Star Trek

Thanks to some very cool people, I'm pleased to offer for your subspace communications needs Escape Pod 14, a Discord community mostly (though not exclusively) based around chatting about Star Trek. We'd be happy to welcome you aboard - it's deceptively spacious for an escape pod! Come chat with us about a range of stuff, though Star Trek is almost definitely what we're most keen to talk about. Now with 70% fewer tribbles*!

*figure correct as of 32 seconds ago; tribbles born since then may alter this figure. Members are advised to pack their own tribble repellant.

(Sorry if you've seen this before, I posted it yesterday but it didn't seem to federate properly, so I'm trying again with a local account. I don't really know how Lemmy works!)

I actually enjoy this weird episode a lot. Then again, one of my favourite VOY characters is Neelix, so what do I know? What's your take on this bizarre episode?

I don't know who greenlit this supposed celebration of TAS, but the writing is cheap, lowbrow and cringey. It's a total shame that the amazing animation and sound design are paired with this quality of writing. None of the three eps released so far impressed me.

I'm seriously shocked by the Youtube comments that found it funny. The latest one is literally supposed to be funny because it involves boogers. Paramount should be ashamed it spent money on this. Have they stopped for a moment to think if this is what TAS fans want? /rant

Rob & Kev planned to turn this entire episode over to a friendly computer super-intelligence, but it was down for a software update, so they recorded their thoughts on "In the Cradle of Vexilon" all by themselves. They also explored other lessons in leadership from Star Treks past, including "The Galileo Seven" (TOS), "Good Shepherd" (VOY), "Pen Pals" (TNG), and "Valiant" (DS9).

The title is a play on the wedding rhyme/tradition, dating back to 19th Century England, of the bride wearing “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue (and a sixpence in her shoe),” for good luck. The green, of course, refers to the pigmentation of Orions.

The ship seems to be a new class of Orion Interceptor with some extra added bits, the original design of which dates back to the 22nd Century (ENT: “Borderland”). The female Orion plays with a TOS style phaser pistol and then tosses it in the trash. They talk about body modification, specifically “bolts in the head”, which we saw on the Orion privateer Harrad-Sar (ENT: “Bound”).

Mariner calls Tendi “D”, which is a reminder that her full name is D’vana Tendi. Tendi refers to Orion “belly dancer outfits” (TOS: “The Cage”, “Whom Gods Destroy”, ENT: “Bound”). Mariner says she has put her foot in her mouth about Orion culture enough times (LD: “Crisis Point”, and Boimler did the same in SNW: “Those Old Scientists”, when both assumed all Orions were pirates).

This is the first time we’ve heard of Andorian linen, but Andorian silk was also prized as a fabric (DS9: “Q-Less”). On the shelves we see Boimler’s plate of the Cerritos, his figures of Mirror Archer, Spock in his monster maroons and Data holding a phaser rifle (LD: “I Have No Bones and I Must Flee”) and his “Boimler Effect” plaque (LD: “Temporal Edict”). On Rutherford’s side we see his DS9 model (and box) from LD: “Hear All, Trust Nothing” and a replica of Wesley Crusher’s tractor beam emitter model from TNG: “The Naked Now” (also seen in “I Have No Bones…”)

Grandmama Boimler said, “A cool duvet keeps the raisin rats away.” The Boimler family owns a raisin vineyard on Earth (LD: “Grounded”). “Lil Boney” the bonsai belongs to Boimler, who acquired it reluctantly in LD: “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris”.

As the Yosemite II shuttle approaches Orion, we see a space station in orbit and also an Orion barge, resembling that piloted by Harrad-Sar in “Bound”. In Star Trek Online the 25th Century version is known as a Blackguard-class Flight Deck Assault Cruiser. We see an Orion riding a purple rhino with two horns and two tusks.

Mariner references Chief Engineer Billups’ background as a prince of Hysperia when she remarks that Tendi also grew up in a castle (LD: “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie”).

One of Tendi’s titles is “Mistress of the Winter Constellations” (“We’ll Always Have Tom Paris”). We learn that Tendi’s parents are the Warrior Queen Shona and B’Rt. Harrad-Sar alleged in “Bound” that while most of the galaxy harbors the misconception that Orion women are slaves, it is actually the females who dominate the males via their pheromones.

Symbolic bridal kidnappings (as opposed to actual ones, which are considered sex crimes) are still part of some cultures on Earth. In the case of Orions, the kidnapping is done by a rival family between the save the date and the issuing of the invitations. Tendi is Prime Daughter.

The real Samuel Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain) appeared in TNG: “Time’s Arrow”.

Comparing the lettering with the name of the bar (“Slit Throat”), the Orion alphabet is a straight one-for-one substitution with English (like Gorn script in SNW).

New Seattle is located on Penthara IV (TNG: “A Matter of Time”).

T’Lyn observes the Orion males in the “scentuary” are under the influence of chemicals, possibly pheromones. Mariner claims that Starfleet made that up to explain why a starship captain could be taken down by “show girls”, referring to the events of “Bound”, but is proven wrong. Tendi clarifies that only some Orions control others through pheromones, but not her. Ingreeta later claims Tendi doesn’t have the pheromones (but didn’t need it).

Coqqor is a Chalnoth (TNG: “Allegiance”) and claims to be from South Chalnoth, although the name of the planet is Chalna. Coqqor could be referring to a region or a city on Chalna.

The ship that Tendi says was one her and D’Erika’s favorites appears to be of the same class as the SS Raven owned by Seven of Nine’s family (VOY: “The Raven”). Tendi was raised as a Syndicate assassin, a “prime”, to be the Tip of the Moonlit Blade.

If we’re keeping score, I think Mariner gets stabbed four times in the shoulder (at the Slit Throat, the scentuary, by D’Erika and at the daughter-daddy dagger dance).

While Mozart has never appeared on Star Trek, many of his works have been heard over the course of the series in episodes.

Written by: Grace Parra Janney

Directed by: Bob Suarez

It seems that with long hiatuses in new onscreen Trek ahead, genre coverage is starting to profile Trek novels again.

This set of ten weird but readable books isn’t necessarily the trippiest, but it does put the first of the Shatnerverse books at the top.

(Perhaps @ValueSubtracted@startrek.website there’s yet hope for Shatner’s wild imaginings to make it into S&S monthly Star Trek ebook deals promotional rotation.)

Here's the direct YouTube link, though the latest issue of the accompanying comic can only be found on the official website.

• Cap’n Freeman’s log records the stardate as 58759.1.

• The world of Corazonia is an artificial ringworld circling a star. In “Rosetta” and “Coming Home” we saw that Species Ten-C used similar Dyson rings to harvest energy from the stars of their original home system, and their newly established home.

     • The scale of Corazonia and its star is…questionable, but that’s hardly a new issue in Trek. Consider the USS Voyager traveling through the planetary ring in VOY’s title sequence, or the utterly massive Borg cube being visible in Jupiter’s eye in the PIC finale, “The Last Generation”.

     • Not canon, but Corazonia very much resembles the Ringworld from the cover art of Larry Niven’s 1970 novel, “Ringworld”, set in his Known Space series, which is also the origin of the Kiznti.

• Corazonia’s climate is controlled by a sentient computer, Vexilon. Other planet controlling computers have been seen in:

     • “The Return of the Archons” - Landru

     • “The Apple” - Vaal

     • “Spock’s Brain” - The Controller

     • “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky” - The Oracle of the People

     • “When the Bough Breaks” - The Custodian

• Freeman roles up her sleeves before getting to work on Vexilon, not unlike the way Mariner keeps her sleeves all the time, despite it landing her in the brig at least once.

• Freeman states that she ”minored in archaic technology back at the Academy.” If Mariner is to be believed in “Room for Growth”, the USS Cerritos has been overwritten by D’Arsay technology three times.

• Boimler’s team’s shuttle is the Kings Canyon, presumably named for Kings Canyon National Park

• ”Statistically, ensigns serving under recently promoted commanders are more likely to experience death and/or dismemberment.” Wesley Crusher’s entire team in “Pen Pals” died during his first time in charge, and he wasn’t even recently promoted.

• Inside the anomaly storage room we see:

     • A probe resembling the Kataan probe from “The Inner Light” but with some notable differences

     • What appears to be an oversized Vulcan lirpa

     • Nomad from “The Changeling”, or a very similar Earth probe transformed into an artificial life form

     • A Wadi board game, from “Move Along Home”

     • What appears to be an empty transport case for a Medusan, including a visor missing the red protective lens; Ambassador Kollos used one in “Is There in Truth No Beauty?”

     • A bat’leth

     • A Betazoid gift box, like the one seen in “Haven”

     • A 23rd century Romulan cloaking device, like the one Kirk and Spock stole in “The Enterprise Incident”

• Billups’ pet ferret is named Lancelot; it was established in “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie” that Billups comes Hysperia, a planet colonized by “Ren faire type” humans.

• Tendi, Mariner, and Rutherford are using T-88 scanners to check the chips in the isolinear chip junction. T-88s were first seen in “Cupid’s Errant Arrow” and weren’t available fleetwide yet, but Rutherford and Tendi did steal a bunch from the USS Vancouver.

• ”Is it a unotronic?” Duotronic and multitronic systems were designed by Richard Daystrom, which we learned in “The Ultimate Computer”. This is the first mention of a unotronic system, though it’s not entirely clear if that’s an actual thing, or simply a bit for Billups’ joke.

• Dirks claims he was trapped in the Wadi game for a month as a child. The Wadi are a gamma quadrant civilization who were first encountered in 2369, 12 years prior to this episode.

• Boimler refers to the large blue guy as ”Big Merp.” In “I, Excretus” the scoreboard showed that another member of the same species was also named Merp. Are all members of the species named Merp? Is it the name of their species and just what they’re all called? Or is Merp simply a common name among their species?

• Rutherford ends up in the Wadi game, where he encounters the same puzzles Captain Sisko, Kira, Doctor Bashir, and Jadzia did in “Move Along Home”.

• Dirks states the Tellarite slop jazz musician Fats B’zirtak overdosed on ketracel-white. Assuming fats was not a Jem’Hadar, I believe this is the first time we’ve heard of a non-Jem’Hadar consuming ketracel-white in canon.

• The Betazoid gift box gets zapped by the not-Kataan probe and experiences an entire simulated life, similar to what happened to Captain Picard in “The Inner Light”, though at no point from Rutherford’s perspective does the gift box appear to be unconscious.

     • ”I miss my wife.” The gift box repeats Michael Sullivan’s line from two episodes ago in “Twovix”.

• After he dies we see Boimler in room which appears to be inspired by the red room from “Twin Peaks” based on the floor pattern, lamp, and end table. Outside the window he sees the black mountain, which Shaxs described as a ”spiritual battleground” in “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris”.

     • The Koala appears, and according to the subtitles it’s ”speaking Koala” but if you reverse the audio it says, “It is not your time, Bradward Boimler.”

     • This is the second time Boimler has seen the Koala, the first being when he nearly drowned in “First First Contact”.

     • Despite being at the Black Mountain, Boimler did not have to fight three faceless aspirations of his father, nor did the surviving father feed Boimler his own heart, as Shaxs described in “We’ll Always have Tom Paris”.

• ”You never forget your first death.” Ransom implies that he too has died.

Bleeding Cool previews behind the scenes commentary from Hageman Brothers from prerelease of DVD-BlueRay bonus content.

CBS Entertainment is keeping the profile up on Prodigy merchandising. A bright spot amidst Paramount’s erasure of Prodigy in Star Trek Day content.

So we learn at the end that Sisko's birth was engineered by the Prophets, right? That he was always destined to be the Emissary because that's how it had to be, from the nonlinear perspective of the Prophets.

So what if they based him on a man from Earth centuries before (perhaps one of his father's ancestors)? He does say at one point that maybe God is trying to tell him to quit writing and go into the restaurant business, betraying a love for cooking, which maybe he passed on to his children - and maybe he passed this on to his descendants, one of whom moved to New Orleans and opened a Creole kitchen, which would stay in the family for many generations...

They chose this man because by some quirk he had genuine future-sight and saw forward into the life of Sisko because of their connection established by the Prophets - creating a self-sustaining loop.

Now of course that doesn't explain why all of the people in Benny's life are so similar to Sisko's people (or is it the other way around?), but maybe there's something there about celestial-temporal archetypes, or Benny is projecting those faces and personalities onto his coworkers because of his strange and exceptional mind.

Via https://twitter.com/leohoratio/status/1328778709667602436

Image transcription of a Tweet by @leohoratio: my body is not a temple. it is a federation starship with critical hull damage and shields at 0%

The 40 best stand-alone TV episodes that can be watched on their own.

Kind of a funny theme for a list, but “City on the Edge of Forever” made it.

@startrek #StarTrek

https://slate.com/culture/2023/09/best-stand-alone-episodes-tv-television.html

The Ready Room may be on hiatus during the strikes, but it looks like they have some prerecorded segments in the can.

/ Film is continuing to report and opine on key points in the oral history book "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From The Next Generation to J. J. Abrams," edited by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross.

For those of us who haven’t (yet) invested in the book, these extracts and reflections can prompt some interesting discussion.

In this case, it sounds like Nimoy’s hesitation led to a much less action-oriented integration of Spock’s presence. An interesting thought experiment.

Also, it sounds like tapping nostalgia and interlinking shows has been a constant pressure from senior executives at the IP holder. It’s well known that Roddenberry resisted close callbacks to TOS, and was determined for TNG to stand on its own in its own era. Even five seasons into TNG, Paramount senior executives though still weren’t convinced it didn’t need a TOS-connection boost.

Considering the amount of callback mining and IP nostalgia mining in the current era shows, it seems as though Kurtzman’s got a hard road to convince Paramount to give new characters and eras a chance to stand on their own.

Can't write a review worth a damn, but figured I'd point out this story for anyone looking for something interesting to read.

So, a few things to explain, My Little Pony (MLP) was a cartoon about magical coloured ponies, MLP: Equestria Girls was a tween spin-off that introduced the character of Sunset Shimmer who passed through a magic mirror to a world of humanoids in a high school setting where we saw alternate versions of many characters from the original MLP.

So, I decided to give this a try thanks to a different story, Sunset's Isekai. I prolly don't need to explain what that one is, I mean it's such a sci-fi trope, but just in case, it's a time and dimension traveling bar run by a version of Sunset Shimmer. I was already aware of the story, but had figured it'd be MLP:EG in space, or ponies have a first contact or start their own space program, none of which particularly interested me. SI introduces us to this version of Sunset, field promoted Captain Sunset Shimmer of the USS Phoenix, and an overview of her life and current situation, all of which sounded like a well done Star Trek story, so I decided to read it.

At nearly half a million words and three seasons, there's a lot to catch up on, but it's worth it. Thanks to a 'magic' mirror, Sunset winds up at Starfleet Academy at 11 years old, and is obviously terrified to be surrounded by aliens, none of whom speak proper Equish.

Once she gets calmed down, and a medical examination, her life begins. Adopted by two teachers at the academy, she grows up on Earth, joins Starfleet because how else will she find home?

Six months into her life, she's joined by another pony that got sucked into the mirror, who will also join Starfleet.

Sunset winds up serving on the Enterprise, but thankfully the author doesn't insert her into the episodes we know, most times she has little to do with them and often times has know idea what occurred, after all she's just another ensign there, albeit a brightly coloured unicorn. The only change she makes to Star Trek is that she delays the warp core explosion long enough that the saucer section never crashes.

Beyond that, she dies, comes back to life (like that's never happened in Star Trek), becomes the XO on the Phoenix and takes part in the Dominion War, and eventually gets home.

The story is still going on, but the Phoenix, last surviving member of it's fleet, is limping home, limited to warp 4, barely any shields or phasers, a journey expected to take a year.

——————— Overall, it's a good read. Sure, fan fic, so it won't hold up like a professionally written story, but it is a very well done story. The author doesn't fall into traps like making the pony characters a huge part of canon, they don't replace anyone, and they don't save the galaxy. They do add an extra wrinkle to the dominion war, one you might be able to guess. Familiarity with MLP isn't necessary, the author explains most of what you need to know either in the story, or the author notes at the end of every chapter.

Kev & Rob narrowly avoid being merged in a transporter accident, and inspired by "I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee", pay a visit to the menagerie of episodes in which humanity is put in a cage, including "The Eye of the Beholder" (TAS), "The Cage" (TOS), and "I, Mudd" (TOS). They also briefly discuss the first of the Very Short Treks, "Skin a Cat", as well as Star Trek Day 2023.

This was included in the Star Trek Day content, but released separately a couple of days ago.

It’s nice to see Discovery getting a lot of love in this. It also really shows how great so many of Discovery’s vfx heavy scenes have been.