As I've now reached the end, I want to thank @AndorianSoup, @HippieScubaSteve, @AlsoPaisleyCat and @theresmiling for starting the #StarTrek31DayChallenge.

Because of this challenge, I've written more blogs (because that's what I turned them into, oops) in this past month than I have in years. Coming up with these responses has caused me to examine my fandom in ways I never really had before in 30+ years of being a Trekkie, and I feel more prepared for discussions about this stuff in the future.

It has also gotten me out of my shell a bit on Mastodon, and given me something cool to talk about every day. I even mostly kept up with it on the daily, though that wasn't a requirement!

Challenge background and rules: https://tenforward.social/@theresmilin[email protected]

#StarTrek31DayChallenge Day 31 - Fave Cliffhanger...

For me it's the HUGE cliffhanger at the end of Star Trek: Discovery's season 2 finale "Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2".

With most cliffhangers, you can generally guess it will be resolved when we come back and things will go back to normal. Watching this, we had no idea what Discovery was going to be like on the other side, but we knew it would be radically different from everything we'd become accustomed to.

This episode had a LOT to accomplish, and it did so admirably. It was the climax and resolution of several 2nd season storylines with Control and Pike and Spock, culminating in the wildest, most chaotic space battle we've ever seen in Star Trek.

After all that, we came out the other side in a brand new era of Discovery where the show really found itself and reach its full potential, making this perhaps the most impactful cliffhanger in all of Star Trek.

#startrek #discovery

#StarTrek31DayChallenge Day 30 - Crew Position You'd Want

Realistically, I'm the Engineer who's good at his job but cusses and complains the whole time.

Ideally? I think I'd want to be on the Command track, with the ultimate goal of becoming a stuffy Fleet Admiral. There are too many badmirals up there; it's time to shake things up a bit at the top.

I think that would land me as a First Officer for a large portion of my career.

I'm good at working with dynamic personalities and keeping them in check, and I'm kind of a jack of all trades, which comes in handy in that role. It would also give me a chance to lead a lot of away missions and hopefully get into some good trouble.

#startrek

#StarTrek31DayChallenge Day 29 - Character Who Inspires You

I've mentioned that Picard's my Captain, and he is obviously a big source of inspiration. I've often defaulted to WWJLPD when I have a decision to make.

But I want to talk about Benjamin Sisko here. This was a character born out of grief, and he started out understandably bitter. But he grew as the story went on, he showed us one of the most loving relationships in all of Trek with his son Jake, he was subjected to immense pressures and had to learn to "live with" working outside the system for the greater good, he cared deeply for and trusted his crew, and he was always willing to give someone a chance, even if he gave them a hard time about it first.

He managed to heal from tragedy, establish community, and fight for what's right while the universe was throwing everything it had at him. Every rewatch gives us more to appreciate about Sisko.

#startrek #ds9

#StarTrek31DayChallenge Day 28 - Fave Episode Set in the Present Day

I really liked the Voyager two-parter "Future's End".

Not only was this just a fun time travel story, but it also gave us the Doctor's Mobile Emitter, which permanently changed the show for the better. It also featured some great guest stars in Ed Begley, Jr. and Sarah Silverman. While I'm less keen on the subplot with Chakotay and Torres, I do think that could have gone somewhere interesting if they had been given the 4-parter they wanted for this story instead of just two episodes.

It was also just cool to see the location shots filmed in the Los Angeles area. I've never been there, but I was playing a lot of Grand Theft Auto V during my last rewatch, and it was fun to see the characters out at the Santa Monica Pier or Venice Beach or the Griffith Observatory and be like "I was driving a tank there last night!"

#startrek #voyager

#StarTrek31DayChallenge Day 27 - Planet You'd Like to Visit

This might seem counterintuitive, but Earth.

Earth is a wonderful place when humans aren't ruining it. The idea of an Earth that is inhabited by humans who have figured out we don't need billionaires and religious wars and nuclear bombs and slavery and violence and suffering and capitalism? Humans who have not only reversed climate change, but learned to control the weather? That sounds perfect, actually.

Also, Earth is a hub. It's the home of the Federation and Starfleet, and you can get to many other star systems pretty easily from there. But you don't even have to go that far - you can vacation on several now-inhabited worlds in the Solar System, taking in a Martian sunset or imbibing some of that "green drink" on Ganymede.

#startrek

#StarTrek31DayChallenge Day 26 - Fave Trek Book (Fiction or Nonfiction)

As a kid in the 90s, The Star Trek Encyclopedia by Michael and Denise Okuda changed my life. It helped me build a much deeper connection to my fandom, but more importantly to me at the time, it helped me look smart online.

When this book came out in 1994, most of us didn't have the Internet. What I had was Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes). I was part of that early federated community where you could dial up a BBS run by a regular person in your city, get on the forums, and communicate with people on every other networked BBS in the world.

Because I owned this book, I had access to the greatest wealth of Star Trek knowledge ever put in one place, and I used it to great effect on the MajorNet Star Trek Forum. From time to time I still go looking to see if anyone has an archive of those posts, just to see how insufferable I became with this vast power at my fingertips.

Thanks, Okudas!

#startrek #tng #startrektng

#StarTrek31DayChallenge Day 25 - Best Trek Tech

Definitely the replicator for me.

When I think about the biggest technologies in Star Trek, warp drive immediately comes to mind. It's so important that the Federation won't talk to you (officially) until your planet has developed it. And it is a massively important technology that opens up the rest of the galaxy.

But if I could snap my fingers and make one technology become real right now and available to everyone, it would be replicators.

The impact on the planet would be massive. In an instant, we could ensure every human had clean water to drink and good food to eat, medical supplies, clothing, shelter and transportation. We would eliminate the animal agriculture industry and factory farms, saving billions of animal lives and reducing carbon emissions so we can fight climate change.

We would no longer have to perform dangerous and destructive mining and fracking operations. We could even potentially save lives by replicating organs (a theoretical possibility even for 24th century replicators,) or at the very least freely replicating prosthetics that currently cost ridiculous amounts. And we could recycle all our waste by breaking it down to an atomic level to be used in future replications, never putting trash in a landfill or an ocean again.

That kind of a change would force us to restructure our society dramatically, and people would have the freedom to study and work on whatever they want for a living, like building that fancy warp drive we've been hearing about.

#StarTrek31DayChallenge Day 24 - Fave Crossover Episode

Classic Trek had a lot of fun crossover episodes. We had passing-the-torch appearances like Bones in TNG, Picard in DS9 and Quark in Voyager, Riker has been everywhere, and it was cool to have random pop-ins like when Bashir helped Data explore his weird dreams.

But the Strange New Worlds / Lower Decks crossover "Those Old Scientists" was an event that really showed what a crossover could be. As a huge fan of both Lower Decks and SNW, I wasn't sure how they were going to pull it off, and I was surprised there was any animated component at all (let alone an animated SNW intro!). But it just goes to show that the SNW team wants to make great Star Trek, and they don't take themselves so seriously that they'd turn up their noses at the chance for an incredibly fun episode.

And it absolutely worked. While I'd love to have had all the Lower Decks main cast appear in live action, it was a huge treat to see Boimler and Mariner in the flesh, and their interactions with the SNW crew struck the perfect balance. They also managed to pay homage to Enterprise in this episode, so it even had faith of the heart.

#startrek #strangenewworlds #lowerdecks