Prouvaire

I've enjoyed two of the three episodes so far, but as burns go, this is 👍.

I would prefer this, I think, because I've been having trouble reconciling a sitcom spending a few minutes most episodes this season racking up a body count that would now be in the hundreds, or even thousands.

As a franchise, of course, Star Trek can handle both silly comedy and lethal brutality (and even Lower Decks has successfully juggled in a few serious scenes amongst the comedy, at times), but the way these vignettes have been inserted into the A plots this season is like if in "The Trouble with Tribbles" Arne Darvin had been gang-raped just before the credits rolled.

Without giving it too much thought, I'd say DS9 season 6 or TOS season 1, with DS9 season 4 also being a contender.

DS9 season 6 opened with the franchise's first example of long-form storytelling, with "Rocks and Shoals" being a standout episode in that arc. It also gave us classics like "Far Beyond the Stars" and "In the Pale Moonlight". Overall the episodes were solid with few duds.

Similarly season 4 also opened strongly, with four of the first five episodes all being strong, with "The Visitor" among the franchise's best ever instalments and "Rejoined" also being very very good. ("Indiscretion" isn't as good as the first three or fifth episode.) It also features "Homefront"/"Paradise Lost". Granted, the second half of season 4 probably isn't quite as strong as the first half.

TOS season 1 established so much of the template of what Star Trek is, and many of the episodes still hold up very well even close to 60 years later, including "The Cage"/"The Menagerie", "Where No Man Has Gone Before", "Balance of Terror", "The Galileo Seven", "Space Seed", "The Devil in the Dark" and, of course, "City on the Edge of Forever".

ENT season 4 definitely gets the prize for "most improved" season. (Yes, I have seen PIC season 3, but don't rate it as highly as most people.)

PRO season 1 gets the prize for best debut season after TOS. I think it did a great job in putting a new spin on the franchise while telling good, family-friendly stories that developed both plot and characters.

That seems like such an insanely weird decision to make.

It could have also been a mistake. The "Ephraim and Dot" Short Trek made a similar continuity booboo when they gave the TOS-era Enterprise the "NCC 1701-A" naval construction code.

Also, I do think it would have been more interesting to proceed with Tuvix from a storytelling point of view. Obviously that doesn’t work great when you have actors contracted for multiple seasons

I was okay with Tuvix being split back apart eventually, but if VOY had fully committed to the serialised nature of its premise I would have loved to have seen Tuvix hang around for, say, 5-10 episodes first. They could still have had Neelix and Tuvok appear in the odd flashback or as holo constructs or something to justify their inclusion in the opening credits. Or, to be even more daring, not have them appear at all and removed Ethan Philips and Tim Russ from the credits for a while, although I don't think this sort of credit manipulation was permitted in the mid-90s. It would have made the impact of killing Tuvix even greater.

They never speak of it again. Probably because Janeway threatened to murder anyone on the ship who brings it up.

And that's what makes her the highly effective officer that she is. :-D

I think that after the season of LDS is done, while we’re waiting Disco season five, I’ll try and do some Non-Canon Connections.

Looking forward to that.

Fair point. It's been a few days since I saw the episode, so didn't recall the nuances.

I did think it was a bit of a shame that one of Trek's most powerful ethical quandaries got so easily and blithely technobabbled away, but such is the nature of comedy. And VOY did pretty much the same thing to the Borg, so turnabout is fair play I suppose.

And speaking of inside remains as a result of transporter accidents, will you do these canon connections posts for the Very Short Treks, (even if they themselves have been declared non-canonical)?

DECKD WK 1, EP 1 & 2
Solved in 3

⚪⚪⚪⚪⚪
⚪⚪⚪🟢⚪
🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢

https://www.playparamountplus.com/DECKD

Too used to playing Wordle rules,which is a disadvantage here.

Boimler has his Starfleet recruitment poster seen in “Those Old Scientists”, but Number One’s face is obscured every time it’s on screen.

I'm 99% sure they were just being subtle (which I like), but 1% of me wonders if there's something in the actors', in this case Rebecca Romijn's, contract that says they have to be compensated if their likeness is used, even a cartoon likeness. And if so, sometimes the budget doesn't quite stretch far enough.

This episode reminded me of what Mel Brooks purportedly said: "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die."

Also, Spork was one of the Vulcan proper names submitted by Bob Justman to Gene Roddenberry during the show's production: https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/star-trek-planet-vulcan-proper-names

T’Lyn is able to combine all the Tuvixed beings into one creature, which is then described by Tendi as a “Non-sentient blob of meat,” handily circumventing the ethical dilemma presented by “Tuvix”.

It really doesn't. It's like you lobotomising someone before you suffocate them with a pillow. Sure you turned the non-sentient blob of meat back into their constituent parts, but you're the one who created the non-sentient blob from a bunch of sentient beings in the first place (second place).

I own all (I think) of the TOS era Bantam novels and short story collections from way back (though some in their UK Corgi editions), and just about all of the early Pocket novels (the first 50 or so); as well as a fairly comprehensive selection of early non-fiction books, including some obscure ones like The Making of the Trek Conventions by Joan Winston, Letters to Star Trek by Susan Sackett and Star Trek Intragalactic Puzzles by James Razzi.

https://youtu.be/tRsYJej2RtI

In my head canon quad is a fundamental unit used in quantum computing, which I assume is a technology in common use in Trek.