I might have to check this one out - I didn’t realize they’d started publishing new novels that don’t tie in to the current series, and this one sounds like it was written with me specifically in mind.

There’s actually more information in here than I would have expected.

I’ve [Alok] been augmented, and I have been cryoed. I am cryo chambered, and I am super old, but my young gun can live for those years of the pain and or rectify the years of pain. And I think he a lot does a lot of that, he is trying to get past his stuff with the use of the team.

We wrote the backstory [for Zeph] that he’s actually paraplegic. He did it to himself by trying to augment himself. And the suit is his wheelchair. He’s completely dependent on the suit, but the suit gives him all that extra power and strength… Obviously, in the future, we’ve moved past debilitating diseases, but there are still reasons that you might need assistance or a wheelchair. And the idea was to do a really positive iteration of what a wheelchair is by it being a suit.

I think when we first come to her [Garrett] in this adventure, she’s very by the book, very tightly wound, black and white, there’s no gray area in her life. It’s right or wrong. Yes, she’s a stickler for that kind of thing, and so she appreciates the systems that she exists in. She feels comfort in knowing what’s expected of her… I’m there to look over things, to make sure we’re coloring inside the lines, at least in the beginning. I’ve been placed here as a little bit of a taskmaster, stickler for the rules, and maybe the ebbs and flows.

The Klowakhans are definitely an amusing twist on Star Trek monocultures, especially when stacked up against Klingon farmers who still can’t escape the call of the warrior.

There’s also a slight chance that critics who have become so used to shitting on things that they’ve lost their ability to enjoy anything might be a nod to internet culture in general.

Great to see Mary Chieffo’s name in the credits.

Sam Witwer, too - he stepped in to play Tenavik in place of Kenneth Mitchell in Star Trek Online a few years ago, but otherwise hasn’t appeared in Star Trek since “Enterprise.”

Rowan does really great work, both with Trek-related content and his other stuff. Never a disappointment.

In “Terra Firma” she literally goes back and tries to do things differently.

Needing to “ask for redemption” suggests there’s a higher power administering cosmic judgment, which is another tenet of the ethos I was unaware of.

Yeah, I guess I forgot that the central tenet of Star Trek is that people are either Good or Bad, and there’s no room for change or improvement.

The idea that a person can do horrible things but still try to reject their old ways and do things differently is against everything that Star Trek stands for?

I really don’t think that’s how it works.

wat

They announced the pivot to a streaming movie in April 2023.

I dunno, from what we’ve seen on DS9 and Enterprise, Section 31 is willing to recruit operatives to fulfil their goals - we saw that in Malcom Reed and Bashir as Starfleet personnel, but also Koval, who was a Romulan agent.

A S31 agent like Alok Sahar, who operates outside the Federation and has the authority to recruit people to achieve the ogranization’s goals, makes a kind of sense to me. A Deltan and a Chameloid both make sense from a spycraft perspective.

If anything, this iteration of S31 could show a progression from the out-in-the-open, “special forces” iteration of the group that we saw in Discovery, to the complete disavowal of DS9.

*movie

Fuzz

There’s been speculation over whether he’s a Vulcan or a Romulan, but I think this description points to him being a Vulcan who rejects Surak’s teachings.

Melle

This might be the first confirmation that she is, in fact, Deltan. Seems like an asset for spy shit.

Georgiou

“Nightclub owner” is pretty far from where I expected her to land after “Terra Firma.” It’s kind of funny that they describe her as “unable to return to the Terran Empire,” when that is something she decidely did not want to do by the end.

Why do they have basic attributes of fictional characters? Tough to say…

Precision is important.

What did everyone think? I slipped into a fugue state when I saw actual Gallamites.

Aside from the obvious space angle, it seems more like a “Suicide Squad” vibe to me, which makes a little more sense, I think.

Their marketing tone is not what I expected at all, but I’m still interested in what the heck this thing will be.

I just want a sense of what the actual story is.

I just want to see Janeway’s plan. She has no plan!

When it comes to the overlapping shows, it might be better to frame things around events rather than series. Like, Dominion War, Romulan Evacuation, etc. But then, there are still some gaps in there, or unrelated adventures that aren’t really defined by those major events.