khaosworks @ khaosworks @startrek.website

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I wouldn't say it was the best series of PIC, but it was certainly the best received, largely because it was so fan service-y. But then again PIC was creeping that way, anyway. Season 1 revolved around Picard himself dealing with the ghosts of his past, but then they probably noticed people paying more attention when characters like Hugh, Seven and the Troi-Rikers showed up. So Season 2 features Q, and despite it being a bit of a mess and feeling like the writers and actors were using it as proxy therapy, again the best received bits were kisses to the past.

So they went all out in Season 3 as a direct sequel to TNG. Old crew, Borg, the Changelings, etc. Give Picard a son, why not? Bring back the D, you got it! Season 3 was entertaining and nostalgic and gave us all these fanboy feels, but boy, was it emotionally manipulative and a lot doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

But to contrast the way PIC echoed plot lines from the animated shows is, perhaps, not entirely fair, because they were aiming for different things.

In PIC the aim was to bring back Data and add a plot complication, so they chose Lore, just to get everyone excited. On reflection, it might have been more interesting just to have Lore on board and not Data (see how this is being handled in the current Star Trek: Defiant comic), but again then they wouldn't have the TNG bridge crew reunion that fans all wanted to see. So damn the torpedoes, Data had to come back somehow.

If we really want to criticize it, Rutherford's past personality issues suffer from the same problem as the Lore complication: it isn't necessary to the plot. It could easily have been Rutherford discovering that he was the victim of a mindwipe and it would have led to the same revelation about the Texas-class feet. It didn't have to have his past self be a different personality, but that gave them a plot to hang an episode on. So in that sense both could be said to be a vehicle just to allow the actor to stretch himself. Also, given the episodic nature of LD, it was a one and done deal just to get the Texas-class revelation out, while the Lore complication was so to stretch out that part of the story for PIC's one big ten-hour movie.

The Borg virus seeming to come out of left field is typical of shows that want to have an overarching mystery (LOST is a particularly egregious example). To be fair, in PRO we also didn't know how the Construct was supposed to destroy Starfleet until midway through the season. And again, the purposes were different. PRO was dead focused on having the kids develop themselves and learn lessons away from Starfleet and the Construct gave them the plot reason to do so. That was why they had to get it out in the open quickly, or make it obvious.

However, in PIC Season 3, they wanted to maintain the mystery. They did kind of foreshadowed it by dropping hints about transporter incidents and the larger question of why Jack was sought after, but they just didn't drop enough clues for us to put together what the overarching plot was, and decided to approach it by misleading us that it would be a Changeling takeover.

So ultimately, did LD and PRO do the plots better? Maybe they held together better than PIC did, but they weren't telling the same story. PIC was trafficking in nostalgia, trying to keep viewers excited and engaged and not so much plot cohesiveness. LD and PRO were telling their own stories as I mentioned above, so the emphases and approaches differ.

Oh, here's a biggie. That individual ships in TOS had their own unique insignia. That turned out to be a myth, despite being perpetuated on-screen by ENT: "In a Mirror, Darkly".

It also led to a post of mine that was particularly controversial at the time.

We've actually seen a merchant marine vessel early on - in TOS: "Charlie X", the crew of the Antares wear an insignia that we've found out in recent years is supposed to be a Merchant Marine insignia.

When did she explain how warp works?

If you’re talking about her Trektech video, that’s her talking about how a warp drive could work in real life, not how it works in-universe in Trek.

My position is that it’s been established how warp works in-universe, and if the powers that be now say it acts like an Alcubierre drive, well, that’s their prerogative - and my response is that that’s a major retcon.

And I’m not saying they can’t do that. I’m saying that if it happens it’ll be an inconsistency and they need to own it as such and figure out some explanation like messing with the timeline.

So I don’t think it’s fair to say it hasn’t been confirmed that it’s an Alcubierre drive. The fairest thing to say is that they haven’t said that it is one at all.

I remain skeptical - you can’t have warp drive be the Alcubierre drive without having to retcon a lot of how warp fields are shown to behave, least of all their inertial mass lowering properties.

Everyone saying that it acts like the Alcubierre drive has to ignore the evidence before them. I can’t think of anything that indicates that warp drive behaves like the Alcubierre drive is supposed to be, but I’m open to be corrected on this.

So until shown otherwise by the series, I’m quite content with sticking with my claim and the explanation in the TNG Tech Manual, which was the technical advisors’ intent at the time.

When people say that warp drive is like Alcubierre, they’re specifically talking about the idea that the ship doesn’t move and space moves around the ship. That in essence is an idea that doesn’t involve inertia or acceleration.

Once you start moving away from the idea it’s space that’s moving, not the ship, then it’s not Alcubierre - at least not in its popular conception.

I readily admit I don’t know what kind of additional ideas they’ve come up with and await further edification on that score, but I have my doubts that it will square with the idea of warp fields lowering inertial mass, accelerating to warp or the use of inertial dampers already depicted in the show.

My pet peeve, that warp drive works like the Alcubierre Drive. It doesn't.

One of my favorite formulations of the PD comes from an old text adventure game, Star Trek: The Promethan Prophecy: "You can look all you like, but don't touch."

It's an interesting insight into Pike's character - the fact that he had to remember not to beat the crap out of Zac implies that innately he's not a pacifist or a nice guy; that dark side is something he's learned to keep in check.

Thanks - I basically wrote this because I was tired of explaining again and again why the two drives are different and wanted to have a single link I could just cut and paste in future. 😂

When the Dauntless is chasing the Protostar in PRO: "Mindwalk", Tysess gives the order to merge the "warp bubbles" of both ships, the first time we hear the term being applied to a warp field.

When the Enterprise is unable to go to warp in SNW: "The Elysian Kingdom", Spock theorizes the nebula may be affecting the ship's ability to create a "static warp bubble", and from context he's talking about the warp field generated by the nacelles.

Prior to this, the terms "warp bubbles" and "warp fields" were not used interchangeably, the former being a “static warp bubble”, previously established as a toroidal, non-propulsive subspace field which once trapped Beverly Crusher in a pocket universe (TNG: “Remember Me”) rather than the field used to enable warp speed travel.

I don't think so. Nothing in the new series explicitly contradicts the idea that warp drive functions by lowering the inertial mass of the ship. You may ask fans and they may answer, but that doesn't make them right. And until they come right out and say that it's the Alcubierre Drive, I don't buy it because we still see inertial effects being felt, which we wouldn't if it was an Alcubierre metric driving the ship.

I wrote a post in old Daystrom aying out the evidence why the two drives are different. I'll repost it here to see what comes out of it.

Fair enough - but most completely fan created stuff as opposed to licensed doesn’t have that wide a distribution so very few things rise to the level where it’s been accepted enough in the fan consciousness to be fanon. Fewer still get converted into canon. Most of the time it’s contradicted.

I suppose one example would be Ni’Var, which had its origins solely in fanzines. But that doesn’t quite work either since it wasn’t a widely known concept until DIS resurrected it.

The only thing I can think off off-hand that’s widely accepted is that the Klingons got cloaking technology from the Romulans in exchange for Klingon ship designs. But that’s been contradicted to a degree too.

“I volunteer as tribute.”

The most recent and significant canonizations of fanon that come to mind is the use of Geoffrey Mandel’s Star Charts as a basis for the charts we see in the show, and the NX-01 refit finally showing up in PIC. Also, the use of the Black Fleet from The Final Reflection in DIS and the importation of Una’s name and her origin as an Illyrian (although tweaked) from the novels. Also the importation of David Goodman’s wording of the Prime Directive from Federation: The First 150 Years in PRO: “First Con-Tact”.

The use of Diane Duane’s terminology for Vulcan emotional suppression (arie’mnu) also makes me suspect that everything she came up with about Vulcan logic like cthia in her books is in the back of the writers’ minds - especially Kristen Byers, just like they influenced the Reeves-Stevens when they were writing ENT. I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually some of her Romulan stuff made it in as well.

I also adore that we got to see it, but technically it was already canon - it was mentioned in the alternate universe bridge chatter in TNG: “Yesterday’s Enterprise” and Geordi asked if Briam “had a chance to see the dolphins yet”.

I post them as a stand-alone in c/DaystromInstitute every week now.

Featuring, perhaps.

Batel’s promotion was nixed by Judge Advocate Pasalk because of her conduct during Una’s trial in “Ad Astra Per Aspera”.

M’Benga mentions that the reason he and La’An were along was because Pike needed people who could fight without phasers (as per “The Broken Circle” and “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”).

That’s basically it, I think.

Zac didn’t intend for Starfleet to notice the delta. He was content to just stay on Rigel VII as High Lord Zacarias, thinking that Starfleet would never return to the planet because of the debris field and the radiation. But then the Kalar used the delta as a symbol and it got spotted.

PIKE: Zac. We saw your message, the, um... the Delta in the garden. It's why we came. Isn't that why you did it?

ZAC: The people here adopted it as my symbol. I should have known better. It's all getting torn out tomorrow.