Agreed that it’s public now - in the case of up/downvoting publication is instance-dependent — and can be scraped, but as a federated instance Meta can just load it directly.

Sharing user data with a an instance with a firm that exists to monetize data seems a fundamental violation of what the fediverse is.

I think that you could consider everything from fanzines and fanfic through licensing to what gets onscreen as a large ongoing dialogue.

Some cool things drift around for a long time, so it’s not even clear if they originated in specific tie-in fiction unless the authors themselves identify who came up with a name - as we can do with Number One being given the name Una.

The preponderance of EPs at this point are fans who bring their own longstanding ideas of canon, but they’re to some extent influenced by the ongoing fan and licensing dialogue.

In some cases, especially with Goldsman who was deep in the fanzine debates of the 70s, I get the idea that he’s intentionally working to counter longstanding fan headcanon or interpretations that he sees as a barrier for new generations to accept TOS.

When we get to tie-in fiction, the writers of licenced products are in most cases also fans, and, like Goldsman, have been immersed in and speculating on past canon for decades themselves. And then the younger television writers have clearly been reading some of the tie-in fiction or playing the games. Or they themselves have been written them, or at least their consultants.

As a Treklit fan, I am seeing that the new shows increasingly draw on the licenced tie-in writing, both books and comics as well as STO.

Discovery season two pulled in the S31 Control AI concept. Picard season three brought STO ships to television, but also paralleled and wove in elements of the the TNG characters from the Relaunch books.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to attribute it simply to Beyer’s influence as a tie-in author who’s now an in-house canon anchor and writer on all the live-action shows. That’s part of it, as are David Mack’s contributions on Lower Decks and Prodigy.

Prodigy has brought the Brikars (originally created by Peter David for the YA Academy books) into onscreen canon. That’s probably my favourite ‘canonization.’ But Mack has also encouraged a restoration of noncommissioned officer roles and several other subtle ‘solutions’ out of Treklit.

Anyway, its an interesting thing to trace.

Having Dr Erin MacDonald a Voyager fan and astrophysicist as the franchise’s science consultant is locking in the Alcubierre-like warp theory as a backdrop across the franchise at this point.

I find it interesting, going back to the warp-like FTL of MGM’s Forbidden Planet, that each of the crew had to stand in a columnar a suspension device to survive the transit. Given how much Roddenberry pulled from Forbidden Planet for TOS, it’s interesting that he decided that we had to be able to see the crew functional during FTL travel. George Lucas, who also drew heavily on Forbidden Planet for Star Wars, went the opposite direction and just had the hyperdrive act as a kind of jump.

I don’t think it’s a bad headcanon.

We do know that the first landing went wildly wrong quickly. It’s possible that the judgement and short term memories of Pike and Spock of that landing were affected by more than trauma and shock.

There was individual variation in how rapidly the effects presented. We saw that La’an experienced some early tinnitus shortly after the shuttle landed.

On the ship, Spock wasn’t necessarily correct in his inference given he was already experiencing some cognitive impairment by that point.

I often disagree , but I find the reviews by Treklit author Keith Di Candido on TOR interesting, and the comments participation of another author Christopher L Bennet interesting to follow. Both know the history of onscreen canon very well and have spent a lot of time working around it as tie-in writers. It’s good to see their takes and their debates.

I agree that Jessie Gender has some solid reviews as well.

As for most of the rest, the reviews of Picard season three have really made me reassess who I find worth my time to pay attention to. Many revealed themselves to be just locked in a a gatekeeping idea that 90s Berman Trek is the only ‘real’ Trek and it’s not something I want to give my views to.

That is, some reviewers whom I had considered sometimes tough but balanced, seemed to turn off any criticism of Picard season three as the nostalgic hits rolled out. Many of the same flaws they had repeatedly criticized in Discovery or earlier seasons of Picard were given a complete pass. And they are back being hypercritical of SNW now.

As someone who eventually stopped supporting the 80s fanzines run by TOS fans that couldn’t accept TNG was its own different thing, I feel the same way about Berman-era fans who are now gatekeeping what Trek can evolve to.

Yes, it’s a direct plot reference to the backstory for The Cage.

I was responding to the comment that it’s like TNG psychological episodes, when I see it as in the tradition of Forbidden Planet where an unknown technology or phenomenon is changing brain function so that subconscious or deep behaviours are revealed.

I would link it back to psychological mystery of The Cage and further to its touchstone, the MGM 50s classic Forbidden Planet.

I agree that it has a genuine TOS feel.

Especially as it gets back to the mid 20th century thought experiments around how the mind functions, but informed my more current understanding of memory, cognitive function and emotion.

I wasn’t quite sure the balance of the scenes was what it could have been, but it was good to see all of the main cast having their moments. I was nonetheless frustrated that Number One was quickly sidelined once again.

Also I was uncomfortable with how far Pike was willing to go in his aggression in order to get information from Zack. I believe we’re supposed to feel that, but it did feel that it was pushed just that moment longer to drive home the point that Pike’s deep ethics are what keeps him in check, not his emotions. It also tracks with his anger and how he even used it to break the thrall of the Talosians in The Cage.

But overall, I liked it. It’s a deeper and more challenging episode than it may seem on the surface, first watch. I suspect it will be one that stands up over a longer horizon.

This is the kind of thing I was very much hoping to see in this show. I’m almost as excited to see Rigel VII as I was to see Talos IV again in Discovery ‘If Memory Serves.’

I am definitely in the contingent that enjoys The Cage more than The Menagerie. I’ve been hoping that the dangling threads of that pilot would be woven back into new stories from the time I saw the first cobbled together restoration of The Cage in the 80s.

Because he had a main cast role in the Peacock series Vampire Academy vs a recurring minor cast role in SNW.

It may not have been a successful show, but it was a step up for his career nonetheless.

I’d love to see a direct-to-streaming movie set before Discovery arrived.