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This is the official /r/DaystromInstitute reaction thread for "The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel". Rules #1 and #2 are not enforced in reaction threads.

In the United States, military personnel are not all called soldiers.

If you serve in the army, you're a soldier.

If you serve in the navy, you're a sailor (unless you serve in specialized roles like fighter pilot, you are naval aviator)

If you serve in the Space Force, you're a guardian.

If you want to refer to all personnel in every military branch, you call them military personnel or operators or warfighters.

But you can also call them personnel within their respective branches like: army personnel, naval personnel, air force personnel, etc; or you can call them by their positions like army or navy officers, or army and marine NCOs and navy petty officers, etc.

In Star Trek we hear Starfleet Officers and crewmen a lot through the show, but you can hear those terms in other branches too (*insert branch* officers, crewmen). I don't think we have ever heard them call Starfleet personnel (army personnel, navy personnel, air force personnel, coast guard personnel, etc) by any generic Starfleet specific terminology.

Confusingly, we also hear Starfleet personnel call each other or themselves soldiers sometimes, even though the term *soldier* is specific to the army.

Captain Kirk: "I'm a soldier, not a diplomat"

Tilly calling Ash Tyler a soldier.

Starfleet could be a descendant organization of the Space Force, but we haven't heard anyone call each other Guardians yet. I know Space Force is a brand new branch, so maybe it might need some time for it to catch up? Or maybe the writers want to be on the safe side, since the Space Force could always disband and just be folded back to the air force and navy space command.

Maybe they're literally called explorers not just as a function, but that might be their legally made generic terminology for all Starfleet personnel? They called themselves explorers many times, but maybe they didn't call it that just thematically.

Vulcans, Klingons and Ferengi seem to have significantly longer lifespans than the average human (even allowing for the slightly hazy human longevity on Star Trek); conversely, Ocampa, Jem'hadar and Xindi-Insectoids are a good deal shorter. What races seem to have similar lifespans to humans? On the face of it, Bajorans and Cardassians seem like good candidates.

Like World War Three, the Eugenics Wars are one of those moments in Trek history that we've never seen but still had big impact on the overall lore. When they were first introduced in the Original Series episode "Space Seed" they were said to have occurred in the 1990s, of course in real-life nothing like that happened in the '90s (I say this as a child of the '90s :=), but as time marched on there have been various attempts to retcon the date of the Eugenics Wars, from DS9, where Ronald D Moore is of the opinion that that Spock merely got the date wrong, to Strange New Worlds, where Khan is shown as a child sometime around 2024.

But my question is: are these retcons really the right choice from a storytelling perspective? If the writers hadn't changed the date(s) would have really affected the overall story?

In TNG's Transfigurations, we're introduced to a new alien species, the Zalkonians. They're beyond the bleeding edge of the frontier in 2366, they're presented as potentially being a military match for Starfleet, and they're in the early stages of a major societal shift. They're then promptly never seen or heard from again.

In this post, I'm going to make the case for why they should be a regional rival for the Federation in the late 24th or early 25th century. For this purpose, I'm going to focus on three reasons--the military reasons, the overall political landscape in the Alpha Quadrant at this time, and finally the thematic reasons.

Part One: The Zalkonians are a military match for Starfleet

Based on what we see in Transfigurations, the Zalkonians are most likely a military match for the Federation. The Zalkonian warship in this episode is capable of warp 9.72 (faster than the Galaxy-class's warp 9.72), and based on initial sensor readings, LaForge suspects they're capable of matching the Enterprise in terms of weapons yield and maneveurability.

The biggest advantage the Zalkonians are known to have is their asphyxiation weapon. This could easily become like the Breen energy dampening weapon in the Dominion War, where it's only a matter of time before Starfleet is able to work out countermeasures for it. It also could be that it's similar to cloaking devices where it's a constant race between the Zalkonians building a new generation of the weapon and Starfleet developing more sophisticated countermeasures.

Either way, I think how effective it is would depend on Zalkonian military doctrine. If their doctrine against other powers is largely based around ambush tactics, then it may not matter how sophisticated Starfleet's countermeasures are. It could be a matter of a Zalkonian ship dropping out of warp, hitting an enemy with an asphyxiation shot, and then warping out.

I think the other question marks when it comes to the asphyxiation weapon is how long a Zalkonian ship has to wait before using it again, and what kind of effective range it has. Both of those questions could either mean that it's either a mainstay of Zalkonian battle tactics, or it's something they only bring out in certain situations.

Militarily though, the other factor here is how experienced both Starfleet and the Zalkonian military are compared to each other. Starfleet was a major player in the Dominion War, and most of the captains and admirals are likely to be veterans of that conflict by the early 25th century. It's not really known if any of the less experienced personnel are veterans of any major conflicts, though there probably will have been at least some border conflicts in the 20-30 years between Deep Space Nine and Picard.

Meanwhile, it's not known what kind of military experience the Zalkonian military has. It's possible that the Zalkonians had mostly been focused on internal policing actions since the mid-2360s due to a certain segment of their population ascending to a noncorporeal form.

All of this could mean that while a Zalkonian and Starfleet ship would more or less be a match depending on the circumstances, both would have reasons to want to avoid doing battle. Starfleet wouldn't want to do battle because they'd be worried about going up against the asphyxiation weapon, and the Zalkonians would be worried about going up against an experienced command crew.

This would allow for a lot of tension to be built up over the course of an episode or even a season-long arc. This could allow for some very traditional Star Trek storylines where a large chunk of the tension is based around both sides hoping to avoid shooting at each other, but also knowing it could become inevitable.

Part Two: The overall political landscape

By the closing decade or so of the twenty-fourth century, Starfleet is, in some ways, in the strongest military position it's ever been in. The Romulan Empire has collapsed, the Klingons are probably still largely on side, the Cardassians are likely still rebuilding, the Dominion is still in the Gamma Quadrant, and the Borg are no longer an issue. While the Utopia Planitia shipyards being destroyed is a major setback, Starfleet has other shipyards, and losing Utopia Planitia may not be as devestating as some make it out to be.

While the Zalkonians were well beyond the frontier in 2366, they may not be by 2406 or even by 2396. After the Dominion War, Starfleet probably would have gone back to putting a lot of focus on exploration missions, and the Federation will have continued to expand.

So in this overall context, the Federation wouldn't necessarily have a lot of natural enemies left; especially not any on the kind of level which could really challenge them militarily. Yes, there's always the Breen and the Tholians, but they're both largely isolationist, and it wouldn't be unreasonable for decades to go by without any significant flare up in hostilities.

While there is some hawkishness in Starfleet at this time, it's at least possible that Picard shows this as overblown. There were war hawks in Starfleet even in the TNG era, and Picard was butting heads with them, too. My gut feeling is that Starfleet's hawkishness probably seemed a lot more overt to Picard specifically because he's usually very doveish.

Without any natural enemies in the immediate area, those hawks in Starfleet will undoubtedly look further outwards. That'd mean the Zalkonians could be a fairly natural fit.

Part Three: The thematic defense

There's also a thematic defense for the Zalkonians being the next regional rival, which is primarily that the Zalkonians and the Federation have opposing values. The Federation, for the most part, values democracy, inclusiveness, and civil liberties, while the Zalkonians seem to value authoritarianism and social conformity.

The Zalkonians specifically are also in the middle of some major social upheavals when we first see them in Transfigurations. It wouldn't be that much of a stretch to say this is still an ongoing thing forty or fifty years later. In fact, for an interstellar species such as the Zalkonians, it could be stranger if it weren't still ongoing--some major colony worlds could be significantly behind the times, after all.

That's an easy style of conflict to draw real world parallels to. In real life, right now we have various groups that would like to steer democratic countries towards a more authoritarian path. Because of that, a storyline where the Federation and the Zalkonians are at odds would be a very traditional Star Trek allegorical story.

I think this would also generally fit with the Kurtzman era tendency to bring in a lot of old legacy races to be the current storyline's big bad. The Zalkonians would be an easy species to work with because they were only in one episode and we only get a very limited look at their society, so you could write a lot of things about them without it being contradictory with established canon.

Conclusions

Overall, I think the Zalkonians would make a good fit to be the next regional rival for the Federation. They're a military match for Starfleet, they'd make sense in the in-universe political landscape by the late 24th century, and I think they'd make good thematic sense.

What do you think? Agree, disagree?

Going through my DS9 rewatch, I just got to "Who Mourns for Morn?" Classic DS9 comedy episode in my opinion, but like the best DS9 episodes, left some tantalizing questions on the nature of the setting. In this case, the fact that the plot revolves around Morn leaving his "retirement fund" in the Bank of Bolias, on the Bolian homeworld.

Which immediately set off my sensors - why is there a bank on a member world of the post-scarcity "socialist utopia" Federation? Particularly since the continuation of a bank seems like it might continue to perpetuate the sort of hierarchies that pre-scarcity economies have, even if the economic factors are not longer dominant.

I did a quick browse of Memory Alpha to see if there had been any other Federation banks mentioned. It seems that Harry Mudd claimed to have robbed a Betazoid bank in a Discovery episode; I haven't seen that episode (or the fact that Discovery also seems to imply that Betazed is in the Federation at that point) but I feel like there's potential wiggle room - did Mudd rob it before they joined the Federation? Or from the wording, was it a bank run by Betazoids outside of the Federation?

Likewise, there's a reference to a "Federation Federal" offering "financing" on Nimbus III in Star Trek V, but given the nature of Nimbus III as both a sort of embodiment of the Federation's failings, and a place where Klingons and Romulans could also gather, it maybe makes sense that less than savory types would establish a bank there, or that a very strong informal economy would essentially take root there.

In any case, there are also arguments that post-scarcity wouldn't truly arrive to the Federation prior to the invention of the replicator (the Trekonomics argument). So there's enough flexibility in my mind to hand-wave those earlier banks away. But that doesn't work with the Bank of Bolias.

One potential argument is that the Bank of Bolias only services people outside Federation citizenship (like Quark and Morn in the episode). I can imagine there being some appeal to this - if you're engaged in unsavory cutthroat space capitalism, having your money be protected by the virtuous and disinterested Federation might make it an idea arbiter of financial disputes and safe third party.

Or do banks now just exist not as repositories of money but places to store objects for safeguarding, using the existing infrastructure that's no longer needed for currency?

Or potentially, the last surviving banks in the Federation have been nationalized and serve as a sort of hard currency repository for when the Federation engages in trade with other governments that have not yet abolished money (something akin to the Soviet Union's foreign trade banks relying on foreign hard currency instead of Soviet rubles).

As an aside, I thought the reveal at the end of the episode - that Morn was keeping the stolen latinum in his second stomach for a decade, and it seemingly being responsible for his hair falling out; in other words, that money poisoned him - a striking but probably inadvertent metaphor.

Tie-in novels have always been an important part of Star Trek—in fact, the science fiction scholar Gerry Canavan has argued that the franchise more or less invented the entire genre of tie-in fiction. The greater length of the novels, not to mention the guaranteed buy-in of any reader who would pick up a Star Trek-branded novel in the first place, made them a way to explore the themes and concepts of the show in a more expansive and open-ended way. Usually pegged to a particular series (the vast majority to The Original Series), they tend to become most interesting and ambitious once that show is safely off the air and the authors know that what they create won’t be randomly contradicted in a future episode.

Never were the novels more ambitious than in the 2000s and early 2010s. In those years, the novelists carried forward the stories of Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager in a vast shared continuity full of crossovers, crew reshuffles, and major changes to the status quo. In the end, when Picard essentially overwrote everything they had done, three key authors of the novel continuity (known to fans as the “novelverse”) were given a chance to wind down their version of timeline, which they did by engineering a story where our heroes have to erase themselves from existence to save the Prime Timeline. As entertainment, it was a mixed bag, but I have to hand it to them for metaphysical ambition.

When Star Trek was relaunched for the streaming era, then, the primary form the franchise had taken for a good couple decades was a series of novels. They hired Kirsten Beyer, the author of the popular second Voyager “relaunch” series, to coordinate tie-in products, and she would ultimately be co-creator of Picard. They also drew explicitly on concepts from the novels. Sometimes they were simply going for a “vibe,” as when all the Klingon actors on Discovery were asked to read John M. Ford’s classic The Final Reflection, which did so much to set up the idea of the Klingons as ruthless yet necessary rivals to the Federation. Most of the events depicted in the book are incompatible with current Star Trek canon, but the overall feel of the Klingons is still very relevant.

Sometimes the borrowings were much more explicit. For instance, nearly the entire story arc of Discovery season 2 draws heavily on David Mack’s novel Section 31: Control. The most prolific and influential author of the novelverse, Mack often seems to take fan theories and push them to such an extreme that they seem to challenge the core values or plausibility of Star Trek, then reset the status quo by eliminating the offending element. In this case, he appears to be responding to fans’ fascination with the black ops unit known as Section 31, which appeared in a few Deep Space Nine episodes but was revealed to have been operating since before the founding of the Federation in Enterprise. In the years between the cancellation of Enterprise and the premier of Discovery, Section 31 has birthed thousands of fan theories, as more and more characters and events turn out to be secret plots of this CIA-like dirty tricks department.

Mack’s novel goes even further, claiming that Section 31 is operated by an autonomous AI called Control, which has been operating since the 2150s. More than running Section 31, though, Control runs everything—its software is omnipresent in Federation computers and in the computers of anyone with sustained contact with the Federation. The entire history of the Star Trek universe is therefore a single vast conspiracy. I would gently suggest that this idea is incompatible with the optimism of Star Trek, and the second any of our heroes find out about it, they immediately realize it has to be shut down. At the end of an action plot full of twists and turns, they finally succeed—which the final pages reveal to have been yet another plot of Control, which now recognizes that the galactic community has reached maturity and doesn’t need conspiratorial micro-managing.

It’s hard to know what to make of this as a political message. Is a totalitarian surveillance state actually necessary to create Star Trek’s optimistic future in Mack’s mind? Sometimes he shows libertarian political leanings, and if we interpreted it through that lens, it would seem like he’s retrospectively casting literally all of Star Trek as a dystopia. The fact that Control isn’t truly defeated at the end adds further ambiguity.

In any case, Mack’s version is a masterwork of political allegory compared to what Discovery does with it. There we learn that Starfleet Command has been using an AI known as Control for tactical guidance, but it has unfortunately gotten a little too big for its britches and has started manipulating events on its own behalf. More disturbingly, it has developed the ability to create humanoid avatars that can pass for influential individuals—such as a Starfleet Admiral or the head of Section 31. Even worse, Discovery has come across a treasure trove of data from an interstellar being that has stored up 10,000 years of experience, and Control knows that if it gets its hands on it, it can finally “become sentient.” (In my mind, if you know you want to be sentient, you are already sentient, but whatever.) If it crosses that threshold, we learn from a time traveler, it will decide biological life is a threat to its existence and sterilize the galaxy. Thankfully, at the end of an action plot full of twists and turns, Control is destroyed and, for good measure, Discovery travels to the distant future to make sure that its vast data cache can never be used for evil.

In my mind, Mack’s version isn’t fully convincing or successful, but he is at least trying something. The idea that the AI could be beneficial introduces a dilemma that could be productive of thought, even though the action plot winds up crowding out such concerns. By contrast, the Discovery version seems simplistic and dumbed-down. No room for ambiguity exists because the AI is determined to commit omni-genocide. Similarly, the incoherent notion that Control is somehow “not yet” sentient—even though it is clearly pursuing its own autonomous goals and has a sense of self and of its own self-preservation—seems to be gerrymandered to prevent us from asking whether Control has any rights or interests. And of course, the whole goal of the Discovery plot is to create some excuse to break away from the prequel concept that had so enraged fans and give the writers more of a clean slate.

In other words, the Discovery plot is ultimately about managing franchise IP, where the novel is about thinking through the logical consequences of certain franchise concepts. The novel is trying to set up a new status quo where Star Trek can be truer to its ideals, while the second season of Discovery is about getting the annoying fans off their back. Comparatively few viewers of Discovery are going to track down a novel that’s deep into a 15-year-long alternate history of the franchise, obviously, but if I were the writers, I might have been more cautious about drawing such an unflattering comparison and found another excuse to get Discovery out of dodge.

[This is cross-posted from my recently launched Substack entitled Late Star Trek, which includes some expanded versions of my posts here as well as original content.]

Exactly what is the title says. I feel like the very first episode of "Discovery", "The Vulcan Hello" set up a much more interesting story than the rest of the series. Let's explore this (for simplicity we're only focusing on the first part)

1): The USS Shenzhou being an older, outdated ship would have been interesting to see, something different than the brand-new, fresh out of spacedock ships we've seen so far. Imagine something like the early seasons of "Deep Space Nine", where the crew have to deal with things not working right or outright breaking down. You could have episodes dealing with the Shenzhou's crew having to improvise because at the very least the ship is of the "slow and steady" mentality rather than the best Starfleet has to offer.

2): Captain Philippa Georgiou is a much more interesting character than Burnham; she's calm, thoughtful, level-headed and could have been an interesting counterpoint to Burnham's surprisingly emotional responses. Additionally, it would have interesting to see a non-Western actor as a Star Trek Captain, especially an older Asian woman.

3): Burnham's arc could have been better handled with Georgiou as her captain, even the mutiny plotline could have been handled differently, perhaps Georgiou goes to bat for Burnham and gets her put on probation, so we could see her arc unfolding as she tries to regain her captain and crew's trust.

4): The Klingons coming out of isolation could have been used to set up how they became the antagonists by Kirk's era. Why has so much time passed since the Federation last saw them? You could also have it so that instead of waging an all-out war the Klingons instead begin raiding Federation outposts along the border.

So, thoughts?

So I know that in general Star Trek only really pays lip-service to being a military organization. That said, I'm wondering if someone more well-versed in military command structures can suggest what Sisko's position during the Dominion war was?

We know that Ross was in command of Federation forces in general, but Sisko seemed to be able to dictate a lot of strategy and orders that seemed to be beyond his purview simply as a captain of the Defiant and/or DS9. Is it just that Ross leaned on Sisko for a lot of the decisions because he happened to like him and be running the war from DS9 (with some hand waving hope by the writers that we not ask too many questions about why Sisko can make the calls he did) or is there some sort of temporary "wartime" assignment he could have received "off screen", like Ross's chief of staff or something on top of his usual duties?

GARAK: His name is Vreenak. He's been a key member of the Romulan Senate for the past fourteen years. He's Secretary of the War Plans Council, Vice Chairman of the Tal Shiar, and one of the most trusted advisors to Proconsul Neral.

SISKO: He's also the man that negotiated the non-aggression pact with the Dominion.

—

BASHIR: Neral. Formerly Proconsul and now Praetor of the Romulan Star Empire. Neral's ascension to the top post was confirmed by the Continuing Committee a little over a year ago. His immediate family was killed in a Klingon raid approximately twenty five years ago. His interests include sociology and archeology. His favourite food is Delvan pudding and his pet set'leth's name is Pensho.

—

BASHIR: Koval. Chairman of the Tal'Shiar. Section Thirty one believes that he was involved in the death of Vice Admiral Fujisaki last year, but there's no proof.

SLOAN: The proof is buried somewhere in Koval's personal database, which puts it out of our reach for now. But believe me, Doctor, the Deputy Chief of Starfleet Intelligence doesn't just die of food poisoning. I have to give him credit though. It was a textbook operation. No sign of foul play, and certainly no sign of Romulan involvement. It was very tidy. Koval's political status?

BASHIR: Ambiguous. He hasn't been elevated to the Continuing Committee, which is usually a given for the head of the Tal'Shiar. His nomination's probably being held up because of his opposition to the Federation Alliance, which is supported by the majority on the Committee.

—

Meanwhile, we know Ross is coordinating with Section 31, and Sloan is on the station right around when Sisko is being murdered, thanks to Inquisition being the episode before In the Pale Moonlight, where Sisko states:

—

SISKO: It's only been two weeks. I need to talk about this. I have to justify what's happened, what I've done, at least to myself. I can't talk to anyone else. Not even to Dax. Maybe if I just lay it all out in my log, it'll finally make sense. I can see where it all went wrong. Where I went wrong. I suppose it started two weeks ago,

—

Garak meanwhile has intelligence on Vreenak’s whereabouts that don’t add up:

—

SISKO: How do you know he'll be visiting Soukara?

GARAK: There are some things I'd rather not discuss. May I continue?

SISKO: Please.

—

Of course, Garak had claimed all his operatives lost their lives trying to bring information across the line and that sort of thing, so Sisko’s double-take at Garak’s intimate knowledge of a Romulan-Dominion meeting is entirely understandable.

With the evidence laid out, let’s run through all the coincidences:

Sloan showed up on the station at the exact time that Sisko was involved in a conspiracy with an Obsidian Order agent to murder the vice chairman of the Tal Shiar, while Section 31 was coordinating with the chairman of the Tal Shiar.

Section 31 then actively supported the chairman’s bid for a seat on the Continuing Committee that had “somehow” opened up recently, by planting Julian on a mission led by the sector Admiral for DS9, also known to be coordinating with Section 31. A mission made possible due to the predictable reaction of the Romulan leadership to the murder of a high-ranking senator by the Dominion.

Before all this, the Tal Shiar’s black ops arm was wiped out to the man by the Dominion. Something which Koval would have been directly felt and been held responsible for, but something that Vreenak, who probably held the post as a means to an end for political reasons, probably didn’t feel as much. Opposing a treaty would have been politically expedient for Vreenak, but it would have been utterly stupid for Koval. Koval also would have signed off on the op to take out the Founders.

Why was Koval unusually cut out? Possibly because Vreenak had held the Continuing Committee post as vice chair of the Tal Shiar to nominally satisfy the expectation that the Tal Shiar would have representation. And it was suspiciously convenient for Koval that Vreenak suddenly exploded after he screwed Koval out of the Continuing Committee post.

Then the Deputy Chief of Starfleet dies…that’s odd, it sounds like the Starfleet analogue to the exact position that Vreenak held! And Bashir with his obvious naivete goes running to a Romulan senator to highlight how he has insider information that rogue elements of Starfleet Intelligence are so convinced that Koval did it and furious about it that they’re trying to murder him.

In addition, Section 31 suddenly pulls the morphogenic virus out of its arse. While Starfleet did not have direct access to Dr. Moira’s research on Odo, the Obsidian Order did and developed a weapon to inhibit shapeshifting based on it. The Obsidian Order worked with the Romulans, who are known to employ bioweapons (see Star Trek: Nemesis). Koval also expresses particular interest in Bashir’s work on the Quickening, and while that may be a lie, he actually bothered to attend. Koval’s lax attitude towards the Dominion also makes sense if he was confident that the Dominion would ultimately fall. And while he’d be unlikely to trust a Starfleet bioweapon, that kind of confidence is warranted if it was one he had intimate knowledge of because the Tal Shiar designed it. Note that the makeup effects for the Obsidian Order weapon and the morphogenic virus are pretty much the same.

DS9 should be crawling with spies by that point in the series, and Sisko and Garak are hilariously unsubtle that they’re up to something, with Sisko uncharacteristically extraditing a random holoforger in a Klingon prison and spending large amounts of time with him and Garak at Quark’s. Along with bribing Quark after a bar brawl. Unless the Tal Shiar is totally incompetent and didn’t have dozens of spies and informants on DS9 to keep up with the senior staff’s activity, they absolutely should have known Sisko and Garak had something to do with Vreenak’s death from the timing and people involved.

So:

Sloan hand-carried intel to Garak about Vreenak’s itinerary. Koval agreed to give up that information to secure Vreenak’s spot on the Continuing Committee. Section 31 arranged the murder of the Deputy Chief of Starfleet Intelligence to cleanse Koval’s reputation and give him kompromat on them so he’d feel secure going through with the deal with them.

They also agreed to deploy the morphogenic virus in exchange for Koval covertly supporting the Federation alliance and looking the other way regarding all the circumstantial evidence involving Sisko and Garak and whatever unfortunate accident Tolar had.

Koval walked out of the deal with influence to play kingmaker for the Romulan Empire, steer its foreign policy in a forward-looking direction rather than a politically expedient one catering to isolationists that would lead to its ruin, and get revenge on the Founders for getting the drop on him.

Meanwhile, Section 31 walked out of the deal with the means to eliminate the Dominion as a threat, get the Romulan Empire bloodied a bit on par with the Federation and Klingon Empires, and have kompromat on the head of the Tal Shiar that could allow them to have influence on the highest Romulan affairs.

And Garak suggested Sloan mess with Julian a little to get to know him on his way out, because Julian had an excellent combination of extraordinary intelligence and wanting to roleplay a spy, and yet be too principled to actually follow through with morally heinous directives. Making him the perfect delivery platform for red herrings.

(Sloan may have used information on DS9’s security protocols from Ross to access the station, but that’s not really important right now.)

All circumstantial, yeah. But it’d be even weirder if it all had nothing to do with each other.

During the events of First Contact, we see the Enterprise destroy a Borg sphere leaving debris in orbit.

We also see Picard, Worf and Hawke battle Borg while working to disconnect the deflector dish. Hawke shoots one drone sending if off into space and Picard shoot a panel that causes another Borg drone to float off. Finally we see Hawke get shot by Worf after being assimilated.

With all this debris in orbit, does the Enterprise collect the debris fragments or do they remain in orbit to eventually burn up in the atmosphere?

Something which made the episode unwatchable for me. The situation is, the crew have accidentally triggered a security program from the Cardassian era designed to stop a Bajoran revolt.

Sensible enough setup, it always struck me that ships and stations in the Star Trek universe should have more automated defences. Like why not change the artificial gravity to crush or knock out a boarding party?

In this case the program uses gas, force fields to restrict movement and suppression fields to prevent communication and transporting. As they try to overrule the program, the situation escalates, till the station reactor is set to overload. In desperation they overload the power grid to take out the suppression field.

Now Sisko and O'brien have to desperately fight their way to the reactor, as they are the only ones close enough to get to it.

Here is the problem, the Defiant is docked and they are going to use it to evacuate the station. So why don't they just use the Defiant's transporters to beam an engineering team to the reactor?

To be fair you have the same issue in other series, when ship systems fail. They have shuttle craft with transporters, so why not use them?

This is the official /r/DaystromInstitute reaction thread for "Shades of Green". Rules #1 and #2 are not enforced in reaction threads.

This is the official /r/DaystromInstitute reaction thread for "Dos Cerrito". Rules #1 and #2 are not enforced in reaction threads.

EDIT: Lamentably, the Paramount Plus episode list calls this episode "Dos Cerrito," which is what I used here. However, in the episode itself, the title is the more sensible "Dos Cerritos".

What if, during Wrath of Khan, after Khan activated the Genesis Device, Kirk orders for the Genesis Device to be beamed aboard, but left in the pattern buffer instead of rematerializing it in the transporter pad. Would that have stopped the Genesis Wave?

Or what about, after beaming the Genesis Device from the Reliant, instead of rematerializing it in the transporter pad, they scatter the transporter signal, the atoms/molecules into space. Would that have stopped the Genesis Wave?

So in the Lower Decks episode "Trusted Sources" we saw the Breen could still use that "power dampener" device successfully.

And it fits perfectly for Starfleet! A way to disable belligerents without killing them and then you can beam them into the brig.

We can assume it is made form rare materials or something, but the Breen equipped interceptors with them regularly.

Honestly, the only reasons I can think of are Doylist, that the weapon is OP and that writers are deathly afraid to change something fundamental about how Starfleet ships look and operate.

Generally speaking, Vulcans don't tell jokes or participate in the emotional mirth of humor. But they are smart enough to understand humor. Could a Vulcan novelist convincingly write genuinely funny dialogue for a funny character?

We see time and time again that if a SF officer wanted to go up the career ladder they had to assassinate the person above them, and the crueler and more abusive you are the more street creds you have with your colleagues.

They are so 1-dimensionally comically evil that I can't imagine how they even function as a society and government, or what glues them together.

Mirrorverse Michael Burnham purposely took out an artist's eyes so that his work would go up in value, and she didn't suffer any consequences from this. WTF?

So if there is a Hannibal Lector type serial killer kidnapping and brutally murdering/eating house wives from grocery store parking lots, they just don't care? Or do they think that the government shouldn't get involved in it and just let the people go on a revenge killing spree?

But if you just let anyone go on a revenge kililng spree, wouldn't that just spiral out of control? Or do they actually have some form of law enforcement, because only Starfleet people and the Emperor are allowed to murder people?

In the Episode "The Measure of a Man" Data's autonomy and very existence was put on trial. Admiral Nakamura and Commander Bruce Maddox attempt to force Data to undergo... What is essentially a vivisection to understand his construction and replicate more of him.

When he refused and resigned, Starfleet made the case that he was the property of Starfleet and couldn't resign. This is where things get hazy for me.

Data was found and reactivated on the planet Omicron Theta by the USS Tripoli. What happens to him after that is a bit of a mystery. We know he joined Starfleet and went to the academy. We know he attended classes and graduated the traditional way, becoming an officer. What we don't know is the nature of his enlistment. Was it his choice or was he enrolled by Starfleet?

Later, his father asks him why he chose Starfleet and Data indicated that it was his own choice. If that is the case, then what basis does Starfleet have for claim Data is their property at all? He joined of his own free will. One would assume he should be able to leave just as easily.

Secondly, during the trial, Data had his arm removed without his permission and was then shut off, again, without his permission. This behavior seemed to shock everyone in the court, including the Judge Advocate General herself. Especially after Data was declared his own person, would a charge of assault against the court and a violation of his personal liberties by both Maddox and Nakamura have been issued? Once both the JAG and Captain Picard issued their reports, one would think both Nakamura and Maddox would have drawn formal reprimands for what they'd done.

(Inflammatory title aside lol) recently watched through all the classic trek (tng,ds9,voyager) for the first time since I was a kid, my opinion on data has vastly changed since then. From my perspective, data was designed to emulate humans, all his programming is directed toward wanting to be more human. Even once he starts dreaming and gets emotions, it's all part of his design, he had dream algorithms put in him by his creator and the emotion chip was made to simulate emotions vis design. Data is basically a really complicated calculator. While the doctor, who was not designed to have emotions, evolved them "naturally", he has curiosity beyond his programing which I think is the key difference. The doctor evolved despite his programing. Sure he made alterations to his code but that was mainly to give himself more memory bc he was functioning beyond his programing. On a side note, why is data even impressive? The holodeck is able to make a supergenius Moriarty with what seems fully realized emotions effortlessly. Has anyone else's opinion on data changed over the years like me or am I alone?

I just watched DS9 episode “Blood Oath” and it got me wondering. Should Worf be considered a Dahar Master? He is a veteran of multiple wars, victor of numerous combat situations, a master of martial traditions and tactics and an expert on Klingon tradition. He is/was very influential in Klingon history and is a known throughout the empire. I feel this should qualify him as a Dahar Master

Moriarty's consciousness ultimately consists as nothing more than code and storage, easily transferable and swapable to any hardware that can support it.

The Federation has encountered numerous types of Androids in the past, and might have even had a complete understanding of some, like the ones Kirk encountered.

While not as ideal a solution as a real life body or a Picard era golem, it solves the issue of him being confined to the holodeck when it is powered up. Why was this not considered when the TNG crew were trying to solve the problem, even as a temporary measure?

Maybe it would not be possible to get an android body in a quick enough fashion or it would be considered too much effort, but then I wonder, surely the federation has the ability to replicate something as complex as a basic android? We know exocomps could replicate themselves, we know machinery and weapons can be replicated, would a simple robot body be that much more complicated?

It seems like such an obvious solution, but then why wouldn't it have been considered? Could it be something to do with a consciousness as advanced as Moriarty's needing special hardware to support it, the way Data's hardware is largely tied to his consciousness, and the computer being unable to design the necessary hardware? Are there other, simpler, more likely reasons?

If the computer can create consciousness in response to a query to create a foe that could outsmart Data, then surely it could create a simple android body that could also house that consciousness? The consciousness is the hard part, printing up a complex FPGA and an RC humanoid with sensors should be the easy part.

An episode of Picard showed that Section 31 had held on to an Arretan android from the original series. So surely at the least they had that to use as a basis.

So, the Federation, the galaxy’s shining beacon on a hill. How do you defeat it?

Does the federation struggle with cloaked ships and hit and runs? Are they vulnerable to rapid brutality?

I’m also more than happy to hear about hypothetical or on the spot solutions. Especially those that might involve heretical technologies like unethical genetic engineering, chemical weapons, superplagues, war crimes, anything grisly.

Thank you.

While watching all the people plant with primitive technology in the DS9 episode "Children of Time" I was surprised they didn't still have a replicator to make better tools. It seemed to me that in a crash landing scenario, maintaining a working replicator and power source would be of the upmost importance. You'd want to fix the replicator on the ship if it was broken, and you'd want to use it to replicate the parts for more replicators...

So this got me thinking about the scenario in general, which lead me to the question "what if you don't have a functioning replicator but you do have a holodeck or holoemitter?" Which is how I arrived at the post topic.

It seems like if holographic replicators did function like real replicators that would potentially cause some issues because you could replicate things and if they are real physical things they would fall on the ground and need to be cleaned up when you turn off the holodeck. I suppose the holodeck could automatically do this, but what if you want to keep the thing you made? And what happens to power consumption if you do this?

I suspect that its possible for a holographic replicator to produce a non-holographic output because of the TNG episode "A Matter of Perspective" where the holographic recreation of that science station modified the the transmitted waves into them Krieger waves. This shows that equipment on the holodeck is capable of performing its intended function beyond just creating the illusion that is the real.

However, I'm not sure. I'm certain there are factors I haven't considered. What do you think?

I doubt it still uses a method like the warp core since it itself is even faster and doesn't use dilithium, it definitely uses a material within the limits of "programmable matter"

In the TAS episode The Slaver Weapon, we're introduced to the Kzinti, a feline-humanoid race that Earth had fought four wars against in the decade or so after it achieved warp speed. In the episode, Sulu refers to the fourth war having happened two hundred years previously, so somewhere around 2069, just six years after Zephram Cochrane achieved warp one.

In this post, I'm going to propose a possible retcon: that one or more of these wars happened later, perhaps as late as the 2150s. I'm going to give four reasons why this could be a reasonable thing to do. Firstly, there is the possibility that Sulu simply got his dates wrong. Secondly, I'm going to raise the question of what constitutes a war. Thirdly, that tensions between humanity and its adverseries means it's not unusual for things to boil over into war once every century or two. And fourthly, I'll present what I consider the thematic defense for doing it.

Whether or not this is a worthwhile retcon is something I will leave up to you, the readers, to discuss.

One: Maybe Sulu was wrong about the dates

This is the point that I consider to be on the shakiest grounds. Sulu was known for having an interest in antique weapons, and while it's never confirmed one way or the other, an interest in military history would make sense as a tangential interest to this. It would seem as if this kind of mistake would be out of place for him.

However, it would also be an easy mistake to make. Maybe two or three of the most famous wars happened in the decade or two immediately after humanity became a warp-capable society. If one happened much later, it could either be so much later that most people got tripped up by it, it could have been part of a broader political climate that people didn't ordinarily associate the Kzinti Wars with, or it could simply be an obscure thing that there was a fourth Kzinti war and Sulu had only just found out about it.

If Sulu had a tangential interest in military history, then this would make sense as the kind of mistake he made. His primary interest in firearms seems to be centred around projectile firearms. By the time the Kzinti wars broke out, Earth was starting to move towards energy beam weapons, and it may be after the main period he's interested in by default.

Plus, if a fourth Kzinti war happened in the mid-to-late 2150s, it would be vastly overshadowed by the overall context of the period. The Xindi conflict happened in 2153, the period from 2154 to 2156 was the Romulan cold war, and then 2156-60 was the Romulan War. If the previous three Kzinti wars had happened nearly a century earlier, then people wouldn't necessarily associate the nadith of human-Kzinti relations with the violent dramas of the 2150s.

Two: What constitutes a war?

I think something tangential to consider when it comes to whether or not Sulu got his dates wrong is the question of what constitutes a war. This is something I've already touched on but I'd like to go into more detail about it. To quote Wikipedia, a war is "an armed conflict between the armed forces of states, or between governmental forces and armed groups that are organized under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain military operations, or between such organized groups."

However, it also usually carries with it a formal declaration of war. The Falklands conflict between the UK and Argentina is regularly referred to as a war, but there was never a formal declaration of war. As such, it could also be referred to as an armed conflict that never quite boiled over into a war.

When a war gets seen as a war could also be a very contextual thing. In the 2060s and 2070s, even a minor border conflict could be seen as a major war to Earth due to its lack of any major starfaring ability at that juncture in their development. A century later, a similar level of conflict might not seem like that big of a deal because of the much larger scale conflicts Earth had been involved in by that point.

So if the fourth Kzinti war happened a century or so after the previous wars, then it may not seem like as much of a turning point, either at the time or to anyone reading about it later. It'd just be seen as a footnote where humans wiped the floor with the local feline pests and then moved on to the other bigger, more significant conflicts which were about to take place, to put it bluntly.

If the fourth Kzinti war did happen in the late 2150s as I'm speculating, then it may not even be commonly be seen as a war. It may just be taught as being a minor point of the Romulan cold war and the fact that there was a fourth Kzinti war is just a minor factoid that nobody really takes that seriously, similar to the real life Emu war. Due to that, it could be that most serious historians see the Kzinti wars as being the three that matter and then the fourth which happened but didn't matter as much, or is mostly just spoken about by the "well actually" crowd or people specialising in the Romulan cold war period specifically.

Three: The general pattern of humanity's conflicts with its long-term enemies

Something else to consider with human foreign relations, and later Federation foreign relations, is that any long-term conflicts generally aren't neatly resolved within a decade or so. With the Romulans specifically, there was the Romulan War, but then there were periods of high tension in the 2260s (the Romulans coming out of their first period of isolation, TOS's The Enterprise Incident, etc.), around the Tomed incident in 2317, and then Romulan intrigue in the 2360s after they came out of their second period of isolation.

This is also true of the Federation's relations with the Klingons. There were at least two hot wars and a lengthy cold war in the 23rd century (the one portrayed in Discovery and then the brief one in TOS's Errand of Mercy). Some early TNG episodes indicate there could have been another hot war in the 24th century, though it's never really confirmed if that was an actual war or just a period of high tensions, and DS9 had another Klingon war in 2372-3.

Just as this is true of the iconic original series antagonists, we also see it being true of a lot of other antagonists, too. The Tholians were long-term enemies and it is known that there was a period of high tension in the 2350s that included the destruction of a starbase, for example. TNG and DS9 established that Federation-Cardassian relations were in the early stages of going this way, between the border conflict and the Cardassians joining the Dominion.

So if the first few Kzinti wars happened in the late 21st century and then the fourth happened in the mid-22nd century, it wouldn't exactly be unusual for humanity's foreign relations. It'd actually be more unusual for it to be the reverse. This is especially true given that it's known there still are some ongoing growing pains in their relations. In PIC's Nepenthe, Riker mentions that the Kzinti are causing some problems in the area, and that could be taken to imply that this was a period of relatively high tensions between the Kzinti and the Federation.

Four: A thematic defense of the concept

As discussed in the previous section, humanity's foreign relations are known to take a long time to stabilise fully. I believe it is possible that this could mean that it'd work out so the fourth Earth-Kzinti war happened some time in the mid-2150s--so late enough that it's just after the Xindi conflict, and that it could tie into the buildup to the Romulan War.

This could tie into why the NX-01 was only in service for ten years before being decomissioned. At the start of Enterprise, Starfleet is still relying on an older and less capable fleet, so they wouldn't be able to afford to retire a warp five ship so soon unless they had the capabilities to build better ones en masse. Being forced to build up that capability due to a Kzinti war and then having to come out with a more capable class due to the Romulan War would explain that.

From a thematic point of view, I believe this would make sense. By the end of Enterprise, Starfleet has two NX-class ships in service, and one of them took much longer to complete than expected. If a fourth Kzinti war broke out at around this time, it'd make sense that Starfleet would expand its ship-building capabilities as a response. This would make the idea that it was somehow a reasonable military threat to the Romulans by 2156 more plausible.

While it is true that Starfleet would have a reasonable excuse to do this in the wake of the Xindi conflict, it's also true that they could have started doing this during the conflict, too. A new human-Kzinti war could be the kick in the pants Starfleet needed to get their ass into gear on this front, especially in the general context of the brewing Romulan cold war.

It'd also make sense from the Romulan point of view. Stoking the flames of a fourth Earth-Kzinti war could provide the 22nd century Romulans cover to sow discord elsewhere. With Earth distracted with the breakout of a new war, they may not be able to keep the Vulcans, the Andorians, and the Tellarites as closely aligned on the Romulan issue as they would otherwise like.

The Kzinti could also make sense as a puppet state for the Romulans too, especially during this period. They had previous conflicts with Earth, so it'd make sense for them to more or less side with the Romulans during the cold war, either knowingly or not. They also wouldn't necessarily like humans suddenly being in a better diplomatic position and may want to change that in their favour, so even if they're not a puppet state, their interests could align with the Romulans.

Conclusions

While this may not be the shape canon eventually takes, I believe it'd make sense if it did. Maybe Sulu was right with his dates, maybe human-Kzinti relations are largely an abberation and did stabilise for the most part after the late 21st century, maybe they were all of equal significance, and maybe my thematic defense of this is off-base. But I think I've made a decent case for why all of this could be a potential route for canon to take.

Either way, I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

The Genesis Device, or Genesis Torpedo, as the Klingons called it, is a rather ominous device created by Dr.s Carol and David Marcus. It uses matter to synthetically create a "living, breathing, planet capable of supporting whatever life forms we see fit to deposit on it." In short, it appears to be the same idea as a replicator, except on a planetary scale. The problem is that it was used under less-than ideal conditions; a crippled ship in the middle of a nebula, which created a less-than ideal planet (or entire solar system, depending on which fiction you believe). Many have suggested that the reason it didn't work was because of what I mentioned above. The device was used on circumstances it was never meant for. However... there is a second theory, one which I tend to subscribe to. Doctor David Marcus was impatient and could be rash and arrogant like his father. "Actually he's a lot like you... in many ways." -Dr. Carol Marcus He rushed the production of the Genesis Device and used protomatter to solve many problems in its production. "An unstable substance which every ethical scientist in the galaxy has denounced as dangerously unpredictable." -Lt. Saavik In short, the Genesis Device was flawed, which is part of the reason it was abandoned... The other reason being the political objections by the Klingons who saw it as a weapon of mass destruction. So I'm curious... Had the Genesis been used on a suitable planet in the "goldielock zone" of a solar system, would it have worked?

We know that the Romulan Star Empire was in complete dissaray after the Romulan Supernova and we know that the Klingon Empire is an expansionist empire that has fought several conflicts with the Romulans over the years and doesn't like the Romulans. While the Klingon Empire probably wouldn't have the strength to conquer the entire Romulan Star Empire how likely is it they conquered at least part of the former Romulan Empire after the supernova?

I'm doing a casual rewatch of DS9, especially trying to watch individual episodes I haven't seen before. I just watched "Let He Who is Without Sin," the episode where Worf, Dax, Leeta, Bashir, and Quark take a vacation to Risa, and encounter the New Essentialists who want to (for lack of a better term) close Risa down because they think all that hedonism is making the Federation soft. I was surprised to read on Memory Alpha that a lot of the DS9 crew didn't like the episode - I loved it, not just because it had a lot of fun moments in it, but it also gave us a little peek into life in the Federation outside of both Starfleet and Earth.

It also made me think: what would social conservatism in the Federation look like?

To an extent, this really relies on how much there actually is Federation society, Federation culture, a Federation identity. Certainly just going from what we're shown on screen, the Federation as an institution doesn't seem to really have a major presence in the day to day lives of citizens. It's also not really clear how much of a say Federation citizens have a in their government, or how often they express it. Still, the phrase "Federation citizens" is used often enough, and allusions are made to rights guaranteed to Federation citizens (as well as more general things outside of Starfleet, like the Federation News Service that Jake Sisko writes for) that I guess we can say there is some kind of Federation identity and Federation society.

Even though I know it's much more complicated than that, I will also take for granted that the Federation being a post-scarcity society means that economic concerns are not longer a factor in social divisions.

There are clearly individuals on local planets who resent the Federation as an organization and/or are prejudiced against other races, and even TNG has something like that with the Vulcan isolationists mentioned in "Gambit." But those feel less like a basis for a broad Federation conservatism and instead something like the Scottish nationalists or Basque separatists, local movements that as a result don't necessarily have a clear political orientation.

It is interesting that the Essentialists on Risa seem to be a small group without a lot of widespread popular support (though that might be from the fact they were on Risa at the time) and led by a professor, which does remind me of the tendency of modern conservative vanguard movements to be led by public intellectuals, who often crave or at least thrive off of the acceptance by mainstream liberals (though obviously what a 'liberal' would be in the context of the Federation also raises a lot of question - so maybe read that in as a general "Federation mainstream view"). I'm thinking of William S. Buckley or, more recently, the various members of the intellectual dark web.

The Essentialists seem to be focused on regulating (and restricting) public morals to maintain a strong defense, presumably also for Starfleet maintaining a more militarized posture. Though as I think Worf even mentions in the episode, this makes sense given the recent threats of the Dominion and Borg, but isn't a lasting argument for a broad movement, and again seems to be more an effort to create a public opinion rather than reflecting one.

If there is what might be a major basis for a social conservatism in the Federation, it seems to be prejudice against AI and androids (you could even imagine this articulated as a "they're taking our jobs!" type sentiment, especially when the post-scarcity society seems like it would mean that people are doing jobs because they like them). And of course, the ever-present prejudice against Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, Ferengi, Orions - really, it seems like any species not in the Federation is looked down upon by those already in it.

How do they know how to encode audio and video in to the signal so that the new species can decode it?

For example Europe uses DVBT2 digital TV broadcasting standard and North America uses ATSC, American TV receivers cant decode European TV signals and vice versa, now imagine how different would standards for full duplex television communication be between different space faring civilizations.

Do they first try communicating using analogue audio modulations FM, AM, SSB?