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unfortunately bluebrixx lost the license

Skin produce #Spock #StarTrek @startrek #meme #humor

• The episode title is a reference to the series title, “Star Trek: The Next Generation”.

    • The PIC series finale was also a reference to TNG, titled “The Last Generation”.

• This is the 50th and, ostensibly, final episode of LDS, making it the ninth completed Star Trek series.

• The fleet of Klingon Birds-of-Prey all appear to be the same arrangement as the HMS Bounty, introduced in “Star Trek: The Search for Spock”, though it’s unclear what specific class they are.

    • The one exception is Relga’s flagship, which is larger than the others, and has a number of noticeable differences.

• We’re introduced to Relga, who is the sister of Dorg and Bargh, introduced -- an killed by Ma’ah -- in “wej’Duj” and “A Farewell to Farms” respectively.

    • Like her brothers, Relga has a pet targ.

• The rift directed to the prime universe by William Boimler in the previous episode, “Fissure Quest”, opens up in front of Relga’s fleet.

• The IKS Krtas is struck by the energies emitting from the rift, causing it to transformed into a 23rd century Bird-of-Prey, first seen in “The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not For the Lamb’s Cry”. Similarly, the ship captain’s armour is altered to be that of one of T’Kuvma’s followers, which we first saw in “The Vulcan Hello”. The captain himself loses his hair, but appears otherwise unchanged.

• Rutherford expresses disdain for the USS Cerritos’ older systems being unable to properly interface with his implant. This issue was mentioned earlier this season in “Shades of Green” and “Fissure Quest”.

    • This is also a reference to the modern day issue of trying to get both bluetooth headphones to pair with your phone while on your commute.

• We get a repetition of the moment at the end of the previous episode where Boimler receives the message from William regarding the imminent destruction of the prime universe, though this time we get the other lower decker’s reactions.

• Malor and Ma’ah were able to properly attach the animal tusks they had to their blood wine delivery truck, the task they set to at the end of “A Farewell to Farms”.

• ”Wake me if Kahless makes another appearance.” The clone of Kahless appeared in “Rightful Heir” and was installed by Gowron as a figurehead emperor. He was still emperor as of DS9 season four’s “Sons of Mogh”, but Malor’s comment implies that might no longer be the case.

• ”Sorry brother, but today is not a good day to die.” The iconic phrase, ”Today is a good day to die,” was first said in Trek by Worf in “Sins of the Father”.

• The Airolo scientist is voiced by Gabrielle Ruiz, who is T’Lyn’s voice actor.

• The rift’s Schrodinger field transforms the Cerritos into:

    • A Freedom-class starship - A wreck of the Freedom-class was previously seen in “The Best of Both Worlds, Part II”, though it did not have a deflector dish, and only one pylon connected the saucer to the nacelle

    • A second Freedom-class starship, with more yellow on the hull

    • A Terran Empire California-class - According to “Crossover”, the Terran Empire fell to the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance after Emperor Spock’s reforms weakened it, meaning there shouldn’t be a Terran Empire in the 24th century to have built the California-class, but presumably if there are infinite quantum realities, there exists one where the Empire didn’t fall

    • A Sovereign-class starship

    • An Oberth-class starship

    • A Galaxy-class starship

    • A Miranda-class starship

• Doctor T’Ana explains that the reason Relga’s ship does not appear to be changing is, ”It probably is; Klingons hardly ever update their fleet designs. They always want their ships to look like big stupid birds.” The Klingon Bird-of-Prey introduced in “Star Trek: The Search for Spock” was intended to be a Romulan ship, calling back to the TOS Romulan Birds-of-Prey. Even once the decision was made to have Klingons be the antagonists of the film as opposed to Romulans, early drafts of the script made it clear the HMS Bounty was a stolen Romulan ship.

    • One of the Klingon ships is transformed into a barge similar to the mythical Barge of the Dead seen in the VOY episode, “Barge of the Dead”, but this one has a mast.

• Olly is able to take down the Klingon shields, exposing them to the effects of the rift’s energy. Relga and her crew transform into mindless proto-Klingons, much like word did when de-evolved in “Genesis”, and her targ turns into a clam.

• ”Klingons do not hug.” All through TNG and DS9, Worf made several such proclamations regarding things that Klingons don’t do, most of which they actually do, but he’d prefer not to acknowledge the fact.

• Outside the stabilized rift we see:

    • A second California-class starship

    • A Parliament-class starship

    • A Luna-class starship

    • The USS Enterprise E

    • Starbase 80

• Captain Freeman is reassigned to Starbase 80 to oversee missions going into the rift. She learned her alternate self from the Minor Universe had been assigned to Starbase 80 in Dos Cerritos and preventing that fate became something of an obsession for her, as we saw in “Starbase 80?!”.

• Rutherford had his implant removed, and his face reconstructed. Shaxs ripped Rutherford’s original implant out of his head in “No Small Parts”.

• T’Lyn notes romantic attraction between Rutherford and Tendi, but Tendi states they’re just friends. “In Parth Ferengi’s Heart Place” we saw that their attempting to pretend to be a couple led the pair to be extremely awkward.

• We see Karavitus wearing a Chu Chu shirt. The Zebulon sisters performed the Chu Chu dance aboard the Cerritos in “Terminal Provocations”.

• O’Connor drops out of a portal in sickbay without his boots on. When he ascended in “Moist Vessel” his steaming boots were left behind.

• The practice of Twaining began in “Something Borrowed, Something Green”. Boimler and Rutherford were banned from twaining, but we see other characters, including Lundy, Big Merp, and Federov have taken it up.

• In Castro’s quarters, we see one of her salons, where apparently they’re attempting to summon an anaphasic lifeform from an ancient candleholder, similar to Ronin in “Sub Rosa”.

• Ransom has been promoted to captain.

• Ransom makes both Mariner and Boimler provisional first officers. When Captain Ramsey was briefly in charge of the ship, she selected Mariner to be her first officer.

• We see Fletcher serving aboard Starbase 80. He was last seen in “Terminal Provocations” where he was fired almost immediately after being transferred to the USS Titan, and sent back to Earth.

• Ransom chooses ”Engage the core” as his signature command for warp speed.

What’s your eulogy for Lower Decks?

Here’s mine: I wasn’t sure about Lower Decks for a well - I’d never been into the adult animation genre, and when I first heard of it, I had initially seen it as the wrong direction for Star Trek.

Finally, in late 2023, I watched it for the first time and was surprised to enjoy it.

Then came the crazy month of March 2024. I got rejected from all my dream schools, putting me in a sullen mood. I returned to the show and suddenly started resonating with Boimler as someone who had ambitions - some naive, some not - that weren’t always fulfilled, while I found the Cerritos to be kind of an analogue to the state school I would end up at.

Then, at the end of that month, a close family member shared their advanced pancreatic cancer diagnosis, and they passed a month after. That was when my attachment to Lower Decks solidified - I turned to it as a comfort show and really started to appreciate it. I think I’ve rewatched it twice since then - one randomly in the summer, and one to refresh my memory for the final season that began while I was doing the (mediocre) paint job for a 3D-printed combadge for a costume:

Overall, it’s probably my second favorite show in the franchise at this point, only behind DS9. I’m sure I’ll rewatch it plenty times more, though maybe a bit more sparingly - just one more this year to cope with the emptiness of no more new episodes. 🤭

Lower Decks! Lower Decks!

In comparison to many other series that have come in this era (because we all love to compare!), the stakes are as profound as any that we’ve seen, but with a particular character driven twist that I hope will surprise and delight people who watch the movie.

Direct YouTube link, if that's more to your liking.

The title plays off Star Trek: The Next Generation, which succeeded TOS in 1987 - the last time that label was used being in PIC Season 3’s opener, “The Next Generation”, with its finale, “The Last Generation”, evoking that as well. Of course, by episode’s end, we see the aptness of the title as a torch is passed for a new frontier.

Relga’s lapdog could be a variant of the Alfa 177 canine first seen in TOS: “The Enemy Within” as it appears to have the same unicorn horn. The breed has been seen in various episodes of LD.

As mentioned last episode, a soliton wave in Star Trek is a faster-than-light wave that was thought to have practical applications in warp propulsion or faster than light communications (TNG: “New Ground”), but was also potentially destructive.

As the wave hits the ships, a Klingon is transformed into a DIS-style Klingon, specifically the alien design and white costume of L’Rell in Season 1. An external shot also shows the ship (the Krtas) transformed into a DIS-style Bird of Prey before it collides with another K’Vort-type and is destroyed.

Honus (last seen in LD: “Caves”) is tending bar. T’Ana suggests Sexy Treasure Island to Shaxs, another in their series of erotic holoprograms (they had a black-and-white Bonnie and Clyde one in LD: “Room for Growth” and a Robin Hood one in LD: “I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee”).

This unnamed cadet is a different one from the younger one we last saw in LD: “Upper Decks”. He’s also wearing glasses, which might indicate he is allergic, like Jim Kirk, to Retinax 5 (ST II).

I honestly don’t know if T’Lyn and Tendi are messing with Mariner or not, but I will dutifully file away that half of all bopples are corbed, and corbopples are foundational elements of artificial gravity. Artificial gravity systems generally rely on generated graviton fields (TNG Technical Manual) and gravity plating.

A Bramble is an actual cocktail, consisting of dry gin, lemon juice, sugar syrup, crème de mûre, crushed ice and finished off with fresh red fruits and a slice of lemon.

In the real world, Boimler and Mariner’s account would sound insane, but this is Starfleet. As Janeway said in VOY: “Deadlock”, “Weird is part of the job.”

This is Ma’ah’s cargo freighter (last seen in LD: “A Farewell to Farms”), instantly recognizable with its brush devil tusks decorating the bow.

Relga’s brothers are revealed to be Bargh and Dorg, the latter being Ma’ah’s former commander whom he killed to gain the captaincy of the IKS Che’Ta’ in LD: “wej Duj” and the former being the head of the Oversight Council who Ma’ah killed in “A Farewell to Farms”. Both deaths were justified, though, with Dorg killed in a proper captain’s challenge and Bargh in self-defense after an attempted backstab.

A Schrödinger possibility field is named after physicist Erwin Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment involving a cat in a box whose state of life or death cannot be determined until the box is opened and the quantum wave function representing the cat collapses into one of the two possible outcomes.

Starfleet says Enterprise is en route. As of LD’s current year of 2382, this would still be the Sovereign-class Enterprise-E, since it would participate in the Battle of the Living Construct in 2384 (PRO: “Supernova”).

We see Ensign Meredith (last seen in LD: “Upper Decks”) and Ensign Olly (last seen in LD: “Of Gods and Angles”.

“[Martiner] is my cha’DIch’s cha’Dich”, says Malor. A cha’DIch is the title for a Klingon’s “second”, which also holds implications of mentorship.

Carol Freeman’s husband is Admiral Alonzo Freeman, who was on the conference call briefing Cerritos on her mission. petaQ can be translated as “weirdo”. Hu’tegh (untranslated) is a general invective in Klingon.

Boims using the ship’s shields to nudge one BoP into another is actually a pretty cool maneuver.

The first wave turns Cerritos into a Freedom-class, a kit-bash that appeared as part of the wreckage of the Battle of Wolf 359 (TNG: “The Best of Both Worlds, Part II”).

Freeman brings up an interesting point about warping with one nacelle. Traditionally, two nacelles create two balanced, interacting warp fields which can be shaped to maneuver the ship. According to the TNG Tech Manual, experiments in 2269 confirmed that two was the optimum number for power generation and vehicle control. As Tendi says, one nacelle for warp is still possible…but we don’t have time to nerd out about this now.

The Klingon BoP is turned into an ancient Klingon sailing barge, a mythical version of one ferrying dishonored Klingon souls to Gre’thor, the Klingon equivalent of the Norse Hel (VOY: “Barge of the Dead”), as opposed to Sto’vo’kor, the Klingon Valhalla.

Matt and Kimolu, the Cetacean Ops beluga whales, were last seen in LD: “Starbase 80?!”

The next wave turns Cerritos into a Terran Empire variant of the California-class. The Terran Empire is of course from the oft-encountered Mirror Universe (TOS: “Mirror Mirror”, et al.), which we last saw in PRO: “Cracked Mirror”.

Ensign Olly, being a descendant of Zeus (or the alien the Ancient Greeks called Zeus as per TOS: “Who Mourns for Adonais?”), has lightning powers which I hope she finally sees actually are useful.

The proto-Klingons Relga and her crew are turned into resemble to a large degree the same form Worf devolved into in TNG: “Genesis” when affected by Barclay’s Protomorphosis Syndrome.

The next wave turns Cerritos into a Sovereign-class, like Enterprise-E, including of course the bridge design (First Contact), then an Oberth-class (ST III), Galaxy-class (TNG), Miranda-class (ST II), and back to California-class.

The engineer to observe Rutherford’s speed is his nemesis/rival Livik, last seen in LD: “Starbase 80?!”

Cerritos splitting into two quantum possibilities is similar to what happened to Voyager in VOY: “Deadlock”, where a subspace divergent field duplicated the ship and personnel.

Starbase 80’s systems, as stated in the titular episode, hadn’t been updated since the 2260s, which makes it ideal for guarding the newly created quantum portal. Kassia was also last seen in that episode. We see that Anximander and her crew (LD: “Fissure Quest”) made it.

I won’t bother identifying all the personnel shown in the final montage, just point out a few notable things.

In case anyone doesn’t know, that isn’t Badgey, but Goodgey, his good twin (LD: “A Few Badgeys More”), who remained on Cerritos when Badget ascended. Speaking of which, the person being ejected from the portal in Sickbay is O’Connor, who we last saw ascending to a higher plane in LD: “Moist Vessel”. Guess it didn’t take.

“Twaining” is a form of dispute resolution that involves dressing up like Mark Twain in a riverboat holoprogram, last seen in LD: “Old Friends, New Planets”. We see another one of Castro’s salons (LD: “Hear All, Trust Nothing”).

Shaxs always wants to detonate the warp core, but Freeman only allowed it in LD: “The Stars At Night”, which brought him to tears.

And so, farewell Lower Decks, for now. It’s been a gas.

Written by: Mike McMahan

Directed by: Megan Lloyd

I think this is a transcription of the podcast that was shared here last week.

This game came out in 2021 as an Apple Arcade exclusive, which means I have not played it, and quickly forgot it existed.

It's a mobile game, so adjust your expectations accordingly, but this review caught my eye, as this game apparently has no time gates or microtransactions (or, at least it didn't three years ago).

It apparently came out on Steam in June, and there's a free demo there that I might check out.

Details are weirdly hard to come by, but it looks like it will launch on Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox later this month.

Has anyone played this thing? Is it worth your time and money?

Not your average average Starfleet officer! I'm beaming in to the first season of @StarTrek: Starfleet Academy on @ParamountPlus.