Having come to this fine website seeking after a place to post my Dreams/High Concepts/Crackpot Theories relating to STAR TREK in all its forms somewhere they would not risk giving a certain long-suffering author potential headaches, this seems as good a time and place as any to start a thread dedicated to my own little ideas on and for the setting. Should anyone like to post their own Pet Theories here, please feel free to do so.
Alright, here are a few thoughts to start with:- -: Q briefly contemplated getting in good & early with his first Trial of Humanity, but was persuaded and/or tricked into sparing NX-01 his attentions through the sterling efforts of 'Crewman Daniels' (That's 'Daniels' story and he's fully prepared to stick with it when asked - whether its actually True remains another question entirely). -: Mr Chekov remains truly disappointed his solution to the Problems of Ekos was dismissed out of hand; after all a Great Patriotic War did the job once and it's not as thought the Universe NEEDS more Nazis. -: Betazoids and Deltans get along so smoothly they enjoy a Special Relations that sometimes seems less like a friendship and more like an extended family; romantic relationships between members of these two species still tend to be quite rare, despite Betazoids being rather better able to absorb Deltan mojo than most (Jokes based on far-fetched reasons for this peculiarity are highly likely to result from any meeting between members of these two species). -: At least one Deltan has served with a Vulcan-majority crew; Deltans make surprisingly good counsellors for Vulcans suffering Pon Far, but are more than a little disconcerted (and a little terrified) by a species with such phenomenal psychic powers coupled to such intimidating Restraint & unpredictable Passion. -: Tellarites LOVE bacon, but not all of them quite understand why Earthlings tend to find this hilarious or vaguely-disturbing. -: USS Archimedes (the vessel from which Lieutenant Georgiou descended to pick up the younger Saru) was a ship of the Einstein-class (i.e. a sister ship to USS Kelvin, NCC-0514). -:The Starfleet vessel which made First Contact with the Bolians was served by a majority-Andorian crew; jokes about "Blue on Blue Diplomacy" naturally abounded. -: Christopher Pike's old Number One and Nurse Christine Chapel met when the Admiral made a brief return visit to her old assignment; they were rather amused by reactions to their strong physical resemblance, appeared oddly familiar with each other and absolutely refused to be sidetracked by Doctor McCoy's less than subtle efforts to cater to his own curiosity. -: Mr Worf, a Klingon so determined to hold onto his birth-heritage that he spent most of his life refusing to eat Human food, a sentient who spent so much time over the years planning THE Big Klingon Wedding that he prowled about giddy as a schoolboy when he got the chance to stage one, a Klingon so dedicated to embracing his birth-culture that he preferred to sleep on the Defiant for the sake of blasting Klingon Opera at a volume at its proper, terrifying volume, knows every song from FIDDLER ON THE ROOF off by heart. He has never, ever been heard to sing them by any of his crew-mates but stage managed the HECK out of a production on NCC-1701-Es holodeck. -: The reason DISCOVERY-era Klingons walked around with shaven heads during Season 1 (and the era of Klingon history prior to that period) was purely to rub their ridgeless relations' noses in their own deformity by flaunting their own proud crags & pinnacles (rumours that these features were surgically-enhanced for bragging rights abound). -: On being asked by later and more sober generations (Klingon & Starfleet alike) how on Kronos they could wear such flamboyantly overblown couture, Warriors of the DISCO-generation uniformly reply "With STYLE." -: The Mascot of Starfleet Academy (Earth) is, always has been and could only ever be a beagle: The current incumbent, Trip the Ninth, was recently rescued from a misadventure involving peanut butter, several peculiar distortions of the space-time continuum and the Kreetassan Ambassador's prize cactus. -: Deltans find shore-leave on Risa frustrating in roughly the same way as the average adult does a trip to Disneyland. -: Cadet James T. Kirk is one of the few cadets in his generation to have heard about Cadet Sylvia Tilly's storied loquaciousness more often than he ever heard it in person; apparently she found his tendency to walk around like a stack of books with legs too reassuring to prompt her customary nervous eloquence. Jokes that anyone who could miss one of Cadet Tilly's legendary bouts of rambling through the Power of Study would probably need a hearing aid to function at his peak as a captain remained current for a surprisingly long time after the disappearance of NCC-1031. -: The Federation/Cardassian War of the mid-24th Century was never a War to the Knife, but more like an extended campaign of raid, counter-insurgency, skulduggery, single-ship actions, manoeuvring, posturing and diplomatic table-thumping; quite frankly both sides were more interested in staking their claim, defending their claim, defending their own people and ousting their rivals with a minimum of collateral damage to their own side to REALLY go at it. -: Garth of Izar was a pillar of the Starfleet war effort during the painful, nine month absence of USS Discovery; his efforts and those of his peers weren't enough to win the War, but they kept the Federation a going concern and Starfleet a 'fleet in being' denying the Great Houses their chance to settle the war with a single, decisive stroke before NCC-1031 did just that with a 'Hail Mary' play (Speaking of which, Mr Benedict Cumberbatch would have made a pretty darned good Garth of Izar - and Kevlar Garth, when not in his right mind, makes a horribly plausible recruit to Section 31). -: 'Faith of the Heart' was one of the biggest popular hits of 2051 (spurred by its instant association with the launch of NX-01 and the sentiments driving it); everyone got thoroughly sick of it, but survivors of that crew and that era still found themselves absent-mindedly singing the d*** song almost a century later. Its inclusion in documentaries depicting the career of the first Enterprise remains all but mandatory to this day.
My theory -- Ensign Sito is still alive; Ben recruited her into Section 31 behind Picard's / Riker's backs and subsequently staged her death.
One of my favourite things to do when whiling away an hour or two with STAR TREK is to work up starship names (in fact names rather fascinate me whether I make them up myself or not and the spotting of especially interesting ones is something of a hobby - and being able to uncover an especially amusing one is a particular delight!). With that in mind, here follow some suggestions for the names of starships in various classes (in no particular order):- CHALLENGER-CLASS: USS Albatross, USS Galathea, USS Valdivia, USS Siboga. CENTAUR-CLASS (Named for legendary centaurs & for various famed riding peoples of History; bonus points if the name of a people is also the same of a horse breed!): USS Andalusian, USS Arabian, USS Cossack, USS Chiron, USS Mongol, USS Parthian, USS Sagittarius, USS Vaquero. CHEYENNE-CLASS: USS Seneca, USS Iroquois, USS Chinook, USS Cherokee. FREEDOM-CLASS (Named for 'Freedom' in various languages, including the extraterrestrial): USS Eleuthera, USS Freiheit, USS Libertad, USS Liberté. NEW ORLEANS-CLASS (Named for 'Delta Cities' around the world ... and doubtless beyond): USS Alexandria, USS Macapo, USS Rotterdam, USS Guangzhou. NIAGARA-CLASS (Named for various peninsulas of historic interest): USS Anatolia, USS Crimea, USS Florida, USS Italia, USS Iberia, USS Kamchatka, USS Korea, USS Labrador, USS Sinai, USS Shanghai, USS Yucatan. SPRINGFIELD-CLASS: USS Independence, USS Canton, USS Atlanta, USS Columbia.
I also have an odd theory that the best name for the Hiawatha-type medical frigate would be the Methuselah-class; I like the idea of a hospital ship-class being named for a figure most famous for dying of extreme old age (an optimistic bit of reassurance, if you will) and one could argue that while Hiawatha was the Founding Father of a nation, Methuselah was a grandfather of nations (through Noah - yes, THAT Noah - his grandson). This rather lends itself to the idea of Methuselah-class vessels being named for Legendary forebears - the Mothers & Fathers, Grandmothers & Grandfathers of Great Peoples - and if you follow this thread of mine for long enough you will come to know that I love themes only slightly less than the average self-respecting Batman villain ... On a more serious note, since we never (to my knowledge) see a Hospital ship in THE ORIGINAL SERIES of STAR TREK or even in any of the films based on that crew, it's amusing to imagine the Methuselah-class quietly soldiering on in the background in somewhat the same way that the Excelsior- and Miranda-classes appear to have done.
This seems as good a place as any to wish a Very Happy New Year and a Blessed New Year to my fellow STAR TREK fans on this website; I'm currently contemplating a brief article outlining my ideas for the USS Hrumog (aka the 'Tellarite Enterprise' mentioned in RISE OF THE FEDERATION: A Choice of Futures), but have only just decided on what format to use for their registry. On an unrelated note, I have just been reminded that one would really love to see Ms. Jennifer Morrison play a gender-flipped Captain Kirk (Kelvin-verse or elsewhere), an idea that occurred to me after reading a Kelvin-verse comic in which James T. & crew met their counterparts from Universe-63 and refuses to leave!
Looking up MEMORY BETA there would appear to be two prefixes to Tellarite registry numbers:- -: TCC 'Tellarite Construction Contract' -: TSC 'Tellarite Star Cruiser' For future reference my working theory is that 'TSC-' is a the prefix given to purpose-built ships of the line, while 'TCC-' indicates a vessel taken into service by the Tellar Space Administration but not originally built to their specifications (i.e. 'TCC-' would be the prefix awarded to a modified freighter or a foreign-built vessel rebuilt to Tellarite specifications). In secondary sources such as the Last Unicorn games sourcebooks, Tellarites are described as great engineers but prone to disputation (presumably including arguments between unions & employers), and in other resources (the STARFLEET MEDICAL REFERENCE MANUAL at least and possibly WORLDS OF THE UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS) I've seen it suggested that some Tellarites still have a chip on their should even as late as the 23rd Century because the United Worlds of Tellar was the smallest & least advanced of the Federation founders. I like to square this circle by suggesting that, in the ENTERPRISE era, Tellarite development is somewhat uneven (across their homeworld, their home system and their colonies) given a tendency to decentralisation and 'do-as-thou-wilt-an-it-harm-none' philosophising; while some of their shipyards are as (and perhaps even MORE) advanced than those available on other planets, others have stuck with what they know & can do Best with remarkable pig-headedness which, of course, rather drags down the average and makes progress much less uniform. Which means that some Tellarites build their own ships and others prefer to outsource.
My take on the USS Hrumog's dedication plaque would look something like this and even more like the format observed on USS Franklin (which this website does not allow me to reproduce):- Tellar Prime Shipyard, Miracht United Federation of Planets USS HRUMOG G'BUQOFF CLASS STARFLEET REGISTRY TCC-G215 "Agreement must never be assumed, Disagreement need never be a deal-breaker - Cherok'Ukora" - Those wondering why the dedication plaque of a Tellarite ship is in English (or at least 'Federation Standard') rather than a Tellarite language might be interested to know that the Tellarites are still busy building a new language for that purpose (Tellarites not only love argument, they love talking; Tellarites not only love talking, the love language; Tellarites not only love the languages they already have, they love constructing entirely new ones) and have agreed to use a non-Tellarite language as a placeholder in the meantime, as a display of inter-Federation solidarity. In fact the language they build for this purpose will end up being used as the linguistic kernel for Federation Standard, which will be used on almost every Federation vessel in future ... and be translated into English for the convenience of Paramount Pictures! - 'Tellar Prime Shipyard' is borrowed from the video games STAR TREK ARMADA & ARMADA II by way of Memory Alpha (at this time the shipyard is still a-building, but the name is already used for registration purposes on Space Administration vessels in anticipation of Future Glories); 'Miracht' is the Tellarite name for Tellar Prime itself and is not used twice for the sake of avoiding redundancy. - The G'buqoff class was borrowed from the old FASA sourcebook on the Romulan War; it's an armed transport that can be used for attack runs & supply runs with equal efficiency. While an older design by the RISE OF THE FEDERATION era (having first entered service as early as 2082 CE, then been continually built and rebuilt for a remarkably long time afterwards), USS Hrumog itself is only fourteen years old in the Year of Federation (aka 2161 CE). At least by Earth reckoning; Tellarite Years are 400 twenty-hour days long, so by Tellarite reckoning the Hrumog is over fifteen years old. - That Registry number indicates that USS Hrumog is the two hundred and fifteenth vessel of the G'Buqoff-class; the habit of using a letter as part of the registry number for a freighter (freighters being more numerous than almost every other class of starship larger than a shuttle so the numbers would be outrageously high otherwise) is one that I like to imagine as an example of Starfleet following on from Tellarite precedent, the Tellar Space Administration at this date being at least notionally responsible for the construction, registration & deployment of all Tellarite starships (even if the Administration has more luck with registration than getting its way r.e. its other two areas of responsibility, Tellarites preferring to ask pardon than to request permission). - The registry number '215' is of course a nod to JOURNEY TO BABEL (Episode 2 x 15 of THE ORIGINAL SERIES), where the Tellarites make their first appearance. - Cherok'Ukora is, more or less, the 'Karl Marx meets Mahatma Gandhi' of Tellar; a mathematician turned politician who advocated an end to the Voice Wars (contemporary to Humanity's First World War and their peer in terms of Mass Casualties & Massive Devastation), he pioneered the more peaceful & pluralistic era of modern Tellarite civilisation through his advocacy of what one might describe as 'Civil Disagreement' (in other words he persuaded armies & whole nations to go on strike and negotiate for a better world, because it was better to argue amongst themselves than to accept a sunk cost fallacy and march against those who should be neighbours & friends without question). The quote is intended to sum up Tellarite attitudes to argument in a nutshell; it's a lesson that might prove useful to the fledgeling Federation. - Strictly speaking Cherok'Ukora should simply be 'Cherok' but I wanted to come up with an homage to the two part names usually given to Tellarites (to help make him sound more Tellarite and less Vulcan), hence my decision to add on the name of his movement ('Ukora' means 'No' in the oldest, most foundational language of Tellar Prime) to his own. Combined with his personal name (i.e. the name he personally chose, an important rite of passage amongst Tellarites), the whole means something like 'Naismith' or 'Cherok the Naysmith' in a number of Tellarite dialects (including his own birth-language).
Dr. Chapel in my crackpot theory spends about 5 years as director of operations for earth. See, at the end of 'Little Girls'we see her chasing Ruk to the computers demanding that he obey her. We don't see what she does down there. Kirk asks her about the computers. She replies they were destroyed. They were AFTer she gets all Kirby's research off of it and his will. Kirby wills his research to Christine but she has to fight Starfleet in court for it. Hence her odd job. She wins and leaves a hostile Federation to pursue Korbys dream.