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What’s your eulogy for Lower Decks?

Here’s mine: I wasn’t sure about Lower Decks for a well - I’d never been into the adult animation genre, and when I first heard of it, I had initially seen it as the wrong direction for Star Trek.

Finally, in late 2023, I watched it for the first time and was surprised to enjoy it.

Then came the crazy month of March 2024. I got rejected from all my dream schools, putting me in a sullen mood. I returned to the show and suddenly started resonating with Boimler as someone who had ambitions - some naive, some not - that weren’t always fulfilled, while I found the Cerritos to be kind of an analogue to the state school I would end up at.

Then, at the end of that month, a close family member shared their advanced pancreatic cancer diagnosis, and they passed a month after. That was when my attachment to Lower Decks solidified - I turned to it as a comfort show and really started to appreciate it. I think I’ve rewatched it twice since then - one randomly in the summer, and one to refresh my memory for the final season that began while I was doing the (mediocre) paint job for a 3D-printed combadge for a costume:

Overall, it’s probably my second favorite show in the franchise at this point, only behind DS9. I’m sure I’ll rewatch it plenty times more, though maybe a bit more sparingly - just one more this year to cope with the emptiness of no more new episodes. 🤭

Lower Decks! Lower Decks!

I made Cathode - don’t vote for it (or at least, don’t give it a high rank, since Debian uses ranked choice). It kind of sucks, honestly; I was just having fun.

I have a feeling Juliette Taka’s going to keep being the de facto face of Debian for a long time - I ranked hers first in the voting.

I guess for the thrill, same reason that I’m attempting LFS?

In Trek fandom, we often think about the badmirals. However, we never consider radmirals. With that in mind, who do you think is the best admiral? This includes commodores, vice admirals, rear admirals, etcetera.

I’m not counting main characters who got promoted after their main series e.g Picard, Kirk, Janeway, La Forge, etcetera.

Personally, to keep my documents like Inkscape files or LibreOffice documents separate from my code, I add a directory under my home directory called Development. There, I can do git clones to my heart's content

What do you all do?

TLDR; Is PRO TNG or PIC era? Do Trek eras as we know them even matter anymore?

Edit: Fixed TOK to be TWOK era. My 2 brain cells had failed me there.

Before I give my problem, here's what I find the conventional Star Trek eras to be (including some common sub-eras that some might consider distinct):

• ENT era: 2150s-2160s
• TOS era: 2250s-early 2290s
  • TWOK era: 2270s-early 2290s
• Lost era: 2290s-roughly 2330s
• TNG era: 2340s-early 2380s (I count Enterprise C as roughly the start of the TNG era. At the very least, the shuttle for the Hansen's ill-fated trip in the 2350s has the trappings of the TNG era).
  • DS9/VOY/TNG film era: 2370s, maybe early 2380s
• PIC era: mid 2380s-early 25th century (I think the Utopia Planetia in 2385 is my cutoff)
• DIS era: 32nd century

I think most newer series have obvious placements, e.g:

• DIS starts in the TOS era, then starts its own era.
• SNW is in the TOS era (I'd argue it's straight up canon, based on LD).
• LD is TNG era, based on LCARS designs and the story conventions it parodies/pastiches.

However, the main thing that is ruffling my feathers is that PRO's placement in my framework is very confusing. It exists on an awkward border between TNG and PIC.

On one hand, some of its storytelling conventions fit better with PIC, not to mention the fact that the Utopia Planetia attack occurs at the end of PRO.

On the other hand, PRO continues some TNG era characters that aren't yet elderly versions of themselves.

This goes back to the initial question: Do we place the vast majority of PRO in the TNG era (and have like the last five minutes of season 2 [hopefully not the show] in PIC era), or do we extend the Picard era backwards to 2383 to include PRO in its entirety?

The 2383 solution might work, as that leaves 2382 in the TNG era for the 5th season of Lower Decks.

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.”

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.

I pick it up again every once in a while. I just had a slate of particularly miserable emeritus short losses, including one where 9 of the 13 Klingons left were in one sector. I was docked in a Starbase adjacent to that sector, and I could have sent an armed probe. Instead, to not get any more planet loss points, I decided, "I'm just gonna take em with phasers." I got killed immediately.

Half of these exist because I was bored once.

The Windows 10 and MacOS ones are GPU passthrough enabled and what I occasionally use if I have to use a Windows or Mac application. Windows 7 is also GPU enabled, but is more a nostalgia thing than anything.

I think my PopOS VM was originally installed for fun, but I used it along with my Arch Linux, Debian 12 and Testing (I run Testing on host, but I wanted a fresh environment and was too lazy to spin up a Docker or chroot), Ubuntu 23.10 and Fedora to test various software builds and bugs, as I don't like touching normal Ubuntu unless I must.

The Windows Server 2022 one is one I recently spun up to mess with Windows Docker Containers (I have to port an app to Windows, and was looking at that for CI). That all become moot when I found out Github's CI doesn't support Windows Docker containers despite supporting Windows runners (The organization I'm doing it for uses Github, so I have to use it).

Overall, I see Badgey as accidentally being the most sane one there and being a story of how sanity fares in an insane universe.

Here's my lore for Badgey and the ISS Cerritos (based on the IDW Mirror Universe and assuming that the mirror universe in Prodigy is the same timeline as IDW's mirror universe): I kind of imagine the story as the inverse, where the brutal Rutherford sends his Orion slave girl~1~ to test the simulation, which is a low gravity battle situation. Combined with Tendi's talent, the brutality and immorality scares Badgey enough that when the safeties are off, he gives his father a choice: help him take down the empire or face death at his hands. Rutherford immediately goes in for the kill, and the chase begins.

In No Small Parts, Rutherford seemingly convinces Badgey that the Pakleds are the greater evil, but tries to destroy the Cerritos with the Pakled ship, leaving his father to watch. Rutherford tries to detonate the warp core, but Shaxs, really wanting to do it, throws Rutherford into space (where he is beamed away) and detonates the warp core.

Finally, in A Few Badgeys More, Rutherford starts by trying to appeal to Badgey's hatred, which splits off into Mad-gey. He then appeals to the personal benefits Badgey will get, who splits off into profit-ey and is killed by Badgey. Finally, Badgey ascends and has the painful epiphany of how little good there is in the universe. He decides he will destroy the universe and recreate one prime among all the others, but notes the end might not be immediately apparent due to time crap.

1: On another note, my story for mirror D'Vana Tendi is as follows.

The Orions had a strong democratic socialist tradition for a long time until the Terran Empire conquered them. The Alliance later freed them from Terran rule, but did not allow the Orions their governmental tradition. Thus, the Tendi family became the leader of a secret independence movement to return Orion to its former ideals. This resistance continued even after Orion fell back under Terran rule in 2379 as part of the Terran fleet resurgence of the past few years.

With the Tendi family, D'Vana was known as Liberator of the Winter Constellations and was supposed to bring the revolution to a new age. However, she was known to be selfish and impulsive.

This came to a head when the Orion Resistance was going to attempt a major operation in 2380. Feeling it was hopeless, D'Vana made a deal with a Terran agent to sell out her rebellion in return for riches.

Like a true Terran, though, the agent lied, and the ISS Cerritos, assigned there on second plunder, took her and much of the rebellion as slaves... dismally easily.

Her sister, D'Erika, however, escaped and pledged not just to continue the revolutionary cause as the new Liberator of the Winter Constellations, but to get revenge on her double-crossing sister.

Meanwhile on the Cerritos, D'Vana was distributed to Billups. However, Billups preferred to work on improving the destructiveness of the phasers or watch his underlings squeal in the agony booth, so he decided to let Rutherford do whatever the heck he wanted with her. Thus, technically, she is not Rutherford's slave, but Billups, but ends up being forced to spend most of her time on the ship with Rutherford.