“Tacky Cardassian fascist eyesore!”

By my accounting Pike has four chances to walk away from his fate. Chronologically:

1. The very scene this quote is from in Discovery, where Tenavik gives him the option to take the time crystal or walk away from his bad future. He chooses the former, but to downplay his decision a little it was his personal future versus everyone’s bad Skynet future.
2. Lift Us gives us the Majalans, whose medical tech is a “maybe” for fixing Pike while keeping the timeline intact. Pike walks away (from Omelas) because he can’t abide by how their society works.
3. Quality of Mercy gives us Future Pike and subtle hints that the Romulan War has been going on about 20 years. That plus offloading his suffering to Spock makes Pike stop trying to tinker with the timeline.
4. TOS’ The Menagerie of course, gives us the Talosians, who have mellowed out a bit from their original appearance and offer Pike a mental paradise with Vina, who they’re also helping. Aside from a spot of insubordination on Spock’s part, there’s nothing wrong here so it becomes the good ending of his story.

Basically it’s a story of principles. He won’t let others suffer for his personal comfort, and even tells Spock (via beep chair) not to risk his career for him.

I mean if you look at Burnham and Sarek’s relationship in Discovery he did a pretty dang good job beating the human emotion out of her.

Sure, this kinda fucked her up emotionally in a way the series tragically didn’t look into nearly enough after season 1, but you can’t say that his methods never worked.

left to right:

• Phlox, USS Enterprise NX-01 (ENT)
• Leonard “Bones” McCoy, USS Enterprise NCC-1701/-A (TOS)
• Beverly Crusher, USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D/-E (TNG)
• T’Ana, USS Cerritos NCC 75567 (LD)
• Emergency Medical Hologram Mk. I, while there are many instantiations this one’s presumably “the Doctor,” USS Voyager NCC-74656/(-A) VOY/(+PRO, eventually)
• Hugh Culber, USS Discovery NCC-1031/-A (DISCO)

A bit worried it’ll have a heavy tonal overlap with Lower Decks and thematic overlap with LD/Prodigy.

That said, I really want Star Trek to move to literally anything other than the TOS/TNG eras, so let’s see where this goes.

A bit of a weird episode in that the protagonists didn’t solve much, the two problems just sort of fizzled out for their own reasons.

Kind of surprised that Peanut Hamper was up for parole-- Memory Alpha doesn’t list a specific stardate for A Mathematically Perfect Redemption but judging by the adjacent years and the stardate AGIMUS listed she’s been in Daystrom for less than two years.

IMO this episode confirms that what we saw last week wasn’t an anomaly, Rutherford’s got it bad for Tendi. It’s kind of weird to have him focusing on her encouragement to the exclusion of Mariner (who was in his immediate vicinity!) otherwise.

Disco stands out at the Star Trek series that really commits to queer representation rather than shoving it in the background and/or discarding it (looking at you, Picard and to a lesser extent LD). At the end of season 3 I was floored when Stamets described Adira as his child because I could definitely see the found family trope progressing and was mentally joking he should adopt them, I just didn’t expect it to pop up from subtext to text. It definitely feels like a more modern discussion of queerness than past series did.

…not sure how I feel about them destroy the subtlety of Trill as trans metaphors though. It’s cool, it just feels very heavy-handed.

No T’Lyn in these shots, here’s hoping we still see her through the rest of the season.

Absolutely looking forward to the triumphant return of AGIMUS!

it’s entirely possible; I personally don’t remember and I can’t find a hard reference in Memory Alpha on any relevant pages (industrial replicator, vehicle replicator, Intrepid class, uss voyager). Most of the memory alpha references are in DS9.

In Prodigy, the USS Protostar has a vehicle replicator that it uses to print shuttles on demand. The Intrepid class was fairly resilient and self-contained, so it’s a fair assumption it would have something similar, but we never see one on screen or even directly mentioned.

It’s one of those things from BB/BCS that is a very pivotal dramatic moment in the show but subsequently got memed to death, so the connotation in online use is generally different from how the scene was played. Same story of that short of Walter White falling over in Ozymandias.

Disco S3: Admiral Charles Vance had the option to sign a peace treaty with the Emerald Chain which would essentially merge it with the Federation, putting the Chain’s hegemony over the alpha quadrant with the Federation’s political legitimacy. Vance looked over the terms and (with a gun metaphorically to his head) conceded they were actually pretty good, he asked for only one concession: that Minister Osryaa be prosecuted for her many (and well documented) crimes. She wasn’t keen on this, so Vance rejected the treaty because he considered the UFP’s ideals worth dying for. Basically, Osyraa put on the face of a reformer but Vance correctly noted she just wanted the Federation brand.

Disco S2: Captain Christopher Pike needs a time crystal for Story Reasons™️. He meets with a Klingon monk named Tenavik on Boreth and, while inspecting a crystal destined for him, sees his tragic future. Tenavik says that Pike can get out of it if he leaves the time crystal. Because Pike is a moral pillar/absolute chad of a captain he steels himself and takes it. IMO Pike’s finest moment, and obviously the catalyst for his SNW characterization.

I can honestly see them pulling the trigger on it at the end of this season. This season’s pretty emphatically pushing the gang past their former status quo-- Mariner has supportive superiors, now what? Boimler is in charge sometimes, now what? Figuring this romance situation out would just be running with the theme of growth and change.

I’m happy either way they end up, although I think Rutherford’s comment about green eyes is telegraphing there’s something there, even if he and Tendi are oblivious to it.

Totally was the Sense-Ores admiral from Moist Vessel. Memory Alpha lists him as Admiral Vassery.

maybe they’re doing the star trek thing of having bad/meh early episodes, just on a more compressed time scale. (yeah it’s subjective, but I certainly liked these ones a lot more than the first ones).

I liked this one, just some wholesome series-to-series love wrapped up in a goofy package. A very Lower Decks feel. The Prodigy erasure continues to be a thing but I don’t think that’s ending anytime soon.

And if heavens forbid this is the last Star Trek thing George Takei does at least it’s on the same fun retrospective note as he had in his Crisis Point II appearance.

Aight let’s put some from some of the unmentioned series here:

• Osyraa, as she was rejected by Vance (Disco, calling out hypocrisy)
• Christopher, the crystal grasped firmly (Disco again, duty in the face of suffering)
• Solum, the wormhole collapsing (Prodigy, defiance in the face of insurmountable odds)
• Una and Spock, together on the turbolift (Short Treks, the sharing of embarassing personal secrets)
• La’an, as she stares at her watch (SNW, despair from holding in a secret)

I’d be remiss if i didn’t point out we have an actual, canon phrase (“Arnock, on the night of his joining”) that we know is appropriate for such an occasion though.

I know you put Angela here as Dr. Crusher but even though it’s all wrong I can’t stop seeing her as a gender-bent lt. Stamets, ill temper and all.

…With apologies to the meme poster.

Hard to do, sure, but “cannot be done easily” is a far different proposition from “cannot be done.” Unless you want to argue that the multiple transporter clones we have seen are philosophical zombies.

The Cerritos is continuing the proud Starfleet tradition of having good mental health advisors and a kinda useless ship’s counselor.