I would suspect that the real draw to working with Starfleet for non-federation personnel isn’t any concept of wages, but a comprehensive benefits package. Presumably Starfleet membership confers some level of personal federation membership, possibly for both you and your immediate family, which may mean that you get to move your loved ones to a mostly-utopic federation world.

Yep. The show was written by humans, humans are flawed, therefore the show is flawed. It’s constantly undone by an unholy mix of things that seemed okay at the time, things that were written to try and correct the things that previously seemed okay at the time (but which made things worse), the personal flaws of the creators seeping into their works, and a pile of crappy tropes that TV can’t help but lean on. It’s weird that you think this is something that isn’t a consideration of the show ‘anymore’; this all goes back all the way to the 60s. Original Trek is occasionally misogynistic crap, and once went so far as to describe Nazism as the most efficient form of government. TNG had episodes that were straight up racist, and characters that are accidentally written as creeps. This is a problem the show has always had, and sometimes you just have to deal with that to get to the good stuff.

Elim Garak, because how can you not love a patently duplicitous and yet still somehow generally benevolent smooth-talker who chews all the scenery and exudes the queerest energy simple tailor?

Heck, Lower Decks already did it with Boimler, with the status quo being back to normal after two episodes of fun B-plots on the Titan.

Heck, even before you take into account differing xenobiologies, this has precedent on earth; different cultures are often unused to how other cultures smell.

The choice of Bynars as the latest victims was clever; if you’re going to remind everyone what’s going on with mysterious ship, but need to get through the entire sequence as quickly as possible, go with the species that transfer information at the quickest rate!

Honestly, whilst it would be nice for the mysterious ship of destruction to actually reach the central plot someone soon, I’m enjoying the little snapshots into lower deck life on other ships. It’s a shame it always inevitably ends with vaporisation.

I’d argue that Odo fits the traditional role more directly, as his confused and sometimes disdainful fascination with solids has a similarly cold and analytical approach to that of Spock and Data. But then, Quark and Odo are essentially two sides of the same coin.

To be fair, DS9 didn’t really have one of those. But DS9’s strength was that the entire extended cast including minor characters had interesting stories to tell. Voyager on the other hand has characters like Ensign Harry Kim, a character so underserved and underwritten that at one point he’s killed off and replaced with an alternate universe version of himself and the dynamic doesn’t change one iota.

Robert Picardo lobbied so hard for that cameo!

Honestly, I think SNW is in a pretty decent position for a larger episode order. Heck, having more episodes to create more space between TOS character guest appearances would probably do the series good.

Folks tend to say that Kirk is too much of a cowboy, but that’s not really who he is. He’s very much invested in the rules and hierarchy of Starfleet, but he’s also driven by a sense of justice.

He’s not a cowboy, he’s the Sheriff.

His work with Erica Henderson on The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl was straight up one of the best runs at Marvel in the last decade, so I’m looking forward to this.

My suspicion since even before the crossover was announced was that they designed the characters to look like the VAs in case they had the opportunity for cameo appearances down the line.

Not country; rock. Extremely soft rock. It’s a cover of a song originally performed by Rod Stewart. For the movie Patch Adams.

If so, then the interviews will stop after episode… 6 I think it was?

It makes slightly more sense than trying to expand Star Trek’s appeal by creating a kids show and then putting it on a subscription service that was basically only used by existing Trek fans.

God, this pitch makes so little sense on so many levels. Star Trek has never been about the villains, so having a batman-style villain team-up makes no sense. Seven samurai in space with time travel is a reasonable pitch, but why would you need to build a team that involves a captain, a captain, a science officer, and a captain?

“Oh yeah, sorry, I got the only chair. Would you like to sit on this ladder?”