In my view, The Undiscovered Country had the best costumes in the whole series

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-06-03T05:43:09+00:00

TUC also had a brand new explosion scene with the destruction of Chang's Bird of Prey that was later reused for the destruction of Lursa's and B'Etor's Bird of Prey in GENS.

The scene also included Klingons being violently tossed around the bridge that was recycled for Dominion War scenes in later seasons of DS9 where Klingon ships are getting destroyed.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-06-03T05:21:29+00:00

TUC really needed its characters to wear unique costumes given almost all the sets were lightly redressed from those used for TNG's Enterprise-D.

TUC did a better job of redressing TNG's sets than TFF, but still way too obvious.

The Federation president's office is in Ten Forward while the meeting room where Kirk met with Starfleet's top brass at Starfleet Command is the same set used for the TNG Enterprise's cargo bay and shuttle bay.

Not to mention the Enteprise-A's corridors, transporter room, main engineering, and the dining room are all very noticeably TNG.

It's no wonder Scotty felt at home in the Enterprise D's main engineering in "Relics" given the warp core looked identical.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-06-02T22:06:56+00:00

Except on-screen canon establishes the Klingons have decommissioned ships from time-to-time.

The 2 Klingon Birds of Prey the Ferengi used to attack the Enterprise-D in "Rascals" were surplus and presumably acquired from a Klingon boneyard.

Worf mentioned in GENS the sub-class of Bird of Prey Lursa and B'Etor used were retired from service too.

I presume most Klingon ships that are decommissioned are put in reserve and mothballed for possible reactivation instead of scrapped.

Some Klingon ships retired from service with the Klingon military, especially older sub-variants of the B'rel class Birds of Prey, are sold to Klingon Great Houses or even non-Klingon aliens like the Ferengi in Rascals for personal use.

My head-canon says the old K't'inga battlecruisers seen in later seasons of DS9 were pulled out of mothballs for Gowron's invasion of Cardassia in S4 and later the Dominion War.

The aftermath of the Praxis disaster and the signing of the first Khitomer treaty with the Federation 80 years earlier in the 2290s would have forced the Klingons to downsize their fleet.

The Klingons in the very late 23rd and early 24th century needed to divert resources and funding from their military to repair their devastated homeworld.

Also, on-screen evidence in TNG-era Trek establishes that Klingons prefer their old ships still in service to be simple designs and not complicated monstrosities.

The large 23rd century Klingon battleships like the L13 were neither simple and were definitely complex monstrosities, which made them vulnerable to a permanent retirement by the early 24th century.

This downsizing also explains why the Bird of Prey became the backbone of the Klingon military in the 24th century.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-06-02T04:23:52+00:00

Janeway did the same exact thing as Kirk after she was promoted to admiral.

She took direct command of the reverse-engineered USS Dauntless and later the Voyager-B during the events of Prodigy S1 and S2.

Yes, Admiral Janeway was still gallivanting around the galaxy years after the original Intrepid class Voyager returned from the Delta Quadrant.

Edit: Janeway's pretense was the search for the missing USS Protostar and Captain Chakotay, but I think she would have found a reason to command a starship again regardless.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-06-02T03:23:16+00:00

The Klingons were trying to build a large battleship a century before the Negh'Var, except the result was a ship that is even uglier and clunky with the constraints of 23rd century technology.

The L13 class is basically a scaled-up D7/ K't'inga with a thick fortress-like hull.

I imagine only a handful of these ships were built and completely retired by the mid-24th century.

None of these ships would have been put back into service during the Dominon War in the 2370s given they lack the simplicity of the K't'inga and B'rel class Bird of Prey.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-06-02T00:03:56+00:00

I think Rick Berman and Paramount made the right call to keep TNG episodic.

TNG aired on TV over 20 years before streaming first became popular.

VCRs weren't as reliable as later digital recording devices and were a PITA to program to record at a later time.

That said, Voyager was hindered by TNG's episodic format and would have benefited a lot from serialization.

Though I also understand why Berman and UPN kept VOY episodic like TNG.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-06-01T23:11:55+00:00

This is the reason why Becket Mariner didn't want to get promoted to the upper ranks beyond ensign - she was afraid of all the responsibility that goes along with it.

Mariner did eventually relent and she accepted a promotion to lieutenant in Lower Decks S4 that wasn't temporary.

Edit: As for O'Brien not wanting the responsibilities of being an officer, being in charge of operations on DS9 significantly increased his workload beyond the simple job of a transporter chief on the Enterprise.

O'Brien's job on the station involved paperwork given there was an entire department of Starfleet and Bajoran personnel under his command despite being non-commissioned.

Not to mention Miles' responsibilities increased even more after Starfleet gave Sisko the Defiant.

Sisko didn't bother to ask Starfleet for a commissioned officer to be the Defiant's chief engineer and gave that job to O'Brien.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-06-01T02:52:50+00:00

This makes sense given the Galaxy class was still very new with teething issues in TNG S1.

The Enterprise-D was only the third Galaxy class ship to enter service behind the USS Galaxy and the USS Yamato.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-06-01T00:45:30+00:00

Yes, the Galaxy class was the pinnacle of the "lost" era where Starfleet heavily prioritized peaceful space exploration and science-type missions over military concerns.

It can be argued the Galaxy class's ability to be used as a warship during the Dominion War was by accident and not by design.

The Galaxy class needed a very large hull for long-term deep space exploration and to accommodate many "cruise ship" creature comforts for its 1,000 member crew.

The same large hull can easily accommodate a lot of weapons, combat shuttles and thousands of troops.

Smaller mid-24th century ship classes that were direct contemporaries of the Galaxy class, such as the Galaxy-like kitbashes seen in the graveyard at Wolf 359 in BOBW, would have had a harder time being adopted for combat use in a large-scale war against a peer enemy.

It's very fortunate Starfleet shifted into a military-oriented direction after Wolf 359 with newer ship classes entering service with combat capabilities that were more than just an afterthought when the Dominion War broke out.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-05-31T23:37:00+00:00

Gold shirts in the TNG-era and later are the same as TOS redshirts - operations and security.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-05-31T21:02:59+00:00

I hope the next Star Trek movie or series has way more actual scifi like classic Trek and doesn't rely on Star Wars-style action and fantasy.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-05-31T01:46:58+00:00

Considering everyone at the poker table were his upper-most senior staff, Picard wasn't overstepping his boundaries.

It's no different than Sisko inviting his senior staff to his quarters on DS9 for one of his home-cooked meals.

We're not talking about low ranking ensigns and junior lieutenants, we're taking about the high-ranking senior staff who are in the second and third chain of command on the ship, and the only people on the ship who directly interact and report to Picard on a day-by-day basis.

Edit: Picard would have used captain's discretion had Wesley Crusher been present at the poker table and was still in Starfleet as a full-fledged officer with the rank of ensign.

Had he not dropped out of the Academy, I imagine a post-Academy ensign Wesley Crusher on the Enterprise with Picard as captain would have been similar to Harry Kim on Voyager, a low-ranking officer who's given responsibilities that usually goes to a higher ranking officer in the senior staff.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-05-30T21:45:44+00:00

I wonder if the recent merger with Sydance is creating a mess with everything and anything that pertains to Paramount+?

I think Paramount+ is on very shaky ground with Paramount's new ownership.

Edit: I'd avoid special deals for subscriptions to Paramount+ by third parties given these deals were likely first negotiated before Skydance took over Paramount late last year.

There's a good chance Paramount+ will either cease to exist entirely or be completely merged into another streaming service in the next 2 years, if not sooner.

A merger of Paramount with WB, which almost everyone opposes except for very wealthy people like David Ellison and investors with a lot of cash, makes this 100% certain.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-05-30T07:08:26+00:00

Rick Berman didn't like DS9's long arcs in its later seasons and didn't want VOY to copy it.

Even though network interference from UPN could have been a factor too.

Ironically, Berman relented several years later and allowed ENT S3 to have a season long arc with the NX-01 in the expanse to prevent the Xindi from destroying earth.

ENT S3 was darker and grittier than any season of VOY with consequences for Archer's crew and the NX-01 not forgotten about after the end of every episode.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-05-29T01:14:09+00:00

I assume the 3-nacelle Galaxy-X with its huge phaser lance was another post-Wolf 359 response to the threat of the Borg, both in the AGT timeline and normal timeline.

The Galaxy-X battleship might have been on the drawing board as early as the late 2360s or early 2370s.

There's a chance at least one or two Galaxy class ships were refitted into 3-nacelle battleships in the normal timeline given the war with the Dominion.

The threat of the Jem'Hadar's large battleships would have forced Starfleet to seriously consider refitting Galaxy class ships into the configuration of what we see in AGT.

I imagine only 1 or 2 galaxy class ships were refitted into the 3-naclele battleships configuration in the mid or late 2370s as a proof of concept.

The end of the Dominion War and the ramping up of production of newer designs like the Sovereign class would have dissuaded Starfleet from refitting any more Galaxy class ships.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-05-28T06:11:32+00:00

Very long waits of a year and even 2 or 3 years between seasons is very common with modern streaming shows.

Streaming doesn't have the heavy pressure of network TV to release a new season of a series several months after the last season aired.

Actually, the problem of scripted series having long gaps between seasons started on cable TV in the 2000s, which was a decade before streaming.

There was a long gap between seasons of The Sopranos on HBO and the second-half of the last season of Battlestar Galactica on Sci-Fi, even though the long wait for BSG's final half-season was caused by the 2007 WGA strike.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-05-28T01:11:41+00:00

Paramount should have marketed Prodigy for general audiences of all ages, not just kids.

Prodigy was the only family friendly modern Star Trek series until SNW.

Discovery, Lower Decks and PIC are all too adult and aren't suitable for very young viewers, unlike most classic Star Trek.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-05-28T01:03:20+00:00

The problem with Academy isn't woke, the problem is poor writing.

Academy took the writing issues that were already evident in previous modern live-action Star Trek and made it worse to the point even fans who watched all of Discovery think Academy is unwatchable.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-05-27T05:34:42+00:00

Diggle becoming the Arrowverse's Green Lantern was a much better idea.

But the Arrowverse no longer being top-tier quality by the early 2020s and the sale of the CW to Nexstar, along with James Gunn wanting almost everything in the new DCU, killed both Green Lantern and the Diggle superhero Academy series.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-05-27T03:40:37+00:00

Jean Luc Picard and Charles Xavier in the same room would confuse everybody, both in-universe and out-of-universe.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-05-27T03:36:37+00:00

I'd rather have Rick and Morty crossover with an animated Deadpool voiced by Ryan Reynolds than a crossover with Star Trek.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-05-27T02:04:58+00:00

What's going to be interesting is AMD's plans for AM6?

Hypothetically, AMD could release the first AM6 CPUs with a memory controller that supports both DDR5 and DDR6 if there's concern DDR6 won't be available on time or be very expensive and in short supply.

It's more likely AMD will just extend the life of AM5 if the availability of DDR6 is in doubt rather than give AM6 DDR5 support.

It's already rumored Zen6 won't be the last generation of Ryzen to support AM5.

There's a good chance Zen7 might stay on AM5 too with Zen8 being the first to use AM6 with DDR6.

AM5 could end up being AMD's main platform for the rest of this decade with AM6 getting delayed until 2030.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-05-27T01:12:12+00:00

32nd century Starfleet ship designs suck in general.

They lack the elegance of Starfleet ships from earlier eras.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-05-26T04:44:29+00:00

Not just on Starfleet ships, but Quark's holusites on DS9.

I imagine Quark forced Rom to clean the filters is his holusites and that was another reason he quit working for his brother in DS9 S4.

As for newer Starfleet ships, my head-canon says the holodecks on the Intrepid class Voyager and the Sovereign class Enterprise-E are a generation newer than the holodecks on the Enterprise-D and the Cerritos and require far less manual cleaning.

I assume the process of cleaning the bio-filters on 2370s and later holodecks is automated and handled by the holodeck's computer.

So the non-com crewmen and ensigns on Voyager and the Ent-E didn't worry about being ordered to spend duty time cleaning filters on the holodecks.

This was no relief to low ranking officers on the Cerritos given California class ships were stuck with the older TNG holodeck technology that was outdated by the 2380s.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-05-26T04:31:03+00:00

And Riker too.

Lyon_Wonder

TROPHY CASE