Good day, fellow Daystrom researchers. I would like to put forth a hypothetical scenario to explain some interesting and unexplained cross-cultural exchanges in early Human-Klingon relations.

“You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon."

Following the explosion of Qo’noS’s moon, Praxis, in 2293, an attempt at peace talks with the Federation was made. While an escort mission of the Klingon Empire’s Chancellor Gorkon to Earth by Federation Starfleet Captains James T. Kirk and Spock later that year is more well known for the assassination of Gorkon that occurred the next day, a curious quote arose out of the first meeting between Gorkon, Kirk, and Spock left many who came across it scratching their heads.

Why is it that a Klingon head of state, only 142 years after first contact with humanity, claimed one of humanity's most celebrated writers as a product of his own culture? Was it a simple joke from the chancellor, who was noted for his rather un-Klingon dry wit?

I think not, based on Gorkon’s Chief of Staff (and one of the conspirators in Gorkon's assassination) noted penchant to quote Shakespeare. In fact, over the course of the events surrounding the meeting, the assassination, and the investigation of the plot by the crew of the Enterprise (NCC-1701-A), Chang was noted to have quoted from Hamlet, Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, and The Tempest. This was a man who had greatly loved the works of Shakespeare, which were by a writer from a species he felt a particular animosity toward, a sentiment common amongst late 23rd century Klingons that fought the Federation in the Klingon War of the 2250s and the various border skirmishes between Starfleet and the Empire following that conflict.

It seems within the realm of possibility, in this researcher’s opinion, that Chang genuinely believed in the mythology of “Wil’yam Sheq'spir,” the Klingon playwright.

“taH pagh taHbe…”

“To be or not to be…” - Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare. Or, as literally translated from The Tragedy of Khamlet, Son of the Emperor of Qo'noS by Wil’yam Sheq’spir, “To continue or not to continue…”

With spotty records on the subject of how Klingons came to adopt Shakespeare as one of their own, or if they truly did, we delve into the realm of speculation. Many would choose not to continue in this line of questioning, but I couldn't help myself.

Humanity's official first contact with the Klingon Empire occurred in the Broken Bow incident of 2151, when Captain Jonathan Archer and the crew of the United Earth Starfleet ship, Enterprise (NX-01), returned the stranded Klingon courrier, Klaang, to Qo’noS.

Historians of galactic history have noted over the years that “First” contact is not always the first contact.

The Borg - Officially, the Federation’s first contact with the Borg occurred in 2365. However, records show that species known to the Federation, such as the El-Aurians, were aware of the Borg as early as 2293.

Starfleet even authorized a clandestine research mission into rumors of the Borg in the 2250s, resulting in the first assimilation of humans by the Borg (Magnus, Erin, and Annika Hansen/Seven of Nine).

The Ferengi - While the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) officially made contact in 2364, hostile incidents occurred between Starfleet ships and Ferengi marauders in the 2350s.

Researchers examining the logs of Archer’s Enterprise (NX-01) noted an incident in 2151 where a small group of Ferengi pirates attempted to hijack Archer’s ship, well outside of the area of space the Ferengi were known to operate at the time. However, the hijackers never revealed themselves as Ferengi during these events. Archer’s crew noted them as an unknown species at the time.

Even more curious was the name “Ferengi” appearing in then-classified documents surrounding the “Roswell incident” of 1947, in the old Earth nation-state, the United States. Later research found logs by Constable Odo of the Starfleet outpost, Deep Space 9, reporting a time travel incident involving himself and three Ferengi nationals. However, records of that incident are spotty as those involved were not Federation citizens and not subject to investigation by the Federation's Department of Temporal Investigation.

What do these have to do with Klingons and Shakespeare? These examples illustrate how first contact can be a murky thing.

Humanity had been ranging out into the galaxy for decades prior to 2151, in colony ships, cargo ships, and early exploratory missions. Due to the length of interstellar travel at low warp speed and lack of long range subspace networks that enabled easy access to large media libraries, human travellers at the time carried their own personal libraries with them.

With all of that out of the way, here is my hypothesis on the series of events that led to the invention of Wil’yam Sheq'spir.

In the early-to-mid 22nd century, merchants on a United Earth cargo ship or independent merchant vessel made contact with a member of the Klingon merchant caste that had ranged well out of known Klingon territory at the time. A member of the merchant caste seems the most likely, as early contact between humans and members of the Klingon warrior caste almost universally resulted in distrust, hostility, or outright violence.

After crossing initial language barriers, either via extended contact or a third-party interpreter, an exchange of media occurred between these human and Klingon parties.

The Klingon(s) receiving the media stumbled upon Shakespeare’s plays. The themes of these plays struck a chord with the Klingons reading them. Klingons have a long, rich history of stage plays and opera.

These Klingon(s) saw an opportunity, with minimal rewrites, these plays could be adapted through a lens of Klingon culture and history. Earth’s own art history shows adaptations of Shakespeare into different versions, such as 20th century filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s feudal Japanese-themed adaptations of MacBeth and King Lear into Throne of Blood and Ran, respectively.

These plays were then published to Klingon media under the rather uninspired pseudonym, Wil’yam Sheq'spir. The first name and surname suggests someone outside of the warrior caste as the “author”.

The plays gained in popularity over the next century, eventually leading to even members of Klingon leadership believing the story of Shakespeare's plays being a Klingon invention.

A Total Eclipse of the Heart

Another curious byproduct of this early culture exchange between humans and Klingons is the curious popularity of Klingon covers of 20th century Earth “power ballads.” A notable example is Bonnie Tyler's 1983 song, “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” A Klingon-language cover of this song was popular in karaoke bars and media stations across the Alpha Quadrant in the 2260s, well before the more extensive cultural exchanges between the Federation and Klingon Empire that began in the 24th century. Like Wil’yam Sheq'spir, the exact origins of these translated works is unknown. I see this as further evidence of early Klingon-Human contact and cultural exchange resulting in human media being translated and passed off as a Klingon work.

Perhaps future researchers will uncover records that tell us more about these early exchanges. For now, this is all speculation on my part. Still, this seems a likely scenario to explain this curious Klingon-Human cultural phenomenon.

(Author's Note: Thanks to any of you who read and enjoyed my dumbass ADHD thought process that kept me awake after watching Strange New Worlds, S04E03, "Human Best Friend".)

Artificial Gravity is a weird one in fiction, because it's such a basic technology thrown into almost all science fiction that isn't aiming for near-future or hard-scifi, but it never ever gets explained.

How does it work?
Reliably, and very well thanks.

Star Trek though.. We have an excuse baked into the franchise.

Warp Technology works by bending spacetime into bubbles and using them to slide across Einstein's nightmares like a proverbial slidey thing.

My headcanon (sometimes mentioned in previous posts) about Warp-tech is that it's essentially Subspace Induction.

You have a magnetic loop full of charged exotic plasma, and as it moves, it churns subspace, which in turn produces distortions in our familiar space-time.
Like spinning a propeller underwater and seeing the water churn.

Churn subspace in the right ways, and you can shape spacetime into bubbles and give physicists the faster-than-light-finger as you cruise by.

Spacetime being bent though is known to have a 1:1 relationship with gravity.

Gravity is the effect of large amounts of mass bending spacetime.
Subspace however bends spacetime without mass.
Like how if you drop a rock into a pond it makes a big splash, bigger rock, bigger splash, but if you stick a propellor into that pond you can spray it like a hose.

So here's my thesis on how artificial gravity works.

You have a coil under the deck full of charged exotic warp-plasma, perhaps some low-grade stuff you wouldn't normally use for propulsion.
You top it off with extra charge regularly, and you keep it spinning around in its magnetic containment tokomak and that's pretty much enough.
It spins, it churns subspace locally around it, and the result is space-time being bent into a downward gradient towards it, which is functionally gravity.

This system has some elegancies built into it, because it's a very low-energy system by starship standards.
You just have to keep the plasma circulating and charged, and it doesn't lose charge quickly, warp-plasma only interacts fairly weakly with subspace or it'd have awkward effects if you picked up a canister of it.
A decent backup power-supply can keep the plasma charged and circulating for days or weeks without access to the main power-train of the ship.

In star trek we sometimes have distress buoys, missing ships etc but I haven't observed any search methods; with maritime SAR there are area (creeping line, parallel track) & datum (sector, expanding square) searches but, to borrow from Wrath of Khan, this is "two dimensional thinking". How could SAR patterns be conducted in three dimensions, this could be applied to all settings in space?

It was the last of its kind - but why? Did it hunt its prey to extinction, they did have an apocalyptic civil war? Was it hunted? Crater talked about the buffalo, which was almost hunted to extinction. Given the ruins that Crater was investigating, it was probably the civilization that had destroyed itself and probably as a result the salt creatures went extinct as well.

The phaser shot did nothing but tickle the Gorn in the EV suit. Although, to be fair, we’ve seen Starfleet EV suits protect Airiam from multiple phaser shots in Discovery.

In a later episode, a Gorn armored vest withstood multiple hits from a phaser rifle set to kill. La’an had to run up to the Gorn and shoot it in an unprotected fleshy spot instead.

When Seven talked about the Borg Queen going back to First Contact she called it a predestination paradox: she had already gone back in time so had to go back again. Basically, the Borg being present at First Contact was part of the established primary timeline.

So, was Sela always part of the timeline as well? Or is that an example of the primary timeline being altered?

Do you think, for example, that most Romulans view the Federation in roughly the same way a particularly cynical Soviet citizen might view Western alliances and cultural exchanges during the cold war? I.e. They cannot possibly be telling the truth that they instrinsically value "lesser" cultures and pretending so is merely a means of alliance building for future domination

Do Klingons tend to understand that the Federation's power comes partly from the technological advances made possible by its culture of academic openness and curiosity or is it more common to believe that were temporarily embarassed by their defeat at the hands of the Federation and would have were it not for infighting and betrayal?

Do you think that Klingons and Romulans tend to view gestures of good faith from the Federation (hamstringing itself by not using cloaking technology in the Treaty of Algeron, not using physical violence as punishment for bad officers and traitors, punishing its own officers like Captain Maxwell for mistreating non-federation people, attending to the distress calls and bids for asylum of people from enemy cultures and not mistreating them like with Admiral Jarrok, sincerely attempting to respect the authority and the jurisdiction of cultures they could easily impose their will on like the Brekkians and Malcorians etc.) as weakness or naivete to be exploited?

Do you think Bajorans tend the view the Federation's principles as insincere or that they're sincere but the Federation tends fail and apply them imperfectly and in a selective manner to the detriment of the Bajoran cause?

Do you think that cultures have a tendency to view the people of the Federation as better or worse or more or less adherent to its stated principles than their government?

Do you think this varies significantly by the level of their society that a person occupies and the level of real contact they have with the Federation?

Any insights you have about how someone from another group or culture views the Federation are welcome.

Fan-made identifications of key Federation member species' homeworlds (40 Eridani = Vulcan, Procyon = Andor, 61 Cygni = Tellar) have already been made canon over a period of years. Information given in various Star Trek shows now lets us do the same for another key species, the Trill.

The real-world star system HD 176051, located 48.5 light years from Earth, is the best fit among real-world star systems for the location of the Trill system from information given in alpha-canon and semi-alpha canon sources.

Basic parameters

The semi-alpha canon work, endorsed in this case by Memory Alpha, says the Trill system is a binary system consisting of a spectral class G primary and a class K secondary. Similarly, the semi-alpha canon Star Trek Encyclopedia identifies the Trill homeworld with the planet “Trillius Prime” mentioned in the Enterprise episode “Fortunate Son.”

Meanwhile, information in Star Trek: Enterprise episodes “Carpenter Street” and, again, “Fortunate Son” gives us constraints on the distance to Trill. “Carpenter Street” is very clear: before 2153, no Earth starship had traveled more than 90 light years from Earth. If the ECS Horizon visited this system in Travis Mayweather’s youth, it must be less than 90 light years from Sol. “Fortunate Son” is more ambiguous: we are told only that it took the Horizon, a freighter with top speed warp 2, three years to get there. While Memory Alpha poses the calculation as simply “warp 2 is 8 times the speed of light, therefore in 3 years the Horizon was at most 24 light years from Earth” the situation is not so simple in its full context. Firstly, it is not at all clear that the Horizon started from Earth. Secondly, as we see in “Broken Bow” with the Enterprise’s swift journey to Rigel, the warp speeds given by the default formula are in practice, at best, guesses. We can only really say from “Fortunate Son” that the Trill homeworld is at least 24 light years from some starting point, but that starting point may not have been Earth exactly but rather some other system in the broad vicinity of Earth.

Our initial search, then, is for binary star with a G primary and K companion somewhere within 90 light years of Earth, favoring systems in a middle distance rather than Sol’s immediate neighborhood.

Orbital parameters of the Trill homeworld

We can narrow our search down by noting that highly precise details for Trill’s orbit around its star are given in the Discovery episode “Jinaal.” “Jinaal” gives the following information for the Trill homeworld, with values for Earth given for comparison:

We can use basic astrophysics – Kepler’s third law – to determine the mass of the star Trill orbits. Since Trill is about the same age as Earth and is in a system with G and K stars, we can safely assume that Trill’s stars are main-sequence stars and therefore that their masses will closely follow established relationships between stellar mass and spectral type.

Let me first point out something unusual: while the orbital distance given is 1.215AU, calculating the semimajor axis of the orbit from the Keplerian ratio and the orbital period gives a semimajor axis of 1.219AU. This should not be possible: the time-averaged distancerof a planet from its primary is given by r = a(1+12e²) where e is the eccentricity; the equation demands that the mean distance needs to be bigger than the semimajor axis. At any rate, the error is small enough not to make a big difference in our calculations.

Assuming, as is standard practice, that the planet is much less massive than the star (or stars – more on that later) around which it orbits:

star mass =4π²/ G× 1/Keplerian ratio

which, when we plug in the values for Trill, gives us 1.026 solar masses using the orbital data, or 1.036 solar masses using the Keplerian ratio.

The fact that we know the mass of the star tells us more about the character of the binary system. A G-type star on its own will have a mass between 0.89 and 1.07 solar masses; the mass of 1.026-1.036 solar masses for Trill’s primary therefore means that Trill orbits only the G-type star, not both stars.

Moreover the mass lets us narrow the spectral class of this primary down. This mass range would be typical of a G1V star, with G0V and G2V within the realm of plausibility. Many of the G-K binaries within 90 light years of Earth have a G8V primary, far too small and cool to make Trill habitable with the orbital parameters given.

Initial candidates

We therefore have five candidate stars for the location of the Trill homeworld, all with G0V primaries:

We can elimitate Delta Trianguli because the map in Starfleet Academy’s episode episode “300th Night” and “Rubincon” shows Delta Trianguli and Trill to be two different systems.

Similarly, Eta Cassiopeiae is identified as the location of Terra Nova in the Enterprise episode of that same name.

c Ursae Majoris can be dropped from consideration on astronomical grounds: its two stars orbit each other less than a quarter of an AU apart, making Trill’s orbit impossible under the analysis above.

HD 101177 meanwhile, while listed in many catalogs as a binary system, was actually found a few years ago to be a trinary, with the K-type star in the system having an M-type companion of its own. No planets are known in this system, although they are possible. Its primary is somewhat too light (0.93 solar masses) for our orbital parameters to make sense, although its spectrum is very much like that of Sol. In any case, as a trinary, HG 101177 is eliminated.

This leaves only HD 176051.

HD 176051 is attractive because it is a genuine binary and already known to host at least one planet, a probable gas giant one and a half to two and a quarter times the size of Jupiter, discovered in 2010. Its middling distance from Earth clashes somewhat with our star map, but its mass (1.07 solar masses) is a decent match for what we calculated above. If HD 176051 is the Trill home system, then Trill enjoys “Tatooine”-style double sunsets at some times of year.

Furthermore, modeling the system in Universe Sandbox, by happy coincidence, does give one more near-match: a planet given Trill's orbital parameters around HD 176051 A comes out with a surface temperature in the neighborhood of 290K.

Direction to Trill

One last piece of information can be used to add evidence to out claim.

The Federation map seen in SNW, “Strange New Worlds” puts Trill at a direction from Earth somewhere around those of Deneb Kaitos (Beta Ceti), Cor Caroli (Alpha Canum Venaticorum) and Mizar (Zeta Ursae Majoris), with a distance from Earth on the same order of magnitude as those stars. Those stars are all well known:

HD 176051 is in Lyra, which is more or less in the direction of Canes Venatici and Ursa Major. “More or less” is the best we can do – Deneb Kaitos is quite far in the real-world sky from any of these other stars. We are already, in all likelihood, pushing up against the limits of what we can extract from fictional in-universe maps; to have arrived at a single strong candidate with the available information is something of a minor miracle.

Surely the presence of actual aliens has screwed with some people religiously. And like, do any religious zealots try to demonize aliens as being messengers of Satan and affronts to God, or has the presence of aliens(as well as humanity becoming more "enlightened" and more heavily embracing science) led to religion falling out of favor, if not being completely discontinued altogether.

Or conversely, has the discontinuance of money as a concept allowed some people to more heavily devote themselves to God, as well as bring an end to false prophets whose only true goal is to line their pockets(since there's now nothing for them to line their pockets WITH)?

I.e. a traditional military leader has to manage the emotional and personal needs of temperamental academic officers who believe that their specialized thinking work is obstructed by a regimented life.

That dynamic was part of the Oppenheimer film too. That's what made me think of it.

This is the official /r/DaystromInstitute reaction thread for "Tomorrow's Enterprise". Rules #1 and #2 are not enforced in reaction threads.

Many a commentator has suggested the Enterprise-D is much too large for its crew complement, including this youtube video from seven years ago viewed 3.5 million times, and this thread from three and a half weeks ago. But these commentators have forgotten several very important members of the crew with very large space requirements: the dolphins.

The Enterprise-D's dolphins, i.e., Cetacean Ops, is a canonical facility on the D, referenced in two TNG episodes. If we are going off the non-canonical Technical Manual, Cetacean Ops is crewed by 12 Bottlenose and Pacific Bottlenose Dolphins and two Takaya's Whales (fictional orca) supervisors. Although 1996's U.S.S. Enterprise NCC 1701-D Blueprints shows their living quarters as spanning two decks, I believe a contemporary understanding of marine mammals' space requirements would lead to a much larger volume.

We can look at the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries (GFAS) Standards for Cetacean Sanctuaries (2023) for a rough estimate of minimum volume requirements. For area:

The sanctuary’s [minimum] area should be equivalent to 4047 m2 (1 acre) per 16 km (10 miles) of average daily swim distance in the wild for the species being housed.

And for depth:

The sanctuary’s depth should be equal to or greater than the typical dive depth in a near-shore environment for the species being housed, for at least one-third of the overall space.

Google results suggest that for dolphins, these figures are ~40 miles (i.e., 4 acres) and ~20 meters. With these figures, we can roughly calculate the minimum volume requirements for a dolphin at approximately 182,546 cubic meters, assuming two-thirds of the overall space is only two decks high per the Blueprints.

However, we also need to calculate the requirements for the fictional orcas, which Google results suggest are ~40 miles average daily swim distance and between 50-100 meters typical near shore dive depth (we'll have to go with the lower end, because with 16 decks in the Galaxy class saucer and an estimated 3.5m per deck, we're only at 56m--although I suppose there could be a shaft leading down through to to the engineering section...). Minus the height of Deck 1 (Bridge), we're at 52.5m max height, or 358,456 cubic meters.

The GFAS Standards don't give us a clear indication about how many animals can occupy each minimum volume requirement. The extremes for our specific case are 358,456 cubic meters on the low end (all 14 cetaceans in the minimum orca volume) to 2,907,464 cubic meters on the high end (every cetacean individually afforded their own minimum volume); the average of the two would be 1,274,504 cubic meters. I'm inclined to support the higher figure as I believe minimum space requirements will be even higher in the 24th century but your guess is as good as mine.

Placed in context, this website estimates the total volume of the saucer section is 3,829,567 cubic meters. Based on the estimates above, Cetacean Ops could be making up anywhere between 9.4% to 75.9% the volume of the saucer section, with the average volume figure coming in at 33.3%. Assuming the saucer section makes up roughly 2/3 the entire volume of a Galaxy class starship, the high figure would represent a little over 50% of the volume of the ship (a.k.a., "literally").

My gut says that is likely not the case given what we've seen on screen. However, we should keep in mind that the Xindi Aquatic ship we saw in ST:ENT was full of water and measured in at 1,800m long, or almost three times the length of the Galaxy class... so... possibly?

Sources

• Forgotten Trek: "Where Do I Find Dolphins?"

• Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries Standards for Cetacean Sanctuaries, 2023

I have been reviewing a bit of Star Trek lore, and I have noticed that the only canonical instance of it being mentioned was in TNG S1 Ep26 “The Neutral Zone” It mentioned only that thousands were killed, and it was between the Federation and the Romulan Empire. After the Incident, the Treaty of Algeron followed, and the Romulans effectively stayed behind their borders (minus when they attacked Narendra III.)

Reviewing Memory Beta reveals their take on the crisis comes from the Novel “Serpent Among the Ruins” in which the Romulan vessel Tomed rammed into a Federation system in the Foxtrot Sector, destroying multiple outposts and the USS Agamemnon. However that also stated it was actually a Black Ops operation, a false flag thing to prevent a major war.

My take on the Tomed Incident is different. My version had a Romulan Blockade in the Tomed System, which had its residents wanting to join the Federation. With its proximity to the Neutral Zone, the Romulans began a blockade. The Federation responded, and tried diplomacy. During the standoff, an experimental Federation ship with cloaking malfunctions, revealing itself, and a battle ensues.

After the shooting stops, the Romulans go back to their system, and the Treaty of Algeron followed. Being that in the incident, a Federation cloak was revealed, it became one of the terms the Romulans demanded or else they wouldn’t sign. Starfleet conceded. The Neutral Zone was redefined, and the Tomed System joined the Federation.

Does this work for a plausible explanation? I’m open for discussion.

This is the official /r/DaystromInstitute reaction thread for "Once La'An A Time". Rules #1 and #2 are not enforced in reaction threads.

As someone who loves all things 2230s-2240s, I absolutely adored last week's episode. However, as already reflected on Memory Alpha, it is never made particularly clear when this infamous Battle of Zeta Reticuli actually took place.

As indicated on the wiki, the dialogue within the episode suggests at an initial glance that the battle took place between 2256 and 2257, amidst the events of Discovery season 1. However, since George Kirk Snr. chose to cover up the reality of what occurred so as to not sour his sons' perception of Starfleet, it also follows that the battle cannot have taken place in the conflict shown in DSC and frequently referenced in SNW, but several years before.

Indeed, as established in TOS: Shore Leave, Kirk joined Starfleet Academy in 2252 at the age of 19, four year prior to the instigating Battle of the Binary Stars (DSC: Context is for Kings, Choose Your Pain). Although Kirk's early career remains murky, it is evident that he was already rising in the ranks by the time T'Kuvma's War broke out, being a Lieutenant as of 2255 (TOS: A Private Little War).

Things are potentially complicated further if we consider his brother. Although George Samuel Kirk's birthdate has not been established in canon (a birthdate of 2229 is given in TOS Special 3, and the script of TOS: Operation -- Annihilate! has him roughly a decade older than James), his absence in the opening scenes of ST09, where James T Kirk is born prematurely aboard the USS Kelvin, demonstrates that he must be at least a year older than his sibling, if not more.*

A terminus post quem can however be derived from the USS Constitution (NCC-1700). As shown on Admiral Reeger's medical file, it is shown that the USS Constitution referred to in the episode is indeed the 1700-registry Constitution Class ship canonised elsewhere (TNG: Datalore). Given the canonical launch of USS Cayuga (NCC-1557), USS Constellation (NCC-1017), and USS Enterprise (NCC-1701), all in 2245, it follows that, as the flagship of the fleet as the time of the battle, the USS Constitution must be of a similar vintage.

Furthermore, accounting for George Kirk Snr.'s service record, conspicuously being a first officer abord the USS Kelvin at the age of 29 (ST09, ST:Beyond), it stands to reason that Captain Reeger's sabotage of his career prospects following the Battle of Zeta Reticuli could have very well been based on insecurity, on account of George Kirk Snr. being only between 42 and 49 at the time of these events.**

Finally, T'Kuvma's reference to the Battle of Donatu V (TOS: The Trouble with Tribbles) in his address to the Klingons in DSC: Battle of the Binary Stars confirms that infamous, and distinct, skirmishes between Federation and Klingon forces had taken place prior to that nascent conflict. On this basis therefore, I believe the Battle of Zeta Reticuli must have taken place between 2245, when the Constitution Class came into service and the Battle of Donatu V was fought, and 2252, when James T. Kirk was accepted into Starfleet Academy.***

*In the absence of any definitive on-screen evidence (that I could find), there is also the possibility that George S Kirk is not in fact James T Kirk's older brother, and that owing to their father's death in the alternate reality he simply never existed.
** Anecdotal, but as a point of comparison we'll note that George Kirk Snr. would have been 62 when his son (33) became captain of the Enterprise (2266). Christopher Pike is given a birth year of 2205 in the ST09 tie-in movie app, whereas the TOS novel Burning Dreams gives him a birth year of 2219, making him between 31 and 45 at the time of his captaincy of Enterprise (2250). Other points of comparison are sparse, but we'll note Riker was 29 when offered the command of the USS Drake (2364), and Picard was 28 when he assumed command of the USS Stargazer (2333), but perhaps these should be taken as exceptions, or indicative of different trends in 24th c. Starfleet.
*** If the USS Constitution had been launched the year before or during 2245 with the senior staff which witnessed the Battle of Zeta Reticuli, this would explain Reeger's adamant refusal to deny Kirk's accession to captaincy, given that he would have just taken the captain's chair and Kirk would have only just been made XO. However, it seems unlikely a 22 year old Doctor M'Benga (SNW: Under The Cloak of War) would have been CMO at this time, unless he had only just graduated out of a four-year academy program and for some reason been made a senior officer aboard the fleet flagship.

Regarding the episode In the Pale Moonlight. If Senator Vreenak did, then blowing up his shuttle wouldn't have brought the Romulans into the war. How did Garak know Senator Vreenak wouldn't foil the plan this way? By confronting Sisko regarding the fake data rod instead of quietly keeping knowledge of the forgery to himself, it shows Senator Vreenak isn't concerned the Federation will take action to hide this such as killing the Senator or jamming his communications and so what stopped Senator Vreenak from immediately reporting the forgery before confronting Sisko?

A common criticism of the Federation is that it is essentially a Human empire; Starfleet headquarters, the Federation Council, and the Presidency are all located on Earth (Sector 001), signage is almost always exclusively written in English, etc.

The reason for this, I believe, is more about the jealousies and suspicions that the Vulcans, Andorians, (and Tellarites) have held for each other going back centuries before the Federation was formed and was well entrenched by the time each made contact with humanity.

On the surface it might have made more sense for important federal institutions to be spread out among member planets (like how the European Union has the European Commission in Brussels and the Parliament in Strasbourg) but I can easily imagine the Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites not being able to agree on which of them gets what to the point that just putting it all on Earth was the only workable solution.

I've suggested before that the USS Lakota may actually be the former Enterprise-B, but the original idea isn't mine. I first encountered it on Ex Astris Scientia, which points out the strange rarity of the modified Excelsior configuration and credits a contributor named Mark with suggesting that Enterprise-B and Lakota might be the same ship.

I've been thinking about that possibility further, and I think Kirk's disappearance during Generations may provide the missing piece that makes the theory work.

I'll separate what we actually know from what I'm proposing.

What we know

The Enterprise-B is not a normal-looking Excelsior. It has substantial additions to the secondary hull, altered impulse structures, and other external differences from the standard configuration.

Despite Excelsior-class ships remaining in service well into the 24th century, almost all of the ones we see retain the standard configuration. Even the large Starfleet formations of the Dominion War don't establish a population of ships matching Enterprise-B.

There is, however, one conspicuous exception: USS Lakota, NCC-42768.

From a production standpoint the connection is even stronger. The Lakota was represented by the actual Enterprise-Bstudio model. It wasn't extensively rebuilt again for DS9; the model was essentially relabeled as Lakota. EAS points to the possibility of the two being the same in-universe vessel as one explanation for why these two apparently unique ships look identical.

We also know very little about the canonical career of Enterprise-B after Generations. Its maiden voyage in 2293 becomes a disaster. Two El-Aurian refugee ships are lost, Enterprise is damaged by the Nexus, and James T. Kirk is presumed killed while saving the ship.

We then encounter Lakota in 2372.

And Lakota isn't an ordinary elderly Excelsior. She has received a major weapons upgrade, including upgraded phasers and quantum torpedoes. When she engages the much newer USS Defiant, her capabilities prove far beyond what would normally be expected from a ship of her class.

So we have an unusual situation:

Enterprise-B is a physically distinctive Excelsior whose canonical history effectively disappears after 2293.

Roughly eighty years later, the only other Excelsior we see with that same configuration appears, and it has an extraordinary capacity for modernization.

My theory

I think they're the same spaceframe.

After the Nexus incident, Starfleet investigates Enterprise-B and finds nothing fundamentally wrong with the ship. The problem isn't engineering.

The problem is that this brand-new Enterprise has just acquired possibly the worst reputation imaginable.

Kirk was one of the most famous officers in Starfleet history and was inseparably associated with the name Enterprise. He attends the maiden voyage as a representative of the previous generation, and then apparently dies saving the new ship before that voyage is even completed.

Starfleet retains a great deal of naval tradition, and sailors have historically been remarkably superstitious about ships, particularly concerning bad events associated with launching and maiden voyages.

Imagine being assigned to NCC-1701-B afterward.

It doesn't necessarily matter that an engineering board says there's nothing wrong with her. To generations of Starfleet personnel, this is the ship on which James T. Kirk died on its maiden voyage.

I think Starfleet quietly decides that returning the ship to normal service isn't worth the morale problem.

But scrapping it makes little sense either. It's virtually new.

So Enterprise-B is decommissioned, stabilized, and transferred to a Starfleet surplus depot.

That also provides a possible explanation for another mystery: why we never see the complete Enterprise-B modification package again.

The modifications didn't fail.

The ship was unlucky.

Officially, Starfleet can cite cost, changing requirements, standardization, or any number of perfectly rational procurement considerations for not continuing the configuration. Unofficially, nobody particularly wants to build another ship that looks exactly like the Enterprise on which Kirk supposedly died.

Becoming Lakota

Eventually Starfleet decides to place the Enterprise name on an Ambassador-class successor, NCC-1701-C.

At that point the inactive NCC-1701-B can no longer reasonably remain Enterprise. Rather than scrap an otherwise sound spaceframe, Starfleet renames it USS Lakota and assigns it a conventional registry.

That doesn't mean it immediately returns to service. It can remain in the reserve fleet under its new identity.

The apparently anomalous NCC-42768 becomes easier to explain under this interpretation as well. It need not represent the vessel's original construction sequence; it could have been assigned as part of its redesignation or eventual return to service.

Why bring it back after all those years?

Wolf 359.

Starfleet loses thirty-nine ships to a single Borg cube in 2367. After something like that, it makes sense that Starfleet would examine not only its active fleet and new-construction programs, but also what usable spaceframes it has sitting in reserve.

Somewhere in that process, somebody takes another serious look at the old Lakota.

And this is where the strange Enterprise-B modifications finally become important.

We don't canonically know what all those additional structures were intended to accomplish. But suppose the modifications provided additional internal volume, structural capacity, power distribution, cooling, and general engineering growth margin.

The configuration may have been an excellent design that simply never got a fair chance.

Starfleet engineers examining Lakota after Wolf 359 discover that this very old ship has considerably more modernization potential than a standard Excelsior.

That doesn't necessarily mean they immediately recommission her. Wolf 359 gets the spaceframe examined and puts it back on Starfleet's radar.

Then the Dominion appears.

The destruction of USS Odyssey demonstrates that even a Galaxy-class ship can be rapidly destroyed by the Jem'Hadar. Suddenly an old hull capable of accepting disproportionately powerful modern systems becomes considerably more interesting.

The result is the Lakota refit.

Modern power systems, shields, phasers, quantum torpedoes, and whatever other internal changes are required are installed in a spaceframe whose unusual 23rd-century modifications give Starfleet more room to work with than an ordinary Excelsior would have provided.

That would explain why Lakota can be upgraded far beyond what the Defiant crew expects from a ship of her class.

The engineers who modified Enterprise-B in 2293 obviously weren't planning for quantum torpedoes. They simply built a ship with unusually generous expansion margins.

Eighty years later, those margins finally become useful.

And then there's Kirk

For seventy-eight years, everyone believes Kirk died aboard Enterprise-B.

Then, in 2371, Picard returns from the Nexus and Starfleet learns what really happened. Kirk wasn't killed aboard the ship. He was pulled into the Nexus, survived there outside normal time, emerged with Picard on Veridian III, and died helping Picard stop Soran.

For the first time in almost eighty years, you might think the reputation of Enterprise-B could finally be rehabilitated.

Then 2372 happens.

The former Enterprise-B, now Lakota, becomes involved in Admiral Leyton's attempted coup and winds up exchanging fire with USS Defiant.

So the old superstition doesn't necessarily disappear. It just changes.

The ship didn't kill Kirk after all. It merely swallowed him into an anomalous phenomenon for seventy-eight years on its maiden voyage.

Then, after spending most of a century in mothballs, it comes back as one of the most heavily upgraded Excelsiors in Starfleet and promptly becomes involved in an attempted military takeover of the Federation and a battle between two Starfleet vessels.

For a superstitious Starfleet crewman, I'm not sure Picard's correction of the historical record would make the ship seem less cursed.

Where the theory ends

To be clear, the following is not canon:

Enterprise-B being decommissioned immediately after the Nexus incident; its reputation contributing to the abandonment of its configuration; its storage at a surplus depot; its later renaming as Lakota; Wolf 359 prompting its reassessment; and the Dominion threat motivating its eventual restoration.

The canon observations I'm trying to connect are much narrower:

• Enterprise-B has an unusual Excelsior configuration.
• We don't have a canonical account of a long subsequent career for the ship.
• Lakota is the only other known ship with that complete configuration.
• The same physical studio model represented both ships.
• Lakota underwent an unusually powerful modernization and could fight Defiant surprisingly effectively.
• Kirk was believed to have died aboard Enterprise-B for seventy-eight years.

The Enterprise-B = Lakota idea has been proposed before. Ex Astris Scientia specifically discusses it as one possible explanation for the rarity of this version of the Excelsior.

What I'm proposing is the history connecting those observations.

Rather than the Enterprise-B modifications being an unsuccessful design, perhaps they were actually too closely associated with an unsuccessful ship. Starfleet mothballed the vessel because of what happened on its maiden voyage, never repeated the configuration, and then discovered almost eighty years later that the supposedly cursed old spaceframe was one of the most upgradeable Excelsiors it had ever built.

And, appropriately enough, when they finally gave the ship another chance, it immediately ended up making history again.

Source / further reading: Ex Astris Scientia — Starship Class Inconsistencies, particularly the section “Rarity of the Excelsior refit.” EAS discusses the rarity of the Enterprise-B/Lakota configuration and credits Mark with the suggestion that the two vessels may actually be the same ship.

In this episode, Janeway:

1.) Says that she is going to hunt down the Equinox no matter the cost.

2.) Becomes emotional in a combat situation and flies the ship into a hazardous atmosphere for no reason, which ruins their rescue attempt and damages Voyager– with the crew even needing to shout at her to withdraw the ship to prevent their destruction.

3.) Removes her first officer from command and confines him after he prevents her from torturing/executing another human.

4.) Threatens to remove and confine her second officer after he also objects to her murderous intent.

On top of those genuine concerns, in this episode Janeway also:

• Lies to captain Ransom by saying she's never broken the prime directive.

• Does not investigate how the Equinox crew escaped Voyager.

• Attempts to take credit for Chakotay's plan

• Tries to put shame on the Voyager crew for their morality, as she meanwhile arranges for the death of the Equinox crew for their immorality.

At the end of all of this, Janeway even admits that they had reason to start a mutiny against her. Chakotay responds though that doing so would have crossed the line... but I think this reply is said more from a writer's standpoint. It would have been too far to make the crew remove an unstable Captain, only to then put her back in the hero's chair at the end of the episode. Especially while fans were apparently worried that Kate Mulgrew was going to leave the show around this time.

But, in terms of the characters, should they have mutinied? If they did, how would it occur, and how would it affect the mission depending on when it occured? How would the aftermath look– in terms of Starfleet policy, emotional fallout, and in the way Voyager returns to Earth? Also consider that the EMH in this case is currently the Equinox's EMH, as he could technically help to remove Janeway if he saw an advantage in it.

(First post here!) I watched "The Drumhead" yesterday and that episode really stuck with me. It also made me wonder what the long term consequences for (Ret.) Admiral Satie following her exposure and outburst.

For context, I'm going to follow the more optimistic portrayal of life in TOS and TNG vs the more cynical outlook of NuTrek.

My speculation is that Admiral Satie's reputation was serious damaged, if not completely ruined, and Starfleet would not call on her out of retirement for any more investigations.

Admiral Henry looked completely disgusted as he walked out of the hearing to call an end to it.

If I were Admiral Henry, I feel the need to take considerable action to ensure that the reputation and integrity of Starfleet's investigatory organs are upheld. I would:

1. (Assuming I have the authority in Starfleet to do so) Have Satie removed from consideration for any future investigation projects.
2. Work with Starfleet's Inspector generation to form a council in order to review Satie's past investigations. Identify earlier instances of misconduct from her and her team, and identify any cases which need to be reopened.
3. Question Satie's two assistants while my staff investigates their background. Refer them to disciplinary hearings for their conduct.
4. In particular, investigate the Betazoid to see if his emotional recognition is genuine or if he's basically a drug dog that signals on command. Work with science officers to develop a test. A possibility would be to have volunteers don a wearable brain scanner and silently recall memories with strong emotional components, and see if the Betazoid can correctly identify them. If he can't, then he's in a world of trouble.

This is the official /r/DaystromInstitute reaction thread for "Orders of Magnitude". Rules #1 and #2 are not enforced in reaction threads.

I've been thinking about Borg adaptive shields and the usual Star Trek approach to defensive technology.

Starfleet normally seems to rely on shields to absorb or block incoming energy. But what if a second, completely independent defensive system worked on a different principle: don't stop the attack—change its vector.

My idea is an Active Deflection Array.

The basic system would consist of physical armor panels equipped with localized deflection-field generators. Instead of simply absorbing a phaser beam or torpedo, the field would alter its trajectory and send it away from the hull.

For example:

Enemy torpedo → → → [Deflection field] ↘ → → into space

The same principle could potentially be applied to phaser or disruptor beams, although I imagine energy weapons would require a different mechanism from physical projectiles.

The more interesting version would use multiple small, mobile deflection units deployed around the ship, somewhat analogous to reflector satellites or Gundam's bits.

The units could reposition themselves mechanically, or potentially be transported using the ship's transporter system, to create an optimal deflection geometry.

This would allow multiple stages of deflection:

Incoming attack → Unit A → Unit B → Unit C → redirected trajectory

With enough control over the geometry, an incoming weapon could potentially be redirected back toward the attacking ship.

And this leads to an even more interesting possibility:

The system could also be used offensively.

Starfleet could fire a phaser into its own deflection array and use multiple units to alter the beam's trajectory.

Instead of:

Phaser → straight line → target

you could have:

Phaser → Unit A → Unit B → Unit C → target

This would effectively allow a ship to fire around obstacles or attack from unexpected directions without physically rotating the ship or the phaser emitter.

I would not make this a universal technology, though. There would be major disadvantages.

1. Enormous computational requirements

The computer would have to continuously calculate the position, velocity, energy, trajectory, and optimal deflection angle of incoming weapons, while simultaneously coordinating multiple mobile deflection units.

I imagine a ship equipped with the full system might require several times the normal computational capacity—similar to how modern supercomputers are needed for extremely complex simulations.

This would make the system practical mainly for large starships.

2. Deflection would have limits

The system couldn't simply turn any attack 180 degrees with perfect efficiency.

There would be maximum deflection angles, energy losses, and limits based on the energy and momentum of the incoming weapon.

Multiple deflections would therefore progressively reduce the weapon's effectiveness.

3. The deflection units themselves would be targets

An enemy could simply attack the units rather than the hull.

This would make redundancy important. Losing several units would reduce the ship's defensive capability.

4. Multiple simultaneous attacks

A single incoming weapon would be relatively easy to handle, but a Borg-style multi-vector attack could overwhelm the system.

This also provides a reason why the system wouldn't completely replace conventional shields.

So the final defensive architecture might be:

Active deflection → conventional shields → physical armor

rather than simply making the shields stronger.

I also think this could be interesting against the Borg.

Borg adaptive shielding is extremely effective because it can analyze and adapt to the characteristics of an energy weapon. But an active deflection system isn't primarily trying to block the weapon's frequency or absorb its energy.

It's changing the vector of the attack.

So even if the Borg adapt to Starfleet's phaser frequencies, they would still have to deal with a completely different defensive mechanism.

Of course, the Borg could respond by using multiple attack vectors, targeting the deflection units, using weapons that are difficult to deflect, or attacking the ship through other means.

That makes it less of a "super shield" and more of an additional layer in an ongoing technological arms race.

I'm curious what you think:

Could something like an active deflection array fit within Star Trek's existing technology and physics?

What would be the biggest problem with the concept—especially regarding phasers, photon torpedoes, momentum/energy conservation, or transporter-based repositioning of the deflection units?

I was thinking about how the bridge of the Enterprise changes throughout its time and realized that D's bridge is probably the worst designed of them all. Why you may ask? Lack of a chair at tactical.

The tactical station sits up and behind the capitan's (obviously for the wide bridge shots) but with no chair the person who's in charge of the defense of the whole ship has to stand there for hours on end making them more tired and less effective at the job.

Also, what's the first thing that happens when a ship gets hit? Everything violently shakes. Meaning the tactical officer has to hold onto the console or fall on their butt, either way they can't actually do anything like raise the shields or fire back during critical times of a battle.

Simply putting in a chair would have easily solved this problem. It's a wonder how that ship survived as long as it did.

This is the official /r/DaystromInstitute reaction thread for "Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass". Rules #1 and #2 are not enforced in reaction threads.

I'm going to be perfectly honest, this is one of those weird childhood fanfics that I probably made when I was like 12 years old and watching Star trek, but now that I'm an adult I think about it and wonder genuinely what would the federation do

Here's the scenario. There's an alien civilization outside federation space that is not only traveling through time, but also to parallel universes (aka, our reality, AKA my boyhood wet dream of being transported to the Star Trek universe LOL) and bringing them forward through time to be enslaved,

Somehow, maybe some long-range explorer ship, or even the federation council itself discovers what this civilization is doing. Maybe some long-range explorer ships finds a couple escapes who try to ask for asylum on their ship, maybe through diplomatic channels the federation here's rumors about enslaved humans and goes to investigate or some other scenario

Do you think the federation would get involved? Or do you think they would consider that part of the prime directive. Normally I would say prime directive but obviously this is human beings, but they're not from our universe nor time

What are you guys think would happen?