I'm pretty sure it never showed up again! This was also the only episode they pronounced kanar as kaynar instead of kuhnar. I'd have to look through the episode to be sure, but I think the Cardassian phasers were also a different color than the orange they were in later appearances.
It's always interesting to see how they change things as they see what works. It does make me wonder what the original pronunciation of kanar was though. Did the actor read it wrong, or did they change it!
In fact, the script specified that it be pronounced "KAY-nar": https://www.st-minutiae.com/resources/scripts/186.txt
So that must have been forgotten/changed at some point, or maybe it is the auditory equivalent of "whisky" vs. "whiskey".
Very interesting! I had been planning to look up the episode to see for sure, but I forgot to do it.
The pronunciation they ended up going with rolls off the tongue a little easier for me, so maybe that was the reason. I don't remember the first DS9 episode to mention it, but I remembered it being in 2x21 The Wire, so I looked that up. https://www.st-minutiae.com/resources/scripts/441.txt By this point it had been changed to the more common version.
As a Doctor Who viewer, I thoroughly approve the "timey-wimey stuff" line. And as I'm currently rewatching Voyager I'm so glad to see the recurring crew in Prodigy ❤🖖
In the Star Trek Encyclopedia, 4th ed., vol. 1, p. 244, the Enterprise-J is identified as a Universe-class starship. The same reference book additionally described the ship as having an overall length of 3219 meters.
I can't find a reference for the Breen Dreadnaught size though, not enough beta canon material for something so new. I can't find a good source for Fed HQ size to compare either, just that it is actually a Pax class starship, but no size for those.
When I tried to ballpark it looking at my starships poster they seemed like they might be about the same. But you could be right, the Breen Dreadnaught could be certainly be the bigger ship.
I've noticed a trend in some new American media coming out of more openly positive depictions of socialism/communism. The new HBO The Last Of Us series for example has this scene, and the new Fallout series has a more centrist/neoliberal take but at least calls out how the right uses communist as a "dirty word," though she qualifies the statement by first saying "I'm not a communist."
The new HBO The Last Of Us series for example has this scene,
I love that scene. It's so authentic: hearing a white American describe his successful living arrangement as literal communism but saying it's not communism, and a black American correcting him. 100 years of Red Scare and minority struggle captured in a few lines of dialogue.
Caveat that I have not played the games, but taking the series at face value they are highly US-centric like most Hollywood productions. It makes no sense arguing on the basis of the series alone what they are going with in this regard, since all the action takes place in the US it is pretty much the scope of the universe, just like in many Americans minds. I tried to make a disjoint point, that was based on how I would interpret it with complete disregard to whatever is canon to the story as a whole, taking what is presented in the first season of the series at face value.
To put this into context with Star Trek, I also find it really boring and non-immersive whenever they hold 21st century America in special consideration. It is just such an obvious way to make a comparison to current state of affairs in one particular country, placating preferences of current pop culture, which is redundant anyway since all science fiction is a universal critique of the current state of affairs anywhere simply by showing a future alternative. A hypothetical sudden end to US hegemony is actually a valid way to make the current US affairs leading up to it special with respect to the future development of mankind, and not just a boring move for views.
That is understandable if you think only within the paradigm of some select countries dominating the rest, but that is perhaps the biggest obstacle to our gay space communist Star Trek future.
I love this show, but I do not understand how they cannot create a uniform that doesn't look like pajamas (the Cerritos-style uniforms Janeway and her crew wear look great though). The weird gray they seem to be enamored with looks so silly.
And in Prodigy's case, Paramount's press releases have never mentioned the Sci-Fi channel - just the website and app. And now they're not even mentioning those...
Yeah, as recently as June 4, Prodigy-related content on StarTrek.com said the following in the footer:
Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1 is available to stream on Netflix outside of markets including Canada where it is available on CTV.ca and the CTV App, France on France Televisions channels and Okoo, in Iceland on Sjonvarp Simans Premium, as well as on SkyShowtime in the Nordics, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Central and Eastern Europe.
This latest announcement says:
Star Trek: Prodigy will stream on Netflix globally (excluding Canada, Nordics, CEE, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Russia, Belarus and Mainland China) and Season 1 is currently available on SkyShowtime in the Nordics, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Central and Eastern Europe with Season 2 coming soon. Season two has launched in France on France Televisions channels and Okoo.
They've completely dropped the CTV reference, even though season 1 is still available there.
I think their are two bridge crew members where it could have been interesting if either was gay.
The first is Tovok. Having a Vulcan show its illogical to deny attraction to the same sex would be fun. The downside here is how reserved the character is, so it likely wouldn't come up all that often in the show.
The second is Harry Kim. It would have been fun for him to be interested in Tom but Tom has no interest in him that way. We'd get a few episodes, may even a season of Harry pining for him before giving up and ending up best friends. Then we get Tom trying to set Harry up with people.
I don't even think either of these would have changed things much overall.
One of the reasons that Voyage's writing is so terrible is because all of the good ideas got knocked back. For example the ship was supposed to get progressively more damaged over time, patched up with improvised repairs. That's why the engineer was a Marquee, because they were used to having to do that sort of thing so they'd have experience that Starfleet engineers wouldn't have. That's why she was promoted over a Starfleet engineer. In the rewrite none of that comes through and it looks a bit pointless.
But they decided that was too expensive, so they didn't do it. In all fairness to them with the special effects they had at the time, it would have been extremely expensive, but it would have made the show so much better.
Crew romance doesn't play a big role in Voyager tbh, gay or not. The only proper relationship we see fleshed out is between B'Elanna and Tom Paris. We hear about Tuvok's wife, Janeway's fiance, and whatever that is between Seven and Chakotay.
It will be interesting to see Harry dating men but I don't see a pairing on the bridge.
I think they'd be more likely to say homosexuality is illogical and repress it. Could make an interesting plot point.
Versus "suppressing our emotions - the thing we do constantly which essentially defines our species - is illogical". I really don't see that making sense in universe.
I think they'd be more likely to say homosexuality is illogical and repress it. Could make an interesting plot point.
The converse is that making a specific distinction based on sexuality like that is also illogical in what is supposedly the enlightened 24th century Federation.
They're not the ancients of the 21st century, who would be so concerned with such primitive things.
But I'm pretty sure Vulcans could get into a bit of hardcore repression of sexuality, only having sex for procreation kind of thing. Very in keeping with their characterisation!
Tuvok: Ensign Kim, your dedication to your duties is truly impressive. I must admit, I find myself looking forward to our conversations more than I expected.
Harry Kim: Thanks, Tuvok. Your guidance means a lot to me. There's something about our talks that feels different. It's like we're on the same wavelength.
Tuvok: Indeed, Harry. I sense a connection between us that goes beyond our roles on this ship. It's a puzzle that intrigues me.
Harry Kim: I feel it too, Tuvok. It's like we have this unspoken understanding that's hard to put into words. I've been thinking about it a lot lately.
Tuvok: Perhaps it's time we acknowledge this connection and explore it further. How about we have dinner in the astrometrics lab tomorrow evening?
Harry Kim: I'd love that, Tuvok. I've been hoping for a chance to get to know you better outside of work. Tomorrow evening sounds perfect.
Tuvok: Excellent. I'm looking forward to it, Harry. The idea of spending more time together and unraveling this mysterious bond between us is quite appealing.
(They share a smile, their unspoken feelings now out in the open, as they finalize plans for their upcoming date in the secluded corner of the lower decks of the USS Voyager.)
I didn't think she's gay, probably more pansexual. She had a pretty weird upbringing, if you'll recall, so her sexuality is more like "gender is irrelevant."
The episode that really nailed down what a talented actor Jeri Ryan is was the time she had all those assimilated personalities surface and was switching back and forth rapidly, and the bit where the Doctor "took over" her body when they were in prison.
Both times, it was absolutely believable that someone else was at the wheel, and "Seven" wasn't there.
While I absolutely do not want to defend Rick Berman, I also think it's important to acknowledge that his brand of assholishness was not unique (and, frankly, still isn't).
It's not really socialist. Socialism is an economic model that involves taxing the rich and redistribution of wealth to the working class through welfare programs.
But in ST, there is no economy, no taxes, no rich people, no wealth, no working class. The only thing from that definition that they do have is welfare, but it's a completely different form of it.
ST is a magical post-scarcity utopia. Any economist would tell you that economics is first and foremost the study of how to allocate scarce resources. In a post-scarcity society, the whole concept of economics breaks down. Replicators break everything we know about economics. Everyone can get everything they need and it costs them nothing but electricity (which they conveniently can generate for basically no cost).
Social ownership of what? Resources? Means of production? Neither of those means anything when replicators are a thing.
There are a million different definitions of socialism depending on who you ask. I gave one above but I'm not claiming it's the only one. However it is ultimately an economic model, and it doesn't make sense to apply it in a world where economics is meaningless because the laws of thermodynamics have been broken.
Then explain what the Orion syndicate does for a living. Or how can ferengi pursue profit. Or how captains owned private transport ships and need to take things from one place to the other.
There's always people who want more than they have, and know who's going to provide them that.
Because the writers recognized that too many story tropes would be entirely unreasonable in a post scarcity world and so wrote in a bunch of stuff that really makes no sense if you think about it too hard. Like why would someone pay for a drink at Quark's when every residence on DS9 has a replicator? Because the writers wanted DS9 to be a frontier town and a frontier town needs a saloon.
Also to be clear, everything I was saying in my above comments was primarily in relation to the Federation. I recognize there are parts of the galaxy where replicators are not common.
Like why would someone pay for a drink at Quark's when every residence on DS9 has a replicator?
Because the scarce resource at Quark's isn't the food or drinks, it's the atmosphere and the experience, i.e things the replicator cannot provide. Quark controls the holodecks too, but even if he didn't the scarce resource would be authentic (not replicated) food and experiences. It's been shown pretty regularly on the shows that some people prefer non-replicated food, non-synthohol drinks, and real people. It doesn't really matter in that context if those are technically indistinguishable from the real thing (but even in canon there is a measureable difference between them and some things the replicators can't do).
I don't really believe there could ever be a post-scarcity world in which we don't create new scarcities to demand.
Hot take: The Expanse (mostly referring to the books here) handled a post-scarcity technocracy much more believably.
Again, the Ferengi are a bad example since they aren't part of the federation. But my point was simply that this stuff wasn't thought through. Why do the Ferengi exist? Because the writers wanted some capitalists to use as a contrast to the Federation.
I firmly believe that ST's worldbuilding mostly handwaves the questions of economics and scarcity, at least within the Federation. The writers didn't want to come up with good reasons for these things that actually make sense when you think about them.
It's a great franchise, but we shouldn't try to apply real-world economic ideas to it when that was so clearly not at the front of the writers minds when they created it.
True for most of the franchise, but the ferengi are eventually. Also, I’m not sure if the federation prevents member worlds from continuing to have their own internal economies that could be market based. My guess is that they don’t and the ferengi will continue to use money for a long time.
And with only one unfortunate exception that I can think of, matter replication is treated as a net energy loss - it isn't free.
Well sure, it's energy negative, but they also have basically free energy. We see in Voyager that as soon as they are cut off from that free energy, they regress to a market-based economy by like the third episode of the show. Doesn't seem very socialist to me.
Yeah that's my point. As soon as they no longer had access to the magical impossible logistics network of virtually free energy, they immediately regressed to capitalism with a side order of martial law.
They use replicator rations as currency and exchange them for goods and services. In a world that frequently says that society has progressed beyond the need for money. As soon as things become scarce they start using a market again. Thus, the lack of scarcity in the Federation precludes the concept of an economy at all.
And yeah Starfleet ships are always militaristic, but people can choose to leave if that's still an option. I believe this was why RDM left the writing team, but it never seemed right that Janeway just appointed herself dictator when this ship was potentially in for a multi-generation journey. BSG handled that sort of thing much better.
That's called "socialdemocracy" and it's been around for centuries. It's actually older than the marxist concept of socialism, if you're gonna get pedantic about it.
I get that Americans have completely sandblasted off any remaining meaning in the word "socialism", first by having conservatives use it as an insult and then by having weird US lefties get all purity test about it, but most of the world has a pretty clear picture of socialdemocracy, it's not that ambiguous. Most socialdemocrat parties across the planet are called some version of "Socialist Party", "Labour Party" or "Worker's Party". It's a thing.
So no, it's not a bad habit. It's just... what that's called. It does get easy to mix up with the Marxist concept of socialism, which is likely why most marxist parties advocating for a socialist society are called "Communist Party" instead. The bad habit is to not challenge the fundamentally conservative, deliberate confusion between the two that any range of neoliberals and protofascists continue to use to pretend milquetoast socialdemocratic policy is some form of revolutionary action.
You're all true until allocating scarce resources. These days economy is how to make scarce something that isn't in order to profit from it. See copyrights and patents. In our society a replicator would be the property of a company and you would need to pay it to be allowed to use it.
Yeah that's the cynical and IMO more realistic take. I'm mostly just taking the world presented in the show at face value. It's not realistic at all.
But even then, it wouldn't be the replicators that are scarce, it would be the software. Because in theory if someone is charging you to use their replicator, you could just pay to print out the parts for your own replicator, and then replicate yourself ten more replicators. What would prevent this? Proprietary software.
What you described is just welfare, not socialism. Socialism is collective ownership of the means of production, meaning there would be no need to re-distribute wealth as it would be fairly distributed from the start.
What you're thinking of is more along the lines of what Scandinavian countries have, which is just capitalism with social democracy and extensive welfare programs.
Socialism isn't a binary thing. It is an ideology that can be worked toward with various different degrees and measures.
But also I clarified further down this thread that my intent is not to give a definition of socialism, but rather to say that no definition of socialism makes sense in the context of ST's federation and the magical impossible technology they possess.
Yeah I'm not out here saying socialism is bad. I consider myself quite left of center. But it's like... they have literal magic. The words we use to describe different ways of allocating resources do not apply to them. They don't have an economy. An economy is a system of logistics and trade for moving scarce things to the people who want those things. Everyone and their dog has a transporter and a replicator. Logistics and resource allocation are irrelevant. Why would anyone trade anything for anything else if they have infinite everything?
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