I want to live!

- EvilKirk's last words

Whatever else you want to say about EvilKirk, it's pretty clear that he didn't want to be merged back into the single Kirk. Despite this, there is no shortage of reasons why it was a good idea to merge the Kirks: the Enterprise needed its CO back, GoodKirk wanted to do it, and it seems possible that the strain of remaining split would have eventually killed EvilKirk anyways. However, the fact remains that EvilKirk did not consent to the procedure which ended his existence.

Clearly the circumstances here are quite different and there's basically no argument to be made that allowing EvilKirk to continue to exist would benefit any involved party, EvilKirk included. But for the purposes of this comparison, the only fact that really matters is that EvilKirk was just as passionate about his desire to continue existing as Tuvix was.

Yet—and it's obvious where I'm going with this—"Spock murdered EvilKirk" is not a meme.

So what gives? Did Spock murder EvilKirk or not? If yes, why does he get a pass while Janeway is condemned?

In DS9 Profit and Loss, three Cardassian political fugitives arrive at the station after evading the Cardassian military. Garak alerts the Cardassian Central Command of their presence. Gul Toran passes by his shop and tells Garak that he would be allowed to return home to Cardassia if he made sure the trio did not leave the station. Garak then successfully intercepts Lang, Rekelen, and Hogue as they board their ship to escape, and claims to be about to kill them... until Gul Toran swings by, tells Garak that he won't be returning home regardless, and relieves him of his weapon. When Toran goes to shoot Lang himself, Garak produces a second phaser, vaporizes Toran, and allows the trio to escape. He justifies this to Quark in the closing moments of the episode by stating that "I love Cardassia."

This is typical of Garak's twisty tales and unclear motives, but it stands out as a case where Garak came extremely close to actually doing one thing, and winds up doing the exact opposite. Which leaves the question: what was he actually planning here? Did he intend to kill the three dissidents until he learned he wouldn't personally benefit from doing so? Did he never intend to kill them, but wanted to lure Gul Toran into a trap and allow them to escape after? Or do his motives run even deeper somehow?

The title comes from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Act V, sc v, fatalistically describing the inevitability of death and banality of life:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Shakespeare has a long history with Trek. Apart from Picard’s interest in his plays, the Bard’s words have lent themselves to episode titles, including TOS: “The Conscience of the King” (Hamlet), “Dagger of the Mind” (Macbeth), “All Our Yesterdays” (Macbeth), ST VI: The Undiscovered Country (Hamlet), VOY: “Mortal Coil” (Hamlet).

In TNG: “The Defector”, Picard performs Henry V, and Data and he do the same in “Emergence”. Picard uses the excuse of the away team being actors performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream in “Time’s Arrow”. In DS9: “Improbable Cause”, Garak and Bashir debate Julius Caesar. In ENT: “In a Mirror, Darkly” the similarities between Shakespeare’s plays between the Prime and Mirror Universe are mentioned. Various bits of Shakespeare are quoted as well, notably General Chang, a Shakespeare aficionado in ST VI and Spock quoting Hamlet in DIS: “Perpetual Infinity”.

The Stardate is 1581.2, whereas last episode it was 2393.8, and it was stated that 1224.3 was four months prior to that. Pelia says she still has a bunker in Vermont in case this “‘no money, socialist utopia’ thing” doesn’t work out, echoing explicitly for the first time the fan view that yes, the Federation economy is basically socialist in nature. She has a painting she claims is a fake and says the Louvre can stop calling her, indicating that at least the institution and some art survived World War III. Her artifacts have labels identifying them as the property of the Archeology Department.

La’An spars with M’Benga. The doctor was shown to be a proficient fighter in SNW: “The Broken Circle”, and actor Babs Olusanmokun is a 2nd-degree black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. On the wall of the gym we see Klingon-esque weapons on the wall, including a few that look like variants of the standard bat’leth and mek’leth.

The dying stranger tells La’An there has been an attack in the past, and shows her a holographic diagram which we’ve seen on the main viewer of the 29th Century Federation timeship USS Relativity (VOY: “Relativity”), using the TCARS interface (as opposed to LCARS). This indicates he’s either from the 29th or 31st Centuries, as Agent Daniels used a similar interface in ENT. At some point between the 31st and 32nd Century, following the Temporal Cold War the Temporal Accords included a complete ban against time travel (DIS: “Die Trying”).

The blurry ripple that accompanies the change in history is reminiscent of the visual effect used to signal a shift into an alternate timeline in TNG: “Yesterday’s Enterprise”. The disappearance of the time agent and La’An’s continued existence in this altered timeline is attributed to her holding on to his device.

Kirk is wearing a different badge insignia, and identifies the ship as the United Earth Fleet ship Enterprise. Spock is in command of a Vulcan ship, the Sh’Rel, so this timeline doesn’t appear to have a Federation, and the Vulcans are losing a war with the Romulans.

It’s of note that of Kirk’s two appearances in SNW so far, they have both been alternate timelines versions - which still jibes with Prime Kirk’s claim in TOS: “The Menagerie” that he only met Pike once, when he took over command of the Enterprise.

La’An says Starfleet has regulations to deal with situations like this. Given the Temporal Cold War impacted at least the 22nd Century, that doesn’t surprise me. The Department of Temporal Investigations was first seen in DS9: “Trials and Tribble-lations” and the licensed novels say it was first created in 2270. As we find out later, the DTI doesn’t exist yet in SNW’s time, but La’An implies that regulations dealing with time travel exist. That means Starfleet acknowledges the existence of the phenomenon, rejecting the 22nd Century Vulcan Science Directorate’s determination of that time travel is impossible (ENT: “Cold Front”).

Despite Kirk’s identification of being in New York, mid-21st Century, they’ve landed in Toronto, specifically Yonge Dundas Square. Kirk claims never to have been to Earth at all, having been born in space on the USS Iowa. His counterparts were born in Iowa, USA, in the Prime Universe 2333 and on the USS Kelvin in the Kelvin Timeline. Kirk says in his time Earth was a battleground, occupied and now a ruin. Earth is filled with clouds of ash that won’t clear for a thousand years and has underground lunar habitats.

Kirk says indignantly to La’An asking him about revolving doors, “I’m from space.” In ST IV, when Gillian Taylor asks Kirk if he’s from outer space, he replies, “No, I’m from Iowa. I only work in outer space.”

Kirk hustles chess for cash. Kirk has been established to be an excellent chess player ever since TOS: “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. Kirk beat Spock regularly at 3D Chess (he calls the 2D version “idiot’s chess”), and in this timeline he also kept beating his XO, a woman.

Kirk points out that if they fix La’An’s timeline, they’ll destroy his, which is consistent with the model of the Trek timeline as a palimpsest - overwritten rather than branched.

Addressing Kirk’s worry that he won’t even exist in La’An’s timeline, she says she’s heard stories about Kirk from his brother Sam (who was still a member of the crew last time we checked). Kirk and La’An both remember the bridge explosion - one of the longest in the world destroyed soon after completion - from their timelines, so this isn’t the nexus point. The bridge seems to be fictional, as I can’t identify a real world bridge in Toronto that resembles it.

La’An identifies the charring on the wreckage as that left by a photonic bomb, a technology that won’t be developed for at least a century. Photonic technology was first seen in ENT: “The Expanse” as a precursor to photon torpedoes, using variable yield antimatter warheads, so the timeline is consistent.

(Continued in comments)

It's a brief mention in PIC S3. As the crew approaches the restored Enterprise-D at the Fleet Museum, La Forge makes a stray comment, to the effect of:

...and obviously we can't use the Enterprise-E

at which point, everyone turns to Worf, who insists with indignation,

That was not my fault.

There's a beat as everyone makes a face and gives each other a knowing look, and then... that's it.

It's clearly meant to be a wink and a nod from the writers: "Yes, we know you want to know what happened to the E, and no, we aren't going to tell you."

Even the behind-the-scenes materials are mum on the topic. The Star Trek: Picard Logs, posted on Instagram, mention both an incident at Kriilar Prime that apparently led to Worf's departure, as well as a subsequent classified mission after which the ship was taken out of service. (To me, this seems at odds with what is shown on-screen: it's obvious that Worf had something to do with the E's demise, and it's also obvious that the story is common knowledge -- even known to Crusher, who has been "out of the loop" for 20 years. So I think neither of the Logs' stories are satisfactory explanations.)

But, as I just alluded to, there are a few things we can infer about what happened to the E.

First, there's no way it was destroyed and no way it resulted in any loss of life. For one, La Forge's tone is too glib for that -- there's no way he would describe the destruction of a starship in those terms. But more importantly, there's no way that Worf would shirk responsibility for such a thing.

Second, we know it's something unusual, memorable, and (in my opinion) decidedly unclassified. And, I would argue, it seems like it's something... funny. Or perhaps whimsical or ironic or otherwise something that it's polite to strike a glib tone regarding.

Finally, I would suggest that, whatever it was, it happened around 2384. We get a brief sighting of the E in the battle of the end of Prodigy's first season (though it's a little unclear whether it was actually supposed to be the Enterprise or the Sovereign) so we know it's active at least until then. But it seems unlikely that any loss of a starship after the Attack on Mars in 2385 would be considered a laughable matter. What's more, we need the -E to be out of service early enough for the -F to have a reasonable career before being decommissioned in 2401. Assuming that a loss of a starship in the wake of the Romulan Supernova would also not be a laughing matter, that would push an -F launch date perhaps as late as 2389, which seems like an implausibly short service tenure. Retiring the -E in '84 gives some flexibility for when to launch the -F and still give it a long enough service life.

So, what do you think? What are some scenarios that could satisfy the clues we've been given? (I'll put a couple of my ideas in the comments!)

As you may have heard, Paramount cancelled Prodigy, halting production on its almost-complete second season, and removed the show from its service. The primary reason to do this, other than to streamline their content in light of the service's upcoming merger with Showtime, was to generate a tax loss -- a disturbing trend among streaming services.

Placing the commercial question aside, this has implications for the franchise. If Prodigy has effectively been deleted from the historical record and is no longer available to watch, is it still canon? The last time something equivalent happened was when the original Animated Series was unavailable for decades, and it was largely not treated as canon by subsequent shows. Nowadays it is counted as official canon (which introduces some complications), but it's also widely available. The likelihood that they will tell a story in the future where this makes a difference is low, but it's still worth clarifying.

What do you think?

BLUF: The Star Trek Universe and its parallels (e.g. the Mirror Universe) are part of a simulation, and the Q are AI programs that can interact and influence them all.

I started thinking about the nature of the Q the other day when rewatching the Voyager episode "The Q and the Grey"; it seems odd that an omnipotent/omnipresent species would also be so rigid and unimaginative. Why, for instance, do the Q have such strict rules about suicide? You can argue that they fear their species eventually being gone because they all eventually opt to off themselves out of boredom with existence, but as long as they had the ability to die that is unavoidably going to be the eventual outcome of an organism that can exist for infinity (mind-boggling, isn't it?) anyway.

And why is it such a disruptive event in the Q Continuum for two Q to have an offspring? Obviously a species that can live forever doesn't need to procreate, but it's clearly possible so why is it so shocking?

Then you have the fact that the Q are not just invisible observers of the universe; they interact with species and even individuals to, seemingly, drive outcomes that are possibly part of a preferred order to things. Quinn influenced Earth's history to drive certain changes; helping Newton define gravity was certainly a big event in human scientific growth. Why, though? What is driving the Q to pursue certain outcomes in evolutionary history?

It's almost as if the Q have an inherent nature, and are just after an incalculable period of time starting to question and even push back against that nature. So where did that nature come from? Was it possible programmed into them?

Now step away from the Q and look at the characteristics of the Star Trek universe. The Milky Way galaxy alone is chock full of humanoid alien species that (for the most part and with variations/outliers) breath the same air, can live within a certain range of temperatures, have brains/emotions/standards that function similarly enough that ideas and principles can be shared and abided by, and interbreeding is even possible to a certain degree without outside support. That's huge. And though the show tried to explain this a little bit in "The Chase", I think it's fair to say that we've seen humanoid species across the galaxy to a degree that a shared ancestor isn't enough to explain it all.

Beyond biology, let's also look at the makeup of the physical universe: subspace allows interstellar communities to function without succumbing to the laws of relativity: FTL travel is possible; real-time or at least near real-time interstellar communications function; the materials needed to facilitate warp drive are ubiquitous enough that nearly any warp-capable species that wants to travel into space can get it. It is arguably miraculous that the universe in Star Trek can operate the way that it can, and these things do not conform to our current understanding of how the universe and space/time operate.

Taking all of this together, I propose that the Star Trek universe is a complex simulation, designed purposefully to simulate what the universe would be like if it operated by certain principles that would allow for interstellar communities to form and that many humanoid species existed and were capable of interacting with each other. Several instances of this simulation are running simultaneous with similar parameters but modified to generate different outcomes: the Mirror Universe, for instance, has different presets to create more aggressive humanoids less likely to work together. Furthermore, I submit that the Q are AI programs designed to interact with and shepherd these communities into developing in such a way that they would eventually develop the right levels of technology and understanding to grow into a spacefaring species.

I suggest further that the Q are only partially aware of their nature and don't necessarily understand that the universe is a simulation, or if they do they don't share that fact. Over the millennia that the simulation has been running (at least internal to the simulation) the Q individually have started to develop interests and ideas beyond their original programming, and other Q programs cannot abide that because it goes against their designed nature. Imagine a piece of an Operating System deciding it wanted to commit suicide, or two programs getting together to code their own, new piece of software. It's unheard of, and that's why it's so disruptive to the Continuum.

Maybe one of the original designers of the simulation was a fan of old science fiction stories and incorporated ideas from a writer named Benny Russell into the coding of the simulation to recreate some aspects of his work?

I know this isn't a provable hypothesis and it's really just an idea for fun, but it kind of (in my opinion) adds another dimension (no pun intended) to a species like the Q.

I recently rewatched the premier of Picard season 2 and was puzzled by one thing that doesn't seem to fit, even on rewatch -- why does the Jurati-Queen act so aggressively and fail so dramatically to communicate clearly? It makes sense if she were representing the regular Borg, but she's supposed to be the "nice" Borg! What gives?

I think we can solve this puzzle if we realize that Picard season 2 is structured like TAS "Yesteryear" -- a theory that I planned to write out here, without realizing that I already wrote the exact post years ago! Long story short, TAS "Yesteryear" is a unique situation in Star Trek time travel where the "wrong" result has to occur to motivate the "right" action -- basically, Spock has to fail to go back in time to rescue himself, in order to be alerted to the fact that he needs to do it in the first place.

Similarly, when the Jurati-Borg sees her former self on the bridge of the Stargazer, she realizes that she needs to scare Picard into self-destructing the ship -- so that Q will send them back and lead to her own creation. The "wrong" timeline is integral to the process of getting us to the "right" timeline. If she had acted more reasonably, she never would have existed in the first place!

What do you think?

The purpose of this post is to examine the history of genetic modification in the Federation, prior to "Strange New Worlds". I've tried to compile various references to genetic engineering, eugenics, cloning, and genetic resequencing within the Federation across all series, with quotes and additional context as needed. All examples are presented in real-world chronological order, to better examine how these ideas have evolved over the history of the franchise.

The first reference to eugenics I could find is in the Original Series episode, "The Conscience of the King". In that episode, they briefly described how Kodos was employing his own theories of eugenics when he enacted the massacre at Tarsus IV:

Spock: Kodos began to separate the colonists. Some would live, be rationed whatever food was left. The remainder would be immediately put to death. Apparently, he had his own theories of eugenics.

McCoy: Unfortunately, he wasn't the first.

Spock: Perhaps not. But he was certainly among the most ruthless; to decide arbitrarily who would survive and who would not, using his own personal standards, and then to implement his decision without mercy. Children watching their parents die. Whole families destroyed. Over four thousand people. They died quickly, without pain, but they died. Relief arrived, but too late to prevent the executions.

The subject comes up again, of course, in "Space Seed", when Khan and his fellow prisoners are discovered:

McCoy: The Eugenics Wars.

Spock: Of course. Your attempt to improve the race through selective breeding.

A later statement from Kirk affirms the root cause of the Eugenics Wars:

Kirk: An improved breed of human. That's what the Eugenics War was all about.

Spock is the first to suggest that there was a fatal flaw in the engineering process:

Pock: In 1993, a group of these young supermen did seize power simultaneously in over forty nations.

Kirk: Well, they were hardly supermen. They were aggressive, arrogant. They began to battle among themselves.

Spock: Because the scientists overlooked one fact. Superior ability breeds superior ambition.

Kirk: Interesting, if true. They created a group of Alexanders, Napoleons.

Khan himself has some thoughts on his own abilities relative to the rest of humanity:

Khan: Captain, although your abilities intrigue me, you are quite honestly inferior. Mentally, physically. In fact, I am surprised how little improvement there has been in human evolution. Oh, there has been technical advancement, but, how little man himself has changed.

Little is said about genetic engineering for quite some time, until we get to The Next Generation's "Unnatural Selection". This one appears to be a bit of an outlier, given what we later learn about genetic enhancement, but it may be possible to reconcile it. When the Enterprise crew first meet Dr. Kingsley of the Darwin Genetic Research Station, she makes the nature of her research seem as innocuous as possible:

Kingsley: Our research here is limited to human genetics. I can assure you we're not dealing with something that got away from us. We believe that we were infected by a supply ship that was here three days ago.

Later, she acknowledges that the children aboard the station are genetically enhanced, with an interesting caveat:

Kingsley: Our ultimate achievement. The oldest is twelve, and all are telekinetic. Watch.

Pulaski: Genetically engineered?

Kingsley: Not engineered, created. Perfect in every way. Their body structure, their musculature, their minds.

I find it very interesting that Kingsley draws this line between "engineering" and "creation" - this distinction seems to hold some relevance to her, but it's not explored in the episode itself. Could Federation law draw a distinction between genetic modification of living individuals and cloning?

This episode also gives us an example of a genetic medical treatment of sorts, when the transporters are modified to filter out the genetic changes Pulaski endured when she transported over to the Darwin station.

Another Next Generation episode, "Up the Long Ladder", reveals some attitudes about cloning, specifically:

Riker: You want to clone us?

Granger: Yes.

Riker: No way, not me.

Granger: How can you possibly be harmed?>

Riker: It's not a question of harm. One William Riker is unique, perhaps even special. But a hundred of him, a thousand of him diminishes me in ways I can't even imagine.

Notably, when Riker and Pulaski are cloned without their knowledge or consent, Riker destroys the clones outright while they are still developing.

The episode also mentions "replicative fading," a process by which errors creep into the chromosomes of clones across successive generations, until the clones are no longer viable.

In Deep Space Nine's "A Man Alone", Odo arrests Ibudan for murdering his own clone in an attempt to frame Odo for murder:

Odo: Killing your own clone is still murder.

Notably, Odo is likely referring to Bajoran law, not Federation law, in this case.

The Next Generation's "Bloodlines" contains an early reference to DNA resequencing, a term which will be used more frequently going forward. It is also another example of flawed genetic manipulation:

Picard: You know as well as I do, Bok, he's not my son. I know what you've done. Miranda Vigo is his mother but I am not his father. You made it appear so because you resequenced his DNA. But your technique was flawed. He developed a neurological disorder. When my ship's Doctor investigated it, she discovered what you had done.

Later, Jason Vigo notes that he is responding well to an unspecified treatment provided by Doctor Crusher, and that the damage caused by the DNA resequencing may be completely reversed.

Federation law regarding genetic enhancements starts to come into focus in Deep Space Nine's "Doctor Bashir, I Presume":

O'Brien: You're not a fraud. I don't care what enhancements your parents may have had done. Genetic recoding can't give you ambition, or a personality, or compassion or any of the things that make a person truly human.

Bashir: Starfleet Medical won't see it that way. DNA resequencing for any reason other than repairing serious birth defects is illegal. Any genetically enhanced human being is barred from serving in Starfleet or practising medicine.

Later, Rear Admiral Bennett makes the case for these laws, echoing the sentiments of Spock in "Space Seed":

Bennett: Two hundred years ago we tried to improve the species through DNA resequencing, and what did we get for our trouble? The Eugenics Wars. For every Julian Bashir that can be created, there's a Khan Singh waiting in the wings. A superhuman whose ambition and thirst for power have been enhanced along with his intellect. The law against genetic engineering provides a firewall against such men and it's my job to keep that firewall intact.

It's interesting that ambition is something specifically cited by O'Brien that cannot be influenced by genetic resequencing, while Bennett says that it can.

In Voyager's "The Raven", the EMH uses genetic resequencing to neutralize Seven of Nine's nanoprobes. Borg nanoprobes are obviously not a birth defect, so it appears that other medical uses of resequencing are considered ethical and legal.

Continued in the comments...

In Star Trek Picard we see Raffi living at rock bottom for a while. She has no job after her discharge from Starfleet, and is clearly not doing as well. She describes her life as humiliation and rage.

And yet by modern standards she has a home, food, and power. Her drug usage isn't condoned but she's left largely alone to do it. By modern 21st century standards its a very soft landing.

Does it get worse than this? What is the worst possible economic outcome someone living on 24th Century Earth is likely to face.

The events of DS9: Past Tense imply that things aren't as bad as sanctuary districts and mass homelessness, but there's a lot of range between that and where Raffi landed. So what evidence do we have about how bad it can get?

It is important to recognize that Daystrom Institute is a curated space. We have much stricter rules than typical internet discussion boards, designed to encourage deep-dive analysis and thoughtful discussion throughout our community.

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One of the fascinating things about this "third generation" of Star Trek (starting either with Star Trek 2009 or with Discovery) is the way the Star Trek universe has started to knit itself closer together by referencing existing backstory. For example, Discovery wholeheartedly embraced the idea that Andorians and Tellarites are key Federation members and should therefore be highly visible in Starfleet, building on lore originally implied in TOS, largely ignored by TNG, DS9, and VGR, and re-embraced by ENT. Prodigy, for its part, leaned very heavily on VGR for its worldbuilding source material.

This has also produced some interesting quiet exclusions from recent stories -- not to suggest they've been "decanonized" or anything like that, but clearly have been deprioritized. The Tholians come to mind as a ready example of this. Like the Gorn, they debuted in TOS, received stray mentions in DS9, before making an on-screen return in ENT. I wonder if the SNW writers considered using the Tholians but balked at a villain that had such different atmospheric requirements, and all the consequences that entails in terms of dramatic presentation. The Denobulans also seem to fall into a similar bucket; outside of a pair of appearances in PRO, they have received nary a mention since ENT.

Then of course we have the lengthy list of "one-off" civilizations, including the likes of

-the Sheliak
-the Husnock
-the Tzenkethi
-the Jarada
-the Miradorn

And in terms of "underexplored corners", I've only been focusing on the civilizations, but there are any number of other corners we could poke into. The Department of Temporal Investigations, the Corps of Engineers, the Federation Council, the Lunar Colonies... the Trekverse is littered with these little crumbs all over the place -- tiny seeds of ideas that suggest opportunities for imagination.

For my part, I would love to learn more about the Sheliak. For one thing, they seem like they would benefit from the advances in CGI over the last 30 years. But I like that they seem equally matched to the Federation in terms of strength, and that their hyperfocus on legal compliance gives them a generally underused "hat" to wear in the Trekverse. They have some similarity to Vulcans, but taken to an extreme, and layered in with real disdain for "lower life forms" that I think would make for a fascinating "adversary" -- I'd love to see Captain Pike or Captain Seven in a verbal jousting match with a Sheliak commander.

What is an underexplored corner of Trek lore that you think merits exploration?

This is the Daystrom Institute Episode Analysis thread for Strange New Worlds 2x02 Ad Astra Per Aspera.

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.

We often see technology from the future brought back to the present, whether as a case of a chance encounter, or something more.

However, it’s also fairly uncommon to see those technologies pop up against after they’ve been introduced. One such example is the ablative armour generators that Admiral Janeway fitted to the Voyager, being prototypes from a future Starfleet, which are seen in that episode, and then never again, even in shows that are set after the time she left.

The reason for this might be that the Federation does not want to run the risk of being accused of violating the temporal prime directive (or accidentally running afoul of it in some other way), and shelves that particular technology entirely.

From their standpoint, it would be rather difficult to separate a technology that the Federation developed of their own accord, compared to one that they might have developed from being inspired by, or reverse-engineering a piece of future technology, so they shelve it, rather than risk the trouble, never developing the preliminary steps to reach that future technology.

The only anachronistic part of this is the Doctor’s mobile emitter, which is a variant of 26th century technology, and was developed into Picard, but that can be explained by it being reverse engineered from 26th century technology, by someone in the 20th century, technically making it technology from the past. Since it is Earth technology from their own past, they might be able to get away with iterating on their own version without risking trouble with the various temporal enforcement agencies.

Numerically speaking, the vast majority of Ferengi we see on screen are sporting what have sometimes been called “headskirts”. Virtually every Ferengi we see on-screen — from the marauder crewmen in Next Generation to Quark’s waiters to various Ferengi businessmen seen in the background — is wearing one. Rom and Nog even wear color-coordinated versions of them once they join the Bajoran militia and Starfleet, respectively.

However, there are a few conspicuous exceptions to this otherwise apparently universal practice, most notably among them being Quark, the only Ferengi character billed as a series lead. This is particularly jarring, as Quark otherwise frames himself as the most Ferengi Ferengi around.

From a real-world perspective, I suspect that the headskirts were originally created to avoid creating a full head prosthetic for guest actors. Once the character of Quark was created, the cost of a reusable full head prosthetic would have been less prohibitive.

In universe, after reviewing which Ferengi are shown with and without headskirts, I believe I have a theory that fits what we’re shown on-screen, and gives us some grounds to infer a few extra bits about certain characters.

First, I propose that the “default” practice for Ferengi is to wear a headskirt. That would explain why we see them worn so frequently. However, I suggest that it is an option to abstain from a headskirt — under certain conditions.

Fundamentally, I propose that the absence of a headskirt indicates that a Ferengi believes he is a “top dog” — in that he has no one above him who could be considered his “boss.” However, I also suggest that there is some subjectivity and risk in this. (Note that “top dog” is not a coincidental choice of words on my part: the Ferengi logo is said to have been drawn to describe the “dog eat dog eat dog” mentality of a capitalist society.)

Zek and Gint are the clearest examples of this: as Grand Nagus, they are the pinnacle “top dog.”

Quark would also fit this criterion: Odo, Kira and Sisko aside, there basically is no one whom Quark answers to (unlike his waiters, who answer to him). Rom and Nog do not fit this criterion, for a few different reasons. Nog is a child at the series start before starting essentially an apprenticeship on his way to joining Starfleet; and obviously once he joins Starfleet, he continues to have those who outrank him. Rom answers to his brother before joining the station’s maintenance crew, at which point he ultimately answers to O’Brien.

There are several other Ferengi who do not wear headskirts, and it definitely is not a clean and tidy division between the bosses and the workers. However, that is where some subjectivity comes in. Rather than being a hard-and-fast rule, the absence (or presence) of a headskirt may be an assertion: “I’m a top dog and I dare you to say otherwise.” It then turns to one’s peers to decide if the claim is justified; if you make the claim but then don’t have the status to back it up, then you lose credibility and standing. So removing one’s headskirt is not without its risk.

Who else have we seen without headskirts?

Galia: as an arms merchant who can purchase his own moon, he would likely be seen as a “deserving top dog” — perfectly reasonable for him to abandon the headskirt.

Brunt: an FCA liquidator, his bare head takes on some new significance in this framework. The FCA is described as “answering to no one” — if that is true, then Brunt’s bare head would serve to reinforce that idea to all those misfortunate enough to cross his path. It’s also possible that liquidators are supposed to answer to someone — a manager or the like — but that Brunt goes bald anyway, just to flaunt his de facto latitude.

Nilva: as the chairman of a large Ferengi company, he likewise probably enjoys “deserving top dog” status.

Reyga: a Ferengi scientist and a bit of a maverick; we might interpret his bare head as indicating some level of rejection of Ferengi norms; if my proposed framework is true, then it is a louder act of protest than we would otherwise realize

Prak: though I doubt this was an intentional choice on the part of the showrunners (I suspect his bare head is the result of extra prosthetics being available from the concurrent production of DS9), Prak does give us an interesting example of someone who perhaps is “too big for his britches” — it is rare to see a DaiMon without a headskirt (presumably because they must answer to some sort of Ferengi admiral), but it’s easy to imagine a DaiMon who is cocky enough to flaunt their bare head — and is probably ridiculed by all his underlings for it. (Recall how Starfleet Captain Styles in The Search For Spock has been mocked for his swagger stick.)

There are several Ferengi whom we might expect to go bare under this framework who still wear the headskirt. Chief among these is Lek, who by his own admission works alone. Lek probably could justify “top dog” status if he wanted to. But the default is to wear a headskirt: to go bare is to make an active statement, and thereby draw attention to oneself. I imagine there are more than a few Ferengi who could justify their own “top dog” status but who would rather keep a lower profile (Rule of Acquisition 168: “Whisper your way to success”).

~ ~ ~

What do you think? Are there any good counter-examples to this? (I admit, I did not check the appearance of every Ferengi in every episode. So it’s possible that I missed someone!) Is this consistent with other things we’ve seen in Ferengi society? Are there any other possible explanations for the pattern of skirted vs bare heads?

In "Looking for Par'Mach in All the Wrong Places", Grilka's senior retainer (Tumek) takes Worf aside and tells him that he cannot pursue Grilka, as he is from a dishonored house. But hadn't Gowron cleared the House of Mogh? I feel like I'm missing or forgetting something obvious. Otherwise, my best explanation would be that although the House of Mogh was formally cleared, it was still regarded with suspicion by more conservative Klingons.

We've seen it many, many times: the ship gets into a firefight, takes a few hits, shakes around, and consoles explode (possibly taking an unfortunate ensign with them). Eventually the battle is resolved with our heroes largely intact if somewhat shaken up. If it was a particularly nasty battle, there will be signs of damage: scorches on the walls, deformed equipment, busted lights, and rocks scattered about.

All of that seems reasonable... except the rocks, which look pretty out of place in a spiffy 24th century starship. So why are they there?

The traditional monologue, as used in TOS, TAS, TNG, Strange New Worlds, as well as the endings of Enterprise and several movies, can be taken as a sort of overall mission statement for the Enterprise, possibly even one that takes place in-universe.

If the other series-- Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, and Prodigy-- had similar mission statements, how might you phrase them?

It's never made much sense that the entire multi-species Federation would be subject to a strict ban on genetic engineering due to events on Earth that happened centuries before the Federation was even founded. The way they doubled down on that rationale in Una's trial only highlighted the absurdity -- especially when Admiral April claimed he would exclude Una to prevent genocide.

On the one hand, the writers may be trying to create a straw man out of a weird part of Star Trek lore so they can have a civil rights issue in Starfleet. And that's fine. From an in-universe perspective, though, I think we can discern another reason for the ban on genetic engineering -- the Klingon Augment Virus.

There was a ban on genetic engineering on United Earth, which is understandable given that it was much closer to the time of the Eugenics Wars. Why would that remain unchanged when more time passed, more species joined, and more humans lived in places without living reminders of the war? [NOTE: I have updated the paragraph up to this point to reflect @Value Subtracted's correction in comments.] The answer is presumably that they needed to reassure the Klingons that something like the Augment Virus would never happen again. Hence they instituted a blanket ban around that time -- perhaps in 2155, the year after the Klingon Augment Virus crisis and also, according to Michael Burnham, the year the Geneva Protocols on Biological Weapons were updated.

That bought the Federation over a century of peace, but after war broke out due to a paranoid faction of Klingons who thought humans would dilute Klingon purity and after peace was only secured through the most improbable means, they doubled down on the ban. Una's revelation provided a perfect opportunity to signal to the Klingons that they were serious about the ban -- hence why they would add the charges of sedition, perhaps. Ultimately, an infinitely long speech and the prospect of losing one of their best captains combined to make them find a loophole -- but not to invalidate the ban or call it into question. This Klingon context is why April, who we know is caught up in war planning of various kinds, is so passionate that the ban exists "to prevent genocide" -- he's not thinking of people like Una, he's thinking of the near-genocide they suffered at the hands of the Klingons.

This theory still doesn't paint the Federation in a positive light, since they have effectively invented a false propaganda story to defend a policy that has led to demonstrable harm. But it makes a little more sense, at least to me. What do you think?

The Galaxy class starship was designed with the ability to separate the saucer from the stardrive section, so that the "floating city" part of the ship could be left somewhere safe while the rest of the ship galavants off to do something risky. We see this happen precisely once, in the season one episode Arsenal of Freedom. We also see saucer separation deployed for a handful of tactical and or emergency uses (such as against the Borg in The Best of Both Worlds, or to escape the breaching warp core in Generations).

So, this seems like a useful ability to have, and the Enterprise is constantly being sent into dangerous situations. Why not use this ability more frequently?

What amazes me most about this episode is that it’s a Star Trek legal episode that doesn’t want to make me tear my hair out. Thankfully they kept the trial procedure to its most basic.

The title means loosely, in Latin, “To the Stars Through Hardship/Difficulties,” or “A Rough Road Leads to the Stars”. It is the motto of the state of Kansas, can be found on NASA’s Apollo I memorial, and also in-universe the motto of the United Earth Starfleet in ENT.

As a child, Una suffered a serious leg injury, but her father refused to take her to the hospital for fear of the doctors discovering her modifications. We see the open wound glowing, like Una did when manifesting her abilities in SNW: “Ghosts of Illyria”.

Batel offers a plea deal: plead guilty to knowingly submitting false information to Starfleet by failing to disclose her genetic modifications, and Starfleet will dishonorably discharge her without prison time. The charge could carry a two-year minimum imprisonment term, so Batel and Una’s JAG-appointed counsel advise her to take it. Una recognizes that this is designed to sweep this under the carpet, and questions how she can have effective counsel if he works for Starfleet. This is a live issue in military trials even today, and to discuss it properly would take more space than we have here.

It is Stardate 2393.8. Pike is on a planet in the Vaultera Nebula to persuade Counselor Neera Ketoul, the civil rights lawyer he and Una discussed in the previous episode, to take up her case. The atmosphere is toxic to humans and Pike requires an oxygen mask to get around. The local inhabitants are Illyrian, genetically adapted to survive.

Ketoul used to be Una’s friend but something came between them. She notes that Starfleet’s race laws are draconian and Una’s lucky not to be charged with sedition. Ketoul has had 10 cases against the Federation thrown out over the last 2 years despite being strong ones. Pike makes reference to the events of “Ghosts of Illyria” and convinces her that taking this case might bring more attention to those she’s lost.

The case file Pike hands to Ketoul is contained on a translucent orange square, like a cross between the old data cartridges of TOS and the isolinear chips of TNG.

The last time Neera and Una met was 25 years ago (we find out later that was when she joined Starfleet), which makes it around 2234-2235 (SNW: “Children of the Comet” suggests it was at least 2260 then). It’s been two months since Starfleet found out about Una’s modifications. Until then her record had been spotless.

Batel refers to the JAG as her boss, although she was also commanding the USS Cayuga in SNW: “The Quality of Mercy”, that was helping Enterprise upgrade the Neutral Zone outposts. In the present day military, trained JAG officers can technically alternate between legal duties and being line officers in a separate MOS as required, and Batel could be in that position. It is possible she used to be a JAG officer, switched to a starship captaincy and then was reactivated for Una’s case because she was the closest qualified JAG officer.

The Judge is Admiral Vasak, and Batel is accompanied by a Vulcan Vice-Admiral, Pasalk (the JAG?). Both Admirals are dressed in variations of the blue uniforms last seen in DIS with Admiral rank flashes on their shoulders.

Because Una has rejected the plea deal, Batel applies to amend the charges against Una to knowingly submitting false information to Starfleet and violating Starfleet Code 614 to 617 by engaging in permanent bioengineering, along with two counts of sedition. She announces she’s seeking a sentence of dishonorable dismissal and 20 years in a Federation penal colony.

The way Batel phrased it (and taking Ketoul’s earlier remarks about Una being lucky not to be charged with sedition), I surmise Una’s original charges were only the false information and permanent bioengineering charges. As we find out later, they fall under the same regulations, so the false information charge is probably specific to information about bioengineering rather than a general false reporting offence.

The plea deal was then not a reduction, but merely to plead guilty to one and have the other one either withdrawn or taken into consideration (i.e. not sentenced separately for). Batel’s application is therefore to add the sedition charges not previously put forward and proceed with all charges at trial.

A global sentence of 20 years seems harsh, and that’s probably because of the sedition charges and also because they’re charging her under military regulations. Over a century later, Richard Bashir would be sentenced to two years in a minimum-security penal colony for genetically modifying his son, which as a civilian he would have been subject to civil laws (DS9: “Doctor Bashir, I Presume?”).

Robert April sponsored Una’s application to the Academy. She served under him for years (alongside Pike on Enterprise) and he promoted her.

Ketoul is assigned Una’s quarters on the Enterprise for the duration. She is escorted there by La’An, who is back in uniform. Ketoul asks for access to the Starfleet Uniform Code of Justice - presumably their equivalent of the US military’s Uniform Code of Military Justice.

La’An refers to Starfleet v. Wyck, which points to the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine - a well-known rule in US law which states that illegally procured evidence, or indeed even evidence indirectly derived from that, is inadmissible in Court.

Una and Pike met when he gave a speech to her Academy class, talking about a test mission he’d flown. Una pointed out a mistake he had made during re-entry, impressing him with her willingness to tell him he was wrong, qualities important in a first officer.

Ortegas’ miming of Pasalk and Spock’s conversation mentions kal-toh, a Vulcan logic game/puzzle first seen in VOY: “Alter Ego” and most recently in PIC: “No Win Scenario”. M’Benga reads the Vulcan body language and says the two hate each other. He would, of course, be familiar with it since he did a medical internship on Vulcan (TOS: “A Private Little War”). Spock says Pasalk was a former colleague of Sarek’s.

Uhura quotes Regulation 25, Section B, that all personal logs are to remain sealed unless by order of Starfleet Command. Regulation 25 was quoted in LD: “Second Contact” as prohibiting the transfer of weapons to other races without the permission of the Federation Council, so it seems odd on first blush that personal logs should be lumped under that section as well, but maybe it’s just a result of a century of regulatory amendments.

The tribunal is called to order with a ship’s bell, as first seen in TOS: “Court Martial”. Behind the panel is the JAG Office seal. Javas is presiding, along with Space Command Representative Zus Tlaggul, a Tellarite, and Starfleet Commander Chiv, a Vulcan. Batel and Una are dressed in division colored versions of the Admiral uniforms, which are redesigns of the dress uniforms seen in TOS, complete with medals being displayed on the left chest.

Batel refers to the Eugenics Wars (TOS: “Space Seed”) as the impetus for the genetic modification ban, with tens of millions dead. April says Starfleet Regulation 17, Article 12 specifically prohibits genetically modified people from serving in Starfleet.

April words General Order One as, “No starship may interfere with the normal development of any alien life or society.” This is a summary, as the actual order was seen for the first time in PRO: “First Con-tact”, and the wording taken from David A. Goodman’s book *Federation: the First 150 Years”.

In 2246 (one year after Enterprise was commissioned), April warned the Perricans, a pre-warp civilization about a meteor shower that could have ended their planet. In 2248, he sent his science officer to Na’rel, an industrial age planet to stave off an extinction-level drought by sharing Federation technology. On the hostile planet Man-us II, landing without his security officer, April chose to reveal the Enterprise to the pre-warp Ohawk. Apart from the violations, this suggests that GO1 was in force by 2246 at least.

April promoted Una faster than any other officer on the ship and recommended her for the Medal of Gallantry after the Marcel disaster of 2248.

La’An graduated top of her class and has been promoted each year of her tenure in Starfleet. That means she’s been in service for about two to three years (assuming ENS, LT j.g. and LT progression). That also allows us to calculate her age to be - at a minimum - 23 to 24 years old (entry at age 16-17, 4 years at the Academy, 3 more years in service). She has also been considered for the Starfleet Medal of Gallantry.

La’An met Una when she was rescued after escaping a Gorn breeding planet (SNW: “Strange New Worlds”, when Una was an ENS on the USS Martin Luther King). She lies when she says she didn’t know Una was Illyrian (“Ghosts of Illyria”). Una sponsored La’An’s application to Starfleet.

Spock met Una on his first day aboard Enteprise (ST: “Q & A”) and mentions her love for Gilbert & Sullivan (which she swore him to secrecy on, damn you Spock!).

In Una’s quarters we see a picture of her as a child with her parents alongside a picture of Pike in his DIS blues next to Una in her DIS Season 2 uniform (DIS: “An Obol for Charon”).

La’An believes that someone got a hold of her personal log in “Ghosts of Illyria” and that was how Una was outed. La’An also carries her ancestor’s augmentations (confirming something we’ve long suspected) and fears she could become dangerous. Ketoul assures her genetics is not destiny and given the time - 6 months minimum - it’s needed to subpoena a persona log, it’s unlikely La’An was responsible.

(Continued in comments)

Poor Terry Matalas. It's clear from numerous post-season interviews that, for as elaborate as S3 became by the end (rebuilding the Enterprise-D! Bringing back Ro and Tuvok! Changelings and Borg and Lore!), his original vision was yet more elaborate. Apparently he originally planned to have Janeway and Kim also appear, and to show Ro still alive in the brig with Tuvok at the end of the season. The man clearly was dreaming big.

Given that, it seems slightly implausible that he would omit material purely out of carelessness. And the absence of Alexander seems like a pretty large omission -- especially in a season that was so focused on the parent-child relationship and the idea of "the next generation". Yes, there are all these memes about Worf forgetting Alexander, but that doesn't strike me as the kind of fan service Matalas was going for.

From a storytelling perspective, omitting Alexander seems pretty similar to why Odo was mentioned adoringly as "a man of honor" but not named: there was already a lot of backstory and reference being woven into the story, and throwing out a random name -- or a random concept like, "Oh yeah, Worf has an estranged son" -- would create too much to unpack.

Likewise, it seems like they wanted Worf to have a paternal presence with Raffi, so omitting Alexander simplified that story.

But still: in a season that was all about parents and their children, it seems significant that they couldn't find any way to reference him.

Unless...

Worf has a memorable scene with Raffi where he tells her, "Don't presume to know what I have sacrificed" (or something to that effect). Surprisingly, that line is never followed up on... explicitly.

But I suggest that that is where we learn of Alexander's fate: Worf has lost his son. Whether to death or desertion or deep undercover work, who can say? But we have an open question -- where is Alexander? -- and we have a vague statement that is never otherwise explained -- that Worf has sacrificed a great deal -- and given how much the rest of the season ties itself together, I suspect this was meant to be a subtle nod to explain away Alexander's absence.

Why not make it explicit? Why doesn't Worf tell anyone about Alexander? I argue it's because they wanted to save the "grieving parent" story for Riker + Troi, especially Riker. Explicitly portraying both Riker and Worf as grieving fathers would create an elephant in the room too big to ignore, and would've taken up much more space in the story.

So, instead, poor Alexander is consigned to a mysterious comment from his father -- perhaps fodder for some future tie-in novel, or perhaps someone we might meet in Star Trek: Legacy.

Are there other theories as to where Alexander might be, or why the writers did not mention him?

To say Discovery has been "controversial" would be something of an understatement. From the very beginning the show sparked off considerable debate about it's quality, and the bevy of showrunner changes and resulting shifts in tone and plot choices just adds an extra layer of confusion. Many of the same groups and same people continue to have very similar arguments over what is clearly a completely different show in 2023 than it was in 2017. Personally I've become frustrated to the point of disinterest about where this show has gone, which makes it all the more exciting to go back and (re)discover something I thought I knew but had begun to really wonder about:

The very beginnings of Discovery are fucking excellent television.

Here's why.

Early Discovery was actually planned out

To start with, the pacing and plotting of both the individual episodes and the overall arc of the season are excellent. In the moment, they are delightfully seamless: pacing is brisk but not rushed, traversing from one important thing to the next, with emotional moments given an appropriate amount of time to be registered and felt without feeling drawn out. Each episode has a clear beginning, middle, and end, with individual stakes that matter beyond simply advancing the season plot. Of course they consistently advance the overall season plot too (with the exception of Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad, which is "merely" a wonderfully executed standalone sci fi story that significantly develops three of our main characters). They do so not by dropping largely inconsequential teases and misdirection in alleged pursuit of a goal fated for resolution only in the finale, but via bite sized, meaningful changes to the circumstances our heroes find themselves in.

This demonstrates something which is clearly absent from the subsequent seasons, and even tossed away before the end of this one: detailed long term planning. Not only are we spared the bizare shifts in background information (is the Red Angel suit hyper advanced future tech, or something a research team banged out 20 years ago? Is the 32nd century Federation tiny, isolated, and largely ignored, or are they active galactic participants with genuine political clout?), but it's also critical for allowing the episodes to flow neatly together as a coherent story. There's been plenty of debate about if Star Trek should even be trying to tell these long-arc, binge-friendly seasonal stories, but clearly CBS wanted that. So why not do it right?

Early Discovery (mostly) makes sense

Every Star Trek show has had it's share of silly stuff. Obviously TOS was absolutely loaded with zany things that seem more in keeping with it's cardboard and hot glue aesthetics than the more serious tone subsequent shows attempted to set, but even the best of TNG era Trek had some whoppers mixed in. Where it has succeeded is by keeping most of the wacky missteps in relatively unimportant places, encapsulated by single episodes and devoid of larger consequence.

Then there's the tech which every Starfleet ship is totally reliant on, most of which has only a fleeting connection to real world physics. The Mycelial Network blends right in: it's a pretty wild idea and most certainly is not real. Just like warp drive. And just like warp drive, it is at least based on something real. Ehh, close enough.

I have little desire to relitigate in depth the plausibility of S2/S3 Burnham being intimately connected to so many wildly disparate galaxy changing things, or how reasonable it is to have a emotionally distraught child trigger a galactic cataclysm that nobody could solve for over a century, but I'll certainly contend that early Discovery's WTF rate is more in line with TNG era Trek than it's more recent seasons have been. A low bar? Sure. But a relevant one.

Early Discovery did good job developing characters

By the end of those nine episodes, we've had a reasonable detailed introduction to six main characters, and all of them have at least a little extra dimensionality to them, enough that they feel real and as presented, I do care what happens to them:

Burnham is our focusing lens for the story and certainly gets the most screen time, but she's also far from the most important person on the ship. We know she's a proficient officer, but also that she fucked up royally with massive repercussions in the opening acts of the show. That dichotomy lines up well with her odd mix of behaviors: conflicted about how much she deserves the second chance she was thrust into, yet supremely confident in her own abilities. Highly empathetic towards the Tardigrade, yet unhesitant and unapologetic in manipulating Saru into being a walking danger meter. There's clearly major unresolved trauma there, and I'd like to see this person develop more naturally from here. She should have her redemption, but she'll need to earn it: not through one grand gesture of genocide refusal, but by demonstrating over time that she is dealing with her demons, and really has learned from the disaster at the binaries.

Speaking of the most important people on the ship, Stamets is chief among them. He has neither the desire nor the mentality to be a warrior, and yet he serves an irreplaceable and absolutely critical role in what has clearly become a ship of war. He's a jerk when we first meet him, but his military necessitated chance to get close and personal with his research shows us a softer side, and likely changed him in ways that we're just starting to see develop. Culber is still mostly one-note, but as a couple they play very well off each other.

Saru has a decidedly alien mentality for a military officer, but is clearly good at what he does. He is both thoughtful and candid about his past and present conflicts with Burnham, and his stint as acting captain in Choose Your Pain showed considerable growth. I want to see more of this guy learning to command (and I will get some, if less than I'd like).

Tilly is an absolute delight. She has her share of minor and harmless tics, babbling when she's nervous and occasionally blurting things out when excited, and she's vulnerable to getting flustered... but can still pull herself together and do what must be done. She shows an impressive level of emotional intelligence in her interactions with Burnham and Stamets, and she also has the awareness and confidence to identify what she wants in life, and fight for it. That's an incredibly endearing combination, and makes her the emotional heart of the show. Give me more, much more, of Burnham mentoring Tilly up to an eventual captaincy. Maybe Tilly could only reasonably work her way to full Lieutenant or Lieutenant Commander over the course of a seven season show, but that would be plenty: I'm not here to see four pips, I'm here to see believable growth in an already sympathetic character.

Lorca and Tyler I'll be touching on later.

(Continued in the comments...)

In DS9 Quark makes a throwaway line about the Great Monetary Collapse that happened during his early lifetime. He describes it as a period caused by "rampant inflation and currency devaluation."

This description might seem puzzling at first, because the Ferengi have always been shown to use hard currency. Hard currencies are generally deflationary currencies, with a fixed or at least limited supply and a growing (and hoarding) population. The only way a currency can rapidly inflate is to increase the supply of the currency, or alternately for there to be a shortage of things to buy.

In short, inflation requires too much money chasing too few goods.

I hypothesize here that the Ferengi experienced an economic collapse caused by replicator technology, specifically the point at which replicators became able to create gold. The Ferengi experienced this shock more severely than most other cultures, not only because they use hard currency, but also because they revere it.

What happens to an economy when replicators show up? The answer is not inflation. A replicator makes goods for cheap. If you can conjure up your Raktajino out of thin air and energy, the price of a Raktajino is going to plummet to the cost of that energy. As long as you are not on board a ship which needs to ration energy, cheap becomes functionally free.

This is the apparent engine behind the Federation's economy. In Federation space, everyone gets a protein resequencer, and there is no more hunger. Then later, everyone gets a more replicator, and clothing is free too. Every year a new advancement, and every advancement brings a new thing that the citizens can conjure up.

But the Ferengi do not think like that. If your religion is based on making a profit, you do not give away the source of free goods. The Ferengi likely had a small number of early entrepreneurs with a monopoly on replicators, setting their prices to what the market would bear.

Even under this system, the prices must fall. As long as the Ferengi compete, seek profits, and can produce goods indistinguishable from one another, prices must fall. Cartels can form to prop prices up, but a cartel only lasts until someone new gets a replicator. Sooner or later, everyone will get a replicator, and the Ferengi will have to find other ways to make a profit.

The shock of cheap goods can collapse economic sectors. Yet progress marches on. Where the Ferengi ran into problems wasn’t the production of goods, but of their reverence for hard currency.

The Ferengi relationship with currency is not like other cultures. At the start of TNG: The Outpost Ferengi did value gold, to a point of finding it offensive that the Federation officers would wear it brazenly.

Now Ferengi are not unique in finding value in gold. Everyone used to value gold. During TOS: Devil In The Dark, they were willing to risk the lives of workers despite deaths just to get access to the gold and platinum, and when they finally made peace with the Horta they were quite happy. Archer uses gold bars to negotiate with the Ferengi, who accept this even after it is made clear they are gold, not gold-pressed latinum.

But by the events of DS9: Who Mourns for Morn, a distraught Quark makes clear, gold is absolutely worthless. This is a radical change, but the evidence suggests it is not merely a continuity change.

We must then ask, when did gold become worthless? Quark does seem to value it only a few seasons earlier, in DS9: Little Green Men, but this happened when Quark was far in the past, and knew he was in the past.

The best example I can find of worthlessness comes from TNG: The Price. While some details are lost on-screen, the original script has some stage direction which I think is instructive.

[Goss] turns the sack upside down and a pile of gold bars spills out across the tabletop.

GOSS: I'll match anyone's best offer... and add the gold on top of it.

He holds out his hands in a fait accomplit motion. Sits back in his chair, with a confident grin. Bhavani reacts, nonplussed. Picard EXITS...

So from the script it's clear, Goss thought gold was useful, and no one else in the room did.

We can then assume that at this point in time (2366) the Ferengi (or some subset of them) were behind in replicator technology, and it resulted in Goss making a fool of himself, bargaining with someone he valued, and no one else did.

This is a society on the brink of collapse. In fact the collapse may already be happening behind the scenes.

Why didn’t the Ferengi see this coming? I believe the Ferengi religion left them blind to the danger. Ferengi do not merely value gold as a good. In fact, they do not merely value it as a currency. The existence of the Blessed Exchequer paints an interesting picture of the Ferengi relationship with their currency. Every Ferengi believes that their afterlife is determined by their ability to make a profit. Thus, every gold bar held by a Ferengi is their spiritual salvation.

The destructiveness of a currency collapse cannot be understated. Quark comparing it to war trauma is played for laughs, but it was not funny to him. If he has any belief in the afterlife, it was was an existential threat to him.

Replicators didn't just crash the economy of the Ferengi. It threatened to damn their very souls.

In fact I would speculate there is a reason why the Ferengi use gold trappings around latinum. The shape, the weight, the feel of currency matters to them. Visiting the Nagus requires the paying of respects, literally. Pressing latinum into a metal was convenient. Pressing latinum into gold was an important symbolic transition.

Leaning into some apocryphal sources now, a little beautiful tidbit emerges. In DS9: Ferengi Love Songs we learn that the Grant Negus who preceded Zek, called Smeet, presided over one of the largest market slides in recent Ferengi history, and was assassinated in office. Thus he likely saw the effects of free gold. According to the Legends of the Ferengi, Smeet was credited with writing the 89th, 202nd, and 218th Ferengi Rules of Acquisition. The 218th rule, according the the DS9 Comic Baby on Board reads as follows:

Sometimes what you get free costs entirely too much.

When studying vertebrate paleontology, the skeleton is one of the most important, and often the only, clue we have to the appearance of long-extinct animals. In Lower Decks: "Kayshon, His Eyes Uncovered", we were treated to the ghoulish sight of of Spock's skeleton ^1, ^2, courtesy of the remains of his giant clone from TAS: "The Infinite Vulcan." Any dinosaur fan knows that while there's only so much bones can tell you about the living animal, they can still tell quite a story. I am not an expert in anatomy and not a trained paleontologist, but it is my hope that analyzing the remains of Spock the Larger will provide further insight into the anatomical differences between humans and Vulcans. By way of comparison, here is an anatomical diagram of the human skeleton: ^3

Dentition

As near as I can tell, adult Vulcans appear to have 28 teeth to the human's 32, seven on each side ^4, ^5 on top and bottom. (It's possible that Spock could have had his wisdom teeth out, but presumably the clone would have undergone no such procedure, and no empty sockets are in evidence.) Looking closely at the teeth themselves, six molars, four incisors, and four bicuspids per side are in evidence. There is no sign of the canines a human has. This suggests that Vulcans evolved from a herbivorous answer. Could Vulcans' propensity for vegetarianism be a biological imperative rather than a cultural tendency?

Skull

The proportions of the Vulcan skull as depicted in this image compared to the human skull in this image are fairly simpler. The skull, across the zygomatic along the upper corner of the orbit, is 101 pixels wide on the Vulcan as depicted in figure 1 and 75 pixels wide in the human as depicted in figure 3. The height of the skull, respectively, is 173 and 132 pixels. These equal a ratio of 1.71 for the Vulcan and 1.76 for the human. Sufficiently clear side and rear views are unfortunately not available for comparing the approximate circumference of the cranium, but it can be presumed that the Vulcan skull is similar in all dimensions to that of a human, and that their brain would likely be similar size (and thus, similar in proportion to their overall body mass) to that of a human. While brain-body ratio isn't a perfect estimator of intelligence this is certainly consistent with them being comparable to a human in intelligence (but don't let the Vulcans know, they'd surely be insulted.) Vulcan eyes are forward-facing. Binocular vision is unusual in prey species, but as we've established, Vulcans are herbivores. One possibility is that a wide field of vision is not necessary to protect from predators, which would suggest that there are no predators on Vulcan large enough to threaten a man, however the existence of the Le-Matya and the large creature that nearly slew a young Michael Burnham when she camped out in the Forge disproves this hypothesis. On Earth, the only herbivorous animals with forward-facing eyes are found among our primate relatives, who descend from an arboreal ancestor that required depth perception to brachiate. I suggest it is thus likely that Vulcan was once home to vast forests, in the trees of which a distant, pointy-eared ancestor once lived.

Vertebrae

Vulcans are vertebrates, shockingly.

All jokes aside, based on the position of Giant Spock's shoulders, it would appear that Vulcans have only five cervical vertebrae to humans' seven ^6. Fewer than seven vertebrae is uncommon for mammals on Earth-- the only mammals with more or fewer than seven vertebrae are manatees with six, two-toed sloths with five, and three-toed sloths with nine. All other mammals, from mice to gorillas, have seven. It's hard to say what the practical effects of this would be, as the number of bones in the neck don't necessarily tell us much about the flexibility of that neck.

Ribcage

I count seven ribs per side, of which the last two are floating ribs unattached to the sternum ^7. These extend rather further forward than the floating ribs of humans. Like earth's tetrapods, and unlike many fishes, Vulcans have only a single set of ribs. I think the Xiphoid process can be seen through a hole in Giant Spock's shirt. I suspect that Vulcans may have smaller lungs than humans do(an assertion backed up by the anatomical chart in the old Starfleet Medical Reference Manual, where the position of the Vulcan heart and stomach truncate the lungs slightly.) Vulcan is generally said to have a thinner atmosphere than Earth, so we can conclude that Vulcan lungs must be far more efficient than our own.

Hands

This is an interesting one. If you look closely at the bones of the Vulcan hand it appears that they are significantly different from those of a human. The most notable difference is that the Vulcan hand appears to have either an additional phalange, or else they have not one, but two metacarpals per finger-- I think the latter, because it looks like the joint would be about mid-palm on a human to me. ^8 The most likely result is that the Vulcan palm can, perhaps, be folded in the middle. This could potentially jive with our brachiation hypothesis from earlier. However it is worth noting that this adaptation seems to appear only on the right hand (on the audience's left in the image.) Most likely one hand or the other is simply the victim of an animation error, but which one it is, we cannot be absolutely certain of.

Unfortunately, glimpses of the remainder of the skeleton are fragmentary and hard to tell us much, though a generally close resemblance to human anatomy continues to be evident from what we see, which includes part of the left radius, the radius, ulna, and humeral trochlea of the right arm, the right shoulder, some three lumbar vertebrae, a bit of the ilium on both sides, and a glimpse of both knees. However we have sufficient diagnostic material to distinguish fossil remains of H. sapiens and V. eridani despite the otherwise extreme convergence of their physical traits.

The @daystrominstitute analysis of "The Broken Circle" is now live on Lemmy!

https://startrek.website/post/46502

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