Let's assume that Janeway never separated Tuvix and kept him as a crew member. Would the crew have still gotten home?

Assumptions:

• The subsequent story arc (and episode plots) are generally the same
• Any episode where the threat is caused by (or related to) the individual personalities of Neelix or Tuvok never happens
• Any episode where the day is saved by the individual personalities of Neelix or Tuvok is more dangerous
• We can assume that the strengths/weaknesses of Tuvix remain throughout the series

Do they still make it home? If not, what episodes are likely to end in disaster?

One of the recent laws in Trek that gets looked at a bit, is the genetic engineering ban within the Federation. It appears to have been passed as a direct result of Earth's Eugenics Wars, to prevent a repeat, and seems to have been grandfathered into Federation law, owing to the hand Earth had in its creation.

But we also see that doing so came with major downsides. The pre-24th century version of the law applied a complete ban on any genetic modification of any kind, and a good faith attempt to keep to that resulted in the complete extinction of the Illyrians.

In Enterprise, Phlox specifically attributes the whole issue with the Eugenics Wars to humans going overboard with the idea of genetic engineering, as they are wont to do, trying to improve/perfect the human species, rather than using it for the more sensible goal of eliminating/curing genetic diseases.

Strange New Worlds raises the question of whether it was right for Earth to enshrine their own disasters with genetic engineering in Federation law like that, particularly given that a fair few aliens didn't have a problematic history with genetic engineering, and some, like the Illyrians, and the Denobulans, used it rather liberally, to no ill-effects.

At the same time, people being augmented with vast powers in Trek seems to inevitably go poorly. Gary Mitchell, Khan Noonien-Singh, and Charlie X all became megalomaniacs because of the vast amount of power that they were able to access, although both Gary and Charlie received their powers through external intervention, and it is unclear whether Khan was the exception to the rule, having been born with that power, and knowing how to use it properly. Similarly, the Klingon attempt at replicating the human augment programme was infamous, resulting in the loss of their famous forehead ridges, and threatening the species with extinction.

Was the Federation right to implement Earth's ban on genetic engineering, or is it an issue that seems mostly human/earth-centric, and them impressing the results of their mistakes on the Federation itself?

In SNW 1x09 All Those Who Wander, the crew reenact Aliens with a handful of baby Gorn as their adversaries. We learn that Gorn breed by infecting a host animal with eggs, which hatch and burst out of the host when mature (which can take months or hours, apparently depending on the host). The babies are immediately hostile to other baby Gorn, and are left to their own devices until they are picked up by adults at some indeterminate point. We also learn that these baby Gorn are themselves capable of implanting eggs in a host by spitting on them.

These baby Gorn seem like a full fledged viable species already: small, vicious hunters who are (like tribbles) basically born pregnant. From an evolutionary perspective, that's plenty to propagate their own existence. It's also a lifestyle that selects for intelligence (small hunters tend to be pretty smart) but seems like an unlikely route to developing genuine sapience. We'd expect these baby Gorn to have a relatively stable population given the turnaround times of egg maturation and their predilection towards cannibalism, and the later feature would also make it far less likely that any given individual would survive long enough to become an adult, as each fresh generation brings a wave of fresh adversaries who vastly outnumber the handful of survivors from previous waves.

Of course, we know there are adult Gorn. So, how did they come to be? Why would there be a species where the adults are intelligent and social enough to be a spacefaring power, and yet apparently nothing they learn as an adult is needed for an individual to pass on it's genes?

I really love the Federation starship design lineage, and love seeing how it all connects across the centuries of Trek history. This includes designs that at first may not seem copacetic with the rest, like the Starfleet vessels in Discovery. This is my attempt at a partly-speculative, mostly-canon history of human/Starfleet starship design.

I originally put this together in this infographic to post on /r/StarTrekStarships but have reformatted it for text.

I chose to leave the XCV-330 out because we really don't know where it fits in the timeline. Ostensibly it is a warp capable ship, but Into Darkness has it placed before the Phoenix in a chronological display. There's nothing to go off of.

​ ​ ​

EARTH STARFLEET DESIGN ERA

CIRCA 2063–2160

This is an era of expansion for humanity as they first venture out into deep space. Starship designs of this era are primarily influenced directly by Dr. Zefram Cochrane's Phoenix and traditional spacecraft design.

Distinguishing characteristics of this design era include exposed metallic hull plating, primitive iterations of familiar design elements, exposed deflector dishes, round nacelles

EXAMPLES

FRIENDSHIP 1

NX-ALPHA/BETA/GAMMA

SS CONESTOGA

SARAJEVO-TYPE

EMMETTE-TYPE

WARP DELTA / NEPTUNE-CLASS

INTREPID-TYPE

FREEDOM-CLASS

NX-CLASS

​

• Dr. Zefram Cochrane breaks the warp barrier aboard the Phoenix in 2063, launching an era of human expansion into the stars
• Only four years later, the arrival of the Vulcans and the goal of space exploration has begun to unify the globe. By 2067, the United Earth Space Probe Agency already exists, and launches Friendship 1, Earth's first warp-capable deep space probe.
• It is only another two years before the unaffiliated civilian colony ship SS Conestoga launches in 2069. The design appears makeshift, two Cochrane-style warp nacelles retrofitted to a hull derived from the earlier sublight DY-type transports. It is likely this is also around the time when the colony seen in The Masterpiece Society departed, as their descendants were unaware of transporters.
• While the first Lunar colonies were being founded around the turn of the century, the Emmette-type enters service as the earliest known large-scale, warp-capable starship. Likely used primarily for intra-system travel, especially between Earth and Mars. The Emmette-type still uses chemical-based rocket propulsion at sublight speeds (as seen in the ENT intro).
• The "warp delta" appears to have been developed from the earlier Emmette-type test-bed as part of continued developments in warp drive and impulse engine research.
• The Warp Five Complex is dedicated by Zefram Cochrane in 2119. Dr. Henry Archer and his team begin work on the next generation of Earth's warp drive. The NX-Alpha and its later iterations are used as the primary research and development test-beds for warp drive development.
• The Sarajevo-type transport's earliest known appearance is 2154, but it may have existed earlier. Its unique design and integrated nacelles suggest it may be an unaffiliated civilian transport rather than a Starfleet vessel. It may represent the pinnacle of early warp 1-2 drives being made available for civilian use.
• The Intrepid-type represents Starfleet's earliest known iteration toward the now-familiar primary hull, perhaps as the necessity of keeping distance between the warp engines and the bulk of the crew for safety became more apparent. The Intrepid's Cochrane/Archer-type nacelles are significantly larger than its contemporaries, suggesting it was used to test newer, more powerful engines.
• The Freedom-class is noted as Earth's first warp 4-capable starship. It is a very small ship, possibly one that had been under MACO command prior to being folded into Starfleet. It should be noted that the design seen here is probably not the ship's original appearance, as it may have been refit during the Earth-Romulan War.
• The Earth Starfleet Design Era culminates in the NX-class starship, the ultimate peak of pre-Federation human starship design, and the first human starship to achieve warp factor 5, thereby finally giving humans access to deep space at reasonable rates of travel.

​

EARLY STARFLEET DESIGN ERA

CIRCA 2161–2270

As of the founding of the United Federation of Planets in 2161, Earth Starfleet has been folded into the newly-founded Federation Starfleet. Starships capable of velocities up to warp 7 are becoming common, and the venerable NX-class is being decommissioned.

Distinguishing characteristics of this design era include metallic hulls in varying finishes and levels of armor, continued use of Cochrane/Archer-style nacelles in the main production line of starships, exposed but protected and heavier-duty deflector dishes, and experimentation with new materials, layouts, and engine designs. This century sees an explosion in Starfleet R&D as new technologies and techniques from Federation member worlds like VULCAN, ANDORIA, and TELLAR PRIME are tested, developed, and integrated into existing Starfleet technology.

EXAMPLES

NX REFIT

DAEDALUS-CLASS

CONSTITUTION-CLASS

KELCIE MAE-TYPE

ARCHER-TYPE

FARRAGUT-TYPE

WALKER-CLASS

MALACHOWSKI-CLASS

CARDENAS-CLASS

HIAWATHA-TYPE

NIMITZ-CLASS

SHEPARD-CLASS

CROSSFIELD-CLASS

​

• The NX-01 Enterprise is decommissioned in 2161. At some point, it is refit with more powerful warp engines necessitating a secondary hull slung beneath the primary hull, connected by a neck. This would become a mainstay characteristic of Federation starships for at least a century.
  • NOTE: There is a discrepancy in the timing of the NX-01 refit. The finale of STAR TREK ENTERPRISE states that the NX-01 was decommissioned in 2161, in which the final episode takes place, yet the ship still has its original body. It is possible that the ship was recommissioned after the founding of the Federation, refit, and rechristened the USS Enterprise (as it is named in the 25th century Fleet Museum). It is also possible Commander Riker's holodeck program is inaccurate.
• This design era marks the beginning of several distinct efforts by Starfleet to branch out and experiment with new ship and engine technology after a century of iterating on the designs of Dr. Zefram Cochrane and Dr. Henry Archer.
• Among the first of these experiments is the Daedalus-class starship. While still making use of standard Cochrane/Archer-type warp engines, it marks a radical departure from previous starship layouts. The NX Refit's secondary hull is expanded to a large cylinder, and the primary hull is made spherical. The Daedalus-class was among the first starship classes fielded by the newly-formed United Federation of Planets — the USS Essex, under the command of Captain Bryce Shumar, is lost with all hands in 2167, only six years after the founding of the Federation. The Daedalus-class is retired by 2196
• By the 2220s, Starfleet has launched the Walker-class starship as a test-bed for new engine development. In a nod to its experimental nature, the ship's design evolves directly out of the lineage of the NX-01. The Walker-class includes a prototype nacelle design not featured on any other starship class.
• Starfleet's main production line of starships continues iterating from the noble lineage of the NX-01, with the NX Refit evolving directly into the Constitution-class starship, launched in the 2240s. In 2245, the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 is launched.
• ​At the same time Starfleet is developing the Constitution-class and its derivatives in the 2230s, other starships are developed as testing platforms for new ideas in space-frames, hull materials, layouts, and engine design, possibly utilizing new technologies and techniques adapted from Starfleet member worlds. Ships like the Cardenas-class, Malachowski-class, Shepard-class, and Nimitz-class lay the groundwork for centuries of future starship design to come.
• The Cochrane/Archer warp nacelle design has reached a development plateau, having achieved incredible speed and power as seen with the Constitution-class and its design contemporaries, the Farragut-type and Archer-type starships.
• The Kelcie Mae-type starship demonstrates a wild departure from typical Starfleet design, mixing a standard Cochrane/Archer nacelle with a body plan possibly influenced by similar Vulcan or Andorian starship designs.
• The Early Starfleet Design Era is closed by the Crossfield-class starship, considered new and impressive in 2256. Outfitted with advanced technology, the Crossfield-class was specifically designed as a scientific test-bed for new propulsion technologies. The project's failure and loss with all hands of the only two known ships of the class led to its design being abandoned.

​

MODERN STARFLEET DESIGN ERA

CIRCA 2270–PRESENT

Following the completion of Captain James T. Kirk's five-year mission aboard the USS Enterprise, Starfleet begins a major fleet overhaul program to integrate new technologies and techniques into their starship designs.

Distinguishing characteristics of this design era include advanced hull materials, integrated and illuminated deflector dishes, standardized photon torpedo launchers, and transitional phases between old and new technology as devices like phasers and warp drives are perfected.

EXAMPLES

CONSTITUTION II-CLASS

MIRANDA-CLASS

OBERTH-CLASS

EXCELSIOR-CLASS

AMBASSADOR-CLASS

CONSTELLATION-CLASS

CALIFORNIA-CLASS

GALAXY-CLASS

DEFIANT-CLASS

PROMETHEUS-CLASS

INTREPID-CLASS

SOVEREIGN-CLASS

AKIRA-CLASS

STEAMRUNNER-CLASS

SABER-CLASS

LUNA-CLASS

PROTOSTAR-CLASS

ODYSSEY-CLASS

EXCELSIOR II-CLASS

SAGAN-CLASS

CONSTITUTION III-CLASS

INQUIRY-CLASS

​

• The Modern Starfleet Design Era is inaugurated in the 2270s by the launch of the refit USS Enterprise NCC-1701, retroactively classified as a Constitution II-class starship. The refit Enterprise leaves behind the reliable Cochrane/Archer-style warp nacelles that had been standard for two centuries. Its newer, slimmer, squared-off engine design suggests a design evolution derived from the experimental nacelles tested on Early Design Era starships.
• Like the original Constitution-class Enterprise, the refit's new design elements are carried over to its contemporaries, like the Miranda-class, whose design also evokes the Nimitz-class seen earlier.
• Starfleet once again experiments with radical starship body plans, using a unique split design in the Oberth-class science vessel, perhaps for crew safety.
• By 2285, the USS Excelsior NX-2000 is launched as a test-bed for yet another refinement in starship propulsion. The ultimate success of this project leads to the recalibration of Starfleet's warp scale toward much faster velocities. The long, exposed warp coil grills of the Constitution II-class and Excelsior-class starships become the new standard in nacelle design.
• The Constellation-class starship is introduced by 2285, relatively unique with its four nacelle layout hearkening back to the Cardenas-class, and becomes a mainstay of Starfleet. New vessels of the class continue to be launched for at least the next 40 years, such as the USS Stargazer.
• The next 80 years are spent by Starfleet, rather than on further experimentation, on refining and perfecting their existing technologies. The Ambassador-class starship, with its clear lineage from the earlier Excelsior, launches by 2340 as the result of this effort. It features the now-standard glowing warp nacelles ubiquitous in 24th century starship design, while once-typical ball-type phaser banks have now been replaced by more flexible and capable phaser arrays.
• Having mastered the art of designing and constructing modular starships, Starfleet begins building fleets of specialized vessels, such as the California-class, for specific purposes — such as engineering, emergency management, and medical — to be deployed across the Federation.
• By the early 2360s, the Ambassador-class design has evolved into the enormous Galaxy-class starship, as best exemplified by one of the most iconic Starfleet vessels of all time, the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D. At 42 decks tall, the Galaxy-class is the most advanced machine ever built my humankind up to that point.
• With the emergence of the Borg threat in 2365, followed by the loss of 39 starships to a single Borg cube in 2367, Starfleet R&D once again turns to radical approaches to counter their new nemesis. This results in the USS Defiant, a new class of starship dedicated entirely to combat, with an overpowered engine, robust weapons array, and minimal facilities for either science or medicine. The Defiant is formally launched in 2370, and deployed to Deep Space Nine to protect the Bajoran wormhole against the Dominion.
• By 2370, Starfleet launches the Intrepid-class starship, a science vessel designed for deep space exploration and outfitted with some of Starfleet's most advanced technologies, including prototype variable-geometry nacelle pylons, intended to counteract the potentially destructive nature of warpfields on subspace as discovered earlier in the year.
• Only shortly thereafter, the Sovereign-class starship is introduced in the early 2370s as a replacement for the aging Galaxy-class, and one capable of defending itself better. The Sovereign-class immediately superseded the Intrepid-class as the most advanced in the fleet, with a new nacelle design that rendered the variable-geometry pylons unnecessary.
• The success of the Defiant in early engagements against the Dominion leads to Starfleet pursuing its combat-forward nature, while settling on larger space-frames to counter the Defiant's propensity for tearing itself apart. These combat-oriented development projects result in compact, battle-ready designs like the Akira-class, Steamrunner-class, and Saber-class, each capable of being quickly crewed and deployed, all of which helped to defend Earth against the incursion of the Borg in the Battle of Sector 001 in 2373.
• In addition to the Defiant and related projects, Starfleet also develops the prototype Prometheus-class starship, utilizing an advanced multi-vector attack mode in which the starship split into three smaller vessels. The Prometheus is launched in late 2373, following the Battle of Sector 001.
• By the end of the Dominion War in 2375, Starfleet has taken incredible losses. Century-old designs like the Miranda and Excelsior-class starships are being refit to participate in the fighting, as with the USS Lakota, with their old 2270s and 2280s-era nacelles being upgraded to generate more power — thus gaining glowing warp coil grills, unlike their earlier predecessors.
• Between 2375–2400, Starfleet focuses on rebuilding its ruined fleets. With limited resources available in the wake of the quadrant-wide Dominion War, tried-and-true designs and methodologies are designated for refurbishment and reuse.
• In 2379, Starfleet launched the Luna-class starship as part of a consolidated effort to return to their principal objective of exploration and discovery. The Luna-class starship built on technologies developed for vessels like the Akira and Sovereign-class starships during the Dominion War, now putting them to use for peaceful purposes instead.
• Following the return of the USS Voyager to Earth in 2378, Starfleet began research and development once again on advanced propulsion technologies. This resulted in the prototype USS Protostar as a test-bed for the protostar drive. The class was ordered into full production in 2384.
• The Odyssey-class starship is launched in 2385, a decade after the end of the Dominion War. One of the largest ships ever constructed by Starfleet, the Odyssey-class builds on the many successes of the venerable Galaxy and Sovereign-class heavy cruisers.
• In addition to the lack of available resources following the Dominion War, the end of the conflict sees a desire by Starfleet and its personnel to return to Starfleet's glory days of exploration. To accommodate scarce equipment, older ships are cannibalized and refurbished into "old-new" designs based heavily on successful designs of the past, refreshed for service in the 24th and 25th centuries. Notable among these are the Excelsior II-class starship, the Constitution III-class, and the Sagan-class.
• By 2399, Starfleet has introduced the Inquiry-class starship, described as "the fastest and most tactically-capable ships in the Federation fleet."

To be clear, I'm not looking to debate whether this is the best Trek film. Rather, I'm asking why so many people see it as such.

I enjoy TWoK well enough, and certainly it is a good film overall. But consider: it is much more militaristic than any Trek before and more than most Trek since, and relatively violent compared to TOS; there is no exploration of strange new worlds; tonally, it is quite different from most Trek stories. (To be clear, I'm not suggesting that these qualities are required for a "good" Trek film -- I'm just noting a few obvious ways that TWoK is unusual.)

In terms of TOS episodes, TWoK is probably most like a combination of "The City On The Edge Of Forever" and "Balance of Terror" -- which, to be fair, are beloved classic episodes, in part because they are somewhat exceptional compared to the rest of the series. So perhaps that gives us some clue as to why the film is so beloved.

In general, TWoK is ultimately about mortality. For all that the film professes to be about Khan, he really is just an Act of God (in the natural disaster sense), creating an unstoppable force that Kirk must humble himself against. The film is really about Kirk learning to confront death -- heightened by the contrast of the new life of Genesis and in his newly-rediscovered son. And that is something that the film did which was new: able to plumb the depths of Kirk's emotional journey at greater length thanks to the larger screen and the longer format.

But, again... it's a great film, but I don't know that it's obvious to me that Kirk learning to deal with the no-win scenario particularly epitomizes what "Star Trek" is (whatever the hell Star Trek actually "is"). In that respect, The Voyage Home seems like the most obvious candidate -- whatever Star Trek "is", to me TVH "feels" more like it than does The Wrath of Khan.

So, why has TWoK earned such a place of acclaim?

(PS: I could write a similar post about First Contact, whose popularity also confuses me.)

Couple of thoughts in response to this thread:

1. I think the Borg, as a concept, somewhat falls apart when we considering that natural, biological systems are actually often perfect models for the efficiency that the Borg claim to strive for. And, to clarify, I'm not saying the concept falls apart from a doylist perspective - I think that the fact that Borg technology evolves independent of any particular intent and is highly automated to take the most efficient route to its endpoint kind of reveals the folly of the Borg, which would be super interesting to explore. They're just recreating systems which already exist in nature, from a certain point of view.

2. Considering the miracle of dermal regenerators and similar technology, I actually think Assimilation is highly reversible. Just still really traumatic.

PS - I'm not really sure on what the policy is on linking topics from the subreddit but I'm trying not to post on Reddit so.i guess this is my way of transitioning. Remove if not ok, I guess?

I know the brand/studio reasons, but all I can come up with for in-setting lore reason is that Mirandas require less resources/crew/maintenance, but it still seems like a sharp contrast between the service lives of both ships where, as far as I can tell, the Excelsior-class may have required more resources/crew/maintenance and that judging by size and a history of jankiness alone (I love the ship, I really do, but it's still an in-setting thing) and even the Constellation seemed to be kept around at least a little longer than the Constitution.

Anyone got any sources about this that make it feel justified besides the studio/suits deciding "we don't want audiences to confuse anything on screen for the TMP refit" ?

When Kirk comes aboard the Enterprise at the beginning of the episode, La'an is in the transporter room to receive him. Her actual motives for being there are... complicated, but she claims to be there so she "can run a security clearance on [Kirk]." Allegedly this is "just standard operating procedure", which Commander Chin-Riley does not question.

To the best of my knowledge, we've never seen a security officer carry out this "standard operating procedure" before, nor do we actually see it done here. further, Kirk is a reasonably respected Starfleet officer who has been on the Enterprise before (and quite recently). It seems unlikely that he represents a reasonable security risk. Are we meant to interpret this as La'an digging through the regulations for an outdated excuse to be present for Kirk's arrival, or is this a legitimate precaution that we should expect is routinely taken quietly and off-screen? If the later, what could actually be going on that requires the physical presence of the security clearance and can't be accomplished by a simple scan?

KIRK: You're bothered by your performance on the Kobayashi Maru.

SAAVIK: I failed to resolve the situation.

KIRK: There is no correct resolution. It's a test of character.

The Kobayashi Maru Test is one of the central themes of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. In the movie, it represents the inevitability of defeat, and teaches the lesson that how we face it - with dignity, with acceptance, with strength - is at least as important, if not more so, than how we deal with victory (to paraphrase Kirk early in the movie). As Picard would say in "Peak Performance": "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life."

And yet, the Test is often misunderstood, especially in terms of what it's actually for, in an in-universe setting. In one interpretation, it plays the same role in a cadet's development as it does thematically in the movie: to show the cadet that there will come a time where a no-win scenario will present itself, and teach the cadet how to deal with it. But then it's not really a test, in that sense, but a lesson.

In another interpretation, the Test is to see how the cadet faces defeat, that is to say, their response to defeat. While I agree that this is certainly an important part of the test, it focuses solely on the aftermath of it and therefore makes the cadet's responses during the test itself irrelevant.

One other interpretation, as seen in the 2009 Star Trek movie, is that the Test is supposed to make a cadet face fear. I've argued before that it seems illogical that Spock would design such a test for the simple reason that fear is an emotion, and at this stage in his life Spock does not (consciously at least) find any value in emotional responses. But this again is not a test, but an experience, an extended hazing exercise with no discernable purpose on the face of it.

The Test may allow for all of these things, but that's not the actual purpose of it. The point is not whether you win or lose, or face defeat or face fear. The fact that it's a command-level exercise tells us that it's supposed to tell the instructors something about the cadet's command performance. It's not just whether a person is fit for command; there's a whole different battery of tests and exams along the way in Command School to find that out. It's about what kind of command they're fit for. While undoubtedly the Test brings in all that the cadet has learned during the course of their Academy training in a simulation, ultimately, it's the cadet's response to the Test during the course of the simulation - not after it, not because of it - that does that.

Do they go in guns blazing? Do they sacrifice their crew against overwhelming odds? Do they try diplomacy? Do they abandon the Kobayashi Maru to its fate? Do they keep trying to win, never giving up, beating their head against a brick wall to the point of insanity? Do they refuse to accept a no-win situation? Do they cheat?

I suspect most cadets would react like most people do - like Saavik did - resent the hell out of the Test and throw themselves into the gauntlet again and again trying to figure out how to beat it, not realizing that said more about them than the Test itself. And so did Kirk, for a time, until he realized that the game was rigged, that the instructors, under normal circumstances, would never allow a victory.

It's likely that the simulation adapts to whatever the cadet does and makes it more difficult on the fly. Try to eject the warp core? The ejectors are frozen due to battle damage. Challenge the Klingon captain to single combat? He refuses because you are undeserving of honor. Defeat the first wave somehow? They just keep coming. Try to run? They catch up. You get the idea. So the only real way to "win" is to reprogram the simulation so it can't adapt to whatever you throw at it.

In that sense, Kirk also missed the point of the no-win scenario, because he wanted to win. At the same time, he was philosophically opposed to the concept of a no-win scenario. So he cheated - changed the conditions just enough so it was possible to rescue the ship and win.

(As a side note, Kirk was a bit hard on himself when he said he'd never faced a no-win scenario: I'd argue that he faced it in "The City on the Edge of Forever" when he had to decide between Edith Keeler and the universe, and he passed that test admirably at great personal cost.)

But Kirk did not frustrate the intentions of the Test, nor did he provide a "wrong" response, because there really is no “correct” resolution. That was why Kirk was never sanctioned for it and in fact got the commendation for pulling off the feat in the first place. Kirk didn't seem to realize that the commendation wasn't a reward for beating the Test - it was for thinking laterally in general by going outside the simulation. The Test had already gotten what it wanted out of Kirk.

In Kirk's response, the instructors recognized a few things: a person who knew when to follow rules, to critically assess them so he knew when to question them and more importantly, when to break or circumvent them, throwing the book away and creating a new one. In his refusal to accept a no-win scenario, they also saw someone that would do whatever was necessary to push ahead in the face of overwhelming odds to search for a solution where seemingly there was none.

And in the wild final frontier of what was then 23rd Century space, which tested and claimed the lives and souls of so many of his peers - Decker, Tracy, et al., he was absolutely the kind of captain that was needed.

Which is not to say that it is perfect or superior to Earth and the larger Federation's comparatively egalitarian post-scarcity economy, or even particularly ethical.

However, from what we're shown, the Ferengi political structure (which is clearly part and parcel with it's commercial structure) does not, with the one HUGE exception of it's treatment of women, make use of divisive social issues to distract its work force from the disadvantages of capitalism. Unlike contemporary Western capitalism, everyone on Ferenginar from the wealthiest to the poorest appears to operate from the same transparent, if morally bankrupt, ruleset, and the powerful, importantly, don't pretend otherwise.

This is a dark but kind of brilliant aspect of the rules of acquisition - All members of society, including laborers, are taught from birth to operate from a position of mutual distrust and can operate comfortably with full knowledge that the person on the other side of the table will disregard all other concerns in order to take complete financial advantage of them, and they will do the same. This bypasses a lot of steps that would otherwise be required in terms of building trust or engaging in any kind of sales or negotiation, although there is likely a lot more onus on each individual to do the calculus on any given business transaction internally to ensure that all of their vulnerabilities are accounted for. The phrase 'trust me' must be a complete joke in all contexts.

Furthermore, because greed is not just a social value but a desirable and marketable job skill, the playing field, which is horrific from the perspective of most 24th century humans, may actually be more level than even modern capitalism. There's evidence to suggest that if even the poorest worker can successfully skim profits without leaving immediate evidence behind, this is almost blameless. Quark knows that Rom shaves the latinum, for example.

This is not a complete theory and I'm sure there are plenty of counterexamples, but mostly I just wanted to gripe that shit is so tough irl right now that even working as a Ferengi waiter seems like a dream by comparison.

This is the Daystrom Institute Episode Analysis thread for Strange New Worlds 2x10 Hegemony.

Now that we’ve had a few days to digest the content of the latest episode, this thread is a place to dig a little deeper.

This hypothesis is predicated on the fact that the explicit intent behind Zefram Cochrane, whether or not this has been successfully communicated on screen, is that he is the inventor of warp drive as we commonly know it in Star Trek, and that prior to his invention, the existing warp-capable galactic powers were utilizing some other means of generating warp fields.

Citing Ron D. Moore after First Contact was released,

"Certainly Cochrane is credited with the invention of warp drive as we know it in Trek, so we could assume that the Vulcans were using something else – possibly a variant of the contained singularity used by the Romulans. That might have been a much more dangerous and inefficient technology which was quickly abandoned by most of the galaxy when Cochrane's system was introduced."

Now, let's look at some Vulcan ships...

The pre-Cochrane D'Vahl-type starship: This is the type of starship that rescued the survivors of the Vulcan survey ship in Carbon Creek. It is also the type of ship that patrolled above the Forge on Vulcan (as seen in the image). These are warp capable but possess what look like only rudimentary nacelles. The glowing bits look more like impulse engines to me.

The pre-Cochrane Vulcan survey ship: Similar in design to the D'Vahl, with no obvious warp nacelles despite being warp capable.

The pre-Cochrane T'plana-Hath: this ship again possesses no obvious nacelles of any kind, and has what appear to be some kind of engine bells or drive units that angle downward for landing.

The post-Cochrane Vahklas-type starship: this is the only Vulcan starship I can think of that possesses what could be argued to be more typical warp nacelles instead of an annular drive. Obviously the ring shape is hinted at, but it looks like it's only an aesthetic choice here.

When the NX-01 Enterprise encounters a Vahklas-type ship in 2151, T'Pol states that they had not been in use for "a long time."

My hypothesis is that the Vahklas-type represents the first (or one of the earliest) Vulcan attempts at adapting the Cochrane-style warp drive to their own vessels, perhaps utilizing the partial ring shape to increase efficiency over Cochrane's nacelle design, which they consider inefficient.

I think it was this continued lack of preferred efficiency that led the Vulcans to continue working on adapting Cochrane's design for their own purposes, eventually leading to the development of the annular warp drive, possibly sometime between the 2070s and 2100. Definitely prior to the dedication of the Warp Five Complex in 2119.

Presumably, the Vulcans came to the humans with their design if only to show them how their warp drive had ultimately proven inefficient and could be, at least by Vulcan standards, drastically improved upon. This led to the development, perhaps not by United Earth Starfleet or UESPA, of the USS Enterprise XCV-330, the only known human attempt at annular warp drive design.

Ultimately, the annular warp drive proves highly efficient but also highly resistant to course corrections and maneuverability. While this trade off is acceptable to the Vulcans, who do not place an emphasis on exploration, it is antithetical to the very purpose of Starfleet. The design is thus quickly abandoned as a technological dead-end, in favor of the homegrown, For Humans, By Humans nacelle design originated by Dr. Cochrane.

Vulcans, meanwhile, continue to favor the annular warp drive for their own ships, and the High Command quickly adopts it.

This leads to the development of the Suurok-class starship by at least 2136 (when Captain Vanik says he took command of the Ti'Mur in ENT S1E8 Cold Front).

The success of the Suurok-class leads to the further development of the D'kyr-type starship.

Throughout the 2100s, Vulcan starships of all types are designed with the annular warp drive, including ships as small as shuttles and transports.

Over the next century, there would be refinements and adjustments of the annular warp drive design, leading to some slightly different but still ultimately hoop-shaped implementations, as in the 23rd century T'plana-type starship and the early 24th century Apollo-class starship as exemplified by the starship T'Pau in TNG Unification I/II.

But ultimately, the ring-shaped annular drive as developed in the 22nd century remains the favorite, lasting well into the 24th century largely unchanged, although with the addition of what appear to be some slightly more traditional nacelle-like elements, as seen on the Sh'vhal-type starship on Lower Decks.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

Like basically every current Star Trek fan, I love the character of Captain Pike as Anson Mount portrays him. I wonder, though, to what extent he is actually the same guy from "The Cage." If we had only that episode to work from (which the Discovery and SNW writers initially did), we would know that he is broody, that he struggles with the responsibility he bears for the lives of others, and that he is remarkably able to conjure up emotions like anger and hate on command. Does any of that fit with Pike as we know him now?

One way to answer this question would be to imagine a very literal remake of the original pilot recast with the current actors. Everyone else would basically make sense, but I think seeing the current Pike act out his scenes would be jarring and even a little upsetting.

I'm sure we can come up with in-universe explanations -- he was having a particularly bad day, he's grown as a person, etc., etc. -- but it does seem like the current-day writers are departing pretty abruptly from the ostensible basis for the character. What do you think?

One of the biggest difficulties of most episodic dramas, including the various Star Trek series, is that putting main characters in danger is seldom believable. It's such a common syndrome that it's even a pop culture trope: plot armor. Watching the early second-season episode "Unnatural Selection," in which Dr. Pulaski is infected with a rapid-aging syndrome, I wonder if the writers are counting on the viewers not believing Dr. Pulaski has plot armor.

After all, she is a recent addition and she is not even listed on the main credits, instead being designated as a "guest star." More fatally still, the episode supplies fresh background about the character and especially her desire to serve with Picard -- and every viewer of a reality TV show knows that once a contestant gets backstory and calls their family on camera, they're probably going home that episode. Perhaps they even expect viewers to remember that they did really kill a main character, Tasha Yar. Maybe this will just be the season of rotating-door Chief Medical Officers, much like season one had a different Chief Engineer every time it came up.

I'm especially interested to hear from people who remember watching it when it first aired, but everyone who watches an episode is watching it for the first time. Did you think Dr. Pulaski could really die?

We already know from TOS that Mutlitronic computers are able to develop sapience, with the M-5 computer being specifically designed to "think and reason" like a person, and built around Dr Daystrom's neural engrams.

However, we also know from Voyager that the holomatrix of their Mk 1 EMH also incorporates Multitronic technology, and from DS9 that it's also used in mind-reading devices.

Assuming that the EMH is designed to more or less be a standard hologram with some medical knowledge added in, it shouldn't have come as a surprise that holograms were either sapient themselves, or were capable of developing sapience. It would only be a logical possibility if technology that allowed human-like thought and reasoning into a hologram.

If anything, it is more of a surprise that sapient holograms like the Doctor or Moriarty hadn't happened earlier.

This is the Daystrom Institute Episode Analysis thread for Strange New Worlds 2x07 Those Old Scientists.

Now that we’ve had a few days to digest the content of the latest episode, this thread is a place to dig a little deeper.

Like most of us, I am greatly enjoying Strange New Worlds. One of the small benefits of the series, in my mind, is that it has finally broken one of the strangest of fan habits -- the insistence on literalism for TOS visuals, especially on things like ship designs and controls. Is there anyone still holding out for a "refit" of the beautiful SNW Enterprise so that it "really" looks like a set from the late 1960s? The updated look is a big part of what makes the TOS world seem relevant and alive for contemporary viewers, instead of just a nostalgia trip (as it was in the tribute episodes that showed TOS sets within a TNG/DS9 context).

Given that they have made the biggest remaining move of recasting Kirk, the idea of continuing past SNW into Kirk's Five-Year Mission seems unavoidable. Given that Paramount seems to be contracting their streaming footprint, it is admittedly unlikely that anything like this would ever get made. But something like the Kelvin Timeline tie-in comics where they redo TOS stories and intersperse them with new ones could actually be a good format -- reintroducing new viewers to classic stories while retrospectively granting more cohesion to TOS.

Obviously there would be drawbacks to redoing the old episodes. Fans would howl at any changes to the scripts, and of course there would be questions about whether any of this was worth anyone's time or talents. And maybe it wouldn't be! But redoing the most stone-cold classics of TOS in a more modern style could literally be the only way some new fans would engage with those stories. Young people are very intolerant of entertainment that seems old or outdated. Looking back at my childhood, I never liked TOS in large part simply because it looked too old and the acting style felt weird. If we really think that these stories are classics that deserve to endure for the long haul, a remake could be a way to inject new life into them.

What do you think? [UPDATE: You all have convinced me this is a bad idea. I will keep that in mind if I ever become head of Paramount.]

The title comes from LD’s 1st Season finale, “No Small Parts”, when CMDR Jack Ransom, XO of the USS Cerritos, refers to the TOS era as “Those Old Scientists”.

We start on Stardate 58460.1 in an animated segment. This places it in 2381, and sometime between LD 3x06: “Hear All, Trust Nothing” (58456.2) and LD 3x09: “Trusted Sources” (58496.1). 3x07 and 3x08 don’t have stardate references. The ship is doing a check on the Krulmuth-B portal, which has been dormant for 120 years - and if you do the calculations you can see where this is going.

Boimler says the portal was discovered by Pike and the “second” Enterprise and refers to Una as “Numero Una” to Mariner’s annoyance. Rutherford talks about teleron radiation. I’m assuming it’s not a CC typo and it’s distinct from “thalaron radiation” (Nemesis).

Tendi’s great-grandmother was on an Orion science vessel, and she claims the Orions were the ones who actually discovered the portal (which looks vaguely Stargate-like). Rutherford is wearing a holographic imager around his neck (last seen in LD: “Veritas” and of the type first seen in VOY: “Latent Image”).

Rutherford picks up traces of horonium. Hōra is the Greek word for “time”, from which we get the word horology, the art of making clocks. Boimler says Starfleet used horonium in NX-class ships, because it was lightweight, durable and was the right shade of grey (Mariner refers to the Starfleet History Museum - it’s not clear if this is the same as the Fleet Museum from PIC).

Boimler screams “Remember me!” as he gets sucked into the portal, in the way that Beverly Crusher is also almost sucked into one in TNG: “Remember Me”. The phrase is originally from Shakespeare, specifically Hamlet Act I, sc v when the Ghost says: “Adieu, adieu, adieu. Remember me,” as he exits. The line is repeated by Hamlet later in the scene.

The title sequence for this episode is animated in the LD style, with the space beast from the LD titles now suckling on the back of the Enterprise. Now I want an animated model of the Enterprise to match my Titan. At the end when the title card comes up we see the outline of the cosmic koala next to the planet (LD: “Moist Vessel”).

Pike’s log is stardated 2291.6. Enterprise is delivering a shipment of grain to a colony on Setlik II. In the future (c. 2347), the Setlik III colony would be the site of an infamous massacre during the Cardassian wars with the Federation (TNG: “The Wounded”).

Una reports that Boimler’s delta is also a communicator, confirming once and for all that SNW’s deltas are not. Boimler has purple hair, like he does when animated. On awakening he calls out, “Computer end program,” thinking he’s on a holodeck. He refers to the ship’s S/COMS operating system as opposed to LCARS in his era.

La’An is uniquely qualified to lecture on temporal protocols as she’s gone through the same experience (SNW: “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”). She talks about not making any attachments owing to the trauma she underwent when the alternate Jim Kirk died in her arms in the past. Boimler accidentally lets slip Worf’s name.

Boimler waits in Pike’s office, as evidenced by the presence of the saddle and he calls out “Riker” as he mounts it with the Riker Maneuver (the popular explanation for the move is that Frakes suffered a back injury but although that injury did result in him doing the “Riker lean”, Frakes said in an interview that the chair maneuver was that he felt it was a cocky move suited to Riker, and no one stopped him so it stuck).

Boimler asks if M’Benga is holding a classic TS-122 tricorder and M’Benga says it’s a TS-120. In the 24th Century, tricorders are of the TR series. Boimler theorizes that radioisotopes from the holographic imager set the portal off. Boimler is startled when Spock laughs.

The ship is an Orion scout ship, technically first appearing in TOS: “Journey to Babel” as just a glowing blob, but redesigned as a more detailed CGI model for the remastered episode by Michael Okuda. A slight continuity contradiction arises: in “Babel” Spock doesn’t recognize the configuration of the scout ship when they encounter it then.

Boimler says “NCC-1701 dash nothing,” referring to the future ships’ names in homage to the original and of course puzzling Una and La’An. He identifies Ortegas as a war hero, referring to her service in the Klingon War. Captain Harr Caras commands the Orion science vessel D’Var.

I can’t feel that sorry for Boims having his chops busted, because I’d just love being paid attention to like that by Jess Bush and Melissa Navia. He says this is the “golden age of exploration”, echoing Pike’s words from the previous episode. He lets slip that Pike’s birthday is on Friday (on movie night) and is a holiday in the 24th Century.

Chapel is rather devastated to learn that she’s not mentioned in books on Spock in the future. Boimler refers to Spock’s pet sehlat (TAS: “Yesteryear”). Ortegas calls Boimler “Future Boy”, a nickname Doc Brown applied to Marty McFly in Back to the Future.

Turns out the grain Pike is carrying is trititicale. Its variant, quadrotriticale, would be central to the Federation’s efforts on Sherman’s Planet in TOS: “The Trouble with Tribbles”. Presumably it’s a three-lobed version as opposed to the four-lobed quadrotriticale. Triticale is a real life grain that writer David Gerrold based quadrotriticale on in “Tribbles”.

Mariner uses up the last of the horonium in the portal, and Una says there’s hasn’t been a supply for a hundred years. Mariner says for all she knew Boimler could have been “stuck in a dystopian San Francisco in the middle of a riot”, referring to the Bell Riots of DS9: “Past Tense”. She finds young Spock hot, much like Jazdia Dax did to his slightly older counterpart in DS9: “Trials and Tribble-lations”.

Boimler does the “Section 31 speed walk” when walking away from Mariner down the corridors (LD: “Envoys”), which he claimed conserved energy. Una wonders if Boimler’s poster is a “pin-up” poster, of which there are very many of Rebecca Romijn.

Uhura says she’s 22 (the same age as Celia Rose Golding), which immediately makes this old chronologist’s mind start doing calculations. The official Star Trek website places her birth year as 2239, which would make the present year 2261, which sort of tracks (my estimate is between 2260-61).

Mariner quotes Starfleet labor codes: section 48-Alpha-7: “Officers must take meal breaks at regular intervals”. She claims that she knows those that help her slack off. She makes Orion Hurricanes for Uhura and Ortegas, although they don’t have Orion delaq, which she says will mess them up. Uhura’s PADD shows her comparing the inscriptions on the portal to Bajoran and Cardassian script.

Ortegas refers to Starbase Earhart, probably best remembered as housing the Bonestell Entertainment Facility where Jean-Luc Picard was stabbed by Nausicaans in 2337 (TNG: “Tapestry”). It also had a dom-jot table. Mariner and Tendi visited it in LD: “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris”. Mariner says Nausicaans are terrible at dom-jot, a billiard-type game, but still love to bet on it. Ortegas’ recognition of the letters leads Uhura to discover the language is a thousands-years old ancient Nausicaan dialect.

Boimler seeks solace in Engineering. Pelia says there is nothing quite so soothing as a properly calibrated warp core, which Boimler would agree with as he’s often said in LD that warp cores are cool. Pelia’s quote is from Cary Grant, which implies she knew him.

Mariner chides Boimler for shouting “Holy Q” because they hadn’t met him yet in the 23rd Century but qualifies it with “they had kind of a Trelane thing going on.” Fanon often states that Trelane (TOS: “The Squire of Gothos”) and Q are related because their MO is remarkably similar. This link was made explicit in the novels (Q-Squared). Mariner has met Q before (LD: “Veritas”).

Boimler remarks how slow and quietly everyone talks in this era, in stark contrast to the high-speed and intense dialogue they use on the half-hour animated Lower Decks.

Boimler once dressed up as Pike for Halloween, and had to contour his chin to fit. Pike confesses he and his father never got along, and that was never resolved. This year is the first year he’s older than his father when he died. He planned to fish on Setlik II’s ice moon with a bottle of whiskey and have an imaginary talk with his father.

Pike refers to Archer’s Enterprise, the NX-01, which reminds Boimler that horonium was used in its construction (a little over a hundred years ago). Boimler talks about the NX-01’s grapplers (which La’An loves), the precursor to a ship’s tractor beam. Grapplers were also seen in SNW: “Life Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach”.

Starfleet tradition is that every time a new ship is commissioned, construction starts with an old piece of the last ship that bore the name (which explains why Boimler called this the “second” Enterprise). Which means there’s a piece of horonium on the ship.

The piece in question appears to be a gas cylinder. Ortegas says she’s a fan of Travis Mayweather, first pilot of the NX-01, and her middle school gym was named after him. Uhura mentions Hoshi Sato, who spoke 86 languages - Uhura wrote 3 papers on her at the Academy. I’m happy to see the NX-01 crew get the love they never quite got when the series was around.

Mariner tells Una that Boimler’s pin-up of her is a recruitment poster and inspired Boimler to join Starfleet. Una is moved that they put “ad astra per aspera” on the poster, the Starfleet motto she quoted during her trial (SNW: “Ad Astra Per Aspera”).

Captain Caras recognizes Tendi’s title “Mistress of the Winter Constellations” (“We’ll Always Have Tom Paris”) and says that he has an Astrea Tendi on his ship. Pike’s offer to give the Orion scientists credit also explains why Tendi tells Boimler that Orions discovered the portal. I wish we could have seen Nöel Wells in live action, though.

Ransom calls “Numero Una” the hottest first officer in Starfleet history. Ransom is voiced by Jerry O’Connell, who is married to Rebecca Romijn. Mariner says Ransom sleeps face down “like a baby”.

We are rewarded with an animated SNW epilogue, which is explained by them hallucinating after imbibing Orion Hurricanes with real delaq.

小嘛小兒郎, 背著那書包上學堂 (Little, Little boy, carrying that bag to school)
不怕太陽曬, 也不怕那風雨狂 (fear not of burning sun, nor fear that crazy storm)
只怕先生罵我懶嗎, (but fear the teacher scold me lazy)
沒有學問 – 無臉見爹娘 (Being unlearned – no “lian”/face to face parents)
小嘛小兒郎, 背著那書包上學堂, (Little, Little boy, carrying that bag to school)
不是為做官, 也不是為面子光, (Not to be an official, or for one’s own “mianzi”/face)
只為做人要爭氣呀, (Just that a person must be determined not to fall short)
不受人欺負，也不做牛和羊 (Not to be bullied, nor to work like a draft animal)
(Classical children song “Du Shu Lang”/”Little School Boy”, Paula Tsui version)

富貴不歸故鄉，如衣繡夜行，誰知之者! When one who made his wealth doesn’t return home, he may as well wear glamorous clothing in the middle of the night, who would notice that!
人言楚人沐猴而冠耳，果然 I heard the Lord of Chu is like an anxious monkey wearing a crown, and I was right.
– <Shi’ji, Record of Xiang’yu>

Introduction

One of the common argument and complaint regarding Klingon honor is that, from the perspective of Human concept of honor, they are NOT honorable. Instead, they use cloaking, ambushes, to achieve victory above all. Instead of escape, they will rather suicide; they will do honor killings. They will attack and even murder the defenseless. In politics, Klingon’s politics is dirty to a fault.

Now, many already realized that perhaps we are too human centric. Some believe that Klingon are focus on duty, and that they refuse to accept failures. Another, which I think is approaching my proposal ( https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/gswny9/klingon_honor_is_nothing_of_the_sort_it_is/) , is that it’s likely related to reputation. Others attempt to square the stated that for them, To fail is to forfeit duty, thus dishonor.

However, what if I tell you that some group of humans may still utilize “Honor” that is extremely similar to that of Klingon? On a meta level, most know that Klingon was made into "Samurai in Space", thus also borrow some aspect from the alleged Samurai culture, include the honor suppose to be practice by Samurais. However, if you actually know about it, it is not honor. In fact, it is far closer to the concept known as “faces” in Chinese.

In short, the meta mistranslation of "faces" into "honor" yields the seemingly contradictory nature of Klingon honor

What is Face

「面子」，是我們在談話裡常常聽到的，因為好像一聽就懂，所以細想的人大約不很多。-- 魯迅, 說「面子」, 1934 (“Faces” is something we often hear in conversation; since it seems like something we instantly got when we heard the word, only small amount of people actually think about it in detail – Lu’Xun, About “Faces”, 1934)

Now I am not saying I know Faces – I am a not born in Mainland, and thus is already influenced by some western concept; and some authors seperate lian(臉) and mianzi 面子, which we don’t in where I lived (for both faces and “Faces”); but even at that place, “face” still affect whether a woman in 1970s will cancel a marriage, despite knowing her future spouse is bad. Nor do I say honor/glory doesn’t exist in Chinese – it does, as 榮譽, for example. However, to my understanding, it is always in terms of the Face. And even if I try to translate Face to dignity or reputation, I fear I will fall into pitfall that gave us “face as honor”.

So let’s look at a Chinese dictionary: Specifically, that of Taiwan Ministry of Education (dict.revised.moe.edu.tw), which also shows they treat “Lian” and “Mianzi” the same. Thus, for our discussion, we will only talk about 面子/Faces.

• 面子. Intepretation: 體面 (身分、體統、格局、規模 - )、名譽 (the name, reputation)、情面（情分與面子。多指私人關係) (feelings and relationships in private matters) Antonym: 實質 (substance of a person)

Okay, that seems simple. But the Revised dictionary also threw in various terms by adding suffix characters and prefix characters. Maybe that tell us more?

• 賣面子 (sell Faces): 故意予人好處，使人感激自己 (Purposely give others benefit, so others will feel grateful of the giver of benefit)
• 留面子 (leave faces, but can also mean “protect faces): 顧及情面，不使人難堪 (care about the situation/feelings, not to embarrass others)
• 夠面子 (have enough face): 夠威風體面。指影響力大，所說的話別人願意聽從 (have a strong face; or more precisely speaking, have huge influence, whatever they say can cause others to follow)
• 顧面子 (care face): 愛護自己的聲名或榮譽 (Love and care their own reputation). The example usage is “為了顧面子，他不惜犧牲一切。” (In order to “care faces”, he will sacrifice everything). If you read it in Chinese, it has negative connotation.

While some words can be translate as honor and glory, it works just as well as prestige, dignity, reputation. Regardless, it’s based on appearance. Or simply put: Face is related to but is not honor, glory, dignity; to translate it as simply is wrong. Based on my observation, in western concept, there is an implication of those words being related to the substance/character of the person. In Chinese at least, the implication of substance is not as strong, and for the most part can be seen just focus on the appearance; something that can be quantify by points, by money, by profit, by amount of supporters, etc. Prestige and reputation seems better suited, at least with 2020s vocab.

I started this article with a song that is taught to children. Written in 1945, when I first heard it as a kid, the message I got is why it’s important to study. But when I was thinking of how maybe Klingon’s Honor is actually “Faces”, I can’t help but to recall the song – and realize that the parallel message of the song is about the importance of faces – as the fourth line indicate, one who is unlearned has no “face” to face their parents. Then at the second half, while they claim it’s not actually about faces (sixth line), the seventh line explain why one must be learned: there’s the version as stated above, which stated one must be 爭氣. I translate it as “falling short”, but it can just be valid as “ambitious”, “fighting for prestige”, or even “showing weakness”. An earlier record even use “A poor person must turn [their life] around“（只爲窮人要翻身), which has similar meaning in that context. Factor in the last line of not being bullied, I can’t help but to recall another Chinese idiom: 成者為首，不成者為尾， “Those that succeed are those at the top; those that are not successful are at the bottom.” That evolve to 成者為王，敗者為寇 (Those who succeed are kings, those who failed are criminals)

Therefore, it can be seen that being “on top” is synonym to victory, and that’s when one will have “faces”. Or reword it: “Nothing is more than being face-full than being on top and having victory”. And this is my personal understanding of “Face”: “be the winner”.

Perhaps, then Klingon Honor is indeed as Worf stated “Nothing is more honorable than victory” – it only sound contradictory is one translate the Klingon’s concept to “honor”, instead of eastern concept of “faces”

A True Worthy Face

The only problem is that there are ways to think of “Victory” – and thus “Faces” even within Chinese history, and is in fact best examplified by Chu-Han Contention. Now do keep in mind that many of the description of that era is written by official of Han dynasty, so as historical documents they are questionable; but as morality stories they may not be entirely wrong. Xiang’Yu of Chu exemplify the appearance victory, and thus he focused upon an on-the-surface Face. Liu’Bang of Han, meanwhile examplify the true victory and thus Faces. This can be seen during the Feast of Hongmen, which shows Xiang’Yu do a lot of posturing, while Liu’Bang just take it humbly and not part take the various rituals. Yet in the end Liu’Bang became the Han Emperor.

And notice the Taiwanese MoE Dictionary actually treat the “substance of a person” as antonym to Face. In short, the Ministry of Education implies there are no merit to Face. It doesn’t sounds something honorable, because a proper honor helps build up society.

Klingon Honor is very, very close to Faces if not exactly the same.

Knowing what “face” is to the best of our ability, if we look at things that Klingon see as honorable (but dishonorable to us) from the lens of “faces”, then it will make perfect sense.

In Memory Alpha, a sentence used to talk about the ambiguity of Klingon’s Honor has some examples: “Worf indicated that it was necessary to challenge Gowron's leadership (because he was presumably acting in a dishonorable way), while General Martok was convinced that it was dishonorable to challenge the leader of the Klingon Empire in the middle of a war.”

But what if I change it from the PoV of Face when applicable?
“...General Martok was convinced it was face-losing to challenge the leader of the Klingon Empire in the middle of a war.” The “face losing” is not just for Martok; but also for Gowron, and even the entire empire. And it was the fact that there is a fight, and expose the issue of Gowron from implicit to explicit.

The above will make sense even in modern Chinese (and possibly Taiwanese) offices; even if you recognize your superior is making some stupid decision, even if everyone knows, you just don’t bring it up in the open if at all. My understanding is that it is even worse in Korea, which leads to some fatal issues such as Korean Air Flight 801. While officially it was “poor communication”, it is likely that the NTSB knows that the Korean culture (even more Face-concerning) affect why the crew didn’t challenge the captain, but choose not to wade into offending someone’s else culture. Ironically, this is an act that factor into face.

Another example:
When Doctor Antaak worked with Phlox to cure the Augment DNA, Antaak decided to deceive his superior and claim they actually stabilized Augment DNA and create Klingon Augments. He then claim that it will give him an honorable death for the mere fact of saving millions.

And translate it through face… well, Antaak is protecting his own face. In terms of “Face” based culture, he is someone that got a miracle. Only if discovered and failure to twist the words properly would he loses any face.

Lu’Xun, in his “About Faces”, talk of a story/myth of how, During Qing Dynasty, the westerners occasionally goes to the Mandarin’s office to ask for benefits with some threats, and the Mandarins just affirm it – but the Mandarins always sent them away through the side door instead of the main gate, as this will indicate the western does not have face, thus the Mandarin/China have face and thus have is in a superior benefit.

Who actually sees the westerner goes in and threaten the Qing Officials? Maybe they are just come in half-bowed and begged for benefit! It’s all about appearance and twisting of words – hence, even Lu’Xun say it may not be entirely true, and it’s precisely such unknown truth that provided him a good example of illustrating face.

Western Honor Fights Corruption; Faces don’t care or even help Corruption

Eastern Relationships, for the most part, is more toward internal. Between superior and underlings; between husband and wife; between the parents and children (三綱、五倫). Nowhere does it talk about outside of your state, except as the last step – to illuminate (ie: Conquer) everything “tian’xia” – the entire world. “Faces” is developed based on this. So just in that light alone, “Faces” doesn’t matter if you are facing a foreigner, even if they are not outright enemy.

So in that light, if one consider cloaking as an example of Kilingon false honor, It definitely does not make them lose face – it’s against an enemy. Heck, it is definitely face worthy, because they managed to trick the enemy.

Now being a someone not from Mainland that now lives in an English-speaking nation, it’s very difficult for me to even tie cheating to “Faces” in a positive way. The only way I can even square both together is that cheating, tricky, and scheming is only face-losing if caught. If not caught, it showed someone has intelligence, and thus actually increase faces. In Chinese mythology, humanity gets to build houses on Earth instead of living in caves because someone managed to trick a Tai’Shui deity. During the Three Kingdoms era, many generals and leaders, from Cao Cao and Kongming, is known to use schemes and tricks and smoke and mirrors, not just toward their enemy, but toward subjects that think of themselves too much.

A classic Chinese example of how failure to understand Face is the story of Kong Rong - a descendent of Confucius and example of “good kid” in Three Character Classic. He was known as someone who serve justice, and thus always fought against Cao Cao when he is an adult. In the end, Cao Cao place him under various false charges and executed his immediate family. The story was taught to show the importance of ensuring your superior’s faces.

In fact, if you think about it, Protecting “Faces” can even require “dishonorable” actions, and thus, acts that is “face worthy” helps corruption. Cao Cao’s face-loving act likely only left people who schemes just as well, and his descendant ended up losing the Wei throne to Sima Zhao. Sounds like a certain empire, doesn’t it?

And in case people were wondering about the numerous game cheaters from Mainland (for our purpose of discussing face, Klingon Honor, and cloaking): I shrugged.

Eastern Faces/Honor vs Western Honor

I consider the issue regarding the so-called contradictory nature of “Klingon Honor” comes from anchoring it around western concept of “honor”.

In my point of view, western concept of honor ties to not just the substance/character of the person, but also “Justice” (whether that is properly executed is a different manner). However, I dare say that eastern concept of Faces is based upon appearance for the most part. It may related to justice depend on situation, but can be easily seperated from Justice, unless Justice determine whether they are viewed as “correct”… which for the most part, comes from Strength.

Book of Rites, one of the Confucian canons, actually recorded “Pitch Pot”, a game. Analysis indicated that it was more about the ritual of gifter-gifting-gifts while receiver-refuse-gift, doing it back and forth three times, to show that neither the gifter nor the receiver are stingy. That being said, from my own point of view, just feel like falsehood for the sake of performance – yet it is consider good back then.

So if we take the assumption that Klingon’s Honor share way more similarity to Faces than Western Honor, Klingon “Honorable” action – or properly saying, “face saving” “face loving” “face earning” make sense and has no contradictory.

Now recall I mentioned earlier that “Face” is commonly tied with “successful”. Now recall that while Qapla is used as a greeting, its literal meaning is “success” – another aspect tied to the Traditional Chinese Face-focused culture.

In fact, I recall in Star Trek Klingon, when Gowron need to pay for a song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2F1X3Guiv8), the proper action is throw a chair, which allows Gowron pay for the damaged chair (and the song). If we think of it in terms of “faces”, it will actually make sense (the general concept, I mean - I will acertain no Chinese will throw a chair just to pay for something)

The only difference is that Klingon is said to be Samurai in space, but I wonder: while we Chinese definitely focus on “face” more than modern Japanese, I will say, with no evidence, that Traditional Japanese (especially pre Meiji) are just as focused on “faces”. Japanese have the term “Read the Atmosphere” (ie: Kuukiyomi; available as a game!). It’s about how everyone should do properly, in silence, without explicit wording. I can’t help but notice that it is not similar to the aspect of dealing with “Face” in Chinese.

TL;DR:

If you understand Faces/Mianzi, you understand Klingon Honor. In that regard, you will find Klingon’s mindset on “Face” has no ambiguity, no contradiction. But even Lu Xun, a famous early 20th century author, stated simply: “但「面子」究竟是怎麼一回事呢？不想還好，一想可就覺得糊塗。” (But what is “Faces”? It’s best not to think about it; once you think about it, it gets more confusing)

Further reading on faces:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept)
• Lu Xun 說「面子」: https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/說「面子」
• https://www.china-mike.com/chinese-culture/cult-of-face/
• https://www.teachingnomad.com/blog/china/what-does-saving-face-mean/
• https://china-journal.org/2017/02/25/the-concept-of-face-in-chinese-culture-and-the-difference-between-mianzi-and-lian/ Especially interesting in that many examples are from Taiwanese.

This is the Daystrom Institute Episode Analysis thread for Strange New Worlds 2x05 Charades.

Now that we’ve had a few days to digest the content of the latest episode, this thread is a place to dig a little deeper.

To elaborate on my criteria: these should be episodes that can work with a minimum number of sets, no special effect and modest-to-minimal practical effects, and amateur though dedicated actors.

Two examples come to mind.

The first is TNG’s “Measure of a Man”. This episode is almost entirely dialogue and takes place in large part in a single conference room. You could probably do a pretty straightforward 1:1 rendering of this episode on stage.

The second is DIS’s “Species Ten-C”, in which the crew make first contact with the titular species and determine how to communicate. This would require more creativity on the part of the production, but given that the 10-C communicate using light, I imagine that even an amateur production could do something compelling with practical effects.

I’ll admit that I am biased: I think I tend to prefer episodes that meet these criteria. I like my Trek talky and tend to have a soft spot for sappy and hammy episodes. But what intrigues me further about these stories is their ability to pass into cultural myth. I’m not saying that these are the only episodes that could transcend Trek and move into the cultural fabric of the era (think of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader), but they seem like they might have the best shot.

What do you think?

The title refers both to the deceptions that Spock and the crew engage in to cover what happens to him, as well as Pike’s desperate attempt to play the game “charades” as a delaying tactic.

The episode was written by supervising producer Kathryn Lyn and showrunner Henry Alonzo Myers. Lyn wrote what is the best LD episode to date, the amazing “wej Duj”. This explains the LD-esque type of observational humor in the dialogue.

Chapel’s personal log is stardated 1789.3. She and Spock are in the Vulcan system, to survey the moon Kherkov on the far side of the sector. It is unclear if this means that Kherkov is in the Vulcan system itself, or when she means sector she means the system. Star Trek has always been vague about how large a sector is, and in TOS days even how large a quadrant is. In Geoffrey Mandel’s Star Charts, a sector is defined as a cube of 20 ly. Kherkov was inhabited by a long vanished civilization and rumored to have had advanced medical knowledge.

What the script means by “sub-impulse” speeds is also unclear, as impulse operations are already sublight in nature. Perhaps this merely means at low impulse speeds.

M’Benga mentioned Korby’s principles of archeological medicine. Roger Korby, known as the Pasteur of Archeological Medicine, would eventually become affianced to Chapel, vanish on the frozen planet of Exo III and turn up five years later as an android (TOS: “What are Little Girls Made Of?”).

Spock is headed for Deck 12, which, according to Franz Joseph’s Enterprise deck plans, is in the interconnecting dorsal section, and contains an observation lounge.

M’Benga has been helping Spock with controlling his emotions (SNW: “The Broken Circle”) after he let them loose in SNW: “All Those Who Wander”.

Pike claims that you can tell the difference between fresh and synthesized herbs. At this point in history, starships use food synthesizers, not replicators, although the difference between the two processes is not entirely clear. The herb Pike pushes on Spock is basil.

Spock says he uses nasal suppressants to block out the smell of humans, which Vulcans take getting used to. In ENT: “The Andorian Incident”, T’Pol uses a regularly injected nasal numbing agent to help with the same issue, although she also partially acclimatizes.

Lieutenant Sam Kirk makes his first in-universe appearance since SNW: “All Those Who Wander”. An alternate timeline version did appear in SNW: “A Quality of Mercy”.

Sam mentions increased sunspot activity in Eridani B. 40 Eridani is a star system comprised of three suns - Eridani A, B and C. It was established in Franz Joseph’s Star Fleet Technical Manual as Vulcan’s system. It is 16 ly away, consistent with ENT’s mention of Vulcan’s distance from Earth. In 2018, an exoplanet was apparently discovered orbiting Eridani A which some fans wanted named Vulcan, but recently the discovery of 40 Eri b turned out to be a mistake.

A Vulcan ceremonial engagement dinner is known as a V’Shal dinner. Spock mentions that he is “still” not speaking with his father. In TOS: “Journey to Babel” it is revealed that the two fell out after Spock elected to join Starfleet rather than the Vulcan Science Academy, and had not spoken since 2249. Amanda assumed that it was because Sarek disapproved of Starfleet as an organization, but the reasons are a bit more complicated, as we find out in DIS: “Lethe”.

T’Pring’s parents here are T’Pril and Sevet. In the novel Vulcan’s Glory, T’Pring’s father was named Solen.

Spock’s (almost) use of the “f” word is of course for comic effect: the first time the expletive was used in Trek was in DIS: “Choose Your Pain”, used by Tilly and Stamets.

The alien entity identifies themselves as Yellow, of Kherkov. The rupture was a transport tunnel, which explains its visual similarity with the Bajoran wormhole (DS9). Yellow is pretty much a Customer Service operator who just wants to get you off the line.

Aliens not knowing how humans are put together is an old trope - we first see it in Trek in TOS: “The Cage”, when Vina’s disfigured form is explained as the Talosians not knowing what a human looked like before they healed her. A modern example can be seen in Doctor Who’s “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”.

Chapel is working to reverse Spock’s genetic alteration. As we saw in SNW: “Strange New Worlds”, she has an expertise in modifying genomes, although that was temporary and for the purpose of disguising away teams.

The enticing aroma of bacon - at least to humans - is due to the Maillard Reaction, which triggers our body’s natural cravings for salt and fat. Spock’s fascination and inexperience with bacon is also because post-Surakian Vulcans are vegetarian. As a human, Spock appears to have forgotten that. Spock would eat meat in TOS: “All Our Yesterdays” when transported thousands of years into the past and reverting to the Vulcans of those days.

M’Benga describes the Kherkovians as inscrutable, interdimensional beings that don’t experience space and time the way we do. They sound more and more like they could be related to the Prophets.

Pike tells Amanda that Pelia sends her regards but she’s off dealing with their “dilithium shortage”. It was established in SNW: “The Broken Circle” that Amanda was the first person to whom Pelia revealed her status as a Lanthanite. Dilithium was always a scarce resource in Trek, and its shortage would eventually lead to more dire consequences in the 31st Century. Pelia’s penchant for “acquiring” antiques was established in SNW: “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”.

Spock wears a beanie to conceal his (in this case) lack of ears. Spock first used such a hat to conceal his ears in TOS: “The City on the Edge of Forever”. Amanda says that Spock isn’t a practiced liar… yet. As we know, Spock will become a lot better at lying in future (TOS: “The Enterprise Incident”, ST II and ST VI being the most obvious examples aside from covert away missions).

The fake ears are probably the same kinds of ears Ethan Peck wears when made up as Spock. When teaching Spock how to act and sound Vulcan, Ortegas’ line about “Notice how I move my eyebrow but no other muscles in my face,” is very Beckett Mariner-like.

The V’Shal ritual starts with Spock making the bride’s family’s recipe for tea and serving it. Tuvok once served Vulcan tea to Captain Sulu (VOY: “Flashback”). Next is the Ritual of Awareness, when a young couple is made aware of all their faults and flaws. While a timer counts down, T’Pring’s parents will tell Spock all the things they think he is doing wrong. Last is the Mind Meld, where Amanda and Spock will share a memory of his childhood.

Spock’s open use of the mind meld and Pike and Una’s knowledge of it contradicts the first time it was used in TOS: “Dagger of the Mind” when he tells McCoy that it was a deeply private thing for Vulcans. He also said then that he had never used on a human before but here he says he’s used to seeing Amanda’s memories.

M’Benga says he has some gene therapy techniques he pulled from the Trinar. It’s not clear if he’s referring to a race or a ship, although closed captioning italicizes Trinar regression.

Pike has cooked traditional tevmel, but T’Pril criticizes the halak as not being fresh and being salted. Pike explains he uses salt to slow fermentation as starships run hotter than your typical Vulcan kitchen.

Ortegas says that she hates analogies because they’re never really like they say it is. Using analogies to make technobabble clearer (“It’s just like skipping a stone across a pond!”) is a time honored tradition in Star Trek.

T’Pring warns Spock not to rush the pouring of the tea or else the pomkot leaves will fail to bloom.

The interdimensional space the trio find themselves in reminds me, tonally, of when Dax and Sisko first entered the wormhole in DS9: “Emissary”. The Kerkhov they speak to this time is Blue, who notes that the complaint is lodged out of the response period. Chapel asks to speak with Yellow and is basically put on hold. Customer Service from hell, indeed.

The soundtrack during the Ritual of Awareness is underlaid with a slower version of the Vulcan fighting theme from TOS: “Amok Time”. During the meld, Amanda’s memory is of an ordinary day when she took Spock to school - the first time Vulcan children asked Spock to play with them.

Spock makes the excuse that he did not tell T’Pring because of the difficulty Vulcans have lying, but that can’t be true. A better explanation would have been that it was because she would be melding with T’Pril later and it might have been picked up. T'Pring also reminds Spock that they have shared katras (SNW: "Spock Amok").

Spock and Chapel’s confession and clinch, of course, is in opposition to what happened in TOS: “The Naked Time”, but at this point, with the popularity of Jess Bush’s portrayal of the character and time travel shenanigans as an excuse, it’s a minor point that only the truly pedantic would even point out as part of their annotations.

(originally posted here)

Very often I see people confidently think or claim that the Star Trek warp drive works like the warp "drive" first proposed by physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994. Unfortunately, this is in error (I put "drive" in quotes because Alcubierre apparently dislikes calling it a drive, preferring to call it a "warp bubble"). As Alcubierre himself says, it was Star Trek that gave him the inspiration for his metric, not the other away around.

Why there is this conflation may be because people desperately want to think that Star Trek is based on hard scientific principles, or that the same principles in Star Trek are actively being worked on in real life. I don't propose to speculate further. There are also several fan ideas and beta canon ideas in licensed fiction about warp drive (notably in the excellent novel Federation by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens) but for the sake of brevity, I'm limiting my discussion to what we see on-screen and related behind-the-scenes documents.

Background

The basic obstacle to superluminal or faster-than-light travel is Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity. Special Relativity says that as the velocity of an object with mass accelerates towards the speed of light (c), the mass of that object increases, requiring more and more energy to accelerate it, until at c, that object has infinite mass, requiring infinite energy to push it past c. In fact, Special Relativity says that nothing with mass can reach c - photons are massless and can only travel at c. From there, it follows that theoretical objects with negative mass can only travel above c, hence given the name tachyons, from the Greek tachys, or “fast”.

Alcubierre wondered: if you can't move the object/ship without running into relativistic issues, why not move space instead? Alcubierre's idea was to warp space in two ways - contract space in front of the ship and expand space behind it, an effect he compares to a person on a travelator. So while the ship itself remains stationary in a flat area of spacetime between the two areas of warped space (the whole thing being the "warp bubble"), that flat area gets moved along like a surfboard on the wave of warped space. Of course, warping spacetime in this manner involves incredible amounts of negative energy, but that's another discussion.

So this is how the Alcubierre metric circumvents relativistic issues. Because the ship itself remains essentially motionless, there is no acceleration or velocity and thus no increase in inertial mass.

But that's not how Star Trek’s warp drive works, and has never been.

Warp Drive pre-TNG

There is no description on how Star Trek warp drive works on screen in TOS except perhaps for a vague pronouncement that the "time barrier's been broken" in TOS: "The Cage" (in the episode Spock also calls it a "hyperdrive" and refers to "time warp factors").

During the production of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), science consultant Jesco von Puttkamer, at the time an aerospace engineer working at a senior position in NASA, wrote in a memo to Gene Roddenberry dated 10 April 1978 (The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture by Susan Sackett and Gene Roddenberry, 1980, pp153-154) his proposal for how warp drive was supposed to work, in a way eeriely similar to Alcubierre's metric:

When going “into Warp Drive,” the warp engines in the two propulsion pods create an intense field which surrounds the entire vessel, forming a “subspace”, i.e. a space curvature closed upon itself through a Warp, a new but small universe within the normal Universe (or “outside” it). The field is nonsymmetrical with respect to fore-and-aft, in accordance with the outside geometry of the Enterprise, but it can be strengthened and weakened at localized areas to control the ship’s direction and apparent speed.

Because of the its non-symmetry about the lateral axis, the subspace becomes directional. The curvature of its hypersurface varies at different points about the starship. This causes a “sliding” effect, almost as a surf-board or a porpoise riding before the crest of a wave. The subspace “belly-surfs” in front of a directionally propagating “fold” in the spacetime structure, the Warp - a progressive, partial collapse of spacetime caused by the creation of the subspace volume (similar to but not the same as a Black Hole).

But there's no evidence that Roddenberry actually used this concept. In fact, Puttkamer said further in the memo that at warp, Enterprise would have "little or no momentum", which we will see is not how it's portrayed. Puttkamer was even against the now famous rainbow effect of going into warp:

The effect should not be firework-type lights but a more dimensional, geometric warping and twisting, an almost stomach-turning wrenching of the entire camera field-of-view.

So while an interesting document, there's no evidence that Puttkamer's ideas made it into any on screen incarnation of Star Trek.

Warp Drive in TNG and beyond

In TNG, the first publicly available description of how warp drive is supposed to work came from the licensed Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual (1991). At page 65:

WARP PROPULSION

The propulsive effect is achieved by a number of factors working in concert. First, the field formation is controllable in a fore-to-aft direction. As the plasma injectors fire sequentially, the warp field layers build according to the pulse frequency in the plasma, and press upon each other as previously discussed. The cumulative field layer forces reduce the apparent mass of the vehicle and impart the required velocities. The critical transition point occurs when the spacecraft appears to an outside observer to be travelling faster than c. As the warp field energy reaches 1000 millicochranes, the ship appears driven across the c boundary in less than Planck time, 1.3 x 10^-43 sec, warp physics insuring that the ship will never be precisely at c. The three forward coils of each nacelle operate with a slight frequency offset to reinforce the field ahead of the Bussard ramscoop and envelop the Saucer Module. This helps create the field asymmetry required to drive the ship forward.

As described here, Star Trek warp drive gets around Special Relativity by using the warp field to distort space around and lower the inertial mass of the ship so that the shaping of the warp fields and layers around the ship can push and accelerate the ship itself towards c with reasonable energy requirements. The stronger the field (measured in units of millicochranes), the lower the inertial mass gets and it becomes easier to accelerate. When the field hits a strength of 1000 millicochranes, the ship pushes past the c barrier. Presumably at this stage it's in subspace, where Relativity no longer applies, and can accelerate even faster to each level of warp until the next limit at Warp 10 (TNG scale), or infinite speed. I'm not getting into how warp factors are defined (but see here for a discussion on the change between TOS and TNG warp scales, which also goes into the definition of warp factors, if interested).

The Technical Manual was written by Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda, who were both technical consultants behind the scenes, and evolved from a document prepared by them in 1989 (3rd Season) to aid writers on the show in writing the technobabble in their script. (See also the history here.)

Here’s what the first, 3rd Season edition says about the way warp works, which is simply that the drive “warps space, enabling the ship to travel faster than light,” and that the ship is “‘suspended in a bubble’ of ‘subspace’, which allows the ship to travel faster than light”. This description also shows up in the 4th Season edition, and the Star Trek: Voyager Technical Guide (1st Season edition) in identical form.

While the actual text of the manual never made it on screen, there are several pieces of on-screen evidence that tell us Sternbach and Okuda's description of warp drive is followed: warp fields lower inertial mass, and the ship experiences acceleration and inertial forces during warp.

Evidence of warp fields lowering inertial mass

In TNG: "Deja Q" (1990), Enterprise-D uses a warp field to change the inertial mass of a moon:

LAFORGE: You know, this might work. We can't change the gravitational constant of the universe, but if we wrap a low level warp field around that moon, we could reduce its gravitational constant. Make it lighter so we can push it.

Later in that episode, we see the effect the warp field has on the moon:

DATA: Inertial mass of the moon is decreasing to approximately 2.5 million metric tonnes.

At the time "Deja Q" was broadcast, all that was said about warp drive in the technical guide was that warp drive "warps space" and the ship is in a subspace bubble with no mention of lowering inertial mass. Yet "Deja Q" shows warp fields doing exactly that, which tells us that either the writer gave Sternbach and Okuda that idea or they already had their ideas in place behind the scenes. The latter is more likely, given that the Technical Manual was published the following year.

In DS9: "Emissary" (1993), O'Brien and Dax use a warp field to lower the mass of the station so they can use thrusters to "fly" the station to where the wormhole is.

DAX: Couldn't you modify the subspace field output of the deflector generators just enough to create a low-level field around the station?

O'BRIEN: So we could lower the inertial mass?

DAX: If you can make the station lighter, those six thrusters will be all the power we'd need.

Evidence of inertia during warp

We've known from TOS on that during warp speed, inertia still exists. If it didn't, then there wouldn't be the bridge crew being subjected to inertial forces when maneuvering at warp speeds and being tossed around the bridge (TOS: "Tomorrow is Yesterday", when Enterprise slingshots around the sun at warp - with the last reported speed being Warp 8 on the TOS scale).

In TMP (1979), we see Enterprise accelerating to warp speed before the engine imbalance creates a wormhole.

KIRK: Warp drive, Mr Scott. Ahead, Warp 1, Mr Sulu.

SULU: Accelerating to Warp 1, sir. Warp point 7… point 8… Warp 1, sir.

As noted, a ship using the Alcubierre metric doesn't need to accelerate, because it's space that's moving, not the ship. Additionally there'd be no need for an inertial dampening field (as we see in TNG and beyond) that is supposed to protect the crew when accelerating to superluminal speeds. From VOY: "Tattoo" (1995):

KIM: Could we go to warp under these conditions?

PARIS: The ship might make it without inertial dampers, but we'd all just be stains on the back wall.

In the 2009 Star Trek movie, Enterprise was unable to go to warp unless the external inertial dampeners were disengaged.

SULU: Uh, very much so, sir. I'm, uh, not sure what's wrong.

PIKE: Is the parking brake on?

SULU: Uh, no. I'll figure it out, I'm just, uh...

SPOCK: Have you disengaged the external inertial dampener?

(Sulu presses a couple buttons)

SULU: Ready for warp, sir.

PIKE: Let's punch it.

If there's no acceleration or inertia, there's no reason why them being on would impede warp drive operation.

Closing Remarks

Taking all these pieces into account, I hope I've shown convincingly that the way the show treats Star Trek warp drive is consistent with a drive system that involves acceleration and inertial forces, and with warp fields that lower inertial mass - just like Sternbach and Okuda describe in the Technical Manual, and definitely not consistent with way the Alcubierre metric is supposed to work.

For those who want a deep dive into Star Trek warp physics, some canon and some speculative, I heartily recommend Ex Astris Scientia's series of articles on warp propulsion. I also recommend Jason W. Hinson's series on "Relativity and FTL Travel". Hinson was a regular participant in rec.arts.startrek.tech in the 90s and educated us on how Relativity worked and how it applied to Star Trek.

For example, the Federation's founding members (Tellarites, Andorians, Vulcans, Humans) were the subject of fan theories and "fanon" for many years before the ENT writers made it official. One of the interesting (and fun) aspects of this recent wave of series has been seeing the writers increasingly add nods to fan theories and pieces of fanon lore over the years. What are some good examples of this?

And relatedly: what's a fan theory, or piece of fanon, that you suspect the current writers believe, even if they haven't explicitly stated it on-screen?

This is the Daystrom Institute Episode Analysis thread for Strange New Worlds 2x03 Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.

Now that we’ve had a few days to digest the content of the latest episode, this thread is a place to dig a little deeper.