#kelvin pods challenge

[trek-tracks]

*Starfleet captain voice* we must abandon ship! everyone proceed immediately to your Tide Pods

[noblest-roman-of-them-all]

Sides in Space (Name for AU pending)

F*ck it, we ball. Have a bit of what I have written for my Sanders Sides/Star Trek Crossover AU

"Dr. McCoy, he's waking up." An unfamiliar said in the distant fog of his pounding head.

"Thanks, Nurse Chapel," another unfamiliar voice answered. Dread began twisting in his gut, sending his heart racing. "Captain Sanders?" The voice called. "Sir, can you hear me?"

His eyes fluttered open and a man that almost seemed familiar stood over him.

"Captain Sanders, I'm Dr. McCoy-"

"Where's Dr. Sanchez?"

McCoy sighed. "Can you tell me what you remember from the last few hours?"

"Not untill you tell me where Dr. Sanchez is," he challenged.

McCoy nodded and took a seat beside the bed. "Dr. Sanchez was killed in the line of duty," he answered solemnly. "I'm sorry, Captain."

Thomas went pale. "How?"

"Approximately 72 hours ago, Star Fleet recieved an urgent message from Vulcan. They were being attacked by an unknown enemy with an unknown weapon. The Fleet deployed all available ships to aid Vulcan, including yours and the Enterprise, the ship your on now. There were complications and the Enterprise arrived moments after the rest of the Fleet, also under attack. We pulled in as many Kelvin pods as we could, that's how you ended up here. It's...a lot to explain, and I honestly don't understand most of it, but Vulcan was destroyed. The enemy created a singularity within the planet. When the planet it went...it took a lot of the Fleet with it."

Tears ran openly down the captain's cheeks. "My crew?" He asked, his chest beginning to heave.

McCoy shook his head. "We don't know, we haven't been able to confirm...everyone we lost. I'm so sorry. As soon as I know anything, you'll know. You have my word."

Thomas nodded. "Thank you," he croaked.

"I know this is a lot, but I do need to go over at least some of your injuries with you."

"Aisde from the concussion?" He coughed, trying to regain his composure.

McCoy gave half a smile. "Yessir. When we opened your pod, you a pretty significant injury to your lower right leg. Someone had apparently done some emergency treatment before getting you into the pod because there was a tourniquet applied-"

"This isn't good news, is it?"

"No sir," McCoy shook his head. "We had to do an emergency amputation."

Thomas dropped his head back, pressing a hand over his mouth as tears started again down his cheeks. "This can't be happening," he gasped. "It ca- this- it's not- this can't be happening."

"Captain, I'm gonna need you to take a deep breath," Dr. McCoy advised. "Breathe in slowly through your nose. And out throughout your mouth. That's right, just like that."

Thomas tried to do as he was told, but something broke in his chest and he fell into heaving sobs. Strong arms wrapped around him and Thomas clung to the other man like a life line.

Thomas blinked, his eyes blurred and gunky, and found his head rested against a blue clad shoulder. The arms around his back loosened as he sat up.

"You alright?"

"Sorry-"

"Don't be," McCoy cut in and helped him rest back on the bed. "You've lost a lot. You need to grieve. We all need that."

---

"Any word?" Captain Sanders asked hopefully when Dr. McCoy came into his hospital room. They'd been back on earth nearly a week and every day he'd asked if any of his crew had been found. The death toll had been astronomical and more were declared dead everyday as they sorted through what was left of the rumble and did their best to identify bodies.

Even most of the cadets that had been sent up had been lost. Still Thomas tried to remain hopeful that at least some of crew had been found and survived as he had. But the look on Leonard's face was was quickly driving that hope away.

"I'm sorry," Leonard murmured.

His heart began to pound in his chest. "How many?" He asked, trying to be brave, but Dr. McCoy shook his head.

"None."

Tears dripped from his deep brown eyes. "What?"

Leonard took one of Thomas's hands in both his own. "They weren't able to find any survivors among your crew. I'm so sorry."

"But there's over four hundred- how could they not-"

---

There was a light tap on the hospital door and Dr. McCoy entered the room. "Admiral Sanders? Admiral Pike is here to see you if you're up to it."

"Think he'd actually take no for an answer?" He asked without taking his eyes off the window.

"Not in my experience, sir."

Thomas let out a weighty sigh and nodded. "Let him in."

"Yessir." Len stepped aside and opened the door for Pike to wheel himself into the room.

"Afternoon, Admiral!" Pike said cheerily and wheeled himself over to the window seat. His face softened as he watched the younger man stare out the window. "How ya holdin' up today, son?"

"I, uh, I tried to run a sim today. Dr. McCoy cleared me to do just a basic flight sim, I wasn't even the one running it and, uh-" He clenched his jaw gesturing to the hospital room. "It wasn't even- There wasn't even anything happening in it. It was just a regular orbital sim. But I panicked. Panicked and apparently hyperventilated myself into passing out and hit my head on the way down."

"Let me guess, Dr. McCoy wanted you to stick around a few hours so he could monitor you?"

Thomas nodded. "He was worried since I already had a pretty severe concussion."

"Yeah, that sounds about right for him. So. What's the damage report then?"

Thomas side eyed him. "This one of those trick questions you're famous for?"

Chris smirked. "Yes, it is. Dr. McCoy gave me an update before he let me in here."

"I've got project for you, Admiral," Pike announced and took a seat across the desk from Thomas.

The younger man sighed. "Do you really have to call me that?"

"It is your rank, son. You need to get used to hearing it."

"It wasn't my idea."

"You could retire," Chris suggested drawning a tired glare from Thomas. He chuckled and held out a data pad. "Here. Take a look at these."

"Cadet files?"

Pike nodded. "I want you to pick out a couple command track cadets to mentor-"

"Oh right, like you did with Dr. McCoy," Thomas agreed wryly.

Pike smiled, relieved to hear some color back in the young man's voice. "Exactly. The Fleet is working on implementing a new program that would allow cadets to spend their last year working on a ship, training directly under a Cheif Offficer in their field of study, with the idea that they would be immediately placed on said ship upon graduation and be trained to take over that position when that CO retires or in emergency situations."

"Isn't that basically what happened with the Enterprise?"

"More or less," Pike agreed. "It wasn't ideal, but it was successful. The idea is that next time they won't be under-prepared."

"Maybe we should focus more on there not being a next time."

"We're doing that too," Pike assured.

He nodded with a sigh as he flicked through the list of names.

"You still with me, son?" Chris waited a beat. "Captain."

Thomas's head snapped up. "Hm?"

"You still with me?" Pike repeated.

He blinked several times then glanced away with a sigh, working his jaw. "Maybe I should retire," he murmured to himself.

"Is that what you want?"

"I want my crew back."

"I know, son," Pike assured softly. "You lost a lot of good folk-"

"I lost them all."

"But it wasn't your fault. You gave the orders to evacuate and those orders were carried out-"

"But what if I was wrong? What if- Maybe I shouldn't have, maybe-"

"Your ship was torn apart, admiral, evacuation would have been necessary no matter what."

Thomas nodded, trying to blink away the tears in his eyes.

"I know it still hurts. It will for a long time and it'll come in waves. And sometimes those waves will knock you over and that's okay. But I wholeheartedly believe you're capable of making a difference in the lives of these cadets, there's a lot they can learn from you and I'm willing to bet, there's a lot you can learn from them. I know I've certainly learned a lot from my boys. All that said, there's no shame in needing to step away if that's what's going to be best for you."

---

Pike glanced up from the list of cadets, brow arched in amusement. He glanced back down again scrolling over the list once more. "Admiral, not a single one of these cadets are command track."

"Cadet Sinclair is on track to become a pilot," Thomas pointed out.

"There are six names here."

"There are two sets of siblings."

"You're sure on all these?"

"They're all within the top ten of their class and have been overlooked by multiple admirals and commanding officers in their fields of study," Thomas explained. "This program is supposed prepare cadets for the field. I don't think that training should be restricted to those at the very top of their fields. We should support all cadets, not just those who 'earn' it."

Pike smiled crookedly and nodded. "Alright. Let's reach out."

[aion-rsa]

Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 Episode 6 Review: Scavengers

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This Star Trek: Discovery review contains spoilers.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 3, Episode 6

If you want to understand how Star Trek has evolved as a franchise, look no further than “Scavengers.” The Star Trek: Discovery episode sees its main character, Michael Burnham, disobeying a direct order from her commanding officer (again) in order to go on a rogue mission with Emperor Georgiou to save her, ahem, friend Book and secure a pre-Burn Starfleet black box. It’s the sort of stunt Kirk pulled on the regular (and, yes, this includes Kelvin Kirk), and it’s the kind of stunt Kirk would have been celebrated for it—both within the world of the TV show or film and, more importantly, by the viewer. Here, the context is much more complicated. We viewers are encouraged to understand why Michael did it and to see the goodness of her motivations, while also being encouraged to see how and why Burnham’s actions negatively impacted her crew and could have led to some devastating consequences. Frankly, it’s a radical and deeply interesting subversion of the myth of American individualism, and it’s one that the Star Trek universe is well-equipped to make.

American pop culture has a relative dearth of good stories about institution, especially for a culture currently struggling with the failure of so many and a deep distrust in the ones that remain. Star Trek has, generally, been an outlier to that rule. From the beginning, it has been a story that is not so much interested in depicting a utopian future as it is depicting a future with a utopian institution: the Federation. The world of Star Trek has never been one without its problems. This is a universe that still knows wars, famine, and systemic inequality. But it is also a universe that has an institution that works, one that our heroes are not only a part of, but believe in. Though this is challenged as Trek goes on, especially in a show like Deep Space Nine, it is rarely completely undermined as a possible ideal. In Trek, the dream of an institution that works for the many is not a pipe dream; it’s a pragmatic one.

How does this all relate to Star Trek: Discovery? Well, unlike the first two seasons of this show, Season 3 is deeply interested in exploring this idea of the possibility of a good and functional institution. The Burn may have destroyed what the Federation once was, but it still exists in some form. Much of Season 3’s tension has been the question of whether that pragmatic dream of putting one’s trust, work, and time into this collective organization is a worthwhile one or rather, like so many modern TV series tell us, that believing in something larger than yourself is for suckers.

In “Scavengers,” Michael demonstrates how she has lost patience with that dream. For her, for a no doubt very long year, it was for suckers. The Federation wasn��t coming to save her, so she had to learn how to save herself, and that is a hard habit to break. In that time without her crew of her Federation, Michael did have someone. She had Book and it’s understandable that she wants to save him here. When his life is put in jeopardy, Michael is forced to choose between the status quo she once had (which fostered a belief in the Federation) and the status quo she has been forced to live with for the past year (which fostered a belief that she could only trust herself and Book).

In Michael’s mission into Emerald Chain territory, not only is she trying to find information that she believes will help the entire Federation, but she is also trying to save someone she cares deeply about. Her motives fit well into Federation values, but her actions chafe against them. Part of being part of a collective (no Borg allowed) means making decisions together and, in a hierarchal institution like Starfleet, it means sometimes having to go along with a choice that you think is the wrong one. It’s an experience that a deeply individualistic American culture is not often encouraged to accept as a valuable one. And it’s a part of my culture I have been thinking a lot about during the COVID crisis, as we watch the United States failure to embrace a “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few” ethos.

Interestingly, “Scavengers” puts a decent amount of narrative time into looking at why Michael’s choice was perhaps the wrong one, and it’s a thematic thread that picks up on characterization from earlier in the season, and earlier in this series. Since her reunion with the Discovery, Michael has been trying to have her cake and eat it too. She wants to be part of the crew and the Federation, but she only wants to follow the rules when they align with her personal priorities. We saw her go behind Saru’s back in “People of Earth,” planning a rogue mission with Book that relied on Saru blindly trusting her, which he did. But, after this latest stunt, that trust is seriously frayed. Saru can’t rely on Michael and, perhaps, vice versa. If Michael tried the “People of Earth” stunt now, it might go very differently. Saru is smart to recognize how that is a serious problem that needs to be addressed now, when the stakes are relatively low.

Of course the stakes aren’t low emotionally. The weight of how he should respond to Michael’s insubordination obviously weighs heavily on Saru’s shoulders. He goes to Tilly for advice, and she tells him what he needs to hear: Michael’s decision puts the entire crew’s future in the Federation in jeopardy. It must be met with consequence. And it is. In the final, best scene in the episode, we see Saru strip Michael of her first officer duties. It’s the right decision—even Michael thinks so—but that doesn’t make it any easier for Saru to accept. This willingness to lean into the difficult questions is, more than anything else, what makes Saru a good captain.

Interestingly, Vance also rebukes Saru before giving Michael a bigger dressing-down. He thinks Saru should have come to him with Michael’s intel about the black boxes and the opportunity of securing another. Like Michael, Saru has perhaps become somewhat used to not having a commanding officer to check in with. And he really hasn’t been a captain for very long.

Is Vance hiding something about The Burn? Perhaps. Vance continues to dismiss Michael’s valid point that, without solving the mystery of The Burn, the Federation will never be able to properly move on. Vance’s reluctance to invest resources in solving this mystery could simply be a very understandable attempt to prioritize saving lives rather than investing in the long-term health of the Federation as an institution, or it could be that he is trying to hide something ugly about the Federation’s potential role in the disaster. Only time will tell. For now, the crew of the Discovery continues to move forward, with the belief that the dream of the institution is something worth investing in. What a statement.

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Additional thoughts.

If you’re a fan of Big Plot Development, the beginning of Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 was like Grudge-nip. The first three episodes of the season dealt with the major repercussions of Michael and the Discovery, respectively, jumping through time and then, eventually, coming back together—with an additional one-year time-jump for Michael thrown in for good measure. While the fourth episode leaned into the character repercussions of it all, last week saw another major plot development when the Discovery found the 32nd-century version of the Federation. This week’s episode, “Scavengers,” like that other Season 3 outlier “Forget Me Not,” was another episode that was more about moving the chess pieces than taking any pieces. This is the kind of transitionary installment that is all about following up on lingering character moments and minor plot threads, which is not to say that it didn’t have its excellent moments, just that it very much felt like an episode that comes in the middle of the season. I have a feeling that, looking back on “Scavengers,” we will see the many major plot developments it is setting up for the second half of the season.

One of the captains who takes part in Vance’s meeting is an older woman and I know this is not the first time we have seen an older woman in a position of authority in Star Trek or pop culture in general, but it still feels rare enough to both give me a thrill when it happens and to be commented upon.

I can’t help comparing the Discovery this season to the experience of living in a quaranteam. This episode, Michael made a decision to increase the quaranteam’s risk level without getting the pod’s approval. Not cool, Michael. (But also: good job saving lives.)

I am Team Healthy Institution, generally, but working within bureaucracy takes time. Being a lone wolf is definitely faster and more flexible. I do get Michael’s frustrations here.

Do we think Georgiou likes Saru? When Michael asks her to go rogue with her, Georgiou immediately points out how it will screw over Saru, which is kind of cool and unexpected.

Michael “I’d rather regret something I did than something I didn’t” Burnham.

I love how, within weeks of getting captured into this forced labor camp, Book knows like the whole history of the place, including the failed revolutions.

We get an Adira/Stamets plotline this episode that is both sweet and somewhat frustrating. Like, I get that Stamets is being supportive here and I love that, but also life-death does work in a linear fashion in almost all cases. Rather than Star Trek: Discovery having to give queer characters a Get Out of Death Free card, I’d rather they, you know, just not kill them in the first place.

Michael and Georgiou’s rescue mission has got to be one of the most obvious rescue missions in history. This isn’t a critique. I love how big they go here. Georgiou is obviously loving it.

In the great dogs v. cats debate, Star Trek seems to come down on the side of the cats. Porthos aside, from “Catspaw” to Grudge, the cat energy in this show has always been stronger than the dog energy. And I say this as someone who has neither a metaphorical dog nor a literal dog in this fight. (But Tilly doesn’t like cats, which I love for her as a character trait. Just when you think she’s gonna zig, she zags…)

But is there more to Grudge than meets the eye? Almost definitely.

For the record, a cat in a spaceship would probably convince me.

Do we think Linus will ever get a proper storyline? Do we want Linus to get a proper storyline?

Um… I feel like this black box information is something Michael should have already mentioned to Saru. Or is this a symptom of how deep her inability to trust right now goes?

We get more information about the Emerald Chain here, mostly about the character of Osira. While we don’t get to meet her in person, we do meet her meathead nephew. Presumably, this means that she is an Orion and also that she is the worst.

“I love me.” I love you too, Michelle Yeoh.

We don’t get a lot of answers regarding Georgiou’s apparent PTSD here. She seems to be remembering something from her Mirror Universe past, and it was not fun. Is this a result of her conversation with Kovich? Probably. Is it something that will lead to her Section 31-centric spinoff? Most definitely. Read some of our speculation on that here.

“Let me just say, there’s no head injuries…” I love this as a conversation opener.

“We always find each other.” If you were wondering, yes, I am 100% into the Michael/Book thing. Thank you, show, for giving Michael a healthy love interest storyline this time.

Bonus!: We get another “toothbrushing” scene with Stamets and Hugh this episode, which is to say: a scene of them being domestic and sweet together. In general, I am for more domestic scenes for this entire ensemble. After all, the Discovery is not only their workplace but also their home. #relatable

I want bocci on my spaceship.

“One day, we will find the answers we are all looking for.” Yes, Saru is my favorite character. Yes, I am so happy he is getting so much to do this season.

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