I would suspect that the real draw to working with Starfleet for non-federation personnel isn’t any concept of wages, but a comprehensive benefits package. Presumably Starfleet membership confers some level of personal federation membership, possibly for both you and your immediate family, which may mean that you get to move your loved ones to a mostly-utopic federation world.
Yep. The show was written by humans, humans are flawed, therefore the show is flawed. It’s constantly undone by an unholy mix of things that seemed okay at the time, things that were written to try and correct the things that previously seemed okay at the time (but which made things worse), the personal flaws of the creators seeping into their works, and a pile of crappy tropes that TV can’t help but lean on. It’s weird that you think this is something that isn’t a consideration of the show ‘anymore’; this all goes back all the way to the 60s. Original Trek is occasionally misogynistic crap, and once went so far as to describe Nazism as the most efficient form of government. TNG had episodes that were straight up racist, and characters that are accidentally written as creeps. This is a problem the show has always had, and sometimes you just have to deal with that to get to the good stuff.
Elim Garak, because how can you not love a patently duplicitous and yet still somehow generally benevolent smooth-talker who chews all the scenery and exudes the queerest energy simple tailor?
Heck, even before you take into account differing xenobiologies, this has precedent on earth; different cultures are often unused to how other cultures smell.
The choice of Bynars as the latest victims was clever; if you’re going to remind everyone what’s going on with mysterious ship, but need to get through the entire sequence as quickly as possible, go with the species that transfer information at the quickest rate!
Honestly, whilst it would be nice for the mysterious ship of destruction to actually reach the central plot someone soon, I’m enjoying the little snapshots into lower deck life on other ships. It’s a shame it always inevitably ends with vaporisation.
Honestly, I think SNW is in a pretty decent position for a larger episode order. Heck, having more episodes to create more space between TOS character guest appearances would probably do the series good.
Folks tend to say that Kirk is too much of a cowboy, but that’s not really who he is. He’s very much invested in the rules and hierarchy of Starfleet, but he’s also driven by a sense of justice.
His work with Erica Henderson on The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl was straight up one of the best runs at Marvel in the last decade, so I’m looking forward to this.
My suspicion since even before the crossover was announced was that they designed the characters to look like the VAs in case they had the opportunity for cameo appearances down the line.