It's worth noting that the last time I heard Ben Stiller talking Trek - five years ago on the official podcast - he made it pretty clear that he was a TOS fan, and hadn't really seen anything else.
Nothing wrong with that at all, but relevant IMO.
Also, he definitely doesn't actually have a pitch.
...they asked him “Do you have any Star Trek pitches?” He promptly replied, “Yeah, let’s do it.”
Is it safe to say that casual use of the notwithstanding clause has been normalized to the point that there are no real consequences to invoking it any more?
"No, Irish need apply!"
Captain Picard falls asleep; dreams of some dead people.
I think the headline misrepresents it a bit, but:
Tim's has a long history of playing to a sense of nostalgia and "shared Canadian values".
Politicians have been using this association to try to seem like Regular Joes for years.
The franchise is owned by one of the largest corporations in the world.
Their menu increasingly contradicts the "traditional" vibe they promote, with newer items like Sweet Chili Chicken Loaded Wraps and Loaded Bowls, Tiramisu Cold Brew, and Blackberry Yuzu Sparkling Quenchers.
They're also increasingly expanding options that discourage people from eating in-store, eroding their "de facto town square" image.
Maybe the confused identity of the brand reflects the confused identity of Canada as a whole.
To be honest, it's a pretty muddled piece, but there are a couple of interesting points in there.
I'm a big believer in "stardates are nonsense, and should remain nonsense," but there were efforts made to standardize them in the '90s. They weren't particularly consistent efforts, though. The full history can be found here.
In early TNG, this was the explanation:
A stardate is a five-digit number followed by a decimal point and one more digit. Example: "41254.7." The first two digits of the stardate are always "41." The 4 stands for 24th century, the 1 indicates first season. The additional three leading digits will progress unevenly during the course of the season from 000 to 999. The digit following the decimal point is generally regarded as a day counter.
By TNG season 6, they were going with:
A Stardate is a five-digit number followed by a decimal point and one more digit. Example: "46254.7". The first two digits of the Stardate are "46." The 4 stands for the 24th Century, the 6 indicates sixth season. The following three digits will progress consecutively during the course of the season from 000 to 999. The digit following the decimal point counts tenths of a day. Stardate 45254.4, therefore, represents the noon hour on the 254th "day" of the fifth season. Because Stardates in the 24th Century are based on a complex mathematical formula, a precise correlation to Earth-based dating systems is not possible.
I'm not sure the people who engage in this sort of tomfoolery are concerned with atomic clock-level precision.
it didn’t seem to have an answer for why the Federation didn’t use it later.
Well, you need to either find and enslave an exotic space tardigrade in order to navigate the network, or illegally splice said tardigrade's DNA into your own.
And even then, navigation is pretty challenging, and can result in accidental time and/or interdimensional travel.
And a malfunction has the potential to destroy all life in the multiverse.
And both ships that had the prototypes installed were lost within about a year.
Take your pick, really.
The more I think about the Chapel plot, the more I think it was a blunder.
If she survived the initial attack on the Cayuga, it's likely that others did, too - at the very least, it should give Spock a reason to look before hot-dropping the saucer onto the planet.
Elevating a notorious enemy general to the position of ambassador in a handful of years is a total Starfleet move.
Abuse of the NWS has been progressively normalized over the last few decades, and I think we've reached the breaking point.