Chronological rewatch from a historical perspective

[Turtletrekker]

I'm actually a few movies in now, but I wanted to say a few words about the Animated Series.

The Animated Series certainly is an underrated little gem. Some might say that the stories are just a little too silly, but really no more so than live action Star Trek. The Animated Series did a "let's shrink the crew" show, but so did Deep Space Nine. The animated series did a "let's turn the crew into children" show, but so did The Next Generation. Live action may not have ever done a 40 ft tall cloned crew member, but the Animated Series never turned crew members into salamanders either.

Story-wise, I think the Animated Series provides a much stronger end to the end of television adventures of this crew than the original series did. Watching it made me realize just how much has been borrowed by live-action productions even before Lower Decks came along. Besides Spock's backstory, there is also Amanda's love of Lewis Carroll, James Kirk's middle name, the design of the Vulcan city of Shir-Kar and other things that were originally established in the Animated Series.

The last words spoken on the Animated Series were "It gave all of us a second life", which is appropriate as it allowed Star Trek to continue and at that point they had no idea that they would ever be doing it again.

 

[Turtletrekker]

I actually enjoyed The Motion Picture more than I expected myself to. The music is great, and I love the effects (even if they are used to excess) and I like that it tried to be something other than a war movie, which is a failing that the movies to follow, as enjoyable as they may be, have.

The series takes a bit of a militaristic turn with the Harve Bennett movies, but not so much so that I can't believe that this is a continuation of the stories of the original series. In fact, in a larger context, one constant factor in the history
so far, something that goes from Broken Bow all the way to the Undiscovered Country, is conflict with the Klingons. No matter what a nation's ideals, a state that is constantly attacked by aggressors will have to adopt a more militaristic stance, despite what that nations stated philosophy may be just for survivals sake. Anyway, that's the justification I'm using for the purposes of this watch through.

It is easy to see how, as @Scionz pointed out above (great essay, by the way. That's the kind of perspective I was hoping to gain through this project) how the next 80 odd+ years of relative peace resulted in the Federation and Starfleet returning to their core mission of peaceful exploration, resulting in the conceit of Jean-Luc Picard's era of Starfleet "not being a military".

However their view of Starfleet may have differed from Gene Roddenberry's, one thing Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer had down was the the chemistry between these characters, Kirk, Spock and McCoy in particular.

And in Star Trek's two, three and four, the franchise finally became epic. The Genesis trilogy is the franchise at a high point. So much action and emotion and humor in these movies. There is a feeling these three movies that harkens back to the first season of the original series. Just fun, high adventure in space.

One thing that made me sad while watching Star Trek 4, was the realization that this was the final appearance of Amanda Grayson. I mentioned up thread how much Discovery had done to flesh out the character of Christopher Pike, and I think to a lesser extent the same can be said about Amanda. While we did see a bit of her fire in Journey to Babel, she largely played a subservient role to Sarek. In Discovery, we see her "in action" for the first time, so to speak. I would not get in her way when she has her mind set on something. I think one would have better luck trying to hold back a hurricane.

Then we get to Star Trek V. This one more harkens back to the third season. Oh my God, this movie is bad. I remembered it being bad, but it's been so long since I've seen it that my mind blocked out just how bad it really is. The dialogue is bad, the effects are bad, the story is bad and the actors performances are bad.

Earlier I said that I felt that Michael Burnham will work better as a long-lost sibling of Spock than Sybok did, and knowing the family as we now do, a lack of mention up to this point seems even more odd that it did when the movie was first released. One of the things that disappointed me about the first two seasons of Discovery, was that we had this deep exploration of Sarek's family, and they chose to completely ignore his existence. I didn't want him to appear or need a deep exploration of who he was, just a simple acknowledgement that there was another member of this family that was estranged from the rest. Anyway, long story short (too late!) in a piece of fortunate,serendipitous happenstance, my copy of Una McCormick's The Autobiography of Mr. Spock arrived in the mail yesterday, and I read through the relevant chapters before watching the movie.

In this non-canonical account, Sybok, who lived with his mother's family until it was time for his Kahs-Wan, Sybok entered Spock's life when he was five, three years before Michael Burnham. Sybok was not a constant presence in the home, so Spock's statement that they were "raised together" is open to speculation. Sybok definitely knew Michael. (Speaking of whom, another thing I liked about the book was that took the form of Spock dictating his memoir to Jean-Luc Picard just before he goes on the Romulan mission from the 2009 movie. Spock didn't want the sacrifice of his sister and her crew mates to be forgotten by history, so he spilled the beans to Jean-Luc in his memoir, classified mission be damned. Of course, Discovery is still considered missing when she arrives in the 32nd century, so Spock's revelations in his memoir did little to revise the official historical record.)

My experience watching Star Trek 6 was... unexpected. Maybe I'm just older and I see the world differently, but I was really put off by the crew's casual racism and what Spock did to Valeris can only be described as rape. Icky.

But other than those glaring flaws, it's an enjoyable yarn that successfully ends an era. The end of open hostilities with the Klingons that date back all the way to Broken Bow, and the beginning of an era of peace as prophesized by the Organians. One might think the story was planned out in advance.

I have to be honest, I have always preferred Star Trek on television as compared to the movies. I just don't think it's the greatest fit for the kinds of stories that Star Trek tells. I'll be glad to get back televised Trek, and I'm happy that there won't be six movies in a row again.

 

[Phoenix219]

I think Final Frontier is more like Season 1/2 Trek then anything since. I think it captures the heart of the big three and the swashbuckling style of the original series completely, right down to a godlike entity (Apollo), the quest for paradise (hippy episode), etc. That human's need pain and not paradise. I loved the raid on the planet, the misdirect with Chekov as Captain, the shuttlecraft crash landing..... I really have never understood the hate for this movie.

 

[Turtletrekker]

I think Final Frontier is more like Season 1/2 Trek then anything since. I think it captures the heart of the big three and the swashbuckling style of the original series completely, right down to a godlike entity (Apollo), the quest for paradise (hippy episode), etc. That human's need pain and not paradise. I loved the raid on the planet, the misdirect with Chekov as Captain, the shuttlecraft crash landing..... I really have never understood the hate for this movie.

Oh, I understand and admire what the film set out to do. I just think it failed in the execution in almost every way. I do recall that ILM was not available to do the effects for this movie, but holy crap the effects are amateur night.

And if you're going to compare it to first season episodes, the confrontation between Sybok and "God" reminded me uncomfortably of The Alternative Factor.

 

[Phoenix219]

years back, when I first discovered fanfilms and fanedits, I fell in love with the movie all over again. It was a rather low quality edit, but the "jack marshall cut" of Final Frontier is just about perfect in my opinion. Snappy pacing, some questionable content removed, some TOS musical cues and FX added in..... makes me happy watching it, even now.

Then again, Alternative Factor and Omega Glory were two of my very first episodes back in the 80s - i can never hate them, as the sci fi weirdness, alternate universes, twist endings, all of it, is part of what drew me to the show to begin with. It was intriguing stuff, that lingered with you long after the episode ended, at least for me as a child.

 

[Turtletrekker]

I love the music in Star Trek 5. In a perfect world, Jerry Goldsmith would be as associated with Star Trek as John Williams is with Star Wars.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Encounter at Farpoint has some serious pacing issues. If I recall correctly, it was originally intended as a 90-minute script that the studio insisted Gene expand to two hours, and it shows. The ironic part, is that the only engaging parts of the episode are the parts with Q, which is stuff that Gene had to add later. Seriously, the episode is saved entirely by the charisma and gravitas of Patrick Stewart and the irreverence and menace of John de Lancie.

That's said, there's a lot that's familiar here. Gene is recycling Squire of Gothos in a pretty obvious way. Riker and Troi's backstory is stolen almost word-for-word from Decker and Ilia. The dialogue, and most of the delivery of said dialogue, is wooden and clunky.

There's just so much screen time that doesn't really add to the plot. The only thing that keeps the saucer separation sequence from being excruciatingly too long is Jerry Goldsmith's Star Trek theme playing in the background. Then there was the whole "manually reattach the saucer to the main body of the ship sequence", which just seemed gratuitous. Even with the Q plot tacked on, this still would have worked better at a 90-minute length. So much navel-gazing. I actually did like the ending, with the two jellyfish creatures being reunited, even if it is another example of the gratuitously long scene to pad out the run time. But Troi's horrible and badly delivered dialogue ruins the sequence. The scene with McCoy is both bittersweet and wonderful and it makes me smile from ear-to-ear every time I see it.

If you recall, our theoretical first time viewer started in media res with First Contact, so they've already met most of these characters. However, they are meeting Wesley Crusher, Tasha Yar, Chief O'Brien and Q for the first time.

As for the Holodeck, I have no problems with the holographic target practice on Enterprise or Discovery. Those weren't forcefield enhanced, computer-controlled holograms that you could interact with, that was just target practice.

The possible discrepancy comes from The Animated Series episode The Practical Joker, where members of the Enterprise crew experienced holographic environments and even experienced a Holodeck malfunction years before Next Generation made it cliché.

The problematic line comes from Riker, who says "I didn't believe these simulations could be this real". Perhaps earlier holographic simulations lacked the resolution to make them truly believable. It's never said that holographic technology is new, so in the end I don't really see any continuity problems.

Anyway, onward. The first two seasons were less than stellar, but there is some good stuff there to revisit.

 

[Scionz]

I actually enjoyed The Motion Picture more than I expected myself to. The music is great, and I love the effects (even if they are used to excess) and I like that it tried to be something other than a war movie, which is a failing that the movies to follow, as enjoyable as they may be, have.

The series takes a bit of a militaristic turn with the Harve Bennett movies, but not so much so that I can't believe that this is a continuation of the stories of the original series. In fact, in a larger context, one constant factor in the history
so far, something that goes from Broken Bow all the way to the Undiscovered Country, is conflict with the Klingons. No matter what a nation's ideals, a state that is constantly attacked by aggressors will have to adopt a more militaristic stance, despite what that nations stated philosophy may be just for survivals sake. Anyway, that's the justification I'm using for the purposes of this watch through.

It is easy to see how, as @Scionz pointed out above (great essay, by the way. That's the kind of perspective I was hoping to gain through this project) how the next 80 odd+ years of relative peace resulted in the Federation and Starfleet returning to their core mission of peaceful exploration, resulting in the conceit of Jean-Luc Picard's era of Starfleet "not being a military".

However their view of Starfleet may have differed from Gene Roddenberry's, one thing Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer had down was the the chemistry between these characters, Kirk, Spock and McCoy in particular.

And in Star Trek's two, three and four, the franchise finally became epic. The Genesis trilogy is the franchise at a high point. So much action and emotion and humor in these movies. There is a feeling these three movies that harkens back to the first season of the original series. Just fun, high adventure in space.

I think perhaps the most important linchpin of connecting the two major eras of Star Trek history - the 23rd and the 24th centuries - is undeniably Flashback. It was very smartly written to capture how much different the Federation of the 24th century is from the 23rd. No other era crossover really does that. Even Scotty in Relics would probably be fine after six months of technical study.

Enterprise had the nascent Coalition of Planets. And that was clearly going to be a rather loose alliance of four (or more) independent worlds creating a political (and perhaps standardization) infrastructure for mutual defense in the rather dangerous galaxy of the mid 22nd century. The early UFP would be like that too. In fact, given the probably lifetime of ships and institutional challenges, it probably wouldn't be until the 2200 when you'd start seeing "one" Starfleet in a sense. If we want a real world analogue, the UFP around its founding was primarily NATO with a bit of the WTO. We know the UFP started with 4 founding members, then quickly grew about a dozen planets.

Fast forward to the 24th century, and the UFP is clearly an cohesive interstellar state whose sub-components have home rule. But there seems to be no role for any planet or system outside of their historic territory. And there is clearly the "one" Starfleet. This makes the 24th century an analogue of the modern United States to some degree (though probably somewhat looser given that each planet is the evolutionary or cultural homeworld of an entire race, unlike the states of the USA which are predominantly historic demarcations). Star Trek Star Charts, though not canonical, says that the UFP had 183 members in the late 2370s.

Between them we have the weirdly mysteriously time of the 23rd century. The Babel Conference had 32 ambassadors. The Federation Council scenes in Star Trek IV had at least 60 people sat in the pews, though oddly some where Starfleet officers (more on that in a bit). I think ~60-80 is a good number for 2286.That allows the UFP to effectively double in size over the next 100 years. As well it should. Why? Look at the map below I just made from Star Charts.

(big image)
Above is 3 roughly labeled regions. These are not 100% correct but get the idea across.
Region 1, in green, is broadly where the NX-01 traveled. Yes they did a straight line to the Klingon Empire a few times as probably a little bit more in the Alpha Quadrant, but generally, stayed in the Beta Quadrant, generally a stones throw a away from known systems. Which makes sense, because as Enterprise made quite clear in Seasons 1 and 2 with its reliance on Vulcan Starcharts, these areas were unexplored to Earth but to the Vulcans (and others in the region), they were mapped. It was a rough neighborhood though. A subset of this region (with some in the Alpha quadrant, such as Tellar and Terra Nova) would also form the core of the early UFP. Interestingly, if you take this region and extend it down to the Klingon border, it modestly matches the Federation border maps shown in Discovery.

In short we can ballpark that by 2360, the Federation more or less had the borders of this map (in purple):

We know the south-eastern portion from Discovery. It's basically where the NX-01 spent it's time along with another century of exploration by the first century of Starfleet and the Federation expading the borders of knowledge from the old Vulcan Star Charts, and bringing in members.

We know the north-east "lobe" from the TOS Map of the Romulan Neutral Zone. And from what bit is in the Alpha Quadrant comes from species featured in TOS (or TOS films), and where the NX-01 went. The rest of the Federations Eastern border can be assumed to have been demarcated by the treaty that created the Romulan Neutral Zone in 2160.

When we contrast the purple region I highlighted above to the broader blue region of the 2370s, the spread of the UFP in that century of expansion becomes very clear.

So what role did Kirk play? Very broadly, the yellow regions (labeled 2) on the first image. Most of the planets and systems (but not all) mentioned in TOS but not in Enterprise are in the yellow region. Yes, the enterprise spent a fair bit of time in the Federation of image #2 (purple), but its role was pushing out the Federation borders that would become instrumental into its expansion into the 24th century.

A core feature of the Federation, I think, in the 24th versus the 23rd century is that it is not a well shaped or contiguous entity. The Romulan Star Empire is, more or less, an oval (in 2D space). The Klingon Empire is also an oval. The pre-Khitomer Federation of the 23nd century seems to be an oval. In the 24th century though, while the Klingon and Romulans are still ovals (more or less) the federation is spreading everywhere it can between and around them.

I think it's notable on this chart that the west-Klingon- east Federation border has the locations of the old listening posts (with the same icon as the much more plentiful ones on the Romulan-Federation border). The maps from Star Trek VI showed only this Klingon-Federation border and not the region of Federation space to the galactic east that is bisected from the Federation core by Klingon and Romulan empires Moreover listening posts on the Federation-Romulan border extend all along it, well past where the limits of knowledge were in the 22nd century, meaning they were added later. However, there are no posts along the border of the Federation and Klingons in that "Eastern Federation" region. This almost certainly means this came later, post Khitomer.

With the Klingons friendly-ish after 2293 and the Romulans turned inwards after 2311 (Tomed Incident/Treaty of Algeron), the Federation was free to expand where nobody else was. And that would be comparatively easy and fast for the Federation compared to the Klingons on Romulans, who seemed to have grown comparatively less (especially the Romulans) in hundreds of years. On that note, I'd say it's likely the Klingon and Romulan Empires doubled in size between 2155 and 2370, buth the Federation grew to be about 40% larger than both of them combined.

And that makes sense.The Romulans are a mono-culture. We've never seen any Romulan vassal states. It seems they only spread into uninhabited systems, and likely due to limits on resources (how big is the Romulan fleet really?). They do so slowly. Those "fingers" coming from north-east Romulan space are likely all the empire can expand.

The Klingon Empire is not a mono-culture. We've met non-Klingon vassal worlds of the Empire. The Klingons leave them alone as long as they cooperate with the Empire's needs. And when world's don't, they use warriors and conqueror them. This will require vast resources and slow expansion any which way. Coupled with the Empire's internal upheavals, expansion won't come fast. T'Kuvma's War in the 2250s could be seen very much as an attempt for the Empire to militarily expand into a region that, 100 years prior (in the 2150s), was ripe for the picking and really only loosely contested by the Vulcans and Andorians. The end of the Federation-Klingon War of the 2250s meant a permanent end to the Empire's expansion in that direction.

Which leaves the Federation and how it spreads. One of the strange things about the 2150s was how pretty much everyone the NX-01 encountered was at the same technology level as Earth, or within 25 years of it. The Vulcans and Andorians had shields, tractor beams and Warp 6ish ships. Their energy weapons were also better. The Klingons had Warp 6 ships and reliable transporter technology. The Romulans probably also had Warp 6 ships. The debut of the first Warp 7 vessels in the 2160s ("These are the Voyages") was of crucial importance to the young Federation because it made getting around their small new alliance in a matter of days very feasible. Which is core to a kind of implicit point of Star Trek's from a political angle: the Federation only works if ships can get around it fast enough. The UFP of the 2160s needed Warp 6 and Warp 7. The UFP of the 2260s needed the (new scale) Warp 8 of the Constitution class. The Federation of the 2300s needed the Warp 9 the Excelsior class, the backbone of Starfleet in that century, brought to the table. For the federation to expand even further and still work as a contiguous political entity, the Warp 9.x of the 2360s ships, lead by the Galaxy class, would be required.

.The Enterprise D, in fact, continued to experience what the NX-01 did of encountering species with near technological parity. On many occasions did it find some new or poorly-known alien race with a ship nearly as fast, nearly as large or whose military power was equal to the flagship of the Federation.

This explains the Federation growing in the 2300s though. For an unexplained reason, many hundreds or thousands of worlds within Local Space hit upon warp drive in the 20th, 21st and 22nd centuries, mostly kept to their own systems, and gradually developed matter-energy transmutation/transmission technology. Some of those joined the Federation. Many more would as the 23rd century rolled around. They didn't stop their technological development. The ones the Federation didn't contact until the 24th century would also not have stopped their development. Many would be easy federation joiners because the bar for First Contact - having simple Warp 1 technology, was likely 150 years behind them at that point. If the Federation joiners of the 24th century were worlds with Warp 7 and Warp 8 technology, with transporters and shields, then joining the Federation is a much simpler process, and the 24th century expansion would be logically quicker. This is especially true of the worlds of the "Eastern Federation", that may not have known about the Romulan and Klingon Empires near them. Mutual defense makes a compelling case for being a quick joiner.

I think this, coupled with wide-spread expansion provided by ever faster ships and the revolution of replicator technology, made the Federation go from that purple potato in 2093 a vast domain by 2375. Technology that makes travel and settlement easy, coupled with worlds with both the technology level and incentive to join a collective defense/trade alliance, could easily explain a jump from 80 to 183 worlds.

WHich brings us to the voyages of the Enterprise D. In the top image, it is labeled in white as 3.Again this is "new areas", not regions that had been previously explored (more on that in a moment) because as we know, the Enterprise D went all over Federation space. It, however, spent a lot of time in the first 3 seasons exploring the unknown beyond the Federation border, in the vast area to the North-east of known space. And that makes sense: this is the next logical region for the Federation to expand to. It also directly connects to Q's statement about exploring the far reaches of the galaxy in Q Who. This area was very far from home.

But as I wrote in my prior essay, the Enterprise D was kept a lot closer to home after the Borg Attack of 2367 as Starfleet seemingly started to take up a security role again (this actually started in 2367 as well with increasing encounters with the Romulans and Klingons). But almost all of it was in the Beta Quadrant.Starting in 2367 and 2368 (Roughly seasons 4 and 5 of TNG), the Federation spent a lot of time in explored space putting out fires, and when it was going into unexplored space, it was just over the Federation border in the Alpha Quadrant, or mapping a poorly charted region of the Alpha Quadrant that was surrounded by known space.

(Part 1 of 2, continued below)

 

[Scionz]

(Part 2 of 2)
I think, looking at the franchise as a whole, the shift in producers hands has served the fictional universe co-incidentally very well. TOS was the originator, so Gene Roddenberry had a blank canvas to establish what the Galaxy of this fictional universe was, and his Federation was a healthy size, but space was filled with unknowns. The TNG-DS9-Voyager galaxy represented Rick Berman's sensibilities (particularly after Season 2 when he really took over). Borders became known. Institutions were more clearly defined. The galaxy had an unknown border but a much of local space was as defined as modern day Earth is. Risa is Space-Hawaii, not a weird alien world. The Meyer-Bennett movies has the Federation being small (still, and rightly) space being big, and weird. Weird aliens, and a no attention paid to the specifics of "the galaxy". We saw a few starships at a time. There was no great fleets patrolling space. But with Star Trek V was definitely the last hurrah of "big weird space". With Star Trek VI, made deep into the run of TNG, the coming order of the 24th century was already showing up. Enterprise, I think, did an excellent job of making local space big, unknown and dangerous (providing a rationale for the Federation... as Archer repeatedly remarks, he seems to be fighting everyone).

And funny enough, I think Discovery captured the transition pretty well in Seasons 1 and 2. Its unintentional because of creative upheaval and the producer's only general interest about the Berman era, but it works. It's a Federation that is much more cohesive and a galaxy much more known and tamed than the Enterprise era (being 90 years later after all), but not nearly so much as the TNG era.. I think it works well as a modern-day bridge between Enterprise and the Meyer-Bennett movies, in way putting a modern spin on the "galactic sensibilities" of TOS. They should be, after all, the same galaxy. And we'll see how much that is the case in Strange New Worlds.

Looking forward, although Discovery almost never gets into this sort of stuff (instead focusing on forgettable characters), I'd like to find out what Warp drive rates at in the 32nd century. Is Maximum Warp now 9.9999? Because for a 500 light year wide Federation, Warp 9.9 can get them across it in about 60 days. At Warp 9.9999, a ship could cover the 75,000 light years in about 137 days, which I think is a very reasonable number if the 32nd century Federation covers the entire Galaxy.
https://www.st-minutiae.com/resources/warp/index.html


This question is integral to "what is the Federation in the 32nd century". We know it's very loose in the 2160s. It's standardized but still a confederation (as opposed to a federation) in the 2260s. In the 2370s, it's clearly much more of a Federation. It seems so far that the 32nd century Federation is back to being a confederation again... much looser than the 2370s Federation. Season 3 Discovery kind of talked about this a bit, with dilithium drying up and the Federation's spread becoming controversial. Perhaps it truly did spread faster than warp drive could make it feasible to act as a cohesive entity. Even within the real world we see "the tyranny of scale" when it comes to democracies. Representative democracy's challenges, functions, the concerns of it's people, the operations of its government and its interval structure all vary between, say , Denmark (population 5.8 million), France (population 67 million), the United States (population 330 million) and India (population 1.38 billion). India's civil service, for example, is larger and unlike any of the others in that list. The modern United States requires it's Federal structure, interstate highway system and air travel. Denmark's small size and land area mean it's government is excellent at dealing with many types of problems quickly, but has limited resources for others.

The same is likely true of the Federation. The Federation - and thus Starfleet - will necessarily work differently when there are 10 members versus 80 vs 183 vs 350 (which again, seems way too low to me, but "planets" is a bad term to begin with for Federation membership).

Which bring us to the essential question (since it's our gateway into this fictional universe): "what is Starfleet?" There is a whole other thread about this, so I'll just touch on it briefly, but it's essential to understanding the world of the Federation.

Trying to shoehorn what Starfleet is into modern terms makes no sense. It's like trying to liken the modern US Military to the Military of 1800. Yeah they share the name of the organization and the linage, but in almost no sense are they the same. Technically speaking, the modern US Military is a creation of World War II and everything before then is a series of adhoc armies erected around a lean meager skeletons. It's not pedantic or inaccurate to say "the US Military did not fight World War I, the National Army did and some of that went on to form the inter-war military that the World War II military was based around".

To extend the metaphor, what Starfleet is in 2161 vs 2266 vs 2293 vs 2375 vs 3189 is likely something that would naturally change to meet the needs of the Federation over that vast length of time. It's bee said before "is it a military"? It's not. It's nothing we have a direct analogue for, and that's perfectly okay, because neither did America in 1800 have an analogue for the modern US military, or the modern Department of Defense (or most of US government).

I think it's safe to assume that Starfleet in 2161 was what the Rise of the Federation books broke it down as: split into defense, exploration, logistical, scientific and managerial branches for a nascent interstellar alliance. By the 2260s-2280s, it clearly has more of sharper dual role between exploration and security, with a heavier lean on security as the 2270s and 2280s bore on.

The most developed, mature Starfleet that we see is of the 2360s and 2370s of course. And we see lots of strange things to our eyes.
We see uniformed civilians with no ranks or weird ranks (Kosinski).
We see Starfleet running or co-running major scientific institutes across every field of study imaginable. We see Starfleet as front line diplomats, working in tandem with civilian diplomats.
We see Starfleet negotiating trade deals and peace agreements, and facilitating interstellar relations, including the Federation wide communications network.
We see Starfleet running a care center for illicitly Augmented humans.

How can Starfleet be all these things as well as the organization that explores space, charts sectors, makes first contact and shoots up the Borg? It's because Starfleet of the 24th century is a unique creation to meet the needs of a 24th century interstellar state that different from those before and after.

If we want to liken it to anything, I think there is one fitting organizational type: a uniformed civil service. While the United States has six armed military branches (Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, Marines, Coast Guard) there are two more non-armed uniformed services - the NOAA corps, the uniformed branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, the uniformed branch of the US Public Health Service, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. If anything, Starfleet is most like them, rather than the US Military. Even in 2367, the creation of a "new Federation Battle Fleet" was treated as a novelty by shelby. It likely wasn't earlier in Federation history, and certainly wasn't during the Dominion War, when Starfleet was organized into fleets.

Another modern day analogue, though it is a bit of a legal fiction, is the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, aka the Japanese military. Technically speaking, they're all uniformed civil servants. But these is largely due to Japanese history and constitutional limitations.

Regardless of the closest modern analogue, Starfleet in the 24th century is clearly the provider and maintainer of the principle infrastructure that keeps the United Federation of Planets a consistent entity. It is perhaps this post-Khitomer development (made possible by the end of the Cold War with the Klingons), along with the introduction of the Excelsior class, and then later on replicator technology, that most made the Federation of the 24th century a tighter structured entity than the far looser one of the 23rd. Logically, that would directly figure to the explosive growth of the 24th century Federation too.

So what of 3189? It's been poorly fleshed out, but evidently member planets quit rather easily it seems after the Burn. Galactic integration seems far looser in general in the 32nd century than even the 23rd. United Earth doesn't even rule the entire Solar System... it keeps its few vessels in Earth orbit to defend against planetary threats as if it were the 22nd century all over again. Captain Archer made a comment to that effect, in fact, in Enterprise, when he remarked that the Vulcans have had powerful ships for a long time, but keep them close to home because the galaxy is rough. Well the post-Burn galaxy seems very much a return to that.

Also fascinating: the presence of Planetary Defense Shields, something we almost never (or never) saw outside of dialogue before Discovery. I find the presence of them fascinating because of the historic parallels.

During the time of the Roman Kingdom and early Roman Republic, walled cities were the norm in modern day Italy. Cities would raid cities, and a wall was the best defense. Rome was sacked several times. Over the centuries, the Romans conquered the peninsula, ending that threat. They then moved into modern day France, Spain and the Balkans and Greece and North Africa. The last direct threat of a land attack on Rome itself was Hannibal in the late 2nd century BC. After that, Roman cities started growing outside of their walls. By the time of the late republic and early / mid-Empire walls became limited to mostly frontier towns. Major cities across the Roman Empire were instead defended by a mobile, highly professional Roman Army that interdicted potential threats to security, or were fighting enemies on the far frontier. Rome had no need for walls.

I'm sure you can see where this is going. That Roman Army is Starfleet of the 24th century and beyond, likely deep into the 30th century until the end of the Temporal Wars.

We then get to the Crisis of the Third Century, which throws the empire into upheaval for decades. Barbarian migrations in Northern and century Europe destabilize a long secured region. The borders of the Roman empire start to contract. The enemies of Rome catch up organizationally and technologically to an empire that basically took an 80 year break and fought itself. Rome starts losing battles and soon territory. And what happens? The walls go back up. And those walls would stay up, and lead to ever more elaborate fortifications (including Castles) until cannon and mortar fire made them obsolete in the 16th century.

Planetary Defense Shields showing up in Discovery were perfect because it shows what is needed in a galaxy without Starfleet making sure the local bullies are promptly arrested. They're the walls of a much diminished 32nd century Roman Empire, in a sense.

I'd be interested in learning when those shields go up. Did they go up in the Temporal War period or before? Did a series of events cause confidence to fall in Starfleet's ability to keep the peace because it was stretched to thin? Or are they a product of the Burn period - put up because Starfleet wasn't there anymore. Furthermore, will they stay up, as the Federation is rebuilt? A functional Federation in the decades beyond 3189 should go back to the world of 2375, when a core world like Betazed had antique planetary defense systems because it simply had no need for it.

In a round about way, I think we can then conclude what is the Federation and Starfleet of 3189? In a sens it is the same as the Federation and Starfleet of 2161 - trying to make a bunch of disparate pieces work in a looser affiliation first. Maybe, just maybe, the highly institutionalized Federation that had so explored space that it decided to explore Time by the 28th and 29th century, will return one day. But until then, it's back to the "big, weird, dangerous" space of the TOS movie and Enterprise era.

 

[dupersuper]

I think Final Frontier is more like Season 1/2 Trek then anything since. I think it captures the heart of the big three and the swashbuckling style of the original series completely, right down to a godlike entity (Apollo), the quest for paradise (hippy episode), etc. That human's need pain and not paradise. I loved the raid on the planet, the misdirect with Chekov as Captain, the shuttlecraft crash landing..... I really have never understood the hate for this movie.

The "I need my pain" bit alone is enough to save it for me.

And if you're going to compare it to first season episodes, the confrontation between Sybok and "God" reminded me uncomfortably of The Alternative Factor.

What of Sybok? What of Sybok?

The problematic line comes from Riker, who says "I didn't believe these simulations could be this real". Perhaps earlier holographic simulations lacked the resolution to make them truly believable. It's never said that holographic technology is new, so in the end I don't really see any continuity problems.

I like to think that the aliens that got Trip pregnant joined the Federation while the Galaxy class ships were being constructed, and these are the first Federation holodecks that benefit from the tech of a species that have had holodecks since at least the 22nd century.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Well, I watched a lot more of season 1 than I would have if I were just watching "good" episodes.

As one of the major points of this whole project is to see how well it works as a history and an ongoing narrative, so I watched several episodes of historical import.

Of course, I skipped such monstrosities as Code of Honor and Angel One, among others. However, I had to take into consideration things like The Last Outpost (re)introducing the Ferengi, Haven introducing Lwaxana Troi, Heart of Glory for starting Worf's arc and Coming of Age for setting up Conspiracy. I have no excuse for watching Lonely Among Us or Symbiosis, and beg your forgiveness for doing so. Symbiosis, at least, has some cool guest stars from The Wrath of Khan.

From the continuity perspective, the time jump from the Kirk era provides a basically clean slate, marred only by the Enterprise episode "Acquisition". I just find it a little on the implausible side that Starfleet could randomly encounter a species once and then never again for 210 years, especially one that was already known in local space. And didn't Arik Soong mention having Ferengi contacts? If independent human operators are making contact with other species without Starfleet's knowledge, I think that's an issue with Starfleet intelligence. And they had Soong in custody! Didn't they debrief him?

Okay, anyway, no one in the Federation knew what Ferengi looked like until 2364. Sure. Okay. Moving on. Whatever.

 

[Turtletrekker]

@Scionz -- great stuff as usual. I just finished re-watching The Neutral Zone and your point about Federation expansion and Romulan reaction to it is right there in the text of the episode, as well as the first hints of the Borg.

In hindsight, it's easy to point to this episode right here as the end of the Federation's high age of peaceful exploration and the beginning of a transition toward Starfleet becoming more of, but obviously not entirely, a military entity. Less than a year later, Starfleet will be performing war games in preparation for an inevitable Borg invasion, 2 years later will see an actual Borg invasion, first of two inside of a decade. Then there's the Klingon Civil War, the Dominion War, and the Romulan attack at Mars.

 

[Scionz]

@Scionz -- great stuff as usual. I just finished re-watching The Neutral Zone and your point about Federation expansion and Romulan reaction to it is right there in the text of the episode, as well as the first hints of the Borg.

In hindsight, it's easy to point to this episode right here as the end of the Federation's high age of peaceful exploration and the beginning of a transition toward Starfleet becoming more of, but obviously not entirely, a military entity. Less than a year later, Starfleet will be performing war games in preparation for an inevitable Borg invasion, 2 years later will see an actual Borg invasion, first of two inside of a decade. Then there's the Klingon Civil War, the Dominion War, and the Romulan attack at Mars.

There's some truly terrific real world parallels, but really what we're talking about as shit hits the fan between 2364 and 2387 is a lot of can-kicking catching up with the Federation and other local powers, and a few black swans diving in to make everything worse.

In a historic "geopolitical" context, the Federation and 24th century Klingon Empire under K'mpec (and Gowron for half is reign) are classic status-quo powers. There is an interstellar order-of-things that really works out well for them, and they're not to keen on disrupting it, and to that end turn the cheek on aggression they probably should not have, and delay in dealing with problems they really should of directly addressed. And for that when the dam finally breaks in the late 2360s (and keeps breaking for the next 20 years), it creates the greatest series of interstellar crisises in a century.. This has happened countless times in our own history. It may even be happening now, in real time.

The limited conflict against the Tzenkethi and the extended but bitter Cardassian Border Wars made up the entirety of the pre-Wolf 359 organized military experience for a generation of starfleet officers. By the 2350s there had not been more than ones offs against a few Romulan Warbirds or the rogue Klingon in over fifty years. You have to go back to pre-Khitomer Conference to see the last time Starfleet thought about security in a fleet perspective. In some context the Cardassian Border Wars changed that. The perplexing thing though is that the Federation completely overmatched the Cardassians, but never acted decisively. Letting the Cardassians engage in a few months of bad behavior on the border here and there, to avoid a major military intervention only made them bolder over the next 20 years. The Dominion War can be seen as indirectly a result of this short sighted policy. Like many juntas in Earth's history, Cardassian Central Command's power came from the perception (and fear it generated) that they were invincible within the Cardassian Union, enforced by the Obsidian Order. Dealt a series of military and political setbacks within a few year span, for really the first time in its history, the Central Command was rapidly deposed. However the weakened, ailing Cardassian State had an optimal suitor waiting for it, in the form of the Dominion. Had the Federation acted more decisively and delt the Cardassians severe enough blows to collapse the Central Command in the 2350s, perhaps the Dominion War could have been avoided.

With the Klingons.... K'mpec ruled too long, from the mid 2340s to 2367. Countless governments have shown in our history what happens when there isn't leadership churn - the regime ossifies and the entire organization/state begins to rot. When the leader of an organization changes, he'll fill subordinate passions with people he trusts to execute his will.These roles changes with regularity fights corruption, introduces new ideas, and disrupts the formations of fiefdoms. Churn is good. Churn renews.

K'mpec prized stability - ruling with an iron first - over renewing the institutions to keep the Klingon Empire from falling into Civil War without that iron first. He would be far form the first to make that mistake. But that fits the Klingon of the 2360s as a status quo power. Besides a few slap fights with the Romulans they apparently haven't done anything new in decades. Their warrior culture became more developed, religious and ceremonial compared to the 2360s-2390 period, where it was more informal. This isn't too surprising. A "back to basics" and orthodox movement as a social counter against corruption and perceived decadence has been a recurring theme in our history. Perhaps so for the Klingons too. If the Warrior-class majority of the Klingons of the 2300 period felt that the Praxis catastrophe was the inevitable outcome of decades of poor leadership and divergence from Klingon traditions (particularly the pathe T'Kuvma laid out, that was not followed), a greater emphasis on Klingon spiritualism as part of the way klingons of the 24th century lived would be an expected outcome. However that comes with it's own set of problems: religious movements are never open to new ideas or self-reflection, and paired with K'mpec freezing renewal in its place, it made the civil war, the brief (and foolhardy) war with the Federation, and the rise of men like Gowron inevitable. We know from Enterprise though that the rise and dominance of the modern warrior class was something that began in the late 21st or 22nd century and that Klingon culture was once greatly valued far more than just martial prowess. By the 2360s and 2370s, that warrior movement would be around 250 years old, and likely every bit as ossified and ready for a fall. As Worf would see at the end of the Dominion War, even the opportunity of honorably fighting-to-win in the biggest war in Klingon history wasn't enough for many Klingons, who wrapped themselves in Empire but really thought about themselves. Not confronting these vast problems made the Klingons, a status quo power, a ticking time bomb.

Perhaps the greatest policy failure of all by the Federation is seen at the end of Season 1. Not engaging with Romulan Empire after the Tomed incident allowed them to shore up their power in unexpected ways in the 2360s and try and destabilize local space to a degree they hadn't attempted since the 2150s. There were confrontations with the Romulans in the 2160s-2300 time span, but evidently relations were more or less stable and predictable. But fast forward to the 2360s and now, not only have the Romulans built a fleet of warships twice the size of a Galaxy class, but their military and intelligence operations in that decade are highly disruptive. Keep the Romulans - a significant power - bottled up for 50 years is an insane policy from the perspective of security, but it makes complete sense for the Federation and Starfleet to focus on expansion and peaceful matters for the first 60 years of the 24th century. Because there were only ever going to be three outcomes, however long it took.: (1) internal change on Romulus makes the Romulans emerge peaceful, (2) internal change on Romulus makes the Romulans emerge aggressive, (3) internal change on Romulus collapses the empire and creates regional chaos. Options 2 and 3 were terrible to any status quo power, but evidently, the Federation gambled on (1) or handling (2) and (3). It got (2) and it handled it... barely. Only because Picard and his crew were far sharper and luckier than your average Starfleet crew. Had the Enterprise not been there, there is no reason to think Duras wouldn't have won and the Federation would have gone into the 2370s facing a unified Romulan-Klingon alliance.

So already, we have three major natural issues - unresolved Federation border conflicts with Cardassia, Klingon ossification and the Romulan timebomb, and then the black swans start show uping up over the next 20 years.

First the Borg, which threatened to wipe out local space as we know it, and evidently control a vast portion of the galaxy.
Then the Dominion, which exploited every single long simmering 24th century problem and very nearly washed away the regional order laid down in 2161.
Finally the Supernova of 2387 entirely disrupted the local order, and the failure to resolve regional problems (even before the failed Picard-led evacuation) shattered the Romulan Star Empire into some petty fiefdoms and created vast disorder. This did not need to happen. In the real world, the United States and European Union worked hard after 1992 to mitigate the effects of such "balkanization". Starfleet, evidently, is far less competent on that front than 20th and 21st century diplomats. Here's question for the Federation Diplomatic Corps: where did all those D'deridex class Warbirds go? In 2365, a single Warbird crossing the neutral zone nearly sparked a war. Are we to believe that after 2387, it's just fine if they're in the hands of a local Romulan petty tyrant from a successor fiefdom?

It's almost painfully ironic in Season 1 that Picard begins his farpoint mission with a Captains log with him marveling at the "great unexplored mass of the galaxy". Yeah, he'd spend a lot of time there over the next two and a half years. But a bit after that, him and everyone else in the Federation would become utterly consumed with the bill of the 2300-2366 period, finally, coming due.

 

[Scionz]

Well, I watched a lot more of season 1 than I would have if I were just watching "good" episodes.

As one of the major points of this whole project is to see how well it works as a history and an ongoing narrative, so I watched several episodes of historical import.

Of course, I skipped such monstrosities as Code of Honor and Angel One, among others. However, I had to take into consideration things like The Last Outpost (re)introducing the Ferengi, Haven introducing Lwaxana Troi, Heart of Glory for starting Worf's arc and Coming of Age for setting up Conspiracy. I have no excuse for watching Lonely Among Us or Symbiosis, and beg your forgiveness for doing so. Symbiosis, at least, has some cool guest stars from The Wrath of Khan.

From the continuity perspective, the time jump from the Kirk era provides a basically clean slate, marred only by the Enterprise episode "Acquisition". I just find it a little on the implausible side that Starfleet could randomly encounter a species once and then never again for 210 years, especially one that was already known in local space. And didn't Arik Soong mention having Ferengi contacts? If independent human operators are making contact with other species without Starfleet's knowledge, I think that's an issue with Starfleet intelligence. And they had Soong in custody! Didn't they debrief him?

Okay, anyway, no one in the Federation knew what Ferengi looked like until 2364. Sure. Okay. Moving on. Whatever.

My theory for the Ferengi is that their highly stable (they've been in their current political form for 10,000 years) but entirely foreign structure confounded the Federation's ability to deal develop a policy for them.

Consider Zek. As Grand Nagus, he is supposedly the leader of the Ferengi Alliance and a vast business empire. He is among the wealthiest Fergeni. He sits atop the Tower of Commerce and is only checked by the Board of Liquidators and some kind of council of other very rich Ferengi. But this a guy who also travels to Deep Space Nine on a mere Ferengi Shuttle (as opposed to a D'Kora class), with a entourage of one or two manservants. Instead of being fetid like a Head of State on his visits, he is often just another traveler. No security. No anything. He deals with Sisko, rarely, one on one and not with a Federation Diplomat.

I propose there is essential no Ferengi state. The entirety of Ferengi society is privatized. Every aspect of it is a service provided by a business for profit. And since no one business can provide all the services any major government can, This would also imply that the "alliance" in the Ferengi Alliance refers to the rather ad hoc relationships of the powerful business interests that provide major services and major products. That would make Zek more of a "Chairman of the Board" of the Alliance (of which his business Empire is one member) and functionally a private citizen (thus explaining his limited entourage and comparative diplomatic rank) than Head of State, which is how we saw him in "the Nagus" episode on DS9.

A state like this would be completely foreign to the Federation, which has only ever dealt with (at a political level) powers very much like it - strong, centralized institutions. Even the Klingons, which have vast private armies, are all elements of a larger combined Klingon Defense Force, able to be controlled by the Chancellor and the High Council despite alignment with various Houses.

So the Federation spends many decades having infrequent contact with the Ferengi and basically every petty Ferengi DaiMon talked a real good game about himself, and the Ferengi alliance, just like Quark did on countless occasions (notably: Little Green Men, but also in his Gamma Quadrant negotiations). It can't engage in the same terms with the Ferengi Alliance as it can the Klingons because there is no "Ferengi diplomats" or "Ferengi foreign policy" in the way everyone else around them has diplomats and a foreign policy. That would make every contact with the Ferengi a first contact, in a sense, because it's always individuals, or a Ferengi business, or a marauding Ferengi DaiMon, being delt with, and not a centralized government with a centralized policy. If the Ferengi couldn't turn a profit with the Federation, the Grand Nagus and his near peer-level leaders of the Alliance would have little interest in a structured relationship with them. The only reason that evidently changed is because of the commercial opportunities of the Gamma Quadrant, which the Federation guarded the gateway to. But the Ferengi also never sent Marauders - powerful enough ships mind you - to help the Federation Alliance in the Dominion War, despite an informal policy of being sympathetic to the Alpha Quadrant powers (it is also a straight shot with no barriers from Cardassian space to the Ferengi Alliance, so the Dominion could have squashed them like a bug if they explicitly chose a side).

The Federation always deals better with things more familiar to it, than things that are very different than it. And the Ferengi, in my view, were just too different for too long, and ultimately just a lesser priority, and in the wrong direction compared to the Klingons and Romulans. I think that last bit is the missing piece of the puzzle and consistent with something I keep coming back to. If from 2161 to 2300 the focus of the Federation is to grow and "fill into" the space between the core worlds of its founding and 2161 and the Klingon and Romulan borders, it would explain why the Federation didn't encounter or regularly deal with the Alpha Quadrant species of it's "western border" until the 24th century, despite some of them being closer-ish than Romulus and Qo'nos. The Federation had to "fill in" to its south east to the Klingon border, and to it's east/north east (Romulan border as laid out in 2161) for security reasons. To claim that space before those two aggressive species moved into it. To build a "defense in depth" strategy of the Federation core worlds. That would take 150 years easily. And by the time that's done, in 2300-2310 or so, the Klingons are friendly, the Romulans are bottled up, and it's time to look to the Alpha Quadrant, where it has room to grow, and begin more regularly encountering the Ferengi, the Cardassians and other powers it may have had only passing dealings with in the past.

Last point... I'll say it again, I think to have a Federation that could deal with it's "front yard" in the Beta Quadrant in the borderlands of the Romulan and Klingon Empires, and everything in between there and Sector 001, Warp 8 of the TOS / Movie era was sufficient. But once you start including that, and wanting to operate and grow into space towards the Cardassian Union towards the galactic "south" and more northward towards the galactic core, you're effectively doubling the Federation's dimensions in the X and Y axis (in 2D space anyway). The Federation would probably need Warp 9, and the Excelsior class, to handle that.

 

[Turtletrekker]

The Next Generation season 2, while still flawed and unfocused, is definitely a step up from season 1. Introducing regular familiar faces like Chief O'Brien and Guinan certainly help in that regard. I know the Chief appeared in two episodes in the first season, but he was really little more than a glorified extra. It's in season 2 where his personality started to develop.

The Outrageous Okona, while just being an okay episode, was an episode I wanted to watch to re-familiarize myself with the character before his appearance on Star Trek prodigy.

A bit of dialogue from Doctor Pulaski in Elementary Dear Data about having been in a holodeck before, but not one "this real", further solidifies my belief the Holodeck technology wasn't a new thing before Encounter at Farpoint, just that the technology has been refined and perfected.

The Measure of a Man, aside from being a powerful and well written and one of the better episodes of Star Trek in general, also figures in prominently down the line when we get to Star Trek Picard. However, there was something that I noticed that was relevant to the purposes of this watch through- the fact that Starbase 173 was newly and hastily established in order to establish a Federation presence close to the Romulan neutral zone due to their return and increased activity, with Admiral Nakamura stating that, "It won't hurt to let the Romulans know that we are nearby." The Federation is already diverting resources for defensive purposes, less than a year after their reappearance.

Contagion, well not being nearly as good as I remembered it, sets up a far superior Deep Space Nine episode down the road, so it's all good.

Pen Pals has always been a favorite. It's the first time that the ethical problems with the Prime Directive are articulated, and I like that in the end, Picard doesn't treat the directive as absolute. The conference in Picard's quarters is a great scene.

But Q Who is a game-changer. Possibly the first perfect episode of The Next Generation, this episode features both Q and the Borg at their most frightening. The hint of the mysterious past between Guinan and Q is just delicious and Whoopi Goldberg portrays Guinan's mistrust and disgust about Q very convincingly. A very important episode for Jean-Luc Picard, the United Federation of Planets, and for the Star Trek franchise as a whole.

Next up is Samaritan Snare, an episode that I once would never have believed would have any importance to the narrative in the future, but thanks to Lower Decks, here we are. That's one of the things I love about Lower Decks.

Also, I'm watching far more than I'm commenting on. I don't want to slog this down with comments on every single episode.

 

[Turtletrekker]

One more thing. I said upthread I really didn't care for the way Enterprise introduced the Organians and the Ferengi into the narrative before they were technically supposed to, mainly because I felt the episodes didn't work narratively. But I actually kind of like the way Regeneration from Enterprise fits in with the Borg. Especially considering I started this with First Contact.

 

[Scionz]

One more thing. I said upthread I really didn't care for the way Enterprise introduced the Organians and the Ferengi into the narrative before they were technically supposed to, mainly because I felt the episodes didn't work narratively. But I actually kind of like the way Regeneration from Enterprise fits in with the Borg. Especially considering I started this with First Contact.

Regeneration should have been a mid-season 2 parter. It was slammed at the time because people got used to slamming Berman and Braga for abusing the Borg on Voyager (Unimatrix Zero deserved it, to be fair). But it's one of the most imaginative, intense and overall best paced Enterprise episodes.

It was a stroke of genius to realize that somewhere on Earth there would be the wreckage of a borg sphere, larger than most other starships of the time, with advance 24th century borg technology, a transwarp coil (which the Arctic research team actually found!). Its's a gigantic out of place object that would require explanation. Having the reactivated Borg cleaning up after themselves as they modified the research ship is an effective way of denying Earth access to technology from the far future.

Many fans at the time criticized bringing them in as a stunt, carried by them not using their names to identify themselves by name, a stunt pulled by the Romulans, Ferengi and Organians on the show. I thought then and think now that the complaint was ridiculous.

We, the view, much like Starfleet of the 2370s came to know the Borg better than anyone expect probably the Klingons. Rotate shield and weapons modulations... don't let them touch you.... locking out computers.... everyone knew the Borg's basic bag of tricks and how to deal with them. I think Enterprise perfectly captured how terrifying they were when the crew had no idea what they were. They existed completely outside the frame of reference for people of Archers times. Most aliens they encountered would be more or less like them - societies, militaries, political structures. And indeed that would continue through to the 24th century until Q gave the Federation a rude awakening. An collective consciousness that assimilated species into it? Phlox didn't even have the terminology to describe it right. Archer spends most of the episode trying to be the local do-gooder like the NX-01 had been for most of Season 1 and 2 up to that point. The look on Archer's face when he realized the Borg played him like a fiddle was perfect.

And did I mention Bryan Tyler's score? Perhaps one of the best of all of Star Trek and the perfect Borg music. Better than Voyager or even First Contact. It was also a great opportunity to see Enterprise's updated CG (compared to Voyager) take on certain borg visual effects.

That's not to say it's a perfect episode. Reed coming up with what amounts to a 24th century solution for phasers was lame. As was the way Phlox cured himself of the nanoprobes. To be fair, those Phasers barely worked and Archer and Malcom resorted to physical combat pretty quickly, and Phlox's cure would have only worked on Denobulan's hardy physiology. But still, it was lame to go there. It also was a missed opportunity to show Archer and Malcom, realizing energy weapons weren't going to work, to do what has been long requested by fans and show them take on the Borg with projectile weapons. If the entire subplot of Reed tinkering with Phasers had been him trying to assemble some crude assault rifles - only to see the Borg adapt their shields to that after a few rounds too - I think fans would have liked it more.

Regeneration is by far the 3rd best major Borg episode after Q Who and the Best of Both Worlds, and if you include First Contact, they are really the only 4 "great" Borg stories with "I, Borg", Scorpion, Endgame and Dark Frontier occupying the "decent to pretty good" rung and lastly Unimatrix Zero and Descent (a tremendous missed opportunity because the pieces were there).

 

[Turtletrekker]

Not quite chronological, but I'm going back to watch some episodes of Enterprise and the original series that I skipped when my attention began to wander and I didn't want my enthusiasm for this project to wane because of lack of interest. I'm hoping by the end of this to have watched a minimum of three quarters of every single series. Hopefully more.

 

[Commander Troi]

My theory for the Ferengi is that their highly stable (they've been in their current political form for 10,000 years) but entirely foreign structure confounded the Federation's ability to deal develop a policy for them.

Consider Zek. As Grand Nagus, he is supposedly the leader of the Ferengi Alliance and a vast business empire. He is among the wealthiest Fergeni. He sits atop the Tower of Commerce and is only checked by the Board of Liquidators and some kind of council of other very rich Ferengi. But this a guy who also travels to Deep Space Nine on a mere Ferengi Shuttle (as opposed to a D'Kora class), with a entourage of one or two manservants. Instead of being fetid like a Head of State on his visits, he is often just another traveler. No security. No anything. He deals with Sisko, rarely, one on one and not with a Federation Diplomat.

I propose there is essential no Ferengi state. The entirety of Ferengi society is privatized. Every aspect of it is a service provided by a business for profit. And since no one business can provide all the services any major government can, This would also imply that the "alliance" in the Ferengi Alliance refers to the rather ad hoc relationships of the powerful business interests that provide major services and major products. That would make Zek more of a "Chairman of the Board" of the Alliance (of which his business Empire is one member) and functionally a private citizen (thus explaining his limited entourage and comparative diplomatic rank) than Head of State, which is how we saw him in "the Nagus" episode on DS9.

Holy moley! This is THE best thinking on the Ferengi I've ever seen and makes *complete* sense! They are profit-based Capitalism in its purest form. Thank you!

BTW, are a historian or something IRL? Your analyses have been wonderful *and* easy to understand. Great job!

@Turtletrekker thanks for sharing your rewatch! I've been enjoying it a lot!

 

[Scionz]

Holy moley! This is THE best thinking on the Ferengi I've ever seen and makes *complete* sense! They are profit-based Capitalism in its purest form. Thank you!

BTW, are a historian or something IRL? Your analyses have been wonderful *and* easy to understand. Great job!

@Turtletrekker thanks for sharing your rewatch! I've been enjoying it a lot!

Haha thanks for the compliment. And nah, I've just watched Star Trek a lot over my life and just have a head for contextualizing a lot of information.