Star Trek

• The episode opens on a freighter ”Somewhere in the Beta Quadrant”; the ship is modelled off Kivas Fajo’s ship, the Jovis, from the TNG episode “The Most Toys”. The Jovis was itself a kit bash of the studio model for the Husnok warship from “The Survivors”.

• Tendi [Noël Wells] is seen using a holographic disguise to infiltrate this collector’s ship. Mirror Georgiou used a similar holographic disguise while infiltrating Klingon high society as an agent of Section 31 in “Point of Light”.

• The collector, Yorif, is voiced by Eric Bauza, who has portrayed a number of characters in LDS, PRO, and the non-canon Very Short Treks.

    • Yorif is of the same species as fellow collector, Palor Toff, who was seen in “The Most Toys”. They even wear a similar golden ribbon piece of headgear, which is established this episode to be prescription.

• Among Yorif’s collection is:

    • A Risian horga’hn

    • What appears to be the Bajoran tablet that Captain Sisko broke in “The Reckoning”

    • A Veltan lust idol - Palor Toff and Kivas Fajo both claimed to own Veltan sex idols in “The Most Toys”

    • A gold Ferengi mask that may have been modelled off similar masks made in Ancient China.

    • A type-2 phaser of the sort used in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”

• Unlike the Orion interceptor previously seen in “Something Borrowed, Something Green” the one that arrives to pirate Yorif’s vessel does not have a number of spikes on it, or a grapple claw; it does appear to have some extra cannons.

• Yorif’s ship is crewed by Hupyrians. This is the first time we hear a Hupyrian speak, as the ones we’ve seen previously have taken vows of silence as part of their service to the various Ferengi Grand Nagi.

• L’Kar was previously seen in “Something Borrowed, Something Green” and is voiced by Kari Wahlgreen, who has voiced a number of characters in LDS and PRO.

• The opening title now has a warp effect to it. In it’s fifth season, TNG’s title screen also gained a warp effect.

• In addition to Klingon, Romulan, Pakled, Borg ships, whale probe, and crystalline entity seen previous season’s opening sequence’s large battle, there is now:

    • A giant green space hand, as previously seen in “Who Mourns for Adonis”

    • Tholian ships forming a web, as seen in “The Tholian Web”

    • V’ger, from TMP

• Mariner [Tawny Newsome], and T’Lyn [Gabrielle Ruiz] are playing kal-toh, a Vulcan game introduced in “Alter Ego”.

• Boimler [Jack Quaid] believes he’s going to be featured in Starfleet’s “Fleet” periodical, but he’s not. However, Naomi Wildman, does get an honourable mention in their 30 under 30 list.

    • “She’s like ten years old.” Naomi was born in 2372 in “Deadlock”, and this episode takes place in 2382.

    • The cover of the magazine claims to feature the Top 10 Riker moments

    • The cover also teases an article on the Continuum, titled *”Q Who?” mirroring the title of the TNG season two episode.

• The USS Cerritos is pulled through a quantum fissure, and encounters an alternate universe version of themselves, which, in honour of the episode title, I will be calling the Cerridos. In addition to their uniforms being slightly darker, the Cerridos crew appear to exhibit only minor differences from the familiar crew of the Cerritos which resulted in their lives turning out different, such as:

    • Mariner’s counterpart goes by Becky Freeman, and is the captain of the Cerridos

    • T’Lyn’s counterpart says ”Remarkable” while she prefers ”Fascinating”. Fasmarkable.

    • Boimler’s counterpart grew a beard

    • Billups’ counterpart became King of Hysperia, which would imply that he is also not a virgin

    • Rutherford’s counterpart wiped Tendi from his memory banks after she left to become a full time pirate, and then cyborged himself up.

• D’Erika was introduced in “Something Borrowed, Something Green” and is voiced by Ariel Winter”

• Tendi has a model of the Cerritos in her ready room aboard the Orion Interceptor.

• ”You miss debating the ethics of goop with your Starfleet nerds.” Most spineless goop in Trek has questionable ethics, at best:

    • Armus is a Skin of Evil

    • Odo is willing to engage in illegal surveillance techniques, and hold suspects under false pretenses

    • Rick Berman treated several members of the cast very poorly, hired a known fraud as the consultant on Native American culture for VOY, and prevented TNG from having an episode depicting an openly gay couple back when that would still have been uncommon

• The Billups propose a plan where the Cerritos and Cerridos are linked together so they can create a pulse which will open the rift again, and allow the Cerritos to return to the prime universe. Spock devised a similar plan in “The Time Trap” to allow the USS Enterprise and a Klingon vessel to the Delta Triangle.

• We learn that Mariner is Mariner’s middle name.

• The crashed Orion vessel has orbs on rotating spokes, similar to we’ve seen on previous Orion vessels, beginning with the ship seen in the remastered TOS episode, “Journey to Babylon”.

• A group of blue skinned Orions appear, wearing the same uniforms as the Orions from “The Pirates of Orion”.

    • The blues pronounce the name of their species as ”Or-ee-ahn”, which is how it was pronounced in “The Pirates of Orion” and no where else in the franchise until now.

• Becky recounts the events of “Second Contact” when Boimler gets gummed on by a Galardon spider-cow, implying that she experienced that episode very similarly.

• ”There’s no interpersonal conflict allowed on my ship.” Becky has the same views on human interactions that Gene Roddenberry held.

• Becky’s ready room captain’s trinkets include:

    • A California flag - Captain Freeman [Dawnn Lewis] has the same one in her ready room

    • A jewelled dagger - This looks like one of the ones Mariner was stabbed in the shoulder with in “Something Borrowed, Something Green”

    • A bat’leth - Mariner accidentally cut Boimler with one she brought aboard the Cerritos while drunk in “Second Contact”

• *”Don't you give me that sarcastic Vulcan salute!” Captain Freeman yelled those same words to Mariner in “Moist Vessel”

• We learn that the alternate Captain Freeman was reassigned to Starbase 80, which was first mentioned in “Terminal Provocations” as the place where Starfleet ships off its screw-ups.

• In the Cerritos’ bar, there’s a bottle of Kanar with a tag featuring the mural from Quark’s.

• ”I have fooled you.” T’Lyn deceived the Lower Deckers into believing she was her Minor Universe counterpart. Because Vulcans lie all the damn time.

I have a random guess about the problem with the alternate, bearded Boimler: he’s actually William Boimler, who killed (or imprisoned) Bradward and took his place on that Cerritos for mysterious Section 31 reasons.

That Boimler even says, “nobody deserves to be replaced by their own double.”

This past week I received my pre-order copy of the new LDecks themed card game, so I made my friends play it as part of our regular game night, then I made a housemate play it, and here are my thoughts.

Gameplay
The game is a fairly straight forward push your luck style game.

You have four different decks of cards: Assignments, Side Projects, Shift, and Alpha Abilities. The Assignment cards have a target number and, frequently but not always, a leisure value on them. In turn, players can flip Shift cards, most of which have an effort value that needs to meet or exceed the target on the assignment, so the leisure points can be scored.

The Side Project cards also have the target number and a leisure value, and can be added to the in play Assignment, making the amount of effort required to score that much higher, but increasing the reward. There is a goal number of leisure points you need to score depending on the number of players, and it would not be possible to meet those goals without adding multiple Side Projects.

The group only has five assignments, and once you're out and the group hasn't met the leisure point goal, you lose. Further complicating things is that there are six officer cards in the Shift stack, each of whom has a rank 1-3, and if officers with a total rank of 4 are in your play area during the Assignment, the Assignment fails, as do any attached Side Projects, and you lose the highest value leisure from your already scored area.

Alpha Shift cards are a pretty rare resource that allow you to do a wide variety of special things, including removing officer cards from the play area, or even adding another Assignment to the available cards. Each player begins with two, and you only gain new ones by being the player to score an Assignment.

Learning the game is simple enough, though everyone whom I played with are fans of games. Even my buddy who hates learning new games got into it after a couple rounds. Games are relatively fast, and it can accommodate two to six players, which is nice. The games I've played have had four, five, and two players.

My biggest complaint would be that the difficulty does feel a bit punishing. Failing an Assignment is already bad enough, but having to lose the highest value card you've already scored does not feel great from a player perspective. Of the five games I've played, my game night group one once, and my housemate and I won the game we played.  

Production
The only components for the game are the cards, so there isn't much to talk about.

The cardstock is nice, and they don't feel flimsy, which is good, because there is going to be a lot of shuffling. That said, the individual decks are small enough that I'm probably going to sleeve my copy, just to make shuffling easier.

Most of the art is simply stills from the show which is a little disappointing, but understandable. The effort icons are Badgey pushing a boulder up a slope, like Sisyphus, so that's fun.

The card backs, which are all really good looking and easily distinguishable, even the Assignment and Side Project cards, which are made to look similar.

The game box is nice and sturdy, looks great, and has a magnetic closure, so that right there is an A++ in my opinion.  

Theme
Let's be honest, the only reason I bought this game is because of the 'Lower Decks' theme, so how does that fit?

Fine. I guess.

The "buffer time" concept comes from the first season episode, "Temporal Edict", which was itself inspired by Scotty's claims in TOS and TNG that he always pads out his estimates of how long it will take him to complete any given assignment. So, the push your luck aspect fits the theme: you're padding out your assignments, and trying not to get caught by the senior staff.

All the cards have titles that relate to things that have actually happened on the show, and the first time I played, I did get some chuckles remember scenes, but the game itself doesn't have any humour aspect beyond stills of Mariner kicking Ransom in the junk or whatever. Which is fine; writing humour is hard, and I do usually hate it when a game tries to cram a humour in.  

Conclusion
Even though I wouldn't have bought the game without the LDecks theme, I'm glad I did because it ended up being a relatively light, quick game, that the people whom I forced to play it with me all said they enjoyed and would be happy to play again.

It's probably not going to hit the table too often during our regular game nights, but sometimes someone's going to be late or you finish the big game of the evening a bit early, so you need some filler, which I do not mean pejoratively despite how it sounds, and I think that is going to be Buffer Time's sweet spot for myself and my group.

Creation’s Trek to New Jersey begins next Friday, November 8 at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, NJ and has over 30 Star Trek guests scheduled to attend — including Anson Mount, Celia Rose Gooding, Christina Chong, Ethan Peck, and Jess Bush from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Tawny Newsome, Eugene Cordero, Dawnn Lewis, and Gabrielle Ruiz from Star Trek: Lower Decks, Star Trek: The Next Generation favorites like Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Michael Dorn, Brent Spiner, Gates McFadden, and more.

The subsequent Trek to Dallas convention kicks off Friday, November 15 in the Lone Star state. Hosted at the Marriott Dallas Allen hotel in Allen, TX, thirty Trek celebrities are expected to attend — including Anson Mount, Celia Rose Gooding, Christina Chong, Ethan Peck, and Melissa Navia from Strange New Worlds, Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones, and Elias Toufexis from Star Trek: Discovery, Tawny Newsome, Eugene Cordero and Dawnn Lewis from Lower Decks, plus many more.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/45628392

EDIT: I forgot to add a screenshot. Here it is.

While re-watching DS9 S1:E19 "Duet", I noticed this okudagram around 6:21 and got a bit curious.

Some of these images just look like aliens they would have already had pictures of. However, two stand out as potential easter eggs - the picture on the middle left looks unmistakably like Spock, and the human on the bottom left looks like they could be a production worker or a favorite musical artist.

However, Memory Alpha and a simple Google Search don't seem to turn up anything. I'm intrigued to know what history, if any, is behind this graphic.

The title is Spanish for “Two Little Hills”, and aside from a literal description of the episode’s plot, reminded me of the song “Dos Oruguitas” (Two Butterflies) from the movie Encanto. A similar title was LD: "wej Duj", Klingon for "Three Ships".

The collector’s (Yorif by the closed captioning) ship is a Zibalian freighter (TNG: “The Most Toys”), and the collector himself is of the same unnamed species as Palor Toff from that episode, which also appeared in LD: “Reflections”. He has Hupyrian guards (TNG: “The Nagus”, et al.). Tendi’s holographic disguise is that of a Heliian woman, the species to which Aquiel belonged (TNG: “Aquiel”). 

Seen in the collection is a Risian horgh’an (TNG: “Captain’s Holiday”), a Veltan lust idol (called a sex idol in “The Most Toys”), next to a broken Bajoran Reckoning Tablet (DS9: “The Reckoning”). Apparently, Orions lived in childhood slime dungeons. Yorif uses a ST II design phaser and claims his ornate facial piercing is “prescription”. 

The LD title has the 3D effect that was applied to TNG’s title which appeared only in Season 5. The ever-crowded battle in the title sequence is joined by Apollo’s hand (TOS: “Who Mourns for Adonais?”), which grabs the Borg cube, a Tholian ship drawing its web (TOS: “The Tholian Web”) and V’Ger (TMP), complete with its sound effects.

Mariner is playing a game of Vulcan kal-toh with T’Lyn. Boimler’s Fleet magazine, aside from the “30 Under 30” feature, also highlights “Klingon Kouture: Blood is the New Black” (an allusion to Orange is the New Black, which also starred Kate Mulgrew), as well as “Q Who? The Continuum Awaits”(alluding to TNG: “Q Who?”). It also mentions “Treknomics”, which is an out-of-universe term used to refer to Star Trek economics. The cover also somewhat resembles the official Star Trek Explorer magazine published by Titan Comics. It is issue No. 47, a recurring number and in-joke in Star Trek. 

Naomi Wildman was born on Voyager in 2372 during its sojourn in the Delta Quadrant, the half-Ktarian half-human daughter of Ensign Samantha Wildman who was pregnant when she came on board. This dates this season around 2382. Tendi mentions it’s been “months” since the end of Season 4. 

Worf encountered a quantum fissure in TNG: “Parallels”, which sent him on a journey through several parallel realities, including parallel Enterprises. D’Erika says that the Orion warship (later we find out it’s a medical frigate) dates from the time of the Great Plague over 300 years prior. Roger Korby’s claim to fame was his translation of medical records from Orion ruins that revolutionized immunization techniques (TOS: “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”), but I always imagined the ruins to be older than a few centuries. 

It was established in “Parallels” that quantum signatures differ from universe to universe. In this case, the parallel that Cerritos is in exhibits only a .327% variance. Among the differences in hair (and in Otherford’s case, cybernetic augmentations), the parallel Billups is King (where our Billups rejected the throne) and has Hysperian accessories over his uniform, like Worf used to wear his sash over his. 

We finally find out that Mariner is her middle name, so she was born Beckett Mariner Freeman. She went by "Becky" when living on Starbase 25 (LD: "An Embarassment of Dopplers") and her father still uses that name (LD: "Grounded").

The globes at the rear of the Orion frigate are like those spinning at the rear of a D’Var type Orion scout ship (TOS: “Journey to Babel”, SNW: “Those Old Scientists”). Blue-skinned Orions (actually light green) appeared only in TAS and were the result of coloring problems in the animation (Hal Sutherland, the director, was colorblind, also explaining why TAS tribbles are pink). Also, the odd pronunciation of “Orion” by the blue-skinned Orions here (“OR-ee-on”) comes from TAS: “The Pirates of Orion”, the mistake being due to an absence of a pronunciation guide.

Captain Becky says “there’s no interpersonal conflict allowed on my ship!” which was Roddenberry’s edict for TNG. Mariner also mentioned that people weren’t supposed to have conflict in LD: “Strange Energies”. Becky also uses a riding crop - in LD: “First First Contact” Mariner said she didn’t want a new captain because potentially they could be “some weirdo with a riding crop”. That was likely an allusion to Captain Styles (ST III) using a swagger stick. 

As she goes to replace Mariner, Becky uses the sarcastic Vulcan salute first seen in LD: “Moist Vessel”. We find out that the parallel Captain Freeman ended up at the infamous Starbase 80 (first mentioned in LD: “Terminal Provocations”). 

The Blue Orions say they are laughed at for their “ridiculous uniforms”, which were a product of TAS design. As Parallel Boimler goes to take his seat as Acting Captain, he does a reverse Riker Maneuver out of the conn chair. 

At the bar next to Ransom is a bottle of Cardassian kanar (DS9: “The Marquis, Part II”). In front of Boimler is a raktajino mug seen in DS9, in reality a Highwave Hotjo 16 oz. Travel Mug.

The title is similar to the infamous Season 2 clip show TNG: “Shades of Grey”, written due to a writer’s strike at the time.

D’Erika is eating wing-slug rolls. Orion wing-slugs were mentioned by Lwaxana Troi in TNG: “Ménage à Trois”, and offered on a menu in the Shipyard Bar in Star Trek 2009. In beta canon they are said to be native to the Rigel system.

The Stardate is 59376.9 - by TNG reckoning that makes it 2382 (as also reckoned using Naomi Wildman’s age last episode), and Cerritos is at Targalus IX. One of the banners being displayed says “No Money No Problems”, an allusion to the song “Mo Money Mo Problems” by the Notorious B.I.G.

Boimler appears to trying to grow facial hair, probably inspired by his parallel counterpart from last episode. He’s calling his tips “Bointers”. He is addressed as Commander even though his rank remains LT-jg, presumably because he’s in command of this away team.

The shuttle Sequoia, named after the California National Park like all Cerritos shuttles, was damaged in LD: “No Small Parts” and has been under repair since LD: “Strange Energies”.

The Blue Orions are House Azure now, and a blazzard is a kind of domesticated Orion bird with reptilian features. Tendi says Orions haven’t used sailships in hundreds of years. Bajoran lightships used solar sails as far back as the 16th Century (DS9: “Explorers”), and R’ongovian ships also used solar sails for ceremonial purposes (SNW: “Spock Amok”).

The Orion sailship doesn’t have inertial dampeners, and neither did the Bajoran lightship. Inertial dampeners are only critical at FTL speeds, and solar sails are not meant for that. However, like Sisko’s Bajoran lightship, the Orion sailship does appear to have gravity plating.

Sarium krellide is a material used in power cells or in explosives (TNG: “In Theory”), and also powered Starfleet combadges (PRO: “Observer’s Paradox”).

Phlox kept a Pyrithian Bat as part of his menagerie on the NX-01 (ENT: “Flight or Fight”, et al.).

“It is possible to do everything right and still get your away team kidnapped by the corporate elite,” is a paraphrase of Picard’s “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose,” from TNG: “Peak Performance”.

On Hysperia, they keep dragons for pets and call their warp drives “dragonsbreath engines” (LD: “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie”).

T’Lyn appears to have added herself to the cartoon squiggles of the others on the Sequoia’s hatch.

Boimler tells Mackler to “turn away from the mountain”. The Black Mountain is a spiritual battleground in the afterlife (LD: “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris”) which Boimler has seen when he died briefly (LD: “In the Cradle of Vexilon”).

Assisting T'Lyn in demolishing Sequoia is Goodgey, Badgey's good twin from LD: "A Few Badgeys More".