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fabuloustrash05 · 2 years

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TMNT 2012 Headcanons: Language

How fluent are the turtles in speaking Japanese and other languages? Here’s my headcanons on each of the boys skills in speaking different languages.

Leo

Fluent in Japanese, ever since he was a kid Leo had a great admiration for the Japanese language and culture. He always wanted to hear stories from his father about his home country as well as learn how to speak Japanese, and he also learned how to write and read in the language as well. It was one of the many things him and Splinter bonded over while growing up and after his father’s death Leo continued learning more about Japanese culture and language, eventually even teaching and sharing his fathers stories to others.

Leo also knows how to speak the fictional alien language in his favorite TV show Spaceheroes (think of it like the language Klingon in Star Trek), but ironically he can’t seem to understand and has trouble with learning real alien languages.

Leo also has a talent in reading lips. It really helps when on stealth missions and spying on the enemy.

Donnie

For Donnie, he was the quickest to learn how to speak Japanese, to the point he didn’t need Splinter to personally teach him and was ahead of his Japanese lessons compared to his brothers.

Growing up, Donnie loved studying and learning new things, it was his favorite hobby, and one of them was learning how to speak different languages. It was his way to feel connected to the outside world while being stuck underground in the sewers.

By age 15 Donnie personally taught himself and mastered speaking French (he really embraced that skill when he learned April likes the French language and thinks guys who speak it are attractive), Spanish, Latin (it’s not a dead language to him), can read Egyptian Hieroglyphics (this is canon, you see it in the S5 Halloween arc), knows Morse Code, and even understands Sign Language, but it’s hard for him since he doesn’t have enough fingers, so reading it is his better option.

Raph

Raph never really care to learn a second language growing up. He was taught and knows basic phrases in Japanese, but that’s as far as he went. Splinter offered to teach him more but Raph always refused, never showing interest in learning more Japanese like Leo or Donnie. (Also when getting in arguments with Leo, Leo would often call Raph a name or insult him in Japanese which would frustrate Raph since he doesn’t know what he’s saying and wouldn’t be able to think of a good comeback). It wasn’t until after Splinter’s death that Raph started to learn more on how to speak Japanese and became more fluent in the language. It was his way to still feel connected with his father and make up for those lost times when he deny his father’s offer to learn more about his first language that he now regrets.

Despite him not being so eager to learn how to speak different languages Raph did pick up Spanish for a time. (Bonus headcanon) Raph loves watching Spanish Soap Operas and he began to unknowingly learn how to speak Spanish, eventually watching the Soaps without subtitles and even yelling at the TV in Spanish, something that weirds his brothers out when first experiencing it.

Raph also knows a little Salamandrain thanks to Mona Lisa. He originally wanted to learn it only to know the curse words, but eventually he picked up most of Mona’s language from hearing her speak it all the time, becoming very knowledgeable of many words and phrases, sometimes even calling Mona cute nicknames in her language. However Raph is still not fluent and is still learning, so Mona often has a good laugh when he says certain words or terms incorrectly.

Mikey

For Mikey, he was the most difficult to teach Japanese, for out of all of his brothers he struggled the most, but over time he learn a few basic phrases and words. He never became fluent in Japanese growing up, which continued to bothered him into his teen years. It wasn’t until Leo, who took Mikey under his wing, helped him improve his ability in speaking Japanese, but Mikey still struggles occasionally.

After discovering pizza, Mikey became fascinated in learning about the Italian language. He began to learn it through Donnie, who was also willing to learn a new language, and ended up learning a few phrases. Mikey never became fluent, but he was happy and satisfied with what he could learn and knew.

Mikey also speaks crazy talk (basic babbling and reverse speaking) and forms of Kraang/Utrom languages in Dimension X (mainly animals in DX). His brothers don’t get it, and Mikey himself can’t explain it, but it’s the only “language” he truly understands and can master because of his unpredictable nature and wild mindset. Mikey considers it his greatest accomplishment, for it’s one of the only thing his brothers can’t master but he can.

#fabtrash headcanons #tmnt headcanons #tmnt 2012 #tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles #tmnt leonardo #tmnt leo #leonardo hamato #tmnt donatello #donatello hamato #tmnt donnie #tmnt raphael #tmnt raph #raphael hamato #tmnt michelangelo #michelangelo hamato #tmnt mikey #master splinter #tmnt splinter

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sammysdewysensitiveeyes · 2 years

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Having now seen the last season of DS9, I can blab about it, in no particular order:

Take me out to the Holosuite - this was just stupid fun. Sometimes you need stupid fun episodes, and this was delightful. Really loved Worf yelling “Death to the opposition” while everyone else was shit-talking the batter. Also, somehow Quark is a better baseball player than Rom, and that’s hilarious.

Chrysalis - I made a joke halfway through the episode that Sarina was going mute again to avoid Bashir’s flirting, but that’s exactly what happened? What the absolute hell is Bashir doing trying to date a patient who has been in a cataonic state most of her life? And he’s moving so fast? Suddenly he’s in love and he’s talking about taking her to Risa, what the hell? I’ll give him credit - when he realized what he was doing, he backed off immediately and felt bad about it. I can understand him being attracted and feeling a kinship to the only other genetically engineered person he knows who seems moderately “normal,” but he went so far overboard here. They had to downplay Ezri in this episode, otherwise the actual trained counselor would have come in with a sanity check and possibly a slap in the face for Julian.

Faith, Treachery, and the Great River - I love Nog. I love how he fits into Starfleet as a Ferengi who has chosen to embrace Starfleet ideals, but is still a Ferengi and will sometimes do things the Ferengi way. I love how Sisko will sometimes quote the Rules of Acquisition to him, because he’s studied up and he respects that it’s part of Nog’s culture. Also, alas, poor Weyoun. The Vorta really are quite interesting. They do horrific things with no remorse, but they are literally bred to obey the Founders without question. They are kind of tragic figures.

Also really love how we have the “Klingons die with honor!” rah-rah battle episode right before the “War is hell, Starfleet officers die and Nog gets maimed for no good reason” episode. It’s a nice juxtaposition. Suddenly, we’re reminded that a LOT of people are dying horribly in the Dominion War, and sometimes it all seems pointless.

(Why did Quark not immediately get beamed out when Sisko decided they would stay to help defend the outpost? I know he was there to be part of the story, and give commentary on human behavior, and kill a Jem Hadar for the very first time, but logically, the non-combatant civilian should not have been there.)

Covenant - Gul Dukat leading a Bajoran cult worshiping the Pah Wraiths was already hilarious, but then that woman gives birth to an obviously half-Cardassian baby and he tries to spin it as a “miracle.” God, what a sleazy asshole, I love to hate him.

It’s Only a Paper Moon - okay show, I like Vic now. He’s okay. Another episode where O’Brien needs to be sidelined, because O’Brien, who lived on the Enterprise during “Hollow Pursuits” would hear about someone literally living in a holosuite and be like, “Uh, guys? That’s....not gonna work out very well.” It actually does eventually work out for Nog, because Vic is aware enough to help him, and Ezri steps in to give advice where needed. Nog mostly just needed a break from Starfleet life, and a distraction. Not a “perfect holosuite fantasy” distraction, but a challenge completely unrelated to Starfleet to pull Nog out of his own head and get him going again. Then, of course, he needed to leave the holosuite and come back into the real world.

Prodigal Daughter - nice to know more about Ezri and her family. My favorite part was O’Brien and Ezri constantly interrupting each other’s storylines until the two storylines intersected.

Mirror episode - Holy shit, Mirror Ezri kissed Mirror Kira, why can’t we have this in the Prime universe? Why are characters only allowed to be gay in the “evil” universe? I somehow blame Rick Berman.

Field of Fire - unfortunately, this episode was just bad, and didn’t do Ezri any favors. The actors did their best, but it was just corny and badly written. From the first Joran episode, I got the impression that he killed mostly out of anger or hatred (he killed the doctor that recommended he be removed from the program), but now he’s some Hannibal Lecter type, talking about the mind of the killer and selecting prey, etc. Also, the killer is a traumatized Vulcan who can’t stand the sight of people smiling? Give me a fucking break. An interesting idea that should have been better written.

Holosuite heist episode - they wanted a heist episode, and by god they found an excuse to have a heist episode! Another fun one, and even Cassidy got in on the act. I liked Sisko getting to say his piece about how Vic’s program is a romanticized version of this time period on Earth, completely removing the racism that existed back then, and that he would not have been welcome in nightclubs as a black man back then.

The rest of it:

That one episode with O’Brien and Bashir going into Sloan’s mind was like the last buddy episode for them, and an absolute gift to shippers. Personally, I don’t ship it, but these two guys both admitted that they like each other “just a little bit better” than the women that they love? Yeah, I see it. I love their friendship. And also, fuck Sloan.

Don’t really care about Ezri’s romances, but it was nice to see her and Worf bury the hatchet and make peace with each other. And if she wants Bashir, why not? Ezri can have a little sexy doctor, as a treat. Wish we’d gotten more than one season of Ezri, to get to know her better.

Loved Kira and Garak helping liberate Cardassia. I still hate Damar for Ziyal, but he had an understandable semi-redemption, fighting for Cardassia against the Dominion. It worked for him.

Speaking of redemption, I’m glad Gul Dukat didn’t get one. He didn’t seem like a character who should get a redemption. That may be hypocritical of me, as there are other horrible dictator characters whose redemption I fully support, like the Diamonds in Steven Universe. (Although I would also argue that Steven Universe is a kids show, I’m not expecting the Diamonds to burn with the Pah Wraiths.) But Dukat was just not a character I could ever like, despite the actor doing an excellent job making him nuanced and complex. He’s just so slimy and smug - if anything, he’s the villain I love to hate. He never showed any actual remorse for his actions, just kept pushing Kira (who grew up in Cardassian labor camps and lost both parents to the occupation) to not only accept, but exonerate him. He wanted her to “admit” that his actions running the occupation where millions of Bajorans died were somehow “not that bad” because he occasionally tried to be kind. Even understanding that his hands may have been tied in some matters, other Cardassians who weren’t responsible for atrocities showed far greater remorse for the occupation. I can see Dukat as an aborted redemption - he started to show a better side of himself with Ziyal, but losing her drove him back into selfish destructiveness. He’s a piece of shit, and the actor did a fantastic job portraying him as such. I understand, though, if people who liked Dukat, or saw more potential in him, were disappointed and wanted his redemption to continue. Personally, though, I’m glad he went down hard.

Kai Winn was also completely awful, but I felt worse for her than for Dukat. Imagine constantly praying to your gods and never getting a response, even though other people do. And then when she finally gets a vision, it’s the wrong gods. Even when she starts to realize her error and turns to Kira for guidance, the prophets won’t speak to her. She’s a horrible woman, but slightly better than Dukat, in my opinion.

Loved that Kira and Quark were the ones who got the last goodbyes to Odo. “That man loves me. It’s written all over his back.”

Kira and Odo - I could never fully get behind them as a couple, but I still love their relationship, and hope that they see each other again.

O’Brien finally does right by his family and goes back to Earth.

Sisko goes to live with the Prophets, and that’s a bold choice that comes right up to killing him off without actually killing him off. I can’t say it comes out of nowhere, though, his connection to the wormhole aliens has been a thing through the whole series. I’m glad that he claims he’ll be back at some point, given that he’s leaving a son and pregnant wife behind.

Overall, a good ending for my favorite Trek series.

#star trek ds9

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nzvalley · 3 years

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The “Broken Bow” Novelization, Part 2

The Klaang Situation and First Impressions

Archer’s first impressions of T’Pol

I always thought that Archer and T’Pol must’ve at least interacted before, been in the same room. The novelization suggests otherwise. Like in the pilot as aired, Forrest’s opening words to Archer, that he knows everyone in the room, implies to me they’ve at least seen each other. However, a few seconds later, right after Archer learns the word Klingon, we get this moment:

He started to say something, possibly rude, when a movement behind the two Vulcans caught his eye. Another Vulcan. A woman. Wasn’t anybody going to introduce her? Or were the Vulcans so advanced that courtesy didn’t involve women? (p. 24)

In the pilot, instead of this moment where Archer notices T’Pol, we cut to a wide shot, from the interior of the infirmary, of the whole group looking at the Klingon.

Great, snarky line on the same page, from the interior monologue of Archer:

He knew that tone, that inference... good thing he was well enough educated to understand the subtle nastiness as wielded by the pointy among us.

The novelization makes much clearer that Archer is immediately impressed (in a grudging, adversarial way) with T’Pol.

The Vulcan female stepped forward, quite suddenly, right through the two elder ambassadors. She was the only one with the guts to say what she was thinking. “Until you’ve proven you’re ready.” ...

“Ready for what?” Archer asked, even though he knew. Hell, everybody knew, but he wanted to maker her say it. “To look beyond your provincial attitudes and volatile nature.” The elegant female had a firmness in her eyes. She was playing his game. She darn well comprehended the triteness of her own declaration. Maybe she was waiting to see how far Archer could be pushed. (p. 29)

and

Eyebrow raised, she looked at him in near enjoyment- was that right? There was a glint in her eye, despite her mosaic stillness. He got the idea that she might not like what she heard, but did like hearing it. Very few humans talked back to Vulcans... yet.

This Vulcan seemed subtly different from the other two- almost as if she were able to imagine Archer actually trying to knock her down- and finding humor in what would, of course, be the inevitable result of any human attempting to overpower any Vulcan. (p. 29-30)

And Archer notices T’Pol, still unintroduced and unnamed, one more time as the Vulcan delegation departs.

The Vulcans, realizing that Forrests’ resolve could not be shaken, departed in stoic silence- not before the female shot him a curious glance. Archer almost smiled, but managed to bury it. Score one for the amoebas. (p. 31)

The crew’s distrust of Vulcans

There is a deep general distrust of Vulcans among the crew, at least the senior officers. Trip speculates that T’Pol is everything from a spy to a saboteur to an assassin. And it’s not a fleeting distrust, well into the third act Trip is seriously considering the possibility that T’Pol engineered a conspiracy to incapacitate Archer. Even Hoshi openly says she dislikes T’Pol.

Malcolm and Trip look into T’Pol’s background to make sure she’s not too dangerous. What we learn about her background is pretty different than what developed later.

“Have you and Reed found out anything?” “She’s clean and normal right up until she gets the scholarship that put her in Soval’s office. Then, her records start getting real terse and kind of vague.” (p.173)

On top of depicting T’Pol’s time on Earth as being brief and sporadic, this suggests that either her comportment was declining... or something else is going on.

Testing T’Pol’s Loyalty

Archer yells at T’Pol for questioning the mission and his authority, and he reprimands T’Pol for hiding/not divulging information. The novel expands that scene quite a bit, and depicts it initially from Trip’s POV.

“Then again,” [Trip] added resentfully, “loyalty’s an emotion, isn’t it?” She looked at him, and he could tell a response was forming- what would she say? Under that stony façade and the gloss of having a “mission” of her own, what did she really think of Jonathan Archer?

There’s a whole other scene’s worth of interaction from the end of their confrontation scene that wasn’t included in the Pilot. After Travis affirms Archer’s orders, Archer and T’Pol have a serious argument.

Turning to T’Pol, Archer strictly said, “You’re going to be working with us from now on.” She paled a little, but owned up to her reasons. “I’m sorry you feel slighted. But I agree with Ambassador Soval’s restraint in giving Earth too much information. Perhaps the last thing we need is another volatile race in space with warp power: You may easily go out and get yourselves killed. It may be a mistake to have helped you so much, to give you so much before you’re ready.” “So much?” Archer barked. “You’d better use the next portion of your long lifetime to go back over the records and see just how much we’ve done on our own, in spite of your cultural cowardice.” “Cowardice?” Her eyes widened. Over to the side, Tucker smirked and pressed his lips flat with delight. (p. 117)

The argument goes on for pages, amounting to what would probably be a five minute scene. It’s actually fairly important, in terms of additional context for why T’Pol began to shift her opinion in the next few scenes on Rigel. It also shines a lot of light on Archer’s ruminations about Vulcans, including why they are behaving so strangely and illogically.

“...You’re dragging behind, and now you need us more than we need you. Why else would you want to come and teach the apes how to sew? I think all this is happening because you’re plain scared of being out here alone anymore.” Stunned, T’Pol parted her lips again. Nothing came out this time. She never blinked, as if staring at a flashing billboard declaring his words to the known galaxy. He was saying the Vulcans were doomed. Nobody had the guts to say that to their faces. Archer backed off now, but pointed at her with a determined finger. “You get on that warp trail. And you’d better find something or be able to explain why not in very clear terms. Dismissed.” T’Pol blinked almost as if he’d slapped her. She turned on her heel and exited without a word, taking a cloud of confusion along on her shoulders.”

Then there’s a few more pages of just Trip and Archer, where they discuss the possibility that the ship was infiltrated before it even launched. They also talk about T’Pol, going over whether she’ll work with the crew or continue to be the High Command’s agent. Archer actually gives her credit and tries to see the situation from her perspective.

“She’s my science officer now, not Soval’s patsy. She’ll learn that lesson over the next week if I have to tattoo it on her tongue.” “Good thing it was you chewing her out instead of me. I’d have punched her in the nose.” “She’d hit me back,” Archer said. “And she’d probably break my jaw.” Tucker grinned, rather drably. “She, uh... she came on the ship about the same time as all our little troubles started...” He broached the subject, then let it hang there. He didn’t seem to have quite the conviction for a direct accusation. Archer accepted what the engineer was saying. The ideas wasn’t new to him. He’d be silly to ignore it. “Well wait and see. Vulcans are reserved. They don’t converse. She’s just learning about us. As Vulcans go, she’s very young. I get the feeling she’s as much in the middle as we are.” (p. 121-122)

So a big chunk from the middle of the narrative has been cut out in the aired Pilot. This is the portion of the narrative where T’Pol has to either stand rigid in her loyalty to High Command and Vulcan values, or adapt a little and embrace her ability to work with humans. At this point I wouldn’t say her loyalties have shifted... but her curiosity has been piqued. The differences Archer noticed in her are really there, and she has noticed some differences about him too.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

#Star Trek #Star Trek: Enterprise #Broken Bow #Jonathan Archer #T'Pol #Diane Carey #Broken Bow Novelization #Trip Tucker

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punkbxt · 4 years

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K'aevuq is so cute! I'd love to hear anything about him! Especially about his friendships with B'elanna!

ahhh thankyou! b’elanna took one look at this tall ass lanky ass hybrid boy and was like “im your big sister now lets hang” they bonded a lot over being from two different worlds and figuring out how to balance those two aspects of self and in places where tuvok wasnt quite as successful, k’aevuQ was there to help (granted also not always successful either lmao) they train a lot together and just hang out and talk about whoever it is theyre crushing on (k’aevuQ on multiple occasions is like sis just ask her out already) (b’elanna does the same thing back) hes just really bad at opening up to others and they just kinda became basically siblings. she reminds him a lot of his older brother and he calls her be’nI’ (which means sister in klingon) (b7 comic this panel is from)

b’elanna is about five to six years older than him and even though he can protect himself just fine, b’elanna is like “harm a hair on his messy lil head and ill chop you in half with my bat’leth like the petaQ you are”

oh also together they learned how to embrace their klingon culture more

#sorry it got a little long i just care a LOT about them lol #send me some more asks!!!!#b’elanna torres #k’aevuQ #punk spock queries #star trek oc

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lavvyan · 6 years

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Consider: Danny Williams is a concerned father who fully embraces the idea of self-defense training for his little girl. He takes shameless advantage of any and all resources he has.

Which is why Kono teaches Grace what stranger danger really looks like and how to get away from someone who is taller than her. Chin explains about the advantages of being underestimated and how not to telegraph her movements. Matty, the dork, tells her to yell "pedophile!" at the top of her lungs. Kamekona, upon hearing this, laughs and nods and then takes her to the side and shows her where to grab and how hard to twist. Kawika, once Danny stops side-eyeing him, teaches her how to hide in the underbrush. Toast programs an app that will send a text with her location to Danny's phone if she utters a certain phrase. Max teaches her how to say "that man is bothering me," in eleven different languages, including Klingon.

It's the one instance other than school or Rachel where people who aren't Danny are allowed to tell his daughter what to do.

Except Steve.

Steve is forbidden from teaching Grace any moves whatsoever. He can go running with her. He can help with her chemistry homework. He can even team up with her to nag Danny about eating more salad.

He can not, absolutely not, Steven, on pain of death, talk to her about self-defense.

It's surprisingly hurtful.

When he asks Danny why he's not allowed to help, he gets increasingly nonsensical answers like, "I want her to be confident, not turn her into a baby ninja," and "I will not subject my daughter to your view of the world until I think she's mature enough to handle it," and "Will you give it a rest? Can you do that for me? Anything you can teach her, I don't want her to learn, okay? No, don't give me that face, this is my daughter, I have a responsibility to give her the tools she needs to grow up strong, and your skill set, while impressive, don't get me wrong, you are crazy but I can acknowledge that you're very good at what you do, but those skills are not among the tools that should be handed to my child."

The one time he tries to bring the subject up with Grace, she looks at him with big, sad eyes and says, "Danno said to tell you shame on you for trying to go behind his back."

So, okay. Danny doesn't trust Steve with his daughter, that's... that's fine. They're clashing heads more often than not. Just because they're also growing increasingly comfortable with each other to the point where Steve is almost ready to admit that Danny's fast becoming his best friend, his North Star, his... Well, it doesn't mean Danny's going to blindly believe that Steve's combat training isn't going to hurt his little girl. That Steve would never... he just wouldn't.

He's honestly surprised when Danny doesn't yell at him for picking Gracie up from school when Danny's in the hospital. He's even more surprised at Danny's bafflement at the very idea that he doesn't trust Steve with Grace, of course he does, what the hell, Steven?

"So that rule about her self-defense training...?"

"Is still in effect. Don't even think about it!"

"But-"

"No!"

And the years go by and it seems like everyone and their dog are allowed to teach Grace things about body tension and foot positions and moving from the hip, while Steve is relegated to being the fun uncle. Which he loves; he adores being the fun uncle who knows about cars and chemistry and foreign cultures and how to put up a tent without all the fussing, seriously Danny, have you never been camping before? He loves her. With his whole heart, he loves her, loves Danny, loves Charlie; loves their private jokes and their weird little ways and how they all so obviously love him back.

He just wants to keep them safe. He doesn't think that's too much to ask.

Is it?

Then Grace turns 16 and starts learning how to drive, starts to roam further and further from home, meeting friends and going to parties without having to rely on anyone knowing where to pick her up, and Danny turns to Steve and says, "Okay."

"Okay?" Steve asks, and raises his eyebrows because okay what?

Danny rolls his eyes like that's going to help Steve read his mind.

"Okay, you can teach my daughter how to fight."

For a moment, Steve doesn't know what to say. He's been waiting for this, somewhere at the back of his mind, has been hoping for it for almost nine years. But something about the sentence is off.

Something about Danny is off.

"I thought you didn't want me to," Steve says.

"I don't," Danny says, and it's like a slap in the face. Steve tries not to show how much it stings. "I sincerely don't, but some things only you can show her. I can't... I don't want her to know these things, but she needs to, and I can't help her."

What the-

"Danny," Steve says slowly, because he can't possibly be hearing this right, "are you asking me to teach Grace how to run a covert op?"

Danny laughs, a harsh sound that sends a shiver down Steve's spine.

"I'm asking you to teach Grace how to keep fighting."

"I don't-" understand, Steve wants to say, but Danny interrupts him.

"You don't give up." When Steve doesn't get it, Danny goes on, "No matter what happens to you, or who has you," he swallows visibly, "or how much pain you're in. You wait for the opening and you take it, and I need my daughter to do the same."

"I give up sometimes, Danny," Steve says, quietly. Ashamed.

Danny smiles. It looks so painful, so sad, that Steve's heart aches for him.

"Even when you do," he says, reaching out to cup the side of Steve's neck, such a rare gesture, "you always buy us enough time to come find you." His thumb rubs along the line of Steve's jaw, just below his ear, and if Steve's heart was aching before, now it feels like he's bleeding out. "I need you to teach her that."

Oh god. For years, Steve thought that if Danny ever asked him, when Danny finally asked him to show Grace some moves, he'd feel smug. Vindicated. Would maybe even pretend not to want to, just to make Danny say please. But this, this isn't Danny asking for a favor, it's Danny asking for the impossible.

This is torture.

"I can't tell what's going on in that head of yours," Danny says, his hand still warm on Steve's skin.

Steve closes his eyes.

"I can't teach her how to trust you," Steve rasps. "She already does."

It's a trust built from lifelong experience. Whatever happens, whoever has her, Danno will come for Grace and he will get her back. The knowledge is so deeply ingrained in her character she probably isn't even aware of it most of the time.

Steve knows this, because he's the same.

He feels Danny shift forward, feels Danny's other hand coming to rest lightly between his shoulder blades, tugging him closer. He sways forward, drifts into the hug like a ship into harbor after a storm, broken but safe.

"You're a goof," Danny mutters into his ear, but for once the words sound almost kind. "I'm asking you to teach her some of that Army mental mojo, not put her through Hell Week for me to save her from. Any saving required, we'll take care of as the need arises, okay?"

"'We?'" Steve asks, pressing his nose more firmly against the side of Danny's neck. Maybe Danny's scent can distract him from the way his heart his skip-thumping in his chest.

Danny's response is to hug Steve more tightly.

"Yes, 'we.' Of course 'we,' when has it ever not been 'we?' When have my children ever given you the impression that they don't trust you just as much as they trust me?" Danny turns his head to leave a quick kiss just below Steve's ear, and then he pulls back. Reluctantly, Steve opens his eyes to meet Danny's gaze. "Okay?"

Steve isn't entirely sure what Danny's asking, but it's not like there's more than one possible answer.

"Okay," he says, and just in case it was the question he's been wanting to ask himself, he straightens his shoulders and leans down to bump his lips against Danny's.

The smile Danny gives him is more beautiful than a Hawaiian sunrise.

Steve grins and takes Danny's hand, absurdly pleased that he won't have to settle for Danny's shoulder or elbow anymore.

"Navy," he says.

Danny's smile dims, becomes puzzled. "What?"

"It's Navy mental mojo," Steve says, because no matter how emotional a situation might get, some things are never allowed to pass. "Not Army."

Danny rolls his eyes.

"You know what? I take it back," he grouses, though he makes no attempt to pull his hand from Steve's grasp. "You're not allowed to teach Grace anything, ever."

Steve only grins wider.

"You love me," he says, and he knew that before, of course he did. Hasn't doubted it for years. And yet, somehow, the knowledge feels entirely new.

"Let me tell you something," Danny begins, and Steve listens, gladly, will listen for the rest of his life.

Also, he'll finally teach Grace how to throw a knife.

It's an important part of Steve’s mental mojo.

#h50 #mcdanno #lavvyan writes #in case you're on mobile: there's a read-more

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douxreviews · 5 years

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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - ‘Sons of Mogh’ Review

"You took away my honor and only you can give it back."

While the Klingon Empire stoops to deceit in their march towards all-out war, Worf is visited by a family member who taxes his sense of connection to two very different worlds.

The thing which separates Deep Space Nine, for me, from the run of the mill (and even from other Treks) is how it constantly weaves in events from the past and shapes them into a journey for the future. The exciting thing is how this is done on multiple levels. Take the context for this episode's Plot B. We're learning about Klingon behavior since leaving the Federation. Predictably, they're getting ready for war; unpredictably, they're doing so with deception by laying mines all along the border between Cardassia and Bajor in a manner which would leave the Bajoran group trapped. This goes against the historical notions of Klingon honor, while giving lip service to that honor itself.

I felt that this was a sort of parallel between our main characters for the Plot A of this episode. Worf and his brother are both products of Klinzhai, they are both extremely connected to the warrior tradition. I mean, isn't that why Worf and Dax have so much steamy sexual energy? How many times have we seen Dax speaking Klingon? She joined Klingon warriors in a vendetta back in season two (and "Blood Oath" also started out with a drunken Klingon). Dax embraces warrior culture and Klingon culture, and Worf sees in Dax, I think, a confusing mirror image of Worf, a mix of Federation and Klingon culture. For Dax, a Trill, it's perhaps easier or expected to move between cultures in such a way. I do not think it comes as easily to Worf.

But it's that very internal division between Federation and Klingon culture which causes the major problem of this episode. Once Worf rejected Gowron in "The Way of the Warrior" at the beginning of this season (and what a change that was after TNG) his family was left in disgrace, lost power, and wound up drowning in a pit of dishonor. Kurn shows up drunk on Deep Space Nine and begs for an honorable death. It's clear from the beginning that Worf also has extremely deep feelings for his brother. Now, we can discuss this as you will, but I think when Worf agreed to provide that honorable death, that agreement was about more than just giving Kurn honor. By proxy, Worf was also killing himself and his connection to the Federation, just as (later in the episode) Kurn sets up a security-related event to set up his own death, and the ship's crew in Plot B set up their own destruction through the planting of dishonorable hidden mines. When Dax takes a few random words from Quark and pieces together that Worf is about to use adanji to prepare for the ceremony of Mauk to'Vor, a ritual honor killing, she immediately runs to interfere. Given her knowledge of Klingon culture, and her clear feelings for Worf, is it that much of a reach to think she was running to save the precarious balance of Worf's soul?

Add yet another layer. While Worf's brother lives, Kurn needs guidance and support to live – and he's depending fully on Worf for that. Worf does pretty much everything he can think of – including going into debt to Odo to get Kurn a job in security – but without any connection to the Federation Kurn just gets into more and more trouble. He tries to suicide-by-criminal (a unique version of suicide-by-cop.) When Worf confronts him and talks about honor, what's interesting is that Kurn also finds the action of the Klingon Empire dishonorable. Kurn voted against Klinzhai withdrawing from the Federation. Worf's rejection of Gowron wasn't the only reason the sons of Mogh are in the pickle they are now. Kurn doesn't seem willing to accept his own part in their dishonor, and his own guilt, and he's stopped from suicide only by the tenets of the Klingon warrior culture which has rejected him.

The episode's ending was bitter, bitter, bitter for me. To sacrifice a brother in soul to save the brother's body, I don't know if that's something I'd agree to. Even worse, to do it without Kurn's explicit consent seems a little like a kind of rape. But without the drastic step of erasing his brother's memory and giving him a new family, Worf sees clearly, Kurn's days are numbered. Again, this was Dax's idea – and while it's a horrible, horrible idea, it might be the one pathway that allows Worf to live with himself. And the result? Kurn lives as someone else's son, and the Sons of Mogh are separated again.

Is Worf still a Klingon?

By my lights, he's definitely still Klingon. It's not that he's left that world behind. It will forever be a part of him. What's happening to Worf is that his sense of honor is becoming more, not less, refined. Worf claims he's losing the warrior instincts of a Klingon. I claim he's choosing to give people the opportunity to show their own honor. Worf claims he's rejected Klinzhai and Klingon culture. I think he's embraced the honorable part of that culture – but over the years and two separate series, he's seen the dark side of Klingon culture, the deceit and the Romulan- or Cardassian-like plotting, and he rejects it. If I had to choose a parallel for Worf, it might be G'Kar from Babylon 5 – except Worf doesn't seem to have G'Kar's ability to express himself.

Bits and Pieces

I learned more about Klingon weapons in this episode. I think it's telling that of all characters Worf is okay with a smaller weapon because he doesn't need the confidence boost!

Tony Todd is back! Before, he was Jake. Now, he's Kurn. I honestly appreciated his excellent acting in both episodes.

Kira and O'Brien have some lovely moments in the plot B of this episode, especially when they set off those mines and flush out enemy ships. Kira looks like a warrior, too.

Sisko has no choice but to reject the ritual. In this episode, he's representing the Federation side completely, but I am not sure he wants to. Great acting here.

Quotables

Dax: So you think that I was overconfident? Worf: You were overconfident. You thought by distracting me with your outfit you would gain an advantage. Dax: My outfit? Worf: Er, I thought that–I mean, I only assumed that– Dax: You thought I wore this for you? Talk about overconfidence. (She turns away and smiles)

Quark: No, this was more than his standard rudeness. He came in here, ordered some Klingon incense and nearly threw me across the bar when I tried to give him some replicated incense. Dax: What kind of Klingon incense? Quark: Something called adanji. Dax: Why would he want adanji? Quark: Why? Is there something special about adanji? (Dax walks away) That's it. I'm going to stop talking to the customers.

Kurn: Did you fight them? Did you threaten to kill them both if they interfered? And are you standing here now with the mevak dagger ready to slit my throat and bring me the death I deserve? No. For a moment in your quarters during the ritual you were Klingon. But your Federation life has claimed you again and now it is claiming me as well. I have no life. I have no death. Whatever is to become of me is up to you.

Overall

As some of you know, this is my first time watching this series. I had a hard time sleeping after watching this episode. I hope to god Worf is okay.

Five out of five psychological and physical land mines.

---

JRS

#Star Trek #Star Trek Deep Space Nine #DS9 #Worf #Jadzia Dax #Benjamin Sisko #Kurn #Star Trek Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews

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theladyfangs · 6 years

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Reflections/ The Other Part 10

Morning After, Katrina II, Uncertainty

Morning After

She’s first to wake. But it feels so different this time. And when she turns, his arm pulls her close to his body, and he murmurs her name.

Michael smiles and kisses his chin, his shoulder, his chest, the places she can get to from this position, and lays down for a moment more until her body calls her attention to an urgent matter. The bathroom.

Gently, she unwraps herself from his embrace and goes to relieve herself.

Last night still lingers between her legs. When she’s finished she goes to the sink to wash her hands. The lights are on but set to low and she pauses a moment to stare at the reflection in the mirror.

Eyes that look like hers stare back and she stands, taking stock of the person in the mirror. Her skin is red in the places his lips were. And her sex clenches as last night slips to the fore.

She waits to feel something—the guilt that usually comes, the shame…but there’s none of it. Not this time. This time she feels…content.

Satisfied in a way that she’s never been, and…hungry.

But not for food. Slender fingers slide down and between her legs, and she bites her lip to tamp down on a moan.

He wakes to find the space next to him warm, but empty, and Lorca’s first feeling is a sinking pit in his stomach.

Did he do it, again? Did he ruin it for them, this time?

But the sound of water from the bathroom catches his attention. And the despair is replaced with relief.

She’s still here. She hasn’t left.

He gets up, walking toward the sound when the water stops. And he enters, right as he sees Michael, standing there, looking at herself in the mirror. She can’t see him, but he can see her, and he takes the time to admire her slender shoulders, the lovely curve of her body and the shape of her spine, her ass, her legs.

It’s starting again.

The flames, licking at the edges, and when he sees her eyes slip close, and her fingers go between her legs, he knows her want is equally as urgent as his.

When she opens her eyes, he’s there, behind her.

Strong arms wrap around her as he presses against her, letting her feel all of him.

And she wants all of him.

Their bodies need no more instructions.

And the glass wall of the shower becomes the bracing point as she stands on her tip toes to give him entry.

The first thrust releases a bolt of sensation throughout her body so intense it makes her start to shake and he doesn’t even bother trying to tamp down on his own pleasure as they sex against the shower. And when Michael comes again, and she cries out—more like a hoarse scream—her throat still raw from last night. And he follows, grunting in her ear.

They slip to the floor, and she scoots into the crook of his arm, one leg, draped over his.

He places a languid kiss on her forehead.

And they rest a moment, to catch their breaths. It’s still early. 0600 hours. Another two before either have to report to the bridge.

Katrina II

She’s in her makeshift ready-room examining the map when Lieutenant Tyler enters.

“What is it?” Admiral Cornwell asks, looking up at him. He’s proven to be a good asset aboard her floating office—a smart officer, a good tactician and his expertise in Klingon culture has done wonders in helping move the lines on the battlefront. Still, he’s largely remained relegated to the communications array with other officers, listening and interpreting and translating. While his work has been exemplary, she still doesn’t trust him to do it alone. Katrina is under no pretense about who, or rather what, she is dealing with. There are two people inside one body - one loyal to the Federation, one loyal to the Klingon Empire. She does not believe he would willfully compromise them, yet she knows that at any moment, his Klingon side could re-emerge. It did with Specialist Michael Burnham in the alternate universe, and it also did with Doctor Culber. Burnham survived. Culber did not. And Katrina is unwilling to become another of Tyler-Voq’s casualties.

“I’ve been listening in on some communications,” he starts, coming over to her with a file. “I think something has happened with the Discovery.”

The Discovery. Katrina’s stomach twists and she moves aside to make room for Tyler to access the viewer. He pulls up a list of transcribed transmissions and begins relaying them to her.

“It’s scattered. There was some sort of an attack.”

“On the ship?”

“No.”

He keys in something and the markers jump between words. “Look here,” he points. She leans in to scan.

“Attack. Federation. “Violation. Klingon space.”

“The Federation attacked in Klingon space? The Federation DOES NOT attack in Klingon space!”

Tyler nods. “That’s what it looks like. And there’s only one ship that’s capable of striking that deep and getting out just as fast.”

“Discovery.” Katrina shakes her head, lips tight, arms crossed. “What the fuck were they thinking?” She mutters to herself, fuming.

“Has any of this reached the other admirals?”

The Lieutenant shakes his head. “No, sir. I brought it to you first, considering…who all is involved.”

“Good call,” she tells him. “Transmit the daily reports, but not this. I’ll handle this one personally.”

Because while she did give Lorca wide latitude, THIS—attacking inside Klingon space—is a violation of treaty and rule, not to mention risky as all hell and who knows what condition the ship is in? And it’s lucky they made it back—what if the tech had been found?

Most of all though, she’s disappointed. The Lorca she knows would never put his crew directly in harm’s way if he could help it, and the front has been changing as Discovery has rallied to shore up the Federation’s defence outposts, so why the attack?

“Wholly unnecessary,” Katrina thinks to herself, turning off the viewer and leaving her ready room.

It’s raised more questions than answers, and she wants them. And she will get them. If for some reason Discovery and its Captain have gone completely rogue, she’s fully prepared to take him down.

And she’s got questions for Specialist Burnham too—she left Michael there for a purpose—to keep Lorca in line.

“Helm,” she commands, sitting into the centre chair.

“Set coordinates for…” she gives the classified location of Discovery.

Uncertainty

Six days out from the battle, and repairs are proceeding well. “We’re up to 75 percent capacity,” Saru tells Captain Lorca, handing him a PADD with burndown charts attached for the work. “And only one person remains in sickbay.”

Lorca nods, making note that he needs to stop by and check in with the officer that remains with the doctors. “Good job, Commander,” he tells the Kelpian, even granting him a smile. The smile is what catches Saru off guard a moment—he’s never seen Lorca actually crack a smile.

“Thank you, sir.” He says, slightly bewildered. The Captain has been in a far better mood these past few days. The doors to the bridge open a few moments later, revealing Burnham.

“Greetings, Commander,” she greets Saru, before taking her station.

“Specialist,” he says, noting she looks…the same.

No. Not quite, but he can’t put his finger on what’s different about her. Externally, she has not changed. Just as efficient as always. Michael completes her duties for the day and leaves. But for the past few…maybe it is his imagination.

The bridge is quiet as the officers work on separate assignments. Saru and Lorca examine status reports, Burnham checks in on the progress of various science projects underway, Lieutenant Bryce monitors fleet traffic and Lieutenants Owosekun and Detmer carefully navigate the ship. For the moment, all is silent.

After a while, Lorca does his usual rotations, stopping at each station and getting an update. When he gets to Burnham, he leans down close. They don’t speak. Yet Captain Lorca stands a little too close, chest brushing against Michael’s back. He leans down a bit too far, until they’re almost cheek-to cheek. Michael exhales just a little too long. She turns her head toward Lorca just a little bit. And he brushes her hand gently before moving on. Small movements. Nearly imperceptible. Unseen by most.

Saru catches it.

When Michael looks up and catches him watching her, she quickly glances away—eyes down, focused on the console in front of her, the data on the screen. But now Saru thinks he knows what’s changed an he is deeply disturbed. It is conduct unbecoming of an officer. Or, officers. And he does not believe a Captain Lorca who is well-versed in Starfleet protocol would dare such a thing…not with a subordinate—not with a criminal.

There is only one explanation—he is sure. And immediately, as it comes to him, he feels the stretch of the skin on his head, the tell-tell sign. He feels the rush of endorphins through his body, a reaction bred through generations of his people fleeing for their lives.

There is danger near. And it is close.

Another furtive look to the Captain, now seated in his chair reading reports. Then to Michael, buried in her console screen.

It is not right. There must be something wrong.

He moves a hand to his head and urges his threat ganglia back in place. He will speak with Michael immediately. It is his duty as first officer. It is his duty as a friend.

“It has come to my attention that the nature of your relationship with Captain Lorca has…changed.”

They are seated in the mess. Rather he found her seated in the mess eating quietly, and joined her. In the past, Saru never would have brought up such matters. But that was then. Since he has served as acting captain, captain, XO and carried all the additional responsibilities, it has granted him a far broader perspective than he had before. He is now channelling that here.

“Relationships among and between people are constantly changing,” Michael replies, steadily focused on the meal in front of her, giving nothing.

“Yes, yes. And change is the universal constant,” a wave dismisses the last comment. “Be that as it may, I perceive that your relationship in particular with this universe’s Gabriel Lorca is of a more personal nature than what existed between you and his alternate. And I am concerned.”

They speak low in a table by the window. The din of the room disguises their conversation.

“Saru,” Michael finally puts down her fork and looks at him. “Has this Gabriel Lorca given you any reason to be concerned?”

“I personally, have found him to be too similar to that other Lorca,” Saru tells her, to her surprise.

“I was under the impression that you liked him.”

“Whether I like him is irrelevant. He is the captain. Put in place by Admiral Cornwell. I have no choice but to follow orders.”

“But you didn’t when we were over there,” she challenges referring to the other universe.

“He left us no choice,” Saru defends. “Gabriel Lorca gave up command when he revealed himself.”

“And you believe he has somehow, returned here. Saru, I WATCHED him die.”

The last part is said with a flicker of something akin to emotion from Michael, and the First Officer is slightly taken aback by it. A few eyes drift their way, ears having been pricked by the slightly increased volume, but the gist of the conversation lost on them.

The specialist and XO fall silent, contemplating each other.

“I trust him, Saru.”

“You trusted the other him, too.”

#star trek:discovery #fanfiction #uss archangel #michael burnham #gabriel lorca #katrina cornwell #michael burnham x gabriel lorca #katrina cornwell x gabriel lorca

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Star Trek: Enterprise – An Oral History of Starfleet’s First Adventure

https://ift.tt/3C98oDS

Before Discovery or Strange New Worlds, the early days of the future as postulated by Star Trek were explored in the television series Star Trek: Enterprise. Celebrating its 20th anniversary at the end of the month, it was set roughly 75 years prior to The Original Series, during the fledgling days of Starfleet, when humanity was first venturing out into the cosmos.

Scott Bakula as Jonathan Archer captained the first starship given the name Enterprise, leading a team consisting of humans, a Vulcan, and a Denobulan. The voyage wasn’t always a smooth one, but certainly an important part of the canon. What follows, presented in oral history format, is a look back at the show’s formative days.

BRANNON BRAGA (executive producer/co-creator): Star Trek always needs fresh blood. I left the franchise before Enterprise; I just said, “I can’t do this anymore.” I remember where I was and what I was working on and where I was standing and at what point in time when I officially burnt out on Star Trek. I decided not to do the seventh season of Voyager and then I was asked to create Enterprise. Rick Berman had a really cool idea for it and I said, “You know what? I’m going to do this one more time.” One could argue maybe I shouldn’t have. Rick was a really good overlord, but even he needed fresh writers. One could argue maybe we both should have left earlier.

RICK BERMAN (executive producer/co-creator): As Voyager was ending, the studio came and said, “Let’s get another one up and going.” I begged them to let the franchise have a few years’ rest. In fact, they wanted it to start before Voyager ended and I managed to get them to at least wait until Voyager went off the air. The question was, what could we do that was different? I’d been working a great deal with Brannon, and so I asked him to work with me on creating a new series. Our decision, and I still think it was a good one, was to change the time period. We had done three shows that took place in the 24th century, and I thought it was time to go to another century. To go forward meant spacesuits that were a little sleeker and ships that were a little shinier, but it wasn’t that much to invent what had come before.

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BRANNON BRAGA: Rick called me and said, “What do you think about setting it between the film First Contact and Kirk’s time?” And I said I thought that was a great idea. We started talking about it and considered what it would give us, and it evolved from there. We never considered another concept. We thought that First Contact seemed to be more of a relatable film somehow, because it had characters from the near future versus the distant future, and it allowed a more non–Star Trek audience to embrace Star Trek. You didn’t really have to know much to enjoy that movie.

RICK BERMAN: There was no Star Trek canon to respond to how Earth got from being in this post-apocalyptic nightmare to being in the world of Kirk and Spock with Starfleet Academy. So our feeling was to pick a time somewhere within that, when the first humans are going into space on warp-capable vessels, and they’re not as sure of themselves as Kirk or Picard were. They’re taking baby steps. We knew, with Enterprise, that we wanted to turn the ship [the franchise] around. We were dealing with the time when the first warp-drive ship was being developed for a crew of humans. There were no holodecks and people didn’t beam themselves anywhere, they just beamed cargo. It just seemed to be the right idea, so it’s the one we pursued.

BRANNON BRAGA: The biggest challenge was that the studio wanted something, but they were dubious about the prequel idea when we went in to pitch it. I don’t think they liked it very much. They thought Star Trek should be about moving forward and not moving backward. We were asking questions like, “How did we end up building the first warp ship? What was it like to meet a Klingon for the first time?” People had ball caps and walked dogs and wore tennis shoes and are more identifiable as people than, say, a Captain Picard, who is more of an idyllic man of the future that you probably wouldn’t recognize as a person that you could ever meet today.

RICK BERMAN: From the point of view of some fans, there’s the great sense of continuity that the shows have had, and they’re very, very particular about that. A lot of them were not happy about things that they felt were outside the canon of Star Trek. A lot of them felt that Brannon and I ignored that, which we absolutely didn’t. We tried to pay great attention to it and we had people who knew Star Trek backward and forward that helped us, but obviously there were things that had to be dealt with and adjusted.

SCOTT BAKULA (actor, “Captain Jonathan Archer”): Enterprise is The Right Stuff. That kind of energy of being the first ones out there and being a little scared sometimes and being a little overwhelmed by the experience, which I think is a great emotion to have to play with. Americans have explored our planet in a variety of different ways. Some successfully, some not. We have a wide history of exploration in this country. Certainly different experiences in Vietnam and places like that where we tried to impose our ideas or philosophies on different cultures, and still are in many places around this planet. Making it more about the experience and less about planting the flag. In other words, enjoying the experience and learning from it, rather than saying, “Now we’re here and we’re going to tell you how to do it. We’ve got good ideas and can do things better than you.” So if you’re someone out there looking to do good, and looking to explore in a healthy way, there’s a great responsibility to that. As well as a great temptation to change and alter and fix. Which became this very wonderful kind of play within the show, which is, how are we all going to deal with not only being out there, but the choices we make?

BRANNON BRAGA: Archer is something between Chuck Yeager and Kirk. He’s anything but the fully enlightened man that Picard is.

RICK BERMAN: It was very important for us to have a captain who was not necessarily that sure of himself, because we wanted him to be different from all the other captains. The other captains got on a spaceship at warp five or warp seven, they never thought twice about it. They ran into aliens every week and they never thought twice about it. We wanted a captain who was taking those first steps out into the galaxy; we wanted him to be a little green, a leader of men and at the same time, somebody who was in awe of everything he saw. With Scott, it just seemed like the perfect fit.

JAMES L. CONWAY (director, Enterprise pilot): Scott Bakula was the only actor ever discussed for Archer. Problem was, his deal wasn’t closed until the table read of the script three days before production began. In fact, there were rumors he was going to a CBS comedy pilot and we got very worried. We had never met him, talked to him, or heard him do the material. All during the casting process the casting director was the only one to read Archer’s dialogue. So it was a relief and pleasure to hear Scott brilliantly bring Archer to life at the table read.

SCOTT BAKULA: I responded to the idea of it and this character, and then I got the script for the pilot and everything just fell into place. I liked the character and it was really a return, in many ways, to what the original Star Trek was all about.

JAMES L. CONWAY: Scott brought a humanity to Archer that’s hard to put on the printed page. Also, as an actor and star of the show, Scott brought a top-notch work ethic and professionalism to the production. As star of the show, he set a great example for everyone.

BRANNON BRAGA: The funny thing about Scott’s take on the character was he spoke in kind of an unusual cadence when he was Archer and I could never figure it out. Someone told me he was a huge John Wayne fan. I’ve never talked to Scott about it, but I think he may have been doing a little bit of a John Wayne thing. He was our only choice.

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SCOTT BAKULA: We had a different dynamic on our show, and I’ve thought about it since then, because basically I was the older captain compared to the younger guys on the crew. John Billingsley’s in the middle there somewhere. That’s why I think the stuff between him and me was always special, even though he was nonhuman. There was a different kind of distance between characters created by the casting. We were building those relationships, but it was still from a different place.

RICK BERMAN: John Billingsley is a character actor and somebody else who’s in tremendous demand. He’s just a wonderful guy. We wanted sort of a wise, quirky alien to play that role of Phlox. Somebody who would be our doctor, and he did a marvelous job. He’s another actor I would do anything to work with again.

JAMES L. CONWAY: We were having trouble finding an actress for T’Pol. We read a lot of actresses, looked at a lot of names on a wish list, but couldn’t find anyone we liked. The role was critical, because she was a Vulcan and had to be able to “be” a Vulcan, yet still have sex appeal. Thankfully we saw a demo of Jolene’s work, loved it, and then met and read and loved her.

JOLENE BLALOCK (actress, “T’Pol”): I grew up on Star Trek. My favorite was Spock. I would sit there with my dad and my brother just watching the show, watching the relationship between Captain Kirk, Bones, and Spock. My favorite relationship was between Bones and Spock, because it was just this animosity and this love-hate relationship. But overall there was such utter loyalty between all three of them. I love the way they worked together, just the way Bones would be, like, “You green-blooded fool.” Somewhere in The Next Generation, I got lost.

BRANNON BRAGA: We wanted a Vulcan babe like Saavik, and wanted a Vulcan on board because the Vulcans were very antagonistic toward humans and she was essentially a chaperone, which really rankled Archer. Their relationship worked kind of nicely, and we saw T’Pol, Archer, and Trip as our triumvirate of characters.

JOLENE BLALOCK: I personally believed that T’Pol should have more of her Vulcan culture. I didn’t believe she should be so desperate to be like everyone else, because the original Star Trek, which I grew up with, had a very simple message that I took from it, and that is that not everyone is like me, and I’m not perfect, and nobody’s perfect, and that’s okay. That really helped me.

RICK BERMAN: Connor was the only actor in four television series that I had to fight for. I just love this guy. I think he’s a remarkable actor, and I saw four pieces of tape on various things that he had done, and there was just something about him; that this character, Trip, that we had written, he was just made for.

CONNOR TRINNEER (actor, “Charles ‘Trip’ Tucker III”): I wanted this job a lot. It was a good, time-tested franchise with a good audience. It had so many different things happening in it and it gave me the opportunity to play kind of a space cowboy—it was a dream job. Plus, you got to use your imagination as you’re meeting new species and races. Since this was our first time out, everything was new and we weren’t used to anything. You, as the actor, got to take in something as the audience did for the very first time, which was my experience as both an actor and a character.

ANTHONY MONTGOMERY: It was incredible. There was an electricity that just ran to my core, and it was because I was sitting at the helm of a show, being a part of a franchise that I grew up with and knew about. I’m not a Trekkie by any stretch of the imagination, but I still understand enough about the franchise that it made me say, “Wow, this is real!” That was even more exciting and intense than when I got the call saying I got the part.

RICK BERMAN: We were looking for an African American actor. We wanted someone young—we wanted this whole cast to be a lot more approachable, in a way; we wanted the audience to be able to relate to them more than they could other shows. Anthony was gorgeous, a terrific actor, and pretty much talked himself into the role the first day we saw him. We also wanted an Asian actor to play the role of communications officer and go back to a little listening device like Uhura had had in The Original Series. We also wanted her to be a translator of almost magical abilities. And Linda nailed it. We wanted somebody very vulnerable and someone who was not into flying on spaceships. In the first audition she completely got it and did very well.

LINDA PARK (actor, “Hoshi Sato”): There’s a lot of growth that happened for me, not only as an actor in front of the camera, but as a businesswoman. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that part of being an actor is that you are your own business, especially when you become successful at any level; you see how you work as a business and you can’t say, “I’m just an artist, and I don’t need to concern myself with the practical,” because it’s just as important to keep your artistic tools as sharp as your business tool. That’s the biggest thing I learned. In the end, it is my career and my life that these decisions are being made about.

RICK BERMAN: I had met Dominic on the first day of the last season of Voyager. He had the role of an English character. We were still a year away from going into production on the new series, but we were already starting to write it. He came in and I said to him, “We’ve got a role for you in a series that we’re creating that’s not going to be going on the air for eight or nine months, whatever it is, but I don’t want to use you up here.” This guy looked at me and said, “You’re right.”

DOMINIC KEATING: I had a chat with Brannon and Rick where I said, “I’m quite excited, and honestly, I’ll say whatever you put in front of me, but I would like it that he isn’t just the talking head Brit on an American spaceship.” Brannon said, “You won’t be saying lines like ‘My dear old mum.’” When I read the breakdown, he’s described as “buttoned-down, by the book, wry, dry, shy around women.” I’m like, “Oh, crap, I’ve got to act this.”

Star Trek’s Most Underserved Characters Will Be Back in Strange New Worlds

By Kayti Burt

Star Trek Doctors, Ranked By Crankiness

By Ryan Britt

JAMES L. CONWAY: The pilot of Enterprise was terrific. But then the first season was very repetitive and it felt like it was written by people who were burned out. And Brannon copped to this, saying he had made some bad choices in hiring staff and he was burned out from finishing up on Voyager. So I think that first season suffered and it took him awhile to re-steer that ship.

BRANNON BRAGA: When we were shooting the pilot and it was time for me to start writing episodes, I had a lot of things that I wanted to do. But once the ship officially set sail, I felt constrained. I felt, “Here we go again,” and I felt very challenged. Also, it was the first time I wasn’t working with people I’d worked with before. It was a large staff of ten people, and Star Trek was notoriously difficult to find writers for, because it was a hard show to write. I don’t even want to say hard; it’s unique. It just had a specific voice, and I had this writing staff that was new to the genre. Out of ten people, I think just a couple survived that first year.

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data-is-my-favorite-android · 6 years

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Ashburn’s Arc: Meta Analysis of the Entire Season (and Predictions)

I must be insane to sit here and labor for hours over another meta, but I can’t help it. I can’t get these characters’ arcs out of my head. Like, the writing blows me away and I’m really excited (and maybe a little nervous) to see what happens next. But one thing is for sure: Michael Burnham and Ash Tyler are the two common threads throughout this entire season, and their relationship is Important To The Plot.

Buckle up, friends, cuz this one’s a loooong one.

You may see that I just said that Ash Tyler is one of two common threads through the entire season, implying he has been important from the beginning.

“But data, Ash Tyler as we know him didn’t show up until episode 5, how can that be true?”

Yes, well, much as we hate to admit it, Ash is also Voq. And Voq has been around from the beginning. While Voq and Ash aren’t entirely the same, they are connected, meaning their arcs are intrinsically intertwined together. And while this may seem counter-intuitive, that fact actually might be good news for ashburn.

Before you riot, let me explain.

This season opened with two ships, a Federation one and a Klingon one, facing off. Aboard both ships, we saw two captains interacting with two important subordinates. In the case of the Shenzhou, the pair was captain and first officer, but also surrogate mother and adopted daughter. Aboard the Sarcophagus, the relationship was between captain and chosen successor, messiah and devout follower. It isn’t hard to see the parallels. The parallels deepen further when Goergiou fights T’Kuvma and Voq fights Michael. At the end of the struggle, both captains are dead, leaving two grieving people behind to pick up the pieces. Michael is imprisoned immediately, while Voq is cast out later. Both are desperate to prove their worth and honor the memory of their fallen loved ones.

From a writer’s perspective, setting up these kinds of parallels between characters can go one of two ways:

1) The two become adversaries. Molded by similar circumstances, they diverge in response and become mortal enemies destined to fight until one of them is vanquished.

2) The two, while initially adversaries, become allies. They meet with the intention of fighting, but find common ground where they least expected it and go on to work together to overthrow the real enemy (whatever that might be). This is also fertile soil for the star-crossed/unexpected lovers arc.

Listen, everything that happens in a well-written story carries a kind of narrative momentum, a series of weights that pushes the Story Arc one way or another. I’ve taken the liberty of noting important moments in the story and their narrative weight as it pertains to ashburn. I’m using a pretty simple system, awarding points for each positive and negative instance, but tbh some of these moments carry more narrative weight than others. For now, let’s break it down like this: ones are for buildings block moments, twos are for scenes or lines carrying important themes, and threes are for Narrative Events that carry a lot of clout. I may have missed a few, or you may disagree with how I’ve weighted them, but here’s what I have presently:

For the parallels set up pre-Ash Tyler, I’m giving a weight of +3. This is a time-honored and well-established literary trope that carries a lot of narrative importance. This could have been a -3 (indicating an unhappy ashburn ending), but circumstances further down the line make me believe that it’s a positive thing.

Tyler shows up. When he meets Burnham for the first time, he doesn’t reject her immediately. Instead, he says “I prefer to assess people in the here and now”. I’ll come back to this and why I think it’ll be important in the future. So he greets her with an open mind. +2

He goes on to sympathize with her when she doesn’t know how to feel about Sarek. He accepts her duality (a human who is culturally Vulcan) and helps her realize that what she’s experiencing is “being human”. +2

Michael wants to initiate a relationship and does so by being honest about her feelings. +1

Michael nearly kills a bitch when Mudd kills Tyler and sacrifices herself (temporarily) to bring him back. +1

Tyler tells Michael he’s “not going anywhere” as they contemplate their budding relationship. +2

On Pahvo, Tyler tells Michael she deserves better than jail and that he personally puts her needs above the many. +2

Aboard the Sarcophagus, Michael tells Tyler “no one gets left behind” and promises to come back for him. +2

Tyler says that after everything that’s happened to him, he’s still happy because it led him to her. +2

Michael listens to Tyler’s experiences and doesn’t judge him, instead telling him he deserves peace, to which he responds that he found peace in her. +2

Tyler nearly suffers another breakdown. He says he can handle it, even though he’s clearly struggling. He asks Michael to trust him. -2

Tyler kills Culber. -3

Tyler pledges to protect Michael. +2/-2 depending on how you look at it

Tyler tells Michael he loves her, and she says she loves him too. +3

Tyler talks about Michael as his tether. +2/-2 depending

Tyler freaks out on Mirror!Voq. -2

Tyler tells Michael he wants to be human for her and that he’s been holding on for her. +2

But then Voq takes over and he tries to kill her. -3

Michael spares him, even though she knows he’s Voq. +1

Tyler asks about Michael with the few seconds of time he has as himself in med bay. +1

Michael refuses to see Tyler. -1

Sarek tells her there is grace in loving your enemy. +3

Sarek tells Michael not to regret loving somebody. +2

Tilly tells Michael that how she treats Tyler now says something about who she is and who they all are as people. +3

Tyler and Michael meet and argue. -2 but also +3 in the long run if my predictions are correct.

As you can see, despite some of the negative major events, there is a net positive momentum behind their arc presently.

Star Trek Discovery has been all about mirrors and echoes this entire season. Looking back at Ash and Michael’s interactions and some of the other big events so far, I can see a lot of potential to take the loose ends of their relationship and tie them back together. Here are some thoughts (that may not be organized that well, sorry!):

I think we’ll see another moment like the one with Ash accepting Michael when they first meet, except the roles may be reversed. This echo may have already been satisfied by Tilly’s intervention in the mess hall, but there might be a more significant moment where Michael assesses Ash “in the here and now”, putting his past transgressions aside and accepting him as he is.

I also think there’s something important about Tyler’s acceptance of Michael’s duality and sympathizing with her confusion around her father and her human emotions. We may see Michael begin to pivot toward accepting Tyler and his complexity like Tyler did for her. Also, Michael struggling with her emotions, specifically those around being angry, but wanting to love, have some narrative significance that I think we may see in the future. I’m seeing seeds here that I could very well see the writers planting for later use.

Ash is now the one more likely to go to prison than Michael, which is an interesting reversal of the previous situation. There may be another moment where Michael does for Ash what he did for her on Pahvo and state that there is something unjust about the situation and she doesn’t want him to be imprisoned. This could just be Ash’s arc playing out in a logical way, but it feels more like a foil of Michael’s trajectory.

Sarek explicitly telling Michael that loving “the enemy” is special and good seems like A Big Giant Plot Point. Telling her to never regret loving someone is crazy important, especially coming from a Vulcan. Michael could have gotten that talk from someone else, like Saru or Tilly. But the writers chose to have her emotionally closed-off Vulcan surrogate father deliver this information. While he may have had other reasons for saying some of the things he said, there’s no denying that he directly stated that there was grace in embracing an enemy. That wasn’t a mistake; it was designed for Maximum Impact.

Tilly also gave A Big Important Speech to Michael about Starfleet values as they apply to Tyler. We’re getting lots of cues from the writers that reconciliation, while difficult, is coming, and lots of confirmation that what Michael and Ash have is special and worthy of protecting.

Now here are my big predictions. Bear in mind that I could be crazy wrong on some of these, but I’m taking a swing at it and seeing how I do:

1) Tyler won’t die. There are a few reasons why I think this. We’ve already had a lot of deaths. There’s been a shit-ton of attrition on the show of not only primary and secondary characters, but also faceless masses of war casualties. Enough people have died in this conflict. At this point in the game, the writers need to give us big emotional wins. Losing Tyler is not an emotional win. Lorca’s death was somewhat shocking, but he was a different character than Tyler; he was unrepentant to the end while Tyler is clearly remorseful. To me, this kind of writing signals a coming redemption arc.

Now, if Ash and Michael had reconciled during their argument this last episode, I’d be more worried. A common trope used in television is the whole lovers making up shortly before one of them is killed (usually in a heroic sacrifice). The crude narrative logic behind this might be summed up like this: one partner in the relationship did something wrong but was forgiven quickly and didn’t have to suffer enough for their actions; death becomes their punishment. Also, it’s a way of giving the audience one last feel good scene before a character dies and creates character pain for the surviving partner. It’s stupid and cheap, but it’s a common enough sight in media. But that isn’t what happened here. Tyler is remorseful and wants to atone for his sins, but it’s going to be a long road. Michael didn’t let him off easy, either. His character has been set up to have to do emotional work; the writers need to show him doing that work. He needs to live to follow through on that.

So what will happen to him? I can’t be sure. I see a few more options, though.

I’ll start with the two least likely but still possible ones.

The first is that he’ll somehow remain with the Klingons. This could be either as a diplomat to build bridges between the Federation and the Klingons -or- as a traitor to the Federation. Voq was set up to be the unifier of the Klingons, and Ash has Voq’s memories; it makes sense that he might inherit his “fate”. It also might echo L’rell’s words to Voq about building bridges between her family’s houses. Of the two possibilities under this subheading, this seems the more likely. It’s possible that Tyler, feeling spurned by Michael or the Federation and disgusted with the war crimes they are threatening to commit, defects and joins the Klingons. But Tyler has thus far been unwaveringly loyal to Starfleet, and he currently has a lot of people in his corner helping him through this tough transition in his life. He knows there are good people around him, and honestly I don’t believe he’d be so petty that he’d betray the Federation because Michael won’t accept him. I do think we’ll see him speaking in defense of the Klingons when he learns of the inevitable war crimes Georgiou is pushing to commit, though.

The second scenario is that he’s incarcerated. This is entirely possible, given his unique situation. However, Starfleet may consider him an asset better left in the field, where he can be used as Klingon intelligence while still being observed in a controlled environment. Also, the Federation may feel it wrong to imprison him for circumstances outside of his control and they may think it inhumane to subject him to tests and experiments without his total consent and cooperation. If he does go to the clink, I think he’ll eventually be brought back to Discovery because, like Michael, he’s an important character and an important resource.

The third possibility is...??? Something happens that necessitates his continued presence on the Discovery or makes his exit impossible. And I’m not going to even begin to speculate how that happens, tbh.

2) Michael and Ash’s relationship will continue in one way or another (either as friends or lovers) as long as Ash is still aboard Discovery. That doesn’t mean it’ll be easy for them, but there’s a lot of narrative gravity pulling them together. But a few things need to happen first:

-Tyler needs to show that he can find his way without Michael as his tether. He needs to be willing to put in the work for himself and he needs to show through his actions that he isn’t relying on Michael (even if he still looks to her as a beacon).

-Michael needs to see Tyler doing something (perhaps protecting her, as he promised he would) in such a way that she realizes the man she knew is still there. Last episode the writers specifically called attention to Tyler’s eyes; Michael said all she could see was Voq when she looked into them. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that in the season finale they’ll be in a tight spot together and Tyler will do something brave or gentle or whatever and she’ll look into his eyes and see him, the man she loves.

3) I also think there will be a moment between them where Michael has to decide to trust Ash and take his hand (figuratively or maybe even literally). Or maybe it’ll be Ash doing something dangerous or reckless and Michael rescues him by taking hold of him, who knows. But I think the “Will You Take My Hand?” of the title may have something to do with them. I actually think we may see several iterations of this question during the episode, but I’m hoping that Ash and Michael reconnecting is one of them.

Ultimately, I think it makes sense for Michael and Ash to continue to be a driving force in Discovery because their relationship is a metaphor for so many things that are key aspects of the overarching story line. They represent the different sides of the war, the possibility for respect and love between enemies, the truth that patience and understanding in the face of adversity can build bridges between people. And remember when I said two people with parallel character arcs can work together to overthrow the real enemy? The real enemy here is fear, and the violence that comes from fear and ignorance. The Klingons were afraid of losing their cultural identity. The Federation is afraid of being annihilated. Fear is the enemy. Michael is afraid of Tyler because of what he is, and Tyler is afraid of losing touch with who he was. To defeat the enemy, they’re going to need to move past their fear and differences and start again from a place of compassion. Their reconciliation would represent a larger trend, one that embodies the optimism of Star Trek and promotes the ideals of the Federation.

And that’s why I think there’s hope for Ashburn yet.

#star trek discovery #ashburn #ash tyler #michael burnham #meta #predictions #really hope i'm right

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blacknerdproblems · 7 years

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Star Trek: Discovery debuted a few weeks ago, but the after-launch buzz has been pretty subdued. There’s a few reasons for that. It is a busy nerd season, what with NYCC and new movie trailers dropping every other day. Also, the show is behind a paywall, preventing a general “did you see last night’s episode” Monday morning chatter. But also, as the show progresses, it isn’t flashy, not the way the premiere would have you believe. It doesn’t lend itself to controversy or jaw-dropping surprises thus far. I have plenty of opinions and feelings about the new show — because let’s face it, Star Trek fandom is one of feelings and character connection as much as any other objective measure — and they run the gamut from love to hate, with a fair amount of shoulder-shrugging ambivalence in between. Are you watching? Read on and agree/disagree with me. Not watching and wondering if you should? Read on, read on!

Warning: Spoilers for Episodes 1-4

Love

Their shiny black aesthetic. They all look like they’ve been painted black and then spray painted gold. Their pointy, sharp edged look has “reverse” evolved (this is the past to our favorite Klingons) to look like Egyptian sarcophagi and random ancient assyrian armor. On top of that, they’ve got a death cult with the leader riding around in a ship covered in coffins. This is goth high heaven. Their philosophy has also shifted, honor is still important but so is some impulse to cultural individuality. These Klingons are anti-space-globalization and anti StarFleet-lead liberalism. While all of this is a departure from previous incarnations, it is an interesting interpretation. Overall, I’m here for Klingons being real beings with their own ethos and direction and can forgive departures from canon. We’ll have to see if they continue to evolve or if they just become “the anti StarFleet”.

Hate

Yoooo…Voq. Why the special Klingon gotta be *literally* white? Why can’t special people just look like e’rybody else? My level of hate for the character is directly in relation to how they explain his situation. Is he an albino? or is there some closet cross-alien action going on? This is squarely in the Hate category, but I can be convinced otherwise, especially depending on how relationship with L’Rell, the female Klingon spy/confidante who comes forward in episode 4, develops.

Love

Everything. Always have. Always will. They’re just so *hard* and yet find ways to wrap logic around the most emotional decisions. “I just hate waste.” Whatever Sarek, she’s your daughter. Get over yourself. Michael’s relationship with the Vulcans is also, so far, reasonable and understandable. She is not a Vulcan. She refuses to claim them. I really enjoy how they slowly reveal hints of Michael’s life on Vulcan and her relationship with Sarek’s family without spending any air excusing the fact that she’s not mentioned in The Original Series. Michael embraces the cultural habits of Vulcans, and even Sarek’s ticks (when she says Fascinating it is a fangirl moment, for sure), even while not abandoning her humanity. “My emotions inform my logic,” she says. You’re not going to either/or Michael. Both/and please and thank you.

Hate

Cross universe, real-time telepathy? How does *that* work? One mind meld when she was little and now she and Sarek can talk whenev? Can she trigger it? or only him? Is it only in life/death situations? Or can they talk about the weather? Not only does it not make sense, it doesn’t add anything to their relationship. I get it, he’s a conflicted father figure, both b/c she’s conflicted about him and b/c he’s conflicted about his role. How does literal *Magic* change that? This kind of meta-narrative hand waving so you can force a conversation is a waste. Give me more of Michael solving her problems and getting into more of them, please. That’s enough.

Read on here. [x]

#star trek discovery #star trek #micheal burnham #sonequa martin-green #cbs #cbs all access #star fleet #spoilers #blacknerdproblems #black nerd problems

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mylordshesacactus · 7 years

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Ael, 2, 14, 34, 53, 69, 89, 94 :P

2 - Do they like animals?

Ael is. Pretty neutral on the subject of animals. She doesn’t dislike animals, but she has no particular desire for one either. She’s the person a cat would seek out at a party because she’s the only one not cooing and courting its attention and therefore from the cat’s perspective the safest individual. And she would enjoy the opportunity to pet the cat, they’d get along great. She probably would not plan to then acquire a cat of her own.

14. How do they react to someone dying?

Well that. Depends on the person. She’s a Space Roman who’s a Klingon citizen, she lived through a massive disaster that brutally decimated her species’ population and then the more intimate destruction of the colony world she’d narrowly escaped to, and she’s a military commander now. People die. It happens. Sometimes you need to accept that reality and move on in order to honor their memory by protecting the people who are still alive.

That being said, she has a small and profoundly close-knit family. Losing any one of them would hurt her in a way she’s never experienced. I’m not saying she could never recover, but…she’d need time, and she’d never be the same again.

34. How do they change throughout the story?

There’s a handful of events that very clearly divide Ael’s life into brackets. You know? Those events that divide your life into before and after this earth-shattering thing happened.

(ouch. possibly not a figure of speech to use around romulans. oops.)

That one colony spacer who picked her up after she got the shit beaten out of her by some bullyboys in an alley and offered her a job because hey, if a kid like you can hold your own like that three on one, I figure you can handle working security for me. Before that she was…aimless. A little hopeless, honestly. It was just a change at direction and a chance to get the hell out of Iuruth.

Then of course there’s before and after the destruction of Virinat, since that’s the event that catapulted her into the Romulan Resistance. Her capture and torture at the hands of Hakeev, and the miraculous rescue that shouldn’t have been possible, changed her a lot more dramatically. There was no question after that moment that they were a family, that every person on that ship would bleed and die for each other. That was when she stopped being afraid of the fire in her blood. And when Hakeev was finally killed, it was a freeing experience. It also marked the point where she and her wife finally admitted and acknowledged their feelings for one another, and when she officially adopted Veril.

She had a lot to work through, and watching her go from a scared, abused kid who was thrust in way over her head and trying so hard, fighting so hard to be good enough, given so little support and completely alone…to the calm, centered, quietly competent commander of a warbird named Hope, surrounded by family, the recognized savior of worlds? It’s a lot.

53. How do they deal with their emotions?

She’s a Romulan so probably like. By challenging them to a duel in the forum or whatever respectable Romans did. wait no scratch that I’m pretty sure both Romans and Romulans deal with their emotions by assassinating their political rivals.

Unlike certain cousins she could name Ael is very much not from a culture where showing and embracing emotion is considered taboo. I think she’s always very open about showing how she feels, though she’s a quiet person who’s very careful with her words. She shows love through actions, personal anger she deals with carefully through appropriate channels so as not to do anything she’ll regret. If she’s angry at someone in her family they both step away, cool down, and then sit down together in a neutral location and talk things out; they all live on a warship, they can’t afford to let hurts fester. You never know when you can lose someone. And bone-deep rage is reserved for big things, world-affecting things.

Those things, thankfully, she can deal with by shooting them with laser cannons.

69. Would they ever wear a flower crown?

that’s a very disappointing question for the number 69

Probably. She’s a little perplexed by fashion. If someone put it on her I don’t think she’d take it off.

89. Can they remember a lot of information at once?

Ael inherited my poor memory for rote memorization but she can put together context clues from old conversations and cultural anecdotes really quickly.

She can also rattle off a long list of every single thing Sela has ever done to screw over the Romulan people when certain individuals insinuate they’ve never done anything wrong, Sela.

94. Do they have a more submissive or dominate personality type?

why was this not number 69

In Ael’s case, in terms of personality definitely she’s more dominant; this girl is scrappy as hell, she’s not gonna give up without a fight.

In the more traditional connotation of dominant/submissive, she’s a total sub honestly. people might not think that looking at the futch decorated warship commander who’s an honorary Klingon admiral next to her slightly more feminine wife the ship’s doctor. but those people have never met Satra.

#askmeme #eighthdoctor

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daleisgreat · 4 years

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Star Trek: The Next Generation: Season Four

youtube

-Welcome back to my semi-annual Star Trek: The Next Generation coverage! I need to get better at watching only one episode a week so I can make better progress than only two seasons a year. Today I am covering season four (trailer) of the BluRay collection I am gradually marching through. To catch up on my entries on the first three seasons, click here! Yes, all these photos for this entry were taken via outdated smartphone, so apologies for the lack of quality, but I felt it was worth it for some of the captions! -Continuing the trend in past entries let us kick off with notable cast changes for season four. The most noteworthy one is Mr. Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) finally landing that spot in Starfleet Academy and departing the show a third of the way into the season. He had a great sendoff episode where Wesley and Picard (Patrick Stewart) go on one last adventure and he winds up saving Picard and the two have a couple emotional final exchanges I could not help but get wrapped up in. I thought Wesley was finally coming into his own the last dozen or so episodes he was on, but in the extra feature interviews he stated he was displeased by how we was treated by the producers in his final year on the show and did not want to pass up other acting opportunities for being the two main reasons he departed. I believe we get a couple more guest appearances from him in the remaining seasons, and for the rest of season four there is a rotating non-essential crew member every couple episodes filling in at the helm.

-If you recall the previous entry, season three wrapped with the critically acclaimed Best of Both Worlds cliffhanger where Picard became assimilated by the Borg. The season four opener wraps up that arc in a gratifying manner in how the crew rescues Picard from the Borg threat and restore him back to his original form. I want to emphasize again how important this episode was in terms of gripping narrative, near theatrical quality special effects and CG and how it was the catalyst for TNG finally being accepted by ardent fans of The Original Series and managing to overcome that show’s huge shadow. It was so groundbreaking that the two-part special eventually got its own special home video release. -The follow-up second episode of the season proved to be the quintessential ‘calm-down’ episode after the intense season opener. Picard takes some much deserved shore leave and visits his family back on Earth and we get to see them reconcile their differences when Picard’s brother gets him to break down his emotions from his Borg assimilation in a moving scene that will always stay with me. The secondary plot of that episode focuses on being introduced to the adoptive human parents of Worf (Michael Dorn) and how Worf overcomes the embarrassment of his loving family and they all wind up embracing each other. Normally, getting all wrapped up in an overly ‘lovey-dubby’ episode can be overkill for me, but I cannot think of a series that captured the perfect moment for it any better after the thrill-ride of the season opener.

-Speaking of Worf, season four proves to be a showcase season for everyone’s favorite Klingon. Aside from meeting his human step-parents, he later on becomes a sudden grieving widow in the same episode he meets the son he never knew he had. Season four finale is another two-part cliffhanger called Redemption and the first part that ends this season is all about Worf finally acting on Picard’s pleas to win back his family’s honor from the Klingon race after the big episode in season three where he covered up a Klingon controversy by taking a fall for a crime his family did not commit and being ex-communicated from the Klingons. The aftermath from that over the next year and a half was constantly referenced every couple episodes as a reminder from the consequences Worf had to live with so it felt like a justifiably big deal when Worf finally stepped up to overcome the shame cast upon his family name. Season four felt like a breakthrough season for Worf where his episodes no longer felt like ‘another Klingon episode’ to tolerate and I am now on board with all the way. -The holo-deck use seemed more dialed back this season. There is a fun mini-Dixon Hill excursion with Picard and Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) which regrettably gets put to a halt early on. Picard shows off some funky laser racquetball skills, and Worf duels with Guinan in a laser-target shootout I never caught the name of. Also dialed back this season was the poker games which I only think appeared in one or two episodes this season and one poker scene wound up on the cutting room floor in the deleted scenes. I hope to see both of these fun distractions become more featured in the proceeding seasons. The Ten-Forward tavern scenes continue to impress however as much needed breather scenes where Guinan offers her sage bartender wisdom like only she can and she even gets to put a badass halt to a stereotypical barfight that erupts!

-For the rest of crew, Data (Brent Spiner) has a memorable episode where he plays three characters at once that sees the return of Lore and after a few teases finally seeing the on-screen debut of his creator, Dr. Soong. I usually am a fan of Geordi (LeVar Burton) centric episodes, but his season four episodes where he is brainwashed by Romulans and infected by an alien race were more headscratchers that did not have me quite invested. The same can be said for Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) with her big episode where she is romantically involved with a symbiote who needs to constantly change hosts that proves to be too much for her. I will recognize however season four for her emerging as a competent doctor for a change and finally saving some lives! Transporter Chief O’Brien (Colm Meaney) gets a first name this season, and more importantly gets married too! Like last season, the use of telepathy from Troi (Marina Sirtis) is sparingly used, but whenever implemented it is noteworthy and actually helpful. The use of Ryker (Jonathan Frakes) as a key crew member also seemed a little more toned down this season, with him only having larger roles in a couple episodes. -Season four I will chalk up as a win for recurring once-annual recurring characters for TNG. I was delighted to see Picard’s treasure hunter partner Vash (Jennifer Hetrick) return in the Q (John DeLancie) episode this season that has Q whisk away the Enterprise crew for a memorable mission in the Robin Hood universe where Patrick Stewart shines as the ‘Prince of Thieves.’ I will also mark season four as the first time the annual episode with Troi’s mother, Lwaxana (Majel Barrett) as a legitimate entertaining episode. I previously could not stand her, but in season four she stood out in imploring an ambassador she fell for to go against his culture’s protocol of mandated suicide at age 60. I liked the ways to get Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) involved in the show again via estranged family members and more alternate dimension cliffhangers to wrap up this season. Props to them bringing back Reginald Barclay (Dwight Shultz) as a recurring crew member and his episode this season cracked me up where a cosmic blast leads to him overcoming his SAD to becoming overwhelmingly brilliant.

-Like previous seasons, I could not help but take notice of a couple episodes of TNG in season four I saw Seth McFarlane pay homage to in his current sci-fi show, The Orville. First Contact (yes a TV episode shares the same name as the eighth Star Trek film) establishes the rules for when the Federation of Planets recognizes the right time to well, establish official first contact with a new race, but only to see it be too much for the race to take in. Orville puts a twist on its first contact rules, but sees their own entertaining dilemma pan out when their cultures clash. In Theory has Data attempt to get involved in a romantic relationship with a crew member and that was replicated on McFarlane’s show when Isaac tries to maintain a relationship with that vessel’s doctor. Click or press here to see how the two shows contrast from each other with their respective androids trying to get romantically involved. -Like the previous seasons, Paramount does not disappoint on the extra features. Besides recycling past DVD extras, there are all new HD bonuses for the BluRay. Excluding a handful of commentaries, according to my notes I tallied up about four and a half hours of behind-the-scenes interviews. Yes, I watched them all for you dear readers! I will once again try to highlight the standout extras. Being a fan of Wesley and Picard’s father/son relationship I like how that is dissected in Selected Crew Analysis. Chronicles of Final Frontier and Homecoming provide valuable insight at the injection of new life a stable writing staff brought onto the show this season. Departmental Briefing indicate how Frakes and Stewart made the move to directing episodes starting this season, with Frakes especially getting more out of it and how it lead to him eventually directing a couple Trek films.

The showcase new HD extra is In Conversation: Star Trek’s Art Department which gathers several of TNG’s CG and special effect artists as they talk shop on how they were brought onto the show and share some of their favorite anecdotes for a little over an hour. I will admit some of it goes over my head, but it was mostly fun being a fly on the wall seeing these colleagues reunite and celebrate their favorite war stories. Random factoid I will forever remember from this was the artist’s disappointing writers for forcing them to tone down amount of phaser blasts they requested because they cost approximately $2000 to produce per individual blast at the time. -Damn, I babbled on for incredibly longer than I wanted to once again, but season four was a damn good season that warranted it. As breakthrough of a great year season three was for The Next Generation, I have to give credit where it is due for season four somehow surpassing it with a better overall quality of episodes. There are landmark moments for most of the crew throughout the season, and once again there is another two-part cliffhanger that has me anxiously awaiting to dive into the following season. Hopefully I will be back sooner than later this time…..no promises!

Past TV/Web Series Blogs 2013-14 TV Season Recap 2014-15 TV Season Recap 2015-16 TV Season Recap 2016-17 TV Season Recap 2017-18 TV Season Recap 2018-19 TV Season Recap Adventures of Briscoe County Jr: The Complete Series Baseball: A Ken Burns series Angry Videogame Nerd Home Video Collections Mortal Kombat: Legacy - Season 1 | Season 2 OJ: Made in America: 30 for 30 RedvsBlue - Seasons 1-13 Roseanne – Seasons 1-9 Seinfeld Final Season Star Trek: Next Generation – Seasons 1-7 Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle Superheroes: Pioneers of Television The Vietnam War: A Ken Burns series X-Men – The Animated Series: Volumes 4-5

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#star trek the next generation #star trek #Patrick Stewart #jonathan frakes #levar burton #Marina Sirtis #gates mcfadden #colm meaney #Wil Wheaton #john delaney #dwight schultz #jennifer hetrick #Michael Dorn #majel barrett #Denise Crosby #TV/Web Series

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sepdet · 7 years

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Star Trek Discovery: ep 2

Okay, I absolutely adored the premiere, which I liveblogged Sunday night. But I’ve been feeling rotten and groggy and didn’t watch episode 2 until tonight.

I’m kind of glad I waited.

I’m transcribing remarks I made to a friend in a private chatroom while watching, and then I’ve added some thoughts afterwards.

SPOILERS.

Ep 2.

Raw remarks transcribed from private chat while watching (slightly edited)

So, our cliffhanger ended with Michael committing mutiny trying to save them, her captain betrayed and pointing a gun at her, and a whole Klingon fleet warping in like several buckets of shit flying towards a fan.

I’m still trying to get used to Sarek being nicer to a human trying to Vulcan than he was to a son whom he practically disowned for leaving Vulcan to join Starfleet. But I love Sarek so will try to muffle the "buts." I want Amanda to show up.

Parting word to Michael: "Behave." On the bright side, seems like it took her seven years before she LOL NOPED.

I hope the Klingon fans are happy. This is a very ponderous language to listen to when it's whole scenes of dialog and not just quick commands or insults. But I know there's a whole branch of fans who embrace Klingon culture and language, and I hope they're as thrilled as I was to hear Sindarin Elvish spoken. (And that they're not too perturbed that the Klingon look has mutated again.)

Oh SHIT. I know the Captain was trying to defuse situation with diplomacy, but did they not have their shields up? Or was this just an old ship and/or Klingons managed to puncture shields. Ouch ouch ouch.

Wow, Michael is not having a good day. Waking up in remains of brig with failing containment fields around her — whole sequence is impressive and sad.

I like the way they're employing FX in service to story. It's hard not to let CGI overwhelm. But here, no matter how spectacular FX are, they're functional, rather than an end to themselves: like incidental music the Big FX moments help set mood/tone and give audience catch breath to process what just happened. As opposed to only using FX to foster one mood, maximum adrenaline, and keep audience off-balance so they have no time to catch breath and reflect on situation.

Intense telepathic scene with Sarek. Man he really likes this kid. He is one crazy ass Vulcan, even if he won't admit it: sharing a katra with a near stranger, especially a human child, is pretty drastic. (Also I'm confused: thought he adopted her after parents died in attack, but it looks like Michael was already his ward during attack?

ARGH.

Sarek: "I did not come here to judge your actions. I came here to—"

*Pumpkin, who likes to snooze on desk next to keyboard and occasionally use it as pillow at inconvenient moments, carefully and deliberately stretches out paw and plants it over ESC key, backing up browser window to several URLs ago, losing livestream.*

Cats. Such exquisite timing.

Back online.

Okay yes [STC sounded slightly noncommittal when I was enthusing about restraint of FX] now they're getting a little show-offy. But yikes. First time I've ever seen a space battle using classical Greek naval warfare maneuver. Trireme beak-ram!

...although it could be coincidence, and I'm reading it that way because of my classical studies background. They might've come up with that unusual and dramatic visual independently. At any rate, impressive.

OOOOO. Just hit scene where Captain, out of options, sees Klingons beaming up their dead, and she sees option. I've been kind of waiting for her to be proactive instead of reactive. Earlier her hands were tied by trying to avoid conflict (following orders).

...DAMMIT. Just Googled to find out spelling of Phillipa's last name and saw the kind of spoiler I really hate to see. Stupid, stupid me. I really honestly didn't know, since I had been so strenuously avoiding behind-the-scenes stuff.

—

[At this point I stopped babbling in the chatroom to watch final scenes, so rest is post-watch thoughts.]

At least we have one great sequence between Burnham and Captain Georgiou, although the lull to confront one another and devise a strategy was a little forced— Klingons being very polite about not finishing them off. And YES, YES YES, finally seeing Michelle Yeoh fighting, which believe it or not I never have. (I don't watch many films or really much media.)

:( Ouch. So close. Just a second or two longer.

So that's that. Man, that's gotta be a record even for Trek; can't even get through two eps without ship's destruction and crew evacuation. (Mom and I used to get annoyed at destroying Enterprise for shock value; first time was so dramatic and meaningful, whereas repeat felt gimmicky.)

Not sure Michael's Expository Speech is did her any favors at this trial, but at least now we hear what she thinks.

Teaser for next episode (or "real" Discovery show) follows. Kinda confusing that they're convicts but on a Federation ship? Or did she get transferred from prison?

I am still mourning the captain and really not in the mood to parse the trailer. DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT. I was wary of this show, but after watching Ep 1 I let my guard down and was SO EXCITED.

I had seen one article about this series last spring showing what looked like a predominantly white-dude bridge with generic-looking white male captain and a few tokens, just like TOS. That had dampened my enthusiasm for this show and prevented me from getting into it or looking forward to it.

But recently I saw posts saying, "Yo, WOC captain and first officer!" (or rather, in Tumblr's usual WE MUST MAKE YOU FEEL GUILTY FOR NOT SUPPORTING THIS THING YOU WEREN’T AWARE OF, SHAME ON YOU!!! way, there was a post berating Tumblr for lack of photosets and buzz and excitement over Michelle Yeoh and Sonequa Martin-Green, and why weren't we getting behind WOCs when we'd been all excited for Gal Gadot?) And I thought, Wait—what?! I thought this was going to be generic white dude captain with token black female first officer which is okay but not ANYTHING LIKE as cool as what you're saying?

And since I do try to avoid spoilers and PR I didn't know Yeoh wasn't going to be the regular series captain. Or rather, I was confused why the hype I was seeing now differed so drastically from that one article I’d started to skim and then closed thinking, “Nah, I’m going to avoid spoilers.” Had the showrunners changed their minds and decided to bring in Michelle Yeoh as an upgrade after seeing their version of Captain Pike wasn’t good enough to anchor a series?I was just going to wait and see.

I forgot any doubts when Episode 1 gave me EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED: Two great female characters with a friendship and professional working relationship. Banter. Excellence. Skills and wits. Clunky TOS tech and new shiny bridge set. Smart captain. Brave first officer. With two WOC they couldn't be tokens; they had to be expanded as just... 3 dimensional characters.

I was so here for that. I loved that whole opening minisode, and also the Captain sending Michael off to play in a brief voyage of discovery and enjoying that her first officer was enjoying herself.

Their friendship was perfect, legendary Kirk and Spock material. It was distracting me from the other bridge crew— even Saru, who is an interesting character, but I was focused so much on these two women— but I figured other characters would get filled out in subsequent episodes.

And now?

"Here. Here's what you really wanted. Two women being superbly competent officers with a meaningful friendship, leading a show just the way Kirk and Spock did. And it's going to be about discovery and an older woman mentoring another one, and tackling difficult ethical problems without providing easy answers and— PSYCHE!

“...FOOLED YOU! Two leading women in a Kirk-Spock dynamic? Oh, we could never do that. So we're killing off your already-favorite character. As consolation prize, here, have an incarcerated and demoralized WOC who has to be 'grateful' to a white dude for letting her out of jail. Power imbalance between her and captain, no close friendship, and oh yeah, instead of voyage-of-discovery and complicated-ethical-problems Star Trek, it's going to be various people being macho and angry, and a depressing Federation-Klingon War."

I hope I'm wrong.

It feels like they gave me everything I'd hoped for and more, and then, once I'd let my guard down, they took it away. I'm left with a character and actor (Sonequa Martin-Green) I like enough that I'm going to watch anyway...for now. But I'm back to being wary. And here we have yet another WOC/minority being killed to make way for generic white dude. So now I'm disillusioned and won’t trust this show, and we're only at the end of ep 2.

Okay, yeah, I'm pissed.

Discovery could redeem itself and turn out to be fantastic. There is a lot of potential here and a lot to like. Saru and Burnham are good characters, and I assume some of the others will be too. But they're going to have to pull off a miracle now to keep me from fantasizing about the better show that COULD HAVE BEEN.

ETA: so maybe I should have read the behind-the-scenes stuff beforehand so I’d be prepared for this premiere to be backstory, in effect. I guess everyone else knew her death was coming, and could appreciate the drama while anticipating this would be a tragedy. Either I’m naive, or too groggy/tired to pick up the Obi-Wan vibes.

#star trek discovery #star trek #episode 2 #liveblog #spoilers

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