I don't know whether this is an unpopular opinion or not but I actually think that the way Tasha Yar died gave the show much higher stakes throughout it's entire run. Here is the chief security officer, main bridge crew, tragic back story, potential love interest for the robot character just slapped down by the monster of the week. It made all the subsequent dangerous situations seem much more dire because "they were willing to kill off someone in the main cast". I also think that Yesterday's Enterprise was an awesome send off for that character that let them have a heroic ending for her after all.

It was a shame because I think Denise Crosby could have been awesome as a recurring character and in my opinion, we didn't get a great strong female character in the main cast (until DS9 which is an embarrassment of riches in that department). But I maintain that casually killing off Tasha Yar made my first watchthrough of TNG much more exciting.

I don't however like the additional stretch of her half-romulan daughter. It's pretty soap-opera-ish in my opinion and tarnishes the heroic sacrifice of her character.

To the Trill with the license to thrill, happy 60th birthday!

My friends and I recently challenged each other to list our top five starship classes and were surprised by how different our opinions were despite being generally in agreement with what we like about the various series.

Personally it was hard for me to make a definitive "top five" but here are some I rank highly in no particular order:

• TOS-era constitution
• Refit constitution
• Discovery-era Bird of Prey (OG is good too obv but I love the HR Geiger-esque weirdness)
• D'Kora class Ferengi ship
• ~~Not canon, but~~ I love the original "Long-boi" Discovery design. It gives off some very cool art-deco retro-futurism vibes. Not very classically "trek" but I love it nonetheless!

I am curious to see what c/StarTrek thinks!

More than meets the eye in this episode

I've been watching the various Star Trek shows for a while now, and while not finished I saw most of them, I believe. And I cannot shake off the feeling that the messages given by these shows, especially (and almost exclusively) recent ones are pushing horrible morals that most people seem to not care about.

Slavery

I posted before, in the middle of my watching of Enterprise, that the show was supporting slavery because of the Cogenitor episode. Many comments disagreed, some even saying that they don't remember anything supporting slavery at all in the show. That was before I watched more. The show contains a full episode that is just about showing that:

• Sex slaves are not only acceptable, they're "sexy" and cool and negotiating with slavers is a good thing

• Sex trafficking of individuals groomed since they are born into being sex slaves is the fault of the victims for "seducing" men ???

How is this show not fine with human trafficking at this point? Is all that you need to avoid controversy, to paint the slaves in green? I still cannot comprehend the lack of reaction on this show. Add to that the frequent crimes of war by Archer and you have a nice cocktail of humanity's finest horror.

Section 31

This is also something that seems absurd to me. When it first appeared, it was already a gestapo/kgb-like group that ignores the concept of democracy, laws, and justice - in other words a horrible group - but its existence as a starfleet element was blurry. But with modern shows, they keep on bringing it back, and directly saying that it is supported by starfleet, and a good thing, or at least a necessary one.

The thing is that what made starfleet supposedly admirable was, if not every single individual's morals, the morality of their concept, their laws, their structure. Having section 31 be condoned by starfleet transforms starfleet from "utopian future of humanity" (which it was supposed to be) to "dictatorship that pretends to be a democracy but supports crimes of war and above-the-law groups". In other words, it destroys the concept of starfleet.

Discriminations, sexism, and other shitty ideas, morals and behaviours

Now this one is maybe more blurry and subjective, but it is scattered all across, nonstop.

Let's start chronologically

DS9

For this show, the constant misogyny is nothing hard to see. But they still went out of their way to put some nasty things here and there.

The episode with Quark "becoming" a woman was interesting. Quark discovers a different point of view, gains insight and empathy, that's nice! Until the end of the episode directly says "no nevermind, he was like that because of hormones, and was just an overly emotional woman because of that". Because after all, women are hysterical, right? .

Other than that, we have the toxic relationship between Keiko and O'Brian, the toxic relationship between Dax and Worf, the toxic relationship between Odo and Kira, the toxic relationship between Sisco and his wife, Jake who constantly shows that when a teen boy is targeted by pedophiles, the teen is both responsible for it, and liking it (one second, I need to throw up in a corner), etc.

And of course there is the rest, between Cisco crimes against humanity, Bashir (that's all I'll say, nothing else needed), and the weird pro-religious message that doesn't make sense.

Enterprise

We already talked about their view of child/human trafficking which I think gives the tone of the show.

But of course that's not enough, so let's put some sexual scenes about the women in particular, rape scenes with TPol because who doesn't like rape culture, Malcolm "PoS" Reed talking like a creep about "bums", Reed and Tucker with their "haha lol, these alien women are ugly because you can't tell if they are women or not" and other toxic masculinity scenes, etc. Oh and I almost forgot about the sex scene between teen siblings that serve no other purpose than to show teens having incestuous sex.

Picard

What do we have here, more weird sibling sexual scenes, people getting manipulated mentally and sexually to extract information, murderers who get away with it because betraying the federation and killing innocents is fine if you're a scenario character (reminds me of something else...AhemelnorAhem)...

Oh, and I almost forgot the amazing scene with a white Picard in his white British empire colonist outfit, going on the planet of the tan refugees who hate the federation, kicks everything around and tries to show that he's the boss. I guess this show regrets colonies too, huh.

Discovery

Now I didn't finish this one yet, and it's hard.

We have klingons that start off as a weird racist stereotype of africans seen by colonialists from a century ago: black skin, tribal armors, weird "foreign" language that the show intentionally refuses to translate through the UT, and when they speak english it's with a strong guttural accent. And they're barbaric, scary cannibals who fight with sticks and knives, and are a bunch of disorganised tribes, with weird magic rituals that allow them to do weird brainwashing. I'm almost surprised they don't carry voodoo dolls while dancing around a bonfire. The fact that people describe this show as "woke" is funny to me.

We have very explicit rape and gore torture scenes, for what purpose, I don't know.

We have people forgiven of murder because it wasn't their mind, but then it is and everyone is fine with it.

And then there's more section 31 shit.

There's also the vision of asylum in this show that basically says "we grant asylum whenever we want, not based on the situation but on personal preferences", with Georgiou granting asylum despite the prime directive, and then Pike refusing asylum because of it. It's surprising that starfleet would allow that, but at least it's not Archer-level, sending people to death then blaming the ones who tried to help them.

SNW

As far as I remember, nothing as bad as the rest here. The take on eugenics and "augmented" individuals is really absurd though, showing starfleet hating on Una is fine because her species is augmented (like the denobulans who are in starfleet though, no?), but the stupid security officer who has DNA augmentations from a crazy evil dictator engineered to be violent and crazy, is allowed without any issue.

All of them

One thing that I struggle understanding is the constant of racist stereotypes. They're everywhere, because all the shows use them to define their characters.

Keiko wants to eat her traditional food in a kimono, Georgiou wears a big kimono-like dress that would barely fit in a Mulan movie, Elnor is a ridiculous samurai-ninja with the fitting outfit, etc. As if in hundreds of years, after earth is united and mixed with hundreds of alien species, "cultures" would not evolve and mix but instead go back to being very split apart and caricatural.

P.S.

I'm not saying that the shows are shit, but that I am worried about the lack of discussions concerning all those subjects. Star Trek is supposed to be progressive and show a better version of humanity, one that evolved and grew, and yet morals seem to not be a consideration of the shows anymore.

Written by: Top Secret (May Darmon)

Directed by: Top Secret (Bob Suarez)

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ended in 1999 after 7 seasons but didn't jump into feature films like The Next Generation. Here's why.

Written by: Ben Rodgers

Directed by: Megan Lloyd

• The episode title is a reference to the spaghetti western, “A Few Dollars More”.

    • “A Few Dollars More” was the sequel to “A Fistful of Dollars” which TNG referenced with title of season six’s “A Few Datas More”.

    • Badgey as introduced in “Terminal Provocations”. Jack McBrayer reprises the role here.

• The Kalla system was first seen in “Firstborn”, and it’s where the USS Cerritos fought the Pakled clumpship “No Small Parts”.

    • Here we see Drookmani scavengers collecting Rutherford’s lost implant. We already saw this happening at the end of “The Stars at Night”, but the scene ended before revealing it was the Drookmani collecting the implant.

• The Drookmani captain is voiced by Fred Tatasciore, the actor who voices Shaxs.

• The Droomani lower decker is voiced by Paul Scheer, the actor who voices Billups.

• The bisected circle emblem on the Bynar ship as also seen on the high tech fanny packs the Bynars wore in “11001001”, as well as this episode.

• The Bynars are speaking in the language we heard in “11001001”, and we see their text shown a display, also from that episode.

• While we never saw a Bynar ship in any previous iteration of Trek, I did think it worth pointing out that they are a species where two individuals are linked and act in unison, and here we see what would be a single captain’s chair on almost any other species’ ship is actually a loveseat, occupied by two Bynar.

• The Mysterious Threat adds the Bynar ship to it’s collection.

• Badgey appears to be controlling the Drookmani who salvaged him via glowing cybernetic implants, which immediately invokes the Borg. It also makes me think, however, of the fact that after having been beamed into space in “Datalore”, we learn in “Brothers” that Lore was rescued by Pakleds.

• Rutherford has outfitted the Sequoia shuttle with a grappler. The NX-01 Enterprise was equipped with grapplers as seen “Broken Bow”, and so were its shuttlepods, which we saw in “Similitude”.

    • Boimler expressed excitement over the NX-01’s grapplers in “Those Old Scientists”, as did La’an.

• The Daystrom Institute was first mentioned in “The Measure of a Man”, and is named for Richard Daystrom from “The Ultimate Computer”.

    • The view of the Daystrom Institute is recreated from the PIC episode, “Remembrance”.

    • The Daystrom Institute’s Self-Aware Megalomaniacal Computer Storage room was first seen in “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie”.

• Peanut Hamper was introduced in “No Small Parts” and given over to the custody of the Daystrom Institute in “A Mathematically Perfect Redemption”.

    • Peanut Hamper is played by Kether Donohue.

• AGIMUS was introduced in “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie”, where we also saw him placed in Daystrom Institute custody.

    • AGIMUS is portrayed by Jeffery Combs, who has played a number of roles across DS9, VOY, and ENT, including:

       • Tiron - “Meredion”

       • Penk - “Tsunkatse”

       • Krem - “Acquistion”

• Lord Tyrannikillicus was first seen in “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie” and is voiced by Shaxs’ voice actor, Fred Tatasciore.

• We saw AGIMUS’ drones in “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie”, but only depicted in a mural on a world he had conquered, or in a fantasy he had; this is the first we’ve seen an actual drone.

• AGIMUS states the Mysterious Threat’s attack on the Bynar ship occurred on stardate 58934.9.

• The Drookmani ship is outfitted with a number of canons. In “Terminal Provocations”, the first episode to depict the Drookmani, their ship has no weapons at all, and uses a tractor beam to throw space junk at the Cerritos.

• ”Almost as noble as the time you snapped my [beep]ing neck!” Badgey is still upset about the events of “Terminal Provocations” when Rutherford had to ”kill” him in order to save his and Tendi’s lives.

• Rutherford’s hug causes Badgey to split into two separate entities, one of whom is named Goodgey. In “The Enemy Within”, Captain Kirk was separated into his good and evil halves.

    • Perhaps worth noting that Goodgey is silver, similar to the combadges worn by the Cerritos crew.

    • Badgey also splits off his logical aspect in Logic-y. Spock dreamed about being split into his human and Vulcan halves in “Spock Amok”.

• ”This stuff is great! All we have on Orion are, like, sharp little pebbles.” It as established in “Second Contact” that there is no sand on Orion.

    • It was also established that sand gives Boimler a rash, but he doesn’t mention it here.

• Tendi is barefoot in this scene in Ecuador.. Unrelated, this scene is also lifted directly from the pitch for the proposed Quentin Tarrantino Trek film that was being talked about back in 2017.

• ”Do you guys want to take a root beer float break?” Root beer is like the Federation, so bubbly and cloying and happy. It’s insidious.

• The EMH used neurazine gas to incapacitate the Romulans who’d hijacked the USS Prometheus in “Message in a Bottle”.

• The Tyrus VIIA research station was seen in “A Quality of Life”. It’s where the Exocomps were created by Doctor Farallon and developed sentience.

    • The interior of the Tyrus VIIA research station is recreated from “A Quality of Life”.

• Badgey develops a plan to travel at warp 9.9 and transfer himself across subspace to the entire Federation. In “Threshold” we learned that an object traveling at warp 10 exists at all points of the universe simultaneously.

• We are introduced to Peanut Hamper’s father, Kevin. In “No Small Parts” Peanut Hamper declared that the only reason she joined Starfleet was to upset Kevin.

• Among the Federation material we see Badgey infect are:

    • A subspace relay which appears to be identical to the “ancient space capsule” the USS Enterprise D located in “The Neutral Zone” which contained three surviving humans from 20th century Earth who had been cryogenically frozen.

    • The Cerritos

    • The USS Vancouver where we see Barbra Brinson from “Cupid’s Errant Arrow”

    • The VCF Sh’vhal from “wej Duj”, commanded by Sokel

    • Starbase 25, first mentioned in “The Slaver Weapon” and seen in “An Embarrassment of Dooplers”

    • Deep Space 9 from DS9

    • Douglass Station which was introduced in “Second Contact”

• Badgey, now all powerful, turns a light blue tone, and exists simultaneously across his past, present and future. He departs to an empty dimension to create a universe.

    • Badgey expresses that he has become tired of Earth. These people. Being caught in the tangle of their lives. Also, for some reason he now has human genitals fully visible on screen.

    • Badgey ascends as O’Connor did in “Moist Vessel”; he has six arms, and the outline of a great bird appears around him, with three circles at its head. He says he might hang out with the Q Continuum, introduced in “Encounter at Farpoint” or check out the Black Mountain, which Shaxs told Rutherford of in “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris”. As he ascends, we see he is travelling towards the Koala. Why is it smiling? What does it know?