A sehlat is a Vulcan animal akin to a large furry bear with pronounced saber-tooth tiger-like fangs. Spock’s childhood pet sehlat, I-Chaya, was first mentioned in TOS: “Journey to Babel” and subsequently seen and named in TAS: “Yesteryear”. A non-cartoon version of a wild sehlat was seen in ENT: “The Forge”.

We see the Bellerophon-class USS Farragut (NCC-1647). At this point in his career (2261), Kirk is its first officer, having served on it since he last left Startfleet Academy in 2255. 4 years prior, in 2257, Farragut lost her captain to a dikironium vampire (TOS: “Obsession”) at Tycho IV. Also see my post on making sense of Kirk’s early career history.

Farragut is doing a survey of Helicon Gamma, an unihabited M-class planet. M-class, or Minshara-class planets (as per ENT: “Strange New World”) are capable of sustaining humanoid life.

Farragut is currently under the command of Captain V’Rel, a female Vulcan officer. Kirk’s frustration at her risk-averse nature and his stating that “risk is why we’re here,” echoes his speech in TOS: “Return to Tomorrow” when he insists that “risk is our business.” Kirk’s desire to rewrite the book is also consistent with his character, who has always tended to change the rules (ST II).

Kirk says, "Starfleet could have sent a probe, but instead they sent us because some things you need to see for yourself to truly understand," which is a paraphrase of Archer's remark to T'Pol in ENT: "Civilization", "Starfleet could've sent a probe out here to make maps and take pictures, but they didn't. They sent us so we could explore with our own senses."

John Logie Baird (1888-1946) was a Scottish inventor, best known for demonstrating the first television system in 1926 and going on to invent colour television. Doctor Who fans will remember him being portrayed in the 2023 special “The Giggle”.

This is the first time we’ve heard of Asaasllich, Destroyer of Worlds, or the Astrovore, but a lot of this - centuries old scavenger ship, comms interference, unable to get through the hull, gravitational beams destroying planets, consuming resources, large enough to swallow starships whole - reminds me very much of TOS: “The Doomsday Machine”.

Ortegas claims the Klingons call it Chach-Ka, “The Annihilator”. The Klingon word chach means emergency or auxiliary and qa’ means spirit, so I’m not sure if those are the right words or what the Klingon name should be.

We see a toppled 3-D chess set, similar to those on which Kirk and Spock would have regular games in future. This is the first time in SNW where Kirk has been addressed as “Captain Kirk” (excepting alternate timeline versions). As Spock enters the wrecked room, we see a picture of Starbase One on the wall.

Scotty refers to the scavenger as “Nessie”, the popular nickname for the Scottish cryptid known as the Loch Ness Monster. Kirk tells him to come up with some “miracles”, foreshadowing Scotty’s future reputation as a “miracle worker”.

The scene where Scotty is struggling in a wrecked Jeffries tube also reminds me of a similar scene in “Doomsday Machine”. Scotty’s time estimate looks ahead to a time when he always multiples his repair estimates by a factor of 4 to maintain his miracle worker rep (ST III, TNG: “Relics”).

Aldentium (first mention) is used by a few species in propulsion systems. This is also the first mention of Sullivan’s Planet and its pre-warp (and thus Prime Directive-protected) population of 100 million.

Scotty better get used to Kirk just ignoring his protestations and getting on with it, or else it’s going to be a really long 32 years. This is Kirk’s command style - which is less consultative than Picard and Pike’s process.

Another “Doomsday Machine” reference. The procedure to replace a CO that Chapel refers to is covered by Starfleet Regulation 104, Section C.

The scavengers use ion particles in their weapons, which rip through flesh and bone like bullets.

The clock Pelia tosses is the iconic and once ubiquitous Kit-Cat Clock, first made in 1932. She hands M’Benga what is supposed to be an Atari Video Computer System (also known as an Atarti 2600), one of the first video game consoles made, released in 1977.

The use of wired (as opposed to wireless) communications to insulate them from jamming is similar to the reboot Battlestar Galactica universe, where intership communications were hard wired to prevent them from being hacked by the Cylons.

Kirk’s mother is named Winona (first named in ST 2009). The story about the dog with the car crops up in Bruce Feirstein’s Nice Guys Sleep Alone, where it’s used as a metaphor for someone who keeps pursuing a paramour but once they’ve “got” them, they don’t know what to do with them.

As Kirk’s crew come together, the first of the core group of people he will grow to rely on for the rest of his career, the music echoes James Horner’s rousingly nautical soundtrack from ST II.

Pike suggests baryon particles to give the scavenger indigestion (shades of souring the milk ala TNG: “Galaxy’s Child”), and La’An says they have to access the waste system of the warp drive. In TNG: “Starship Mine” it was established that operating warp drives led to a build up of baryons that needed to be occasionally purged from starships by means of a “baryon sweep”.

Pelia used to be a roadie for the Greatful Dead, who stand among the greatest rock groups in history.

While Uhura is usually pictured at her communications station, she has taken the navigation and helm stations on a few occasions, notably in TOS: “The Man Trap” and TOS: “Balance of Terror”. She temporarily took over Spock’s station in TOS: “The Galileo Seven”.

Kirk once told Scotty to “discard the warp nacelles if you have to” in TOS: “The Apple”, but this is the first time we’ve seen a starship do this on-screen.

Una’s trick of using a depressurising section of the ship as a makeshift reaction thruster was also used in TNG: “Cause and Effect” - Riker ordered the shuttle bay to depressurise so as to avoid Enterprise-D colliding with Bozeman. That being said, Una only uses a single airlock rather than an entire shuttlebay, which seems implausibly small when shifting something of Enterprise’s mass.

As we zoom in on the hull markings, we see a United States flag, and a delta with what appears to be an United Nations logo inside, and the registry number XCV-100. One of the first spaceships named Enterprise, also prior to Earth Starfleet’s formation had the registry number XCV-330 (TMP, ENT: “First Flight”).

Prior to First Contact with the Vulcans means prior to 2063 (STFC). Pelia narrows it down to just after World War III ended in 2053. Other ships launched around that time included Cochrane’s Pheonix in 2063 and the UESPA probe Friendship 1 (VOY: “Friendship One”) in 2067. Friendship 1 had the same delta with the UN logo.

Aldebaran whiskey is the “it’s green” liquor that Scotty imbibes with Picard in TNG: “Relics” (and possibly the same one he drinks in TOS: “By Any Other Name”).

Pike’s optimism is laudable - in the end, what Star Trek teaches us is whether we turn into monsters or not can’t be blamed on circumstance, it’s a choice. The same choice faced Captains Janeway and Ransom in the Delta Quadrant (VOY: “Equinox”), and both chose differently. Kirk’s lesson that we’re not that different from the enemy would serve him well in situations where he can anticipate the enemy’s moves (TOS: “Balance of Terror”), reactions (TOS: “A Taste of Armageddon”) or when he reaches out with empathy instead of destruction (TOS: “Arena”).

Star Trek, which has not been in theaters since 2016, has largely been overseen by Alex Kurtzman with a lengthy list of Paramount+ series. Execs said that Trek would be looked at holistically rather than siloed off between different parts of the company, such as film and TV.

• Ensign Gamble records the stardate as 2184.4 in his junior medical officer’s log. Which, of course, would predate the previous log entries this season, if stardates progressed through increasingly larger numbers, as they do in every series in this franchise other than TOS, and TAS.

    • Gamble says he has been stationed on the USS Enterprise for six months. In “Wedding Bell Blues”, when Gamble is introduced, it was established that he was a temporary replacement for nurse Chapel, and that she had been off the ship for three months, indicating that at least three months has passed between that episode and this one.

• Gamble comments that Korby is working on ”corporeal transference.” In “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” Korby will have transferred his own consciousness and that of his associate, Brown, into android bodies.

• ”She is an excellent dance instructor.” La’An was teaching Spock how to dance in preparation for his reunion with Chapel in “Wedding Bell Blues”, but it seems as though as of the end of “A Space Adventure Hour”, the lessons have progressed from tango to horizontal mambo.

• The Vadia IX magnetic anomaly is located at the Lafarge Quarry. On the other side of the ridge you’ll find:

    • The camp of rebels against the Terran Empire - “The Wolf Inside”

    • Talosians - “Light and Shadows”, “If Memory Serves”

    • Some Trill itronok - “Jinaal”

• Berto Ortegas is aboard the Enterprise as a documentarian. The LDS episode, “Trusted Sources”, featured an FNN reporter documenting the missions of the USS Cerritos.

• Chapel and Korby speculate that the M’Kroon are descendants of an ancient civilization that achieved immortality. Star Trek is lousy with powerful ancient civilizations that, for whatever reason, are no longer present to exert their direct influence on the galaxy, including:

    • The T’Kon Empire - “The Last Outpost”

    • The Iconian Empire - “Contagion”

    • The Progenitors - “The Chase”, DIS season 5

    • The D’Arsay - “Masks”, “Room for Growth”

• Doctor M’Benga declares that his scans find Gamble to be brain dead. Other people who’ve been brain dead include Chakotay in “Cathexis” and Rick Berman for most of his career.

• ”This thing…is older than anything I’ve ever seen.” Pelia is of a long lived species, Lanthanites, and has been alive since at least the 6th century BCE.

• Spock uses a set of alien goggles to view the well of Vezda orbs. One of the orbs floats up, and a toothy monster inside the sparkling light snarls at him, not unlike the crew of the USS Yosemite who’d been transformed into transporter snakes and assaulted Barclay in “Realm of Fear”.

• Gamble has been possessed by one of the Vezda entities. Other characters who’ve been possessed by malevolent entities include:

    • In “Wolf In the Fold” Scotty was briefly possessed by Jack the Ripper

    • In “Clues” Troi was possessed by a Paxan

    • In “Power Play”, Data, Troi, and O’Brien were possessed by non-corporeal prisoners

    • In “Masks” Data was possessed by several figures from D’Arsay myth

    • In “Cathexis” Tuvok was possessed by a Komar

    • In “The Reckoning” Jake Sisko was possessed by the Kosst Amojan Pah-wraith.

• Vezda Gambel references Rukiya Doctor M’Benga’s terminally ill daughter whom he kept in a transporter buffer for the first half of season one, let go of so she could join with a sentient nebula in “The Elysian Kingdom”, and promptly forgot about until now.

• Captain Batel, who is presumably now a Gorn hybrid after her treatment following “Shuttle to Kenfori”, recognizes the entity in Gamble, and the pair fight in sickbay. It is unclear where Batel got the large boulder she throws at Vezda Gamble like the Gorn in “Arena”, but we did learn in “Strange Energies” that Starfleet does have medical boulders.

• La’An voices suspicion that the ancient site might be a prison to house the Vezdas. In “Power Play” the entities that possessed Data, Ro, and O’Brien were prisoners whose consciousness was separated from their bodies and trapped in a magnetic storm.

• ”Curiouser and curiouser” Spock quotes “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, a book Amanda Greyson would read to him and Michael Burnham when they were children, as per “Once Upon a Planet” and “Context is for Kings”.

• Scotty traps the Vezda after it escapes Gamble’s corpse, and stores it in the transporter buffer. In “Wolf In the Fold” Spock scattered the Jack the Ripper entity across deep space with the transporter.

So if you aren’t aware from my previous post, I was at STLV last week. Among the various things to do, there were artist doing free face painting and airbrush temporary tattoos. I decided on a temp tat and among them was this image of Tendi from “Strange Energies”.

I liked this so much that I am seriously considering getting a real permanent tattoo of this. On top of that I am thinking about getting it colored.

I see the trailer, I don't think is the best serie in the world, but I think can be something fun to watch, to nowdays standards that is enough to me really.

I need to watch it to have an opinion, I have the feeling people need to give a chance at least, I did with Voyager despite all the negative critics I saw.

What you think about this?

The new, post-Skydance merger Paramount has two major TV studio units: the existing CBS Studios, led by David Stapf and overseen by Paramount Chair of TV Media George Cheeks, and the newly formed Paramount TV Studios, headed by former Skydance TV President Matt Thunell and overseen by Dana Goldberg, Co-Chair of Paramount Pictures and Chair of Paramount Television.

...

Meanwhile, two streaming series originally developed by the former [Paramount TV Studios] that CBS Studios took over after the former’s demise — Apple TV+’s Murderbot, renewed for Season 2, and the upcoming Little House On the Prairie for Netflix — will remain at CBS Studios, as will CBS Studios’ homegrown streaming projects including the Star Trek universe on Paramount+.

At STLV today, Frank Aurelio Yokoyama, the mayor of Cerritos, California was in attendance. He gave Dawn Lewis a proclamation for playing Captain Freeman.

This made me cry and I’m still in tears.

The song might be goofy but there’s good stuff in there too

During a panel with Picard season three showrunner Terry Matalas and Todd Stashwick (Shaw), were questioned about a ‘30-page outline’ for the Star Trek Legacy concept.

Reportedly, Michelle Hurd (Raffi) mentioned this during an earlier panel.

It sounds as though there’s nothing new in terms of interest from the executives about the concept, just fan interest and an ongoing campaign. Matalas and Stashwick are focused on the upcoming Marvel limited series Vision Quest in which Stashwick stars as the Paladin.

What’s interesting to me is that the more I hear about Matalas original pitch, the more I dislike. Matalas confirmed that it would have a Klingon focus.

While I loved the deep dives into Klingon lore in the 90s, I would prefer something new in the 25th century even a show featuring legacy characters.

As well, Matalas confirmed that they proposed that Shaw would a holographic recreation rather than revived by Borg nanites. We don’t need another grumpy hologram now that the Doctor is back in both Prodigy and Starfleet Academy.

I would find Shaw’s journey as a victim of the Borg with survivor guild to someone who accepts that his own life depends on Borg technology as much more interesting, compelling and new ground in terms of a character arc.

Edited to correct Michelle Hurd’s family name…

• This episode was directed by Johnathan Frakes, the actor who portrayed Thomas Riker in “Second Chances” and “Defiant”

    • Frakes also plays the director of the fictional television show, “The Lost Frontier” that exists within the re-creation room simulation.

• Obviously “The Lost Frontier” is a pastiche of TOS

    • The title, “The Lost Frontier” is a reference to ”the final frontier,” mentioned in the introductory monologue spoken by Captain Kirk during the opening sequence of every episode.

    • The lighting aboard the *USS Adventure” is heavy on the greens and purples, mimicking the lighting of TOS.

    • Some of the music cues are lifted directly from TOS.

    • Just as TOS had Kirk, Spock, and McCoy as its main cast trio, the only protagonists we see on “The Lost Frontier” are the captain, the first officer, and the doctor.

    • The plot of the episode, involves the Agonyan empire stealing the brain cells of the Adventures’ human crew, which is similar to the plot of “Spock’s Brain” where aliens stole Spock’s brain. Additionally, being robbed of their brain cells afflicts the characters with melancholia, a condition that seems to remove their joie de vivre; similar to the passive Kirk lacking any drive or motivation in “The Enemy Within”.

    • The episode’s opening sequence has been replaced with the sequence for “The Lost Frontier”, which is also a send-up of TOS’s opening, including its own version of the captain’s monologue.

• The Agonyan Zipnop is played by Kira Guloien, who previously played the Edosian bartender in “Wedding Bell Blues”.

• ”Now, the device we’re going to be testing is called the…re-creation room?” In “The Practical Joker”, M’Ress pronounces it ”recreation room* as in used for recreational activities.

    • ”Holodeck, for short.” In “The Practical Joker”, they call it the ”rec room,” even in the signage, which is even shorter, and derived from the thing’s apparently official name.

    • The holodeck was first seen in the TNG series premiere, “Encounter at Farpoint”.

• La’An asks of the re-creation room is based on battle simulators; we presumably saw a battle simulator in the Disco episode, “Lethe”, when the episode opened with Captain Lorca and Ash Tyler running a simulated combat against holographic Klingons, and a certain segment of the viewers decided to be real normal about a holodeck existing before TNG.

    • La’An claims that battle simulators are usually on starbases due to the massive energy and computing requirements, but I think we can agree that the USS Discovery could have been one of those implied exceptions, seeing as Lorca likely just yelled at the admiralty that he’s trying to win a war until they agreed to install one on his ship.

      • In “Unexpected” we saw that the Xyrillians had holographic simulators that impressed Trip, even aboard a ship significantly smaller than the NX-01, and it is implied that the technology would work aboard the Klingon battle-cruiser in the episode as well.

• ”It’s the kind of thing I’d do all the time when I was a test pilot.” Pike loves bringing up that he used to be a test pilot. He’s mentioned it in “Light and Shadows”, and “Among the Lotus Eaters”, and confirmed that he was one in “Hegemony”.

• La’An explains to Scotty that she wants her program to be inspired by the stories of Amelia Moon, a fictional detective. Captain Picard’s own holodeck adventures also cast him in the role of a fictional detective, Dixon hill. Specifically in: “The Big Goodbye”, “Manhunt”, “Clues”, and “Star Trek: First Contact”. And, of course, Data takes on the role of Sherlock Holmes in “Elementary, Dear Data”.

• La’An says it was the captain of the ship who rescued her from the Gorn breeding planet that introduced her to the character of Amelia Moon; we learned in “Strange New Worlds” that it was the USS Martin Luthor King Jr. that rescued her.

• To populate the re-creation room -- and give the principle actors something to do in this episode - Scotty needed to use the high resolution scans of individuals from the transporter’s pattern buffer. In “Our Man, Bashir”, the characters in Doctor Bashir’s spy adventure holosuite program have their likeness replaced by those of the senior staff after Eddington and Odo need to upload their transporter patterns into the station’s computers. And, in “A Fistful of Datas”, all the characters in Worf and Alexander’s old west program are overwritten to have Data’s face and skintone.

• Uh oh! La’An committed the mistake Geordi made in “Elementary, Dear Data” by requesting the computer ”create a new mystery that [La’An] will find challenging to solve.” Geordi prompted the computer to, ”Create an adversary capable of defeating Data/”

• The re-creation room is a re-creation of the holodeck as seen on TNG, with black walls lined with a yellow grid. When not active, the rec room seen on TAS was a large, empty, grey room.

• ”I can practically smell the ocean and the cigarettes.” La’An implies that the re-creation room doesn’t include scents in its simulation. In “The Big Goodbye”, Picard was very impressed with the newly upgraded holodeck’s verisimilitude, including smells.

    • in “Unexpected”, Trip claimed he could smell the ocean in the Xyrillian holographic simulator.

    • In “Encounter at Farpoint” Data explains to Riker that the holodeck functions by using light and forcefields in conjunction with the replicators to actually physically manifest some of the scenery, such as trees. Here, Scotty says everything is down with holograms and tractor beams.

• ”As my ancestor, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, would write, ‘The game is a afoot.’” It was implied that Spock was a descendant of Doyle in “Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country” when he attributed another of Sherlock Holmes’ quotes to his ancestor, but this confirmation that’s the case. Assuming we’re to believe a holographic re-creation of Spock created by the computer to foil La’An.

• We’re introduced to the dramatis personae of La’An’s re-creation room adventure:

    • Joni Gloss, who has Uhura’s likeness

    • TK Bellows, who has Pike’s likeness

      • Bellows is the creator of “The Last Frontier. His soft spoken mannerisms and womanizing might have been inspired by Gene Roddenberry, though his appearance looks to be based on Isaac Asimov, and his willingness to threaten people with a gun could have been taken from the writer of the TOS episode “The City on the Edge of Forever”. The alcoholism might have been lifted from all science fiction writers. Except Harlan Ellison.

    • Sunny Lupino, who has Number One’s likeness

      • Sunny is a former actor turned producer who we’ll learn was largely responsible for keeping “The Last Frontier” afloat, at her own personal expense, much like Lucille Ball did for TOS. Her name is almost certainly inspired by Ida Lupino, who was also an actor who became a producer later in life. Sunny’s might also have been inspired by Jessica Tandy, who was a model until appearing in “The Birds”. Sunny claims, ”Until I convinced Alfred to put me in ‘The Crows’ I was just another pair of lips.”

    • Adelaide Shaw, who has Chapel’s likeness

      • Adelaide plays the first officer on “The Last Frontier” just as Majel Barrett played Number One in the original Star Trek pilot, “The Cage”. Jess Bush gets to use her actual accent to play the character.

    • Maxwell Saint, who has James Kirk’s likeness, which raises the question of how long they keep the high rise transporter scans of individuals.

      • Saint is the captain on “The Last Frontier”, and Paul Wesley is leaning very heavily into a William Shatner impersonation, which stands in stark contrast to how he actually plays Kirk.

    • Lee Woods, who has Ortegas’ likeness

      • Woods portrays the doctor on “The Last Frontier”, like DeForest Kelly, Woods is a fan of the western. Also, DeForest…Lee Woods…get it?

    • Anthony McBeau, who has Doctor M’Benga’s likeness

• ”You know I’m an actor, not a doctor, right?” Lee Forest gets to say the inverse of Bones famous recurring line, first used in “The Devil in the Dark”.

• Number One suggested Pike reinstate Ortegas to active duty, which certainly doesn’t render taking Ortegas off active duty in the previous episode moot.

• TK Bellows claims, ”Our fanbase is small, but it's quite passionate.” When it was rumoured that TOS was going to be cancelled after the second season, Gene Roddenberry secretly funded a letter writing campaign that is attributed with saving the show for a third season

• La’An speculates that Lee Woods is the murderer, believing Tony Hart stole a script she wrote and was going to credit someone else, ”Probably a man because that happened all the time back then.” In “Far Beyond the Stars” 1950s science fiction writer Kay Eaton had to use a male pen name and not appear in promotional photos for the magazine she worked for to be able to continue to get work.

• Not being able to end the program is a common trope of holodeck episodes. See: Most holodeck episodes.

• ”You know what’s not realistic? A lady first officer.” Apparently Maxwell Saint agrees with the suits at NBC who rejected the first TOS pilot.

• Pike is clearly uncomfortable with the idea of a re-creation room being a fixture on Starfleet ships. In “An Obal for Charon” Pike claims that he never liked the holographic communication system because it reminded him too much of ghosts.

• Scotty recommends that if re-creation rooms are to be installed in Starfleet ships they should have independent power and processing.

    • In “The Practical Joker” the rec room is affected by the same computer virus as the rest of the ship, and in both “Elementary, My Dear Data” and “The Nth Degree”, the ship is able to be controlled to some degree from the holodeck.

    • The USS Voyager and the USS Titan-A both have independent power sources, as established in “Parallax” and “No Win Scenario” respectively. The USS Enterprise D did not, a plot point in “Booby Trap” and Voyager eventually has the holodeck integrated into the rest of the ship’s power grid, which is alluded to in “Night”.

• Number One informs Scotty that there are 203 crew on the Enterprise. That number was established in “The Menagerie, Part 1” and remained true for “Brother”, and “All Those Who Wander”, though in “Subscape Rhapsody” Spock implied there were only 200 crew on the ship.

• La’An and Spock seemingly begin a relationship. in “Charlie X” Uhura sings a song about how Spock is a heartbreaker; how many ”female astronuats” will she watch him run through?

• The episode ends with a “The Last Frontier” blooper reel.

    • The director’s voice is clearly that of Johnathan Frakes, which, considering Scotty had to use transporter scans for the characters in the program would imply that serving somewhere aboard the Enterprise is a descendant of the NX-01’s Chef.

• Maxwell Saint attempts to perform the Riker maneuver over the captain’s chair, with disastrous results.

• Bonus! Clues that Spock was a re-creation before the actual reveal:

    • Scotty shows La’an a pad with the pattern buffer likenesses, and Spock is there, and is the only one of the eight to not have a character in the narrative.

    • Spock is in the re-creation room when La’An enters.

    • Scotty tells La’An that the holodeck is drawing more processing power than expected, and it’s because it also simulating Spock.

    • Saint asks Spock if he was the one to kill Tony and Sunny Lupino

    • When he goes to Uhura for advice, Scotty only mentions that La’An is trapped in the re-creation room, not Spock.

EHK: Emergency Harry Kim

When you need to disappoint an Ensign badly.

EDIT: This Hologram had to reinitialized their startup sequence. My badge was misaligned and pip on the wrong side. A kind season two Geordi saw and fixed that.

EDIT 2: Excuse me, can I get someone to fix my caffeine intake subroutine please? I am still not awake. It’s EHK, not EKM.

UPDATE: I was told to go talk to Garrett Wang. I went to his both and introduced my costume. He loved it. He asked for a photo and a video of me explaining it.

A fascinating look back at the potential 'Star Trek' sequel TV show includes some incredible imaginings of what the new USS 'Enterprise' may have looked like.

The existence of Star Trek: Phase II—the plans for a Star Trek continuation series in the mid-1970s that eventually gave way to Star Trek: The Motion Picture—has been known for a very long time at this point. We’ve seen concept art, we’ve seen story ideas, and we’ve seen it for long enough to see how those nuggets have gone on to influence the Star Trek that we would go on to get for another 50 years. And yet, there’s still plenty to enjoy in this new documentary about the bumpy road Star Trek almost made on the journey home back to our screens.

Just one of the many fun late night activities hear at the Rio in Las Vegas, Nevada. Trekkies like to party!

My first time doing makeup. I tried painting my hands but that didn’t work well.

Was walking around wearing Ceti eel earrings and carrying a Moopsy. Bumped into Seán Ferrick of TrekCulture who gave me a compliment on my costume. I am star struck getting a compliment from Seán.

I know there is watch guides, but I'm still in the struggle of choosing the next Star Trek serie to watch next. I was thinking in skipping Star Trek: Enterprise.

Ensign Gamble identifies himself as a “junior medical officer”, not a nurse, but the two may be equivalent. The stardate is 2184.4, and it has been six months since he was assigned to Enterprise. Since Gamble came on board to sub for Chapel while she was away on her three-month fellowship with Korby, this places the episode six months after SNW: “Hegemony, Part 2” or three months after SNW: “Wedding Bell Blues”.

Gamble mentions Korby’s work on “molecular memory and corporeal transference”, and that “man’s fascination with resurrection and reincarnation might be based on forgotten technology” foreshadows the android technology Korby will discover on Exo III (TOS: “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”).

Chapel asks how much “tarazine” is lethal. I’m not sure if she meant “thorazine”, which is a real world antipsychotic. Chapel jokes about “command function” being in the “left lobe [of the brain]”. The frontal lobe is where higher executive functions are regulated, and the left hemisphere controls speech, comprehension, math and writing.

Vadia IX was first mentioned in “Wedding” as where Korby and Chapel conducted a dig, and Trelane’s remarks imply it was the ancient homeworld of the Q.

According to the star chart, Vadia is in the same sector as Majalis (SNW: “Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach”) and a sector away from Eminiar (TOS: “A Taste of Armageddon”) and Cait (home system of the Caitians), and about 100 ly away from Gorn space. It is under the jurisdiction of the M’Kroon, who have their first mention here.

Beto Ortegas first appeared in “Wedding”, but was mentioned prior to that in the SNW novel Toward the Night by James Swallow. As I noted previously, Beto is usually a nickname in Spanish for names that end in -berto, and we find out here his actual first name is Humberto.

“We’re gonna need a bigger landing party,” is a reference to the famous line, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat,” from the 1975 movie Jaws.

Polaris is also known as the North Star, the brightest star in the constellation Ursa Minor (or the Little Dipper), but we are unaware if it has any planets, let alone twelve. This is the first mention of Praetorian. La’An says, “Fascinating,” which is a phrase Spock often uses - Chapel seems to notice this.

“Ancient astronauts” is a reference to a dubious (not to mention racist) yet popular hypothesis in real-world ufology, where it is posited that aliens with advanced technology visited Earth in the past and left traces of their visits, including objects like the Pyramids or Stonehenge which proponents of this theory argue could not have been built by primitive man without help. In the Star Trek universe, however, aliens have visited more primitive cultures and either influenced them and/or been mistaken for deities. We have TOS: “Who Mourns for Adonais” where aliens are taken to be gods by the ancient Greeks and TOS: “Return to Tomorrow” where Sargon suggests humans are the descendants of Aretans. In TNG: “The Chase” (and DIS Season 5), much humanoid life throughout the galaxy is said to be seeded by the Progenitors. In TNG: “Who Watches the Watchers?”, Picard is mistaken for a god by the Mintakans.

“El Cucuy”, or Coco (meaning “skull”) is a mythical Spanish boogeyman, a monster who spirits naughty children away and eats them. The Ortegas family is from Colombia (SNW: “Among the Lotus Eaters”).

I’m not sure why the Universal Translator doesn’t pick up on N’Jal’s speech here and nobody seems to question it. Was N’Jal’s earlier speech translated or was he speaking Federation Standard, and if the latter, why doesn’t he speak it here? Uhura says her intepretation is the “closest translation”, so perhaps the UT somehow doesn’t want to be imprecise?

La’An translates the Chinese text as “Here stands the beholder sentry of eternal bridges.”The Chinese text reads, in traditional Chinese script, “這裡矗立著永恆之穚的旁觀者哨兵,” which I would translate (from Mandarin) as “Here stands the eternal bridge’s sentry.”

Korby’s challenge to Spock, that the latter does not believe that the science exists to prevent consciousness from fading after death is ironic considering the Vulcan (or at least the Syrannite sect) belief in the existence of katras and Spock’s future experience with that (ENT: “Kir’Shara”, ST III).

Rukiya was M’Benga’s terminally ill daughter which he placed in the care of a non-corporeal life form (SNW: “The Elysian Kingdom”). Gamble’s remark about the entity that emerged possibly just being something bearing Rukiya’s appearance and that it ate her echoes my own doubts about the ending of that episode. Thank you!

Scotty sends the orb “nowhere”. The idea of using the transporter to dematerialize but not rematerialize threats was first mooted by a crazed Chekov in TOS: “Day of the Dove” in reference to leaving a party of Klingons dematerialized. In TOS: “Wolf in the Fold” they beamed Redjac’s host body away, dispersing its components into space, but here they decide to keep the Vezda in the transporter buffer like M’Benga did to Rukiya to keep her alive (SNW: “Ghosts of Ilyria”).

What exactly the Vezda life forms are is not made explicit, but the fact that they are ancient, malign, non-corporeal entites draws parallels with beings like the pah-wraiths from DS9 (also, N’Jal says “Mika-tah Vezda-pah”, as does Batel when she sees Gamble). Also, what the connection between the Gorn and the Vezda (or indeed if there is a further connection with the Q) is as yet unexplored. And why there was Chinese on the console.

The containment orbs (although not for prison purposes) for ancient non-corporeal forms also remind me of the Aretan orbs in TOS: “Return to Tomorrow”.

And as the episode ends we finally have the now late Gamble’s first name: Dana.

Written by: Onitra Johnson & Davy Perez

Directed by: Andi Armaganian