Star Trek is a Way of Life

This is a sideblog dedicated to my life as a Trekkie and all things Star Trek.

[stiawol]

I went back after the event broke up to get some better pictures. Enjoy!

Also, it appears someone left an offering?

Oh, and I don’t want to forget the information plaque.

[stiawol]

Not the best view but still glad I came!

[stiawol]

Awaiting the Janeway statue unveiling. Good energy in the air!

[reginaldqueribundus]

what is a Star Trek?

Star Trek is about people being sexy and overly dramatic in space. After solving all their problems, humans of the future flew out into the stars to find more problems and have ethical conundrums about them while tricking the audience into thinking about real-world issues.

Earth doesn’t have war, famine or Jeff Bezos anymore so humans formed a club with their alien friends where everybody can just chill and be cool (humans are best friends with a bunch of space elves who have bowl cuts and pretend they don’t feel emotions). Sometimes the club gets into fights with space orcs or cyborg zombies trying to strip everyone of their individuality but it’s usually resolved pretty quickly so they can go back to chilling and exploring space.

Every time they Boldly Go into space they find Weird Shit™ and People Who Are Very Different but this is resolved by doing technology stuff or making dramatic speeches. The elves also have imperialist cousins (dark elves) who sneak around in invisible ships and pop up every once in awhile to try and trick us into getting in a fight with them, but this never works and they end up taking their football and going home.

Star Trek comes in six flavours:

Star Trek TOS (Original Flavour): made in the Sixties. A feminist captain with a weird speech pattern, a charming redneck doctor and a space elf go to space and run into all sorts of crazy things like sentient rocks, Cold War allegories, pouty gods and evil doppelgangers. The captain is gay for the elf, who is half human but very much in denial about it. A Scottish guy fixes the ship. There are lots of fistfights and miniskirts. It also got adapted into a very trippy cartoon in the Seventies! And six movies.

The Next Generation (Sequel Flavour): made in the Eighties/Nineties. Same concept as TOS but there’s more of it. The captain is a bald guy who talks like he’s in a Shakespeare play all the time. There’s also a bearded guy who’s always DTF, a robot who loves to cosplay Sherlock Holmes, and a psychologist (but they mostly just use her as a lie detector). The orcs are our friends now and one of them works on the ship. They spend a lot of time getting stuck in their cosplay machine, dealing with Time Fuckery and the dark elves being sneaky again, and getting kidnapped by a trickster god who has a crush on the captain. Also has four movies that are mostly about the captain and the robot.

(Bald captain has his own show now where he is friends with Space Legolas and they try to figure out if robots are evil. It is a very Different Flavour.)

Deep Space Nine (Story Arc Flavour): made in the Nineties. Instead of flying a ship around they’re on a space station guarding a wormhole to the other end of space (but sometimes they still fly around). This one has plotlines! The captain is a single dad who meets gods in the wormhole and accidentally becomes Jesus to a race of aliens that survived space lizard fascism. His 2nd in command is a terrorist who fought the lizards, his best friend is a trans lady with an immortal worm in her stomach that carries memories of her past lives, and their mechanic is a grumpy Irishman who accidentally becomes best friends with a very annoying doctor. Head of security is a grumpy blob of Jello who can turn into anything he wants. He’s always trying to arrest the bartender, a space goblin who worships capitalism. They end up in a big fight with Nazis from the wormhole. One of the lizards who thinks he is Very Handsome won’t leave them alone. There is also a bi lizard assassin who is so gay for the doctor he turns into a good guy, plus a mean lady Pope and literal demons.

Voyager (Action Adventure Flavour): also Nineties. A lady captain is chasing some dissidents and her whole ship gets thrown to the opposite end of space (not the one with the wormhole). She tries to get them home while dealing with cabin fever, the time police, aliens who try to kill them for trespassing, and a tragic lack of coffee. Her best friend is an elf but is not so Dramatic about it. Later she adopts one of the cyberzombies, and they spend a lot of time flipping the double bird at the cyborg zombie queen. Their Doctor is a hologram who wants to be an opera singer.

Enterprise (Prequel Flavour): early 2000s. Humans are flying around in space for the first time, trying to make new friends (like the blue antenna people) so they can form their club, which doesn’t exist yet. The elves are kind of dicks about it, but they start to come around. The captain is a big lovable dork who gets beat up a lot. His best friend is a redneck and their doctor is a polyamorous puffer fish with a zillion weird pets. After being constantly pestered by the time police for awhile, they then have to stop some zoo people who want to make Earth kasplode. Sadly gets cancelled just as they get down to business.

Kelvin Timeline (Reboot Flavour): there are also three movies with new actors playing younger versions of the TOS characters. An angry miner kills the space elf planet and makes a new timeline where the feminist captain is a horny frat boy and his elf boyfriend is Straight™ and has temper tantrums all the time. Everyone is Cool and there are lots of big spaceships and explosions. Also Benedict Cumberbatch.

Discovery (Modern Flavour): now with Canon Gays™! A grumpy fungus expert figures out how to make the ship fly around the universe with mushrooms. The main character was adopted by elves (the elf guy from TOS is her brother). She’s friends with an adorable girl who never shuts up and a space gazelle man with Anxiety. She gets arrested for awhile but then falls in love with a walking spoiler and they try to stop the space orcs from being such huge assholes. Later they chase an angel around the galaxy and get a new captain whose cheekbones are so sexy they have to save themselves with time travel. This one is still going!

There are lots of people on the internet who will try to tell you which of these flavours is the Good Star Trek and which ones are Bad. Some of them will even say this or that flavour is Not Star Trek. Those people are wrong and you should enjoy whatever flavour you think is the most fun! Some of the flavours start out kind of bland at first but they grow on you, others are too spicy for some people and that’s ok. You might enjoy all the flavours or just one (or even none at all) but the important thing is you get to decide! There are even flavours that don’t exist in the shows or movies! Because the best thing about Star Trek is there’s a lot of it.

[stiawol]

This is a great breakdown of the various series in Star Trek. I wish the Voyager one wasn’t quite so brief but it hit most of the salient and interesting points. And honestly, although it’s my favorite flavour, Voyager has A LOT of issues.

[sapphic-phoenix-deactivated2021]

if your blog is 99% star trek (especially Voyager!) please reblog so I can find more people to follow. my dash is getting boring :/

[stiawol]

It’s quiet but it’s Trek....

[curator-on-ao3]

*Kate Mulgrew materializes on the bridge of Voyager and collapses*

Doctor: *scans her with medical tricorder* This woman isn’t the captain.

Chakotay: How can you tell?

Doctor: Well, for one thing, this woman has given birth to three children.

*everyone glares at Tom Paris*

Doctor: Human children.

*everyone stops glaring at Tom Paris*

[stiawol]

This cracked me up.

[alivelymoment]

Dear Streaming Services,

Please make your services more amenable to slower networks. Believe it or not, there’s still a lot of customers out here in rural America. Cable and DSL networks only extend so far from town, leaving many of us to rely on our celluar service or pricy satellite services, both of which serve up high fees if we stray over our data limits.

I understand that many customers, probably even the majority of customers, demand high resolution graphics and crystal clear sound quality. But honestly, I’d just like to be able to watch a show without it taking twice as long as the time stamp because it has to buffer every five minutes. We know we’re not your core demographic and we accept that living out in the country means we sacrifice certain amenities. If that must include pixelated images and fuzzy sound, we’ll survive just to be able to watch a show or movie without having to cook a three course meal to keep ourselves occupied while it loads.

Sincerely,

A Country Bumpkin

[alivelymoment]

P.S I have been reliably informed that many people in more populated areas also cannot afford the best possible connection speeds or live in areas where the internet infrastructure struggles to support demand.

[boldkatte]

nothing to see here, just J/C in an alien ritual that turn out to be a wedding, their wedding

[t-rina]

One thing I love about scifi and exploring new civilisations is that at least one turns out to have a ritual that marries the one couple in the show that everyone wants to be married.

Or was that only in fanfictions?

Well…

[stiawol]

My friend’s young daughter loves this vid.

[capsfromtrek]

[captaincrusher]

Hey do you ever think about how Neelix had to teach Seven how to chew and swallow food when she came aboard Voyager yet she’s absolutely sure about being a straight woman ? Have you ever thought about how much this exemplifies heteronormativity and gender roles?

[angrywarrior69]

If you’re watching star trek and not asking yourself “what the fuck?” at least every five minutes then you’re doing it wrong

[stiawol]

My headcannon for Seven is that she is not heterosexual but simply mimicked the most visible example of human sexuality available - Tom and B’Elanna. After arriving on Earth and having ample opportunity to observe other relationship options and dynamics, she prefers relationships with other women.

[captaincrusher]

Let’s talk about Star Trek.

If you had to chose ONE character out of all the shows that is your fav, who would it be and why?

[humanstargazer]

Janeway.

She's like my ideal person. I'd want to be her all the way. She way she leads, the inspiration she provides, her strength, her friendships. All of it.

[rawkfemme]

Same. Her soul is steel wrapped in silk wrapped in science. She's smart, and feminine. She has relatable challenges with relationships and mental health. I adore Kathryn Janeway.

[chronically-ill-dandy]

Picard. Hot bald man.

[stereomike]

[stiawol]

Deanna Troi, because she has such a strong sense of herself that she can be the rock that everybody can put their back against when uncertainty is closing in. And the few times that she’s not certain herself, she’s wise enough to ask for help from her friends.

[chharliedayarchive]

i’m bored while doing my latin homework i am this close to translating the opening monologue to star trek into classical latin someone stop me quick

[chharliedayarchive]

caelum. finito terminalis. is cursus est de commissi navistella. sui legatio quintus-annus - munduses ignotus novus exploro. lux nova et cultus novus sequor. cedo audacius quatenus homonis aput iit.

I have a serious problem.

[cinquespotted]

#i am 100% sure that someone who follows me will like this

[midoriyasbones]

Reblog if you are 100% okay with a transgender person correcting you if you accidentally misgender them or use their dead name.

[tiredsadandgay]

Please correct me

[insomniparty]

^^^^^

[underscorespider]

I wish my datemate would do that when i accidentally misgender them because they use more than one pronouns set :/

[captainsblogsupplemental]

I’m sorry, what??

[captainsblogsupplemental]

[joaryn]

According to the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D blueprints, Cetacean Ops is located on deck 13 and the dolphins habitats extend between decks 13 and 14 and include their own lifeboats.

[hekate1308]

Did they… Did they really go there…

[stiawol]

Star Trek Discovery - thoughts after 5 eps

So I probably don’t really like this show. I mean, we’re five episodes in and while there are characters I like, I’m not sure I’d care all that much if they died in the next episode. In fact, I don’t think I’d be to terribly sad if the plug was pulled on the show all together, except for the fact that I love Star Trek and there would be almost no chance of another show, ever. Of course, if this is the route TPTB continue to force Trek on, well . . . . It’s Trek, but not really Trek.

There are elements of Trek, it’s true, but I’m not sure they’re all the right elements? And I’ll probably muddle this up and make my point incomprehensible, but I’m going to try anyhow.

First off, I’m all for a diverse crew; in fact I actually really like the diversity of this crew. But it feels like the people behind the show are making the diversity an issue and it shouldn’t be. We’ve had diverse characters in Trek before, but that was never the defining characteristic of the characters. It was a facet of their character, but they were whole characters in and of themselves and they just happened to also be black or alien or android or female or blind or whatever. It wasn’t irrelevant, either. It was just a fully integrated element of a whole character. But with the characters on Discovery, it often feels like the *only* reason a character is a character at all is because they ticked off a box on a diversity check list. Maybe they’ll be developed further in the future, but I’m not holding my breath.

If that made sense, I’m so glad. But I don’t make any promises for the next part.

My second point is the issue of the Prime Directive. It’s kind of a big issue in most of Star Trek. After all, it’s called the PRIME Directive for a reason. It’s not sub directive 3-b or something; it is the one essential command that all members of Starfleet are supposed to abide by. But I kind of wonder if TPTB ever got that memo, because I’m not seeing a whole lot of adherance to the Prime Directive in Discovery. They mentioned it in the first five minutes of the first episode, but mentioning it and actually following it are not the same thing. There was an episode in the Next Generation (more, actually) where the crew had the opportunity to save a race on the verge of extinction. They wanted to - they saw a civiliation in its death throes and they wanted to help, to allow the civiliation to continue on and maybe someday develop the technology to explore the stars themselves.

And, in the end, they did. And viewers could switch off their TV sets happy about rooting for the good guys. But that’s only the part of the picture we saw. Our only authority on the Dremans is a 10-12 year old girl who is witnessing the death of her planet. We assume, because we like Data and Picard and the Enterprise crew in general, that they are correct and the planet will be destroyed in short order if they don’t act and the Dremans lack the ability to stop it. But they have never encountered the Dreman’s before. They don’t really know anything about the Dremans and their abilities or their technology. How do we REALLY know that the Dremans weren’t actually hours (or minutes or seconds) away from powering up a sonic inducer that would have shattered the dilithium lattices. Can we be *absolutely certain* that the Enterprise didn’t delay the Dreman’s launch into deep space exploration by a more than a decade or even a few thousand years?

*That* is why the Prime Directive exists. It isn’t just because the actions of a crew or individual might prompt a previously secular civiliazation into believing in an all-powerful and all-knowing deity. It is because we ultimately do not *know* exactly all the repercussions any action we take might have. A book can change the whole future of a civilization, a stray tricorder can prevent a pandemic, or a careless gesture can start a war.

I’ve rambled long enough and I think I’ve pretty much avoided any serious spoilers for Discovery so far, so I’ll close here. Discovery has issues. I don’t like them, but I don’t think it’s irredeemable just yet. I’ll continue to watch and I’ll probably post again at some point in the future.

[stiawol]

Well, that was different. Looking forward to next week.

[stiawol]

Currently watching some of the Star Trek Discovery clips while waiting for the premier. Also, since my current TV provider is at odds with CBS (grrrrr), I’m just hoping I *can* watch….