USSBurritoTruck

• It’s perhaps interesting that the opening sequence for the show (or at least this episode) has not changed from the first season. Because of that, we still see elements such as the USS Protostar which was destroyed in in season one’s “Supernova, Part 2”, and a representation of the Emergency Janeway Hologram, which sacrificed herself in that same episode.

    • In the episode, when asked if the Protogies would be taking a Protostar-class starship for their mission, the Doctor [Robert Picardo] says, ”The Protostar is still under construction.”

• The episode opens with Murf [Dee Bradley Baker] engaged in a tactical training exercise at Starfleet Academy. The cadets, other than Murf, are wearing a uniform we haven’t seen before.

• An officer hands Murf a PADD with a message from Admiral Janeway [Kate Mulgrew], and the other Protogies each receive one as well. In the message they’re referred to as ”Starfleet Academy hopefuls.” It was established in “Supernova, Part 2” that the Protogies wouldn’t be accepted into the Academy ahead of more qualified entrants, but would become warrant officers training under Janeway’s command.

• When Rok-Tahk [Rylee Alazraqui] receives the message, she is in the middle of a presentation on lieutenant Edward Larkin, and citing the events of the “The Trouble With Edward” short.

• ”She’s probably Queen of Solum by now.” The Protogies lament the absence of Gwyn [Ella Purnell], who separated from them in “Supernova, Part 2” on her own mission to her species homeworld.

• A shuttlecraft arrives, bearing the registry number NCC-74656-A. Hey, NCC-74656 was the USS Voyager’s registry!

    • Shuttles with the same registry were seen in “Supernova, Part 2”, fishing the Protogies out of San Francisco Bay.

• The shuttle contains Voyager’s Emergency Medical Hologram, the Doctor, who apparently still has not chosen a name for himself, though he is willing to claim the title ”Hero of the Delta Quadrant.”

• ”I’m a doctor, not a butler.” The Doctor echo’s Doctor McCoy’s phrase, first uttered in “The Devil in the Dark”, where he stated, “I’m a doctor, not a bricklayer.”

    • Though Bones was the originator of the phrase, the Doctor is easily the character who has uttered it the most.

    • Doctor Bashir, the EMH Mark II, Doctor Phlox, and Doctor Culber, have all had variations of the line as well. Doctor T’Ana has not used the phrase on screen, but Boimler has imitated her saying it, albeit with a lot more curses than most Starfleet doctors.

• The Doctor explains that he’s able to move about thanks to his mobile emitter, and bit of 29th century technology he acquired in “Future’s End, Part II”.

• The Doctor refers to having written a holonovel he wrote that ”was very well received.” Presumably he is not recalling “Photons Be Free” the holonovel he wrote features in the episode “Author, Author” as that was not about a bond between a hologram and its crew.

• The mission Janeway is taking the Protogies on is to observe the wormhole created by the destruction of the Protostar in “Supernova, Part 2”.

    • The Doctor explains that a distress call from Captain Chakotay [Robert Beltran] came through the wormhole, reiterating what we saw in “Supernova, Part 2”.

• We get to see the USS Voyager A in spacedock. It is a Lamarr-class starship.

    • The Lamarr-class was named for scientist and actor, Hedy Lamarr, according to the Hageman brothers.

    • According to Zero [Angus Imrie], the Voyager-A has 29 decks, a crew of more than 800, and two schools.

    • In engineering, we’re also shown a quantum slipstream drive, a Delta Quadrant technology first encountered in “Hope and Fear”.

    • “Twovix” is set in 2381, and this episode is set in 2384.

    • The Doctor says that ”There are over 16 holodecks.” Not really clear why he choose not to give a specific number.

    • The Voyager A also has a cetacean ops, large enough to accommodate a humpback whale.

      • Rok-Tahk mentions that it’s her turn to feed the dolphins at one point in the episode. Apparently the navigators in Cetacean Ops don’t get access to their own replicators.

    • There are two shuttlebays, not three.

• ”Her predecessor is a floating museum.” We saw the decommissioned Voyager’s journey to be installed as an orbiting museum in “Twovix”.

• The Doctor claims that the rest of Starfleet is busy with the Romulan evacuation. As we learned in “The End is the Beginning”, Starfleet and the Federation abandon that effort in 2385, following the synth attack on Mars. Perhaps something to look forward to for season three?

• Nova Squadron is an elite group of cadets, introduced in “The First Duty”.

• ”I already promised Admiral Picard I wouldn’t lose this one in the Delta Quadrant.” Admiral Picard was previously mentioned in the LDS episode, “The Stars at Night”. Apparently he’s some sort of mummy aficionado.

• ”And we need all these people to…observe a hole.” Traditionally all the important tasks aboard a Starfleet vessel are carried out by the three to seven most important members of the crew, while the other sometimes hundreds of officers aboard the ship are there to do routine maintenance, keep the seats warm on the bridge when the senior staff is off engaging space adventure, and occasionally serve as human shields. For more information, please see Star Trek. All of it.

    • All of it.

• In Dal’s [Brett Gray] quarters we see a model of the Protostar as well as the goggles he wore in the mines of Tars Lamora in the series premiere, “Lost and Found”.

• ”Borg is short for cyborg!” While perhaps Dal is correct metatextually, that’s never been previously stated in Trek. In the Borg’s first appearance, “Q Who”, Guinan simply states, ”They’re called the Borg.” The Borg refer to themselves as such, there would be little reason for them to have named themselves after a term that originated in 1960s Earth science fiction.

• ”Well, cloaked ships are illegal in Starfleet.” Jankom Pog [Jason Mantazokus] is referring to a provision in the Treaty of Algeron, explicitly stated in “The Pegasus”.

    • The titular USS Pegasus in “The Pegasus” did have prototype cloak, which would also allow the ship to phase through matter.

    • The USS Defiant did have a Romulan cloaking device on it, and was originally only able to be operated by a Romulan officer billeted aboard the ship, as seen in “The Search, Part I”.

    •In “Star Trek: Insurrection” Starfleet also had a cloaked holoship intended to be used to forcibly relocate the Ba’ku.

• Janeway reveals to her senior staff that Admiral Jellico is concerned that the classified mission to use the Infinity to enter the wormhole and rescue Chakotay would put the timeline at risk. Jellico was introduced in “Chain of Command, Part I” where he wanted to negotiate with Cardassians first by appearing to be a loose canon, and then by threatening them with mines attached to their ships. In “Masquerade” ordered Janeway to avoid entering the Neutral Zone to prevent provoking the Romulans, and instead commanded that they fire a torpedo into the Zone to destroy the Protostar. No doubt he also has a good plan regarding the Vau N’Akat.

Trip: A poop question, sir? Can't I talk about the warp reactor or the transporter?
Archer: It's a perfectly valid question.

In season one of ENT's "Breaking the Ice", the crew of the NX-01 records a video for Ms. Malvin's class of fourth graders back on Earth, and one of the questions is what happens when someone aboard the ship flushes the toilet, which Archer throws to Trip, and Trip is concerned the kids are going to think he's the ship's sanitation engineer.

Now, because Archer is an awkward goober in this episode, it seems like he's reading the questions off the cuff, with no one other than the possible exception of Ms. Malvin herself, having first vetted them. However, at the start of the recording, Archer announces that he's the one who selected the questions so he knew going in that the, as Trip puts it, "poop question," would be in there. Also before the recording Archer told Trip that he needed to there to participate as opposed to dealing with the large amount of work that was on his plate. What's more, we know from the start of the episode that Trip's nephew is one of the fourth grade students in Ms. Malvin's class.

So, my theory is that Archer made the intentional choice to have Trip answer a question he knew the engineer would find to be embarrassing, specifically to diminish him in the eyes of his nephew. Why would he do this extremely petty thing to someone who is ostensibly his friend and most loyal officer? Probably because he sucks and wanted to put Trip in his place for some imagined slight, just like he later has an outburst with the Vulcan captain whom he invited to dinner.

Not my original content.

Happy Free RPG Day!

Not my OC

• This is the series finale of the “Star Trek: Discovery”, the first instalment of what we might consider to be the modern era of Trek.

    • Premiering in 2017, DIS ran for five seasons over the course of seven years.

    • The show has a total of 65 episodes.

• The episode title, “Life, Itself” is a reference to the 1973 Disney animated classic, “Robin Hood” wherein the titular outlaw says the line, ”Marian, my darling, I love you more than life itself.” Q transformed captain Picard into a version of the cartoon fox in "Qpid".

• This episode’s credited director is series executive producer, Olatunde Osunsanmi, who has directed thirteen prior episodes of DIS, and two “Short Treks”. HIs presence is immediately apparent in the cold open when the first thing we see is the camera rotating upside down. The use of the flame jet emitters in the bridge is also one of his hallmarks.

    • Jonathan Frakes is the uncredited director of the final sequence of the episode, which was done in reshoots after it was announced the series was ending. That means Frakes is now responsible for closing out two Trek series, both DIS and ENT.

• I previously speculated that the floating wickets at the end of this season’s credit sequence were from the bridge of the Breen dreadnought, but that was incorrect. The interior of the Pregenitor technology features floating wickets as windows into different biomes, and they resemble the ones in the credits much more closely.

• We see a dead Breen whose helmet is smashed open and a bunch of green goo is spilled out, perhaps confirming the fan speculation that when a Breen dies while not in its solid form, their body loses cohesion, and that is why Worf’s statement in “‘Til Death Do Us Part” that no one had ever seen a Breen outside of the refrigeration suit remained true, despite Kira and Dukat incapacitating two Breen to steal their suits for disguises in “Indiscretion”.

• The Breen that tackles Burnham is the one who had a tether attached to their suit before attempting to enter the Pregenitor technology in “Lagrange Point”; you can see the snapped tether still protruding from their back.

• Production error: The hurricane force winds are strong enough that Burnham and the Breen whom she’s fighting are both blown horizontal, but Burnham’s braids remain hanging down from her shoulders.

• The final credits sequence brings back graphics from earlier seasons:

    • The captain’s chair from season one

    • The environmental suit from season one

    • The paired Klingon mek’leths from season one

    • The graphical representation of Zora from season four

    • Book’s unnamed ship, from season three

    • The flip communicator from season one

    • The Red Angel suit from season two

    • The DMA from season four

    • The badge from season one

• The Breen fighters we see have an asymmetrical design with some elements of what we saw from the Breen interceptors in DS9.

• ”This is like the avalanche all over again.” Rayner recalls the events of “Red Directive”.

• ”Ever since Jinaal, I’ve been trying to figure out what it means. This change inside me, or whatever it is.” Doctor Culber refers to the third episode of this season by its title.

• ”I know what it’s like to lose somebody who means everything to you. I do. But thankfully, I got him back.” In “Will You Take My Hand?”, Ash Tyler left to support L’Rell’s bid to become chancellor. They were reunited in “Saints of Imperfection”.

    • Moll does not get L’ak back.

• In the interior of Saru’s shuttle, we can see a pathway drive for the first time, though it was mentioned in the season four premiere, “Kobayashi Maru”.

• Burnham and Moll locate a cairn. Burnham surmises it is the grave for the sixth scientist, the one whom Jinaal mentioned having died when the group located the Pregentior technology.

• ”Nine. That’s the number you need to make a larger triangle.” There are ten triangles on the Pregentior interface when we’re shown an unobstructed close-up. Moll is as good at counting as L’ak was at not stabbing himself.

• The USS Discovery A destroys the fleet of Breen fighters pursuing them by using a photon torpedo to ignite a pocket of plasma. In “Shadows and Symbols”, the IKS Rotarran used an EM pulse to trigger a solar plasma ejection, destroying a Dominion shipyard.

• Doctor Culber remembers the resonance frequency of the Pregenitor technology portal from his time as host to Jinaal’s consciousness in “Jinaal”.

• ”My species are predators, and I have studied you like prey.” In season one of DIS, the Kelpiens were mentioned repeatedly to be a prey species, and Saru was the lens through which that was presented. It was not until “The Sound of Thunder” in season two that Kelpiens were established to have nearly driven the Ba’ul to extinction thanks to the changes they undergo post-vahar’ai.

    • In “Die Trying”, the medical hologram Eli claimed that Saru might be the last Kelpien to display biochemical traces of vahar’ai.

• The Progenitor whom Burnham meets reveals that her people were not actually the originators of the technology, and shares a theory that there was some sort of pre-Progentiors who created it, and them as well. Some sort of Pregenitors, if will.

• Apparently the Discovery A can perform a saucer separation. It’s unclear if this was a feature of the Discovery pre-refit, but in “The Apple” Kirk suggested, ”Discard the warp nacelles if you have to,” to Scotty in order for the USS Enterprise to be able to devote as much power as possible to the impulse engines.

• The Progenitor causes Burnham to experience four billion years of development in a moment. In “Hard Time”, O’Brien was implanted with memories of 20 years in prison, and it messed him up pretty badly for the rest of the episode.

• “Nothing here can bring him back. I’m so sorry.” Burnham informs Moll that the Pregenitor technology can’t be used to bring L’ak back to life. Things that have been used to bring characters back to life in Trek include:

    • Scotty was revived by Nomad after Nomad had killed him in “The Changeling”.

    • Spock died in “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan” but the Genesis planet, revived his body as an infant, allowing for his katra, which had been transferred to Doctor McCoy, be returned to his now alive body.

    • Worf and Wesley were both killed in a battle with bestial soldiers conjured by Q. Riker resurrects them with his temporary Q powers.

    • Harry Kim had to die in “Emanations” to get transported back to the USS Voyager. The Doctor was able to revive him with medicine.

    • Neelix dies in “Mortal Coil”, but is revived with Borg nanoprobes.

    • Kelvin universe Kirk died in “Star Trek Into Darkness”, but Doctor McCoy was able to filter Khan’s augment blood through a tribble and save him. Or something.

    • Doctor Culber’s neck was snapped by Ash Tyler in “The Saints of Imperfection”, and beings that live in the mycelial network revived him using fungus material from an interdimensional transporter as his new body in “Despite Yourself”.

    • Shaxs died aboard an exploding Pakled clumpship in “No Small Parts”, but returned in “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris” with story of having visited the black mountain and fighting three faceless apparitions of his father.

• ”I realized we already have infinite diversity in infinite combinations.” The IDIC is a Vulcan philosophy first mentioned in “Is There In Truth No Beauty?” so that Gene Roddenberry could sell merch.

• Outside Federation HQ there is:

    • An Eisenberg-class starship

    • A Mars-class starship

    • A Saturn-class starship

    • A Merian-class starship

    • A Courage-class starship

• Among the trinkets in Kovich’s display are:

    • A Terran knife

    • A type-2 phaser of the sort introduced in season five of TNG

    • A bottle of Chateau Picard dated 2249

    • A VISOR, presumably the one Geordi wore beginning in season two of TNG

    • A baseball; it’s too clean to be Sisko’s so perhaps it’s Rom’s from “Parth Ferengi’s Heart Place”

    • Perhaps it’s noteworthy that Kovich does not have any items from the NX-01

• Kovich reveals himself to be Daniels, the temporal agent introduced in “Cold Front”.

    • Kovich says he’s from the USS Enterprise, but the NX-01 did not have the USS designation.

• Book had a confrontation with Talaxian pirates. Neelix established in “Non Sequitur” that Talaxian piracy is mostly cased around the procurement of haircare supplies.

• Molly was the endangered trance worm Book rescued from the Emerald Chain in “That Hope is You, Part 1”.

• In Burnham and Book’s 33rd century home on Sanctuary Four, they have the Tuli wood box in which the Eternal Archive and Gallery’s World Root cuttings were stored in “Labyrinths”, and captain Georgiou’s telescope, first seen in “The Vulcan Hello” and received by Burnham in “The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not for the Lamb’s Cry”.

• We learn that Burnham has attained the rank of Admiral.

• There is a deer-like creature on Sanctuary Four that Burnham calls Alice. Presumably she named the creature for “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, a book we learned Amanda Grayson read to her as well as Spock in “Context is for Kings” and “Once Upon a Planet”.

• ”I thought you’d be on your way to Crepuscula by now.” The Crepusculans were a pre-warp civilization in “The Vulcan Hello”. Georgiou and Burnham visited their world to help mitigate the effects of a drought caused by an industrial accident in nearby space.

• ”One, aye,” calls back to “People of Earth” where Book disguised himself as a Starfleet officer.

• The shuttle captain Leto picks Burnham up in is UFP-47.

• Book has planted the World Root cuttings on Sanctuary Four, and we see several trance worms swimming in a river.

• Starfleet HQ now has three of the station/ships in the 33rd century.

• We see DOTs working on restoring the USS Discovery to it’s original configuration before the 32nd century refit.

• ”I did hear a word in passing. ‘Craft.’” Zora encounters Craft in “Calypso”, according to her, almost 1,000 years after being left in a nebula.

• Despite the years that have passed, all the ships we see in attendance for the *Discovery’*s last mission are spaceframes we’re familiar with from the 32nd century.

Not my original content

Not my original content, but something I stand by

• This episode was directed by Johnathan Frakes, who starred in the ENT episode, “These Are the Voyages...”

• Captain Burnham informs Rayner that the Breen Primarch Tahal is going to be arriving at their location in the next episode. We learned in “Erigah” that Tahal occupied Rayner’s homeworld, Kelerun, and used it as a staging point.

• The tool Book is using to help effect repairs on the spore drive looks to be the same one he used as a weapon against Burnham in their fight when the characters first met in “That Hope Is You, Part 1”.

• The Progenitor’s technology is contained within a structure carefully balanced at the point where the gravity wells of two black holes intersect, i.e. the Lagrange point. Hey, that’s the title of the episode! Which makes sense, because the rest of the episode must surely be about figuring out how to retrieve the structure from such a precarious position without being crushed, torn apart, or spaghettified by the intense gravimetric interactions. It would be silly if, say, the Breen dreadnought was to show up and simply yoink away the structure with a tractor beam while we’re still in the cold open, and the Lagrange point did not matter for the rest of the episode.

    • The structure containing the Progenitor technology looks like a large barrel. Somewhere in Sto’vo’kor, a warrior punches a wall and doesn’t understand why.

• Moll stores L’ak’s body in a portable transport buffer. Trek has been using the transport buffer to store people since Scotty did so in “Relics”, though the other engineer aboard the USS Jenolan, Franklin, a good lad, pattern degraded too far for him to also be retrieved. Presumably no one would notice if L’ak’s pattern degraded over time.

• Adira mentions having been part of the Earth Defense Force, which is what they were doing when introduced in “People of Earth”.

• Burnham’s plan for infiltrating the Breen dreadnought is to transport through a gap in the shield coverage near an exhaust port. In “Preemptive Strike”, Ro and a team of Maquis exploited a weak point in the USS Enterprise D’s shields created by the ship’s impulse engines to steal medical supplies.

• Rayner asks Tilly to be his acting first officer while Burnham and Rhys are on the Breen ship. Saru also promoted Tilly to be his acting first officer while she was still an ensign.

• The away team plans to move around the Breen dreadnought in replicated Breen suits. In “Indiscretion”, Kira and Dukat disguised themselves in stolen Breen suits to infiltrate a work camp.

    • When Burnham activates her helmet, it forms around her head, but her braids are still visible hanging down her back before the transport. Upon arriving on the Breen ship, Burnham’s braids are no longer exposed. Later, when Burnham deactivates the helmet, her braids are already hanging down her back before it starts to dematerialize.

    • Despite being Federation technology, the fake Breen suits still have Breen script in their HUD.

• Burnham uses the term “achworm” during her bluff, something Primark Ruhn called called the Federation representatives in “Erigah” before it became apparent that T’Rina speaks the language.

• Assembled at Federation Headquarters we see:

    • Two Eisenberg-class starships

    • A Saturn-class starship

    • A Merian-class starship

    • Two Mars-class starships

    • One starship of the same class as the USS Dresselhaus

    • One 32nd century Constitution-class starship

    • One 32nd century Intrepid-class starship

• T’Rina suggests sending the USS Mitchell to intercept Tahal’s fleet. The Mitchell first appeared in “Rubicon”.

    • ”A shuttle wouldn’t be remotely capable of engaging her entire fleet.” President Rillak seems to imply that the Mitchell could conceivably be a match for a Breen fleet, which I would argue is very appropriate for a ship named for Kenneth Mitchell, who played Kol, Kol-Sha, Tenavik, and Aurellio on DIS, and voiced the Tweerk captain, one of Ransom’s Starfleet black ops buddies, and a Romulan guard on LDS before his passing.

• Burnham uses her xenoanthropology specialization to understand that joining a Breen feast day would be considered a good thing to do. Xenoanthropology was established as Burnham’s scientific focus in the series premiere, “The Vulcan Hello”.

• Burnham relates the results of her self introspection in “Labyrinths” to Book.

• ”Grum of osikod,” is a reference to the Kellerun epic, The Ballad of Krul. Burnham quoted the passage in which it’s mentioned to Rayner in “Mirrors”.

• ”Oh, holy schnoodle.” In “Choose Your Pain”, Tilly was the first person to say ”fuck” in Trek.

• Before sitting in the captain’s chair, Rayner does a one handed variation on the Picard maneuver.