#and they are blatantly about kirk and spock

[why-lamp]

well, here's the update to this post:

i finished it at 3am and cried a whole bunch. and not just about the story (which was very good, very tragic, and also very gay) but also the history behind the book and how it shouldn't even exist. i'll be posting a full analysis soon, Though it may take longer than I'd like (I'll be starting my first year as a teacher on Thursday). for now, i'll leave yall with these excerpts.

[lostyesterday]

Star Trek science officers venn diagram!

Some notes: I know Data and Seven aren’t technically science officers, but they are in my heart, and also just functionally speaking in their respective shows. Also, you could argue that Seven is technically fully human rather than part-human, but to me a part of her remains Borg.

For the “important relationships with others cause them to question some of the most essential beliefs of their culture” segment, I’m mostly talking about Rejoined for Jadzia and Spock’s arc in the TOS movies with Kirk.

For the “doesn’t feel any emotions about that (blatantly untrue)” segment, I don’t actually think Data’s lying about not experiencing emotions, I just think he has difficulty recognizing his own emotions as being emotions. Seven and Spock are mostly just lying though, with a bit of denial mixed in.

For the “contains the memories of other people” segment, I was mostly thinking of Lal for Data, but there are several other possible reasons this would make sense for him, like how he has all the records from the people living on the planet where he was created.

[fanhackers]

Honoring Our Foresmutters: Joanna Russ

Inspired to post today by the recent New York Times article on Joanna Russ, “Joanna Russ Showed Us the Future: Female, Queer but Far From Perfect,” which promotes an exciting new collection of her work by the Library of America.  Joanna Russ was a fan and a fanfiction writer well as, arguably, the literal founder of the field of fan studies. While Russ has been referenced or namechecked many times in the Fanhackers blog over the years (here and here, for example), I don’t think we’ve ever specifically shouted out her field-founding 1985 essay “Pornography By Women For Women, With Love.”  (Is there an important fan studies essay before this one? Perhaps Ien Ang’s 1985 work on Dallas fans? Janice Radway’s 1984 Reading the Romance? Lamb and Veith? Lichtenberg, Marshak, and Winstons’s 1975 landmark Star Trek Lives? Maybe that one. But Russ is pretty much the first to document and defend modern slash fandom as we know it (which is one of the reasons the NYT article links to the Archive of Our Own.)   

Russ says a lot of things in this essay about Star Trek slash, what it is and how it works, and how slash serves as a sexual fantasy for women. (She also says some pretty fascinating things about not just female rape fantasy, but also about male rape fantasy: there’s a lot of sympathy here for men’s sexual fantasy and empathy for the way men are thwarted under patriarchy as well.)  But I think my favorite thing in the essay is the way Russ is willing to own her feels:

I hope I haven't offended anyone by calling K/S "sexual fantasy." If it weren't, I wouldn't pay any attention to it. I love the stuff, I love the way it turns me on, and I love its attempt to establish a very radical androgyny in its characters. So many feminist creations of Amazons and Goddess-worshippers and so on simply don't work-most are very thin–but K/S works, if you know and like Star Trek, and (as I mentioned) it is the only sexual fantasy by women for women that's produced without the control or interposition of censorship by commercial booksellers or the interposition of political intent by writers or editors. It's also a labor of love for the women involved, since it is (and must be, because of the possibility of lawsuit) non-profit. I find it raw, blatantly female, and very valuable and exciting.

She ends the essay preparing to go back to the story she is writing!

And now, if you will excuse me, I must go back to my ancient Vulcan castle with the carved bedposts where I have left my two characters, Guess Who and Guess Which, in a very dramatic and painful situation. In fact, I left Spock preparing to beat Kirk, whom he has bought as a slave in an alternate universe in which violent Vulcan (Spock's planet) never reformed. Of course the point of the whole scene is that Spock can't bear to do any such thing because he is madly in love with Kirk. So he smites his forehead with his hand (or some similar gesture) and rushes out to agonize. Meanwhile Kirk (who's of course in love with Spock) agonizes too, but in the opposite direction, so to speak.  They will do this for a long as I can contrive, and then they will make great music together, also as long as I can stretch the scene out. Yum. And so on.

That “Yum,” in print, in 1985, is everything! 

–Francesca Coppa, Fanhackers volunteer

[spocksocksrock]

ok I saw the reblog of your star trek books post about someone asking for recs someday, but I’m impatient and have decided I am not gonna wait and that I will send the recs ask MYSELF dammit!!

I feel like i’ve never gotten into the books because I’m worried they will be bad, so if you have any TOS/DS9 book recs I would LOVE to hear them — I have consumed all Star Trek content made up until this point and am so so desperate for new material

thank you SOOO much for asking i love any excuse to talk about st books!!! (though it is kinda funny cause that same person talking about recs did end up messaging me already lol)

for TOS i would say the best ones are:

Killing Time by Della Van Hise — famously gay and for good reason, it’s just blatantly romantic spirk content. it’s all about how they are meant to be together in every alternate universe and that they are soulmates <3

Spock’s World by Diane Duane — bones, kirk, and spock go to vulcan because the vulcans are considering leaving the federation. really great plot and super accessible characterization for the main three!

Vulcan’s Forge by Susan Shwartz — follows two plots- young spock figuring out that he wants to join star fleet, and older spock dealing with kirk’s death and trying to move on. it’s really not as sad as it sounds and it adds so much to spock’s character imo.

id honestly also recommend the novelizations of the movies, they definitely add a lot of new content

—

DS9 is harder cause i love soooo many of these but some of the best are:

Hollow Men by Una McCormack — kind of a sequel to the episode ‘in the pale moonlight’, garak and sisko go on a trip to earth to deal with dominion war stuff (and everyone else has shenanigans on the station)

The 34th Rule by Armin Shimerman — basically quark whump, him and rom are sort of kicked off the station and go to a prison camp and the rest of the characters have conflicting feelings about this (it’s a bit overdramatic at times but i love quark-centric stories so 🤷)

Fallen Heroes by Dafydd ab Hugh — this one is pretty crazy, quark and odo suddenly travel 3 days into the future and find the entire station is dead, like Everyone died, and they have to figure out what happened and fix it (i love quodo and there’s a scene where quark vacuums odo up, need i say more)

Saratoga by Michael jan Friedman — sisko is meeting with the other survivors from the ship jennifer died on. there’s sabotage, intrigue, betrayal and such and then the b plot is that odo has to pretend to be quark. so basically an average ds9 episode lol

there are definitely a lot more good ones but it depends on what characters you like and what kinds of stories you’re looking for ya know? please please message me if you want to talk ab it more!!!!

[westworldparty19]

I don’t love that Pike allows Sam Kirk to be openly space racist to Spock. He just yells “enough” and they move on. I get it’s a tense situation but still, have some character integrity. Also it just makes no sense for what we know about Sam from his brief appearances and also for the situation. No one else is crying about Duke’s death, they are all focused on surviving the mission. So it can’t even be played off like he wasn’t just straight up being space racist.

Contrast Pike’s reaction with Jim Kirk almost kicking an officer off the bridge in Balance of Terror, an equally if not more tense situation and…

I enjoy SNW for the most part but I think the writers are largely missing the point. I saw a tweet the other day that said “the problem with snw is that the writers aren’t even a little bit socialists” (if I find the tweet I’ll tag the poster lol) and I think that’s really true. The show has no solid politics and no strong sense of ethics. I could write a book on how disappointed I am about how they have turned the Gorn into some unforgivably evil alien species, but I’ll save that so another post.

Edit: actually the more I think about Sam’s outburst, the more mad I get. What was the point of it? To turn him into a character we don’t like? From a plot perspective it was to push Spock into reacting violently…but I feel it could have been handled better. I just wish there was a narratively compelling reason for it. In Balance of Terror, the officer’s space racism was used as an opportunity to develop Jim’s character and blatantly state that racism and prejudice is not condoned. It had purpose, moved the plot forward, added tension. In All Who Wander it’s just used as a way to manipulate Spock into a Star Trek 2009 temper tantrum, but this time that was not the intent behind the tormentor. In 2009, Jim is aware that he needs to make Spock angry and so he pushes him, but in All Who Wander….Sam does not know this needs to happen. So I ask again, what was the point?!

[sshbpodcast]

Mutiny on the Bounty, and the Enterprise, and the Voyager, and the…

By Ames

Don’t trust your first officer as far as you can throw them. Especially in space because the lack of gravity probably means you can throw them very far! This week on A Star to Steer Her By, we’re all mutinying against our corrupt captains, our possessed or mind-controlled captains, and sometimes our captains that just aren’t corrupt enough for our liking!

We see it on just about every ship, whether Starfleet or alien, whether justified or not. So grab your favorite melee weapon, stand guard at the brig, and scroll down and/or listen to this week’s podcast episode (discussion at 55:37) for our full list of mutinies in Star Trek! Just don’t get any bright ideas…

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

“The Menagerie”

The first time we see a crewmember usurping control of the ship in all of Trek, we also see the comeuppance right away. In trying to bring Captain Pike to Talos IV, Spock neckpinches several crewmen, kidnaps a disabled man, straight up steals the Enterprise, lies to a whole bunch of officers, and probably eats someone else’s sandwich too. Was it all a worthy cause? Well, it meant the show didn’t have to film new content for half an episode, so I’m gonna say yes.

“This Side of Paradise”

Sure, everyone in this episode was under the influence of mind-altering spores at the time, but that doesn’t prevent it from being mutiny when these lotus eaters go against captain’s orders, sabotage the Enterprise, abandon the ship, and even get into a fistfight with Kirk! Screw happiness and fall in line!

“Amok Time”

Yet another example in which Spock’s not in his right mind and goes straight to mutiny occurs in “Amok Time.” Sure, the memorable parts of the episode are all about gladiatorial combat and killing Kirk (he got better), but remember that Spock also kept rerouting the Enterprise toward Vulcan without realizing it because his pon farr was affecting his thinking so much.

“Mirror, Mirror”

Finally, someone other than Spock mutinying! Mutiny is just a daily occurrence in the mirror universe, as it seems pretty much everyone is vying for a promotion by murdering whoever’s above them. Chekov and Sulu give it the old college try but can’t manage to overthrow Captain Kirk. The more, the mutinier!

“Whom Gods Destroy”

This one’s in the backstory of Garth of Izar, whose crew mutinied when they couldn’t stand by while he committed war crimes. This one’s definitely a justifiable mutiny since Garth’s actions were not the Starfleet way. That and the guy was entirely unstable, so his crew had grounds all over the place to take over from him.

“Turnabout Intruder”

The final episode of The Original Series is problematic as hell. It’s also yet another example of Spock mutinying. That pointy-eared hobgoblin freakin’ loves mutinying. He was ready to mutiny before he even figured out that it was Janice Lester in Kirk’s body. On top of that, Scotty and McCoy also blatantly plan to mutiny before Lester catches them as well and threatens the death penalty. And that’s why we can’t have lady captains in TOS.

The Final Frontier

Most of the crew has their minds tampered with in Star Trek V, similar to when everyone was mind altered in “This Side of Paradise” above, and that makes mutinying come that much more naturally! Everyone whose pain Sybok heals basically bends over backwards to help him take over the Enterprise-A from Kirk because he's such a nice guy.

“The Battle”

This early TNG episode is one of those interesting cases in which the crew is unhappy with how their leader isn’t acting corruptly enough for their liking! In this case and with some strong nudges from Riker, the Ferengi crew removes Daimon Bok from power because he was trying to return property to the Federation not for profit but for his own personal revenge plot. How much more un-Ferengi can you get?!

“Allegiance”

Like in “Turnabout Intruder” in TOS, the Enterprise-D crew are ready to unknowingly mutiny against their captain who isn’t actually their captain. There’s just something weird about how Picard is acting, and though no one’s mindmelded him or has any substantial proof, the senior staff is prepared to face the consequences. Luckily for them, there aren’t any.

“Brothers”

Proving to be one of the weirder dads in space, Noonian Soong calls his boy home by hacking into his system and making him usurp the whole bridge. I’d say it’s a bad idea to give so much power to an android who can be reprogrammed to take over the ship whenever is convenient, but frankly you can do that to biological beings as well, as we’ll see lower in this list…

“Disaster”

Picards calls out the actions of the three little twerps whom he rescued in the turbolift in “Disaster” as committing mutiny. To be fair, all they did was refuse to leave him to die as he ordered, so there may be some grey area in there. But Ro was definitely a centimeter away from mutinying against the de facto officer in charge of the bridge because nearly anyone could have done a better job than Troi in that situation.

“Power Play”

So Data mutinied in “Brothers” because he’s an android. Then what’re O’Brien and Troi’s excuses for doing the same thing in “Power Play”? Oh right, they were possessed by space jerks who wanted freedom from their prison planet and were using the bodies of Starfleet crewmembers to take over the Enterprise to do it. That’s a decent excuse, I guess.

“The Pegasus”

One more from Next Gen, and it’s another for which the cited mutiny is in the backstory of our guest star. Like Garth of Izar’s crew noted above, the Pegasus crew notably mutinied against Eric Pressman when he was going around pissing on Federation rules and regulations. In this case, violating the “no using cloaks” treaty with the Romulans. But those mutineers are all dead now because their phased cloak tech was just as bad as they thought it was! Joke’s on them!

“Dramatis Personae”

Here’s another episode in which everyone who’s mutinying is actually possessed and acting out a military coup that happened in some alien society, but screw it – it still counts! Possessed Kira riles up a group of folks fully ready to mutiny and it’s unclear if everyone’s possessed or if Bajorans just really love violence. Let’s face it, it’s probably both.

“To the Death”

The Vorta have their work cut out for them keeping the Jem’Hadar from mutinying every minute of every day, and they mostly succeed! It’s usually through the use of debilitating drug addiction, but they succeed. Except in this season 4 episode in which, at the end of so many minutes of battle, First Omet'iklan and friends rise up and straight up murder our first Weyoun. And it won’t be the last either!

“Worst Case Scenario”

What starts as a fictional mutiny in the holodeck escalates quickly into an actual crisis that nearly destroys the Voyager. Leave it to Seska to have a scheme with so many layers only a Cardassian could have carried it out. Even the hologram of Seska is ready to mutiny at the drop of a hat, leaving us to wish all the more that the show did more interesting stuff like this in early seasons with the Maquis.

“Year of Hell”

Obrist has enough of Annorax’s shit at one point in “Year of Hell, Part 2” after who knows how many years of attempting to alter the timeline. With some gentle nudges from Paris, our Krenim friend colludes with the captured Starfleet officers, takes down the timeship’s temporal core, and beams the prisoners away. It begs the question: if your mutiny resets the timeline, did you really mutiny?

“Night”

Here’s an interesting little example of a sort of reverse mutiny. A little like the instance with the children in “Disaster,” the captain orders the crew to leave her to die, and everyone refuses. So instead of mutinying to take over the ship, it’s more like a mutiny to keep the captain being in charge. It’s a sweet little sentiment.

“Equinox”

Captain’s Ransom’s crew of the Equinox was quick to mutiny the moment he started showing the least bit of mercy. This is one of those examples of people mutinying when their leader isn’t corrupt enough for them, and Burke and company pounce at the opportunity when Ransom shows his soft underbelly to the Voyager. They all get what’s coming to them though.

“Repression”

In yet another instance of the crew having their minds manipulated, the Maquis crew mutinies like whoa in this season seven episode. It’s a little odd that we’re dredging up the tension with the Maquis again so late in the series when we really never got to see it explored early on, but it’s even odder that it’s a Maquis mutiny scheme that Seska wasn’t even involved with!

“Nightingale”

There may be a reason forever-ensign Harry Kim never gets a promotion throughout all the years that we’ve known him, and that’s that he barely seems able to handle any more command than that. When he’s given the honorary captaincy of the Nightingale, the very first thing the Kraylor crewmembers do is mutiny. That’s a pretty bad track record, Harry.

“Hatchery”

Where do I even start with this rage-inducing episode? Captain Archer is actually showing compassion for the unhatched offspring of some Xindi Insectoids, and the rest of the crew is appalled that he’s not committing war crimes or anything! But then it turns out everyone else is right to mutiny because Archer’s mind was corrupted into caring for babies, so who is the real monster here? The babies? Clearly the babies.

“In a Mirror, Darkly”

If you’re not mutinying in a mirror universe episode, are you even in the mirror universe? As usual, the slightly evil counterparts of all our Enterprise friends spend most of this late-series two-parter scheming, getting tortured, scheming, and overthrowing everyone who takes power. Oh, and scheming. Archer does it. T’Pol does it. Sato does it. Hell, Porthos probably mutinies with the best of them.

Star Trek (2009)

Kirk was way out of line when he started screaming at Spock after the destruction of Vulcan in the first of the Kelvin movies. Spock, in his own logical way, was still piecing together that this movie just created a new timeline just for fun, and he’s stuck with this pissant attacking people and being a general dick. Now, was Spock also out of line marooning Kirk on a planet instead of throwing him in the brig? You decide. No, screw that; I’ll decide. They were both out of line!

“The Vulcan Hello”

Michael Burnham gets a lot of flak for knocking out Captain Georgiou, lying to the bridge crew, and doing her own little Vulcan Hello. And for good reason! She did get a whole lot of people killed and sparked a war with the Klingons that gets even more people killed! What a way to make an entrance into the franchise.

“Will You Take My Hand?”

But boy does Burnham make up for that little mutiny by the end of season one with… well, yet another mutiny! But this one for very good cause. Emperor Georgiou is about to destroy the hell out Q’onos, and the rest of Starfleet has their tail between their legs when Michael pulls one of many heartfelt speeches about doing the right thing, and the Starfleet way, and not committing genocide all the time. Hear, hear!

“Ask Not”

I really miss the Short Treks, though the idea of Captain Pike mutinying (spoilers) that was presented in this one was (more spoilers) obviously a fabrication from the word go (sorry, not sorry). So it’s all a little test to put a cadet through her paces by placing her in a stressful situation, making her confront trauma, and asking how far she’d follow her captain if it’s not in Starfleet’s best interests. It’s a little messed up, isn’t it?

“The Serene Squall”

Last one of the blogpost, and it’s a very recent one from season one of Strange New Worlds. The crew of the pirate ship Serene Squall is already a stubbed toe away from mutiny at any given time, so it’s barely an inconvenience for the captured Enterprise crew to push them all the way. “The Serene Squall” is one of those episodes that tries to balance comedy and… more comedy, and it’s indeed a very silly mutiny.

— Aaaaaand, we’ve been court-martialed. Thanks for mutinying with us, folks. Keep your eyes here for more when we’re out of the brig, and follow along the rest of our voyage through Voyager over on SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also scheme with us on Facebook and Twitter, and keep a close eye on that wily Spock. That guy's always a step away from mutinying.

[rivertalesien]

Star Trek Picard

It's over.

Episode 10: The Last Generation

Spoilers.

Well, a quick one: they completely forgot about Laris.

Were there good things that happened during the three seasons of Picard's run? Absolutely. We got back with Seven of Nine and she's queer and awesome and a great character to go forward with for a new series. It's great to be able to say the captain of the new Enterprise-G is a queer former cyborg who really made this show immensely compelling whenever she was on-screen.

Re-introducing the Borg and Picard's troubled past with them as a major plot point was smart: it's probably the most interesting thing about the man and a massive shame they didn't explore his relationship to them, post-TNG. We got some convoluted business about synths and Starfleet's ban, we tied into the Romulans and a really promising idea involving a confiscated Borg cube: but it never went very far. Too-tied into Data (and his "children"), the first season floundered trying to find its way, when it was right in front of them: former Borg working together to redeem themselves in Starfleet/The Federation's eyes, only to find their world has already been quietly and slowly assimilated into its own drone-like collective of bureaucratic stagnation. So many terrible things being allowed to happen because no one is trying to change a broken system? The disconnection of what used to be a large, functional family? It says something of our world and was a missed opportunity, I think.

But involved storytelling seems to be a thing of the past.

Season two may have had some of the strangest storytelling decisions of all and the start of the nostalgia porn that Picard became: it blatantly ripped off TOS' films so much, Nicholas Meyer and Leonard Nimoy deserve writing credits.

Even though the title of the show is Picard, delving into his childhood history seemed way off base: it might have made a nice novelization back in the 90s, but it didn't really illuminate anything about Jean-Luc Picard (except the curious amount of Victoriana he grew up with) that hadn't already been dealt with before on TNG and it didn't really blend with the time travel story about his ancestor and ANOTHER Noonian Soong offshoot or even the Q stuff with an alternate universe to do...what? I still don't know how to make sense of those decisions because none of it really worked as a cohesive whole. The only through-line was Jurati's story and how she wound up becoming a new Borg queen, but even that ended with a thud: a new generation of Borg joining the Federation to be...helpful? They could have left some shades of grey in that resolution. Especially given what they came up with for season 3.

I really wanted to love it. I was so looking forward to it: my tv best friends from childhood, back together, doing their thing, saving the galaxy, learning what they've been up to: it could have been epic.

But they just had to give Beverly another kid and they relied far, far, far, far too much on nostalgia. Some of us were hoping for a new story with this family, not dozens and dozens of cribbed notes taken from just about every single Star Trek series or film ever made.

Involved storytelling is a thing of the past.

Could have saved some money if they'd just filmed it with the toys.

My favorite of the Star Trek films is The Undiscovered Country. It was the very last story with the complete TOS crew, on a new mission, one that involved an old enemy, but a troubling situation: they Klingons are dying out. The fall of the USSR was still recent and the impacts were felt around the world. In The Undiscovered Country, we got Star Trek at it's best: the personal conflicts of the crew up against the challenge of What Happens Now (especially when some want to go down fighting?). Kirk and Spock are given some of their best material here: we get to see the bitter and somewhat hateful side of Kirk and for Spock, the crisis of a personal betrayal.

The film works so well because instead of being a nostalgia-fest that they could have flown off into the sunset with, they are faced with a truly existential threat from within as well as without. As Kirk would have said, how we face death -- or the future -- is at least as important as how we face life -- or the past. The crew of the Enterprise did get to fly off into the sunset with a sort of quiet dignity that befits these older heroes close to retirement (but not quite ready yet): they saved the galaxy again and it's time for another adventure.

This is almost, tonally, to how TNG crew bowed out in their series' finale, All Good Things...: the universe is saved and Picard sits down with his officers to finally join them in a game of poker. It's a first for him and the beginning of something new: if only it had actually ended there.

Because the best stories kind of end in the middle. They don't always tell you what the next thing would be, we get to guess for ourselves. We get to build up the story in our own imaginations. Tell too much and you risk leaving the joy of connecting and dreaming up our own scenarios out of it. If fandom is about anything, it's about connecting and dreaming up all of that new stuff. The TNG films, though, allowed for nothing: they closed off the possibilities of learning more about Geordi and Beverly and even Troi, so everything would be focused mainly on Picard and Data: even in First Contact, they almost completely write Beverly out the story in favor of a new character who is to Picard what Beverly should have been: the close voice of reason (Alfre Woodard was wonderful, though). A chance to develop their relationship was completely thrown away.

And TNG never really came back after that: Insurrection was completely forgettable and Nemesis was bogged down with bad decisions (including what happened to Troi). Paramount was so into their cash cow, they overextended themselves a tragic amount and pretty much ruined TNG (and Star Trek in general) as a viable franchise for well over a decade.

Not that JJ Abrams did the series any favors: he and his writers were also hung up on the nostalgia aspect and while Star Trek (2009) had its fun moments, it also didn't make a lot of sense and was followed up by, objectively, the worst entry into the franchise (yes, I said what I said), that blatantly tried to re-work Wrath of Khan...without having a single clue as to what made WoK so special. If you remember what happened in Beyond, good for you.

Thanks to the success of Star Trek: Discovery, though, TNG was given an unlikely second chance. Only it kinda wasn't?

Other than the nostalgia factor, I'm not really sure why Paramount thought Picard was a good idea: there were plenty of potential series in these characters' further adventures (and not just from TNG), and maybe Picard was simply considered the best-known and loved and Patrick Stewart jumped ahead. Fine?

The immediate appeal was that we were told this wasn't going to be TNG: the Sequel. And then the first episode gave us Data and we even got to visit Riker and Troi for a bit. It was good to see them and only made it seem more likely that they should be around in the future as well. Was Paramount being sneaky?

Season 2: Q is back, Guinan is back, the one with the whales is back, even Wesley Crusher shows up for a cute little cameo. And then the announcement of the third and final season being a love letter to TNG, with EVERYONE coming back. Well alright.

But they came back to a story that wasn't really theirs (being pulled from all corners of the galaxy and beyond), felt stitched together around a central "mystery" that went nowhere (except to his own special chair and his own special title on the latest iteration of the Enterprise) and a final "battle" that was pure cringe and not at all dignified for this legendary crew (even now, reading all the compliments to the finale? Nostalgia definitely won).

We started with a compelling introduction: Beverly Crusher has been missing for years and is now calling out for help. One look at her quarters on her ship and we're basically given the entire season: it's going to be Borg again, and it's going to feature at least one character with a familiar name that nobody asked for.

And I say this even as I consider that if they'd given Beverly and Picard a daughter (and if she were played by, say, Karen Gillan?), this might have actually corrected a few things, especially if they'd written mother and daughter as mother and daughter sharing dangerous adventures (and scenes!) and could have even worked young Crusher as the new Borg Queen? Jack was written as the worst sort of stand-in: he's not there to be Crusher's son, he's there to be Picard's heir.

See the difference?

The old sexism that brought us all those terrible TNG episodes that tried to make Picard a rakish romantic lead with, potentially, an unknown child in every port, or paired up with much younger women? The same old sexism that had Wesley closer to Picard than his own mom, even in episodes where she should absolutely have been the main character dealing with him? Terry Matalas thought this was a good idea.

And the whole season suffered for it. Because there was no point to Vadic. There was no point to Beverly being missing for ages *except* to have five minutes of drama with Picard when he found out about their kid (making her the "bad guy" until Picard tells her, in the finale, how she never did anything wrong, because he's all noble like that), there was no point to Worf and Raffi running around in a city on a planet that surely knew who they were and weren't fooling anyone, there was no point to, as Gillian would have said in The Voyage Home:

Because none of it mattered.

What mattered was the references. Did you get all of them? Did you get all the Easter eggs? The Bunny was busy on this one.

Did you think it was all going to end with Picard sacrificing himself? Sure looked like it, but there was no point to building up to that, either.

Did you think they'd pull a Return of the Jedi stunt, flying into the Borg cube? Or make the Borg Queen something closer to the xenomorph in Alien? Did the visual of the cube in Jupiter's eye make you think of the Narada coming out of the singularity? Did you get all the musical cues and oh boy, was that really Walter Koening repeating almost verbatim the President's lines from TVH? (it was)

Did they really waste Seven and Raffi pretending to be in the weakest space battle (against...Space Dock?) that was never going to involve the destruction of Starfleet for a second time because hey, all those kids! Yes. Yes they did.

Oh, and in a limited space (like spacedock or a Borg cube, for example), a Starfleet vessel has to operate on thrusters, only, not whiz through it like the Millennium Falcon. That moment alone was an embarrassment.

Seriously, the resolution to this Terrible Threat made the whole thing look so painfully inept I'm surprised they didn't have an O'Brien cameo just to reset the pattern buffers on the transporters and tell everyone off for being so stupid.

I mean, they could have at least upped the ante and given us all those grown-up Star Trek kids now stationed on various ships (we don't get to see anyone on any of them except the Titan): Miles and Keiko had a son and daughter, Worf had a son (does he even remember him?), even Sisko had an unborn child by the time DS9 finished. I guess that would have been a cringe-fest too far.

Goodness knows they could have had a couple of decent cameos at the end, like Janeway or O'Brien, the current Dax and its host? Nope. We just get Picard embracing His Son for the first time, saving him from what might have been the only interesting thing to ever happen to him.

Because watching him at the end in a Starfleet (command) uniform on his way to his new post with his parents (nepo baby confirmed), cocky as ever, but, for some reason, already Beloved By All, given a chair next to the captain and a title no one would have expected (counselor to the captain, really?), while Sidney LaForge crashed her way through the Academy to get her seat? Little James Kirk (for surely you couldn't compare him to either of his real parents) gets Special Treatment and even a visit from Q (who wasn't dying after all! Season 2 didn't matter either!), just so we all know who the new series is going to be about: another white guy.

Oh, and they totally forgot about Laris.

All of them sitting around getting drunk, playing poker and not one damn word about Laris (or Elnor, Agnes, Soji, Cristobal)?

For a show about family, it really picked its favorites.

And that didn't feel like The Next Generation at all.

[diesoonandsuffer]

i just rewatched ‘taste of armageddon’ from tos and god what an episode. objectively its not “the best” but i think i was right to put it at the top of my rankings

basic plot summary if you forgot: kirk and the enterprise are ordered to approach a planet and establish diplomacy with them even though the planet warns them to stay away. when they land they learn that the planet has been fighting a war for 500 years but purely done through computers. the enterprise is declared a casualty so kirk and the landing party are taken hostage until the enterprise crew agree to come down and submit themselves to a disintegration machine, which the civilians of that planet do if they are declared casualties. kirk and the landing party end up destroying the computers and force the planets to either negotiate peace or fight a real war.

there are so many things i enjoy about this episode. i think for me, if you ask me to name you a quintessential TOS episode, this is it. theres some sort of strange premise that seems like a silly concept on the surface but leads itself to further philosophical thought. spock gets to do some weird vulcan telepathy. kirk busts out his sick karate moves. scotty blatantly denies the orders of a federation ambassador. kirk is a wiseass who comes up with some sort of solution somehow. the primary directive is almost certainly disobeyed but no one cares. its missing some things i would have liked, for example sulu is replaced by some guy and bones and uhura don’t get to do much, but for the most part this is everything i expect in a TOS episode wrapped in one.

feel free to stop reading here but i’m just gonna mention specific things that i like

1) spock saying there’s a certain logical approach to the computer war, and when the council leader says “i’m glad you approve” spock is like “i do NOT approve”

2) a female character who is not a love interest. this is an incredibly low bar but every time they played that violin music i would get scared

3) kirk saying “you will have a longer casualty list than you know what to do with if you don’t let us out of here” like he really said fuck the laws of this land i WILL slaughter you

4) the council leader using a voice disguiser to pretend to be kirk and scotty immediately being like “that’s not kirk” ashdjksahd

5) kirk watching spock do his vulcan telepathy. he’s a little too turned on by it

6) to follow that kirk’s little smile as he watches spock trick the guard to knock him out and take his gun. he’s like heehee hey girl look what spock’s gonna do i love this trick

7) spock getting the gun in the stupidest way possible. like hello

8) the ambassador being wrong. i love when federation officials look like dumbasses. yes i love search for spock why do you ask?

9) kirk’s little “come here” finger motion to the council member before throwing him headfirst into his own guards. incredible work king and he almost won the fight too with his karate chop action

10) spock telling the yeoman to “sit on her if you have to” to get the other woman not to kill herself

11) “what are you doing, mr. spock?” “practicing a peculiar variety of diplomacy, sir” *blows up disintegration machine*

12) the council leader saying kirk is a barbarian the scene before, and then the next when he’s like what kind of monster are you kirk goes “i’m a barbarian :)”

13) also that whole scene of the council leader being like war! destruction! death and violence! millions of lives slaughtered to save your 500 people! how could you let this happen! and kirk is like that is literally not my problem

14) kirk somehow taking down a room full of guards and getting TWO guns and saying “now we’re talkin :)” he’s like hell yeah TWO GUNS

15) spock walking in like oh. i guess you’re fine. ok then

16) the fucking line delivery of kirk saying “knowing we’re not going to kill......today” i need to clip that because i quote that shit all the fucking time. he’s like yeah i have an innate bloodlust and every day i have to fight my own instinct to bite and rip and shred but i won’t do it......today! god it’s so funny

17) last but not least in case you bitches forgot THIS EPISODE is where the incredible luck and miracles line comes from. it absolutely comes out of nowhere and they play it for laughs? for some reason? but this is where it comes from! LUCK AND MIRACLES BABEY!!!! YEAH!!!!!

[fiadorable]

54 Great Things about Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach

Strange New Worlds season one episode six... yay... so glad we got to this one...

Strange New Worlds | Children of the Comet | Ghosts of Illyria Part 1 & Part 2 | Memento Mori | Spock Amok | Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach | Serene Squall

Pike's impression of La'An is so bad 😂

La'An's security lessons were probably mandatory continuing education for the crew and that's why they all know them and I need fic now of this happening

Combat cruiser has grappling hooks to grab Alora's ship instead of a tractor beam

Enterprise is gigantic compared to the shuttle and the cruiser - I like seeing the size of things in space because it's easy for me to loose track of the scale of the ships

Pike's hair is ridiculous in this episode - too much mousse, my man, too much

Number One is thoroughly enjoying seeing Pike reduced to a bumbling lieutenant and slightly mortified

"Oh, well, it's gold, technically… because I'm captain" 🙄

Attempt #1: Uh this is my Number One

Attempt #2: Una

Attempt #3: Lieu-Lieutanant Commander Una Chin-Riley

Number One manages to keep a straight face as her captain demotes her an entire rank in his attempts to speak coherently in front of a woman (no, I am not interested to know about the discrepancy in the rank stripes on the uniforms or screenshots of the ship's roster)

Rukiya learning about the transporter timer 😭

The Majalis maxim "science, service, sacrifice" is very similar to Pike's in Discovery "service, sacrifice, compassion, and love"

Slow turn by everyone in the ready room when Pike can't turn off the googly eyes

When Pike tells Alora Starfleet requires them to investigate the downed combat cruiser with or without her help, backing up Number One's statement, Number One turns to face Pike and then turns back to Alora like "Told you"

Spock being like "Whaaaat is happening" during the debrief

Everyone is instantly charmed by the First Servant in sickbay

M'Benga realizing the Majalans could cure his daughter

Uhura is 9,000% done with the lessons of security by the time they go investigate the cruiser

Alora blatantly lying No, I don't know what that neural dampening device is

Majalis has pretty architecture if you don't know what's actually going on

The floating agenda Alora's assistant uses is rad if you don't know what's actually going on

Spock would be such a good dad

"That would be an impressive feat [rewiring the biobed to generate a subspace frequency], though Dr. M'Benga might object." … And the First Servant is so proud that the ship's science officer thinks that he is impressive

Oh my god how does nobody fall off the Majalis walkways

Uhura scarfing down lunch and her smirk as Kirk talks a big game and then becomes a shrinking violet when La'An comes over

"I would, but I'm conflict averse?"

Lesson six of security: Know when to bend the rules. Good rule for lots of things

So much empathy for Elder Gamal when M'Benga is expressing his wonder at the quantum bio implants… because this kid probably has those implants not to improve his quality of life, but because he is going to be plugged into a machine that will literally suck the life out of him and those implants will let him be a longer lasting battery

The doors to Alora's quarters are beautiful if you don't know what's actually going on

Pike is such a beefcake under that uniform, damn

"I wonder what ever happened to that Majalan girl who couldn't fly a shuttle"

Uhura is so proud of herself for figuring out the Prospect 7 mystery, and she should be!

Everyone constantly underestimates Uhura when they give her a task and she always delivers in spades - get it, girl!

La'An being a good mentor and telling Uhura to present her work to the captain

Rukiya 😭

The First Servant and Rukiya playing together

Grumpy Pike at having his romantic rendezvous interrupted and Diplomatic Number One politely inviting him to reengage his brain

Mitchell's face when the cruiser explodes after trying to warp out of a tractor beam

Everyone on the bridge is standing to pay respects for the loss of the First Servant during Pike's call to Alora - it's a nice touch

La'An defending Uhura as she presents her evidence that Elder Gamal has been lying

What the fuck is a Mugatan breathing stone - I need answers (never mind, I looked it up and I don't want to know)

Deck 17 is the Enterprise's attic, apparently (why are there so many containers everywhere does the Enterprise not have cargo bays?)

The ascension ceremony top-side is beautiful if you don't know what's actually going on

Damn the brig is huge - everything on this ship is way bigger than I think it will be

Look, given how completely adorable and taken everyone is with the First Servant, I knew the kid was toast the first time I watched this episode, that's just the way fiction works. But every time I watch the scene where they take him down to the chamber and Alora is being all creepy about Pike being allowed in I want to jump into the television and pummel her into the ground. All of which to say, nice acting.

"You're saying there's no way to contact the captain exactly when I need to talk to him?" And Spock looking genuinely afraid as Number One advances on him saying this.

I can't describe how deeply uncomfortable and sad and angry the ascension scene is for me. Which I guess is the point.

They really threw Pike onto Alora's ridiculous circle bed as awkwardly as possible or that's just not a great camera angle

"You're damn right I'm going"

Eerie soundtrack during Pike and Alora's conversation is eerie

"Maybe in the future you'll feel differently." Great line and lot for Pike to think about given their earlier conversation about his future accident

Elder Gamal helping M'Benga develop a treatment for Rukiya, even after his terrible loss

I never have to watch this episode again

[tailsrevane]

[movie review] star trek: generations (1994)

we watched this around the christmas season because it’s a much hotter christmas movie take than die hard or even batman returns. literally no one is talking about how star trek: generations is a christmas movie! justice for star trek: generations, you guys!

i like the tos movies even though they’re pretty un-star trekky, so when i was a kid i would actually oftentimes watch the beginning of this movie just because it was a nice little 15 minute tos movie, you know? it was funny, it was action-packed… i don’t know a lot about the production of this movie, but it really does feel like people who worked on the tos films worked on this opening scene and people who worked on tng worked on the rest of it? that might not be remotely true, but it’s what it feels like.

also like… the enterprise-b is just gorgeous? over the years i do think i’ve come around to the basic bitch version of the excelsior class as my preferred version of that ship, and honestly my appreciation for that class of ship in general has skyrocketed, but like idk it’s always very fanservicey as a star trek fan to get to see a new enterprise, you know? and filling in all the little gaps in the franchise’s history is just always something that’s gonna be inherently appealing.

it is weird as fuck how obvious it is that they originally wrote scotty & chekov’s parts for spock & mccoy and barely changed them, though. like, i think there were a few very small rewrites for scotty (or, hell, some of them might’ve been ad-libs by james doohan for all i know), but yeah then you have distractingly weird stuff like… dr. chekov??? taking charge of sickbay??? and just blatantly acting the way mccoy would in that situation? like, it isn’t too much of a stretch to imagine chekov jumping in and helping with that because no one else has the training or whatever, but the way he acts like it comes that naturally to him and he had bones’ personality transplanted onto him is just so weird.

lastly in the tos era prologue, it is pretty obvious that someone involved in the writing of this movie has some serious beef with journalists??? like, uh, wow? and that whole angle with the swarm of reporters with vlogger headcams just felt weird & out of place for a star trek story, though i guess props on predicting the whole headcam thing?

while i did love this part of the movie as a kid, my trek preferences have shifted emphatically in the opposite direction over the years, so that when we get the “seventy-eight years later” transition it feels to me now like the movie is finally getting started. more than that, i just wholly question the necessity of a “passing of the torch” movie, you know? i felt like the ending of star trek vi was the perfect swan song for the original cast, and kirk’s final captain’s log explicitly passes the torch to future crews of ships called enterprise (a metatextual nod to tng, which had already completed four seasons of television at that point).

i really don’t think tos’s inclusion in generations added anything to either series. i assume the thought process is that the general moviegoing audience hadn’t formed a relationship with the tng crew the way they had the tos crew, but i really question whether the tos crew was really a particularly strong box office draw by this point? my (admittedly unresearched) assumption here is that this is one of those overly cautious movie exec moves that makes them more comfortable with a movie’s marketability regardless of whether it actually fits the facts of a situation, and it just makes this movie age terribly.

i do really like generations, it’s one of my favorite star trek movies in spite of all of this, but that’s basically entirely because of the strictly tng portions of the movie. at this point i just really find myself wishing tng’s first movie had been strictly a tng movie from start to finish.

both criticisms & praise of this movie often point to the fact that the bulk of it feels like a longer, better-funded episode of tng, and like… yeah! that’s exactly what i love about it, and exactly what made it my favorite tng movie for a minute when i wanted to resist the obvious fact that first contact is the best tng movie. and like… i’m glad we got generations (even in its somewhat adulterated form), but i find myself just wishing we could’ve gotten more of these kinds of tng movies, you know?

i love the enterprise-e, i think it’s a gorgeous ship, but it was really nice seeing some real resources thrown at the enterprise-d. doing more interesting things with the lighting, etc. and like… this is silly, but at the end of the movie jonathan frakes puts his hand on the enterprise-d’s captain’s chair, and says, “i always thought i’d get a shot at this chair one day,” and holy heck we didn’t let jonathan frakes direct a movie set aboard the enterprise-d??? considering he leonard nimoys the next two tng movies, that just feels like a massive missed opportunity, but alas.

before i entirely move on from superficial details that literally no one else cares about, i know there’s a general consensus that the ds9 uniforms look kinda dumpy compared to both the tng uniforms and the upgraded tng movie uniforms (which end up being carried forward into ds9)... but i actually kinda loved seeing a lot of the tng main characters wearing ds9/voyager era uniforms? it’s probably a nostalgia factor because voyager was the first star trek series i actually watched start-to-finish as it was airing, but yeah i’ve always liked those uniforms.

and yeah, this wasn’t the most expensive movie ever or anything, and you can see a few places where they cut corners, but even seeing a fairly cheap movie compared to a tv budget… it was just pretty fucking cool, you know? and it was all just like… heightened versions of shit we already liked. like, tng already had great music, but giving that crew the resources of a movie to make more tng music gave us a fucking awesome score. we got to see new locations like guinan’s quarters and stellar cartography. we got to see ten forward be as crowded as it probably always was supposed to be.

superficial details aside, there’s plenty to love about the tng portions of this movie. as a confirmed worf stan i fucking love that the first thing we get is his badly overdue promotion to lieutenant commander, and how playful and fun that whole deal was. and everyone rushing to the bridge still in costume to answer the red alert was fucking glorious, i love that kind of shit.

and although some segments of it were more successful than others, i liked that there was room for some of the cast to split off and do their own things. deanna gets to do some good therapy shit with picard (and to a lesser extent data), geordi & data get to have their friendship tested & reaffirmed, geordi gets to end up as the damsel in distress for the fucking millionth time, riker gets to be in command during a crisis/space battle… it feels like a lot more characters get serviced in this one than in future movies.

don’t get me wrong, this isn’t perfect. it would have been nice to get more of this, and there are some rather obvious characters on the short end of the stick. like, picard and data definitely have the biggest stories to chew on in this movie, and that’s a trend that will continue throughout the rest of the movies. deanna’s story, while still a better utilization of her character than you get in many of these movies, is still ultimately there to have someone for picard to emote at. (and like… yeah, patrick stewart kicks ass at this because of course he does, but it still bears mentioning.) geordi’s role is as the subordinate character in data’s story… and then there’s dr. crusher, who has literally nothing to do other than be the butt of a joke on two occasions. woof.

like, they all have something to do, and that’s nice, and compares favorably to the other tng movies, but there’s still a pretty pronounced gap here. some of that is almost certainly attributable to the understandable difficulty curve in hammering a tv series into the shape of a movie, but the patterns of which characters get the juicy parts and which ones get the subordinate ones is… well, it’s pretty fucking telling. and before anyone comes at me like “well, it’s just the most marketable actors,” a) that’s been the excuse used to focus on cishet white guys in hollywood for literally forever, and b) you really want to look me in the eye and tell me that levar burton isn’t at least as good of an actor as anyone else in the cast? if you can’t market him, that’s on you.

i mean, hell, this movie brought back (and killed) the duras sisters, and they weren’t even the big bads of the movie! they were subordinated to a one-off appearance by malcolm mcdowell! and while it was undeniably cool seeing him chew up scenery across from patrick stewart, we aren’t just subordinating our own black & women characters to our own white guy characters, we’re importing whole new white guys to subordinate them to!

still, though… this kind of movie with its greater faithfulness to the series that came before clearly allowed for more space for little individual stories to happen, and it only makes me wish even more fervently that we had gotten more tng movies with this same rough format. maybe then we would’ve seen juicier parts for these characters. or maybe not. because, again, while there were definitely pressures pushing the creative team towards making this the picard & data show going forward, in the end those pressures are going to push you towards the things you value the most anyway, right? it’s probable that the shape i wish these movies had taken wouldn’t have ever really been able to happen without some pretty massive changes in both the movie industry and the priorities of the people making them, so it’s all well and good for me to point out their shortcomings, but at the end of the day i can only be so hard on them considering i do genuinely like these movies for all their shortcomings.

a-rank

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

Can I just say Bones does not get nearly enough credit for how well he reads people?? Like, we all forget that he is not only a doctor, he's a psychiatrist as well. And not only is he insanely good at reading Jim, we also see him read and understand Spock (who is his opposite and with whom he frequently disagrees) and push him when it's necessary. It's Bones' words that make some of the most powerful exchanges out of all the 79 original episodes. Here is proof (and there's a lot of it):

Balance of Terror

Jim's doubting himself and is dealing with a lot of stress because of all his responsibilities and the burden of making decisions, and asks Bones, "What if I'm wrong?" This is an incredibly vulnerable moment for Jim, who always has to be strong, and when Bones starts to answer, Jim gets up and says "I wasn't really expecting an answer."

Bones immediately puts his hand on his shoulder, stops him, and says, "Well, I've got one." Completely unexpected by Jim. Bones starts off by saying "This isn't something I'd usually tell a customer," then gives the speech we all probably know, about how there are millions of possible earth-like planets, "but in all of that, and possibly more, only one of each of us. Don't destroy the one named Kirk."

Let's break down why this is so good. First, Bones lets Jim know that he sees how vulnerable Jim is being and that he's talking to Jim as a friend. He recognizes that Jim's identity is fundamentally tied to his role as a captain, and also acknowledges how deep Jim's doubts are going, and at the same time reminds Jim that he is the one in control of himself (something very grounding for Jim) and he is not alone (because Bones is supporting him). Most of all, he doesn't dwell on the vulnerability Jim's expressing, but encourages him to take action, which is Jim's natural bent. He perfectly adapts to how Jim functions and knows what to say to get him back into a place where he can do what he does best: lead.

The Ultimate Computer

Jim has been been feeling insecure and threatened this entire episode, because a computer may take away his role as captain. Twice he seeks out Bones for comfort. First, he tells him that he has concerns about the computer, but worries about his motives. "You have my psychological profiles; am I afraid? Of losing my job? ...Daystrom's right, I could do a lot of other things. Am I afraid of losing the power, the prestige? Am I that petty?"

Bones replies, "Jim, if you're self-aware enough to ask that question, you don't need me to answer it for you. Why don't you ask James T. Kirk? He's a pretty honest guy."

Breakdown: Bones responds beautifully by once again reminding Jim that he knows himself and is in control. That sense of confidence is all Jim is after. He also establishes earlier in the conversation that what Jim is feeling is not unusual and can be understood. Brilliant.

The second time Jim reaches out to Bones (this episode is my favorite for a reason), he's doubting his role even more intensely, having just been blatantly insulted and called useless (affirming his insecurities). He left the bridge, silently, by himself, and even Spock didn't follow him out. Bones knew he needed help and went to him, with some drinks (Jim initially responds that he's not interested in eating--coping by losing interest in food) and a joke and light-hearted attitude, so that Jim can feel comfortable expressing himself. Jim puts on an air of not caring (shutting himself off from his emotions) and says he's never felt so useless, and makes a cynical joke as a toast, "To Captain Dunsel" (the insult from earlier, meaning "unnecessary").

Bones stops him, looks him in the eye, and says "To James Kirk, Captain of the Enterprise." Jim says softly, "Thank you, Doctor," and when he downs his glass, Bones follows suit.

There's just so much good about this. Bones seeks him out even when he was trying to isolate himself because he knew Jim tends to distract himself and unhealthily repress things. And he doesn't let Jim get away with being blasé about how he's been hurt, but he doesn't force him to be honest either; instead, he lets Jim know he sees how he's feeling and how deeply he's hurt, and also reaffirms that Bones still cares about, respects, and most of all, believes in him. When Jim starts talking after the drink, Bones just listens and lets him talk, and when Jim responds to the call to the bridge, he follows him out. Back in action, and another job well done.

The Trouble With Tribbles

Just a brief point with this: Spock is just being silent here, which is typical for him. But Bones asks him "What's the matter, Spock?" seemingly out of the blue. Spock responds with, "There's something disquieting about these creatures," which means that he was feeling off, and Bones picked up on it. Bones then makes a joke ("Don't tell me you've got a feeling!") which lets Spock know that Bones sees what he's saying but isn't treating it as unusual (since the joking between them is their normal behavior). And when Spock continues talking, he hears him out (although it eventually degenerates into their typical spat).

All Our Yesterdays

Spock has begun degenerating into a pre-reformed-Vulcan version of himself. He gives up on trying to get back to their proper time and becomes irritable. Bones notices that something's wrong almost immediately.

He starts by asking about Jim (because he knows how deeply Spock cares for him), and Spock responds apathetically. This clearly shocks Bones, who then says "I don't believe it, Spock. It's just not like you to give up trying." When Spock doesn't acknowledge something's off, Bones presses him: "I understand. I never thought I'd see it, but I understand. You want to stay here. In fact, you're highly motivated to stay in this forsaken waste!" Spock deflects again, and Bones keeps pressing, which leads to Spock grabbing him by the neck and saying angrily, "I don't like that. I don't think I ever did, and now I'm sure." Bones simply looks him in the eye and asks calmly, "What's happening to you, Spock?"

Instead of hassling Spock about why he isn't doing more, he focuses on what's wrong with Spock himself, and he clearly has a deep understanding of who Spock really is. He starts by trying to get a feel for Spock's emotional state by going to ground 0: Jim. And he doesn't back down when Spock tries to blow him off.

Seeing that he's getting nowhere, Bones bides his time, and then starts something with Zarabeth, knowing Spock will jump to her defense.

When Spock pins him against the wall, Bones calmly says, "Are you trying to kill me, Spock? Is that what you really want? Think! What are you feeling? Rage, jealousy--have you ever had those feelings before?" Spock is clearly affected by this, and says it's impossible, since he's a Vulcan. Bones sees his opening, saying "The Vulcan you knew won't exist for another 5000 years! Think, man! What's happening on your planet right now, at this very moment?" Spock answers with the facts, and Bones tells him flat-out what's going on: he's reverting. Spock falls quiet, and says, "I've lost myself. I do not know who I am."

Bones is specifically structuring his responses (both here and earlier) to cause Spock to evaluate himself--to think, which has always has grounded Spock. Bones indirectly (so that Spock doesn't feel as threatened by the accusation) indicates that Spock's being too emotional. He wants Spock to see for himself that something's wrong, so Bones asks questions or makes open-ended statements so that Spock will have to respond. He also provides enough evidence (pointing out the emotions Spock is feeling) to prove he has a point and guide Spock towards a conclusion. He's talking Spock through it, using reason and logic, which Spock has always responded to. Bones' questions are also phrased so that the answers are objective facts--he's bringing Spock back to the verifiable, Spock's comfort zone. Finally, he does the analysis for Spock, telling him what's undeniably happening, but leaves the course of action open to Spock, so that he can regain control of himself by deciding how to proceed. Bones smoothly and logically guided Spock to the delicate realization he needed to have.

Of Bread and Circuses

Then of course we have this iconic exchange. Jim's been separated from the both of them and they are all in danger. Spock is pulling at the bars although he knows it will be futile.

Bones calls him out on this, and then thanks him for saving his life. When Spock brushes him off and keeps his walls up, Bones says, "I know why you're not afraid to die, Spock. You're more afraid of living. Every day you stay alive is just one more day you might slip--and let your human half peek out." Spock is silent and looks away, and Bones continues, now smiling slightly: "That's it, isn't it? Insecurity. Why, you wouldn't know what to do with a genuine, warm, decent feeling." His face makes it clear he's gently baiting Spock, who then looks back at Bones and says, "Really, Doctor?" Bones replies softly, "I know. I'm worried about Jim, too."

First thing: Spock's theme starts playing when Bones corners him. So we're supposed to get that Bones is really laying him bare. But starting from the beginning of the scene, Bones recognizes Spock's anxiety through his illogical behavior. He takes the time to thank Spock for saving his life, in an effort to remind Spock that he is competent and in control--basically, trying to calm Spock down and reassure him. When Spock refuses to deal with his emotions productively, Bones is having none of it, and shows Spock just how much he knows. He can tell Spock isn't worried for himself ("you're not afraid to die") but also is well aware of Spock's actual fears (which are coloring his current behavior towards Bones). Basically, Bones is saying, "this facade of yours can't keep me out. You're understood. You're not alone." Saying it in those terms, though, would just make Spock feel weak for unsuccessfully trying to mask his behavior, so Bones frames it as a gentle challenge. When Spock looks away, he can tell he's hit the nail on the head, and he smiles because he's getting through to him. His face as he says "you wouldn't know what to do with a genuine, warm, decent feeling" telegraphs to the audience that he's not actually serious, but is looking for a response. And he gets it--Spock acknowledges, as Bones had intended, that he is currently dealing with emotions. And that's where Bones wanted to get him, because now that he's admitted it, he can move forward; but Bones doesn't want this admission to go unrewarded, and definitely doesn't want Spock to go on believing that Bones meant what he'd said about not knowing what to do with feelings, so he again tells Spock that he understands what's really going on, but without challenge this time. He just accepts it and reassures Spock that he's not alone: "I know. I'm worried about Jim too." They're in it together, and now that Spock is a little more vulnerable, he's able to see that Bones is right beside him.

So that was a lot, but there is definitely even more. Basically, give Bones the appreciation he deserves, because his emotional intuition is off the charts. (After all, as he is so fond of reminding us, he is a doctor!)

[speedygal]

Compilation of Nexus References in We'll Always Have Tom Paris.

Heavy handed reference of Spock and Kirk. Something tells me that Paramount+ has a plan to get Kirk out of the Nexus and into Star Trek 4 because why so blatantly mention the nexus about four times??! FOUR TIMES TOO MANY!

The last addition below is the second mention of Spock's resurrection because why not, we had lots of Kirk's latest method of resurrection mentioned.

[lockwie]

so tired of people misremembering kirk as sexist

like yeah the whole show has sexism in it but if you listen to the characters honestly spock says more blatantly sexist stuff than any other main characters

and honestly that's on whoever wrote those lines and they are pretty ooc imo

but why do people choose to forget any bad stuff spock says or does but use any tiny thing potentially macho about kirk to build the entire idea they have of his character

i get it i love spock too and i prefer to not think too hard about the bad stuff but that's no reason to do the exact opposite to kirk

[ichayalovesyou]

Headcanons about Mirror!Spock

In the mirror-verse Amanda is a Re-education Administrator for the Terran Empire who trampled all over the Kalifee/Pon Farr traditions and forced Sarek to marry her. Her job as a teacher in the prime universe twisted into an arm of the Empire trying to deliberately smother alien cultures.

Mirror!Spock’s older brother Sybok is not a weird hippie-cultist but part of the underground Vulcan revolution. (I haven’t seen much Discovery but lets say Mirror!Michael’s parents survived because I’d imagine Klingons act like the Federation in the MirrorVerse, and she is fully a loyal member of the Terran Empire or a traitor for the Klingons)

Mirror!Sarek taught Spock much about Vulcan culture, logic and psychic abilities from Mind Meld to Tal’Shaya, his leaning more toward his Vulcan half in the MirrorVerse is more of an act of defiance than an attempt to conform like in TOS.

He’s still resentful of his human half (for completely opposite reasons than Prime Spock) but uses it like a weapon, as even half-Vulcans are much stronger than humans, and in the Terran Empire, only the strong survive. Pairing carefully disciplined Vulcan rage and cold logic under the guise of faux human emotionalism.

Mirror!Spock is far, far more liberal with the Mind Meld (I mean that’s practically canon with how Mirror!Spock immediately Mind Melds with Prime!McCoy like its nbd, hey who knows, maybe Spones is a thing in the MirrorVerse), partially because he was unable to learn the full disciplines from Sarek due to the secrecy of his studies, and Mind Melding is a VERY effective interrogation tool, something that makes him of value aboard a Starship.

Mirror!Spock & Mirror!Kirk still have that chemistry we know and love, but the difference is they don’t trust each other, it’s more of a slap-slap kiss situation with knives at each other’s backs rather than an unwavering loyalty and brotherhood.

Mirror!McCoy and Mirror!Spock actually get along and don’t bicker as much as Prime Spock & McCoy do because I think (judging by the dialogue hints in Mirror, Mirror about McCoy being “soft” even in the MirrorVerse) Mirror!McCoy in spite of being forced to do things like torture, has proven to Mirror!Spock not all humans are horrible colonizers. Likely having more of a Bones & Kirk relationship than Mirror Kirk & Bones do.

Amok Time went MUCH differently, I think what went down is that Mirror!Spock didn’t wait for the Pon Farr to get too intense (because of the aforementioned lack of daddy issues in this timeline) I think he outsmarted Kirk and tricked him into going to Vulcan (or forcibly took command somehow), Kirk didn’t get involved at all. Mirror!Spock defeats Stonn in the Kalifee (without killing, I assume there aren’t many Vulcans left after the Terran occupation, especially not ones who still practice the ancient traditions) and fully bonds with T’Pring (for politics and Pon Farr, maybe even for love, I feel like without a healthy relationship with Kirk, Spock would be more prone to pursuing other romances.)

After meeting Prime!Kirk, Mirror!Spock spends his time slowly kindling the Vulcan Revolution with T’Pring, Stonn, T’Pau and his surviving Vulcan family members, while carefully nudging Mirror!Kirk into having a conscience and awakening the good in Mirror!Kirk that was more blatantly on the surface in Prime!Kirk.

Mirror!Kirk’s girlfriend either breaks up with him or spies on him for Spock, they become close friends.

Frienemies to enemies to friends to lovers arc with Mirror!Kirk is totally inevitable as Mirror!Spock is eventually successful in awakening the aspects of Prime!Kirk hidden by Mirror!Kirk’s culture and trauma.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

[nuchubookery]

Sneak Peak

hello everyone!

I’m not done chapter 5 yet, but here’s the first bit

I lovingly refer to it as “the gratuitously long tea scene”

Chapter 5

There was a steady, rhythmic noise of wood tapping against stone and dry, crispy leaves as Spock dedicatedly set himself to the task of preparing a traditional Vulcan tea. Although Leonard and the captain were in his quarters to congratulate him on not only his wedding, but the impending end of his Pon Farr, the mood was anything but celebratory. The captain, nonplussed and irate, sat an awkward distance away from the table that McCoy and Spock were at. From the opposite end of the room, he watched Spock with blank eyes. Spock ground his herbs, gaze fixed on the strange Vulcan equivalent to a mortar and pestle. McCoy felt simultaneously invisible and naked, glancing uncomfortably between the two of them. Water boiled in some unseen kettle. The warmth of Spock’s room was starting to itch at the his collar.

“So, Spock… Are ya excited about getting married?” He regretted the words the moment they left his mouth. Spock’s grinding paused, and he looked up to answer.

“Yes, Spock. She must be quite the catch for you to keep her secret all these years,” Jim interrupted, making a show of smiling. McCoy waited for a Pon Farr induced outburst to follow, but it never came.

“Captain, I did not ‘catch’ T’Pring. As I’ve stated previously, she and I were merely arranged to be wed,” Spock answered with his usual dispassion.

“She’s a real beauty,” McCoy commented somewhat curiously. When her face had first appeared on the Enterprise’s view screen, the entire bridge was caught off guard. She had the usual hard lines to her face as most Vulcans did, but her eyes were large and warm, and she had a powerful confidence about her presence that was undeniably attractive. When she spoke, Leonard was almost surprised to hear the same kind of monotone cadence that he got from Spock, but with something more to it. She had the voice of a woman who knew exactly what she wanted, and it had enraptured him. Spock, by stark contrast, spoke to her as though he were making funeral arrangements

“Yes, she is,” Jim said thoughtfully. He had been less enamoured about T’Pring’s beauty after Spock confessed that she was his wife-to-be. Initially, McCoy assumed he was trying to be respectful and not be too blatantly attracted to her, but as Vulcan got closer to transporter range, Kirk seemed more and more pouty. Spock glanced up at him now, but remained silent.

Once the leaves had been ground into small flakes, Spock grabbed three clay cups and what McCoy initially thought was a dehumidifier from a high shelf and arranged them on the table in front of him. He and the captain watched, mesmerized as he used a variety of wooden utensils to disperse various leafs and portions of hot water into each one until the room flooded with foreign, earthy aromas. Spock carefully handed a cup to McCoy, who hissed in pain, nearly dropping the mug before placing it back on the table.

“Dammit, Spock! Those things are scalding!”

“My apologies, doctor. Perhaps wait some time, and your hands will be more accustomed to the heat.”

“Right. Thanks.” He huffed.

“It is a Vulcan tradition,” Spock grabbed another cup and looked to the captain expectantly, “to drink theris-k’hat with one’s closest friends the night before… one is to be wed.” Spock swallowed dryly and waited, but Jim made no effort to move from his seat, or even look away. McCoy awkwardly reached back for his mug and focused on the pain of the heat in his hands while the two maintained their intense eye contact.

“Is there anything else I should be doing for this?” He asked, finally breaking the silence. Spock looked at him surprised, as though he had been jolted out of some day dream.

“No, doctor,” he said, walking across the room to deliver the captain’s tea to him. “The tea will steep, and then you may drink.” Jim accepted the cup with a single hand, winced slightly, but held it firm and watched Spock walk all the way back to the other side of his quarters. It was a little ridiculous, and when he finally got to his seat across from McCoy, he grabbed his own cup, closed his eyes and exhaled deeply. Leonard desperately wanted to make a joke about it not being too late to kick the both of them out of the ceremony, but bit his tongue. He was already honoured, but astonished that Spock had invited him in the first place.

“Oh, this is actually quite nice.” Jim remarked, sipping on his tea.

“It’s a bit early for that isn’t it? You’ve hardly let it steep!” Leonard joked, “it might as well just be hot water.”

“The tea will taste different depending on how long you let it sit. Although it is uncommon to drink it while it’s still sweet, some people prefer it as such.”

“How much does it change the taste? -the brew time, I mean.” Leonard asked.

“More than it would from typical Earth tea,” Spock explained. “The less steeped, the sweeter the tea tastes. Around the five minute mark, you can expect an almost creamy flavour -similar to that of your Oolong teas.”

“How do you like it, Mr. Spock?” Jim grinned with his usual deviousness.

“I am actually rather partial to it at the six minute mark. Captain, we can extract the leaves from your cup if you wish to keep the sweet flavour?”

“Yes, I think so.” Grabbing a seat close at the table, McCoy could see a soft flush in Jim’s face, and wondered if it was the heat, the tea, or something else that was bringing the blood to his cheeks. He had an endearing smile aimed at Spock, and it was difficult not to get caught up in the sweetness of his expression, regardless of the cause. Even Spock seemed to get swept up by it, and the corners of his mouth twitched up for a moment while he used a strange spoon to somehow fish out all the leaves from the captain’s cup.

“The spoon is actually lightly magnetized,” Spock said. McCoy gaped at him.

“You’re not just feeding us magnet soup are you?” His question pulled a chuckle out of Jim, who otherwise kept drinking, unfazed.

“The plants are grown in a mineral dense area of Vulcan, and retain dense mineral deposits within. The rigidity of their cellular structure prevents harmful contamination with the water, even upon being boiled.” Spock began taking careful drinks of his own tea, closing his eyes once again as though in meditation.

“It hasn’t been six minutes yet, has it?” Jim remarked with a smile. Spock merely hummed in acknowledgement and resumed drinking.

The captain and his first officer were content enough to sit in relative silence and enjoy their tea, and it was killing Leonard to watch them slip into such seamless harmony without him, and to his surprise, he was dreading Spock being married off -especially when he had been so adamantly opposed to it. Jim had slapped him on the shoulder and congratulated him when they all found out about T’Pring, but Leonard could see through the facade of his smile. McCoy had enough medical examinations with Spock to know by now that he would have nothing to do with the marriage if he had the choice. He wondered if the two of them had spoke about it privately, or if Jim just needed to look at Spock to know the truth of the man. They never spoke of what would happen next. He assumed Kirk was avoiding the topic as much as Spock was, though neither of them would admit it. Would Spock come back to the Enterprise right after the wedding was consummated -or was he obligated to stay on Vulcan? And what would Jim do if he did? McCoy’s previous fantasy of miserably working on some developing colony with Jim transformed into life on Vulcan. Surrounded by an entire race of computers as a permanent third wheel was a million times worse than trudging and working ten hour days on a remote planet.

The strong scent of tea clouded his mind when he took a breath. It did some wonder calming his nerves, but his mind wandered to the Crane Wife: to fleeing, living in secrecy, and dying. The self flagellation of pulling out pieces of yourself to live an uncomplicated life. He and Spock were in various states of hiding, that much was clear. While McCoy was hiding the loneliest and most shameful parts of himself, Spock, of course, had a very reasonable biological excuse for his predicament. Sort of. It seemed to him that Pon Farr itself was not the primary cause for Spock’s distress (although medically, it really ought to be). Spock didn’t want the cure. He didn’t want to die, but he wanted the cure even less -that much was clear. But why be so averse to marrying T’Pring? Was it marriage in general, having a child, or T’Pring specifically? Maybe… the two of them were cranes in the same story.

Kirk was so close to Spock that their arms were pressed up against one another. Spock’s eyes were wide, staring hard at Kirk’s open hand, resting on the table.

McCoy throat bobbed painfully as he took a sip of his tea. Instead of the creamy flavour he was expecting, he was greeted with the taste of coal, so unbelievably bitter that it dried his tongue on contact. He sputtered and squinted his eyes, but the bitterness kept sucking the moisture out of his mouth.

“Oh, Bones, you should see your face!” Jim amicably wrapped his arm around Spock’s shoulder and laughed. McCoy could feel his face heating up.

“’s not my fault the damned thing’s so bitter!”

“You took too long,” Spock told him.

“Excuse me?” McCoy demanded. He tore his gaze away from where Jim and Spock’s faces had touched, where Spock’s hand had briefly touched the one that Jim had over his shoulder before he reluctantly dislodged himself from the half-embrace.

“Too long with what?” McCoy asked again.

“The tea,” Spock continued, clueless to the doctor’s duress. “You’ve let it steep too long, and now it’s become bitter. If you hadn’t waited so long, you would have enjoyed it, I’m sure.”

“I’m sure I still can,” Leonard told him. He hoped his smile didn’t look as bad as it felt, but he really didn’t want to drink more, and Spock’s words made him more than a bit nervous.

“The taste just caught me off guard is all.” He brought the cup to his mouth and flashed his best reassuring smile, but as soon as the tea hit his tongue again he winced. With a sigh of relief, he allowed Spock to gently take the cup from him. Their fingers touched momentarily, and McCoy felt a familiar flicker of heat wash over him until they parted.

“There’s no need to force yourself, Leonard. I shall drink the remainder if you are unable.”

McCoy and Jim both watched, dumbfounded, as Spock took the cup and drank from the same spot the doctor’s mouth had been moments before. It’s not that Spock was a germaphobe, but when it came to everyone other than Kirk, he certainly preferred to keep things physically separate unless absolutely necessary. McCoy wasn’t sure which was more astonishing: that, or the fact that this may have been the first time Spock had ever used his first name.

“I thought you only liked mild tea. How can you drink something so bitter?” Jim was joking and smiling, but there was an accusatory edge to his tone. Spock raised his brow at him, as though the reason were perfectly logical.

“I never said anything about disliking any flavour, captain. Sweet or bitter, I am more than capable of enjoying both.” Spock took another deep swallow from the cup, aiming his gaze directly at McCoy.

“Well, thank you for that, Spock.” McCoy stood up awkwardly, heart pounding enough to make him dizzy. He could never quite tell what that damned Vulcan was up to with his cryptic words, and he didn’t want to stick around in case he decided to tell Jim about their little meld. He scrambled out of his chair a bit too quickly and forced himself to slow down before he got to the door.

“I’ve got to go check on Chapel before we beam down to your planet, so I’ll meet you both later.”

“I wonder if T’Pring’s tastes are as flexible as yours, Spock.” Kirk mused suddenly, though it seemed a bit cruel. McCoy’s feet glued themselves to the ground, his neck craning to witness the aftermath. If Spock detected any sarcasm, he made a valiant effort not to show it.

“I honestly haven’t given it any thought, captain.” Spock said flatly.

[ideas-of-immortality]

Okay but also what’s funny about tbe Jensen Ackles bad gay acting jokes is that like... supernatural is so prone to hyper masculinity that it can’t even show two dudes just being affectionate with each other in this year of Our Lord 2020 without feeling the need to immediately reaffirm the masculinity of the characters. Straight Men Can Be Affectionate And Soft! And Gay Men Can Be Tough And Grizzly. There’s no rule to how masculinity should be portrayed.

Meanwhile we have Star Trek from the 1960s showing William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy having such good quality soft moments with each other on screen that it spurred one of the most prominent fandom elements of all time... slash fiction. Not only that but no one doubted their masculinity, because James T Kirk drank his respecting Women Juice and Was Arguably A Heart Throb That EVERYONE Respected, And Spock Was A Quality Character Whos Whit Was Very Fun To See On Screen.

Like one was during blatantly homophobic Nuclear Family America, and the other has been around in a more liberal environment. It’s just sad.

I used to love the show, but it had a lot of pitfalls. And we were robbed of genuinely good soft scenes because they felt the need to shove a weird masculinity constest down our throats every time. So I will continue to laugh at the “Act Gay” “I cannot For I Am Sytaight” memes coming outta this entire thing.