Canon Connections: 2x07 - Those Old Scientists
• In the episode “No Small Parts” Ransom explains to Captain Freeman that he calls the 2260s the ”TOS Era” in honour of ”Those Old Scientists” like Spock and and Scotty. Of course, this episode takes place in 2259, so clearly it’s time for a shake-up among the SNW production team.
• This episode was co-written by Kathryn Lyn, who also wrote “wej Duj” and co-wrote “Charades”. She was initially hired to be a canon consultant for LDS, before becoming an executive story editor for that series in season two, and is currently the supervising producer for SNW season two.
• Johnathan Frakes directed this episode. Trekkies will recognize him as the director of several episodes and movies, including:
• “Sub Rosa”
• “Meridian”
• “Parturition”
• “Project Daedalus”
• “Two of One”
• “Star Trek: Insurrection”
• It’s Bradward Boimler! From Star Trek! Boimler is voiced, and performed in live action for the first time, by Jack Quaid.
• Boimler records the stardate as 58460.1, which, because LDS has a functioning stardate system, would put this adventure between “Hear All, Trust Nothing” (58456.2), and “Trusted Sources” (58496.1).
• It’s Beckett Mariner! From Star Trek! Mariner is voiced, and performed in live action for the first time, by Tawny Newsome.
• It’s Samanthan Rutherford, and D’Vana Tendi! From Star Trek! Rutherford and Tendi are voiced by Eugene Cordero, and Noël Wells respectively.
• Rutherford has a holo-imager identical to the one introduced in the VOY season five episode, “Drone” when photography became one of the Doctor’s hobbies.
• The viewfinder display on the holo-imager is also accurate to what we see in VOY, starting with “Infinite Regress”.
• Tendi has previously demonstrated being sensitive about the common association between Orions and piracy in the minds of her fellow Starfleet officers, going back to “Crisis Point”.
• As he’s being portaled by the portal, Boimler cries out, ”Remember me!” which is also the title of a TNG episode in which a swirling energy vortex repeatedly tries to pull Doctor Crusher into itself.
• The portal dumps Boimler 122 years in the past.
• The SNW opening credits are recreated in the animation style of LDS, with some slight adjustments to the angles at which things are seen. Fortunately they kept in all the usual elements, such as the glowing space leach attempting to digest the nacelle, and the Koala.
• Pike’s gives the stardate as 2291.6 in his captain’s log.
| Episode | Stardate |
|---|---|
| “The Broken Circle” | 2369.2 |
| “Ad Astra per Aspera” | 2393.8 |
| ”Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” | 1581.2 |
| ”Among the Lotus Eaters” | 1630.1 |
| ”Among the Lotus Eaters” | 1630.3 |
| ”Among the Lotus Eaters” | 1632.2 |
| ”Charades | 1789.3 |
| ”Lost in Translation” | 2394.8 |
• The USS Enterprise is en route to Setlik II to deliver a shipment of grain. This is the first direct mention of the planet, but Setlik III was established in “The Wounded” as the site of the Setlik III massacre during the Federation-Cardasssian War.
• The grain is tritriticale. In “The Trouble With Tribbles” there was a large amount of quadrotritricale grain being stored at Deep Space K-7 with the intent of transporting it to Sherman’s Planet, and in “More Tribbles, More Troubles” the Enterprise was escorting too transport ships loaded with quintotriticale grain, again to Sherman’s Planet.
• Number One explains to Pike that Boimler’s badge is also a communicator. Pike first saw such a device when Section 31 agent Ash Tyler used his badge as a communicator in “The Saints of Imperfection”.
• ”But flipping it open’s the best part.” Pike is objectively correct.
• “Computer end program.” Boimler attempts to shut down the past like a holodeck simulation.
• In “The Inner Light” Picard gives the same command after awaking as Kamin in the memories imparted to him by the Kataan probe.
• In “Ship in a Bottle” Barclay tests to see if using that command will shut off a simulation of the USS Enterprise D after encountering Moriarty, and his being trapped in a simulation.
• The soles on Boimler’s boots have the delta and star print on them that they do in animation on LDS.
• In “Cupid’s Errant Arrow” Boimler gets the computer to replicate him the coolest outfit ever in a ”Boy’s size small,” and in ”The Least Dangerous Game” transporter chief Lundy accurately guesses Boimler’s weight to be 61.2 kilograms, and asks him to volunteer for his afternoon life drawing class because they need ”a skeletal boy.” However, Boimler is taller than every every member of the bridge crew, and thus we can only conclude that everyone serving aboard the Enterprise is tiny.
• ”It’s a classic S/COMS operating system.” ”Spacecraft Operations and Management System” was seen on screen in “First Flight” and the ENT showrunners consciously adapted the displays to feature more familiar elements from the TOS computers as the series continued.
• S/COMS would be considered a classic by Boimler, because by the time of “Encounter at Farpoint”, Starfleet has adopted LCARS as their operating system.
• ”Definitely won’t happen again, Worf’s honour.” Worf suffered discommendation and was stripped of his honour in “Sins of the Father”.
• “And, perhaps most important, don’t make any attachments.” La’an became attached to an alternate version of Sam Kirk’s brother James when they travelled to the past together, and she watched him get killed by a Romulan agent.
• ”Riker!” Boimler swings his leg over the saddle in an imitation of the Riker maneuver, a practice he would have no doubt been witness to during his brief time serving aboard the USS Titan.
• According to an interview, the line was ad libbed by Jack Quaid and, of course, Jonathan Frakes was in the room directing when he did it.
• “I’m sorry, my friend Mariner, would be freaking out right now.” Though Tawny Newsome has stated in interviews what an important character Uhura is to her, Mariner has never mentioned Uhura in LDS. The only direct mention was actually by Boimler, when he was dehydrated talking to a hallucination of Sulu in “Crisis Point 2: Paradoxus”.
• “‘Explode,’ you said?” In “Arena” the Gorn were able to cause Spock’s tricorder to explode during their attack on the Cestus III outpost.
• An Orion scout ship arrives in orbit of Krulmuth-B. It’s design is inspired by the Orion vessel seen in the remastered version of “Journey to Babel”; in the original episode, the ship was merely a blip of spinning light.
• ”Some Orion vessels are specifically designed to fool sensors.” Spock surmised that the Orion ship in “Journey to Babel” either had a dense enough hull, or was cloaked in some other way to prevent sensors from being able to get specific readings.
• ”What would come after the dash?” A bloody A, B, C, or D. Or E. Or F. Or…G unfortunately. Or J.
• La’an’s statement implies that Starfleet has not yet adopted the custom of maintaining a Starship’s legacy by preserving its designation and registry number.
• The Federation survey ship the Enterprise learned crashed on Talos IV in “The Menagerie, Part I”, the SS Columbia, had a registry of NC-5940-1, as seen on the printout of their distress call.
• Boimler built a model of an Orion scout ship in a bottle. Building ships in bottles is a hobby he shares with Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Miles O’Brien, as per “Booby Trap”. Lieutenant Carey also spent all his time aboard the USS Voyager between seasons one and seven building model of the Voyager in a bottle, which we see in “Friendship One” after his death. ”Ships in bottles. Great fun.”
• The episode “Ship in a Bottle” does not feature any ships in bottles.
• ”He was so excited to see me, that for a second it felt like maybe my future wasn’t so bad.” Pike’s future, so far as he’s aware, is ending up in a disfigured and living in a life support chair, able to communicate only through beeps after being exposed to delta radiation, which we see in “The Menagerie, Part I” and he sees in “Through the Valley of Shadows”.
• ”I know, but like smaller jetpacks.” In “A Moral Star, Part I” we see the Protogies using significantly smaller thruster packs than the ones seen in “The Vulcan Hello” or “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”.
• Ortegas tells Boimler she’s going to give him all the credit for the birthday party they’re going to throw for Pike. In “Temporal Edict” captain Freeman instituted the Boimler Effect, encouraging officers to add buffer time as needed into their scheduled tasks, something which Boimler also did not want credit for, but we see is his legacy far into the future in that same episode.
• Chapel assures Boimler he is not responsible for Spock’s recent exploration of his emotions. Spock broke his Vulcan mental conditioning in order to fight the Gorn in “All Those Who Wander”.
• “I’ve read literally every book about Spock and they mention his upbringing on Vulcan, his pet sehlat, his relationship with his mom and his dad–” The books on Spock are apparently far more forthcoming about his life than he is; in “Journey to Babel” Kirk was unaware of the fact that Spock’s father was one of the most respected Federation ambassadors, and in “Yesteryear” after watching I-Chaya die while in the past, Spock only told Kirk that a pet died, not his own childhood pet.
• ”For all I knew you were dead, or stuck in a dystopian San Francisco in the middle of a riot.” Mariner is referring to the Bell Riots, as seen in “Past Tense, Part II”.