So.... somehow all the Romulans from previous Star Treks are from the Northern Hemisphere?

And somehow they remained distinct despite colonizing space in cramped space ships?

It's wholly unnecessary too... Just make Narek some Romulan/Human mix if they needed a hot Romulan to seduce Soji. It could even serve a plot purpose showing the Jat Vash (sp?) is so committed to eliminating the synths they don't mind a half Romulan in their midst.

wait, he's objectively hot? when they referenced that in the show i no joke giggled a bit because it was so over the top campy and I didn't see it

his sister though is smokin hot

episode 6 confirms this is a battlestar galactica reboot

Really enjoyed the (albeit blatant fan service) of the most recent episode. Frakes and Sirtis bought some much needed relief from the convoluted main plot and gave as good a performances as they have given in their respective roles.

it's a shame Picard will be transported back into the main plot in the next episode, but when the show inevitably falls on it's arse in a season or two, this is the one episode that could be rewatched as a nostalgic stand alone.

The writers did a good job with the kids' names. Thad (Will's middle name is Thaddeus) and Kestra (Deanna's older sister who died when D was a baby). It's realistic that the characters would name their kids that.

It's Thomas, actually. Thaddeus was the first name of oe of his ancestors featured in the Voyager episode Death Wish.

Is there lore explaining why/if Romulans can/can’t mind meld? I am really confused. I can’t remember Romulans performing the mind meld.

Or is Oh really Vulcan after all and the chat vash actually has been around forever, possibly before the Vulcan/Romulus split?

Bah, you're right. I knew there was a connection though!

I have a theory that bearded Riker is actually mirror universe Riker. He became much cooler, and a bit rapey, once he got that beard, which feels very mirror universe.

Thoughts?

Does Star Trek ever show straight up, regular ship to ship combat? Going back through the movies, there is always a special circumstance or gimmick that makes every battle extremely one sided.

ST 1: (No battle)
ST 2: Khan does a sneak attack on Kirk and then Kirk does a sneak attack back. Then in the 2nd battle, they are in the nebula. (Though at least in this case the battle was not one sided)
ST 3: The Enterprise is damaged so Doc Brown's klingons get an easy shot on him.
ST 4: (No battle)
ST 5: (No battle)
ST 6: Chang's BoP is invisible and once Kirk and co unstealth it, they get an easy kill.
ST 7: The BoP can shoot through their shields and get a lucky shot to hit the warp core or whatever happened. They needed a gimmick to fight back though, something about faulty plasma coils or whatever.
ST 8: This one is a little different since it was a fleet vs the borg cube but it was a very one sided affair at the beginning, then Picard shows up and they all shoot at the one point and blow it up and then it became a one sided affair at the end.
ST 9: They are in the brer patch and they are about to get destroyed until he blows them up with space gas.
ST 10: (Don't remember since I haven't seen this in a while)

The one I can think of was in Yesterday's Enterprise, the battle vs the Klingons was pretty standard. No gimmicks or special weapons or tactics.

Though I haven't seen anything from DS9 or Voyager. Isn't a large chunk of DS9 about a Dominion War?

A lot? I think you may feel that way because once the shields fall, the battle is decided.

I think the gimmicks are just a plot necessity. Nobody wants to see a 10 minute ship battle as they grind down each other’s shields and basically compete on fire power and shield strength.

Of the movies, probably the end battle of ST10 was the most even/back and forth, as awful as that movie was. But that was only because of another special circumstance - they couldn't destroy the Enterprise because he needed Picard alive. Otherwise they'd be toast.

Voyager had some ok battles, but yes DS9 had lots of them, many of which were good but in the later 2 seasons they seemed to throw tactics away and destroy ships with 1 shot... it's like nobody had shields anymore. They went with quantity (fleets of ships) instead of quality (tactics).

TOS - Balance of Terror - A full episode of ship to ship combat

That's one of my favorite - if not absolute favorite - TOS episodes.

And with good reason given that The Enemy Below is one of my favorite WWII movies.

The ship-to-ship combat is one element that made the Wrath of Khan such a great movie. Meyer's cleverly saw how Star Wars ANH borrowed heavily from The Dambusters to create a great climax, so TWoK emulated some of the great submarine movies.

quotes from newest episode

"stfu picard"

"ok guys I'm done murdering now"

I'm just watching out of inertia and lockdown at this point

The thing that is incongruous about Star Trek combat is that the interior shots of the ships show them giving orders like they are old time battleships or submarines. Then when you go to the SFX shots it's all lasers and missiles. With battleships, positioning is important and the speed of firing is relatively slow. But you'd assume with the lasers, photon torpedos and electronic targeting they can fire at a high speed and when you are in a 3d plane such as space, positioning is going to be relatively unimportant.



But this is also what makes the battle scenes work. Compare it to the JJ Abrams Star Trek movies where they did speed up the combat, which takes all the tension out of it. I don't think there were any interesting battles in those movies.

Episode 8 clears a lot of things up, focuses the plot, and has a ton of fan service.

agree 100%, timing always felt off but wasn't enough to ruin it and then when i saw the alternative it suddenly made me miss the stuff i used to think didn't make sense

Feel like 7 and 8 have been a high point so far. 7 for the character work with Troi/Riker and 8 for the plot stuff you mentioned and for some "old trek" kind of stuff with Raffi and the holos. That felt a little like a old mystery episode where we slowly unravel clues as we go. If you remove the



piece from this one, there's basically no action and all story. It felt pretty solid in that regard.

I actually liked the 7 bit. Quite Star Trek campy, maybe even campier than TNG with the

So basically, the writers started their storyboard with Episode 10

Just watched the finale