What's the worst non-canon decision in the history of Trek?

I always felt that one was a bit problematic. If these dolphins are indeed Cetacean Ops, than it means that people are allowed to go to Cetacean Ops for no reason but to gawk at the dolphins as they do their jobs. Which sounds unbelievably messed up. These dolphins are members of the crew doing jobs specific to the function of the ship. Yet, people who otherwise have no business being there are allowed to go hang out and gawk at the dolphins as they do their jobs? Geordi wouldn't tolerate someone showing up in engineering just to gawk at everyone doing their jobs there. Dr. Crusher wouldn't tolerate someone hanging out in sickbay who wasn't staff or in need of medical attention. Picard or Riker wouldn't tolerate anyone on the bridge who had no business being there. So why is behavior that's frowned on everywhere else on the ship allowed in Cetacean Ops?

It's only gotten worse with Lower Decks actually stating people on the Cerritos go for swims in Cetacean Ops for recreation.

 

^ I'm sure if the dolphins objected to any of this, Starfleet would take steps to accommodate them.

 

Dolphins are exhibitionists. That's actually the whole reason they go into space, so they can be seen. Have you ever seen one wearing clothes?

 

Ideally (or, at least, somewhat less problematically), a starship would have dedicated "water corridors" like the ones on seaQuest DSV where cetacean (and Xindi-Aquatic and so forth) crewmembers could have free (or, at least, somewhat less restrictive) access.

 

Ishan Anjar being a Bajoran collaborator with the Cardassians and having a fake identity. I feel like that was a weird "get out of portraying the Federation badly" versus an actually nativist politician who oversteps the line.

 

Personally, I’m okay with that one specific example, but I’d have liked more examination of the fallout of the Dominion War and subsequent crises creating a Starfleet that defaults to military responses, the fleet that was perfectly willing to just accept him without question, exploring the questions of who and what Starfleet IS in the wake of so much combat that there are roughly twenty years worth of officers forged through combat, rather than exploration.

One of those stories we lose out on getting because of the Litverse wrapping up.

 

Someone measured the interior in Season 2 by eyeball and the estimated size based of the turbolifts and it does barely fit in the secondary hull. But the Season 3 one appears to be way bigger than Season 2's.

A diagram from a Season 2 artbook had a big space in the secondary hull labelled as a 'Systems Hub', I assume that was the art team trying to justify it

https://twitter.com/Captain_Revo/status/1330249231567876100

 

Maybe cetacean ops has a holographic system so the dolphins have miles of open water to swin in.

 

Excellent point. Dolphins are extremely social, playful beings. It's why we get along so well with them -- we're both social species by nature, and we need community and interaction.

Although, really, in that case you'd think you'd see dolphins participating more fully in shipboard life overall, instead of being segregated to their little corner of the ship where people have to come to them. Someone above mentioned water corridors like Darwin had in SeaQuest. There's also Hwiii's approach from Diane Duane's Dark Mirror, an antigrav hoversuit for "swimming" through the air. (I think the dolphins in Brin's Uplift series had something similar, though I haven't read it in a while.)

 

This is going to be a weird complaint and is by no means a reflection on the authors:

The fact we never got a Turkana IV novel about Tasha Yar's backstory. I think that place is probably one of the most fascinating in the entirety of the Federation and would have loved to have seen a description how an idealistic Federation world can just so utterly fail.

It's why I liked DRASTIC MEASURES where we get pretty much another image of a fascist coup in an otherwise Feddie world.

 

The novel Survivors went into Yar's backstory, but not Turkana IV's.

 

Yep. As i already mentioned before, it was one of the greatest mistakes during the time of the now ending novelverse to never have done anything with Turkana IV and instead have this planet erased by the Borg during the Destiny arc.

 

I hope we don’t see the turbolift funhouse in Strange New Worlds.

 

I fully expect someone to do a STRANGE NEW WORLDS novel that says, "The Boralleium-Ion energy of the Turbolift shaft had a weird vertigo-inducing effect that caused many viewers to hallucinate a vast labyrinth of steel and pipes."

 

Do we know if it's the same VFX guys?

To be honest I find it amusing. They're hitting us over the head with THIS STUFF DOESN'T MATTER but we never listen.

 

Its a funny experience watching Deep Space Nine with my wife and having to explain so often, "The transporters were made so they didn't have to use shuttles as they were more expensive"