USSBurritoTruck

As a fellow Gen X, I feel like SNW is...perfectly fine. If you went to the Star Trek store and walked up to the counter and said, "One Star Trek, please," SNW is what they would give you wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. Star Trek as you like it! It's a solid C+ for sure. And there are even some really good episodes, too!

But man, do I wish it wasn't trying so hard to be Star Trek, and was actually doing something new and interesting. I grew up watching reruns of TOS before TNG was on the air, and then TNG was appointment viewing in my house. And I love those shows. I have those shows an I can rewatch them any time I want.

This second season has been better than the first, and I've enjoyed it, but there still hasn't been much to really get me invested. There's no hook. None of these episodes are threatening to break into my top 50. Which, granted, there is almost 900 episodes of Star Trek, so there's a lot of competition.

I just want to be excited about Trek, and SNW is not doing that for me.

Yeah, absolutely. But that's not really what the term refit means.

And if that is a refit in Starfleet parlance -- as the instagram log claims it is -- than what prevents the Lamaar-class Voyager from also being a refit. Keep in mind that in "The Star Gazer", Picard claimed that the new Stargazer was also a refit, and, according to Matalas, it was a refit of the Constellation-class Stargazer:

"Like the TMP Enterprise, it’s a massively updated refit. I like to think of it as the story of the broom: If one day you replace the handle, and another day the brush, is it still the same broom? We thought of it as a vessel endlessly repaired and upgraded, brought in-line with current-future tech, so that somewhere underneath all the lights and polish are the bones of Picard’s original ship. Does it make sense? I don’t know. But I sure like the spirit of it."

Now, personally, I would prefer to not take anything Terry Matalas says seriously, but a lot of people seem tot think he should be Trek's new torchbearer, so there's a good chance we'll see a lot more of this nonsense in the future.

I don't think your assessment of the Luna-class and the Constitution III is accurate. They are entirely different, and the PIC production crew deciding that "refit" is basically just a word that the Starfleet Corps of Engineers will drop at a hat doesn't change that.

The instagram log that explains the history of the Titan A claims that it was constructed "using much of the internal components" of the Luna-class ship, and that's why it's a refit, but that plans to build the new ship on the spaceframe of the old were set aside mid-way through.

It's been a busy week, but I finally got a chance to read Defiant. There's a lot crammed into the book, and most of it is fun.

• Personally I'm tired of Sisko and Worf's bickering at this point. Their fallout seemed pretty flimsy when it happened, and here Worf's dragging up a bunch of old problems from their time together on DS9 did not work for me.

• Similarly Tom and B'Elanna's bickering didn't really move the needle.

• I did like Sela, Doctor Crusher, and the Defiant's unnamed Orion drug dealer/medic rushing to save Martok that's good stuff.

• The highlight of the issue is definitely the Data Lore interactions. I especially liked their conversation as they run through the streets of Qo'noS incapacitating Red Path followers without even pausing. Data's always had the potential to be so much scarier than he is, and it worked really well here.

Roddenberry’s memo about stardates being the episode producer’s birthday multiplied by the ship’s distance from Earth was a joke.

However even when you order the episode by production date the stardates still don’t line up. Even in season three where the episodes were aired in production order, the stardates still bounce around a bit.

That's right! Thanks for the correction.

A lot of the people who've made Star Trek over the years did not care about continuity from one episode to the next, let alone between series.

Personally I find long running media franchises with ongoing continuity fascinating. It's like the Winchester Mystery House; a beautiful maze like construct with sudden dead ends, doors to no where, abandoned additions, inconsistent design, and occasional Shakespeare quotes. Except instead of one mourning woman directing all the construction, it's been 56 years of countless writers, directors, production designers, and showrunners all contributing to Trek continuity.

It's fun to see how everything fits together, and those spots where it does not. That's just my take, anyway.

Are they doing something intentionally here?

Violence. Against me. Personally.

But also, as others have pointed out, in TOS there was very little rhyme or reason to the Stardates, and SNW seems to have embraced that. It's actually seems to be less non-sequential this season than in the first.

My personal headcanon is that after the Klingon, Starfleet implemented a sort of two factor authentication to the stardates so they're somewhat randomized, and can't be properly pieced together with the proper "key" that lets you know the actual sequence of events.

The general rule is that the only things considered Trek canon are what has appeared on screen in a series are film. But a lot of the comics are fun, regardless.

• Dak’Rah speaks of a chancellor who asked him about a Klingon speaking on behalf of the Federation, and he uses masculine pronouns while doing so. The title of chancellor has been used to describe a variety of positions, but I suspect that I am not the only one who initially assumed Dak’Rah was speaking of the chancellor of the Klingon Empire, their head of state. Last we saw, L’Rell was still chancellor, after having taken over in “Will You Take My Hand?”

• ”tlhIngan maH taHjaj.” Ortegas recites the rallying cry of T’Kuvma’s followers from “The Vulcan Hello”, ”Remain Klingon.”

• Uhura learned about Aenar philosophy from Hemmer in “Memento Mori”, and we learned that they’re pacifists in “The Aenar”.

• Doctor M’Benga and La’an have been practicing Mok’bara, a Klingon martial art Worf taught aboard the USS Enterprise D as seen in “Clues”. As per “The Vulcan Hello”, prior to the Federation-Klingon War, there was effectively no contact between the Federation and the Empire for 100 years, which does raise the question of how two Starfleet officers would have been able to learn Mok’bara.

• The red martial arts uniforms Doctor M’Benga and Dak’Rah wear for their Mok’Bara sparing session resemble the ones we see worn in “Charlie X” when Kirk is showing Charlie Evans some throws in the work facilities. Except those uniforms had tight leggings, an a Starfleet delta on the chest.

• In the flashback to J’Gal, we see the Klingons there all wore their hair long. Every Klingon we saw in season one, from heads of Great Houses to guys urinating in back alleys, was bald, and in “Point of Light” we learned that it was specifically because they were at war, first with other Klingons, and then with then with the Federation. We also so that each House had individual customs for dress and body modification, so unreasonable to assume that whichever House Dak’Rah and the other Klingons who held J’Gal were loyal to did not engage in such tonsure.

     • The Klingon warlords we see Doctor M’Benga kill in the flashback are wearing the same armour as D’Chok in “The Broken Circle”.

• The D’k thag dagger was introduced in “Star Trek: The Search for Spock”.

• According to Doctor M’Benga’s service record, he was born in 2223, meaning he would be 36 years old.

• The subtitles for the episode call the Klingon homeworld ”Kronos,” but fortunately the map Number One gives to Pike has it labelled ”Qo’noS,” as it should be.

• ”How can we represent a Federation that believes in peace if we say some people aren’t allowed to make up for their past.” For example, Pike will probably be very grateful that during the events of “The Menagerie, Part I” the Talosians choose not to display the moment where he claimed, “It's just that I can't get used to having a woman on the bridge.” Look how far he’s come in only five years!

• Doctor M’Benga tells Dak’Rah, ”You turned me into a monster.” In “The Wounded”, Chief O’Brien tells a Cardassian officer, “It’s not you I hate, Cardassian. I hate what I became because of you.”

• Dak’Rah accidentally stabs himself during the struggle with Doctor M’Benga. In “The House of Quark”, a Klingon named Kozak accidentally stabbed himself while fighting Quark, an in “The Vulcan Hello”, the Klingon Torchbearer stabbed himself after ambushing Michael Burnham.

It's right after Troi quotes Data's speech from "Family". That line always gets me.

• ”Have you noticed their references are weirdly specific?” Number One is also concerned about my going way over the character limit on this post.”

• Boimler power walks away after being startled by Number One. He claimed that power walking is more efficient in “Envoys”. Apparently Section 31 does it.

• Mariner tells Uhura that while she’s known for being a super-translating space adventurer in the future, part of that reputation is that she’s carefree. In episodes like “Charlie X” and “The Man Trap” we see Uhura singing in the recreation room, and flirting with Spock.

• Mariner performs the Picard Maneuver when standing up.

• On her PADD, Uhura is looking at examples of the Bajoran and Cardassian alphabets, which are labeled as such. This is the first indication that the Federation had made contact with either civilization prior to the TNG era.

     • There is a comatose Cardassian being held by the automated shipyard in “Dead Stop”, but no one actually really sees him.

• Starbase Earhart was first mentioned in “The Samaritan Snare” when Captain Picard tells Wesley the story of his being stabbed through the heart by a Nausican, and we first see the base in “Tapestry” when Q sends Picard’s consciousness back through time to that event.

     • “Tapestry” is also the first mention of dom-jot.

     • Mariner describes dom-jot as “A billiards game that Nausicans are terrible at, but love to bet on for some reason.” We see Mariner playing dom-jot against Nausicans at Starbase Earhart in “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris”.

• Pelia and Boimler share a moment staring at the warp core. Boimler has a long established history of being a fan of warp cores, going back to his first episode, “Second Contact”.

• Pelia’s quote, “I always pretended to be someone I wanted to be, until finally I became that someone…or he became me,”* is paraphrasing Cary Grant.

• ”Don’t yell Q, they haven’t met him yet.” Q first reveals himself in “Encounter at Farpoint”

     • ”They had kind of a Trelene thing going on.” Trelene appears in “The Squire of Gothos” and, so far no where else.

• The Enterprise crew starts expressing enthusiasm for the past, specifically the NX-01.

     • Pike mentions that he would be excited to set foot on Archer’s Enterprise. In “These Are the Voyages…” we learn that he is the one who wrote the parameters for a popular holo-simulation where the user plays the role of the NX-01’s chef.

     • La’an says she loves grapplers, which first appeared in the ENT premiere, “Broken Bow”.

     • Ortegas claims, ”I’m a huge fan of Travis Mayweather. First pilot of the NX-01*.” Presumably there had to be at least one.

     • Uhura mentions Hoshi Sato having spoken 86 languages. In “Two Days and Two Nights” it’s established that Hoshi learned 38 languages before having left Earth, and that she knows ”about 40” as of that episode.

• I believe this is the first time the Fleet Museum is referred to as the Starfleet History Museum, but both locations have the NX-01, as per “The Bounty”.

• We learn that Number One is featured on a Starfleet recruitment poster, including the words “Ad Astra per Aspera” which was the motto of the United Earth Starfleet and, we learn, of personal importance to Number one in the episode “Ad Astra per Aspera”.

     • The poster featuring Number One was not seen among the recruitment material Mariner and Boimler took when they set up their booth on Tulgana IV in “Reflections”.

• It was established that Tendi is the Mistress of the Winter Constellations in “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris”.

• It’s Jack Ransom! From Star Trek! Ransom is voiced by Jerry O’Connell.

• “Oh, Numero Una, hottest first officer in Starfleet history.” Rebecca Romijn and Jerry O’Connell are married.

• Drinking the Orion delaq causes the Enterprise crew to experience visual hallucinations similar to what Mariner, and Boimler went through after being exposed to nitrous oxide in “Room for Growth”. Tendi was immune.