• Like an authentic midwest American town, the Parnassus Beta colony is having trouble making sure everyone is vaccinated.

So authentic!

Given Archer’s test pilot background, I’d like to think he was from Hammondsport, the hometown of Glenn Curtiss.

James is Sam Kirk’s brother, who was introduced in the episode “Where No Man has Gone Before”.

Deep cut. Love how they continue to flesh out these obscure characters from Trek canon!

We see lieutenant Mitchell in the captain’s chair, I believe for the first time.

Kind of hoping they promote Rong Fu to a regular simply so that she is no longer the only bridge crew person who isn’t.

IKS par’Machstreet Boys

This is canon now.

Oh, c’mon, why do you have to do Frakes so dirty like that?

”But flipping it open’s the best part.” Pike is objectively correct.

Okay, that part is true.

I think Christina Chong has released some songs on her own and I know Carol Kane was in Wicked.

My personal philosophy is DEATH TO THE OPPOSITION.

“We must personally attack Burrito Truck and his sanity.” -The people behind SNW

I can only presume that you are currently doing “Those Old Scientists” but may die in the process.

Great as always. Especially love the escalation of things you show with “stuff that Kirk is good enough at chess to win money for”

”It would seem that the rules of Starfleet only apply when a captain deems that they do.” Please see “All of Star Trek”.

Ain’t that the truth.

The content will be shopped around to other platforms. You can probably expect some of it to end up on freemium/advertisement-based streaming services. The rest will just go into the proverbial vault.

What’s weird is that Paramount HAS perhaps the best Freemium service: Pluto TV. One has to wonder if perhaps that is where Prodigy will end up (it may seem strange for a company to totally remove it from one streaming platform and move it to another that they also own, but the legalities of streaming rights are WEIRD. For example, some of the Looney Tunes shorts were removed from Max but can still be found on other WB/Discovery platforms, like their YouTube channel and the Boomerang streaming service- ultimately it was just an accounting trick)

Disney did pull a few things Marvel, but they weren’t prime MCU. They were all documentaries, time-sensitive hype pieces, or shows of dubious canonicity to the MCU.

Thoughts as I watch the episode:

• Previously on Star Trek: Una is an augment, and Starfleet greatly dislikes that.

• Oh, Kid Una!

• “How can he council me when he works for you?” Good point!

• This was the ready room scene last week.

• Illyrians hiding on a poisonous planet is a nice touch.

• So, this is an allegory for Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell and similar anti-gay and discriminatory policies, isn’t it? Hiding who she is, for example. Timely.

• Damn, Batel’s boss is an asshole.

• Damn, that took awhile to get to credits.

• Oh, more case law for Starfleet!

• “I know you hate giving inspiring speeches.” Heh.

• Ortegas imagining a Vulcan conversation is hilarious.

• “I regret that you had to witness that outburst.”

• Seriously, that outburst, it was so horrifying. Not sure if I can ever emotionally recover from it.

• Oh, those dress unis! Look so much like the TOS ones while still being all modern.

• Hahaha, she’s using all the times they ignore the Prime Directive to show the hypocrisy of rules.

• The stuff about her being tried for stuff her parents did calls to mind the stuff with the DREAM act.

• Hang on, wouldn’t the fact that La’an has Khan blood flowing through her veins kind of give a possible method of pointing out how much hypocrisy there is to the law?

• “An affinity for Gilbert and Sullivan Musicals”

• Good point about how family isn’t destiny and also how the discriminated against can be led to self-loathing.

• I just noticed that the mural/engraving behind witness stand seems to show a bunch of humans, tellarites, andorians, and so on… wonder if it’s meant to show the founding of the Federation or great legal scholars of the Fed species.

• Oh shit, she turned herself in.

• “Starfleet is not a perfect organization, but it strives to be.” We all should try to live up to that.

• My Badmiral Sense is tingling.

• Ah, so an asylum loophole! Clever way of allowing her to stay in while still keeping the anti-genetics stuff still in place come Bashir and Dal’s time.

• Pike Hugs must be the best hugs.

Fun as always, although a bummer that Lemmy can’t let you have the full post all in the top post.

Also, I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who caught the reference Korby’s specialty.

From what I understand based on what they said in BTS stuff, the fight was partly inspired by the fact that Babs Olusanmokun is a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Why they had to have him be juiced-up fighting Klingons, I don’t know. Lord knows he could have been fighting humans without steroids.

RESET THE CLOCK!

Thoughts and observations written as I watch- I’ll be putting this on both Reddit and Lemmy, since infinity diversity/infinity combinations:

• Wheeee, NCC-1701 in the Star Trek tag!

• Previously: Last season happened.

• Little ships flying!

• Wonder who the lawyer that Una and Pike have tried to reach is.

• Oh, hey, the Vulcan musical instrument whose name I can’t remember!

• “Fascinating.” “Isn’t that usually his line?”

• The fellowship on archeological medicine? Is that a reference to Dr. Korby?

• “We must steal the Enterprise.” Buddy, if I had a nickel every time someone had to steal the Enterprise, I’d have several nickels.

• Lt. Mitchell gunning for series regular next year with how much screen time she’s had early on this episode.

• Okay, having Carol Kane is already paying dividends.

• And, yeah, Carol Kane doesn’t need alien makeup to be an alien. She’s already an alien.

• I’m still not sure if the emphasis one the warp catch phrase is amazing or annoying, but this scene was funny.

• KLINGON UPDATE: RIDGES!

• So clearly La’An’s augmented ancestors were genetically engineered to drink a lot. Which, y’know what? Fair.

• Ah, the borderlands, where utopian rules go away and everyone becomes a Ferengi.

• Congratulations to Uhura on graduating from the Academy.

• Ah, the old “I have technology that I’m totally not making up that will blow you up” bluff!

• New transporter chief?

• Okay, so the angry borderlands people are trying to do some sort of false flag thing.

• Redundant Klingon organs, the old standby.

• Roided-up doctors can tell you what bones they broke as they break them.

• These are obviously Discovery sets.

• This action scene, while well-done, is way too long.

• A D7!

• “We’ve gotten out of worse.” “No, not really!”

• “This I’ve got to see!”

• I wonder if “Lanthanite” is a synonym for “El-Aurian”

• Pelia knowing that being on the Enterprise means adventure is further proof that those ships are goddamn weirdness magnets.

• Gorn. Yes, it stretches canon but fuck it the Gorn are awesome we’ll come up with an explanation later.

• “For Nichelle”

• Overall, while not one of the better episodes, it still was a good start to the season. It wrapped up one of the hanging threads of last year (La’An), we continued to see some of Young Spock’s struggles with his emotions before he became the more-Vulcan Spock that Nimoy was in the main TOS series, and we got our first look at Carol Kane as the nutty new engineer. Overall, I’ll call that a win!

Yes, I just have one question: was it a long road getting from there to here?