Jaccident

I thought it was quite good myself; it reminded me very much of the doctor taking over Seven’s body in Body and Soul, the various crew possessions in Powerplay, and Curzon inhabiting Odo in Facets. I do enjoy getting to see an actor really chew the scenery outside the confines they have worked in before.

Something that jumped out was Adam’s very astute question; whether this season there will see “an effort toward finally creating an actualised character out of our main character”.

I realised that it’s a fascinating difference between Disco and almost all the other Trek shows. In TOS, TAS, TNG, VOY, ENT, and SNW we see the lead in a self-actualised state when we first meet them. With DS9 we see Sisko questioning his feeling of actualisation early on, but by the end of the pilot we see that conflict resolved. In LD we see 4 lead characters; three of whom seem actualised and one who has a core conflict; but this quite works as they are primarily comedic characters, and the lack of self-actualisation isn’t lingered on. PRO is an outlier as it’s about discovering who you are, which makes an awful lot of sense as the characters are ostensibly children. PIC muddies this by taking a very actualised character, in Picard, and confronting him with a world that’s not the one he last felt actualised in. Though by S03 he’s much returned to his TNG roots as an actualised character.

Now, self-actualisation isn’t a state that you reach and then hold onto forever, it’s a constant process, and we see that process interrupted for many characters in Trek, leading to terrific stories. And many members of the various casts have not been as actualised, which also leads to great arcs. But Disco feels to me to be one of the first and only shows where almost nobody feels self-actualised. Saru, Reno, and Dadmiral are about as close as you get.

I don’t know if it’s a perfect benchmark but I feel as though if you can answer “how would X handle this situation, with confidence, that character has probably been rounded out and presented as an actualised character.

Not now Kesley!

“Coffee. Black.” “Make it yourself!”

What the actors knew and what the writers knew are not necessarily the same thing though. The writers could well have had a much better idea this would be the end of the road, and left them selves avenues accordingly.

Yeah, I couldn’t tell if there was some joke I wasn’t getting, but the “naming paradox” comes up a lot (and I too believed it for years) so I thought I’d add some colour anyway.

That’s a half-myth it seems. There was a write in campaign from the fans to rename the then tentatively named Constitution (in recognition of the 200th anniversary of the ratification of the US Declaration of Independence), to Enterprise. At the same time, Gerald Ford had the final say, and he himself served aboard the famous WW2 aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise (CV-6). It would appear that there is a confluence of two wishes to lead to the test vehicle being finally officially named the Enterprise. Certainly of recent years, NASA has seemed happy to not dispel that story though.

Some interesting tid-bits here though. The NCC-1701 was early on going to be named the USS Yorktown. Yorktown-class was the ship class of the CV-6 Enterprise. While we all know that the ship class of the NCC-1701 was the Constitution-class.

So, it’s my belief therefore that, in our timeline and Star Trek’s timeline, American men of a certain age seem to be obsessed with the symbolism of three particular names; and no matter what, the Shuttle would have been Enterprise in both.

Could be better on Janeway’s body, she was known for her love of good coffee after all.

Shit, I went to regular schools and still managed to major in “He-Who-Must-Suffer-nomics”.

Implying you’d just sit in the test room as instructed, while as far as you know, a bunch of people die in the corridor outside.

Yeah. Not sure what that poster is on about, Sir Patrick is in terrific form still. The only thing I think maybe differs is the energy, but that’s down to personal tone and timing, Sir Patrick hasn’t aged or changed massively from his prime, he’s always been of less jubilant character, but still very present and engaged.

Total happenstance! One of their workshops is right next to mine, and I walked past one morning and spotted a prop I recognised. I poked my head round the door and asked if it was what I thought and between various people being astonished that I had recognised it, they told me they were just starting the build and how to take a little peek. It was only half finished but it was really really cool nonetheless!