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Beyond the obvious ones, I mean. Being genocidal is a pretty big moral failing.

But, I’ve long been fascinated by the female Changeling’s statement “To become a thing is to know a thing. To assume its form is to begin to understand its existence.” There’s a deep philosophical truth here: every object has its own unique existence and, therefore, perspective. We can never understand the existence of, say, a rock because we can never be a rock. We can never occupy the place in the universe a rock does, so we can have only a partial, limited, and qualitatively incomplete understanding of what it “means” to be a rock. We cannot understand a rock, but Changelings can.

Being able to exist as another object opens up all kinds of philosophical questions from ontology to phenomenology. Changelings can literally assume the entire physical existence of a rock; it’s established in dialogue that if you scan Odo while he’s a rock, you’ll only read a rock. So on a very basic and deep level, Odo is a rock when he assumes its form. And Odo regularly comments on the exhilaration he feels taking different forms. One has to assume this is at least in part due to the variety of unique experiences and insights afforded by existing as other beings for a time.

So, equipped with this unique ability to literally assume an entirely different existence, the Founders use it instead to reject and dominate the rest of the galaxy (or try to, at least). They have this amazing capacity to perceive the universe as others do and connect with and understand them on a level far beyond anything “solids” are capable of and they totally squander it. They are starkly at odds with the ur-Humanoids that seeded their bodily form into primordial genomes throughout the galaxy to foster mutual respect and a sense of commonality through a shared physical form.

I add this betrayal of their potential as mediators of great peace and understanding to the long list of crimes the Founders are guilty of.

Being the nerd I am this is something I've thought about a lot. It feels like the Warp 5 speed limit is something that "should" have a lot of impact on the plot of the show but for some reason has NEVER been addressed properly.

Firstly lets break down the two parts of the Speed Limit as simply as we can:

1. All Federation Vessels MUST travel at no faster than Warp 5 - Unless given emergency clearance. We see this clearance given in a few episodes. This Speed Limit is in affect throughout ALL of Federation Space.

2. In areas of space in imminent danger of "space damage" due to warp fields, there was ban on all but the most essential travel.

The Speed Limit was initially introduced in TNG: Force of Nature (7x09). The Speed Limit was bought up again in TNG: The Pegasus (7x12) and TNG: Eye of the Beholder (7x18). Other than these episodes, however, the speed limit is never bought up again in either TNG or even DS9.

There was never an attempt on screen to explain what happened to the speed limit. I assume most people simply thought a magic fix was found. In my opinion I thing the problem arose from the speed limit being a "TNG" problem and well...TNG kinda ends after season 7.

Now there are several Beta-Canon sources that try to elaborate on the speed limit.

First is the Star Trek Voyager Season 1 Writer Bible released in 1994. The bible contains some interesting press release material. A part on the U.S.S. Voyager's engineering section states that the ships new warp drive system was more efficient than previous models and as such allowed the ship "to exceed the warp speed limit imposed in the Star Trek TNG episode 'Force of Nature', without polluting the space continuum". The Bible makes no reference to "Variable Pylons or Nacelles". This bible would have been released in the gap between TNG ending and VOY starting. This information about the speed limit is not repeated in any of VOYs other season bibles.

The next Beta-Canon source is Michael and Denise Okuda's "Star Trek Encyclopedia". Now here is where it gets confusing as the book seemingly contradicts itself a few times. The 1st edition released in 1994 suggests that Warp 5 became the "New normal cruising speed" after TNG: Force of Nature. This 1st edition was released shortly before TNG ended.

In 1999 a 3rd edition of the Encyclopedia was released with the new information that "The Starship Enterprise-D and other ships observed the “warp speed limit” for the remainder of Star Trek: The Next Generation. After that, it was assumed that Starfleet was able to develop a more “environmentally friendly” warp drive, so the speed limit was evidently lifted." (p.187). From this it would seem the authors were pretty certain the speed limit was dropped by the time TNG ends. In a different entry later on it states "A Temporary upper limit for warp speed travel was established in Force of Nature". One may interpret this wording as evidence the speed limit was always intended to be a temporary thing by the writers.

HOWEVER, the new edition also starts talking about the ever favorite "Nacelles". The entry on warp factor (p.555) states that "Later advances in Federation warp drive technology permitted the use of speeds exceeding warp 5. One of the first ships to be so equipped was the Intrepid- class U.S.S. Voyager, whose variable-geometry warp drive nacelles prevented damage to the subspace continuum". As such this supports the idea that the writers wanted to go into Voyager without any of that Speed Limit baggage and as such the engines/nacelles on certain ships are upgraded to negate this.

The Okudas elaborate on this by stating "This speed limit was abandoned a couple of years later when it was assumed that newer Federation starships (like the U.S.S. Voyager and the new Defiant) had improved, environmentally friendly warp drive systems that did not cause damage to the spatial continuum".

Now the question that is left unanswered is whether this implies the speed limit as a whole was dropped or whether the speed limit was dropped for Certain ships e.g. the U.S.S Voyager and Defiant.

Even MORE confusing is this information contradicts the earlier statement on page 187 that stated that the speed limit was lifted AFTER the end of TNG for ALL ships. (If the Okudas ever read this I'm sorry for nitpicking)

Finally we have the unpublished Voyager "Technical Manual" which states that the Variable Geometry Warp Nacelles on the U.S.S. Voyager "may no longer have a negative impact on habitable worlds, as established in TNG". This Manual was again published in 1994, likely in the gap between TNG ending and VOY starting. As such the stance of this manual is that the Speed Limit was still in affect by the time of Voyager, but ships like the U.S.S Voyager could bypass it with "Clean Nacelles". As such, this supports the information published in the Star Trek Encyclopedias (Mostly) and the Voyager Bible (Kinda).

For a while this was the final say on the topic until we reach Voyagers late season 7 episode "Renaissance Man" (7x24). Now as I haven't watched Voyager in a long long long time, I will just use the wiki as evidence. The Memory Alpha Entry on Variable geometry pylons states: "Renaissance Man" however suggested that the warp drive of the Voyager still caused the cumulative damage. In the episode, members of the Hierarchy capture Captain Janeway and demand the warp core of the Voyager in exchange for her. The Doctor comes up with a lie for the crew of the Voyager, that they had entered R'Kaal space, a species of ecological extremists he had invented, who had supposedly outlawed warp travel in their space, because conventional warp engines damage subspace. When he claims this is the reason why Voyager has to surrender its warp core, the crew makes no effort to convince the R'Kaal that their warp drive is environmentally safe".

Many people use this episode as evidence that the speed limit was still in affect by the end of Voyager or at the very least that a fix hadn't been found yet. I've always found it weird that they waited until the PENULTIMATE episode of the show to bring this topic up again and to me screams of "Um guys I've ran out of ideas....hmm does anyone remember that whole thing about banning warp travel or something". Its possible the writers (Who only ever wrote a few episodes of Voyager) weren't aware of the implications of what they were talking about. (Wouldn't be the first time). In my opinion I always just figured that whatever fix to the warp drive they came up with, didn't actually 100% make the engines environmentally friendly, just heavily negated it.

An interesting note is that due to the lack of an actual on-screen explanation, Memory-Alpha basically thinks the speed limit is potentially in affect as of the most modern Star Trek Content. Which I find unlikely.

This last mention in the penultimate episode of Voyager was the last we heard of the speed limit for about 23 years until the Lower Decks episode "Caves" (4x08). This episode seems to suggest that the whole Warp fields being damaging to subspace was a massive conspiracy planted by the Vendorians. Or maybe not, its not very clear. So make of this what you will. Maybe this a way of the writers trying to explain away why the speed limit was dropped so quickly (Potentially after the end of TNG as other sources suggest). But who knows *Throws up arms*

I just wish the writers would write one or two lines and give me peace of mind but apparently that's too hard *Cries*.

In my personal opinion the Speed Limit was dropped for SOME reason between the end of TNG and about the first episode of VOY. Perhaps with the discovery of a fix to the issue, Starfleet reversed the ban and then started retrofitting older models of ships or phasing them out when they can. Perhaps at the same time they realised it was some weird Vendorian conspiracy (Maybe)

At the same time though, I think the areas of space most at risk of damage were likely left as restricted areas unless the ships traveling through them had one of the new engines upgrades.

I am not in the camp that believes that maybe one or two of the more modern ships in the Federation were given a fix and the rest of the fleet was left to languish at Warp 4.7-5 for the rest of eternity. To me thats just silly. Especially given that the Romulans, Cardassians and whoever else are BOUND to ignore it. Thus putting them at massive advantages even in peacetime.

But at this point I'm just tired of writing this thing and want to see what you guys think. I would like to see this as the last word on the whole Speed Limit topic as I believe I've pretty much gathered all possible information and laid it out.

When discussions of what is the “most impressive” or desirable technology in the Trek universe come up, warp travel, replicators/transporters, and computers/androids regularly come up, but for me the Federation’s sensor technology always seemed the most mind-boggling. For example, they are shown to be able to reliably detect phenomena on the quantum level in several instances. They also seem able to counteract or compensate for fundamental limitations on how much we can know about a quantum system (Heisenberg compensators work just fine, thank you). I realize the sensors are primarily an invention of techno-babble with capabilities that, like how fast warp speed is, are entirely dictated by the needs of the plot, but it got me thinking: if we could reliably and precisely detect quantum-level phenomena, what would that enable us to do?

It would certainly open up whole new worlds in materials science (transparent aluminum anyone?), quantum computing (could we see the first AGI?), and just, like, all of chemistry (at what point do we become capable of synthesizing any conceivable compound?). I imagine medical diagnosis would be transformed (when you can scan the atomic level, resolving a cell is laughably easy), entirely new communications technology would be possible (applications of quantum entanglement?), and I’m sure we’d waste no time in developing military and weaponry applications (real-world particle weapons). We could complete particle physics. And perhaps very high resolution scanning of the structure of space time would provide the knowledge necessary to learn how to manipulate space time to enable propulsion of some sort. In short, I think there’s an argument that sensing technology opens the door for nearly all the other technology depicted in Trek.

Conversely, do limitations on what we can know about quantum systems inherently restrict the types of technologies we can develop? That is, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle exists, so no transporters? And perhaps this points to a more deeply rooted philosophical connection between the limits of knowledge and capability to change. Curious to hear other thoughts.

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Several times in latter Star Trek, there have been attempts to paste over plot holes created by the mere passage of time in real life. The most prominent one is, of course, the explanation of the bump-less Klingons as a factor of the augment virus, which of course was derided by many fans initially, but has now basically been accepted as canon. I came around on it, after at first considering it rather clumsy. It provided a whole world of intrigue and drama around an interesting divided caste system in the Klingon Empire.

(I would have preferred to leave it at simply different varieties of the same race, shown vividly in Discovery, which portrayed a particularly less human offshoot of Klingons, but alas--they did what they did in Enterprise, and it is internally consistent enough.)

Anyway, to the point: the oft discussed Future's End episode. What we have here, in my opinion, is a fairly elegant way to explain the divergence in the 1960's vision of computing vs. the real world and eventually what we see in modern day Trek episodes. I know this isn't a particularly insightful revelation, but I think it's one of the better "pastings" of plot holes and one the writers themselves might not have considered, although they might very well have.

Starling's adaptation of technology from the timeship, as rudimentary as it was, and done with technology and materials only available to 20th century science, led to much more advanced computing earlier. Perhaps we ourselves in the real world live in Starling's future, and you could say that everything after a certain production point in the franchise represents the future in which he advanced technology more quickly.

Without Starling, we get pretty much everything in TOS and the movies, with primitive optical displays and a vast reliance on physical engineering. Perhaps this equates further with Starfleet's general fear of advanced AI and the removal of the human element from space exploration. Making everything less automated and more visceral may very well be a conscious design choice, but also clearly inspired by the Starling-less philosophies on computing in general. Maybe the lack of Starling's interference directly leads to a more open and catastrophic Eugenics Wars? The timeline is clearly quite diverged. The nineties probably looked a lot different in the historical databanks of the original NCC-1701 or Memory Alpha as depicted in the Original Series.

Anyway, the gist of it all (again, not this is particularly novel or anything) is that I think this episode allows for many interesting ways to describe the progression of the differing tech as the franchise aged. As much as we occasionally laugh at the crazy ass ideas of Braga and Menosky, this was a cool one and is ripe for fan debate. I realize that in the real world, the computer boom is perfectly explainable without future technology, but in a television setting, it's kind of a fun idea.

I unreservedly loved when Pike learned his fate from the time crystal on Boreth. I thought it spoke so powerfully to the kind of man that he was, that he would choose to walk a path that leads to hell because in the process he saves 5 cadets. Yes 2 more cadets die in the accident, but nobody can accuse Pike of having given less than his all for them.

What was key to this story though is the uncertainty surrounding Pike's fate: Pike has no idea if it's possible to achieve a better outcome by meddling with time. Maybe what the crystal showed simply can't be changed, or maybe anything he does can only make things worse (can't cheat fate, etc). All he knows is that, on his present course, eventually he and specifically him will be in the right time and place to save those 5 young lives. Pike, unwilling to gamble on that outcome, chooses and keeps choosing to carry the burden all the way to the end. Unimaginable nobility and courage.

Alas, then "The Quality of Mercy" comes along and lifts the veil. What future-Pike tells us is that the timeline where Pike saves 5 and loses 2 cadets is mathematically optimal, because that's the timeline that avoids a Romulan war that kills millions. Two deaths vs millions: not saying that it doesn't still take courage to let oneself be exposed to delta radiation, but there's an obvious correct choice to make here.

But there's something so cold and sad about unraveling Pike's choices like this. Because what about the 5 cadets he did save in the original timeline? They don't matter anymore. Yes Pike saves them, but it's incidental because that's just what happens in the timeline that avoids the war. In the bad timeline, do the 2 extra cadets that Pike saves survive the war? It doesn't matter if they do or not, the war's what's important.

In fact, if future-Pike had shown a timeline in which the war is avoided, but all 7 of the cadets die, that would still obviously be the correct path for Pike to choose. The cadets. Don't. Matter.

I understand the terrible dilemma that Pike faced when he saw Maat alive, knowing what is to come, but surely there was a way to write a story about that which didn't turn his heroic ultimate sacrifice into an optimization problem.

The USS voyager had approximately 4-5 years of solitude in the delta quadrant before temporarily reestablishing communication with Starfleet HQ via the Hirogen relay network. Before and after this brief connection, we see the crew access the computer for information dating back at least to the early to mid 19th century, and in one instance the Doctor was able to create a convincing holographic recreation of Crell Moset, his personality, and his laboratory, as well as investigate his war crimes via records of purchases of biochemical supplies.

So, do they just load up every ship with all information ever recorded before they leave spacedock? How can ships without contact to HQ have so much data available to them whenever they so wish?

The saucer of the Enterprise was recovered, post Generations. The stardrive of the Syracuse was available, due to the loss of its saucer, so it was available. LaForge ended up using the Syracuse stardrive to pair with the Enterprise saucer to create the "Enterprise-D" seen in Picard S3.
Why was this ship the Enterprise? Why did the computer acknowledge it as such when Picard performed the reactivation procedure? Should not the keel be with the powerplant/engines half of the ship and not the saucer?
From what we know - said and seen on screen - the Enterprise saucer was mated to the Syracuse stardrive. If you pause/zoom on the combined ship, you can see the Syracuse markings on the dorsal and the pylons, so it certainly seems like that's the stardrive from the Syracuse. Additionally, in the scenes where they show the back/dorsal, there is a distinctive color difference between the saucer and the stardrive - just enough so it's clear they were from different ships. So, I think it's pretty likely that the Syracuse stardrive was mated with the Enterprise sauce.
Assuming so, the question is, why did the Enterprise name/identity take priority over the Syracuse identity?
And, if we want to get even more crazy, what if this ship were to separate? Would the saucer be the Enterprise and the stardrive be the Syracuse again? Or the Enterprise stardrive, even though it says Syracuse on it and the Enterprise stardrive was destroyed?
So many fun questions to think about...

I just watched "The Perfect Mate" again and I'm curious about whether the Kriosian metamorphic powers would only work on men or if they would work on anyone attracted to women? For that matter, would they work on gay men? Or asexuals?

Also, if her powers don't work on women (or at least not on straight women) why do they they need an android to be her chaperone? Why not just a woman? Seems more in Troi's wheelhouse than Data's.

It seems to me if her powers do work on women, then Kamala would defacto be bi, since if she imprinted on a woman she would be gay. Anyway, 90s Trek was way too heteronormative to bring this up, so what do we all think?

I personally think tactical officers and security officers should be different roles.

I would have tactical officers more as a soldier in a way. I would have them as trained in advanced use of weapons and tactics. They would be the officers responsible for the more military roles and would be trained in advanced tactics and combat techniques such as Eva combat, recon, ship combat, specialists in weapons and bomb techs. On a ship I would have a senior tactical officer stationed on the bridge in command of the ships weapons, and there would be a few teams of tactical officers for when a more militaristic approach is needed like the maco in enterprise. They would be the offensive and first responders if the ship is boarded.

I would have security as the more defensive side in a boarding scenario. They would be responsible for guarding the key areas of a ship in a boarding scenario. On the day to day they would be trained in things like crowd management, investigation of crime, escorting VIPs.

A regular away mission would have a security officer assigned to protect the away team. But when they are caught in a hostile situation needing backup or when you need to infiltrate a hostile ship you send a tactical team. I would see on average ship the ratio of security : tactical officers would be 80:20.

Any thoughts would you see them as separate roles?

So looking at how the Federation is organized is always fun. The most striking thing is how sparse and haphazard Federation instutions seem to be.

Of course, this makes sense. When the Federation came together, the founding members had very different histories, cultures and sometimes biological needs. The Vulcans had just gone through a revolution, the Vulcans and the Andorians had been at war and Earth just had its first extra system colonies.

You don't want to start with a complex institutional framework in such a scenario. You want to keep it simple. A venue for diplomacy and arbitration, a Federation Council say, where every member sends their representatives however they see fit. Point in case, T'Pau was offered a seat and declined and that made news. Which likely wouldn't have been so noteworth if she had just declined running for office.

What else do we need? Someone to run this council. A presider or President. Yaresh-Inyo was convinced by his collegues to put his name up for election. This apparently wasn't popular election for however many citizens the Federation had a the time. The Council elects a President.

Speaking of citizens, some Guarantees on individual freedoms. Humans are big on that, the new Vulcan government is all going IDIC after they ousted their military dictorship. And yes, member polities can just leave, the Andorian Ambassador threatens that in Journey to Babel.

What the Federation doesn't have at this point is a fleet. The members have very different traditions, procedures and apparently humans stink. It is also still unusual that Spock joined Starfleet, Kirk still introduces his vessel as the Earth Ship Enterprise and on the dedication plaque of the Enterprise-B we still read it was constructed by UESPA. Notably the Vulcan fleet still exists independtly of Starfleet in the 24th century.

And that's it. Congratulations. We have a Federation.

Now, going a bit further to the 23rd centry, we see some Federation personnel. Federation Commissioners (high and assistent) feature three times in TOS. Now, a commissioner is usually created ad hoc. They are not usually part of constitution, like ministers or secretaries might be. Which fits our model, the Federation is trying to create an administration separate from what the member worlds offer.

A bit later, in the movies, we also see for one and only time a Federation Security officer, who accosts McCoy. We don't know when exactly these guys were founded, but they are not around for long, see below.

In the same timeframe, we also see the crew of the Enterprise "tried" in front of the Federation Council. The Federation doesn't seem to have a separate judicial branch to handle this.

So that's the state of things, the Federation is trying to get some institutions in place. Maybe around this time they also founded the Federation Naval Patrol that Paris thought about joining to mess with his father. Is this literally about sea-going ships or is it metaphorical for space-going vessels? On the one hand,"navy" has not been used for space operations anywhere else, but on the other hand, what would the Federation do with boats? If it were about space, it could fit this model, because the Federation - at this point - has no fleet.

By the mid 24th century, the picture has changed. It's Starfleet, Starfleet, Starfleet. We see Starfleet fighting the Federation's wars, we see Starfleet security officers where they really have no right to be, like in the office building of the President, where we would expect our trusted Federation Security personnel, they do diplomacy independently, they help with colonization efforts with no civilian oversight,

The other member fleets still exist. But we only see some hints in Reunification and later on LD for the Vulcan fleet. There are some instutions that operate in their own right still, like the Diplomatic Corps, including Khelyr and Curzon, the Department for Temporal Investigations, and the Federation Science Council provides regulation on hazardous materials. Now the Science Council might be separate institution, or just the Council when it does sciency things. Much like the Council of the European Union operates.

But what about Starfleet, what happened there? It is apparently now the Federation's hammer that makes everything a nail. Of course, captain Picard introduces his gig as the Federation Starfleet Enterprise, unlike Kirk.

So Starfleet is now de facto the Federation fleet. Does it mean it is legally a Federation institution now? Maybe it is, but not necessarily. For example, China has no army, the KPC has, and this legal distinction concerns exactly no one.

But how did this happen? First and foremost, where Spock and other Vulcans had been less commonly seen in Starfleet in the 23rd century, we now see Vulcans and Andorians at all levels of Starfleet. Not to speak of all the people, whose homeworlds might not have a dedicated fleet program. And some Romulans in disguise too, it's really a place to be.

So for Earth Ship to become Federation Ship, all we really need is a change in perception among the Starfleet's rank and file and the Federation higher ups thinking "OK, we'll just ask Starfleet" one too many times.

Of course, in the DSC timeframe Starfleet then absconds with remnants of the UFP.

To my knowledge, this post addresses everything that we saw on the show that might be a Federation institution. Except for the Federation Supreme Court, mentioned by Bashir Senior and I'm not sure about his understanding of legalities. If I have missed something, please tell me.

And thanks to u/uequalsw for the help.

Mines currently banned by every country but Russia and the US for good reason. While the US refuses to sign the treaty banning them outright, they've also scaled back their usage.

They are insidious devices that kill indiscriminately, and they are often accidentally left behind when wars end. There are still children being maimed by mines all over Southeast Asia. There are so many maimed children, in fact, that there are beauty contests for amputees.

But even regular mines don't approach the evil of Rom's self-replicating mines. These things are like the back story to a dozen other Star Trek episodes where the crew comes across a civilization that wiped itself out, only leaving behind automated war machines.

Seriously. Let's say the mines could never be taken down and the Federation loses or the Federation and the Dominion both fall. For thousands of years in the future, these invisible mines are going to maim random passersby. Even if the Dominion loses control of the Gamma Quadrant, anyone who accidentally passes through the wormhole is going to be killed.

There are even worse possibilities. Each of these mines are governed by a software program that is also replicated when a new one is created. Eventually, due to cosmic radiation, that program is going to suffer from degradation. Who is to say one of them won't experience enough software corruption that they no longer limit their self-replication? At that point, you've got a huge dyson cloud of destruction that could eventually swallow the entire galaxy.

I think we also have to think about how they're replicating. We know that replicating something that has an on-board energy supply requires that energy to exist in the replicating device. So these mines have to have either started with an absurdly large amount of energy or they must have some way of harvesting energy from the environment. So if they go dyson cloud, they'll strip everything in their path.

The Dominion was right to call Rom an evil genius.

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It's often occurred to me that, given the non lethal nature of phasers, why don't Starfleet people just use a wide sweep and stun everyone in combat? Similar to the phaser sweeps they did in DS9 against hidden changelings. Clearly not as dramatic but would make more sense tactically in many situations. Thoughts?

One of my favorite episodes of Star Trek: TNG is Genesis. Ever since it first aired thirty years ago, I have watched it (and its thematic cousin Threshold) many, many times. I am well aware that many fans hold these two episodes in contempt, but I've been fascinated by their narrative excesses and idiosyncratic portrayal of evolutionary theory.

Both of these episodes have one common thread: writer-producer Brannon Braga. I'm aware that his grasp of the concept of evolution is a running joke in the fandom, but I was unsatisfied. Braga is considered an inconsistent writer, but his portrayal of evolution (despite being wildly inaccurate) is philosophically consistent (crew members devolve, leading to a breakdown of the social/familial structure). Through watching these episodes, I've tried to reverse-engineer the source of their portrayal of evolution, and thus the philosophy which spawned them.

I believe it lies not in science fiction literature or movies, and certainly not in any kind of actual science, but in a location (Kent State) and a musical act (Devo).

First of all, Brannon Braga attended Kent State for two years, from 1983 to 1985, before transferring to UC Santa Cruz. Apart from Braga, many entertainment personalities have attended Kent State (including Trek guest stars Ray Wise and John de Lancie).

Among the most notable attendees of Kent State were the founding members of legendary New Wave act Devo (who happen to be my favorite band), which was formed by Mark Motherbaugh, Gerald Casale and Bob Lewis in the aftermath of the Kent State shootings^(1). Their hallmarks were a striking visual image and a pioneering combination of rock and abstract electronics, but their gimmick and ideological hook was devolution.

Inspired by crackpot theories, fundamentalist screeds against evolution, and scientology, Mothersbaugh, Casale and Lewis created devolution (hence the namesake), a wholly fake doctrine which held that society was regressing--devolving--and mankind was regressing along with it.

They tell us that

We lost our tails

Evolving up

From little snails

--Devo, "Jocko Homo" (Note that, in the original pamphlet which inspired this song (and much of Devo's theory) "Jocko Homo" translates as "ape-man" cf. the primitive Riker in the Ready Room)

The year Braga first began attending Kent State--1983--was the year that Devo released their last consistently good album IMO (Oh No! It's Devo) as well as appearing on the soundtrack to cult comedy classic Doctor Detroit. I believe he had to be aware of their existence, and he might well have even been a fan

wear gaudy colors or avoid display

lay a million eggs or give birth to one

the fittest shall survive yet the unfit may live

be like your ancestors or be different

we must repeat!

--The Devolutionary Oath

My theory: Brannon Braga drew on Devo and their bespoke mythology to craft Genesis and Threshold; turning the band's metaphor of devolution into a literal concept, providing a basis for storytelling (e.g. in Genesis how the society of the Enterprise devolves along with the cast, leaving the crew unable to perform the most basic functions, and ending with crewmembers literally devouring each other.) And, not only did the concept provide a running thread to expand on Braga's love of Cronenbergian body horror (always a consideration), but it also allowed him to pay homage to his alma mater. It's not entirely off-brand; consider the example of the constant references to Bozeman (Braga's hometown). Kent State is directly referenced in Deadlock (another Braga-written episode):

JANEWAY: So where is the other ship?

KIM: As strange as it sounds, Captain, according to these readings, another Voyager's right here, right now, occupying the same point in space time we are.

JANEWAY: Quantum theorists at Kent State University ran an experiment in which a single particle of matter was duplicated using a divergence of subspace fields, a spatial scission.

--Star Trek: Voyager, Deadlock (S2, E21)

Admittedly, the evidence is circumstantial--Braga has never mentioned the band in any interview I can find--but the concept of devolution plus the Kent State link is, in my opinion, too strong to simply discard (discovering that Braga attended KSU was the source of my making this connection).

I welcome any and all thoughts or criticisms. Thank you.

^(1). It's interesting to note that, per Memory Alpha, Braga penned the story for the VOY episode Memorial; which could conceivably serve as an oblique reference to the Kent State Massacre and the continuing trauma surrounding it.

In Star Trek The Original Series, Season 2 Episode 3 "The Changeling", it is shown that LT. Uhura, after having her mind partially wiped by the Nomad probe, can only speak in Swahili. Why is she forced to relearn English instead of the Universal translator kicking in and altering her speech to be recognizable for all crew members? It does this with alien species, some of whom have yet to be encountered by the federation at large (see: Cheron natives from "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield").

Starfleet sensor systems are some of the best in the Alpha Quadrant. With a core mission of exploration, every starship is equipped with the latest in scientific equipment. This equipment can be split into two groups, passive systems like telescopes, interferometers, and antennae and active systems like LIDAR and other particle emitters. These passive and active systems allow for certain tactical opportunities.

The passive scanning ability allows for superior targeting. Often times a Starfleet Captain will give orders to target a specific subsystem. This is an advanced ability that can make all the difference in a fight or prevent one altogether.

Passive instruments are also very useful for signals intelligence. Intercepting and decoding the communications of an enemy ship can reveal tactics, weaknesses, and objectives. When ideally executed signals intelligence can give a window into the entire decision making structure of your foe. Starfleet systems are sensitive enough to measure signals of all scopes and sources from intraship coms to intergalactic signals.

The active sensor systems lend themselves to the dazzler tactic. This is where you point one of your particle emitters directly at enemy detectors. Painting the target like this can temporarily blind their systems and give a window for maneuver or counteraction. At high enough power a dazzler attack can completely destroy the detector.

A last tactic I'll mention is the offensive scan. This is like a dazzler attack but larger and directed at the entire ship, not just it's sensors. The offensive scan creates a multi-spectrum pulse that can overload EPS grids or blow out a delicately balanced warp nacelle.

These are tactics that lend themselves to the sensor-equipped Starfleet.

What other ways can sensors be used as weapons?

This is something I think about often. I know that Gene Roddenberry envisioned the Federation as a sort of idealized version of the United Nations, but I think over the course of TNG, DS9, and VOY this changed.

We know that the Federation has an elected government with a Legislature (Federation Council), Executive (Federation President), and Judiciary, in addition it's clear from the events of DS9 that the Federation President is the Commander-In-Chief of the Federations defense forces/military (Starfleet)

I think over the course of my many watch throughs of TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, and now SNW, I've come to the personal conclusion that the Federation has become something of a more federalized European Union. It doesn't come across as centrally unified as say the United States, but it's certainly more centralized in nature than the contemporary European Union or United Nations.

Thoguhts?

A Bajoran poet from 300 years ago falls out of the wormhole.

Kira says every school child can recite his poetry.

But at the end, Sisko asks the prophets to send him back to his own time.

Since he was supposed to disappear in the past, sending him back should alter the timeline.

Even worse, Sisko specifically asks the prophets to send him back, “as he is now” after being healed. This leads me to believe they didn’t alter his memory, and therefore he has knowledge of the future including the cardassian occupation!

Surely Sisko deserves a visit from DTI?

A little known feature of the Intrepid-class is a second warp core in the engineering hull.

Could this warp core be brought online to double the power available to ships systems?

To me it appears the aft core is intended for engines only while the core amidship is meant for the rest of ships systems, but both would still operate at the same time.

Voyager was legendarily launched without all of her systems installed and a second warp core was likely one of those systems not installed.

Do you think Voyager could have built a second one and got it up and running? They basically rebuilt their one core at least once during the series.

When trying to prevent making contact with the distortion ring, Tuvok - who is in command at the time - says 'If we cannot go around it, we will have to go through it'.

When encountering an obstacle (also seen in other series/episodes but I can't recall which, please comment if you do), the person in command seems to discount the option of 'going over' altogether. I remember sentences along the lines of 'going around it is a detour of xx days, so we must wait or go through' when a field of some kind is encountered which on-screen looks quite two-dimensional.

Maybe I'm missing information, like height dimensions of said obstacles. But I'm curious if this is a question other people have, or have had, and what possible explanations there are.

Several times (The Motion Picture and Generations spring to mind) there's an incident near Earth and the Enterprise is the only ship in range. It doesn't make a lot of sense for there to be only one ship in the Sol system, that seems illogical. I think the explanation is a treaty limiting how many Starfleet ships can be in the sector but we just never hear them name the treaty on-screen.

Let's look at something else that seems illogical without the full context. Imagine you've only seen a scattered collection of episodes and don't know all the lore. You've seen Klingon and Romulan ships turning invisible with their cloaks. You've seen Starfleet technology is broadly speaking on a par with Klingon and Romulan technology, pretty much anything one of them can do is something all of them can do. You've seen them building all sorts of advanced technology out of shoelaces and tin foil. You've even seen a Starfleet Ship, the Defiant, cloaking sometimes. Logically cloaking should be well within the capabilities of Starfleet Ships. So whenever the Enterprise D/E or Voyager or a Runabout is on a mission where stealth would be helpful it's illogical that they can't just cloak.

Now we know why Voyager and the Enterprise don't cloak is because of the Treaty Of Algeron wherein Starfleet promises never to use cloaking devices in exchange for peace with the Romulan Empire. But if you haven't seen the episodes where the Treaty Of Algeron then it seems like a massive plot hole that doesn't make any sense "Why not just cloak?". Through bad luck you've just not seen the episodes that would explain it.

What if an unseen treaty is the answer to the seemingly illogical plot hole of only one ship being in the Sol system? The Treaty Of Shran was signed to limit the amount of military power that could be consolidated in the Sol system to minimise the possibility of any betrayals in the fledgling alliance between the Humans, Vulcans, Andorians and Tellarites. Maybe it was actually focused on the Andorians and Tellarites but ALL races had to agree to it. And maybe it was a logical threshold that wasn't updated properly. Famously the Titanic didn't have enough lifeboats because there was a regulation on how many lifeboats the largest class of oceanliner must have but that number wasn't updated in line with how big oceanliners were getting.

So the Treaty Of Shran restricted having more than X kilo-reeds of phaser power in any of the four home systems, which would have been a big fleet of ships in the 2160s but the threshold was never updated. A century later when the USS Enterprise Refit is about to leave drydock that one ship is more than the limit of X kilo-reeds of phaser power. So all the other ships with even moderate weaponry (Miranda, Soyuz and Oberth Classes) have to evacuate to a nearby system like Wolf 359. Speaking of Wolf 359, that was probably a good time to review the treaty. Starfleet threw out their old policy against dedicated warships to work on the Defiant. And the Federation reviewed the old treaty so now more ships can be in the Sol system at once because if the fleet at Wolf 359 had failed they would have wanted more than one ship in Sol as a backup. By the time of First Contact or the end of Voyager we see quite a few starships in the Sol system.

It's just bad luck that all the events we've seen of the Star Trek universe happen to be those that don't mention the Treaty Of Shran. So without that information we think it's illogical to not have more than one starship in the Sol sector.

Just coming over from a discussion about AI in the midst of thinking about the impact of current AI on my life. I'm currently working on something where AI is being used in place of what would have been creative human work. On the side, I'm a musician, and it's a little harrowing watching AI get better at generating historical voices or sounds.

Which go me thinking--could there be a coming gap in fresh, new artists if AI is doing a lot of work? Why go listen to some new artist when a computer can generate a clean recording of your favorite artist doing a cover of another favorite work? Especially in regards to classical music--as it falls out of vogue in conteporary culture I can just have a computer analyze the playing of Jascha Heifetz or Itzhak Perlman and generate anything I want.

My theory is this--during/before/around WW3 humanity had started implenting AI heavily in the arts. THe planetary devesation helped this along, and post-war there was a focus on rebuilding, but culture suffered massively. New AI comes along and they start using it to analyze historical records, but the bulk of it is media from 1600s-late 2000s (manuscripts, hard copies, physical recordings, whatever remained digitally).

So we get this second "renaissance"--except it's just facsimile of an entire swath of human history. There's a massive gap thanks to the war and pre-war AI use that was lost. We get lots of classical music, Shakepeare, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. THere's a glut of music and culture preserved from the 1940s-early 2000s thanks to how prolific media was in that era, although some things are lost. Also, as a result, there is less influence OF those media on people that ignore them or arent exposed and a budding art period is born thanks to technology (holodecks, terraforming--although the former also is heavily reliant on AI).

Anyway, just a thought I had while hoping my job doesn't disappear in the next yearlol

It's rarely discussed what pop-culture and ordinary life on Earth is like, so it's possible I've missed something.

But if we imagine Earth society in the 24th century, wouldn't it make sense that Star Fleet's adventures are publicized in pop culture? Be it as books, holo-novels, movies etc.?
Star Fleet's records, i.e. officer's logs, mission logs, maybe even recordings from missions, are probably largely public. I don't imagine there's a great deal of secrecy about past events in that advanced, utopian society. So while Star Fleet might keep records sealed for a couple months/years for safety reasons, I'd imagine that everything else will be publicly available. Even NASA does that.

So wouldn't it follow that all those literally fantastic adventures that happen in outer space are somehow used and reproduced for the public? Like, the Enterprise's log has to read like a script for a TV show at times, with all the things they encounter and overcome. And these stories are all in the public record. I imagine there's directors, authors and all sorts of artists that use these logs as inspiration. Or at least for a podcast.

Plus, that would be great for Star Fleet recruitment, and a great way to promote the Federation and it's goals. After all, how do you motivate young people who live in abundance on earth to join Star Fleet, which requires a lot of dedication and hard work. Well you tell them of Captain Picard and the heroes of the Enterprise and Voyager! And what better way to do that than a dramatized version of the official logs. A TV show based on a real story? What do ya'll think it would look like? Are the more well known officers kind of like famous actors when they go on shore leave?

It's a common canard that the layout of a Bird of Prey, K'tinga, or Constitution leaves the vessel hopelessly vulnerable to a simple shot to the neck or to an outstretched nacelle.

The usual counters are thus: nacelles and warp cores are radioactive and explosive, so some distance and the ability to detach the bridge is good, and that once shields are down, you're boned no matter what shape you are. It's also proposed that Klingons are worried about mutinies, and build their ships to make that hard.

I've another. It's also down to changes in shields, targeting systems, and propulsion between TOS and TNG's era of targeting systems. In the TOS era, engagements are well outside visual range, and hitting an enemy moving at close to the speed light, far away, isn't easy- battleship combat vs dogfights. Klingon ships are skinny and flat. As long as they move to keep their nose or tail facing you, they're an exceptionally small target, and even a Connie does this to some extent. Point one; small target, like cold war Soviet tanks.

Point two: in John M Ford's The Final Reflection, exploding consoles and power conduits are caused by excess energy from weapons fire coming through the shields as force that vibrates, buckles, and warps the hull. But if a lot of what's inside your shield bubble is empty space, your modules are built on long pylons designed to bend, and the interior space is full of bulkheads, you can eat that force up much more easily than if your vessel was a solid brick.

The Romulan vessel in Balance of Terror is compact, and it's accordingly fragile. They quickly adopt more durable Klingon vessels, and keep plenty of empty space in their shield bubbles thereafter.

It's only in the 24th century that we see compact designs dominate. Targeting has clearly improved, ships get much closer and dogfight, and it's gotten easier to re-route shields to a given area. Cores and nacelles are clearly safer, too. Keeping safe is now about tight, tough shields, and designs with components that are harder to pick out at speed.

In Journey to Babel in TOS, Sarek collapses after being told he's a suspect in the murder of the Tellarite ambassador. McCoy then scans him and has this exchange:

"It's difficult to say with Vulcan physiology, but I believe it's something to do with his cardiovascular system."

"Can you help him?"

"I don't know that yet either."

Is Vulcan physiology just more difficult to scan with the medical tricorders of his era for some reason, or is it somewhat similar to the Undiscovered Country controversy, are we being told that he lacks a complete understanding of the medical needs of one of the Federation's founding members? (Worst enemy in the Undiscovered Country obviously.)

Since we know the senior staff/bridge crew change per series, like how communications got dropped, and how counsellor & operations got added, from TOS-TNG. So how would you structure your senior staff?

For me:

• Captain - Pretty straight forward

• XO - Basically Riker in TNG deals with lots of departments/people stuff and does away teams

• CMO - Chief medical officer, has a chief counsellor that reports into them

• Chief of Operations - Handles the more computer based aspects of the ship

• Chief of Engineering- Handles the more mechanical aspects of making the ship go

• Security Chief - Handles security of the ship INTERNALLY. Is responsible for ambassador safety etc. Repels intruders. No way Tuvok/Worf should be leaving their stations in a ship fight to do that

• Tactical Chief - Handles weapons system and external threats to the ship

• Head of Science - Gives them the lowdown on whatever weird stuff they find

• Conn - The pilot

• Xenorelations expert - Expert on alien cultures and traditions and helps the captain with diplomatic stuff

It's pretty common during a space battle for shields to be "weakened," typically measured in percentage points where 100% means no damage and 0% represents the complete destruction of the shields.

My question is, how is it possible for a shield to be wore down? Let's compare the shield to the repulsive force when bringing two magnets together. In the case of the magnet, you either overpower the repulsive force, and make them touch... or you don't. Either way, the magnetic field itself does not weaken. Shields should be similar. Either the phaser fire is more powerful than the shield and it penetrates, or it is weaker, and it doesn't.

Abstract

The Dominion War was the ultimate crucible for Federation society's self-conception. It forced their core values to be deconstructed and examined, not only by the writers of Deep Space Nine, but by Federation culture itself in the war's aftermath. Abstract concepts like "diplomacy" and "compassion" that had been taken for granted as concrete foundations of society suddenly appeared as hollow as holograms, leaving the entire Federation—and Starfleet in particular—in a crisis of cultural identity in the late 2370s and 2380s.

Peace is good for business

By the time we pick up with Starfleet's story in The Next Generation in the 2360s, the Federation was coming off the back of an unprecedented era of peaceful exploration. Between the Khitomer accords in 2293 and Wolf 359 in 2367, the Federation faced virtually no existential threats or major wars: the Klingons were rebuilding after Praxis and were treaty-bound to non-aggression; the Romulans had silently withdrawn inside their own borders; the Borg at this time were little more than myth and hearsay. There were a number of skirmishes and border wars to be sure (notably with the Cardassians and the Tzenkethi) but nothing that was an actual threat to Federation hegemony: on the whole the UFP was sailing smooth diplomatic seas for most of a century, expanding its membership from roughly 50 planets to over 150.

All good things, however, must come to an end. The 2360s marked the beginning of an unprecedented series of existential threats to the Federation. First, the Romulans resurface with new foreheads; then the bluegill conspiracy very nearly dismantles Starfleet; and then the Enterprise-D encounters the Borg. Wolf 359, thousands dead in a matter of hours: nobody in the Federation had experienced anything quite so bone-shaking. No adversary had directly attacked Earth in over a century. No foe had ever subverted Starfleet as Locutus did. No other foe left a scar on the Federation quite like the Borg. That scar manifested in the development of Starfleet’s first explicit warship, the Defiant-class. Times, and attitudes, were beginning to change.

The changing face of war

Enter the Dominion. The anti-Federation in many ways: a conglomerate of species under tyrannical military rule rather than diplomatic co-operation; a system of government based on biological hierarchy instead of conceptual equality; a pangalactic multicultural polity relying on its size, diversity and technology to accomplish its aims. The Federation had faced many formidable foes, but had always either innovated or negotiated its way to peace. The Dominion was different.

The Federation couldn't rely anymore on either its soft speech or its big stick. The Dominion weren't listening, and they had a much bigger stick. Unlike past adversaries with whom reasonable common ground could be found, the Dominion cared about little outside of conquest and genocide. The Dominion could not be defeated with creativity and courage because they relied—like an inversion of the Federation—on diversity and innovation themselves (e.g. recruiting the Breen with their devastating weapon).

How do you negotiate with an adversary bent on total conquest? How do you out-think an enemy who can out-think you right back? How do you defeat your own reflection?

You cheat. In the end, victory against the Dominion was hard-won and it was not cleanly ascribable to Federation virtue alone: divine favors were called in, ethical corners were cut, moral certainties were questioned. Federation values had formed the cornerstone of the endings to many wars before, and it was accepted as an axiom that compassion and diplomacy would always prevail against violence and tyranny. The Dominion War shook that belief to its very core.

It's no surprise that the experience of fighting a total war against an existential threat, and of the crimes committed in the name of peace, left Starfleet and the UFP as a whole with a cultural identity crisis in the immediate aftermath of the war. Terrorism, biological warfare, and genocide are not exactly Federation slogans. While it's unclear how much of our Doylist information about the war's end was available to the Watsonian public, it is clear that—no matter how much the public knew—the war left an indelible mark.

A whole generation of young officers were pressed into front-line service; rather than the wide-eyed optimism at the beginning of a Starfleet career of peaceful exploration, they were left disillusioned and traumatized, questioning whether the Federation could have survived on its principles alone, whether Starfleet values were really enough.

The voyage home

And so a shell-shocked Federation picked up the pieces of its destruction. How do you move forward when you have come so close to annihilation? Where do you go after so deeply compromising your own principles? After the dust has settled and the necessary evils have been justified, the question remains: who is the Federation?

An answer of sorts came with the USS Voyager. It was in 2378, barely three years after the end of the war, when Voyager returned from its seven years in the Delta Quadrant bringing tales of tenacity and courage, stories of curiosity and exploration. In short, a renewal of faith in Federation values.

Their story exploded into the public consciousness, and Voyager and her crew became cultural icons: speaking tours, commemorative plates, a theme song, the ship itself became a museum in the grounds of Starfleet HQ. Voyager’s return was a phenomenon that both captured the imagination of the disillusioned young generations who either fought on the frontlines or who came up in the post-war depression, and that reassured older generations of the value of their values. Voyager was a tonic for the post-war malaise eating at the Federation: a beacon of Starfleet at its best, a Starfleet that many of its youngest members had never truly known.

Of course I’m paranoid, everybody’s trying to kill me

Voyager ultimately couldn’t heal the wounds of war alone. Starfleet spent the next twenty years in a state of ebbing and flowing identity crises (represented by no less than 7 distinct uniforms in a 25-year period), trying to reconcile the optimism rekindled by Voyager with the lingering paranoia of the Dominion War, and walking a very fine line between trust and fear. Voyager’s renewal of faith gave the Federation consciousness a new lick of paint, but didn’t stop the foundations from continuing to rot.

This uncertainty provided fertile ground for division. As we are seeing unfold in our own global politics, when people have a crisis of faith in their institutions they become fractured, hostile and paranoid. The AI crisis of the 2380s (the Texas-class, the Living Construct, and the attack on Mars) served to further damage faith in the Federation and Starfleet, giving agents provocateurs the conceptual space to infiltrate Starfleet at the highest levels: for one example, the Zhat Vash exploited this atmosphere to push the unprecedented and fundamentally anti-Federation ban on synthetic life.

The culmination of this post-war isolationism, paranoid culture, and social division, was Starfleet’s utter failure to evacuate Romulus in the prelude to the 2387 supernova. How many millions of lives were lost because Starfleet compromised its foundational principles? How could Starfleet ever again claim moral authority after such a craven ethical failure?

The future's future

We have little to no information about the state of Federation culture in the 2390s, but from what we have seen at the tail end of the decade it’s reasonable to assume that the pendulum oscillating between trust and fear took a hard swing rightwards after the litany of tragic events in the 80s. Paranoia and hostility became entrenched in the public consciousness, and once they get in they are very difficult to weed out again.

It arguably wasn’t until the Frontier Day attack that Starfleet and the Federation at large got their mojo back with a final exorcism of the ghosts of the Dominion and the Borg. The changelings were routed by teamwork and tenacity; Data defeated Lore with an act of humility; Picard defeated the Borg by connecting with his son. The Starfleet “old guard”—the quasi-legendary physical embodiments of those core values—saved the day with trust and tenacity, quite literally rescuing the younger generation from losing themselves, and finally allowing those generations to have their shaky faith in Federation values vindicated. The last we see, they are warping off into the great unknown with hope in their hearts.

The reconstruction of optimism that began tentatively with Voyager finally reached its conclusion 2 decades later. It was a long road, but diplomacy and compassion won the Federation its war against itself.

​

Timeline

• 2363: Launch of the Enterprise-D
• 2367: The Battle of Wolf 359
• 2371: Voyager disappears
• 2373-2375: Dominion War
• 2378: Voyager returns
• 2381: Texas-class incident
• 2384: Living Construct incident
• 2385: The attack on Mars
• 2387: Romulan supernova
• 2399: Zhat Vash coup
• 2401: Frontier Day Borg attack