Canon Connections: Strange New Worlds 2x04 - Among the Lotus Eaters

• The title refers to the Homer’s “Odyssey” when Odysseus’ voyage reached the land of the Lotus-eaters. These people’s primary food source was the fruit and flowers of the lotus, which was powerfully narcotic, and caused those of Homer’s crew who ate it to forget their desire to return home.

• Pike’s personal log records the stardate as 1630.1. Ortegas’ personal logs record the stardate as 1630.3, and 1632.2.

Episode	Stardate
“The Broken Circle”	2369.2
“Ad Astra per Aspera”	2393.8
”Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”	1581.2

• The USS Cayuga previously appeared in “A Quality of Mercy”.

• Captain Batel gives Pike an Opelian mariner’s keystone, a device worn by ancient Opelian captains to ”guide lost sailors home.” Another reference to Odysseus’ journey.

    • Batel says she found the keystone on a planet which the subtitles spelled ”Galt.” Worf lived for a time on Gault with his adopted mother and brother, and headbutt another child to death there during a soccer match; that world’s name was pronounced the same as this.

• Captain Patel was passed over for a promotion to commodore; she believes it’s a result of Admiral Pasalk punishing her for losing the trial against Number One in “Ad Astra per Aspera”.

• Rigel VII was first mentioned in “The Menagerie, Part I”. Pike and crew were shown via Talosian record, and Pike and Doctor Boyce discussed losing three crew people on the away mission, and its impact on Pike. In “The Menagerie, Part II” we saw that the Talosians forced Pike to relive his fight with one of the brutish Kalar.

• Number One describes Rigel VII as ”a remote M-class planet”. However, there are several other inhabited worlds in the Rigel system:

    • Rigel II - According to “Shore Leave”, Bones was familiar with two women from a chorus line in a cabaret there

    • Rigel III - In the alternate future of “All Good Things…” Geordi retired to this world with his wife to become an author

    • Rigel IV - The entity Jack the Ripper resided there for a while, murdering women to feed its need for fear, and possessed Hengeist before moving on to Argelius II to continue in “Wolf in the Fold”

    • Rigel V - The homeworld of the Rigelians, first mentioned in “Journey to Babel”

    • Rigel VI - I would argue that the canonicity of this world being habitable is dubious at best, as it’s only mentioned on a menu screen in the post credits commercial for Tribbles cereal at the end of “The Trouble with Edward”

    • Rigel X - A colony world occupied by a wide variety of aliens, seen in “Broken Bow”.

    • Rigel XII - The earliest mention of a planet in the Rigel system, in “Mudd’s Women” the USS Enterprise stopped there to negotiate purchase of lithium crystals to replace the cracked lithium crystal circuits necessary for controlling the ship’s power flow from the warp core.

    • The “Star Trek: Star Charts” have attempted to reconcile this abundance of worlds by relabelling the Rigel star close to the Sol system in the star chart seen in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” as Beta Rigel. This would be where Rigel X is located, considering it was the first planet visited by the NX-01 after launching from Earth. Presumably, Rigel II, Rigel III, Rigel IV, and Rigel V as well. Rigel VII and Rigel XII would be more remote, where the actual Rigel star is, some 860 light years from Earth. The map of the Alpha and Beta quadrants seen in Admiral Clancy’s office in “Remembrance” did have that star labelled as Beta Rigel as well, but there is nothing official stating that the various worlds are in that system.

• The display for information for the Enterprise’s first mission to Rigel VII, five years earlier, says the stardate was 2455.4. If Pike is Odysseus, I am Sisyphus.

• ”Last time we went down there we were in uniform; I am not making that mistake twice.” Despite the prime directive an concerns about altering cultural development, during TOS it still seemed to be general policy for Starfleet crews to beam down to pre-warp civilizations in uniform, with their gear.

• ”I like her,” Number One says of Batel, the woman who arrested her in “A Quality of Mercy”, and prosecuted criminal charges against her based solely on her species in “Ad Astra per Aspera”.

• In her quarters, Ortegas has models of Constitution, Walker, and NX-class starships.

• Ortegas refers to the Kalar as Kalarans. Apparently ”Recon 101” does not include more than skimming the mission brief.

• ”I may not be Erica Ortegas, but I was a test pilot, remember?” “Light and Shadows” established that Pike’s first assignment out of Starfleet Academy was test pilot.

• The away team’s shuttle is the Cervantes, which was introduced in “All Those Who Wander”.

• ”We’ve got subdermal universal translators.” This is the first mention of Starfleet personnel having translators implanted beneath the skin. In “Little Green Men” we saw that Ferengi had translators implanted in the ear canal, but Starfleet translators have always been part of the communicator or combadge, a function of the ship or station, or a wholly separate device.

• The Kalar palace is featured in season two’s opening credits.

• The type-3 phasers the Kalar carry are identical to the ones introduced in season one of DIS.

    • The Kalar have at least eight type-3s, which raises the question of how many they took with them to during the first away mission.

• Yeoman Zac Nguyen has been taken in by the Kalar and given a position of authority as High Lord Zacarias.

    • In "Bread and Circuses", Merchant Marine captain, and Starfleet Academy dropout, R.M. Merik was stranded on a planet where he became First Citizen Merikus of a society that mirrored Earth's Roman empire.

    • In "Patterns of Force", former Starfleet Academy history instructor, John Gill introduced the planet Ekos to the concept of fascism, and set himself up as Fuhrer, because he believed fascism to be the most efficient form of government, meaning John Gill was terrible at both understanding history, and not getting assassinated by members of the explicitly Nazi party he installed on an independent world.

    • In “The Omega Glory”, Captain Tracey integrated himself with the Kohms assumed a position of authority.

    • In “All the World’s a Stage” we saw the Enderprizians, who took in ensign David Garrovick and made him to be a heroic figure, En Son.

• The radiation affecting the Enterprise crew doesn’t appear to be something Number One’s Illyrian healing glow works against, despite the fact that we’ve seen her survive the radiation of a near warp core breach in “Ghosts of Illyria”.

• Ortegas’ file says she was born in 2233, making her 26 years old. Melissa Navia is 38.

    • The files specifies, “Lieutenant Ortegas is a 23rd century Federation Starfleet officer.” Presumably it’s necessary for the files to have information about the century in which an officer serves due to all the time travel.

• The Enterprise computer illuminates wall panels to guide Ortegas to her quarters. In “Encounter at Farpoint” Riker was guided to the holodeck and Data by a similar system.

• La’an and Doctor M’Benga once again share the gesture where they trace a line under the right eye with their index finger. They did this in “Strange New Worlds” and “The Broken Circle”.

• Pike makes the decision to remove the asteroid emitting the radiation causing the Kalar to forget from the surface of the planet, back to the debris field in orbit. Spock asks if it’s a violation of the Prime Directive, and Pike claims that it’s not because the asteroid interfered with the natural development of the planet for thousands of years. We’ve previously seen Pike make such unilateral decisions to ignore General Order 1 in “The Sound of Thunder” when the USS Discovery was used to amplify a signal that triggered puberty for every Kelpien on Kaminar.