What is your personal head canon?

[Oddish]

You guys seem to have gone ape-crap with the "is the Fed military" business, but can I drop some head canon?

The "Think Tank" in Voyager S5 wasn't the brilliant organization it said it was. It mostly solved mid-tier problems, while taking credit for other people's work. That's why it had to create an easy-to-solve problem for Voyager. Instead of offering to address their real problem. If they were really the super-brains they said they were, they'd have just worked out the bugs in the quantum slipstream drive, then offered to fix it and send Voyager zooming home... for the same price as before. Creating a much toothier dilemma for the crew. As for their ship, it had next-level armor, but not much else.


And... oh, yeah. The Vidiians cured the Phage themselves. The Think Tank just knew of their prior encounters and just figured, "who was Voyager going to check with?"

 

[fireproof78]

You guys seem to have gone ape-crap with the "is the Fed military" business, but can I drop some head canon?

The "Think Tank" in Voyager S5 wasn't the brilliant organization it said it was. It mostly solved mid-tier problems, while taking credit for other people's work. That's why it had to create an easy-to-solve problem for Voyager. Instead of offering to address their real problem. If they were really the super-brains they said they were, they'd have just worked out the bugs in the quantum slipstream drive, then offered to fix it and send Voyager zooming home... for the same price as before. Creating a much toothier dilemma for the crew. As for their ship, it had next-level armor, but not much else.


And... oh, yeah. The Vidiians cured the Phage themselves. The Think Tank just knew of their prior encounters and just figured, "who was Voyager going to check with?"

Honestly, I always took the think tank as a snake oil sales organization that utilized situations to maximize their profits and opportunities.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

• Just recently, we found a cure for the Vidiian phage.
• JANEWAY: The Vidiians?
• KURROS: You would hardly recognize them now.

Or, yikes, they obliterated them.

Hang on, I don't see anyone disliking the idea that the bridge is playing the sound effects over the speakers.

Did we just find an idea that everyone likes?

Sweet.

An absence of noise can drive you mad.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/earths-quietest-room-you-can-hear-yourself-blink-180948160/

Somebody could drive the crew of a ship nuts just by creating a larger one of these and turning off every sound on the craft.

White-sound device

A white-sound device was an instrument in use aboard Starfleet vessels that was able to mask individual sounds from sensor devices. It was employed on the bridge of the USS Enterprise in the year 2267, during testimony in the court martial of Captain James T. Kirk. Doctor Leonard McCoy used the...

memory-alpha.fandom.com

 

[Oddish]

Honestly, I always took the think tank as a snake oil sales organization that utilized situations to maximize their profits and opportunities.

They definitely were. But they weren't punching at the weight Kurros implied they were.

Or, yikes, they obliterated them.

If they had had the power to exterminate a species as widespread and powerful as the Vidiians, they wouldn't have needed the Hazari as dupes.


Another (sad) bit of head canon: Under Starfleet's policies, an officer could not be held accountable for actions committed under alien influence. Had Harry Kim fought the reprimand Janeway dropped on him, it would have been stricken from his record. Unfortunately, due to his general hero-worship of Janeway, he didn't. That was why his career was in the sorry state that LD implies it was in.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

If they had had the power to exterminate a species as widespread and powerful as the Vidiians, they wouldn't have needed the Hazari as dupes.

Not the whole species...just the few they encountered.

 

[Oddish]

Not the whole species...just the few they encountered.

That's possible. Either way, if the Vidiians as a whole had beaten the Phage, I don't think it was the Think Tank's doing. Were they capable of such a feat, shortening Voyager's journey would have been a simple matter.

As an aside, I just got a new phone, and it has an aggressive autocorrect function. So expect a lot of apparent typos or strange word choices from me.

 

[Farscape One]

The Think Tank lied about the Vidiians. They were, what, over 40,000 light years away? Nothing has ever indicated they had that kind of propulsion technology, and the fact Kurros was interested in the Quantum Slipstream tech as part of the 'payment' to solve their 'problem' points to the Think Tank not actually having that ability to move across that distance in such a short time. (Roughly 3 years, which was the last time Voyager encountered them for real in "RESOLUTIONS".)


Kurros just dropped the name 'Vidiians' to make his group seem very impressive.

 

[BillJ]

Kurros just dropped the name 'Vidiians' to make his group seem very impressive.

Well, it was probably also there to give some fans a chubby.

 

[cooleddie74]

Costanza always liked trying to impress everyone else.

 

[Farscape One]

Well, it was probably also there to give some fans a chubby.

To be fair, as a big fan of the Vidiians, I loved the callback.

But I was not blind to it being obvious it was a lie.

 

[Oddish]

I loved the callback.

It was nice to see in a series that had too little continuity.

 

[Admiral Archer]

Some of my personal headcanon regarding Star Trek Generations, specifically:

First, let's address Harriman, otherwise known as the most incompetent Enterprise captain ever. My headcanon is he got transferred to a literal garbage scow (referred to by brass as a "freighter" to make it seem more dignified) after this disgrace, following a court martial. He wasn't necessarily directly responsible for Kirk's death, but he was absolutely responsible for taking a starship out of drydock that was woefully undermanned and unprepared, leading directly to the deaths of the 368 El-Aurian refugees that his ship was unable to save. This was a diplomatic crisis of incredibly negligent proportions, and the loss of one of Starfleet's most legendary officers was just the icing on the cake of catastrophe. The man didn't deserve a starfleet ship command of any kind, much less the Starship Enterprise.

Second, and on a more positive note, as a kid, I could've sworn they either lengthened the nacelles or moved them further back on the nacelle pylons on the Enterprise-D in the refit that took place between "All Good Things..." and the movie (y'know, the refit that added all those extra consoles on the bridge and made it so dimly lit everywhere, lol). All these years later, my headcanon is that this actually did happen, and below are illustrations I found on facebook to help you envision what I had in mind.

 

[Oddish]

Here's a great one, don't know who came up with it, but I'm SO adopting it.

The reason Sisko grew a beard and later shaved his head was due to his picture in historical archives, him having assumed Gabriel Bell's identity. He changed his appearance to distance himself from "Gabriel's" appearance.

 

[StarTrek1701]

Some of my personal headcanon regarding Star Trek Generations, specifically:

First, let's address Harriman, otherwise known as the most incompetent Enterprise captain ever. My headcanon is he got transferred to a literal garbage scow (referred to by brass as a "freighter" to make it seem more dignified) after this disgrace, following a court martial. He wasn't necessarily directly responsible for Kirk's death, but he was absolutely responsible for taking a starship out of drydock that was woefully undermanned and unprepared, leading directly to the deaths of the 368 El-Aurian refugees that his ship was unable to save. This was a diplomatic crisis of incredibly negligent proportions, and the loss of one of Starfleet's most legendary officers was just the icing on the cake of catastrophe. The man didn't deserve a starfleet ship command of any kind, much less the Starship Enterprise.

Second, and on a more positive note, as a kid, I could've sworn they either lengthened the nacelles or moved them further back on the nacelle pylons on the Enterprise-D in the refit that took place between "All Good Things..." and the movie (y'know, the refit that added all those extra consoles on the bridge and made it so dimly lit everywhere, lol). All these years later, my headcanon is that this actually did happen, and below are illustrations I found on facebook to help you envision what I had in mind.

Gorgeous renders holy shit!! Thanks for posting!

 

[Admiral Archer]

Gorgeous renders holy shit!! Thanks for posting!

Let me be perfectly clear - I did NOT do those renderings, and I don't recall the facebook group I got them from providing credit to the artist (they might have, I'll have to double check when I have time). I just thought they looked cool and wanted to share them, since they matched my early ideas for what the Generations Enterprise-D refit looked like.

 

[FredH]

I feel like some of the resistance to having Starfleet defined as a military is that it opens the door for people to follow it up with "The characters would never behave like this in a military. In a military this would never be allowed. This is unbelievable for a military vessel," and so on. The term comes with baggage, expectations and preconceptions.

I think some of it is also an understandable reaction against that certain portion of the fandom that really likes the military angle to a perhaps unfortunate degree, and whose fanworks tend to involve super duper Starfleet battleships, the intricate details of military hierarchies, and stories about blowing the (fill in enemy) out of the sky and, at least sometimes in the past, engineering coups in Starfleet to stop not-always-well-defined “corruption”. It’s a small portion, but it’s out there.

 

[FredH]

First, let's address Harriman, otherwise known as the most incompetent Enterprise captain ever. My headcanon is he got transferred to a literal garbage scow (referred to by brass as a "freighter" to make it seem more dignified) after this disgrace, following a court martial. He wasn't necessarily directly responsible for Kirk's death, but he was absolutely responsible for taking a starship out of drydock that was woefully undermanned and unprepared, leading directly to the deaths of the 368 El-Aurian refugees that his ship was unable to save.

Pretty sure he was under orders to take the ship out then; it wasn’t his decision. Whomever gave him those orders was at fault; Harriman wasn’t. He did nothing wrong, unless one counts trying solutions we’d never heard of to which Kirk shook his head sadly and didn’t work, after which Kirk tried solutions we’d never heard of which did. That a “because the writer said so”, not any fault in character. This is like people blaming Deanna Troi for the D under Riker’s command being damaged in battle and not subsequently defying gravity.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

This is like people blaming Deanna Troi for the D under Riker’s command being damaged in battle and not subsequently defying gravity.

IMO, Deanna did a GREAT JOB "Crash Landing" the Saucer section in one piece given that it was a crisis situation & she's not a regular Pilot / CONN Officer.

For all the BS that the fans give her, it wasn't her fault that she was placed in that situation.

She did the best she could given what was available at hand, they didn't have time to find a replacement pilot with the few seconds they have.

 

[Farscape One]

Did Riker's time aboard the Pagh affect him more than we think?

Both times Riker was in command of the Enterprise when she's attacked by a Klingon Bird of Prey (or two), he completely faltered. In "Rascals", he and the crew looked like complete morons when two out of date ones manned by Ferengi beat them. In GENERATIONS, one ship severely damaged them, to the point it blew up the stardrive section. Granted, they were able to shoot through the shields... but as soon as you see that happening, you fire more than a single phaser shot! She's a Galaxy class ship, EASILY outmatches them... a fact the Duras sisters say to Soran.

Both situations were almost entirely avoidable if Riker made better command decisions during those battles.

 

[fireproof78]

Did Riker's time aboard the Pagh affect him more than we think?

Both times Riker was in command of the Enterprise when she's attacked by a Klingon Bird of Prey (or two), he completely faltered. In "Rascals", he and the crew looked like complete morons when two out of date ones manned by Ferengi beat them. In GENERATIONS, one ship severely damaged them, to the point it blew up the stardrive section. Granted, they were able to shoot through the shields... but as soon as you see that happening, you fire more than a single phaser shot! She's a Galaxy class ship, EASILY outmatches them... a fact the Duras sisters say to Soran.

Both situations were almost entirely avoidable if Riker made better command decisions during those battles.

I have a lot of questions in terms of Riker's tactical decision making in starship combat. He's overtaken rather easily in Rascals and Generations the immediate decision is to turn weapons away from the attacking ship? What?

The lack of combat response definitely gives me pause for Riker.