#i didn't cut off the nacelle

[siryl]

The Sydney-class U.S.S. Jenolan from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Relics." This vessel was represented on-screen by the executive shuttle model created by Bill George and John Goodson for Star Trek VI after extensive modifications by Greg Jein. The digital images shown here were created by Eaglemoss Publications for the Official Starships Collection.

I've always liked this design. It's very different from a typical Federation starship, yet at the same time looks distinctly Starfleet.

[eponymous-rose]

So I've been rewatching Star Trek: TNG as comfort TV during/post-move and just got to Yesterday's Enterprise, which I remember liking well enough, but man, it's really unusual in the context of the rest of these early episodes. For one thing, the violence shown is a lot more stark than we've seen in the show thus far - Riker with his throat cut, Captain Garrett with the metal shrapnel in her head, lingering close-ups on dead faces. It's dark and moody and the "happy ending" resolution (as far as we know at this point, anyway) is saving the few survivors of a brutal battle, patching them up, and then shipping them straight back into that battle to be killed.

Given the show's not-so-great track record with its female characters, it's weirdly refreshing that we get a re-do for Tasha Yar. And yeah, she falls in love with a dude and goes off with him on his ship, but she was ready to say goodbye to him and that would've been that - what finally prompts her to step willingly into the meat-grinder is the realization that she had an "empty death" (Guinan had some really raw lines in this one) in the other timeline, and that now her death can have some meaning. It's nicely done, if a bit of a self-flagellating "mea culpa" on the writers' parts.

The alternate timeline isn't the gleeful, campy evil of the Mirrorverse, it's just an exhausted grind through the final days of a losing war. Lots of little touches show how desperate things have become - Wesley's been fast-tracked to a full ensign, Picard is a tactician first and foremost (he takes officers' opinions under advisement, yes, but he's also keeping from them the inevitable, imminent surrender), the bridge is laid out so the captain is front and center with everyone else in the background. As a contrast with the actual Enterprise's chill 90s living room lounge vibe, it's pretty striking. It's like a sneak preview into the bleak and war-heavy sci-fi that would start saturating pop culture a decade or so later, and then it's a firm rejection of that premise - "This isn't a ship of war. It's a ship of peace."

I have a long, long history with TNG - DS9 is my favorite Trek on balance, but TNG is encoded in my DNA. From around ages 3 and 5, my brother and I were watching and rewatching TNG constantly. (My parents would laugh over the fact that my brother didn't know how to read yet but had memorized the episode titles of the first couple seasons.) We had pajamas. We scoured every garage sale and had a giant metal can full of action figures and phasers and tricorders and ships and even, shockingly, that transporter toy that made things disappear using mirrors.

The tactile experience of those toys is burned in my brain - the loose nacelles on the Enterprise model, the click of the left phaser button, the little hole at the bottom of the Borg cube that we once stuck a pencil in and had the tip of the graphite snap off and rattle around forevermore. My brother and I played incessantly with our action figures, to the point where most of them had the paint at least partially rubbed off - we created hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of new episodes over the years. The first time I ever used a touchscreen was at some sort of Star Trek exhibition in Canada in the early 90s that we stumbled across on our way to visit my grandparents.

I'm always fascinated by how kids interact with fictional media - my brother and I were so young, but we obviously knew Star Trek wasn't real. Except... I just always assumed that important people watched it, realized "well, that seems nice", and were actively working to make that future happen. I was (perhaps a little embarrassingly) older when I realized that no, we weren't gonna be out there on science missions to the stars during my lifetime. At least, not in an Enterprise kind of way.

At any given time, there's just this Star Trek filter over how I experience the world - when I got to go to college thanks to scholarships, I had that weighty feeling of responsibility and awe that came with daydreaming about Starfleet Academy. I saw my career shift from the gold of engineering to the blue of science to the red of command. And the older I get, the more I appreciate a show that, for all its flaws, managed to make a utopia interesting and complex.

Because TNG was such a phenomenon when I was a little kid in the early 90s, a lot of my family relationships also have TNG tied up in them. I remember going to my grandparents' apartment and my uncle showing us a fan magazine about the show. I remember another uncle who didn't really "get it" but gifted me and my brother astronaut ice cream because he knew we liked that space stuff. I remember watching most episodes curled up on the couch or my parents' bed with my brother and my mom and dad. When Mom got sick and we talked about death, I remember the way she wistfully brought up the Nexus from Generations or how she hoped she could see the next season of Picard (she didn't, sadly, but she really enjoyed that first season). Hell, one of the first real bonding moments I had with my otherwise hyper-professional and businesslike PhD advisor was when she made a TNG joke, I laughed at it, and she said, "I just love that show, everyone's so nice to each other."

It's just been a lot of fun coming back to this show, is all. I think I periodically forget how much it's affected me and the extent to which it was a fundamental, formative influence. While a lot of it either hasn't aged well or fails to hold up to modern media analysis, so much of it is still lovely, and occasionally there are these moments of shockingly good storytelling.

Star Trek good.

[princesscolumbia]

Code of Ethics - Ch. 9 - Doing Good vs Doing Well

I'm REALLY liking how this chapter turned out! It has just everything I wanted plus a touching moment that I didn't think I'd be able to put in this early in the story.

Yet another "picks up where the last chapter left off." We'll get to some time skippage again here soon, promise!

Preview below the cut:

Diane shrugged, “Computer, activate the Operations building, please.”

There was the sudden sensation of an almost imperceptible hum as every light, HVAC system, computer, and electrically powered accessory in the building received power all at once. The lights in the office and main Ops room which had been on standby suddenly bloomed with a cool blue light that was bright enough to drive away most shadow but not so bright as to make it difficult to see. Dark paneling that Diane had assumed was simply an interior design choice flickered to life to reveal that they were huge displays that wrapped seamlessly around the entire office that wasn’t a door or window. Startup routines could be seen scrolling up all the displays and, when she looked down, she saw the same was happening on the surface of her desk. Momentarily, a holographic computer interface bloomed to life where she would expect a desktop monitor if she were at an office back ho...er, outside the pod, and a very pleasantly ergonomic keyboard rezzed into place. Oh, nice! I hate touch interfaces for typing, let’s see if... She reached out and tapped a few keys experimentally and, yes, they had the familiar spring-lock feel she preferred in her keyboards.

She smiled and looked up at Katrina, “So, Ops is activated, do we need to wait on anything else to get started with building a ship?”

Katrina raised an eyebrow, almost incredulously, “...no, though I imagine dealing with the squ...” the digital assistant glanced at Norma meaningfully, who for her part just huffed indignantly, “Tenants would take priority.”

“Is getting the ship started going to require more effort than activating Ops?”

“...no...”

Diane smirked, “Computer, begin construction on the Ad Astra based on the available blueprints in station memory.”

One of the wall-displays that had completed its boot-sequence and was on a pleasant screensaver mode flicked over to a visual of a wireframe of a spaceship. It appeared to be a fairly small craft, though obviously intended for long-haul exploration. Callouts appeared for crew quarters, a mess hall, waste recycling, fuel storage, and everything else one might expect of a small expeditionary vessel. The exterior design seemed based on a modified Straczynski-esque craft. Instead of a squat pod that held life-support and an ejectable cockpit, the main body of the ship was somewhat shaped like a ground-transport cargo vehicle, as though someone had taken a semi-truck and attached trailer, fused them into a single piece, modified the front so it looked like a fat sports car, spiffed it up to look like it belonged in space, and then made it big enough to house three to five people and everything they needed to live for long periods of time in the void of space. Attached at the corners starting about one-third of the way back from the nose of the ship were squat ‘wings’ that would never keep the ship in the air in atmosphere. They were in a vague ‘X’ configuration, which would allow for creative use of thrust from the nacelles positioned at the ends of the wings to allow for crazy-fast turns. The nacelles looked like they provided all the thrust to the ship, as well as maneuvering. It’s no Conquistador-class, Diane thought with a smile, But it does look like a sleek little ship. The display popped up with a status bar that was familiar to anyone who had used a computer in the last century and ticked up to the 1% mark after a moment.

“Awesome!” remarked Diane, “So, Katrina, any other immediate tasks? Activating anything else necessary right now?”

“Dealing with the highly annoying tenants?” offered Katrina.

“Oi! You’re the one who’s been sitting on the ability to build a starship the whole time I’ve been trying to deal with the little housing crisis in the residential habs!” snapped Norma.

Katrina glared, for all a tutorial program could glare, at the woman, “You are not authorized users of this system. Had your predecessors left this station as they should have then there wouldn’t be a ‘housing crisis’ in the residential habs.”

“Alright, that’s enough,” said Diane, “Katrina, could you give us the room, please?”

“What?!” the hologram seemed surprised, then collected herself so quickly Diane wondered if she was seeing things, “But…security protocols…”

Diane waved a hand dismissively, “‘Security protocols’ I’m not familiar with and, since I’m the fiat commander of this station, don’t apply to me if I say so.”

“I really should remain present as a precaution in case she…”

Diane huffed, “She’s, what, four feet tall?”

“Five-foot-one!” Norma growled.

“Meanwhile I’m a six-foot-one…”

“Six feet, nine inches,” interrupted Katrina with a significant glare at Norma.

“Sure, that; and I’m an apex predator species, I think I’m more than capable of taking her in a fight if it comes down to it. Besides, you’re a hologram, you can monitor the office via the security systems, right?”

“…yes.”

“Well then, you can give us the illusion of privacy for this conversation and at least take your physical presence out of the room so you stop antagonizing the person I’m trying to…” she glanced at Norma, who’d set her jaw stubbornly, “…have a conversation with.”

Whoever on the dev team programmed the personality of the tutorial program did a damn fine job of making them appear to have emotion as Katrina gave every impression of being hesitant to concede the point as she said, “…very well. If she…causes problems, simply eject her from the office and I’ll seal the doors and flood the Ops command level with a neurotoxin.”

Diane frowned, “A non-lethal neurotoxin, right?”

Katrina seemed to be refusing to meet Diane’s eyes as she started disapperating from the room, “Sure, sure. Non-lethal.” And with that, she was no longer in the room.

Diane allowed a small smile to quirk as she started removing her jacket. Part of it was comfort, part of it was a test. She was deliberately exposing the weapon stuck to her back to Norma. If the woman noticed it, she was either a human player who, for whatever reason, had chosen to take charge of a band of galactic nomads and homeless people, or was a rogue A.I. who was using the cover of being a refuge on an unclaimed station to hide from hunters such as herself. She turned just enough to drape the jacket over the back of her office chair, watching Norma out of the corner of her eye.

No response…let’s see if she’s just faking… As though reaching back to scratch an itch, she palmed the grip of the weapon while using her thumb to “scratch” the nonexistent itchy spot then casually pushed the weapon against her thigh, making it plainly visible as it adhered to her leg like it had her back.

Norma gave no response whatsoever, just sitting down in one of the chairs obviously intended for visitors to the office.

All right, Diane thought as she took her own seat, She’s just an NPC A.I., so no threat here, “So,” she began, “Not to seem like the bad guy, but I this is my station. I get that some of you were born here, but this isn’t 20th century America with a liberal policy that allows illegals to drop a kid and claim backdoor citizenship.”

“… ‘America’…?” Norma said the name of Diane’s home with stark unfamiliarity.

Stifling the frustration that the game creators didn’t bother to give America it’s proper place in history, she simply said, “A country on Earth, predates the period of space exploration and contact with life on other worlds. Point is, I am the law here. It’s my life and safety on the line if I let the lot of you stay and someone turns out to be a bad actor. I’m quite invested in keeping the skin on my back on my back.”

Norma simply glared back at the newly minted station commander.

“What I’m saying,” said Diane into the silence, “Is you will need to sell me on letting you all stay here. As you pointed out, I’ve got a starship under construction,” she glanced at the wall display, Norma mimicking her, and they saw the build progress was now at 2%. “I won’t even need to space you all. I can build a…let’s see here…” she turned to her holographic display and started tapping menues and was pleased to see it was fairly easy to navigate. She found the computer’s storage of ship blueprints and filtered out what the station didn’t have the capability to build yet, then tapped and flicked the plans over to a wall display. “I could build one of these,” the display lit up with a wireframe of another starship, but this was not something sleek and intended for exploration like the Ad Astra, this was a box with an engine strapped to it. The ‘ship’ part was what looked for all the world like a glorified camper van scaled up to house everything necessary to support a barebones crew, in-system flight, and FTL. Attached to that was a comparative behemoth of a cargo container, obviously intended to be modular and detachable. The name attached to the blueprint read, ‘ECC Goldrush.’

“Obviously, we’d have to mod the cargo container, those things are designed to haul materials, not people, and it wouldn’t be comfortable. We probably wouldn’t be able to kit it for gravity and atmosphere control would be…problematic. It would take who knows how long to get to a friendly port…” a notification popped up on her holographic display, blinking a furious red. Her eyebrows scrunched together, she tapped on the notification and saw a message: Katrina - “8 days to nearest Terran Federation station.”

“Katrina, at least pretend this is a private meeting, please…” she muttered, then to Norma said, “About eight days, I guess, to the nearest friendly port.”

The space-born woman frowned at the schematic for the surveyor ship on the wall, her face no longer a mask of anger but now showing muted concern. “I…know some of us would take you up on that. The people who came here on ships that abandoned them, people who had homes and want to go back to them…but,” she turned a pleading look to Diane, “I…I was born here, this is the only home I know!”

So much for the easy solution, Diane thought. She leaned back in her chair and drummed her fingers on the arm rest, letting the silence linger.

Read the whole thing on Scribblehub

[yonker-tonker]

wheele ramble/rant/some complaints; about the unused designs for ALM and a slight tangent on his spotlight

Thinking about how robbed tf is bc these designs didn't make the cut.

ESPECIALLY the one on the right. His name is WHEELIE and has only one wheel. Fucking brilliant, it fits. Also looks super slick along with his brim covering a portion of his face. Idk, man I really like it. Even though it wasn’t the chosen design, nice. 

And the color scheme? Tasty, I really like the full tangerine aesthetic he has and the red face. I don’t think many tfs have that vibrant color face, I can only recall a few (tfp breakdown, tracks, nacelle, armada screamy for one upgrade [feel free to tell me I'm wrong]). So, its a good variance to me.

The middle is also great with its three wheels (think its three). More revitalized version of his little space buggy car design. Also capitalized on the wheelie name a little bit (skewed somewhat to the left). If there is an official wheelie design that makes him a motorcycle, tell me.

Could’ve had this instead of the spotlight, smh. 

Since now that I am thinking about it; in Spotlight Wheelie, he does lose an arm-- which I feel should have stayed off b/c it is literally grey lifeless rotting from necrosis and he just plunks it back on. not even that it-- still works! as an arm! It is infuriating. (this is a huge flag that I am a one arm wheelie truther, if I haven’t made that clear.) Like? no disease, either? It hurts him to transform (which... why put it back on if it hurts to have?!)

Entirely a personal gripe though, as the whole comic is perfectly...

Serviceable. He is pick last in war (which is so sad that it wraps around to being funny), loses hope in the world, saves an alien, kills Reflector [:( ], proves he’s a “good autobot”, and then lives fuckall with his survivalist alien friend while learning his rhyming gimmick-- end of spotlight. (later on his alien friend dies but i dont remember how and that is way out of the spotlight.) Rife with Fruman’s writerisms. 

[justanalto]

If I could steal your files—

B o o t s

spoilers for 4x02 under the cut :))

"Commander Owosekun, if you could stay still for just a moment —"

"I'm fine." Her entire right side throbs with the impact of her last meeting with the bridge floor, there's a twinge in her chest with every exhale, and her sleeve stained red is decidedly not from the strawberry sauce she'd dropped onto it this morning with her pancakes, but she can't stop.

"Commander Owosekun —"

"I'm fine." Circuits blown to high heaven. Entire decks that need life support. Debris in the corner of her eye that looks like it could take out their entire starboard nacelle if she gave it the chance. She can't stop.

"Commander, it'll just be a second —"

Keyla's body, the sickening thud it'd made when they'd all fallen, so still and lifeless for the briefest of moments Joann'd been shocked with the cold possibility Keyla's life would've been the first of the ship's taken by the anomaly, of all they'd ventured forth, all the scrapes and bumps and bruises it was the unknown that would finally take her —

"I'm fine!"

She can't stop. She doesn't know how. She's not sure she wants to know.

(If she stops, she will realize the weight of all that has passed, and despite all that she has seen, she's not sure she would survive.)

"Jo." The voice is different this time. Higher, softer, a timbre Joann would be able to identify blindfolded five times over and played through an ancient gramophone. Keyla.

"Keyla," Joann tries, the wobbly mess of consonants and vowels completely unrecognizable by the gravel that's taken residence up in her throat. "Keyla, I —"

But two fingers touched to her cheek render her silent, even more so when Keyla produces a vascular regenerator. "Open for me?" Keyla asks gently, and as if by magic, Joann does.

If she thinks hard enough, she can remember a time when their roles were reversed, Keyla's anger and denial a shell cracked only by the impact of an entire starship into parasitic ice. Joann's own hand, ghosting over the imprint of the implant while Keyla stared at the blood coating her fingertips in surprise and panic.

If they hadn't been standing in the middle of a bridge still hissing like a hibachi grill, Joann suspects she would have found an irony in the reversal of their positions.

She wonders when she became the woman who kept going. When she became the one determined to pick up where others left off, to compensate for the ones unable to do the same. Part of it, she supposes, stems from being the only one able to reach the lowest depths of the caves as a child; the other, she suspects, perhaps an unintended side effect of being partnered with Keyla.

(After all, if there was anyone who didn't know how to stop more than Joann did, it was Keyla. Maybe it was what made them so formidable on and off the bridge.)

"Are you okay?" she manages to ask, because at the end of it all, it'd been Keyla who'd hit the floor so loudly with the artificial gravity, not her. There were more ops specialists that could sit in her seat; there could never be another one of the 'Fleet's greatest pilots. "Does anything hurt? Did you get checked out by Dr. Culber? And someone needs to make sure the debris on the starboard side doesn't hit the nacelle, and decks six through ten need their life support restored, and I swear if the lights on the bridge don't stop sparking —"

Keyla's lips cover hers almost immediately, and it's only months of shared helm time that make her quick enough to keep Joann's hand from drifting upwards to cup Keyla's face. "I'm fine," Keyla murmurs. "Hugh says it looks like you bit the inside of your cheek clean off when you fell."

"Which you would know if you'd taken a minute to stop," Culber reminds her lightly. But the expression on his features is no different from that of when he usually takes care of an equally as stubborn Keyla, humoring grin and all. "We're all right, Joann," he adds when she opens her mouth to speak. "All decks have restored life support and Linus is going through the circuit boards we speak."

There's the sound of a muffled explosion, then a loud whoop. "Got the debris!" Rhys yells; the exultation in his voice makes both women chuckle.

"See? We're alright," Keyla says. The regenerator lets out a tiny beep, allowing her to lift it to check her work. "Flawless," she hums. "As always." A tiny butterfly's pat to the cheek. "No scars for you, Owo. Perfect skin lives another day."

"Owosekun," Michael calls. Now that there's no longer the permanent taste of metal in her mouth, everything else seems to be much less pressing. "You're relieved of duty. Get some rest."

"Captain," Keyla calls, and by the tone of her voice there doesn't seem to be an attempt in arguing. "Permission to be jointly relieved with Commander Owosekun."

Michael snorts fondly. "And what made you think I would solely relieve her, Commander Detmer? I don't want to see either of you back here for the next 72 hours."

(Joann has to admit, it is entertaining to see Keyla be the stuttering one for once. Now Keyla at least knew what it felt like whenever she propositioned Joann in the bridge group chat.)

"Got it," Keyla calls back, still with red cheeks. She taps Joann's communicator lightly, the two of them teleporting into their quarters in no less than a nanosecond. "No," she tells Joann firmly when the other woman goes to unlace her boots. "Sit," she adds in a softer tone, getting to her knees to unlace them herself.

"You got hurt today," she continues. Deft fingers weave through knots and loops until Keyla's dutifully tugging Joann's boots off and looking up at her girlfriend. "Can you get your uniform?"

Joann nods; there's saltwater brimming at the corner of her eyes even as she sheds her coat and pants, Keyla taking them to hang in the closet. "You don't have to do this."

Keyla turns to give her a half stern, half amused look from the closet. "And what would you have said if I'd said the same thing to you? It is not a burden for me to do it," she echoes at the same time the words fall from Joann's lips like raindrops. Her grin widens. "See?"

Joann's eyes fall shut when Keyla lopes back over, taking her face in gentle hands and laying a soft kiss on her forehead. "You got hurt today, Jo," she continues in the same voice she'd originally approached Joann with. "Let the person who's always getting hurt take care of you for once, okay?"

"Okay," Joann agrees, blushing immediately when her sniffle ricochets loud and nasally off the walls of their quarters. It's not that she's opposed to being taken care of, or what stubborn thought have you, it was just...she was stopping.

She'd been going at a breakneck speed ensuring everyone else took their stops for so long she'd forgotten what it was like to stop herself.

Without comment, Keyla hands her a set of sleeping clothes and a tissue, pulling back the bedspread so Joann can swing her legs into bed. "C'mere," she murmurs again, only this time it's quieter, more of a whisper; the fragile admittance of a voice Joann only saw in the privacy of their quarters and the occasional medbay bed. "You do so much for everyone, Joann Owosekun. And I am so proud of you for that — I am, really — I'm just so proud of you. Thank you for trusting me to take care of you."

Long, warm arms wrap around Joann's waist, pulling her close, and though unorthodox, Keyla's warmth sinks Joann into comfort immediately. The perfect ending to a breakneck day — the slow, unhurried embrace of her girlfriend. "Keyla?"

"No, you can't big spoon me tonight."

"I —" Well, there went her plans. But still: "I love you."

A sleepy smile curls into Joann's back. "I love you, too."