williams_482

If Kolinahr works like it says on the tin (purging all emotion), it seems doubtful that the season would have the same plot. Spock probably wouldn't have been in whatever weird mood compelled him to "steal" the Enterprise and charge off to Cajitar. It's unclear how he would have been affected if he were again abruptly turned fully human, or if Chapel could have convinced the aliens to change him back, it seems especially unlikely that the two of them would have wound up in a relationship at all. So the emotional cause for his Subspace Rhapsody solo is gone.

As for the more technical side:

Uhura: I have a theory. I think since we're in a musical reality, we're actually following the rules of musicals. So, when do characters in musicals usually begin to sing? When their emotions are so heightened that words won't suffice. This musical reality wants us to sing about what's most pressing on our minds. These emotions have the power to overwhelm our capacity for rational thinking. They also have the potential to drive us apart.

If Uhura's theorizing was correct, an emotionless Spock would have probably been involved in the ensemble songs the same as always, but would by definition be incapable of experiencing "emotions [...] so heightened that words won't suffice". So it is unlikely that he would have found himself belting out a solo about anything.

I wonder how common is it for a starship to make their "Senior Science Officer" a two person team.

Clearly many captains don't see filling the role as a priority: None of the Enterprise D, Voyager, or (until this episode) the Cerritos had a senior science officer posted to the bridge. This makes a fair bit of sense on the grounds that "science" is an extraordinarily broad field and most of the practical, problem-solving sciencing we see tends to fall under the umbrella of engineering, so subject specialists and engineers wind up carrying the load as appropriate. As they should! No science officer can possibly hope to be comparably well versed in any given subject than a more junior officer who happens to specialize in it.

Therefore, although scientific acumen is obviously useful, as is getting as much scientific acumen as possible onto the bridge to quickly react to whatever weird shit a ship encounters, the larger part of the job is going to come down to synthesizing the larger knowledge base of the ship's contingent of scientists into an actionable answer. The Senior Science Officer should be asking themselves not just "what do I know about this", but "who else on the ship knows more about this" and, in a pinch, "which of these different ideas are we actually going to try."

Having two people in the role is beneficial for getting more scientific knowledge on the spot and ready to be used, especially if the two people involved work well together, but it's a potential liability in that final point where two people can reasonably disagree, but someone is going to have to make a call on what the best option is. In many cases that person is the captain, but when time is scarce and the choice is between things the captain doesn't understand, the choice is really going to come down to the science officer. And what happens when the two science officers disagree?

In this case, I think the correct choice between our two science heroes would be Tendi. She's (generally) good with other people, she has actual command experience (in combat situations, no less), she knows the bridge officers better, and they are more familiar with her. Further, T'Lyn is nominally a temporary posting who doesn't seem to view herself as a serious candidate for the role. All the conventional decision-aiding factors seem to favor Tendi, and we all know she's qualified.

Which leaves me wondering why this was a particularly difficult decision for Freeman, and why Data recommended this seemingly unconventional solution. Heck, Data barely even saw these two officers working together, as the two of them spent nearly the entire time working independently.

So maybe having multiple "senior" science officers is a normal state of affairs, and the expectation is that the captain will ultimately be able to resolve any final-stage disputes without needing an explicit head of the science division? That's plausible if potential awkward, and there do seem to be plenty of consoles at the back of the bridge for multiple science specialists to be sitting in.

I would have struggled to date the station given just the exterior, personally. A 2260s (or earlier) origin seems well within the bounds of possibility.

How many Starbases does Starfleet have? It seems that their numbering system is not truly sequential, as SB343 was existant in 2256, while SB173 was brand new in 2365. SB80 could be quite old, or relatively new but using a repurposed spaceframe from an older space station which had received a major upgrade.

I really liked this one. I think it did a good job making Starbase 80 fit into the universe as more than just a joke (why does starfleet have a starbase that everyone knows just totally sucks? Well, because of a bunch of weird circumstances, and also it's more complicated than the reputation).

Interesting, although unsurprising, that Mariner apparently didn't hang around SB80 long enough to figure out that there was more there than met the eye. A lot of the stuff uncovered in this episode should have been noticeable to a new transfer.

Who actually was Bargh? He's the "leader of the Klingon Oversight Council," who are supposedly tasked with approving the eligibility of officers. That doesn't sound like a body which would actually command ships or fleets directly, but Ma'ah describes his ship as being part of Bargh's fleet. Bargh's death is also not presented as something that would significantly shake the Klingon government. Kor had been on this council (and rejected Martok) in 2345, but Kor would have been approaching 100 at that point and likely wasn't especially active in day-to-day military command.

So is Bargh essentially a minor administrator on a power trip, or a person of significant status and power who commands fleets but also has a role on this relatively minor council? My inclination is the former, and Ma'ah is expressing some sour grapes in referring to "his" fleet, but it's not clear.

How did you do this?

Transporter clones appear to be vanishingly rare. We're aware of two (Thomas Riker and William Boimler), and the circumstances around Thomas Riker's existence were clearly unheard of to any of the people investigating. Clearly this is not a thing that transporters normally do, or are even capable of outside of extremely unusual circumstances.

It also seems pretty dystopian to require the insertion of artificial genetic markers to make a person more easily recognizable. Would we expect "normal" identical twins to be treated similarly? Or actual clones?

I think the larger lesson on this incident from Starfleet's perspective is that they need to beef up their internal security practices. Big shocker, that. Thomas Riker is neither the first nor last person to successfully impersonate a starfleet officer and cause major troubles in doing so, and most threat vectors can't be solved by preemptively identifying likely perpetrators (such as this likely very offended transporter clone) and modifying them specifically to make infiltration more difficult.

Starfleet seems to have an interesting relationship with the media, giving privileged access to reporters who are willing to make at least some of their subjects look bad. Low-ranking officers also evidently know a whole lot about weird and embarrassing things that other crews have done, so at least basically mission logs must be relatively easy to access.

There are counterexamples, but on the whole, it doesn't seem like the kind of information that would matter to that magazine is controlled much at all.

Apparently your tap water is dramatically colder than any house or apartment I've lived in.

Yes, putting ice in water does make me enjoy it more, and no, letting the tap run doesn't do nearly as much to cool it down as ice cubes do.

It's really depressing how any internet discussion about global warming is full of comments like this which only exist to downplay small but existent improvements that others have made. It's whataboutism, plain and simple, and only serves to discourage people from doing anything at all.

This guy getting a more efficient stove isn't going to save the planet, but at least it helps. Your comment (and many others in this thread) doesn't do anything at all about our climate problem, and mostly serves to make other people feel stupid and inadequate for even trying to do something.

There is so much, so fucking much, that needs to be done to save our planet. If you think that political change is the only thing that will "really" matter to save the planet (it's obviously going to be a huge factor), and you are so deeply committed to the ideal that the only things worth doing are those which directly further said political change, then you have serious work to do on your messaging strategy because what you had to say here clearly isn't causing global change.

Alternately, if you think the situation is so impossible that nothing can be done to save it, go find a different void to yell into and stop trying to drag down those of us who still have some hope.

Voyager's original CMO was a Lieutenant Commander, which is presumably pretty typical for a ship of Voyager's size. Bashir was commissioned as a Lieutenant Junior Grade to be the CMO on a backwater space station, so that's presumably the bare minimum.

I would expect the Doctor's first official rank (whatever that might be) to stick with him, plus promotion as appropriate. Adjusting it up and down based on posting would be a bizare thing to do for any other crewperson, and I'm sure The Doctor would object vigorously to such a thing.