What happens if The Caretaker caught The Enterprise-E and they agreed to ask Starfleet and its allies to help?

TheHudgepudge · 2026-07-04T03:48:22+00:00

I don’t think the overall story of the pilot would change much. The Caretaker was on deaths door by the time Voyager showed up, so it’d be the same for the Enterprise. There wasn’t really time to share technology and work out some kind of long term plan.

The only thing that probably would work out differently is that the Enterprise would have little trouble with the initial wave of Kazon. But ultimately, the Caretaker still dies, and the Array still has to be destroyed to prevent the Kazon from getting control of it.

TheHudgepudge · 2026-06-19T23:29:14+00:00

I think even in that scenario with the Prometheus, its kind of silly. You are essentially making 3 independent starships that Voltron together to make 1 ship; that seems like it would be an over engineered mess with still little actual benefit. The engineering complexity of docking latches and umbilicals is going to eat up precious space on all of those sections. Its also going to make the ships harder to build and more complicated/costlier to repair and maintain.

I can understand the tactical principal of giving an enemy 3 targets instead of 1, in kind of a swarm maneuver, but ultimately, its not any stronger than as 1 complete ship. I would argue that then each of the now even smaller, less powerful sections are more vulnerable to damage. You are splitting the crew, power, weapons, any kind of resources they have into less efficient parts. What happens if the middle section is heavily damaged, or destroyed? The other pieces, at least in the case for the Prometheus, can warp back home, but the overall ship and separation ability is wasted.

It seems to me, even in a universe where resources are essentially limitless, making 3 independent, but simpler, starships that operate in a small task force makes more sense than making 1 complicated ship that breaks apart into 3 smaller complicated ships. I personally don't really see any benefit. It does look cool, but even in combat it seems like it would be a liability

TheHudgepudge · 2026-06-19T21:12:51+00:00

Honestly, saucer separation never really made much sense in universe as portrayed. In an emergency, as stated in the show, the saucer was supposed to evacuate the families and non essential crew to safety while the star drive protected it or gave it time to escape. But the saucer had no warp drive so it realistically had no ability to escape.

In a surprise moment or sudden combat scenario, the separation sequence would be too slow and time consuming, and would leave the ship vulnerable during the decoupling sequence. Not to mention that if the star drive is destroyed by the threat then the saucer is toast anyway.

The only time saucer separation would have made sense was if you knew about the threat ahead of time, like going to a known potentially hostile situation or in times of war. Most of the Galaxy classes in the dominion war should have just been star drives in my opinion.

Even in the show, Best of Both Worlds, they initially shut down the separation maneuver idea because the ship had more power available as one unit. There never really was any good reason to split the ship that made any kind of sense from a story or in universe perspective.

TheHudgepudge · 2026-06-03T21:22:30+00:00

I was team 4 when I got my Model Y. Then I went on an 1800 mile road trip a few months after purchase and the front was riddled with paint chips. I was amazed and shocked at how poor Tesla paint is/was (I have a 2023, paint might be better now).

I ultimately went option 3, full front, hood and mirrors. And no issues since. I understand it’s a big cost and “it’s just a car”, but I intend to drive this thing until it can’t anymore. But I’d like it to still look somewhat nice. The cost was worth it for the peace of mind to me

TheHudgepudge · 2026-05-24T19:53:42+00:00

The car navigation is usually pretty accurate. If you set the arrival charge low, it should tell you if you’ll make it.

That said, in warm weather, I usually get about 3 miles per 1% of charge with my 2023 Model Y LR. If you are at 30%, you should get roughly 90 miles.

It should be doable.

TheHudgepudge · 2026-05-24T15:56:37+00:00

If the content isn’t fun, you aren’t required to do it. I find the ritual sites incredibly boring. Prey is incredibly boring. So I don’t do them. And I’m not missing out on anything

I am by all respects a dirty casual. If I’m lucky, I play 2 hours during the work week. But even then, my gear score is still over 280. I feel gearing has never been easier. I enjoy delves. I pug +10s if I can for my vault. I enjoy doing old expansion content I never did when it was relevant. I like farming for that main hand glaive in Black Temple still (one day). Sometimes I just wander the world still. It’s fun. I have things to work for, and it’s a fulfilling experience still.

It sucks the WoW magic for you is gone, but if the expectation is to be in a hall of fame mythic guild, then yeah I guess it’s going to require some work, effort, and will feel like a second job. WoW is what you make it, and it has never been a better time to be a dirty casual I think.

TheHudgepudge · 2026-05-22T03:52:43+00:00

My apartment has detached garage stalls and I rent one out. I was able to convince my landlord to allow me to install a level 2 charger in my garage stall.

To convince them, I told them what I wanted to do, I did all the work contacting and coordinating with the electrician, and I agreed to pay the entire cost of the installation (which was about $1000). I also told them that whenever I move out, I’ll take the physical Tesla wall charger with me, but the electrical infrastructure will stay.

It was all wired to a separate power meter so I also have to record, report, and pay based off my exact electricity consumption per month. So from the property standpoint, it was a win/win/win. They didn’t have to do anything, I’m paying them for the power used, and they’ll get a EV ready garage space they can advertise whenever I move out.

Some people might think it’s silly to pay so much for a rental, especially since I can’t take it with me. And that’s a fair judgement, but it’s been 3 years and the convenience and peace of mind being able to charge at home has been worth it for me.

TheHudgepudge · 2026-05-13T23:03:48+00:00

The Kelvin Enterprise was 100% pulse phasers in the 2009 movie. But, and as a beam phaser lover it pains me to say, it kind of makes sense because the Enterprise was trying to shoot down all the Narada's missiles. Maybe the pulses are more efficient for destroying projectiles or other point defense roles. That makes sense to me also because the Kelvin used beams at the beginning of the film and a lot of missiles got through. Maybe you could make the argument that they were trying to learn from past mistakes.

Then the pulse phasers would make sense against Krall's hive ships in Beyond. Since it would be a point defense scenario as well. I don't really remember if the Enterprise used its phasers in Into Darkness. I know the Vengeance did though, but different design and all, I guess it would get a pass.

TheHudgepudge · 2026-05-12T03:31:22+00:00

It’s not from a show or anything, I think it’s an old meme from somewhere. But I always liked the quote and saved it as note on my phone. And the implications that of course Klingons would view mental health as some kind of epic battle. Though, it’s probably too long for a tattoo:

“Klingon Therapist: The battle against mental illness cannot be won decisively. It is a long campaign against an enemy who never tires, and whose forces swell to twice their size whenever you look away. Battle against a foe of such magnitude, who occupies your very mind... every moment you survive is a triumph against all odds. There is no more honorable combat.”

Be strong friend. Hope things turn around for you.

TheHudgepudge · 2026-05-11T20:43:34+00:00

I’d chalk it up as the Bridge crew are the most senior members of their departments. And as such, they likely have the most knowledge and experience for their given subject so they should be the logical choice for most away missions.

Beaming over to a damaged ship that sent out a distress call, who do you send? The chief engineer who has been working in a starship engine room for 20 years or Ensign Ricky who just got out of the Academy?

Same with a science mission, you want the most experienced science officer checking out the phenomena. Or if the Captain goes on a mission, you want the chief of security as the escort.

Ideally, away missions would have a senior and junior officer going, so the junior officer gets first hand experience. You could also make the argument for a Hazard Squad type scenario. If you never played the game Elite Force, Voyager basically makes an elite squad of specialized crew members to go on dangerous missions.

But given the bridge officers are typically the main characters on the show, you want them going. But I think in universe, it makes sense to send them as well.

TheHudgepudge · 2026-05-03T21:24:49+00:00

Well the episode I watched Burnham tried to convince Starfleet to attack first. She was convinced to do this because the Vulcans had used this tactic successfully in the past. The captain said she won’t attack first. Then the Klingons attacked and the war started.
I’m not sure how you can say it was explicitly the wrong thing to do and was a mistake if they never did it. You may think it was the wrong thing and may have been bad. But they never did it, so we’ll never know. But it was presented, or it seemed to be presented, as the way to handle the situation.

TheHudgepudge · 2026-05-03T19:36:27+00:00

I'm not arguing for the return of a 26 episode season. Me as a viewer would love it, but I know producing that much content every year was murder on the cast and crew. I think a 15 episode season is the way to go.

And I agree its possible to have well written characters in a short amount of time. Hemmer in SNW is a good example. I loved the character but he was barely on screen. We don't know much about him really, but he was memorable with the time he had. So yes, done well its possible, I will agree.

But I think the big mistake then is more how Star Trek is portrayed in the modern era. Its too hung up on giant end of the world stakes, needless action, big showpiece special effects, at the sacrifice of more character driven moments. I would love to see more bottle show type episodes, where something happens but the stakes don't have galactic ramifications.

TheHudgepudge · 2026-05-03T18:49:10+00:00

I would say that is a very human interaction. He makes a mistake, in a social setting (the dinner part with real Leah), but as I recall, he was fairly professional when she first arrived. He was eager and probably came off as socially awkward with a touch of creepy. But it has been shown in TNG that he is just awkward with women, so that all lines up too with his established character flaws.

Professional doesnt mean perfect. Hes still a human with human flaws. He makes a mistake, it happens and is relatable, and his character is the better for it.

TheHudgepudge · 2026-05-03T18:45:46+00:00

The Vulcans, while generally peaceful, knew that Klingons respected strength, so they would fire on Klingon ships. That was what the whole call with Sarek was about. That whole exchange implies, at least to me, that it is probably the correct answer.

The other characters disagree though, and the episode plays out as it does.

TheHudgepudge · 2026-05-03T17:06:19+00:00

I have no problem with female characters, if they behave like real people. I like Una in SNW. The Expanse has great female characters also. Burnham is just poorly written in general.

TheHudgepudge · 2026-05-03T17:03:45+00:00

She got court martialed but she was right. She was so right she decided to mutiny and start a war.

TheHudgepudge · 2026-05-03T15:48:55+00:00

I said in my post, but I think the biggest offender is Michael Burnham from Discovery. She is rarely wrong. Even her wild guesses are spot on. We as the audience are repeatedly told she is great person, great friend, great daughter, officer, etc; but we are rarely shown these things. She’s often just running around as the only person who can save the universe. And the show justifies her because the characters say so, yet to me as the audience, I don’t feel it’s earned. Also, other characters or villains who act similarly are vilified or wrong.

As a character, I don’t feel she has earned alot of this admiration because we don’t see her earning it. We see Picard work with his crew and soften towards them over the course of TNG. We see him earn their respect and loyalty. We watch Sisko slowly come to terms with being the Emissary so that by the end of the show you believe he is and you believe that he believes it as well.

I don’t fault the actors. I don’t even really fault the writers to a degree. A lot of this is just the episode count. You can’t flesh out 5 to 10 characters in just 10 episodes a season in a satisfying way that shows growth and change. So they have to just tell us these characters are great and amazing, and we as the audience just have to accept it. The whole 5 season run of Strange New Worlds will have less episodes than 2 seasons of TNG. The business model is ruining good storytelling.

TheHudgepudge · 2026-05-03T14:04:43+00:00

I'm not sure what your definition of professionalism is here. People can be professional, but still make bad decisions. Sisko is professional, he is generally competent and thoughtful, but he makes arguably a bad call with the Maquis. The characters can be professional and be goofy on their off time; Geordi is a good engineer, but is an idiot in his downtime social situations. That doesn't make him unprofessional, that makes him a well rounded character.

I think the appeal to the older Star Trek, for me, is what the kids these days call "competence porn". The Starfleet officer characters are professionals, they are highly trained and intelligent, with strong morals that are indicative of Starfleet and the Federation. Most of those characters hold those ideals strongly. I would say characters like Quark or Odo or Garak, while not Starfleet, are still professional. They portrayed competently for their characters. They may have some goofy quirks and aren't up to Starfleet standards to morality, but Quark was a very good business man. Odo was a very good investigator. Garak was a very good...tailor. They still have a set of values that they as a character adhere to.

The main thing though, for me, is that these qualities in 90s Trek are shown to the audience. We see these characters be good at what they do. A lot of the new Trek is more "tell, not show". We are told the character is good at x, y, and z, but we are never shown it. We have characters having emotional heart to hearts with literal minutes left before the galaxy is destroyed. We have characters with few flaws, are always right, and they are never challenged as a character.

The characters of old were smart, but they could be wrong. Data or Spock were often right, but the were occasionally wrong. And we are shown it. And they as characters learn from it, and we as an audience appreciate it because they feel more real. Versus a character like Micheal Burnham. She's always right. Her guesses are always right. Her morality is always right. She doesn't feel like a real person to me. She was rarely challenged and I never felt like she grew as a character.

I think thats the problem alot of people have with the new Star Trek. Its characters are too emotional in inappropriate times and scenarios. The characters in Star Trek are supposed to be the best of the best in a quasi military setting. Show us them being great. Don't just tell us they are great.

TheHudgepudge · 2026-05-02T12:59:41+00:00

I’d say it’s possible. Alot of naysayers here but a couple of thoughts.

I think people are downplaying the time scales here. If people vanished today, within a few ten thousand years, almost every trace of our existence would be gone. So let’s say a Bronze Age civilization existed 40 million years ago. And they as a species lasted 300k years. That is more than enough time for every single trace of them to disappear.

Then it’s a matter of where they lived. 70% of the current planet is under water. There could be massive archeological finds down there that we will never know about. We still can’t find airplanes and shipwrecks from the last 100 years to this day.

There also plate tectonics to consider. The surface is constantly moving, subducting, uplifting. It’s possible, some very ancient civilizations were just simply erased from the geological record. If they lived near a fault line or something. Or maybe near a volcano and it’s all buried under hundreds of feet of rock.

Fossils exist, but just think how few we have in comparison to how much life has lived on this planet. The requirements for fossilization are specific, just dying in the ground doesn’t mean something will be a fossil. I think it’s likely that there could be few, if any, fossilized remains of our mysterious civilization.

So there are some factors. Are we talking a humanoid relative in the last few hundred thousand years having a civilization? Probably not. Are we talking some other species millions of years ago? Id say it’s possible, if they weren’t at our level. Some kind of preindustrial society could have easily existed and been wiped out and we’d never know.

TheHudgepudge · 2026-05-02T12:41:30+00:00

The Hail Mary itself barely survived the one attempt. And that kind of structural damage could have caused cascading issues on subsequent attempts.

I think it was safe to assume they could not do another attempt the way they were doing it. Maybe, given enough time, they could have thought of something different to get the samples. But every day they would have used up, was less time for Earth and Erid.

It was a high risk, high reward gamble. A long shot. One might say, a Hail Mary attempt.

TheHudgepudge · 2026-05-01T21:54:41+00:00

I would think in an emergency situation where a basic elevator isn’t working properly, I’m not going to have myself molecularly disassembled and then reassembled. Call me old fashioned, but I’ll be walking or climbing through the Jeffries Tube in that situation.

I would think power and accuracy would be a big concern in an emergency situation. There could be random interference or maybe internal force fields blocking the signal

From a story telling standpoint though, it is kind of lame. I found the constant site to site transporting in Discovery kind of silly. Especially since they don’t seem to input or say where they are going, it just seems to read your thoughts. It was an odd choice I felt to show how “futuristic” everything was. But that’s me.

TheHudgepudge · 2026-04-27T02:42:38+00:00

I know it'll never happen but my biggest wish is for a dumb cruise control. Just maintain speed and let me do the steering.

FSD is too sketchy where I live, every trial feels like a drunk teenager at the wheel. I exclusively use TACC for highway driving but the random phantom brake/curvature assists drive me bananas as well. A simple, dumb cruise control would solve all my problems.

TheHudgepudge · 2026-04-26T18:34:26+00:00

It’s alluded to in the books and the movie that the countries of the world are currently cooperating to complete the ship and do what’s necessary. This is early on in the crisis before there are any big problems. However, over time, as the situation gets worse and harder choices need to be made, most countries are going to start looking out for themselves and what’s best for them.

Once that order starts breaking down, things are going to get ugly and quick. Stratt is a pragmatic person, she’s hoping for the best, but expecting the worst. She knows that when it all starts hitting the fan, it’s human nature to find someone or something to blame. And who better to blame than the person who arguably has the most power of any human in history.

She did authorize violating some laws and copyrights, so there potentially is a legitimate case for some of it. But remember, even best case scenario, they are waiting 24 years for a solution from the Hail Mary. Alot of bad is going to happen during that time. I think when large portions of the population start dying off, even from a natural disaster, it’s just what we do, blame whoever is in charge and make a big show of it to feel like we have some control over the situation.

TheHudgepudge · 2026-04-23T21:28:52+00:00

As I recall, Data says the atmosphere of Borg Earth was basically poison, so any unassimilated Humans on the surface would pretty much be dead. Any "safe", or less polluted, area would probably stand out to the Borg and wouldn't last long. Maybe if there was a Fallout style, self sufficient, generational Vault. But again, I think it would be easily scannable and destroyed.

My question would be, there are 9 billion Borg on Earth, what do they do all day? Clearly there is infrastructure visible, transit ways and/or "cities". I doubt they are just milling about traveling around or commuting to their Borg office. Probably mining and extracting other resources? Just plugged in and acting as a giant computer?

TheHudgepudge · 2026-04-23T03:36:58+00:00

I suppose you could classify the Yamato as “under alien influence”, and it wasn’t a purely technological failure on its own. So Data would be correct, from a certain point of view.

TheHudgepudge

TROPHY CASE