Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Pike series and novel continuity

And this time it was Tomlinson who lost Martine. They just can't win.

 

In the Kelvinverse, they BOTH die!

(in STB, Krall feeds them to the life-energy-sucking machine)

 

Off topic, but I did like the line in Myriad Universes A Less Perfect Union where the Commander says to Kirk "I am glad that in this reality I can call you friend."

 

I feel like, if anything, it's bringing up as Charles Phipps put it, you can't appease fascists. That, on the basis of media always reflecting the period of time that it is created in, there is a contingent that believes that it can find common ground with the fascists, while others are pointing out that it only allows them to get their foot in the door and wedge it open wider.

Like the Dominion War, it's a message that, as hopeful as we want to approach the future, there will be those who will not leave us in peace, even if our peace is not infringing on them at all. Better to fight for those ideals than see them trampled underfoot by those who just don't give a damn.

It's a message that, at least in my book, is worth repeating.

And, since we have the added knowledge of the future of the Star Trek universe after this point in time, we know that Spock forges a peace between Vulcan and Romulus - the message, when Star Trek is taken as a whole tapestry, is that those realities ARE possible, someday, even if that day is not today. This may not have been the day when peace and friendship won out, but that is not to say that it cannot come eventually - but, when it is NOT that day, then you still have to stand and fight for your beliefs.

 

Was just about to post something along these exact same lines myself, here. Also, absolutely loved that we finally got the return of the future "Monster Maroon" TOS movie-era uniforms onscreen in this episode.

Although the new canonical visual-design of the NCC-1647 sorta blows up several offscreen stories (including the novels The Ashes of Eden, Vulcan's Forge, and the My Brother's Keeper-trilogy, DC TOS Vol. 1, Annual #1; DC TOS Vol. 2, #64; the DC Comics graphic novel Debt of Honor, and several FASA RPG sourcebooks). Guess we'll just have to mentally retcon the Farragut's appearance like we now do with (for instance) Robert April.

 

I wonder if the decision to make the Peregrine a Connie lookalike made them want to make Farragut a different class, so we didn't keep seeing Enterprise clones over and over again on the screen?

Plus, in the battle scenes, having the Farragut look substantially different to Enterprise gives the viewer an immediate situational awareness of what they are seeing that would otherwise be ambiguous, if both Federation ships were the same.

 

More likely the latter. Or maybe they were thinking of The Making of Star Trek saying that Kirk's first command was a smaller "destroyer-equivalent" vessel.

And probably the only reason they did make the Peregrine a lookalike was because they needed an excuse to use the Enterprise sets -- including the virtual-wall cargo bay set, which is in the secondary hull. Since we didn't see any of the Farragut except the bridge, there was no incentive to use the same design.

 

I would totally watch the shit out of a cooking show, hosted by a post-accident Pike, with him beeping cooking-instructions, while a frustrated Ortegas struggles to do as he's telling her, but can't quite catch all the beeps and their meanings.

 

Debt of Honor left the saucer intact. sauté in a pan with some eggs and two new nacelles... last night's leftover starship is pasta mama.. continuity intact

 

Vanguard and the Seven Deadly Sins novella "The First Peer" promoted ENT season 4 character Vrax to become the unnamed Praetor mentioned in TOS. Now, SNW has shown that Praetor to be an unnamed younger woman.

It is technically possible the office-holder is a different person during "Balance of Terror" of the prime timeline, but I feel that arrangement would undermine the aesop of "A Quality of Mercy".

Speaking of, I am a little surprised SNW did not bring forth the starship name Algeron previously used in Federation: The First 150 Years and Prometheus. I always wondered how the latter's authors selected the former's usage over competing alternatives Gal Gath'thong, Tellus, Nhorazz, and Talon. I suspected CBS supplied their choice as with the Solanae in both STO and Sight Unseen.

 

Maybe, maybe not. Maybe the Tal Shiar reported to the Senate and the Continuing Committee that Pike, a leader known for being less aggressive, had declined a promotion to fleet captain to stay on as captain of the Enterprise, and the presence of a known dove as captain of the flagship emboldened an aggressive nationalist faction to replace Vrax with the Praetor seen in "A Quality of Mercy."

 

Nothing requires there to be only one Praetor. In Ancient Rome, the title referred to a chief magistrate or army commander, and there could be more than one at a time. Diane Duane's My Enemy, My Ally gave the Romulans a 12-member Praetorate, like the Roman Empire under Augustus. (Under Emperor Tiberius, there were 16 praetors.)

 

This is Romulus, not Earth. And if that were true, then the entire premise of Nemesis would be meaningless.

 

I never said it had to be exactly like Earth, just that there was nothing ruling out the possibility of more than one Praetor. It doesn't have to be twelve, but it doesn't have to be one either.

Nonsense. It's 120 years later. Governments can change over time. The number of praetors in Rome changed a number of times over the centuries.

Besides, NEM is ambiguous about the Praetor's role, saying merely that his power came from the Romulan fleet, which is consistent with the Roman use of the title to mean a military commander. (Although Praetor Hiren in the opening scene seemed to be portrayed more like the president of the Senate.) NEM also established that Shinzon had to assassinate the entire Senate to gain sole power, suggesting that the Praetor's authority normally exists alongside or within the Senate's authority.

 

The idea of there being multiple Praetors actually works to explain what would otherwise be an oddity with this episode, in that why would the Praetor be showing up to a battlefield. This individual being one of many Praetors certainly makes much more sense than the Head of State personally leading the charge in response to what was a response to a reinforcement request.

 

For the record, it was actually DS9's "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" that established that the Praetor was the Romulan head of government, at least as of 2375. NEM seems to confirm this, depicting Hiren as the guy in charge of the Star Empire and as apparently needing the legislature to hold power (which is consistent with a role akin to a prime minister). VOY's "The Q and the Gray" established the existence at some point in history of a Romulan Empress, strongly implying (but not explicitly establishing) that the Romulan Star Empire was some form of monarchy with an Emperor/Empress as head of state. This again fits with the idea of the Praetor as head of government. That's the arrangement the novels went with post-NEM: a ceremonial Emperor, a Praetor who is the real person in charge, and a Senate whose support the Praetor needs to keep power.

I don't necessarily know that the writers of VOY, DS9, and NEM even meant for it all to fit together that way, but it did fit nicely and it worked. But, as Christopher rightly points out, there is literally nothing canonical requiring the Romulan constitutional system of the 2370s to work the same way in the 2260s.

I mean, in a martial culture there's nothing particularly implausible about the idea that the head of government might seize upon the opportunity to lead an armada in the field to gain what they believe to be an easy, assured military victory in order to gain political capital.

 

And of course, as I mentioned, having two or more Praetors is just one possibility. For all we know, the Praetor glimpsed here, while played by a female performer, may use he/him pronouns.

The novel Killing Time posited a version of the Romulan Empire that was institutionally misogynistic (contradicting The Making of Star Trek's assertion of the Romulans' complete gender equality), so that the Commander from "The Enterprise Incident" had somehow risen to become Praetor, but concealed her true identity and pretended to be male. Although she wouldn't have actually shown herself openly like this Praetor did. A variant could be something like the Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut, who had to present herself as symbolically male, wearing a fake beard and such, because those were the required trappings of a pharaoh.

 

Wwwellllllll....

 

It occurs to me that, while not a particularly novel concept (hee hee!), TOS - Ex Machina and TOS - The Higher Frontier did precipitate SNW 1.05 "Spock Amok" bringing the ENT term V'tosh kat'ur to a publication not branded ENT and to Federation-era Vulcans.

It will be interesting to see if DIS mentions any presence of V'tosh kat'ur on post-Burn unified Ni'Var.