My partner and I are both completely unsurprised that they were retained in a private collection primarily composed of film and video of trains and canals.

Who knows what’s left to be found in the estate collections of early television buffs.

One of the things that stands out - pun intended - about Starfleet Academy, is that the directors and production crew aren’t trying to hide the differences in height.

Holly Hunter isn’t afraid to let it be seen that she doesn’t even come up to Sandro’s shoulder.

Unlike Patrick Stewart who seemed to want more orange boxes deployed to minimize his height difference in Picard than has even been necessary in the constraints of old standard definition in TNG, the actors are comfortable being different in height and the directing style is working with it.

I’m hoping we’ll get more later.

The Imzadi bond between Tarima and Caleb is an order of magnitude stronger than Troi and Riker’s. Likely more.

I’m willing to go with a head cannon for now that Caleb has to have some native psychic abilities, if latent, that sparked the attraction and connection even with Tarima’s inhibitor in place.

She’s definitely rising as as an A-lister.

“Lanthanites are a fun ride” says co-showrunner Noga Landau.

Of course, Nahla Ake has extended family even if she told Nus that she didn’t know her Lanthanite father well.

Will we see Pelia? Other Lanthanites?

Do we have a Lwaxana Troi type character incoming in season two?

I’m feeling the same way.

This is the most coherently plotted live action Trek of the current era. The showrunners and writers room knew what they wanted and laid down all the pieces to get there.

I’m going to say that while Anisha’s punch of Brakka’s (as they say in comics) most punchable face seemed logical and a necessary catharsis, I don’t like that Ake stooped to that herself, however understandable the motivation.

I still feel, based on how much difference an extra two episodes per season makes to a low budget show like The Ark, that SFA would be stronger and better able to serve its large cast with 12 episode seasons.

I hope we get more on SAM’s development and integration of her two memories in season two.

Likewise, there definitely feels that there’s unfinished business between Anisha and Ake. I am going with Anisha being resigned to accept who her son has become but unsure of her own future.

Time passed. It wasn’t instant.

I assumed that the Starfleet ships were prepositioned near the barrier/wall ready to cross. We were shown in the previous episode that there were old remnants of Borg Transwarp conduits in the region.

Reno could have messaged Vance even if full holographic communications weren’t available.

The episode makes clear that hours had passed while the Reno and the cadets on Athena were repairing the ship and working out the solution, then another 30 minutes to get to the star system at a limping warp speed and more to find Brakka.

I’m trying to find a way to reconcile some of Rod Roddenberry’s recent social media statements with the positives in interviews with from Kurtzman and Osunsamni.

Rod Roddenberry has not critiqued Secret Hideout but has talked about how there is potential for more positive Star Trek that fulfills his father’s concept of modeling a utopian society.

So, clearly Roddenberry Entertainment is pressing for some strategic influence in future shows.

That said, it makes one wonder how much strategic direction for darker peak television may have come from the highest levels at CBS and Paramount…

SFA definitely bobs up in rank on Thursday/Friday/Saturday and falls off the rest of the week, but the interest shown on Amazon Channels is consistent across many countries, and not just in the United States.

Paramount will have the hard and detailed viewership data to make decisions — not just US-based brigading on social media aggregators.

Even many of the perpetual doomsayers on other platforms are bending to acknowledge that SFA is tenaciously sticking at a rank of #1 or 2 on Amazon Channels.

It’s sinking in that SFA is pulling viewers but not Paramount+’s existing demographic — which means that it’s achieving what it was designed to do.

We’ll have to see how the finale lands, but it may be the most successfully constructed live action season arc of this era.

I recall that feeling!

I also recall that there were many TOS fans my age for whom the Kirk-Spock-McCoy triumvirate defined Star Trek.

I never thought that way myself but it’s been a dividing line in the franchise from the start.

I love SNW for what it is but I have to say that I was disappointed that Akiva Goldsman — who said he was himself disappointed when he joined Discovery’s writers room in season one to find out that they originally had no intention to include Pike — turned out to be more focused in telling the pre-TOS backstory of the TOS main characters than in telling the story of the Enterprise under Pike’s command.

This is another thought experiment that Kirsten Beyer took on in her Voyager Full Circle sequence in the Relaunch Treklit novelverse.

There were a lot of questions about whether their ethics were in fact shared or parallel with that of the Federation as well as whether they really were who they claimed to be on the surface.

Another Relaunch Treklit exploration involved a very different Breen society than Discovered unveiled. Instead of a single species, Breen turned out to be a multiplicity of species with different environmental requirements who all spent all their lives in environmental suits other than in their own homes. In the Relaunch universe, the Breen achieved species, race and gender equality by completely hiding their physiology and masking their voices.

On the blood products recipient end, we want to ensure safety and ethics in the products people need to live.

Unfortunately, donations are not adequate such that Canadian Blood Services buys blood products to make up the difference.

A significant portion of the product purchased and imported into Canada from the United States comes from incarcerated populations.

Paying Canadians for plasma donations is an arguably lesser harm than importing plasma and fractionated blood products from incarcerated persons in the United States.

A healthy adult should be able to make plasma donations very frequently. This raises questions about what was happening in that donation centre’s screening and drawing procedures.

In fact, there is a long history, when the blood supply was less reliable, where parents of children with bleeding disorders often donated plasma biweekly in order to make sure their children had a safe and timely supply of essential coagulation factors.

Ensuring that the donations are safe both for the person donating and the recipients is nonnegotiable. It’s also however essential that we have the blood products available for those who need them and not condemn those with inherited bleeding disorders to disability due to insufficient availability of fractionated products.

And his S31 movie was terrific too (based on his comments in other promotional campaigns).

My partner and I are among the seemingly very few longtime Trek fans who really found S31 fun, and have even rewatched it.

That said, however evidently capable Osunsamni is as the executive in charge of managing production in Toronto, S31 exemplifies a personal preference for flash over substance. One therefore has to wonder whether he’s got good situational awareness about where the context is now.

This does remind me how few times Star Trek has used the idea of a space elevator.

I kind of feel we need a meme juxtaposing this with a gif from the Lower Decks episode where Mariner and Ransom were fixing an elevator and had to skydive.

Kirsten Beyer’s had a very creepy and innovative follow up to the Schisms aliens in her Treklit Voyager Full Circle sequence of novels.

Discovery borrowed one of her plots for the 4th season. I wouldn’t mind if they adapted some of their alien concepts for SFA.

It seems that CBS senior executives really wanted a show with Patrick Stewart as Picard.

Many attempts to pitch a show were made but it wasn’t until Chabon flattered him into reading a concept that Stewart would even meet with the creators.

CBS and other studios had access to the state grants to incent the major streamers to keep production in California and made the choice to blow theirs on Picard.

The ones in the image of the post are all old, rehashes from classic episodes.

When the Borg first appeared towards the end of TNG season one, all we saw was destroyed colonies. It was a mystery who or what was causing this.

Or, consider how we heard about the Romulans before first seeing them in TOS.

A slow revelation of a new and unexpected opponent, very different from the ones we’ve seen before, would be much more interesting than revisiting old ones repeatedly.

I’d definitely like to see more of Una.

This is where some lower budget (than S31), less action-focused, made-for-streaming movies would be great.