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Spoilers Strange New Worlds General Discussion Thread

Oh lord, they've made Uhura another
Starfleet orphan:rolleyes:

Yeah, it's not what I would have done. I get some fans like that stuff but I'd have avoided it and still gone with the same or similar character beats.

Not everything in the galaxy has to be the product of tragedy.
 
I hope me nearly cutting off a finger in childhood counts because I want a swank outfit with a cape and the power to stare intense laser beams.
 
That is a bit disappointing.

Who are the confirmed orphans among the major characters?
TOS: Uhura
TNG: Crusher, Worf, Yar
DS9: Kira
VGR: Neelix, Seven
ENT: none?
DSC: Burnham
PCD: Elnor, Seven again, kind of Soji
LD: none?
PGY: Dal
 
I don't think ENT had any orphans. Everyone seemed to have living, breathing parents or at least one surviving parent and Archer's father didn't die until Jonathan was in flight school.

I mean, we never saw Phlox's but then again he never said they died when he was a child and left him alone in the care of others.
 
If you do count having at least one dead parent while still relatively young, it does make the number go up dramatically. All this in the future where medicine is akin to magic.
 
Also when it comes to the Enterprise, I'm kind of hoping that my future self will drop by soon to let me know if it gets a refit into the Original Series ship in the series finale. As long as I get that refit I can accept this Enterprise. Gap in the pylons and all.
If you're a fan of SNW for however many seasons it runs: then you won't care as much as you do now, by the time they'd get to that point. If you turn out to be invested in the series, it'll probably go from "make or break" to "would've been nice... "
 
That is a bit disappointing.

Who are the confirmed orphans among the major characters?
TOS: Uhura
TNG: Crusher, Worf, Yar
DS9: Kira
VGR: Neelix, Seven
ENT: none?
DSC: Burnham
PCD: Elnor, Seven again, kind of Soji
LD: none?
PGY: Dal

Wesley assuredly does not count as an orphan, since his mother is still alive. I'd also argue that anyone who lost their parents after adulthood doesn't qualify as an orphan (otherwise Picard himself should be on this list). And to nitpick a bit further, I'd also argue that Kira doesn't quite count, because her father died once she was an adult - and though Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night implies that her mother is dead, it's never canonically said. Also, Seven's parents were assimilated, not killed - and her father was still canonically alive as a drone when we last saw him.
 
If you're a fan of SNW for however many seasons it runs: then you won't care as much as you do now, by the time they'd get to that point. If you turn out to be invested in the series, it'll probably go from "make or break" to "would've been nice... "
I'm not going to let a spaceship design make or break the series for me, I'm not that obsessed with visual continuity. But it really would be nice, for me at least.
 
Wesley assuredly does not count as an orphan, since his mother is still alive. I'd also argue that anyone who lost their parents after adulthood doesn't qualify as an orphan (otherwise Picard himself should be on this list). And to nitpick a bit further, I'd also argue that Kira doesn't quite count, because her father died once she was an adult - and though Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night implies that her mother is dead, it's never canonically said. Also, Seven's parents were assimilated, not killed - and her father was still canonically alive as a drone when we last saw him.

I did not include Wesley on my list of orphans.

I suppose Kira could have been an adult when her dad died. It doesn't actually say when he died. I kind of assumed it was when she was a teenager, and they just didn't recast for a teenage Kira. Memory Alpha just says 2360s. If you count 18+ as adulthood, it only gives over a year for Kira to have been orphaned.

Being an orphan is not only about having a literally dead parent. I'll give you Seven wasn't a child when she next was aware, so you can strike her out. An abandoned child is also an orphan, whether through will of a parent or not. By the strict "both parents are dead" definition, Burnham was not an orphan, even though she experienced the trauma of the deaths of both her parents and did not reunite with her biological mother well into adulthood.
 
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Happy well adjusted families aren't dramatic:shrug:

I kinda like the fan theory that the people going into Starfleet are all fucked up, because in a utopian society who would volunteer for paramilitary service except those with issues of some sort.
 
Her being related to Khan is like saying someone related to Gengus Khan.. As in alot were related..
Yes, but we aren't all called Khan nor do we want to keep it a family name.

Naming a character in Star Trek "Khan" is the equivalent of naming a starfleet officer "Borg Queen". You know, she assimilated billions so a lot are related.
 
Yes, but we aren't all called Khan nor do we want to keep it a family name.

Naming a character in Star Trek "Khan" is the equivalent of naming a starfleet officer "Borg Queen". You know, she assimilated billions so a lot are related.
Now sure that's an apt comparison. Khan was a dictator, and genetically engineered, but even Kirk and McCoy had a measure of admiration for him. There may not be the same type of antipathy as would be obvious with the Borg Queen, especially since records from "the last world war" were "fragmentary.

It's not like she's named "Green."

Oh lord, they've made Uhura another
Starfleet orphan:rolleyes:
Don't see how this is an issue. We know nothing about Uhura's background, or family members so why not? She might need that sense of belonging as she grows in to her own. It's a trope but as far as many Trek tropes go it's a rather inoffensive one. Yar's background is more offensive.
 
Conjecture:

I wonder what the exact wording is. I wonder if, in the pre-"Space Seed" era, Khan Singh is seen as a man who fosters a lot of opinions. Given the incident with the augments from a hundred years earlier, and the general disdain for genetic engineering on Earth, La'an might not actually be biologically related to Khan, but might be taking the name as a political stance. Maybe she's genetically engineered herself, and got into Starfleet anyway, and wants to make a statement about the bigotry of Starfleet/the Federation.
 
"Noonien Singh" could be like a future version of "Castro" or "Assad". Having baggage, but also not necessarily being as uniformly despised as "Hitler" or "Stalin". I'm not 100% up on my TOS lore, but weren't they also praising the guy quite a bit? In a Napoleon bad-but-also-impressive-way?

That being said: Putting a Kahn on the bridge is definitely a weird choice, and combined with what I read about Uhura here a stark reminder that this show -while looking very promising - is still being done by the same people who made a LOT of questionable-to-downright-stupid decisions so far.

But let's see. Turning Section 31 from "the Illuminati" into "regular Starfleet spy agency" was also a weird decision. But in the context of the show it kinda' worked. As in general - and with all things NuTrek - it would have worked better if they had created their own, new spy organisation/warrior race/adoptive parents instead of co-opting existing, familiar names for essentially new stuff. But whatever. If it works & is a good story, I'm fine with it. And having a genetically engineered human on the bridge (with maybe a dark family backstory) is not necessarily a bad idea. Again: better if it would be a "new" thing, and not twisting something familiar into a weird direction. But -itself alone- also not a bad thing, that can actually turn out quite good if we're lucky.
 
There was also a Mr. Singh in the Enterprise crew in TOS, in "The Changeling." He's the Indian/South Asian-looking crewman checking on equipment in the laboratory where Nomad is listening to Uhura sing.
 
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