholian Web" "Wink of an Eye" "The Cloud Minders"
A/S- Romulan
C- Doctor Leonard 'Bones' McCoy (hm)Spock and Kevin Riley
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S1-"Mudd's Passion"
(hm)"Yesteryear" "The Magicks of Megas-Tu"
S2-"Albatross" "The Counter-Clock Incident"
A/S- Skorr
C- Montgomery 'Scotty' Scott (hm)Spock and Bones
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"The Voyage Home" "The Undiscovered Country"
A/S- Chameloid
C- Bones and Scotty (hm)Spock, Sulu and Kirk
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S1- "The Last Outpost" "The Battle" "Datalore"
(hm)"The Netural Zone"
S2- "Elementary Dear, Data"
(hm)"A Matter of Honour" "The Measure a the Man" "Samaritan Snare" "Up the Long Ladder" "Manhunt"
S3-"Who Watches the Watchers" "The Offspring"
(hm)"Captain's Holiday" and "Ménage à Troi"
S4-"The Wounded" "Clues" (hm)"Devil's Due" "Qpid" "Half a Life"
S5- "Time's Arrow" (hm)"Darmok" "Unification"
S6-"Relics" "Chain of Command" "Timescape"
(hm)"Time's Arrow" "Schisms" "Frame of Mind"
S7-"Parallels" (hm)"Phantasms" "Thine Own Self"
A/S- Ferengi and Romulan
C- Doctor Pulaski and Data
(hm) Lwaxana Troi, Daughter of the Fifth House, Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, Heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed
and Troi(Starfleet-Uniformed)
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S1-"Progress" "Duet"
(hm)"Captive pursuit" "The Forsaken" "Dramatis Personae" "In the Hands of the Prophets"
S2-"Whispers" "The Wire" "Crossover"
(hm)"The Homecoming/The Circle/The Siege" "Rules of Acquisition" "Necessary Evil" "Profit and Loss" "Tribunal"
S3-"The House of Quark" "Civil Defense" "Visionary" "Explorers"
(hm)"Second Skin" "Destiny" "Prophet Motive" "Distant Voices" "Improbable Cause/The Die is Cast"
S4- "The Visitor" "Hard Time" "Body Parts" "Broken Link"
(hm)"Indiscretion" "Green Little Men" "Our Man Bashir" "Crossfire" "Bar Association" "Ascension" "The Muse"
S5- "The Assignment" "The Trials and Tribble-ations" "In Purgatory's Shadow/By Inferno's Light" "Empok nor"
(hm)"Apocalypse Rising" "Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places" "Things Past" "Doctor Bashir, I Presume" "In The Cards"
S6- Best season of entire Star Trek series.
S7- "Treachery, Faith and The Great River" "Field of Fire" "What You Leave Behind" (hm)"Shadows and Symbols" "Take me out to the Holosuite" "The Emperor's New Cloak" "Penumbra(part 1)" to "Extreme Measure(part 7)"
A/S- Bajoran, Cardassian, Romulan and Wormhole Alien
C- Kira Nerys, Miles O'Brien, Benjamin Sisko, Ezri Dax, Quark and Odo (hm)Garak, Julian Bashir(Generic Engineering), Damar, Weyoun, Brunt, Ziyal, Leeta, Rom, Nog, Morn, Jake Sisko and Keiko O'Brien
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S1-"Eye of the Needle" (hm)"Phage" "Emanations"
S2- "Projections" "Prototype" "Threshold" "Tuvix"
(hm)"Initiantions" "Maneuvers" "Resistance" "Alliances" "Dreadnought"
S3-"Future's End" "Before and After" "Distant Origin" (hm)"Basics" "Flashback" "Sacred Ground" "Macrocosm" "Fair Trade" "Unity"
S4-"Message in a Bottle" "Living Witness" (hm)"Scorpion" "Year of Hell" "Mortal Coil"
S5- "Latent Image" (hm)"In the Flesh" "Timeless" "Thirty Days" "Bride of Chaotica" "11:59" "Relativity"
S6- "Blink of an Eye" (hm)"Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy" "Riddles" "Dragon's Teeth" "Muse"
S7- "Shattered" "Author, Author" "Homestead" "Renaissance Man" (hm)"Critical Care" "Nightingale" "Endgame"
A/S- Kazon and Romulan
C- Kathryn Janeway, Tuvok, The Doctor and Neelix (hm)Harry Kim
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"Frist Contact"
A/S- Romulan and Reman C- Worf and Picard (hm)Data
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ship-o-rama · 3 years
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Name: U.S.S. Yorktown
Registry: NCC-1717 Class: Constitution
Captain: Commodore Una
Affiliation: Starfleet
Year: 2269
Background: Fitted with a prototype cloaking device based on the designs stolen from the Romulans. The power requirements were enormous and often played havoc with their sensors. Commodore Una protested the measures enacted to combat the Romulans but was overruled by top brass. Travelled to Neutral Zone Monitoring Base 108 where they were received by the personnel there.
It didn’t take long before a message from another base reported a fleet of Romulan ships going past them, Yorktown rushed to investigate. The Romulan fleet cloaked as they approached and Yorktown did the same. Believing the fleet to be very close to them she had the ship’s cloak flicker for a moment, and they were hit with disruptor fire. The Romulan commander hailed them, informing them that this was now Romulan space, as ordered by the Praetor. The Romulans fired a new miasma weapon, a update to their feared plasma weapons, which Yorktown was just out of range of. Yorktown returned fire, guessing correctly that some of the ships were below the plane of the weapon, scoring three hits. More conventional weapons fire was exchanged, straining the ship’s system and overloading consoles. They were able to retreat under cloak.
They intercepted an unmarked starship crossing into Romulan space. Although a Klingon D7 in design, they assumed it to be Romulan,given what was known of the two Empires’ technological exchanges. They decloaked and fired immediately, striking a crippling blow, and the enemy ship jettisoned their damaged nacelle before cloaking. Una baited the other ship into attacking them again by dropping their cloak and shields. The other vessel took the bait but not the way they expected, they raised their shields, snapping the battlecruiser’s neck as the forward portions were inside their shield envelope. They demanded the battlecruiser’s surrender as the aft section of that ship was exploding. The remaining portion of the ship rammed the top of the Yorktown’s saucer, causing massive damage. 
Unbeknownst to both parties, their actions were being monitored by a cloaked Romulan ship, which beamed off the Yorktown’s bridge crew and the Klingon survivors prior to the ships colliding. The surviving senior officer (the first officer, who wasn’t on the bridge at the time) relocated backup crews in auxiliary control. They disentangled themselves from the Klingon wreck, and attempted to move away, but there was damage to key systems and power fluctuations across all decks. Yorktown was later taken to a Starbase for repairs.
Christine Chapel joined the medical staff in 2271.
In 2272 Yorktown was still under the command of now-Admiral Una. They had received partial upgrades to interior spaces such as the bridge and transporter room during their last refit.
Surveyed the forest moon of Sigma Thernia 3B, in the Orion sector. The landing party reported odd structures and mathematics being performed by the local insects and birds. When they left members of the landing party starting exhibiting unusual symptoms like dismantling consoles and heightened senses.
Responded to the Joanna’s distress call, a medical courier. They beamed aboard Leonard McCoy, Jon Duncan, Theela, Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln from a twentieth-century equivalent warzone that had been supplied weapons by the Klingons and populated by clones made from a secret 1960s experiment back on Earth. They engaged the Klingon Kloor’s ship, with intent of disabling it, but as soon as it took at direct hit it self-destructed.
Theela and Jon Duncan made requests to stay behind on the planet, to help the inhabitants with the various medical sciences they desperately needed. Six Yorktown medical personnel also volunteered and the mission was approved by Starfleet Command. Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln used the transporter to return to their own time period.
The two crew members who’d experienced the earlier symptoms prior to the Joanna’s distress call died as if their brains exploded and a third one who wasn’t on the landing party started getting similar symptoms.
The infection quickly spread to over half the crew, and the effects were accelerating. McCoy along with Yorktown’s medical staff discovered a second intelligence living inside the brainwaves of those infected and once communication was established and the situation explained, the intelligence agreed to restrict itself until they returned to Sigma Thernia 3B where it could flourish again. It had been distraught by what it had done.
Appeared in Star Trek: Romulans Schisms, and Leonard McCoy: Frontier Doctor #3-4, IDW Comics
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qwertyfingers · 3 years
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Not to be too forward but please drop your TNG watch order.
okay tng is. complex. here’s how i’d do it I think. I’m jumping about a lot, and I’m also struggling to remember a lot of it because my first watch was 7 years ago and my rewatch w friends we just did Sherlock Holmes and then went straight into chronological order. so this is like, combo of a handful of eps I remember being plot important and just stuff that makes me laugh.
Elementary, My Dear Data (S2E3) and Ship In A Bottle (S6E12). a) introduces you perfectly to the concept of holodeck episodes, which will be important later b) DaForge married gay energy off the charts c) Picard is really fun. the only failing of this as a start is the tragic lack of Guinan
ALL of the Q eps. Speedrun the Qcard nonsense and get a lot of the overall show plot
Encounter at Farpoint (S1E1 and S1E2)
Hide and Q (S1E10) - unnervingly babyfaced Riker. you could skip this one but it lays some good basis for who the Q continuum are, but it’s kind of fun
Q Who (S2E16) - borg introduction! absolute must watch. The insanity of ‘to learn about you is frankly provocative… but you’re next of kin to chaos’ as a line alone, let alone the voice Patrick Stewart gives to it. Iconic episode.
Deja Q (S3E13) - Q getting turned into a human as punishment for being a naughty boy. V funny, must watch
QPid (S4E20 babeyyyyy) - MUST WATCH one of thee funniest episodes and experiencing the QCard speedrun from farpoint to qpid is a very special kind of brainworms
True Q (S6E6) - this one is skippable tbh, but it is pretty fond and I’m personally fond of running a full Q supercut
Tapestry (S6E15) - this one isn’t as fun as most Q eps but it is VERY TNG-ish and therefore a must watch. If you’ll forgive the pun, it really gets at the heart of Picard’s character
All Good Things (S7E25 and S7E26) - as with most Star Trek finales it’s not the best. You don’t have to watch this here but it can be a fun bookend for the Q speedrun
You could also go watch DS9’s Q-Less (S1E6) if you’d like to see Q get punched in the face, it’s really very satisfying
You kind of have to watch The Best of Both Worlds (S3E26 and S4E1). If you’ve seen TNG before, you don’t need to worry about when you watch it. If you haven’t seen any TNG yet, watch it here.
Darmok (S5E2) - THEE most star trek of all star trek’s. hmu if you ever want me to rant about Darmok I have a whole badly-structured personal essay about it ready to go at all times
Disaster (S5E5) - Geordi and Crusher teamup is really fun, and ‘executive officer in charge of radishes’ is the best line in all 7 seasons of TNG
Schisms (S6E5) - you could just watch from the opening until Data’s poetry recital ngl. The ep is decent and I’d personally watch it all but this ep is mostly about Data’s poetry.
Sub Rosa (S7E14) - Crusher fucks a ghost. iconic behaviour
Dixon Hill eps! They’re fun and silly and much like watching TOS’ A Piece of The Action
The Big Goodbye (S1E12)
Manhunt (S2E19) - Lwxana. I’d do anything for Lwxana
Clues (S4E14) - Guinan as Gloria is so much fun I love her and she should have got a full episode!!!!!
The Measure of a Man (S2E9) - important Federation and Data lore. Very emotional.
Yesterday’s Enterprise (S3E16) - Tasha’a back!!!!!!!! Just a very cool ep imo
Hero Worship (S5E11) - Extremely good Data ep, good content about Federation attitude to mental illness
Datalore (S1E12) - another important Data ep, and Lore is laways fun
The Offspring (S3E16) - Data wants to be a dad!!!
I, Borg (S5 E23) - HUGH!!! IT’S ALL ABOUT HUGH!!!!!!!!! (I like to watch this right after The Offspring because it’s direct parallels of geordi and data just wanting to take care of people)
Brothers (S4E18) - more Data (And Lore) content
Descent (S6E26 and S7E1) - not required watching, but Lore is fun and evil
Fistful of Datas (S6E7) - EXTREMELY SILLY GOOD FUN ALLROUND. CAN NEVER GO WRONG W ACOWBOY EP
Sarek (S3E23) - I can’t remember the plot I just know Sarek shows up in a lavender robe and has mad chemistry with Picard. I’m  pretty sure they mind meld really hard??? Lord help me the old men you put on this spaceship to do politics are exploring eachothers’ minds in the most intimate manner possible <3
Unification (S5E7 and S5E8) - Spock attempts to re-unify Romulus and Vulcan. Iconic 2-parter, but definitely the kind of episode that benefits from watching with a friend so you can add commentary
if you like Romulan episodes you could watch the full Sela arc before this one (The Mind’s Eye S4E24, Redemption S4E26/S5E1, Unification)
Face of The Enemy (S6E14) - I can’t remember the entire plot but I’m pretty sure it was good and I love a good Romulan ep
The Host (S4E23) - Trill introduction!!!! So good.
The Game (S5E6) - profoundly stupid but worth it for how funny the graphics for the game are
Cause and Effect (S5E18) - just a pretty cool one
Time’s Arrow (S5E26 and S6E1) - One of TNG’s strongest plots imo
The Inner Light (S5E25) - another banger plot; Picard gets hit by a psychic probe and lives an entire life in a history that has already happened. there’s a really good Spones fic based on this episode and I could read an au like this for any ship I swear
Relics (S6E4) - Scotty!!!! It’s fun
Chain of Command (S6E10 and S6E11) - another one of TNG’s strongest plots. The origin of the ‘there are FOUR lights’ meme.
Birthright (S6E16 and S6E17) - this is an infamous double parter but all I actually remember is Julian Bashir appearing and meeting Data
Ensign Ro’s intro ep Ensign Ro (S5E03) i LOVE her
The Next Phase (S5E24) - cool ep where Ro and Geordi get stuck out of phase and are invisible from the crew, pretty fun
and the end of her arc with Preemptive Strike (S7E24)
I personally love Barclay and just choose to live in a universe where the misogyny wasn’t happening and he was just a weird little man, but if he bothers you, you can skip his arc. Don’t skip Genesis tho it’s good
Hollow Pursuits (S3E21)
The Nth Degree (S4E19)
Realm of Fear (S6E2)
Genesis (S7E19) - perfectly batshit star trek fake science. I love it
Masks (S7E17) - extremely silly and therefore fantastic
after this point I’d go back and watch in order all the way through, or look up a watch order for eps that are actually important plot-wise :’) 
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defconprime · 4 years
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Cover for Romulans: Schism issue 3. Cover art by John Byrne, 2009.
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starship-imzadi · 3 years
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S4 E24 The Mind's Eye
Geordi is so relaxed and informal when he uses the computer...and I can't say his idea of entertainment makes him seem like an engaging or interesting person (no wonder he fell in love with a holodeck program.)
Where did they get a Geordi double? Is he a surgically altered Romulan or a human? He doesn't look ready to have a fun time...
I really don't understand Klingon culture. It seems so performative and over the top.
The shot when Geordi walks onth the bridge seems like an unusually high and wide angle.
"They've got a chocolate there counselor that you would love." Okay, hang on... if you've seen Lower Decks you'll know Deanna has been to Risa. At this point Geordi's comment makes it sound as though, at least to his knowledge, she hasn't, as of yet, ever been there...just food for thought.
Good reflexes...
"somnetic inducer" is an almost meaningless bit of techno babble. "Somnetic" is just related to sleep. (In "Schisms" Crusher just tells Riker to drink a hot milk toddy when he can't sleep.)
Notice the use of a wider lense when Geordi walks down the hall.
It's amazing what the computer can and can't do.
Damn, Data is badass! When he wants to be series his behaviour is strikingly different (when does he ever insist on an order?! He never pulls rank.) And the beat of the soundtrack music is subtle but very effective. I also like Worf's calm and quiet response. When he says 'sir' as a question it's so subdued and...innocent.
This is the VERY first time an episode has a debrief after a traumatic event with Troi there to help (at the end of "The Vengeance Factor" there's a moment taken to process what happened but it's Will at the bar, drinking to cope and "The Bonding" has the Klingon ceremony between Worf and the boy Jeremy which was the first time a red shirt died and it mattered) most of the time...we just move on and the baggage is forgotten (there's a nod to this reality in Picard and as TNG goes into later seasons there are more two part storylines and development carry over from past episodes)
One example of that is this: We didn't see her face, but this episode was the introduction of Tasha Yar's Romulan daughter. The true significance of that development is in some part dependant on the audience's knowledge of "Yesterday's Enterprise"
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dgcatanisiri · 4 years
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I see two immediate possibilities of Jurati’s actions at the end of the most recent episode.
One, that Oh turned out to have implanted her with a trigger command to kill Maddox (not unreasonable to think, considering the point made of the EMH auto-activating and asking about her “psychological emergency”), perhaps even leading to a reveal that Oh herself is a Vulcan and not a Romulan posing as one, that the Zhat Vash are old enough to predate the schism and thus are as much of Vulcan as Romulan origin.
Two, Jurati herself is an android and Oh and the Zhat Vash hijacked her programming. Mostly I throw this out their due to Jurati’s improbable age - her actress is 34, the synth ban came down about fifteen years ago, if Jurati’s the same age as her actress, that strains believability on her being not just able to work with Maddox, but also be his lover.
Or, corollary to two, Jurati is an android but is actually one that the Zhat Vash actively fear, part of a faction of androids who are why the Zhat Vash exist.
But these are my top theories in how Jurati can be a character we’re meant to like and root for after killing an injured person in her medical care, that she literally did not have control of her actions in that moment.
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biblioflyer · 1 year
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Zhat Vash and the Romulan Diaspora, Picard s1e2 Rewatch.
The timeline of the Romulan separation from Vulcan becomes even more murky and shrouded in legend and propaganda. Continuity complaints abound but "canon violation" often really just means "I don't like this, it is silly and dumb."
This is part of a series of essays reevaluating Star Trek Picard and interrogating the widely held fandom criticism that Picard made the Federation into a Dystopia.
This is the episode where we learn the name Zhat Vash in an info dump by Laris and Zhabon. Intriguingly and perhaps problematically they are described as having been active for thousands upon thousands of years. 
This doesn’t line up very neatly with the hazy info we have on Romulan history. The exodus of Vulcans who rejected Surak’s teachings was only supposed to have taken place circa 470 CE when “those who marched beneath the Raptor’s wings” lost a struggle for domination of Vulcan society and left for the stars. 
However, if the people who would become the Debrune and the Romulans could leave Vulcan in the first place and feasibly make an interstellar journey, that implies that Vulcan had had at least rudimentary interstellar travel prior which does not preclude a group of explorers who would become Zhat Vash stumbling across the Admonition and bringing its anti-Synth warning back with them.
Scrutiny of Memory Alpha to refresh my memory of what has been canonically established about Romulan and Vulcan history also brought up an interesting detail: Vulcans may not actually be from Vulcan. 
In a TOS episode Spock actually speculates that a powerful telepathic species they encounter may actually have been ancestors of the Vulcans. Thus there is another possible vector for Zhat Vash to have been introduced into Vulcan and Romulan societies in that Zhat Vash may actually predate both civilizations.
At the risk of deviating into fan theory territory, I do have to wonder if this all adds extra texture to the Romulan / Vulcan split wherein Zhat Vash may have played a role in heightening tensions between the two over concerns that a rejection of emotion and the embrace of pure reason would lead the Vulcans to ultimately dismiss concerns over artificial intelligence as illogical products of anxiety over AI being hostile, uncontrollable, or a moral hazard of some sort. 
It's also possible that tales of Zhat Vash have grown across multiple retellings and they were only founded after the schism. 
I take a stance that we ought to be open to the idea that not all exposition is created equally and not all narrators are reliable. Zhabon and Laris may be our Herodotus in this scene: they’re relating what they were told, and believe up to a point, but we the audience ought not to assume their rumors about a cult operating inside or alongside the Tal’Shiar are completely accurate in every little detail.
It's worth reminding ourselves that even Picard himself does not seem to be a wholly reliable narrator either! In just the first two episodes, he repeatedly demonstrates lack of self awareness and other errors in judgment or lack of knowledge. Thus I think we ought to entertain the idea that even characters who are providing detailed exposition are stating what they believe but not necessarily providing 100% definitive facts about the setting.
At any rate, we find out that Commodore Oh, who has an ambiguous role in ensuring security from clandestine Romulan assassins operating on Earth, is herself a member of Zhat Vash. From what I can recall, even in private Oh does not “break character” which suggests to me that while it's assumed she’s Romulan, it's possible she is culturally Vulcan at least in her decision to abstain from overt displays of emotion. 
Seeing as she’s not the first deep cover Romulan impersonating a Vulcan who presumably would have to pass as Vulcan to other Vulcans, I find myself wondering if some Romulans actually did go on to develop an ascetic tradition that mirrors Surak’s teachings but is either dogmatically different enough from Surak’s tradition to be tolerated by other Romulans or is merely tolerated for its usefulness in grooming deep cover agents.
Thematically, I find that I’m kind of over the trope of secret societies with seemingly omnipotent capabilities to hide and manipulate their host civilization. The X-Files is my own personal touchstone for this trope becoming popular and the longer the show ran, the more the trope became its own problem because the more you tug on the strings of that storyline, the more answers you have to cough up as to how they do what they do and why, and the explanations often become a bit hard to believe, if not contradictory. 
Zhat Vash hiding inside of the Tal’Shiar, creating a situation where you have nesting dolls of memetically ultra effective, conspiratorial organizations just takes this to another level. 
Having said that, the trope is subverted a bit in that while Zhat Vash is feared, they’re clearly not as good as they’re mythologized as being. First off Laris and Zhabon are able to pretty accurately lay out their agenda based on scraps of hearsay. Just off of memory, while Zhat Vash’s motives will be expanded upon as the season progresses, Laris and Zhabon already have at least the broad outline completely dead on.
This represents a level of operational security that falls well below Section 31 who had managed to erase almost all evidence of their having existed sometime after the events of Discovery’s second season and most people who seemed to have had personal knowledge of Section 31 kept it quiet enough that not even the likes of Captain Picard ever apparently heard so much as a scrap of a rumor. 
Also this is a rant for another time, but I absolutely, positively despise Section 31. Absolutely nothing Star Trek Picard does corrupts the Federation thematically more than Section 31. It reeks of a refusal by the inventors of the organization to accept the core premise of the setting that a civilization that devotes itself to fairness both in equity and equality could ever endure or prosper.
Returning to Zhat Vash, as individuals Oh, Narek, and Narissa are far from perfect superspies. I remember Narissa in particular being a real problem for Oh and Narek who are far more cautious and plotting than the impulsive and rather sadistic Narissa. 
Given my biases against conspiracy within a conspiracy storylines, I do look forward to trying to rejudge Zhat Vash and whether I think it holds together better than the Syndicate of the X-Files. For now I don’t exactly hate it, but I don’t love it.
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tsaomengde · 5 years
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Tiny Viewing Guide to Star Trek: The Next Generation
Just found out one of my oldest friends, a huge sci fi guy, has never actually seen TNG, or indeed any Trek. He asked if I wouldn't mind writing a viewing guide. Not all that tiny, but the blurb for each episode is tiny. YMMV.
S1
Encounter at Farpoint - Goofy but iconic, series premiere
The Naked Now - Bad but hilarious and a little important
Code of Honor - terrible racist horseshit
The Last Outpost - first time we meet the Ferengi, they're not impressive
Where No One Has Gone Before - interesting enough
Lonely Among Us - I have no memory of this place
Justice - terrible outfits, Wesley episode
The Battle - Picard episode, not terrible
Hide and Q - Riker-centric Q episode, not the best Q episode, not the worst
Haven - first time we meet Lwaxana, don't remember anything else
The Big Goodbye - first of many holodeck episodes, pretty good
Datalore - important!!!
Angel One - totally forgettable
11001001 - meh
Too Short a Season - weird, generally meh
When the Bough Breaks - Wesley episode, don't remember it much
Home Soil - no clue
Coming of Age - more Wesley (can you tell Gene Roddenberry liked the character?), but not bad
Heart of Glory - first time the Klingons get real character, important
The Arsenal of Freedom - automated weaponry is bad, mmkay
Symbiosis - nope, no idea
Skin of Evil - dark, nasty, generally unpleasant episode, important for character reasons
We'll Always Have Paris - genuinely do not remember this one but wiki says there's time travel and that's always fun
Conspiracy - real mixed feelings about this one, it's tense and interesting TV but not really good Trek and it has huge implications that are never revisited
The Neutral Zone - Romulans are reintroduced, pretty cool
S2
The Child - pretty decent Troi episode
Where Silence Has Lease - interesting space puzzle episode sprinkled with Picard philosophizing
Elementary, Dear Data - first Sherlock!Data holodeck episode, excellent stuff
The Outrageous Okona - weeeaaaak, but kind of funny
Loud As A Whisper - cool deaf character, cringey late-80s implementation
The Schizoid Man - Data episode, good acting, cringey dialogue
Unnatural Selection - Pulaski-centric, and I dislike Pulaski so this is a pass for me
A Matter Of Honor - Riker serves on a Klingon warship, some good stuff
The Measure of A Man - Easily a top 10 Trek episode of all time
The Dauphin - Wesley has a crush, receives terrible romantic advice from entire crew
Contagion - interesting lethal archaeology
The Royale - love this episode, it's terrible and bad science but I love it
Time Squared - weird time-travel stuff, not one of the best
The Icarus Factor - lot of good character stuff, terrible future martial arts
Pen Pals - excellent Data episode, thoughts about the Prime Directive
Q Who - WATCH THIS ONE
Samaritan Snare - bad episode, funny moments
Up The Long Ladder - holy shit the Irish racism
Manhunt - Lwaxana Troi at her best, love it
The Emissary - Amazing Klingon stuff
Peak Performance - good episode, lots of fun character bits
Shades of Gray - TERRIBLE CLIP SHOW AVOID AVOID AVOID
S3
Evolution - Wesley episode, not bad but not great
The Ensigns of Command - Mediocre Data episode
The Survivors - space puzzle episode, OK
Who Watches the Watchers - more prime directive stuff, mildly interesting
The Bonding - interesting stuff about grief
Booby Trap - another space puzzle, high stakes, cool payoff
The Enemy - Pretty good, Romulans
The Price - fun episode
The Vengeance Factor - ehhhhhhhh
The Defector - More Romulan stuff, is good
The Hunted - will 100% make you scream at how terrible security is in the future, not a bad ep though
The High Ground - ugh, just not great
Deja Q - good Q episode
A Matter of Perspective - let's use the holodeck to prove Riker couldn't have committed this crime!
The Offspring - WATCH THIS BUT BRING TISSUES
Sins of the Father - first of many Klingon Politics episodes, I love these with a fiery passion and my wife is bored to tears by them so YMMV
Allegiance - space puzzle, not a great one but not bad
Captain's Holiday - WATCH THIS, IS AMAZING
Tin Man - literally put me to sleep once
Hollow Pursuits - First of many Barclay episodes, my beautiful autistic space boi
The Most Toys - alright, worth one watch
Sarek - SO IMPORTANT WAAAAAAAAAATCH
Menage a Troi - bad episode, worth it for the payoff
Transfigurations - Jason Ironheart called, he knows he came after this episode chronologically but he was better
The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1 - YAAAS
S4
The Best of Both Worlds, Part 2- YAAAAAAAAAAAAAS
Family - So important
Brothers - Very Important
Suddenly Human - meh
Remember Me - very interesting space puzzle, one of the Crusher episodes where she gets to be awesome
Legacy - not the most jaw-dropping ep but important
Reunion - KLINGON POLITICS YEEES
Future Imperfect - interesting enough
Final Mission - Wesley episode, not bad
The Loss - v. good Troi episode
Data's Day - fun, wholesome Data times
The Wounded - SO GOOD AND SO IMPORTANT
Devil's Due - I love this episode even if it's not that important or good
Clues - Awesome space puzzle
First Contact - eh? okay? sure?
Galaxy's Child - fine, whatever
Night Terrors - uuuuugh, no
Identity Crisis - this one scared the fuck out of me as a kid and may be responsible for my deep-seated body-transformation-horror triggers, now it's just kind of weird
The nth Degree - BARCLAY, LOVE HIM AND THIS EP
Qpid - YES SO GOOD
The Drumhead - This is Michael Dorn's favorite episode and it is worthy of the title
Half a Life - Lwaxana is great, the episode not as much
The Host - introduction of the Trill, kind of cringey almost 30 years later
The Mind's Eye - brainwashing stuff, meh
In Theory - Data tries to date, hilarities ensue
Redemption Part 1 - GIVE ME THE KLINGON POLITICS
S5
Redemption Part 2 - MOOOOOOOOOORE
Darmok - One of my top 5 episodes in the series
Ensign Ro - so important, introduces the Bajorans and Ensign Ro
Silicon Avatar - important for Data, not a terribly interesting episode otherwise
Disaster - Troi gets to shine! cool episode
The Game - by far the worst Wesley episode. everyone is seduced into acting like a brainwashed idiot by a terrible space future video game. fuck this episode and everyone who wrote it but especially Brannon Braga.
Unification 1 - WATCH
Unification 2- THESE
A Matter of Time - So good, waaatch
New Ground - I am not a fan of Alexander but he is so important to Worf's growth, so... yeah
Hero Worship - more stuff about grief, eh
Violations - I don't remember this one that much but I do not think I enjoyed it
The Masterpiece Society - read the above description
Conundrum - amazing space puzzle episode. easily one of my favorites in the series
Power Play - meh
Ethics - very important, good Trek
The Outcast - THIS EPISODE COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH BETTER IF THE LOVE INTEREST WAS MALE. JONATHAN FRAKES PUSHED FOR A MALE ACTOR. watch it anyway
Cause and Effect - fun space puzzle, a little repetitive but totally solid
The First Duty - one of the best Picard Speeches ever, watch
Cost of Living - fun Lwaxana episode
The Perfect Mate - pretty meh but Famke Janssen is fun as Kamala
Imaginary Friend - so bored
I, Borg - INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT
The Next Phase - interesting episode about the afterlife
The Inner Light - THIS IS MY FAVORITE EPISODE OF THE ENTIRE SERIES AND I CRY EVERY TIME
Time's Arrow 1 - Such good time travel
S6
Time's Arrow 2 - Such great Mark Twain
Realm of Fear - Yay more Barclay!
Man of the People - bad Troi episode
Relics - WAAAAAAAAAATCH
Schisms - space puzzle, kind of lame payoff due to effects limitations but the journey is worth it
True Q - By far the worst fucking Q episode ever written
Rascals - uuuuuuuugh. half the crew is regressed into children. Ferengi are involved. you are missing nothing.
A Fistful of Datas - amazing dumb holodeck episode, watch
The Quality of Life - boring episode, good message
Chain of Command 1 - So dark, so difficult, so totally riveting and important
Chain of Command 2 - See above
Ship in a Bottle - Sequel to Sherlock!Data, amazing
Aquiel - could have been written much better
Face of the Enemy - by far the best Troi episode, Marina Sirtis was incredibly happy when I told her it was one of my favorites
Tapestry - fantastic Q/Picard episode
Birthright 1 - Basically exists to set up DS9 but is pretty good and has important bits
Birthright 2 - See above
Starship Mine - DIE HARD ON THE ENTERPRISE
Lessons - Very important Picard episode
The Chase - amazing space puzzle episode, has one of my favorite one-off Klingon characters
Frame of Mind - is Riker's entire life a delusion he has created to mentally escape his imprisonment in a mental asylum? spoilers: no
Suspicions - Good mystery episode, Crusher gets to do stuff
Rightful Heir - Very important Worf episode, good Klingon stuff
Second Chances - uh, kind of bad, but it gets referenced later in DS9
Timescape - super interesting space puzzle, amazing character bits
Descent 1 - WAAATCH
S7
Descent 2 - as above
Liaisons - okay. not great. not bad.
Interface - OK Geordi episode
Gambit 1 - Amazing stuff
Gambit 2 - More amazing stuff
Phantasms - Psychological horror? in my Data? it's more likely than you think. watch
Dark Page - one of the few Lwaxana episodes I don't love
Attached - great Picard/Crusher episode
Force of Nature - environmentalism! is! good!
Inheritance - important Data episode
Parallels - SUCH A GOOD WORF EPISODE
The Pegasus - very important Riker episode
Homeward - Interesting Worf and Prime Directive episode
Sub Rosa - so cringey and terrible, oh my God
Lower Decks - a fun change of pace from the main cast
Thine Own Self - I don't love it, but it is good character stuff
Masks - weird space puzzle episode, I love it but I wouldn't call it Great
Eye of the Beholder - space mystery, it's not fantastic
Genesis - look. this episode is not good. but it has amazing costumework by Michael Westmore. and has some great Picard/Data stuff. watch it.
Journey's End - super important stuff. sets up a lot of stuff for DS9 and VOY
Firstborn - Good Worf/Alexander episode
Bloodlines - More Ferengi stuff, kind of lame
Emergence - space puzzle, weird but interesting
Preemptive Strike - So so so so important
All Good Things... - it's the series finale. and some of the best Trek ever. obviously you're going to watch.
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spockvarietyhour · 4 years
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The Romulan Fleet
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aion-rsa · 4 years
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Star Trek: Lower Decks – Is That an Edosian?!?
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This article contains Star Trek: Lower Decks spoilers.
Because it happens in 2380, Star Trek: Lower Decks is, in theory, a direct sequel to ‘90s era of the franchise. But, spiritually, it sometimes feels like more of a sequel to the first animated Trek series, the 1973 show Star Trek: The Animated Series. So far, Lower Decks has brought back one very obscure shape-shifting alien from that show (the Vendosian in Episode 2) and made references to at least one other, specifically the plant-based aliens the Phylosians in Episode 5.
But the throwback alien reference in Star Trek: Lower Decks episode 7 — “Much Ado About Boimler” — takes the cellular peptide cake. Feel like you’ve seen that orange three-armed alien before? You’re right! He’s the same species Arex, the navigator of the USS Enterprise in The Animated Series.
But what species is that? Well, that’s a good question…
When Boimler is shipped off to Division 14 in Episode 7 of Lower Decks, he’s confronted by a large three-armed, three-legged alien who appears somewhat ominous and menacing. But, in TAS, the last time we saw an alien who like this, it was Arex, and he was super-friendly. In fact, in the episode “Mudd’s Passion,” we even saw Arex play a lute. 
In TAS, Arex was voiced by James Doohan, who you better know as the guy who played Scotty. Doohan (and Nichelle Nichols) did a lot of additional voices for TAS, so much so, that in some episodes they are voicing two characters who are talking to each other. In terms of the bridge hierarchy, Arex “replaced” Chekov, who was never seen in TAS at all. Although Walter Koenig wrote one episode of the show, his overall involvement in the series was limited. 
The basic canonicity of Arex was somewhat murky for a long time, mostly because everything about TAS was considered pseudo-canon for years. Although lately, the Trek franchise fully acknowledges TAS as canon, with Discovery helping to lead the charge on that front by having two text-on-screen mentions of Robert April has been the Captain of the Enterprise NCC-1701 before Pike. (This fact was established in the TAS episode “The Counter-Clock Incident.”)
And, somewhat notably, the seventh episode of Star Trek: Picard found Riker mentioning the Kzinti, a cat-like species from an Animated Series episode called “The Slaver Weapon,” but who also originated in Larry Niven’s “Known Space” books and short stories.
But, what kind of alien is Arex, and this new, very imposing medical officer? Well, the truth is, there are kind of two answers, and perhaps, three. In the Alan Dean Foster Star Trek Logs books (which were novelizations of TAS episodes) Arex is called an Edoan. Later, in the New Frontier universe (created by Peter David) a distinction was made between a species called Edosians and Triexians. The idea is that these species were closely related, but not exactly the same. Which, is kind of like the difference between Vulcans and Romulans.
For the most part, sources like Memory Alpha identify Arex as an Edosian, which is corroborated by the mobile roleplaying game Star Trek Timelines. Gene Roddenberry’s own company, Lincoln Entreprises released publicity material in 1974 that said Arex was an Edosian. And in the Enterprise episode “These Are the Voyages…” Endosian suckerfish are mentioned, which, as of now, is the only on-screen mention of this species. 
That said, this episode of Lower Decks stops short of naming the species of the “Division 14 Medical Specialist.” And considering his size and attitude, it’s still possible that a Triexian/Edosian schism could still be made canon. Or, maybe not. The real question though is somewhat bigger. If we can get one of these three-armed guys on Lower Decks, could we get a live-action Arex in Strange New Worlds? Start your letter-writing campaign now!
cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });
Lower Decks Season 1 has three more new episodes, which air on Thursdays on CBS All Access.
The post Star Trek: Lower Decks – Is That an Edosian?!? appeared first on Den of Geek.
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