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Numerically speaking, the vast majority of Ferengi we see on screen are sporting what have sometimes been called “headskirts”. Virtually every Ferengi we see on-screen — from the marauder crewmen in Next Generation to Quark’s waiters to various Ferengi businessmen seen in the background — is wearing one. Rom and Nog...
We've seen it many, many times: the ship gets into a firefight, takes a few hits, shakes around, and consoles explode (possibly taking an unfortunate ensign with them). Eventually the battle is resolved with our heroes largely intact if somewhat shaken up. If it was a particularly nasty battle, there will be signs of damage:...
It's never made much sense that the entire multi-species Federation would be subject to a strict ban on genetic engineering due to events on Earth that happened centuries before the Federation was even founded. The way they doubled down on that rationale in Una's trial only highlighted the absurdity -- especially when Admiral...
In "Looking for Par'Mach in All the Wrong Places", Grilka's senior retainer (Tumek) takes Worf aside and tells him that he cannot pursue Grilka, as he is from a dishonored house. But hadn't Gowron cleared the House of Mogh? I feel like I'm missing or forgetting something obvious. Otherwise, my best explanation would be that...
The traditional monologue, as used in TOS, TAS, TNG, Strange New Worlds, as well as the endings of Enterprise and several movies, can be taken as a sort of overall mission statement for the Enterprise, possibly even one that takes place in-universe....
The Galaxy class starship was designed with the ability to separate the saucer from the stardrive section, so that the "floating city" part of the ship could be left somewhere safe while the rest of the ship galavants off to do something risky. We see this happen precisely once, in the season one episode Arsenal of Freedom. We...
What amazes me most about this episode is that it’s a Star Trek legal episode that doesn’t want to make me tear my hair out. Thankfully they kept the trial procedure to its most basic....
Poor Terry Matalas. It's clear from numerous post-season interviews that, for as elaborate as S3 became by the end (rebuilding the Enterprise-D! Bringing back Ro and Tuvok! Changelings and Borg and Lore!), his original vision was yet more elaborate. Apparently he originally planned to have Janeway and Kim also appear, and to...
To say Discovery has been "controversial" would be something of an understatement. From the very beginning the show sparked off considerable debate about it's quality, and the bevy of showrunner changes and resulting shifts in tone and plot choices just adds an extra layer of confusion. Many of the same groups and same people...
In DS9 Quark makes a throwaway line about the Great Monetary Collapse that happened during his early lifetime. He describes it as a period caused by "rampant inflation and currency devaluation."...
When studying vertebrate paleontology, the skeleton is one of the most important, and often the only, clue we have to the appearance of long-extinct animals. In Lower Decks: "Kayshon, His Eyes Uncovered", we were treated to the ghoulish sight of of Spock's skeleton ^1, ^2, courtesy of the remains of his giant clone from TAS:...
I saw this rant/complaint over on Reddit, and it got me thinking a bit....
This is the Daystrom Institute Episode Analysis thread for Strange New Worlds 2x01 The Broken Circle....
The history of Starfleet uniforms is long and varied, and reaches back earlier than the dawn of the Federation itself. But despite a wide-ranging colorful history, each era of Starfleet uniforms can be placed into one of two categories: lots of colors (one for each department), or few colors (departments grouped into divisions)....
Paths Not Taken...
In my TNG season 1 rewatch, I finally got to the season finale, "The Neutral Zone." Though best known for Picard's utopian declarations to the cryogenically frozen people from the 90s about the post-scarcity future, it also centers on a tense confrontation with the Romulans. I noticed many parallels with the setup of the...
It's a classic, if somewhat exaggerated trope in Star Trek: The ships first officer, second officer, tactical officer, chief engineer, chief medical officer, and a random ensign beam down to an unsecured planet while some dangerous problem is either ongoing or likely to occur. The Doylist reasons for this are as obvious as the...
In recent years, I have been surprised to find one part of DS9 that keeps on getting better with age: the Ferengi. As vehicle of social commentary, they go where Trek never went before....
When doing some digging about the nature of Bajoran orbs I found an interesting piece of unused dialogue spoken by Bashir in the episode 'Accession' when discussing the neurotransmitter psilosynine:...
@williams_482 invited contributors from the old Daystrom to repost some favorites, so here is one of mine....
It is Stardate 2369.2, and Enterprise is docked at Starbase One. Chief Fleet Inspector Commander Pelia from Operational Support Services and her team are performing systems checks and upgrades....
It will surprise few members of the Daystrom institute who are familiar with me and my work that cartoons are one of the only things I enjoy as much as I do Star Trek. One of my favorite animated shows of all time is Cartoon Network's 2010-2019 surreal fantasy-comedy Adventure Time with Finn and Jake. The creative crew of...
While some may argue in transparently bad faith that it isn't so, it's obvious to even a casual observer that Star Trek's setting depicts in the Federation a vision of society in which the goals of both the social and economic left wing have largely won out and largely been attained. The people of the Federation have relatively...
In "Take Me Out to the Holosuite", captains Sisko and Solok form teams of their own crewmen and play a baseball game in one of Quark's holosuites. Unlike most Holosuite programs, the real people involved are extremely spread out, with Rom (in the stands behind home plate) and Dax (climbing the center field fence) at least 450...
In the finale of Picard Season 3, the Titan, armed with a 100 year old cloaking device, manages to successfully evade detection by the Borg controlled fleet. This raises some questions. How on earth is it that the Titan was able to accomplish this with a seemingly obsolete cloaking device?...