Star Trek Social Club

Lear’s senior thesis was an examination of the Federation ban on genetic engineering and the blurred lines when it comes to Augmentation, using the expression “God is in the grey areas,” a variation on the expression “God is in the details.” The phrase is attributed to various people, including Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Gustave Flaubert, and is usually taken to mean that when attention is given to details big rewards can be derived. A related expression is “the Devil is in the details”, meaning that while things may seem simple on the surface, an examination of the details will reveal complications. It’s more likely that Lear means the latter rather than the former.

Lear also mentions discrimination against hundred of people with small percentages of Augment DNA, many of them Starfleet officers. Known Starfleet officers with Augmented genetics include SNW’s La’An Noonien Singh, although to what extent she has Augmented abilities is unclear, and Una Chin-Riley, although she is not a descendant of Earth Augments but is augmented due to her Illyrian background - both as of 2261. Dal R’El (PRO) was a Human Augment hybrid, and as a result was initially barred from entering Starfleet Academy in 2385. The 2370s would see Julian Bashir (DS9: “Doctor Bashir, I Presume”) and the members of the Jack Pack (DS9: “Statistical Probabilities”).

Tuvok expresses skepticism about Starfleet officers judging people with Augment ancestry that they do not control but Lear says he’d be surprised. She may be referring to incidents like Chin-Riley’s court martial in 2260 for concealing her Illyrian heritage (SNW: “Ad Astra Per Aspera”).

Tuvok also thinks Lear isn’t telling him the whole story. He says Vulcans find it incredibly difficult to lie, and many are incapable of it, and that this somehow this makes them sensitive to others lying.

Tuvok’s admission that lying is difficult for Vulcans rather than impossible is probably as close as we can get to a fair formulation of the “Vulcans never lie” myth. If we accept Vulcan logic as being devoted to the principle of c’thia, or “reality-truth”, an acceptance of reality as it is, as opposed of what we want it to be, then one can see why it becomes difficult as a matter of principle to deviate from it. Most times when we see Vulcans lie it is usually for what they consider the greater good, or justified as such, with Spock being a prime example. Even Tuvok himself lied when he went undercover in the Maquis (VOY: “Caretaker”).

McGivers and Khan’s as-yet-unborn daughter is named Kali, the Hindu goddess associated with time, death and destruction, although Western depictions of her mostly emphasize the latter qualities, mainly because of her association with the Thuggee cult.

Barolo wine is a red wine from the Piedmont region of France, made from nebbiolo grapes. The bottle in Ivan’s possession comes from a warlord in Kashmir, at the Northern tip of India, bordering Afghanistan.

Ursula’s “If you strike at a king, you best not miss,” is a combination of a saying attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson (“When you strike at a king, you must kill him.”) and the more famous pop culture formulation from The Wire (“You come at the king, you best not miss.”). Ivan’s retort, “I never miss,” is also what James Bond quips when he despatches Elektra King in The World is Not Enough.

The song the young Augments are listening to on Ivan’s boombox is “Your Touch” by Particle House, released in 2021. There were several references in previous episodes to this still being a timeline where Khan and his people left Earth in 1996, but if we are to take this as accurate, perhaps we are in the timeline where the Eugenics Wars took place in the 2020s (SNW: “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”).

We know that McGivers eventually died because of the Ceti eels, and we are now told how she became infected.

Ivan’s scream of “Khan!” is of course echoing the infamous scene where Kirk also screams Khan’s name in ST II.

I’m pretty much on board with the idea that Lear is Kali. The sums work out (she would be around 25-26 years old), as well as why Delmonda would hand her McGivers’ logs and Lear’s interest in how the Federation deals with people with Augment ancestry. They could of course throw us a twist, but it’d be a cheap one given the build-up.

As Marla slips away, Khan quotes from the last stanza of Kubla Khan: “A damsel with a dulcimer / In a vision I once saw: / It was an Abyssinian maid / And on her dulcimer she played, / Singing of Mount Abora. / Could I revive within me / Her symphony and song, / To such a deep delight ’twould win me, / That with music loud and long, / I would build that dome in air…”

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/post/559351

I rushed to book my room.

Here’s a new interview with the main cast and Alex Kurtzman.

It seems to have been done in Toronto where season two is in production.

The title may be a reference to the Aristotelian concept of the common good, although that has been used to justify utilitarian positions, where the correct decision is deemed to be one that benefits the greatest number of members of a given community. Of course, that means that the minority may bear the brunt of the disadvantages.

The synopsis of the episode confirms the spelling of Elborean and Delmonda.

McGivers’ log says it’s the 208th day of the exile, which means about a month has elapsed since the last episode.

Delmonda says a “pandem” is “a collection of minds bonded beyond convenience or aptitude”. Given the literary proximity of Khan’s story to Milton’s Paradise Lost, one can’t help but think of “pandemonium”, which was Milton’s name for Hell, or “the place of all demons” (pan + demon).

The deception that Delmonda detects from Khan is of course his spin on how he came to Ceti Alpha V - not by choice, but because Kirk exiled them there.

Joachim calls the Elboreans “Elbs”. Erica says he’s the best fisherman of their group and the first one to chart the “Sunless Sea”, taking the name from McGivers’ quoting of the opening of Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”: “Where Alph, the sacred river, ran / Through caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless sea.”

Ursula says her and Madot’s baby is due in eight more weeks (two months), which is consistent with it being about seven months since the start of the exile, since the baby was conceived about a week into the exile (KHA: “Paradise”).

Khan says the four most terrifying words in the English language are, “We come in peace.” In DIS: “The Vulcan Hello”, T’Kuvma exhorts his people to “lock arms against those [the Federation] whose fatal greeting is… ‘We come in peace.’”

McGivers alludes to the fairy tale of “Hansel and Gretel” when she says “no wandering through the caverns without breadcrumbs”.

As noted at the start of “Paradise”, in 2287 (six years prior to 2293) an “anonymous source” (or so she told the Starfleet Civilian Resource Allocation Committee) gave Lear McGivers’ logs recorded while on Ceti Alpha V. She now reveals that it was Delmonda.

Currently region-locked - hopefully they'll fix it soon.

This is a new promotional site for SFA - it looks like they've put a fair bit of work into it.

There may be updates following the NYCC panel later today.