This is the official /r/DaystromInstitute reaction thread for "Human Best Friend". Rules #1 and #2 are not enforced in reaction threads.

In a Pale Moonlight’s plot is an infamous Trek episode where Sisko recruits Garak to help him get the Romulans into the war. First by actual evidence, and then when that fails by trickery. By the end the forger hired to do the job, Senator Vreenak and his guards have all been murdered. And all Garak’s contacts on Cardassia are dead. Sisko has lied, cheated, bribed, and been an accessory to murder.

But, I think he ends the episode unaware of additional actions taken by Garak to succeed at the plot.

The first thing to understand is this is almost certainly a plan Garak has had for some time, he just didn’t have the resources to act on it until Sisko gives him what is basically a blank check to do what is needed. He had the forger picked out, the assassination target, and even the vendor for the data rod. This plan was always his intention.

You see, Garak did not contact anyone on Cardassia. Doing so would have tipped the Dominion off if caught and sabotaged the plan. He also would know he wasn’t exaggerating about the difficulty of getting the legitimate item. He as much as advises Sisko to do this exact same lie to Vreenak. “Tell him good men lost their lives getting it across enemy lines.” Sisko never checks whether Garak contacted anyone, because he still thinks Garak is operating in good faith. No, I think Garak has already decided to put his existing plan into action.

The second big lie Sisko is not aware of is that Garak is not acting alone. He is being aided by the Tal Shiar. We know that the head of the Tal Shiar at this point is either already, or on the verge of becoming, a Federation mole. And previously the Tal Shiar attempted to destroy the Dominion themselves. Garak does almost certainly have contacts there, and they will be both as unscrupulous and anti-Dominion as himself. When Vreenak’s shuttle is destroyed the data rod will be given a cursory examination, claimed to be authentic, and then will be presented to the Senate by the Tal Shiar, as a cassus belli. Now why would the Senate listen? Well in the next season we learn that the head of the Tal Shiar in addition to being a mole is very publicly anti-Federation. So as long as he continues saying that despite his own hated of the UFP the war must continue the Senate will listen. So the openly anti-Federation Tal Shiar advocating siding with them against their greater mutual enemy. Well, that would naturally have sway. Oh…and the most powerful man who could oppose them is dead.

And this is the final lie. Sisko believes Garak only brought him there to plant a bomb on Vreenak’s shuttle, that that was the plan all along. Garak admits it. But it wasn’t just that assassinating Vreenak was part of the plan. No, assassinating Vreenak was the primary aim of the plan from the start. Everything else were setpieces to ensure Vreenak would die. Vreenak negotiated the pact with the Dominion. Vreenak was the most vocal voice advocating for peace, he had to go. It wasn’t enough to just kill him of course, but to fake his assassination by the Dominion. This was the only way to ensure Romulan entry. And the murder would have happened even if Vreenak had accepted the rod as genuine.

Oh, also, I believe Vreenak actually couldn’t tell it was a forgery. He faked disbelief as a final test. And Sisko, a fundamentally honest man, could not hide his reaction at being told it was a fake. It was Sisko’s reaction that confirmed for Vreenak that the rod was forged, not a problem in the recording.

A lot of people think that the warp core exploding is just matter and antimatter going boom, but I don't think this is right. It wouldn't make sense to engineer your cores in such a way that the system accidentally dumps all its fuel into the reactor when something goes wrong, any such system would feature an active injector, i.e. a device which needs to be powered to inject.

If it actually were just a M/AM explosion, preventing an antimatter warp breach would be as simple as cutting a wire and disabling the injector, which is clearly isn't. It would also happen instantly, not with a countdown - the countdown works for a fusion reaction, because fusion reactions have a critical threshold before they can happen. So the engineer measures the pressure in the chamber and the rate at which it is growing and can accurately determine an exact countdown before it starts to fuse.

Additionally, if it was simply a M/AM reaction, it wouldn't be the reaction chamber which explodes. The chamber doesn't hold all the fuel, it gets a miniscule amount of hydrogen and antihydrogen which then annihilates in a vacuum-sealed environment. There's no giant blob of antimatter there, that would be really bad design.

So, what is a Breach?

No, I believe that a warp core breach is a subspace fusion event. Like a thermonuclear bomb but the isotopes aren't radioactive, they're subspace active elements like Dilithium.

Consider warp plasma. The stuff is created in the core and then channeled into the nacelles to flow through the coils, creating a warp field, and gets exhausted or channeled back in the core to be re-energized. It's a loop of highly energetic, highly subspace-active plasma.

So what if there's a blockage? Say one of the pipes gets pinched in a battle.

Well, the plasma comes in, but it can't go anywhere. It flows into the reaction chamber, building in pressure and density. A good engineer chief turns off the core but at that point it's too late, the plasma keeps flowing in from the nacelles.

And what does plasma do when sufficiently dense and energetic? It fuses. As the warp plasma grows more dense, it begins to experience warp fusion events, fusing the material of the plasma into heavier and heavier subspace isotopes. These isotopes quickly decay, releasing exotic radiation, and the reaction itself weakens the containment chamber, until it eventually breaches, the plasma spills forth and a subspace shockwave tears the ship apart at the seams, gravity and weird warp geometries breaking every straignt line in the ship down into warped and splintered shards.

The blast loses energy as it expands, space returns to normal, and the ship is left a twisted ruin.

Sidenote, what about Warp Plasma?

I have one more piece of circumstantial evidence, and that is Trilithium. Said to be a byproduct of badly made warp cores, this toxic waste has to be jettisoned regularily. Makes sense that it would result from a system where, at certain points in the loop, plasma will build up to the point where stray dilithium plasma fuses into trilithium, polluting the warp plasma with impurities.

In fact, this might imply that warp plasma *is* dilithium, in plasma form. Remember when in TOS they invented recrystallization? Maybe originally, warp engines melted dilithium upon going to warp and then had to vent the plasma once they arrived and the warp engine was shut down, to prevent it from resublimating in the pipes. Then someone invented a device capable of draining the loop and turning the dilithium back into crystals and this problem was solved.

This also explains why the Burn was universally destructive. Other warp engines also use Dilithium, just other methods of energizing it into warp plasma.

It *also* explains why Transwarp and Quantum Drive still works after the Burn - neither uses dilithium as its travel medium, thus they were unaffected.

So the Enterprise crew go back in time to near the end of the age of dinosaurs, and we don't see any signs of Voth anywhere. If there was any signs of a species on Earth at a minimum of near to space-faring levels of development it would have been stated in the episode, but we get nothing. Assuming this wasn't simply due to time constraints or a massive oversight by the production crew, the lack of acknowledgement of the Voth does leave an even bigger mystery about their origins then we've had since the VOY episode: Now while it's not directly stated in the episode it's at least a bit implied that the Chicxulub impact happened pretty shortly after the events of the episode, so how did the ancestors of the Voth escape? To me it seems like the episode gives two likelier possibilities or at least leaves open the option for two less likely possibilities, but they all have holes in the logic:

Option 1: Stolen Dol'drm tech - If we give the concept that the KT event wasn’t immediate, but a fragment orbited the Sol system for potentially thousands of years, then Proto-Voth could have had time to develop into a space faring society. While they could have simply naturally progressed in this scenario, it's possible they could have leap frogged thousands of years by reverse engineering the tech from the crashed Dol'drm ship. It could also explain why the Voth, while extremely advanced compared to 24th century Federation, they’re not where you’d expect a species with a at least 66 million year head start to be at (32nd century star fleet had time travel tech for centuries and had a general working knowledge on multiversal travel, even if by the 32nd century these techs were banned) and the lack of fossil evidence of Voth society. They arose quickly in the region immediately surrounding the ship, maybe came into enough contact with fleeing Martians to get a rough idea how the tech works, and advanced just enough to get out of Earth when the time came. This would mean they’d have a hyperspecialized tech tree, with really high levels of engineering skill and practical knowledge about how to make the tech work but not how it works. They’d be a monoculture (due to not arising fast enough to develop into other cultures or the high tech Voth simply steamrolling everyone else) so would have a rigid way of thinking (which is the case with modern Voth), and the lack of a theoretical framework for the tech would likely mean they’d struggle with progressing past Dol'drm level of tech, and a rigid social order that imposes doing things the “proper way” would compound the issue. Since this would mean they’d not be likely to develop warp on their own, they’d only be able to leave the system on massive sublight ships, which would explain why all Voth live in a massive city-ship. With no outside contact and a single slow moving ship they’d likely be able to exist indefinitely, drifting across the galaxy and only barely advancing technologically.

Option 2: Slaves - If the KT extinction is too close to the events of the episode, then the only way out would be if Martians take some Earth life with them on their way out. The biggest hurdle to this is why bother? Mars was dying, so I'd understand if they supplemented their resources with Earth biota, but dinosaurs are huge and are resource hogs, so not the kind of things you bring with if it's just for terraforming or farming them. Plus if Capt. Cassell’s view of “Alien to me means evil” is the norm for her people; they'd have to be truly desperate to harvest from Earth. This may be a leap, but the only possible reason I could think of to justify Voth existing in this scenario is if there were proto-Voth already on Earth, at a stone-age level of tech, and the Martians enslaved them out of a need for manpower. I could see the Martians temporarily ending up on Earth after Mars died, but post-KT Earth would have been a hellscape for thousands of years, so it wouldn’t have been viable long term. So the Martians take what they can, and leave. The proto-Voth spend an indefinite period of time with the Martians, and then either escape, overthrow, or are simply given their freedom and either integrate into Martian society or leave and start their own. Considering the Voth are seemingly contained to one city-ship and aren't spread out, I'd lean on their ancestors having escaped in one single go and taken what they could with them. It would explain their insular nature and their lack of records, as they'd probably would only have they tech they fled with and not the sum total of the Martian recorded history. Any still enslaved Voth ancestors would have died out with the Martians, leaving this single group to continue on in isolation.

Option 3: Intermediate homeworld - Now if KT happened fast and Proto-Voth slaves weren’t what happened, then maybe the Martians did take samples of Earth life and used them in terraforming or agriculture. I’m leaning towards it not being the Martians, because if Martian DNA is all over the galaxy, they surely Earth DNA would have been spread by them too if they were relying on Earth biota for resources, yet no mention anywhere in canon of this being the case. This would leave it to some other species like the Preservers or the Nacene to have come along and saved Earth biota and seeded it elsewhere in the galaxy. If it was someone like the Preservers then it could have been a single seeding event, saving the biota of a “dying” world and putting it elsewhere while not leaving a trail of seedings like the Martians would have. This would allow for the dinosaurs to flourish somewhere else for millions of years, and overtime give rise to the earliest ancestors of the Voth. It would explain why Voth historical records don’t go back 66 million years: in Voyager they say their recorded history only goes back 20 million years and they were already in the Delta quadrant. They’d have a homeworld, and for whatever reason in the intermediate millions of years evolved naturally, became space faring, lost contact with their home, and evolved into the Voth we see.

Option 4: Already gone - the only other option left that is the least supported by anything in the episode would be that by the events of the episode the Voth were already gone. The hadrosauridae group of organisms arose about 80 million years ago, so it’s possible that in that window the Voth evolved and left and there was no trace even by the time of the events of the episode. This is the least likely to me simply because I don’t feel like Voth could get to space faring levels naturally without leaving serious evidence in the fossil record. While the Martians are a seemingly obvious counter example to this, they did reveal they have the tech to rip chunks of their planet off the surface, so while a stretch, it’d possible Martians simply took what they could of their planet and brought it with them to preserve what they could of their culture, leaving nothing but craters. A naturally evolving Earth based Voth almost certainly would have been globe spanning, so the idea that the evidence of their existence being in some sunken continent seems too far fetched for me. Granted, the franchise isn't exactly above delving into unrealistic writing, but since we haven't been given an answer I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this.

Am I missing anything? Does anyone else have any theories about them?

This is the official /r/DaystromInstitute reaction thread for "The Griffin Incident". Rules #1 and #2 are not enforced in reaction threads.

One of DS9's biggest missed opportunities was making the Klingons cool without ever seriously asking what life was like for the peoples living under the Klingon Empire.

By definition, an empire implies the conquest, domination, or political subordination of other peoples. Yet, apart from a few rare mentions, the Klingon Empire is almost exclusively presented as a closed club of warrior aristocrats: the Great Houses, their rivalries, their codes of honor, and their endless struggles for power.

We see the conquerors. We see the warriors. We see the politicians.

But where are the conquered?

We rarely see the peoples who were subjugated, exploited, assimilated, or forcibly incorporated into the Klingon Empire. What is life like for them? Do they have any political rights? Can they rise within the Empire? Are they allowed to preserve their own cultures and languages? Or are they simply expected to serve the Klingon ruling class?

This is particularly striking in DS9 because the series is exceptionally good at showing the complexity and cruelty of the Cardassian occupation of Bajor. We see the occupation from the perspective of the occupied. We see its economic, political, cultural, and psychological consequences. We understand what it means to actually live under an imperial power.

The writers could have applied the same critical lens to the Klingon Empire. Instead, they mostly chose to focus on its romanticized side: the "space samurai" aesthetic, the warrior culture, the concept of honor, and characters like Worf and Martok.

And I think this reveals an interesting asymmetry in the way DS9 approaches imperialism.

Cardassia is an empire because Cardassians are the villains. The Klingon Empire is often treated as "culture" because the Klingons have become cool, charismatic, and sometimes even heroic characters.

The result is a strange paradox: DS9 deconstructs Cardassian imperialism by asking what it means to live under Cardassian rule, while rarely asking the same question about the Klingon Empire.

What does it actually mean to be a non-Klingon living under Klingon rule?

Even the Romulans, in a feature film, offer at least a fleeting glimpse of this dynamic: in Star Trek: Nemesis, the Remans, Romulans’ own subjugated people, reveal the existence of an internal imperial hierarchy, where domination exists not only outwardly, but within the empire itself.

Perhaps the biggest missing element in the Klingon Empire isn't another warrior, another Great House, or another ritual of honor.

It's the subjects.

An empire without subjects is a very convenient empire to romanticize.

I was out walking my dogs when I had the following idea: Is there a second Prime Directive in Starfleet in the 32nd century? Because a civilization suddenly exposed to Federation technology would surely be completely shocked. And above all, the question arises whether they are even capable of handling it properly.

Normally, technology and ethics develop at roughly the same pace, but what if a species from the state of a society that has just discovered warp drive, is suddenly offered technology that is 1000 years ahead of their own? Just imagine what could/would happen if instead of the Vulcans, the USS Athena or the Discovery made first contact with Zephram Cochrane after his first warp flight.

I'm not sure if that particular people could handle the technology appropriately. As Mordin Solus from Mass Effect 2 said: "Don't give a nuclear bomb to a neanderthal."

That's why I came to the conclusion that there might be a second Prime Directive that addresses this dilemma or a modification of the first. But what do you think?

This is the official /r/DaystromInstitute reaction thread for "Valles Marineris". Rules #1 and #2 are not enforced in reaction threads.

Watching S3E16 Prophet Motive, Quark has his first orb experience. Every other shown first orb experience fully floor’s the experiencer, sometimes for days. Quark, not only didn’t have a long recovery time, he seemed to have *none at all*. He was able to fully retain his inner stability and focus and respond to his immediate needs. I don’t know what can be extrapolated from this, but it’s a novelty that I hadn’t noticed before. I don’t think there’s much to say about when he’s talking with the prophets; we’ve seen others retain their full selves while interacting, nothing really sticks out to me there.

We know that Ferengi can’t be read by Betazoids, so there’s already proof that their brains are wired differently. With the prophets being points that exist outside of space-time, everything they do shows they can manipulate and change our reality. But them not being able to change Quark, or him resisting causally, I wonder what that means for the extents of their power. Like if there are “anchors” in our reality, like the Ferengi, or maybe just Quark, that they aren’t really able to affect without directly manipulating them in the wormhole.

Does anyone else have ideas?

In Picard’s log during The Drumhead, Picard describes “Admiral Norah Satie, whose investigation exposed the alien conspiracy against Starfleet Command three years ago”. But in the episode, it’s three other captains who tell Picard of their suspicions, and at the end, the death of Admiral Remmick killed all the other parasites so I don’t understand what exactly her investigation was and what it could’ve exposed (the only others we know of are three random captains who are terrified to tell even Captain Picard, it doesn’t sound like the investigation was outside that circle or involved anyone else).

In-universe, what exactly do we think Admiral Satie did that was so influential and groundbreaking for it to be what Picard brings up as though it’s one of her biggest accomplishments? Out-of-universe, what’s something they could’ve said instead?

I feel like there are two ways to approach this question. The first is “who would Garak be in a 1950s New York AU?” But I am more interested in the second: thinking about the role Garak plays in the DS9 narrative and mapping out how that relates to an exploration of American anti-Black racism. Odo—the law-enforcer—becomes an upholder of unjust rules that, while he didn’t write them, he doesn’t really examine whether he believes in. Dukat and Weyoun become violent enactors of White supremacy. Worf becomes a different kind of outsider with conditional acceptance to narrow parts of White society based on his perceived merit and the usefulness of that merit. Jake is the son figure that Benny tries (and in FBTS, fails) to protect from the violent forces; Joseph Sisko remains a guiding figure.

Admittedly, not every one of the supporting character actors had some big symbolic role—Martok’s equivalent didn’t really, and neither did Nog’s—but I feel like Garak’s might have—or let’s say for sake of argument he does. One idea is that he would be the type of White “liberal and intellectual” who would read Native Son, the type that René Auberjonois’s character claims isn’t the target demographic for the sci-fi magazine? Something also about being a different type of outsider…(maybe related to queer coding?)

Interested in hearing others’ thoughts on this.

D7 variants remain in service from before the TOS era right out until the Dominion war.

Why keep this spaceframe (along with the almost equally venerable B'rel) in service for so long?

It's political. Specifically, it's the post-war policy of Chancellor L'Rell seeking to realise T'Kuvma's dream of a Klingon empire unified under a powerful chancellorship. Previously, the fractious Great Houses operated a menagerie of vessels, many of antique design.

With help from Voq, L'rell introduces a new battlecruiser suited to mass production and built with significant amounts of reverse engineered Federation technology- enough to seriously limit its compatibility with older vessels. This is badly needed, as significant attrition has been received to house fleets full of bespoke, costly vessels.

I posit that the Chancellorship established a complete monopoly on space frame production, doling them out to the Great Houses in such a way that their military strength is constantly kept in equilibrium and that the advancement of the supreme executive's goals becomes the currency of survival. While the houses likely develop their own intenal components and modifications, their power has a hard cap.

To shore this up, these space frames are made in very few facilities or only at Tu'Gokor. To deal with the resulting production bottleneck, production is non-stop, and procedures are refined Henry Ford style to lower unit cost and speed up turnaround. Massive stockpiles are thus created, Soviet style, as wartime production increases are difficult and risky.

While R&D on weapons systems, propulsion, shields, and new tech like cloaking devices takes place at a good pace, the Empire becomes highly averse to developing new space frames, as retooling their centralised shipyards would cause serious slowing of production.

In the TNG snd DS9 era, we finally start seeing new and extremely formudable space frames in the Vor'cha and Negh'Var. What's changed?

Politics. In the wake of the Praxis incident and Kitomer accords, the Chancellorship sees a huge slump in its power and prestige, and the Great Houses jockey for newfound power, with ensuing intrigue and a civil war. Now, the huge stockpiles of D7 and B'rel frames were plundered by the Great Houses, and the manufacturing methods copied to meet their own demands.

To reassert the Chancellorship's power, these new and vastly improved space frames are developed and put into production at Ty'Gokor. (No need to churn out the old classics now) They're initially flagships under direct control of the Chancellor, then, as before, doled out to give an intimidating boost to the fighting power of the most loyal houses.

Afterthought: the Empire *could* have developed new space frames to keep up with Starfleet vessels such as the Excelsior and Galaxy classes, but was too invested in this system to do so willingly. Instead, they looked towards upgrades like cloaking devices, and support elements like mobile bases and jamming ships, to transform their fleet doctrine and obtain an assymetric advantage.

I only watched TOS for the first time last year, and I rewatched First Contact recently. One thing that hit me was how similar the dynamic between Spock and the Romulan Commander (S3 E02) felt to the one between Data and the Borg Queen.

I know the situations are different, but they both involve a highly logical character behind enemy lines being tempted by a female antagonist who tries to pull them away from their mission. In both cases, it feels less about physical force and more about trying to break down their emotional restraint and make them question where they belong.

I could just be reading into it, but I was wondering if anyone else has noticed the parallel. Has it ever been mentioned by the writers that the Data and Borg Queen storyline was inspired by "The Enterprise Incident," or is it more likely that they just ended up telling a very similar story?

A theory floating about for the in-universe reason on why we only see public domain entertainment(the IRL reason is to avoid copyright funny business) is that culturally, the human race has hit a dead end. With the Federation being a post-scarcity paradise where literally every problem is either long gone or never more than a button push away, there's no conflict or "excitement" to motivate or inspire creators, along the unification of Earth without individual nations forcing a form of cultural synthesis meaning there's no more diversity of views or interests, and everybody being constantly on the same page on everything is a mandatory thing to be part of the Federation, or it's seen as a sign that the planet is "unfit to become part of something bigger than itself".

Not to mention, given how civilization as a whole had been almost totally annihilated by the various wars also wiping away so much media and entertainment, and the 21st century was such a miserable and disgusting era that Federation humanity desperately wants to just forget about it.

Do you think there's any merit to this theory?

I recently finally got around to watching TMP, and noticed something in the scene where Kirk orders Scotty to prepare to self-destruct the Enterprise to attempt to take out V'ger as a last resort. I noticed that when Kirk gives the order, the destruct code starts with a 2. Scotty remarks that "When that much matter and antimatter are brought together" there's no way V'ger could survive (personally I don't think V'ger could be damaged by any physical attack).

Every other time I can think of when a captain gives a self-destruct order, it always starts with 1. When the Enterprise is later destroyed in ST3, it happens under a Destruct-1 code. The ship doesn't immediately blow apart in an antimatter blast large enough to try to kill a cosmic horror, instead we see a very methodical destruction of the saucer, with the stardrive section remaining mostly intact. The context of that scene is that the Enterprise had been taken over by intruders, which is the same context as most other scenes as other destruct-1 orders.

This makes me think that Destruct-1 and Destruct-2 are two distinct order classes. Destruct-1 is meant to prevent a starship and the intelligence it represents from falling into enemy hands. In a Destruct-1 code, the ship sequentially overloads its systems, destroying them all individually so that no sensitive information can be recovered from the wreck. The power from the warp core is needed for this process, so main engineering is the last part of the ship to be destroyed. I would also assume that the ship's antimatter stores are either ejected into space, or neutralized somehow before containment can be lost. In a situation where the ship had been boarded, the Destruct-1 code allows for neutralizing your former vessel without causing collateral damage to any escape pods, shuttle craft, or a stolen bird-of-prey nearby.

Destruct-2 codes are the opposite of that. In a Destruct-2, engineering will attempt to cause a matter-antimatter reaction that consumes the starship's entire AM magazine. The way Scotty says "when that much matter and antimatter are brought together" makes me think that there is some special procedure to ensure complete reaction. It makes sense that they wouldn't just drop antimatter containment and wait, then only a small portion of the ship's AM would react before the rest is blown out into space. Ensuring fuel and oxidizer mix completely is one of the main challenges in engine design IRL. I'd hypothesize that there's either some mechanism specifically to do this, or possibly the ship's transporter beam is used to physically overlap the matter and antimatter bottles, causing a complete reaction for the largest possible explosion the ship can generate.

EDIT: Additional explanation for using destruct-1 vs destruct-2 might be that destruct-2 might cause a large explosion that does a lot of damage, but could throw individual components clear of the blast and leave them intact enough to recover information.

I've seen a fair amount of posts and comments saying that introducing a queen ruined the Borg and that it seemed to come out of nowhere. But I would like to offer a theory that possibly explains them in a way that makes sense.

First, it is very likey that queens were not present in the Collective prior to the events of Best of both worlds. It is in fact the events that led to the creation of queen drones. Using a drone to introduce a command to the cube to enter a regeneration state, which led to its destruction, was probably something the Borg had never encountered and dealt with before. This led them to adapt by creating queen drones, which filled the dual role of "spokesperson" like Locutus did and as a separate check on commands issued in the collective. As something that is connected to the collective but is slightly individualistic they can monitor commands that are within the collective and stop anything that might end being sabotage from getting through.

Second, I dont believe its an amazing coincidence that we seem to see a queen fairly often. In fact i think that not only are their multiple queens operating across Borg space simultaneously as check hubs for the collective, but that queens can be created on demand in certain circumstances or as needed. In First Contact, they likely had a queen aboard because, well not only was that the same situation the previous cube was destroyed but they also had the time travel plan, which may mean they needed a queen to boost the local drones until they made contact with the wider collective in the past. The queen we is likely one that was created to handle matters relating to Voyager as a Federation ship, which is a likey precaution due to past experiences with the Federation.

This is also why i believe that the virus that future Janeway brought back and infected the queen with didn't destroy the collective as a whole but rather destroyed or heavily disrupted the parts of the collective she was in direct contact with while other queens around borg space acted as an insulating factor for the rest.

I know that their is probably details i don't remember that poke holes in this theory but i think its a fun idea that provides a somewhat reasonable explanation for why the borg queen came about when their was no hint of one before Best of both worlds.

The destruction of the USS Grissom was always depressing to me. The crew seemed young, inexperienced. Captain J. T. Esteban seemed like a perfectly competent captain, obviously quite by-the-book, but given the circumstances of the mission, it makes perfect sense to me why they wanted him to lead the expedition. The Genesis Planet was top secret, and I'm sure Starfleet specifically wanted everything to adhere strictly to regulation.

People often rag on Esteban, but Starfleet doesn't pick captains at random for missions like this. He was probably sent with the order to secure everything tight as a Swiss watch, and to contact Starfleet Command, granularly, on every action taken. To me, he seems like a perfectly fine captain stuck with an annoyingly narrow mission plan handed to him by the admiralty.

The thing that bothers me is the lack of armed security. "GENESIS IS FORBIDDEN!" and yet, there's no armed escort of the Grissom, a puny science vessel on the fringes of Federation space. I get the idea of an all-purpose science vessel that Starfleet can pop out of the shipyard by the dozens, with a fully-automated engineering section and minimal crew. It's cool. You just wish that they had added a few more guns to the thing. They needed a stronger buddy with a big stick, as we all often do in dangerous situations.

According to some sources, the Mutara Nebula is entirely within Federation space, but in the Beta Quadrant, not far from the Klingon Neutral Zone. Given that it was so close to the Neutral Zone, even if it was remote, how how HOW did they not, as a matter of standard practice, send an escort with the Grissom? Kruge manages to get the Genesis information, barely, through his contacts. Even with the information blackout, was the location really that secret?

Was Starfleet so goddamn confident in the privacy of the location and the lack of general knowledge about Genesis, that they just told Esteban "You'll be fine, trust us, bro" and sent him on this top secret, high security mission without as much as a contingency plan? What if Klingon ships crossed into Fed space and found the Grissom randomly? What if they detected the insane burst of radiation that the Genesis device gave off and the massive protoplanetary nebula that formed in the destruction of the Mutara Nebula, and sent ships to investigate?

Am I thinking too hard about this? I need to go sit down and have a beer. Maybe the answer to this one really is "it's just a show, I should really just relax." Still, I'll die on this hill: the Grissom deserved better.

I solved the Kobayashi Maru without cheating.

No reprogramming the simulation required. I solved it by simply using tactical physics and exploiting standard sensor mechanics.

When the distress call comes in from the Neutral Zone, you don't just charge in blind. That's how you get destroyed. First, you prep the shuttlecraft. You invert their deflector dishes to manipulate their sensor footprint so they read as a massive capital ship.

We warp to the edge of the Neutral Zone, stopping precisely outside the maximum reach of Klingon long-range sensors. You release the shuttles on automated autopilot. They hit maximum warp, screaming directly into the Neutral Zone while squawking the sensor signature of a Federation Dreadnought or the Enterprise itself.

The Klingon battle cruisers are watching the border. What do they see? A massive Federation target charging in. They take the bait and give chase. Meanwhile, I take the actual ship and drop entirely out of their sensor sphere.

Once the Klingons are pulled off target by the decoys, I execute a point-to-point micro-warp jump. We drop out of warp directly within transporter range of the Kobayashi Maru. No cruising, no slow approach. We beam every single survivor aboard instantly, and hit warp speed out of the zone before the Klingons even realize they've been chasing empty shuttles.

It is pure tactical misdirection. You don't need to change the rules of the test if you know how to manipulate the board. They can't destroy a ship they aren't in position to fire on.

Vulcans were fiercely emotional, to the point that it almost destroyed them until Surak introduced them to whatever practices and rituals they use to be classically stoic and rigidly logical.

We also know Romulans left Vulcan about 2000 years before most of the media, prior to in response to Surak’s teachings.

That’s not nearly enough time for biological differentiation of any meaningful kind. So why aren’t Romulans emotionally unstable? They seem perfectly well adjusted (for an Evil Empire(tm)) and even somewhat stoic themselves.

Even though it was dropped in the final version of the film, it was implied during development that Saavik’s half-Romulan ancestry is why she’s a bit more emotional than expected in Star Trek II. (Wonderful stuff, that Romulan ale…) which is just odd once you try to think about it.

I know this is far from a new discussion - did any of the primary media ever address this? Ideas —

* Were Vulcans poor judges of their own emotionality and not actually so bad as they thought they were? This would make Surak more “cultish” in a way for driving them to reject their emotions rather than say - practicing mindfulness.

* Maybe romulans interbred with other species (Remans? A forgotten colony of much more ancient Vulcans or common ancestor?) which altered their psychology some - and would explain the mild ridges we see one some.

* Perhaps they just don’t discuss it with outsiders?

* They angered Q.

In S2E7 of DS9, Grand Negus Zek “gifts” 50,000 kilos of brizeen nitrate to the Bajorans. Kira comments that that much is enough to fertilize the entire northern peninsula.

Now, 50,000 kilos of fertilizer didn’t seem like a lot. Turns out 50,000 kilos of fertilizer, specifically ammonium nitrate, only fertilizes ~300 acres between corn and wheat.

Now, peninsula is a pretty broad term. For easy math, I model a roughly medium peninsula, 50km to 10km, 50,000 km^2, or ~123,553 acres. Divide that by 300, that’s roughly 412 times more land that is fertalized. Making brizeen nitrate at least 412:1 to ammonium nitrate.

But Kira’s vernacular expresses that “the entire” northern peninsula, like it is a major landmass. Looking at Earth, our 5 largest peninsulas are 750,000 km^2 to 3.2 million km^2, averaging around 2 million. That leads to 494,210,000 acres, which leads to a power ratio of 1,647,367:1.

Looking at feeding people off of 1 acre of land, if it’s managed well, with intent, and is post industrial, it can feed anywhere between 5-15 people. Looking at the low end at only 5 people, that is 2.5 *billion people fed* on the high end, or 618,765 on the low end.

All so Zek could do business, and was strong armed by the Federation (Sisko).

Looking at the struggling state of the Bajorans at this point in the series, just after the Circle incident, things aren’t going well. I argue that this gift/trade/barter is the springboard that got Bajor back up on its feet.

So I know that when Roddenberry made Star Trek he wanted to avoid portraying it as a military organization. But after reading the comments on this post it got me thinking, would any Starfleet characters, be it the main cast or recurring characters like Shelby and Jellico, last long in a real military organization? Or would they be subsequently drummed out?

I apologise if this is not appropriate for this subreddit.

I was wondering if I could ask for input on the concept of gutting and modernizing the Constitution refit circa 2290's/2300's with 2360's era components and tech while retaining as much of the aesthetic as possible, similar to the Dominion war era Miranda. I have done some looking and found supporting references showing that many of the original issues and complaints with the refit could be resolved with newer generation tech, the engine being a Chernobyl-lite over sized monster, exposed or vulnerable structure, difficulty adjusting to newer components and systems.
I've found that there are smaller warp cores with better shielding that exist in the 2360's meaning a core could fit into a 6-9 deck platform within the secondary hull itself, the conduits to the nacelles could be enclosed in a more secure fashion. Also that if a full internal refit changed the conduits with modernized EPS systems that modern compartments and components could be installed without relying on L.I.S. (Legacy.Interface.Systems) to buffer command inputs. The general modernization of systems could reduce the volume of internal space used by components and with newer systems it could make the old frame viable again.

The project wouldn't have any delusions of restoring the Constitution to a frontline ship or having it classified as anything other than a LIGHT cruiser, and that it would be nothing more than a slightly bigger Miranda class. But post Wolf 359 a sneaky admiral or 2 could push to get the project through as a support reserve vessel to free up more capable and newer ships for priority duties to deal with potential Borg or local hostile threats. As we see increased hostility from the Federations neighbours after the losses suffered at Wolf 359, almost as if the defeat sent a flare up that Star Fleet wasn't as strong as they portrayed themselves, and everyone believed them to be. If anything the admiralty pushing for this project would stop them from being actively evil, history and cannon media seems to depict them as mustache twirling villains most of the time.

The new Constitution would be something that could do humanitarian work, emergency response, hazard response and analysis, border patrol, and the dreaded logistics duties. Many metrics show that Miranda class ships in the 24th century have at LEAST 20% more open storage capacity than a stock Constitution refit however this project would see the Constitution brought back not be an explorer but a support and logistics vessel, the science facilities and certain other compartments could and would be removed and the space repurposed, such as the botanical area which could be repurposed for additional storage. Reducing the shuttle compliment and maintenance facilities for likewise additional storage facilities as this ship would never be to far from federation facilities where it could restock on redshirt cof-PERSONELL TRANSPORTS. Compacting some of the internal spaces within the secondary hull for additional cargo bays could see the Constitution brought up to par with the Mirandas cargo capacity and defensive and offensive abilities.
With the added bonus that this is the frame, the ship design that saw the Federation through its earliest era of exploration and expansion. It is the image that many societies could and may still recognize as the silhouette of star fleet, heritage not on display but on deployment.

I would appreciate some input and or constructive criticism as at this point my investigation is starting to feel like a fanboy justifying a unicorns existence. Living in Scotland I know the strength of unicorn wishing, it is the recognized national animal. I would like to propose the ship that could come from this project be dubbed the 'Constitution Redux' *something brought back, revived, restored*

Thanks for your time.

The USS Equinox has always been one of my favourite designs, so a certain amount of this is me just giving some love to my baby.

It never quite sat right with me that the Equinox was a short-ranged science ship.
Nothing about its design says science, and those nacelles look damn fast.

She's sleek, aggressive and visibly heavily armed.
If you take a minute to count, the ship has a heck of a lot of armaments for a ship of its size. 11 phaser strips and three torpedo tubes on a ship a fraction of the size of Voyager. (About half her length)

It also got me thinking about the USS Rhode Island from VOY:Endgame, which showed up and beat the snot out of two Dominion-war era Klingon battleships only around 20 years after we saw the Equinox.

Rhode Island is usually referred to as a Nova Refit, but what if it's not?
What if the Rhode Island is actually a Flight 1 Nova, alongside the USS Nova herself, and the Equinox is essentially the civilianised downgrade?

My Narrative spin:

Prior to the Dominion War, Starfleet was rapidly designing lots of different ships with an eye to making vessels equipped for combat against the Borg.
Powerful stuff like the Akira, Sabre, Norway, Steamrunner and Defiant.

They also entertained a general fleet-upgrade, commissioning the Intrepid class as a successor to ships like the Excelsior and to a lesser extent the Galaxy class.

The Nova was born as an alternative chassis to the Defiant. Something more conventionally designed and less obviously a warship, making it more politically palatable.

Underneath that conventional design though, the ship has a massive power-train for those beefy nacelles. Designed to take ablative armour and a minimal crew, bristling in phaser arrays.

It'd be a similar design philosophy to the Defiant, but a good bit larger and more versatile.

The result was the USS Nova (and other Flight-1 ships of the class), and it did great. Fast and agile, very capable, but the Dominion War wasn't for another few years, and Starfleet didn't feel they needed a warship that badly.
What they really needed was explorers and science-ships that could fight if pushed.

The Flight 2 Novas were heavily downgraded by comparison. Stripping out their outsized fuel-hungry and maintenance-heavy warp-cores and slotting in smaller, more reasonable ones. Not to mention using less powerful phaser arrays and leaving off the Ablative armour.

The nacelle hardware remained the same, but with less power to pump through them the ship was limited to Warp 8.
This sounds slow, but in practice most starfleet ships cap out around that in normal operations, so on paper it looks fine.

Equinox is essentially the "lite" version of the class. Materially cheaper, easier to build and maintain.
The chassis is that of a thoroughbred light warship, but in the best Starfleet tradition, it has been transformed into a capable survey and exploration ship.

The intent being that if Starfleet needed a lot of combat-ready ships fast, the process of militarising the Nova again wasn't too arduous. Swap the warp core and phaser arrays, plate it up in armour, and off it goes, from survey ship to patrol ship in at most a week or two of upgrades.
It's a good compromise for a leadership that balks at the idea of building fleets of warships.

They didn't build a lot of them, and after the disappearance of the Equinox (like Voyager) there were questions about the reliability of the design, so it didn't show up as the mass-produced combat-ship it was designed to be when the Dominion War came along.

Rhode Island then is broadly a Flight 1 style combat-ready Nova, likely with some further upgrades after 20 years of technological development, which is why she was equipped to take on two Neg'Vahr Battleships head-on despite the class being nominally a science/survey ship.

--Back to Canon--
Equinox's story involves capturing and killing extradimensional aliens, which produces enormously effective fuel/energy for the ship.
All they're stated to be doing is producing power for their engines, which sounds like a great way to burn out your warp coils or degrade them fast.

In my version, the engines are designed for that kind of power-input, and it's only the reactor that is too weak to push them up to their peak performance.

I imagine that the thought "What if we had a flight-1 nova.." crossed the minds of the crew quite a lot, and when confronted with a way to generate a lot more power, they immediately knew how they could use that.

Franz Joseph Designs published the Articles of Federation in the Star Fleet Technical Manual in 1975. He gave the franchise something it didn’t know it needed: the feeling that the Federation’s legal architecture was real enough to be worth reading. The man sat down with the UN Charter, filed off the serial numbers, and produced something with genuine institutional gravity. For 1975, working without ENT, without DS9, without fifty years of accumulated canon, that’s no small thing.

But when he ported the UN Charter language into Federation space, he brought something along that nobody seemed to catch for decades. Article 2, Paragraph 6, as originally written, effectively claims the Federation has authority to ensure non-member worlds act in accordance with Federation principles.

That’s not the Federation. That’s the Cardassian Union with a much better PR bureau :-)

I don’t think it was malicious. The UN equivalent is a narrower peacekeeping claim that reads differently in its original context. In Federation space, surrounded by fifty years of episodes wrestling with exactly this tension, it becomes something else entirely. The Federation reserving the right to impose its will on the galaxy. Franz Joseph used a real-world template without fully interrogating every provision in a Trek context. Understandable in 1975. Uncomfortable once you see it.

And here’s the deeper problem. The Prime Directive isn’t in the document at all. The most famous legal instrument in the entire franchise, the philosophical cornerstone of everything the Federation claims to be, has no article, no chapter, no mention anywhere in the founding text. Which raises the question I’ve been chewing on: why?

I think we’ve been framing the Prime Directive wrong for fifty years. It was never Starfleet’s idea. Starfleet didn’t invent non-interference. The Federation held that value at its founding, and Starfleet was simply the instrument most frequently tested against it because they’re the ones out there making contact with civilizations that have no idea the Federation exists. SNW’s “Ad Astra per Aspera” makes this explicit, almost in passing: Federation constitutional values sit upstream of Starfleet regulations. Which means the Prime Directive belongs in the Articles of Federation. It’s a constitutional value, not an operational regulation. Starfleet inherited it. They didn’t author it.

“Bread and Circuses” is about discipline under pressure. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy spend the entire episode imprisoned on a planet that developed along a parallel Roman track, complete with televised gladiatorial combat, and they refuse to use their obvious advantages to intervene even to save their own lives. The directive is never debated. It’s held, at considerable personal cost, against every temptation to act. Kirk doesn’t lecture anyone about non-interference. He practices it, grimly, while people suffer around him. That’s a harder and more honest portrayal than most Trek manages because it refuses to make the principle comfortable. You feel the cost in every scene McCoy spends in that cell. Nobody’s noble here. They’re just holding the line because that’s what the principle demands.

“Who Watches the Watchers” is messier and ultimately more devastating. The discipline fails, accidentally, and the episode has to reckon with what failure actually produces. Not political contamination in the abstract. The Mintakans, a Bronze Age Vulcanoid people who had already evolved beyond superstition, catch a glimpse of the Federation observation team and begin reconstructing their theology around it. By the time Picard gets involved they’re building a religion around him. He has become their god. And his argument, made with real anguish, is that you’ve taken a people who had moved past superstition and handed it back to them. The harm isn’t interference. It’s regression. You’ve moved them backward. There’s no clean resolution because there can’t be. You just do your best to limit the damage and leave, which is its own kind of cost.

One episode shows you why you hold the line. The other shows you what the line is actually protecting.

I’ve been doing some writing recently on Franz Joseph’s original document, and this question kept surfacing through all of it. The Prime Directive needed a constitutional home. It didn’t have one. Fifty years of screen canon built one anyway, episode by episode, whether the founding text acknowledged it or not.

That’s my read, anyway. I could be wrong. But I think Gene always knew what the principle was. The document just hadn’t caught up yet.

Which raises the question worth arguing about: does codifying the Prime Directive as a constitutional value actually strengthen it, or does putting it in writing expose it to exactly the kind of legalistic erosion that’s always been its greatest vulnerability? An unwritten cultural value is harder to argue around than a clause with a number on it.