Star Trek Social Club

Sharing my photo of me at Vasquez Rocks that I mentioned in a different post.

Looks much smaller in person. Didn’t get a chance to get upclose. I was cutting it close on time to make it to Universal Studios Hollywood for Fan Fest Nights (it was a 2 hour drive in stop and go traffic for me).

But um, yay! I got to see the Famous Rock (the formation featured throughout Trek). There is another formation called Witch’s Hat (for looking like a witch’s hat).

So I wanted to start off by saying, yesterday was my birthday, the reason I chose to go on the second to last night of Fan Fest Nights. Earlier in the day I drove out to Vasquez Rocks (approximately 40 miles from Universal Studios). It was such an amazing night.

For those unaware, Fan Fest Nights is a new (first year) after hours event at Universal Studios Hollywood celebrating fandoms. Specific to the event, not preexisting were: Star Trek, Dungeon & Dragons, Back to the Future (the backlot had the entire Hilly Valley town square built for the event), One Piece, and Jujutsu Kaisen. This event included themed walking attractions (aka shows), characters (photo ops), food, drinks, and merchandise.

For Star Trek we got Red Alert a walking attractions that emulated the attraction from Star Trek: The Experience in Las Vegas years ago. Red Alert set in 2403, where you travel from Spaceport Los Angeles to Athan Prime to visit the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D (featuring the actual bridge set from Picard season 3) located at the Fleet Museum. Depending on when you went during the night, different actors/aliens would be seen. Among the species were Human, Trill, Bajoran, Andorian, Vulcan, Orion and one I couldn't name (I swear was Elaysian but didn't make sense due to gravity). At certain points actors would look for guest wearing Picard era uniforms (like myself) and ask them to check their Combadge.

Aside from Red Alert, the park featured Quark's Cafe for themed food and beverage and Ten Forward for additional alcoholic beverages. I had a Cardassian Dog, Vulcan Fritters and Bajoran Hasperat (I forgot to get a photo of the hasperat since it wasn't available when they opened for general admission). As for the beverages I had a Orion Hurricane (real delaq not included) from Quark's and Ceti Eel Margarita at Ten Forward (gummy eels in it).

I bought myself one piece of merch, Ceti Eel earrings. I need to get my right ear pierced now.

The video linked is my recording of Red Alert.

• The episode title, “Cracked Mirror”, follows the practice of referencing mirrors in titles of episodes where the mirror universe is visited, going back to the very first, “Mirror, Mirror”.

    • Prior to “Cracked Mirror”, there were eight mirror universe episodes, alluding to mirrors in the titles:

      • “Mirror Mirror”
      • Through the Looking Glass”
      • “Shattered Mirror”
      • “Reflections”
      • “In a Mirror Darkly, Part I”
      • “In a Mirror Darkly, Part 2”
      • “Mirrors” - this episode does not visit the mirror universe, but does largely take place on a mirror universe ship that transported refugees to the prime universe

    • There are nine mirror universe episodes that don’t mention mirrors in the title, as well as the “Section 31” film. This is not including “The Tholian Web” or “Into the Forrest I Go”, which do include the mirror universe, but one only as a retcon, and the other only in a cliffhanger for the following story arc.

• ”The protowarp is merely bending spacetime around us.” Zero’s vague explanation for how the protodrive works does not differentiate it from how the more common warp drive works: the ship generates a subspace displacement field which compresses spacetime in front of the ship, and elongates it behind. So is the protowarp merely a more powerful version of the warp drive?

• ”She’s a whole lot different than the one I remember.” We’re told the character of Chakotay served aboard the USS Voyager on VOY that was stuck in the delta quadrant in VOY, but I cannot find any indication of the character.

• The Emergency Janeway Hologram tells Rok-Thak she’s a dog person. Unlike Captain Archer, the real Janeway whom the EJH is patterned upon left her dog, Mollie, in the care of her fiancée when she took command of Voyager, as per “Caretaker”.

• Admiral Jellico has taken command of the USS Voyager A. Jellico was introduced in “Chain of Command, Part I” as the captain assigned to temporarily take command of the USS Enterprise D.

    • The Protogies quickly discover that they reality where Jellico takes over after the deaths of Janeway, Tysses, and Noum is an alternate to their own, so fortunately Jellico can’t make anything worse for them in a way that it matters.

• It’s Okona! From Star Trek! Or at least an alternate reality iteration of Okona. He’s outrageous! Okona was introduced in the episode “The Outrageous Okona”, and the Protogies previously met in him in season one’s “Crossroads”. Okona is voiced by Billy Campbell, who also portrayed him on TNG.

• When Rok-Thak and Zero exit the turbolift, they find the Voyager A crewed by Enderprizians, who were introduced in “All the World’s a Stage”. The ship

    • The Enderprizian whom Rok-Thak and Zero speak with activates his comm to alert Captain Tuvix.

• ”I’ve been through something like this before.” Chakotay may be referencing the VOY episode, “Shattered”, where Voyager was caught in a temporal anomaly, and he was able to move through different time periods on the ship until finding a way to resolve the issue.

• Maj’el proposes using an inverse tachyon pulse to seal the interphasic rift Voyager A is caught in. In “All Good Things…” it was discovered that the USS Enterprise D using inverse tachyon pulses at the same point across three different times is what was creating the anti-time eruption.

• It’s the Mirror Universe! From Star Trek!

    • MU Janeway is wearing a Starfleet uniform, though “Crossover” established that the Terran Empire fell to the Klingon Cardassin Alliance in the 23rd century. This could indicate that there is still a pocket of the Terran Empire active, which was the case in the Shattered Mirror comics.

    • Janeway’s uniform does appear to be based on one from the Shattered Mirror comics. Like the mirror universe Marshall Janeway from Star Trek Online, this iteration has a Borg implant similar to Seven of Nine’s over her left eye.

    • MU Chakotay has a goatee, a look popularized for mirror universe executive officers by Spock in “Mirror, Mirror”. MU Chakotay also sports the same tattoo as his prime universe counterpart. As per “Tattoo”, Chakotay got the tattoo to honour his father.

• Apparently humpback whales are able to serve in the Terran Empire as well, though that does raise the question of how humpback whales were able to survive being hunted to extinction in the mirror universe, considering they killed out in the prime universe. Were there circumstances similar to those of “Star Trek: The Voyage Home”? Or perhaps Terrans simply got more joy out of grinding up puppies, rendering whaling obsolete.

As this is an unannounced Star Trek series, not many details are currently known. Our first indication of this new series comes from the USPTO – United States Patent and Trademark Office. The filing details clearly list “a multimedia series featuring animation distributed via various platforms”. Additionally, another source is a casting website. This site is specifically requesting young actors and actresses for a YouTube Short Series. So it’s possible this could air on the Nick Jr. YouTube channel.

It seems Star Trek: Starfleet Scouts will be something like Disney+ and Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures. This Star Wars series originally started as six shorts on YouTube before it gained a full season order. It has been an excellent success for Disney+, with two full 20+ episode seasons released and a third in production.

Based on casting information, the new animated series will focus on three 8-9-year-old friends as they go to school on an earth-like planet. The series will follow their adventures as they train to become future Starfleet explorers. This information seems like a step before Starfleet Academy. The characters of Starfleet Scouts are described as “Cool, funny, heroic, and authentic”.

This recipe comes from once again The Star Trek Cookbook by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel. The best part of this recipe is getting to pick your own seeds and cheese!

Star Trek: Prodigy didn’t make a significant impact when it did land. It missed the global weekly charts, and looking at the Netflix Engagement Reports, it didn’t catch fire. Per that report, covering viewing data from 2023 through 2024, the series picked up the equivalent of 3.4M views in total throughout that two-year period. For comparison, Blue Eye Samurai, which did get a rare animation renewal, picked up 20.5M views in the same period.

That, combined with the fact that the show isn’t even Netflix’s own property and that the original team behind it had long since disbanded, made its chances of renewal incredibly slim. With the shows set to depart in the coming months, Netflix has quietly ruled out any season 3 renewal chances.

Our understanding is that the series will be leaving Netflix in two parts, with each season leaving 18 months after they were initially licensed. That means at the moment, the two seasons will be leaving on the following timeline:

• Season 1 will depart Netflix on June 24th, 2025
• Season 2 will depart Netflix on January 1st, 2026

Of course, Netflix and Paramount could arrange to renew the license, and we’ll keep you posted if that happens. As it stands, though, your time to watch both seasons is running out.

Some people have said things like “he can dream with the programme but doesn’t actually sleep”, although some people have told me he does in fact, sleep similar to how other life forms do.

This box and toy itself are showing its age. The view screen is hard to rotate, the battery compartment has erosion (but no batteries), the strap is very short. I wanted this all for the looks (cosplay), till the day I might be able to purchase The Wand Company’s Tricorder (probably never at this point; 😕).

Been watching DS9 Season two and have been very impressed with the quality. I remembered it being "pretty good" but in my memory it was "the season with "The Circle" trilogy, "Melora", "Rivals" and "The Maquis", episodes and story lines that never really did it for me. I think that made me forget how many really good one-off episodes were also here, to name a few:

• "Necessary Evil"
• "Rules of Acquisition"
• "The Alternate"
• "Armageddon Game"
• "Whispers"
• "Paradise"
• "Shadowplay"

All bangers!

Also I love how this season ever so slowly drip-drops dominion references culminating with the season finale "The Jem Hadar"

The recipe comes from The Star Trek Cookbook by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel. My first time but I’m going to make more. This batch has orange extract. I will need to increase the amount of extract.

UPDATE: I made blue lemon this time.

• The episode title refers to the hip hop group, A Tribe Called Quest, which Data mentioned as being his favourite recording artists in the TNG episode, “Family”.

    • Tribbles first appeared in “The Trouble with Tribbles”.

• Rok-Tahk refers to the tribble by it’s scientific name, tribleustus ventricosus, which was first mentioned in the short, “The Trouble with Edward”.

    • Keiko O’Brien’s classroom in DS9 had a diagram of tribble labeled polygeminus grex, which was taken from the “Star Fleet Medical Reference Manual”, published in 1977.

• ”A tribble outbreak once brought the Klingon Empire to its knees.” Worf mentioned in “Trials and Tribble-ations” that tribbles were once considered mortal enemies of the Empire.

• ”But tribbles don’t have teeth.” We saw a tribble with teeth in the PIC episode, “The Bounty”, but that was genetically modified.

• Giant tribbles approaches the Protogies and Chakotay. In the TAS episode, “More Tribbles, More Troubles”, genetically modified tribbles were able to combine together in one large colony creature.

• Doctor K'ruvang is on the planet researching a way for the Klingon Empire to defeat the tribbles. In "More Tribbles, More Troubles" the Klingons had genetically engineered a creature called a glommer to eat tribbles.

    • K’ruvang was sent to this planet by Martok, whom we last saw in either “What You Leave Behind”, or “The Least Dangerous Game”, depending on if you count an unlicensed Ferengi boardgame using his likeness.

• Chakotay askes how smart Rok-Tahk actually is, and Dal claims she fixed a core breach in 10 minutes, though he neglected to add that from Rok’s perspective in “Amok Time”, she had significantly more time, perhaps even years.

• Rok accidentally combining her DNA with that of a tribble resulted in a monstrosity. Edward Larkin also combined mixed his DNA into the tribbles in “The Trouble with Edward”.

• Dal mentions that like Rok-Tahk’s abomination, he too is a hybrid being created through combining the DNA of multiple species, as we learned in “Masquerade”.

• Quadrotriticale grain was introduced in “The Trouble With Tribbles”. Though in “More Tribbles, More Troubles”, Starfleet had developed quintotriticale grain.

This is the full text of the email I received from The Wand Company today. Many of you may have seen the unboxing video Adam Savage uploaded. To sum it up, the only official place to purchase this is currently Amazon.uk. So far a batch of 200 sold out pretty fast (two days) with a fluctuating inventory status on the product page leading to confusion. Doesn’t appear a product page for the Tricorder is active (a search yields no results and Star Trek section of the store page displays no products for sale). Once The Wand Company get a larger inventory sent over to Amazon.uk, sales will resume. As for fans in the U.S., there is no certainty on how tariffs will affect the price.

Sales are officially being doing through Amazon.uk. The sales have been paused till inventory can be increased as a response to the confusion and sellout of 200 units within two days

EDIT: I forgot to include legible text to read.

| Dear ____,

Further to our previous email, we’re conscious that you are still waiting for your “invitation to purchase” email with a link to the Tricorder on Amazon UK.

IMPORTANT: we are making plenty of Tricorders   A very small number of Tricorders were sold on Amazon in the last two days.  This didn’t go as smoothly as we’d hoped, though:

The quantity (200 units) sold out very quickly, but then the Tricorder would occasionally appear to be back “in stock” for brief periods, causing confusion and frustration.

During some of these brief periods, international shipping wasn’t available. Some people had their orders automatically cancelled by Amazon for suspected fraud – we believe this is probably why one or two units would then become “available” again.  

We’re really sorry for the distress and confusion that this has caused for some of you. We want to reassure you that we are making plenty of Tricorders and we believe that you will each be able to buy one from us if you want to.  

We are pausing Tricorder sales for at least a week

We’ve shipped another batch of 952 units to Amazon this week.  We were hoping that they would already be showing up in the Amazon system by now, and that we’d be sending out a batch of “invitation to purchase” emails today, but that’s not the case.  

To avoid a continuation of the confusing situation with the Tricorder appearing to fluctuate in and out of stock, and it only becoming available one or two at a time, we are pausing the sales to allow some time for the incoming stock to build up to a sensible level so that we can create some stability in its availability.  

As I write, we are manufacturing Tricorders and airfreighting thousands of them into the UK. However, the process of loading them into stock at Amazon takes a bit of time.  

Opening Tricorder sales again

Once there is sufficient stock in the Amazon UK store to create a more stable and pleasant purchasing experience, we will set the Tricorder listing to “active” once again and start emailing people again to let them know that it is available. We will aim to do this at around 4pm UK time. We will monitor that stock carefully and pause the sale of the Tricorder again when the stock is depleted, in order to allow more stock to fill the sales channel once again and prevent the listing from going in and out of stock due to order cancellations.  

A few Tricorders are already appearing on eBay. Whilst everyone can buy their Tricorder however they wish, we strongly urge fans not to buy from third party sellers at the moment. We have plenty of stock arriving and you should wait for that to become available through our official retailers (Amazon UK, the Star Trek Shop or IGN Store).  

Shipping to a non-UK address

Our decision to sell on Amazon UK was not taken lightly and was in response to the evolving tariff situation in the US. When there is sufficient stock available, fans who do not live in the UK will be able to purchase from Amazon UK and we do not know of any restriction that will prevent this for our customers outside the UK. (In case you didn’t already know, we’re based in the UK ourselves.)  

The tariff situation

The US tariffs on bulk shipments of products from China have been changing rapidly over the last few months, starting with 10% announced in February and reaching 145% on April 10th. If those tariffs reduce to a more manageable level we will review the situation regarding importing the product in bulk to the US for sale domestically (such as via Amazon US) and take the appropriate action.  

US tariffs on small packages to individual consumers with value under $800 USD (“de minimis” shipments) have also been in flux recently.  At the moment they are scheduled to become 120% on May 2nd, or a flat fee of $100 USD, but it’s unclear which of those fees will be charged.  It’s also possible that the changes due on May 2nd will be amended or postponed.  

What will happen next

We will write to everyone in waves in order of their first registration with an invitation to purchase as the stock becomes available. As mentioned above, we will aim to send those emails out at around 4pm UK time.  

LLAP