majicwalrus

We do not know when the UEF was formed. It could be a relatively new initiative having taken longer to get started without the help of the Vulcans. The USS Iowa is a United States Starship whereas the UEF Enterprise is the United Earth Fleet ship. Sometime between Kirk's birth and the 'present' Earth was finally able to form a central government (or at least a centrally organized spacefleet) under one banner.

I think narratively it's just a much more enjoyable to not have Odo shift shape onscreen, especially as it gives him the ability to overpower a lot of people. In the early episodes this needed to be shown so we could understand Odo's character, but by the fourth season (both when he was a solid and not) we knew enough about the Changelings that we didn't need to show this as frequently and had to figure out more creative ways to to get around Odo.

Narratively rank is very important especially when you are trying to demonstrate a paramilitary organization in the confines of a television series. I think there are probably often arguments about this. Why is Ezri written as a counselor and an Ensign instead of a science officer of a higher rank?

I do think there is real world relevance sometimes. We see Worf and Geordi get promotions and become a larger part of the series with more screen time and character development. This works narratively to distinguish the change. An "on screen" promotion indicates some sort of character growth. We see this happen with Sisko likely because the only reason to distinguish him at first was because he was written to have a fairly minor (in universe) role which was greatly expanded.

In recent years I think rank has been downplayed as there are so many inconsistencies and patterns and anti-patterns throughout the series. It's important that you're able to tell a story where if someone is supposed to be in charge they have the appropriate rank for this. This is one of the reasons Discovery effectively promoted Tilly rapidly (all the way to being the XO for a little bit) because she was a pivotal part of the cast and needed screen time. In fact Discovery doesn't "ignore" rank it rather ignores rank conventions by having a mutineer on the bridge as a 'specialist' and a command staff that almost just takes turns at the wheel.

In Lower Decks we can assume narratively no one is going to get promoted permanently or demoted permanently because the show depends on that dynamic. If we look to Strange New Worlds we see rank downplayed to a large degree because everyone's rank is so close together. This is important to get Spock of a low enough rank so that he can be promoted to commander later. (Frustratingly there are still inconsistencies here. There seems to be confusion between Lt. and Lt. Jg. and Nurse Chapel's rank, which may be provisional because she may be a civilian contractor who has a temporary commission and then later joins with a regular commission of a lower rank - or her rank is just not important - is also out of continuity.) But importantly for SNW - narratively it makes sense to have these people of these ranks in these positions so it just works.

In a more realistic depiction people would be moving through ships much more quickly. There would be fewer officers and they would move through the ranks regularly and not stay in one position for 7 years. Likewise mostly Enlisted people would be spending a few years at most and moving onto other careers in civilian life as most people don't want to be in the military forever and if they do they become officers. Miles O'Brien (despite the insignia being weird) is probably most accurately depicted. He served on many posts, he left posts for some period of time and then returned to them in new capacities, he moved between posts. He joined in 2345 and by 2375 he was probably ready for retirement or in the case of a utopian future, moving back to Earth to teach at Starfleet until he is absolutely ancient because he's got nothing better to do and he loves his job.

I suspect this isn’t covered for a variety of reasons, but what we do see shows an Earth steeped in nostalgia blending with technology that alleviates the overwhelming majority of material concerns. No one needs to worry about food, shelter, clothing, or profit. They work to better themselves for its own sake and they relax and stuff.

I think the message is that Earth is boring and humans, having created paradise, left it for knowledge of the stars. Civilian life is coffee and breakfast in the morning before dropping the kids off at school, plenty of time to pursue niche hobbies, and probably also time to pursue some career interest and education.

However, you raise an interesting point in that civilians from the perspective of Starfleet officers are even more out there. These are folks who often wanted to go even further than the rest of society wanted to go. Fringe people with eccentricities to un civilized to stay within the Federation. The intersection of these two kinds of civilians is what I would like to explore.

A happy family who have lived in paradise are suddenly Swiss Family Robinson or Lost in Space style thrust into deep space and must survive without the comforts of paradise would be an interesting way to tell the story of what it’s like to be a civilian in the Federation.

Whoa! Good catch. That timeline almost lines up exactly and it's very possible that O'Brien was referring to Una. It could also be that O'Brien is indicating that sentiments have maybe changed somewhat in 100 years, something that we are lead to expect from SNW. And indeed Bashir is allowed to stay in Starfleet without even having to find a technical loophole and Richard's punishment is considered harsh at 2 years. Given the future utopia that we're dealing with and the historical significance of the crime I think what we're seeing is that no one really does this anymore and so it's not really an issue.

I really hate that Prodigy was unrewened because a courtroom episode of Prodigy where Dal gets the right to serve in Starfleet and the Starfleet ban on genetic augments is lifted would be a pretty cool.

Prodigy is canon insofar as everything is canon when it happens on screen. I like to think of the canon containing all Star Trek works right down to your fan fiction novel or your "head canon" with some things being more canonical than others and with those things which are seen on screen either as a film or TV episode are the most canonical of the canon. Prodigy still fits that bill. I doubt that there will be anything as canonical that would "undo" what Prodigy did. But if that happened we would just incorporate the conflict into the canon like we always do.

I want to push back on the conversation between Jack and Bashir in "Statistical Probabilities" a little bit given additional context from Strange New Worlds "Ad Astra per Aspera." I don't think it's fair to say that all augments are treated the same way. It's unlikely I think, that even if Bashir were to have not lied to get into Starfleet he would have been prevented either by law or by policy of doing anything even remotely scientific - including medicine or other gene research.

However, I don't think we can take Jack at his word that he would have been institutionalized in the same manner. If we believe that the genetically modified people we see from the Institute in Deep Space Nine weren't driven mad by their perceived incarceration then we have to believe that side effects of the genetic modification process caused unexpected neurological abnormalities and personality disorders that we see typified by that group.

Dal, for instance, in Prodigy does not fear institutionalization in the Federation, but rather he fears he won't be let into Starfleet. Presumably he may also be precluded from other career choices that he's just not interested in, but I don't think it's fair to say that being an augment is criminal as much as it is laws have created a system whereby modified people, especially modified humans, are treated as second class citizens. This might even extend to people who have DNA sequencing done for legitimate medical reasons like Chakotay. I like to imagine Chakotay and Una and Bashir having similar experiences even though their circumstances were unique. The human willingness to look past reason and into bigotry doesn't go away, but it's focused on the genetically modified.

And it takes decades, centuries even, for the laws to change even a little bit and even longer for the people to accept those changes.

My assumption was that Vasquez Rocks was playing itself and that it was no longer a state park because there was no longer a state. Most of the Earth outside of cities has probably largely been left to the wilderness and as such parking your RV in any place is probably allowed if not unusual.

The decision to not even drop his name in this season of Picard really hammers how bad of a father Worf really was. This is absolutely something that should be explored in a Worf-centric story. There's a lot of context for how Worf was raised by Humans, but Alexander was not.

DS9 tries very hard to deal with this, but they actually make it worse by mistake.

Worf: "I cannot fix the mistakes I have made, but from now on I will stand with you. I will teach you what you need to know to be a warrior, and you will teach me what I need to know to be a father." Alexander: "Let's see if you mean it."

And clearly he didn't. He was too caught up in his own warrior's journey to consider Alexander. Alexander left, remained Klingon on Klingon ships and continues to be estranged from his father.

I think this can quite easily be pulled off. Lower Decks is an example of this to a degree, but for an even better Beta Canon example look at the Star Trek Resurgence narrative game. The story takes place from two perspectives Petty Officer and the ship's First Officer. Each of these characters has relationships which will impact the story and for the most part they work separately from one another, but still work together and it makes a lot more sense when the Captain sends the Petty Officers to go on the hull and do dangerous work than sending the chief of any department.

Consider that Deep Space 9's primary cast of characters includes an enlisted person and several non-Starfleet personnel or straight up civilians. Porting that to a TV show would not be that difficult and I think there has even been some success with that in Lower Decks which features lower deckers along senior staff just fine, even interweaving their stories; and Discovery which, particularly in the first season, creates characters by proximity to the story not by bridge positions. Tilly is important because she is Burnham's roommate, not because she's the chief of anything. Despite this Tilly's character is a fan favorite. Unfortunately, I think Discovery fell into the impulse of giving audiences more of what they want and that meant creating stories where a random cadet was a valued member of the team - and team was still mostly senior staff.

undefined> It represents an approach to Star Trek that was cut off far too early, one that solves or avoids the most obnoxious pitfalls of the later seasons, and one I desperately wish we could have gotten more of.

I'll comment on this most important concluding statement with agreement. Ultimately, Discovery tried to do something different and did it fairly well. It's downfall was in not being willing to take that kind of storytelling and really lean into it. Fans started talking, loudly, about changes that were made and as a result later seasons of Discovery become far more tempered. The Discovery of season 1 could have ended Season 2 by sending Burnham and Discovery to the future and introducing a whole new cast of main players in a whole new context. Instead of that, they responded to the valid criticisms of the weaker supporting characters who don't seem to have much to do and as a result the show took a much more emotional turn. They haven't abandoned these long arcs, but they've tried to tell that story in a more familiar way and in my opinion this was always Discovery's downfall.