Mechanically augmented. Maybe human, maybe Alien. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Airiam#Background_information
It's the 23rd Century version of body modifications like tats and piercings. Airiam is one of the cool kids.
I wonder if the actor change will be figured into this somehow? If not deliberately, then at least so that the character's height and pose changing will feel perfectly natural for any <insert true nature of Airiam here>. Timo Saloniemi
Here we go, new article for Episode 2 http://trekcore.com/blog/2019/01/star-trek-discovery-canon-connections-new-eden/
Given Pike was on the list of the "Greatest Federation Captains" that Saru called up in Season One; I'd say that was a bad assumption on your part.
Contrary to popular belief, Pike did not communicate through beeps due to his injuries. Rather, fed up having to listen to his captain mouthing off about women on the bridge or talking wistfully of Orion Slave Girls, Dr. Boyce developed a filtering device which would detect every time Pike was about to say something sexist or ignorant and render it into a series of beeps.
I always figured the long duration missions were just a side effect of distances covered. Even if you're moving at 1000+ times the speed of light (maxed out warp TOS) from one area to the next with consistency it could take months just to get from one place to another. That excluding things like stopping for science and contacts which only add more time to the journey. So 5 years sounds pretty average for exploratory travel. So yeah, I more than agree that by and large most Captains over a long period of service probably see more of nothing than anything at all. Hence why Kirk getting to do so much in the average span of time makes his mission so impressive.
Yet Kirk got from A to B in story time easily enough. So nothing much supports the 1000 c speed limit or the idea that long stretches of time would separate planetside adventures. Possibly he just chanced upon more interesting planets than most. He does seem to get the oddest of errands, no doubt beneath the dignity of dedicated warfighters and scientists both. It's a somewhat separate issue that there does seem to be a 1000 lightyears per year limit, even though the ships can move a hundred times faster than that at the very least. It's just the difference between what you can maintain for a short while, and what causes an unholy whine from the engine room, typically to a Scotch cadence. I'm glad they never suggested a warp factor to go with Pike's travel time estimate. Kirk's Warp 2 was a perfectly fine interstellar speed, and might have sufficed for the 50,000 ly per 150 yrs performance. And Burnham's ship has never been attributed with a top speed in warp factors. ...FWIW, the vessel has flown at two warp speeds so far: "maximum warp" and "Warp 5", the latter commanded by Lorca as a stalling maneuver when commanded away from Pahvo and to SB 46, and then by Pike for hopping to the first Red Thing. It doesn't sound likely that Warp 5 would be the maximum, then, but for all we know, it still could be. Timo Saloniemi
I think it's believable that there were no transfers while they were away during the war. 203 isn't actually from Memory Alpha. I think the only canon is that Pike said he was responsible for 203 lives. I guess you could argue Pike wasn't including himself, and there were 204 to begin with.
I'm thinking now, if we want to reconcile 'The Cage' with the rest of canon Pike's portrayal now (done excellently by Anson Mount), we just have to assume that Pike was having a REALLY bad day after that Rigel mission, which caused him to say out-of-character things like denigrating women on the bridge and considering to become an Orion slaver. He probably apologized off-screen after the episode was over. If that's not enough, I wouldn't put it past the Talosians to be telepathically manipulating Pike to be repelled by all the women on his ship so that Orion women (aka illusionary Vina) would be more appealing to him.
They met and made peaceful first contact with the First Federation, which ultimately resulted in approximately doubling both the size of the Federation and the number of advanced star-fairing species in it? (Not entirely canon, but doesn't contradict canon, either. ) I seem to recall that the Vulcans had ships capable of Warp 7 in the 2150s, they just weren't sharing that tech with Earth. It seems fairly unlikely to m that they haven't either shared that tech or had it copied by the clever spies and engineers of other Federation member worlds by 100 years later...
It's the tranya. Kirk's 5 year mission is historic because it introduced tranya to the Federation. That's all there is to it.
Or you know, just consider that this show is written in the 21st century and not the 1960s. There doesn't need to be an in-universe explanation for his casual misogyny.
How do we know we won't get one regardless? They will go to Talos in Discovery, https://www.newsweek.com/star-trek-...-villain-races-talosians-captain-pike-1160846 , and I wouldn't be surprised if they make an offhand comment that Pike was telepathically manipulated by Talosians the first time he visited their planet. A mind control retcon placed during 'The Cage' would clean up Pike's character tremendously. As for the "accept the show was written in the 1960s", people used that excuse for over 30 years regarding TOS Klingons, and the Star Trek producers still ended up providing an explanation on Enterprise with the augment virus. So there's already a history of Trek retconning and explaining stuff, even if the real world explanation for said stuff was that it was made in the 1960s.