I’m rather wondering if this kind of advertising targeting GenX middle aged and senior men is an inevitable coda to the 1990s wave of colonic irrigation humour.

Hopefully this episode will satisfy the “what happened to the Klingons?!!” questions lingering from Discovery.

…And perhaps kickoff a new narrative with Jay-Den as Heart of Glory did for Worf in TNG season one.

That’s a point.

Although in the case of the introduction of the Cardassians, there were significant contradictions vs the geopolitical situation of the Federation as presented repeatedly in the earlier seasons of TNG.

In relation to fan outrage though, even modest ‘filling in gaps’ — or ‘dancing between the raindrops’ as the EPs of SNW call it, is frequently met with with complaint that “no one has ever mentioned that before.”

Well, I can see your point.

I also was always supportive of WW III being pushed back by a half century.

But you can’t argue that there haven’t been major retcons.

Oh, it definitely did contradict established continuity — certainly more than Spock having had a foster sister or Khan descendants that we hadn’t heard of previously.

TNG initially presented a stable and peaceful utopian civilization. Picard and his officers spoke repeatedly about this in the early seasons.

There were long term stable borders with the Romulans, established relations with the Klingons but no major armed conflicts in the lifetimes of the senior officers.

‘Yesterday’s Enterprise’ was given as the exemplary lesson on how the alternative, more violent, alternative history would have played out but even that was quite far back, with the Enterprise-C.

The Ferengi were in early TNG a new and mysterious alien group on the borders.

The Borg was the most disruptive threat in generations, one that required new technology and new more military forward leadership approaches.

And then suddenly it turns out there has been a major ongoing border conflict with Cardassia, marginalized refugees from occupied planets living in camps bordering Federation utopia, and Starfleet has had its serving crew in armed conflicts.

How can you sincerely argue that isn’t a ‘major change?’

It’s interesting though.

We get the perception in early TNG that it’s been a long stable period of peace, exploration and expansion that’s suddenly disrupted by the Borg.

Then, we find that there have been significant ongoing regional conflicts with the Cardassians, some in Starfleet service have seen combat and torture, and that there have been marginalized refugees that have been marginalized and largely forgotten the Utopian Federation worlds.

BUT we accepted at the time as an audience.

In fact, unlike many of the elements of TNG that were outraging TOS fans in 1987-1989, there was nary a murmur about this at the conventions or on the BBS about the introduction of the Cardassians and Bajorans or the significant retcons.

As someone who was around for the TOS fan backlash in the early years of TNG, I don’t think that this has anything at all to do with the cumulative weight of lore or lack thereof.

My thought rather is that a show at the height of its popularity can get away with a great deal in terms of retcons and rewriting its own canon/lore.

A new show that does that takes a larger risk and is more likely to attract backlash.

I was listening to the video and thought I heard “fighting” but that could have just been my misunderstanding.

I get the discomfort about speculation.

It definitely sounds like there’s been ‘stuff’ behind the scenes already. Not TNG Chaos on the Bridge or Disco season one and two level, but definitely frictions.

(The actor who plays Genesis recently let slip when asked about Jonathan Frakes, that he’d been originally scheduled to direct her character’s second season feature episode but there had been “fighting going on” and Frakes was pushed back to directing a later episode!)

If the backdoor pilot episode in Disco season four didn’t work the way they’d hoped, it would be unfortunate if the characters and their actors have paid the price for the ‘notes’ from the senior executives.

However, as we saw with Number One in ‘The Cage’ if the the television franchise head thinks it’s worthwhile to bring back a character or an actor, one or both will happen eventually.

My bet is firmly on Tribbles.

Jay-Den seems to be wearing some kind of House heirloom.

Are the Klingons finally in a position to eradicate Tribbles?

Is the honour of Jay-Den’s family somehow involved? Did one of his ancestors create the genetically engineered tribble predator called the glommer?

And as a TAS fan I want to know if we’ll finally see a live action glommer!

Not on this subject.

If we assume that season one of SFA is taking place at the same time as Discovery season two, then we might expect Tilly to join as a more frequent recurring character in future seasons.

My read of the situation is that the original backdoor trailer did SFA that was in Discovery season four was very much not viewed as a success by Paramount executives — to the point that the central roles for Adira and Tilly in the ensemble were written out and rethought entirely.

I am confident that their are overseas bot accounts intervening to magnify cultural and political conflicts in entertainment spaces.

Are you seriously suggesting that IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes weren’t review bombed globally?

Any rating that has a distribution of 38% 1/10s has no credibility whatsoever, zilch.

And the alleged non US ratings aren’t vettable.

Or older.

My partner and I are old enough to feel comfortable laughing at our young adult selves.

I would add Heart of Glory because it gives a crucial introduction to where the Klingons are as a society in the 24th century much as The Neutral Zone introduces the state of the relationship with the Romulans (and sets up the Borg threat).

One could restyle it but if this cadet is from a low gravity world, they may prefer to get around as they can on their own in this environment.

Generally, Paramount owns all Star Trek IP rights.

However, reusing some things isn’t cost less. In some cases, they have to pay residuals to specific individuals or subcontractors who have creative rights.

Historically, this has led to weirdness such as renaming the Locarno character from the TNG episode ’Lower Decks’, played by Robert Duncan McNeill, to become Tom Paris in Voyager because Paramount didn’t want to pay the writer who got scrip credit for the TNG episode ongoing residuals for creating the character.

I don’t know enough about whether creators of animated character designs have rights to similar kinds of residuals, or the production houses like Titmouse for Lower Decks, but one has to wonder. It was so strange that Paramount+ suddenly said it was refocusing away from animation just as Skydance started its moves to acquire it.

As an animated Trek fan, that definitely irks, especially as it’s an animated sequence.

I have a suspicion that there’s something about animated design IP rights behind the decision though.

The old owners had decided to jettison animated Star Trek, and some other Paramount+ animated content to make the streamer mainly live action focused. Which, at the time this was announced, seemed very odd because Paramount’s owners were trying to sell the firm to Skydance, which is a major producer of high end animation for streamers.

So, my thought is that Skydance wants its own animation studio to be doing any future animated content for Paramount. There will be exceptions for long running Nickelodeon animation such as SpongeBob, Beavis and Butthead or Dora the Explorer, but relatively recent creations will get short shrift.

I’m more suspicious that the old owners canceled all their animation so as to no be in conflict with Skydance’s animation studio which is top quality.

The law looks back further than Confederation. This was addressed in previous amendments to the Act.

It has to since Canada didn’t have independent citizenship legislation until 1947.