Star Trek Social Club

In TNG, the lower the level of something the higher in intensity it was (a Level One Diagnostic was more intensive than a Level Four). In the 32nd century, the opposite seemed to be the case, as Reno talks about a Level-10 diagnostic in SFA: “Rubincon”. SNW seems to be taking the latter approach as well. This episode is not the first time we’ve seen people turned into puppets - in LD: “Kayshon, His Eyes Open”, Cerritos security chief Kayshon was turned into an (albeit inanimate) puppet by an energy beam. Fans might also remember the Angel episode “Smile Time”, a parody sequence in Stargate SG-1’s “200” and an imaginary sequence in Community’s “Advanced Documentary Filmmaking”.

The stardate is 3019.4. Enterprise is patrolling Rizonian space (first mention) on her way to Vulcan. Space piracy is indeed extant in Star Trek, with various species and factions engaging in piratical or privateering activities, notably the Orions (TAS: “The Pirates of Orion”), the Ferengi (TNG: “Rascals”) and the Breen (DS9: “To the Death”).

Spock and Scotty discuss longer-range transportation. Spock says 27,000 km is 2,000 km further than any transport achieved. By the 24th century, transporter ranges on the Galaxy-class could reach up to 40,000 km (TNG Tech Manual). To be honest, 27,000 km seems a bit short, since Earth geosynchronous orbit is 35,786 km. This might be a “Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale” trope issue.

That Scotty is working on increasing transport ranges references Star Trek (2009), where the Kelvin timeline Scotty is working on transwarp transportation to allow transmission across interstellar distances. Prime Spock helped him with this, giving him the necessary equations his Prime counterpart had already solved.

While chanting the mantra, “Logic is the rhythm of your katra,” (katra being roughly the Vulcan equivalent of the soul, ST III), Spock hears echoes from SNW: “The Griffin Incident”.

Kal Rekk, a day of “atonement, solitude and silence” was first mentioned in VOY: “Meld”.

T’Pring’s suspicion of “hijinks” refers to her two previous trips to Enterprise, one which resulted in a body swap (SNW: “Spock Amok”) and another which had Spock turned physically human (SNW: “Charades”). Specifically, in “Spock Amok” while in Spock’s body she says she does not like hijinks.

When Spock turns to see the puppet T’Pring, the music echoes bits of the soundtrack to TOS: “Amok Time”, the episode that introduced her and Vulcan.

April is actually less nonplussed about the situation than would be expected. But then again, as Janeway said in VOY: “Deadlock”, “We’re Starfleet officers. Weird is part of the job.” He says the nearest ship is two days away, but didn't Spock say the USS Witmere was 29,647 km away? This is answered at the end of the episode.

La’An has been concerned since SNW: “Four and a Half Vulcans” that her Augment heritage is asserting itself.

Orion interceptors first appeared in ENT: “Borderland” and are playable Tier 6 ships in Star Trek Online. Ch'Rol is played by Rachael Harris, who played Kes' mother Martis in VOY: "Before and After" and is better known for playing Dr Linda Martin in Lucifer. Her lieutenant Ejachi is played by Joe Lo Truglio, best known for playing Charles Boyle on Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

This is the second time in the series that someone has captured Enterprise, the previous time being Captain Angel in SNW: “The Serene Squall”. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: to lose a ship once may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose it twice looks like carelessness.

While the stereotype of the submissive Orion slave girl is prevalent in popular culture, it is true that Orion women control the males via the use of pheromones (ENT: “Bound”). Another matriarchal society was seen in TNG: “Angel One”.

Spock “touching hands” with Pike while separated through glass and Pike saying, “The needs of the many…” echoes Spock and Kirk’s scene at the end of ST II when Spock dies. The full phrase - a Vulcan aphorism - is, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.” Kirk, naturally, disagrees, sacrificing his ship and career to save Spock in ST III because “The needs of the one outweighed the needs of the many.”

Wait, how did Pike get back into the ship (and that room) if none of them can operate doors and they couldn’t even get out of the room? This is answered at the end of the episode.

Pike, La’An and Una in Vulcan robes is the first time the classic totem pole trench trope has been used in Star Trek.

When T’Pring rescues Spock, we can see a Romulan ale bottle behind the counter, although the liquid inside does not appear to be Romulan ale blue.

While the phrase “my mind to your mind, my thoughts to your thoughts,” is forever associated with mind melds, it was not actually used in TOS. The phrase debuted in TAS: “The Infinite Vulcan”, said by Spock’s giant clone.

And to round off a trilogy of tropes, we have the “All Just a Dream” trope, which was used to probably better effect in DS9: “Far Beyond the Stars”, although the dream appears to have had some therapeutic effect for Spock. Hoshi also experienced an entire episode’s hallucination during 8 seconds in the transporter buffer in ENT: “Vanishing Point”.

Written by: Henry Alonso Myers & Dana Horgan

Directed by: Jordan Canning

Article is in Portuguese. This was literally the most popular person at STLV this year.

Brief Star Trek mention if you don't want to read the whole (lengthy) thing.

DEADLINE: What is your plan for the Star Trek franchise? It is at crossroads with Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy ending and no new series greenlit. If I heard you correctly, you said that something is coming. Yes?

WISEMAN: Well, it’s one of the reasons why Chris is here as the resident number one fan of the Star Trek franchise. And there’s so many people in this building, by the way, that are. It is our goal and it is our job to figure out what the next bounce of Star Trek is. We’re talking to a lot of writers, we are leaning on CBS Studios, and it is imperative that we figure out what the next iteration is in this franchise because it’s just too important. We also are in touch with Paramount Pictures, they have a Star Trek movie that’s in development.

The title refers to the black-and-white aesthetic of the episode. Chiaroscuro is an artistic technique that uses strong lights and darks (chiaro, bright and oscuro, dark) to create contrasts, so as to give a starker, more dramatic and sometimes three-dimensional feel to the two-dimensional image. A notable user was Leonardo Da Vinci, whose hologram has made a number of appearances in Star Trek (VOY: “Scorpion, Part 1”).

The stardate is 2122.4. The system shown on screen is Mat’Aar, its first appearance in lore. The technobabble explanation for the black-and-white look is the “infrared blackbody spectra” from the Mat’Aaran star whose radiation affects how people see colour. This is the same explanation as to why the outdoor scenes on the Harkonnen homeworld of Gledi Prime were black-and-white in the movie Dune: Part Two. The 9th episode of the fan film series Star Trek Continues, “What Ships Are For”, featured Hyalinus, an asteroid whose sun produces radiation that stops the eyes’ cones from working, making everything appear monochrome.

The last time the Klingons and the Federation were in open conflict was during the Klingon War of 2257-2258, some 5-6 years ago from SNW’s present day. Since then, the two powers have enjoyed an uneasy peace, which will once again erupt into open conflict a few years from now in 2266-67 (TOS: “Errand of Mercy”).

With Una on the mission is Uhura and M’Benga. The latter served in the Klingon War as a special forces operative code-named “The Ghost” (SNW: “Under the Cloak of War”).

Una’s fondness for rules is why the crew nicknamed her “Where Fun Goes to Die” (SNW: “Spock Amok”).

The art deco architecture and fashion of Mat’Aar XII, coupled with the black-and-white motif and plot are designed to evoke a 1940s film noir atmosphere, with the Klingon occupation, resistance and collaborators reminiscent of other films of the era like 1942’s Casablanca.

M’Benga’s reference to Una pretending to be someone she’s not refers to her years hiding her Illyrian heritage (SNW: “Ad Astra Per Aspera”).

Uhura quotes partially from Casablanca, “Of all the gin-joints in all the towns in all the world… she walks into mine.”

La’An’s transformation into a Vulcan took place in SNW: “Four and a Half Vulcans”, where she began to exhibit aggressive and paranoid traits more commonly associated with Romulan culture. Some of it was chalked up to her Augment heritage.

The legendary Commander Kor was first played by the inimitable John Colicos in “Errand of Mercy”, who subsequently reprised the role in DS9: “Blood Oath”, “The Sword of Kahless” and “Once More Unto the Breach”. As M’Benga notes, Kor is a member of the House of Kor, part of the Klingon Imperial Family (“Once More Unto the Breach”), which traces its descent from Kahless the Unforgettable, founder of Klingon civilization (TOS: “The Savage Curtain”). He is played here by actor Demore Barnes who, like Colicos, is Canadian.

The machine the resistance woman refers to is the Klingon mind scanner (“Errand of Mercy”), also known as a mind sifter or mind ripper, which scans a subject’s thoughts but sometimes destructively. M’Benga alludes to the idea that in a vast universe, we will eventually run into our own doppelgängers. This is the kind of excuse that TOS came up with to explain the number of Earth-like civilizations Enteprise ran into by citing “Hodgkin’s Law of Parallel Planetary Development” (TOS: “Bread and Circuses”).

M’Benga refers to the Borgia plant, which is similar to the nightshade plant and common to Class M plants (TOS: “The Man Trap”). The Borgias were a powerful Renaissance family that were reputed to use poison to eliminate their rivals.

Kor is shown as a ridge-headed Klingon, unlike his depiction in TOS but in line with how he is portrayed in DS9. The whole Klingon ridges thing is a rabbit hole I really don’t have space to get into right now, but I’m sure someone will bring it up elsewhere in a thread.

Kor’s claim that serving the Empire is the noblest honour reminds me of the concept of kuve, or “servitor” species in the seminal TOS novel The Final Reflection which, although rendered non-canon by events, heavily influenced the depiction of Klingons as a sophisticated warrior culture. In the novel, the Klingons’ position is also that there is no shame in being conquered and rendered kuve because they are serving a superior species.

Uhura uses the alias Nyota Nakuru. M’Benga was born in Nakuru, Kenya on 29 December 2223 (“Under the Cloak of War”). Neodymium is a real-world rare earth element, commonly used in magnets, but it is mentioned in DS9: “In the Cards” as being part of a neodymium power cell. Here Kor mentions it in conjunction with munitions.

Allakas malt was an alcoholic beverage first mentioned in ENT: “The Communicator”.

A targ is a Klingon animal, like a cross between a pig and a dog, and often domesticated.

Scotty says, “Cross my heart, hope to get stuck in a pattern buffer.” He will, in fact, be stuck in a transporter pattern buffer for 75 years (TNG: “Relics”), but on purpose.

M’Benga says that a parent would do anything to protect their child. He might be thinking about his own daughter, Rukiya, for whom he took extraordinary measures to preserve her life when she was dying from chinokemia (SNW: “The Elysian Kingdom”).

This is the first time the T’Gal regional dialect of Klingon has been mentioned.

The Klingons entering the club are singing the same drinking song Worf and Huraga sang in DS9: “The Way of the Warrior”. The Doctor and Seven also sing it in VOY: “Barge of the Dead”. The Mat’Aarians singing back in defiance copies an identical scene from Casablanca where German soldiers singing the patriotic “Die Wacht am Rhein” are drowned out by other patrons singing the French national anthem “La Marseillaise”.

Bloodwine is a Klingon alcoholic beverage which is made from stomping on serpent worms in the same way wine is made from grapes on Earth (LD: “A Farewell to Farms”).

The USS Yang (NCC-321616) was a 32nd century Friendship-class starship (DIS: “That Hope is You, Part 2”, SFA: “Rubincon”). Chapel’s Yang would be, of course, the 23rd century namesake.

This is the first mention of Ülget in lore.

As the shuttle leaves the system, colour fades back into the closing scene.

Written by: Skylar Ojeda & Dana Horgan

Directed by: Meera Menon

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Daniel_Davis

Sharing some photos from the convention.

FWIW, what might have been but probably never really, etc.

One of the highlights of STLV for me this year. Got a NX-01 assignment patch tattoo at Count’s Tattoo (at the Rio) in honor of my late grandfather who passed in 2025.

EDIT: Included the year.

FWIW. I'm not really wild about their chances. This show of all shows is the one Paramount really didn't want on their plate.

Are the Maquis doing the right thing?

Thanks for the lively discussion all! My take is that the sci fi elements mean you can't cut and paste their experiences onto our morality exactly, but it makes the feeling of conflict relatable, at least emotionally.

Join Noah Wyle, along with Katherine LaNasa, Fiona Dourif, Taylor Dearden, Shabana Azeez, and Ayesha Harris of The Pitt, and some surprise guests, for a celebration of 60 years of Star Trek. Hosted by the Writers Guild Foundation, which also celebrates its 60th anniversary, this special night will include remarks from people closely associated with the series, a performance of the first aired episode of Star Trek, “The Man Trap,” with live score, and an appearance by a Salt Vampire replica from the episode, on loan from the Star Trek Archive, Paramount.

Sold out? Not in LA? You can stream the show or watch on demand. Tickets are here: https://watch.thirdbest.tv/products/wgf-retroreads-star-trek-60th-with-noah-wyle/

The stardate is 2011.7. This is the first mention of the Rodaxian system in lore. It was established in TNG that starships run on a three-shift rotation (8 hours each), although some captains preferred four shifts (TNG: “Chain of Command”).

Uhura says the Rodaxians are very specific as to how they want to be spoken to. Another alien race which is very exacting in their diplomatic protocols - especially a ritual greeting to open negotiations - is the insectoid Jarada (TNG: “The Big Goodbye”).

Some of the promotional video for the Cesnar Grand is in a limited animation style resembling that of TAS. We see a female Aquan (TAS: “The Ambergris Element”) doing yoga, dressed the same way as in the episode, albeit not breathing water as her species is supposed to do. Next we see an Edosian singing, and an Andorian that resembles Thelin, the XO of Enterprise in an altered timeline (TAS: “Yesteryear). We see a Vulcan playing the Vulcan lute who resembles Sarek as portrayed in “Yesteryear”, and on the sofa is a woman dressed like the android Andrea from TOS: “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” Which reminds me, Roger Korby should have gone missing on Exo III by now.

We see a tribble purring and gliding over the wreckage of Ortegas’ shore leave (TOS: “The Trouble with Tribbles”). Ortegas is wearing a headband with fake Andorian antennae. On the table is a plush toy or stuffed Alfa 177 canine (TOS: “The Enemy Within”). Scotty is wearing a mugato costume (TOS: “A Private Little War”), which we also saw in SFA: “Vitus Reflux”, as the mugato is the mascot of the 32nd century Starfleet War College.

The episode is written by Kathryn Lyn, who previously worked in LD, first as a “canon consultant” and then writing the iconic LD: “wej Duj”, which was nominated for a Hugo award. This may explain the LD-ish tone of the episode.

Kirk and Spock shared a mind meld in SNW: “New Life and New Civilizations” in order to coordinate an attack between Enterprise and Farragut, the first of a number in their friendship over the decades.

Una is singing “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in Klingon.

“It’s green,” is a line Scotty uses to describe an alcoholic beverage in TOS: “By Any Other Name”. When Data takes a similar looking bottle from under Guinan’s counter in Ten Forward in TNG: “Relics”, he uses the same line to answer an older Scotty’s question. That drink is identified by Picard later in the episode as Aldebaran whiskey.

Pike asks what they think of a face tattoo. In VOY, the character of Chakotay has one. This is the second episode in a row Anson Mount gets to play his “crazed Pike” expression, although the one in SNW: “The Griffin Incident” was of course psychotic rather than drunk. Pike has a cabin in Bear Creek, Montana (SNW: “Strange New Worlds”).

The closed captions have Scotty saying “tellurite”, which is an oxyanion of the element tellurium. He probably meant “Tellarite”.

The running gag of Vulcans looking perfectly fine but insisting they are out of control originated in “wej Duj” and previously referred to in SNW: “Ad Astra Per Aspera”. The significance of the title is made clear when Spock says to Kirk that he’s never had a “human best friend”.

Anbo-jyutsu is a martial arts/competitive area game first seen in TNG: “The Icarus Factor”. It’s also appeared twice on LD (LD: “wej Duj”, “Mugato, Gumato”). The Bingo Caller is Kathryn Lyn herself, probably in the persona of K’Lyn, a Vulcan character she cosplays as, and the inspiration for T’Lyn’s name in LD.

Ortegas’ brother (last seen in SNW: “Four-and-a-Half Vulcans”) is Umberto Ortegas, but she calls him “Beto” (a common nickname for Spanish names that end in “-berto”). Scotty reveals he has 6 brothers, 4 of them adopted - previously undisclosed on-screen. He does not mention a sister, however, one assumes he must have at least one because his nephew in ST II was Peter Preston, not Scott, unless naming conventions have changed.

Pike has letters in pIqaD the Klingon script, tattooed on his face. However, it is a simple substitution and the words are English. The one on the forehead reads “hair today Gorn tomorrow”, both a pun on the saying “hair today, gone tomorrow” and a reference to Pike’s hair, a perennial fan obsession.

Isolinear chips were introduced into lore in TNG, but it was mentioned in “Relics” that they only replaced duotronic chips c.2329. However, technological progress has been altered, probably due to time travel shenanigans like those in SNW: “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”.

Spock mentions Quadrium particles which are native to the Rodaxian system. Varuvian is an ore which is a component of a varuvian bomb, which has enough explosive power to destroy a planet (LD: “First First Contact”). Niritlin is also an explosive compound (DS9: “Improbable Cause”).

A zeptosecond is one sextillionth of a second - the smallest unit of time ever measured. The time it takes for a photon to cross the length of a hydrogen molecule is 247 zeptoseconds. A transporter cycle, from dematerialisation to rematerialisation, in the 24th century takes about 3-5 seconds.

Scotty nearly gets his thumb blown off. In real life, actor James Doohan was accidentally shot six times by a sentry during D-Day, one of which cost him the middle finger on his right hand. He hid his missing finger during his acting career, usually by holding his hand at strategic angles, although occasionally you can spot it in episodes like “The Trouble with Tribbles” and TOS: “Catspaw”.

Written by: Kathryn Lyn

Directed by: Yana Gorskaya