Two weeks of Christmas vacation means more time to think about Star Trek. Today, we’re following up our recent discussion of one of the unsung heroes of the Enterprise-D, the Environmental Systems Officer, with a purely fanon creation: the Emergency Operations Officer.As with many of our Back of the Bridge articles, we start with a [...]
We’ve been talking about some of the less celebrated position in Starfleet, specifically the consoles along the back of the bridge on the Enterprise-D — two Science stations, Environmental Systems, Mission Operations, and Engineering. Although there are some good reasons to make some permanent assignments to these positions, even on a big ship like the [...]
We’re taking a look at the back of the bridge on the Enterprise-D and the brave young men / women / others who perform semi-critical duties and throw their bodies between exploding work stations and the senior staff. Let’s talk about Starfleet’s most consistent performers: the Environmental Systems Officers.Fun fact: that first season of ST: [...]
Star Trek fandom comes in many different varieties. Me, I’ve never learned Klingon or dressed up as Kirk or played three-dimensional chess, but I’ve done a lot of digging into various semi-canonical sources just to try to get a better understanding of how life works in the 24th century, particularly ife in Starfleet. Some out-of-print [...]
Thinking about rank and chain-of-command issues on “Star Trek”is a quick way to make your head explode, but it’s what we do here at Nerd Lunch. Today, we're talking about why every good starship should have a full-time Second Officer. Yeah, that’s kind of a head-scratcher in the reboot movie when Kirk goes straight from Cadet to Captain. [...]
Q: So what’s the premise of this new "Agent Carter" show? A: Post-WWII, Agent Peggy Carter fights a secret war against the forces of evil, assisted by millionaire industrialist Howard Stark and two-fisted vet Timothy “Dum Dum” Dugan. Q: Is this gonna be cool? A: See that picture? That was the least attractive picture I [...]
During my recent post-injury convalescence, I watched a great deal of Star Trek --- lots of DS9, some TNG, even a few Voyagers and Enterprises. I was looking for some deep-cut TNG, when to my amazement, I realized that there was an episode I had never seen or even heard of --- 6x22, "Suspicions." Now just [...]
Our recent discussion of Ensign Rusty and the strange fate of 23rd century sanitation officers has led me to ponder some of the other oddities of the Star Trek job front. Ponder with me, readers.Waiters OF THE FUTURE. Particularly by the TNG era, we are led to understand that at least within the heart of [...]
As mentioned in a recent post, I've had an unexpected stretch of vacation time since breaking my ankle and leg, and I've spent a fair amount of that time hitting the Trek. My personal sweet spot is DS9 in its entirety (although I've been skipping the Lwaxana Troi episodes); TNG Seasons 4-7; and movies II-III [...]
Nursing a broken leg this past week, and I've used the time (and medication) to immerse myself in the deep and swampy waters of Star Trek lore. I found out that the drugs I'm currently taking are not strong enough to make me enjoy "Enterprise" all that much. I ran across a non-canon but entirely [...]