Don’t blink - you might miss it.

Wait, I thought that was Doctor Who…

I’ll let Luther Sloan take this one.

We search out and identify potential dangers to the Federation…we deal with them.

They certainly believe they’re protecting the Federation.

Honestly, if there’s one character whose upbringing I’d like to see, it’s this one.

At least once more, as always.

And yet it endures. Unlike the Terran Empire, which fell centuries ago. Were you aware that the distance between our two universes started expanding sometime after your departure? There hasn’t been a single crossing in over 500 years. You didn’t know that, did you? You’re all alone now.

There’s definitely a lot of wiggle room in there.

I thought metaphasic shields were theoretical…

Hmm yes I did expect it would go without saying, but the extra reminder can’t hurt.

to shreds, you say

A mild counterpoint, because I totally get where you’re coming from:

Section 31 is probably the one setting that should be high stakes, all the time. Like them or not, this is kind of what they do.

This makes me think that the flashbacks to Georgiou’s childhood seen in the trailers might be directly related to the main plot, rather than something that’s just there to provide character insight.

I was thinking that it’s interesting that crossovers with the Mirror Universe stop completely at some point around the 27th Century. There’s a story there.

One has to dig into the novels for some of this, but Picard took his promotion to oversee the evacuation plans, so in theory, Starfleet already knows about the supernova and is beginning their initial evacuation effort.

The Utopia Planitia fleet was a major project, but evacuations took place even before the fleet was built - Elnor’s colony was an evacuee settlement, and Laris and Zhaban stuck with Picard after he rescued them.

I had been hoping that such a major re-evaluation of Starfleet’s mission would affect this show, but it was not to be.

TrekCore is reporting that The Ready Room is coming to an end with this episode.

I wish I could say I was surprised, but the vastly decreased frequency of episodes was a red flag.

As a finale, I think that was satisfying. I’m glad they got the cameos out of their system last week, and primarily focused on the core cast this week.

The main thing that I wanted to see this season - a tie-in with the impending Romulan supernova - didn’t come to fruition, but I’m trying not to hold that against them. They’ve very clearly left themselves a path for continuation in some form, so we’ll have to see what comes of it.

Boimler eventually turning away from the alt-universe PADD was an inevitable conclusion, but I like the reason they provided, avoiding the low-hanging fruit of alt-Boims turning out to be a dick or something.

The overall Rutherford arc was less successful. I guess they seeded it previously, but I always just assumed his implant was on the fritz, so it was odd to see him suddenly blaming the ship.

Is that an angry bullpup version of the unicorn dog from the Original Series?

I believe it was a jackal mastiff, which hasn’t been seen (outside of STO) in quite a long time.

I never wondered if Klingons had claws for toenails, now I am.

We got to see Worf’s feet once, and I apologize for the reminder.

Or was that Goodgey? Have I forgotten about them?

Goodgey did remain with the crew, and was last seen in episode 5x02.

Fun(?) fact regarding a *Defiant-*class ship landing on a planet.

Per Ex Astris Scientia, while the Defiant MSD had visible landing struts fairly early on (the revised MSD introduced in “Shattered Mirror”), it seems no one thought to inform the writers:

The real-world reason for the Defiant never landing is that the producers were not aware that there were landing struts visible in the MSD. Ron D. Moore said in an interview with LCARScom.net: “The Defiant has landing gear? You have to remember that things like CD-ROMs and the various “official” manuals put out by Paramount are not done in conjunction with the writing/producing staffs and that the authors are usually simply extrapolating information based on what’s actually been seen on screen.”

the shuttlebay appears to be in the nose assembly, where the deflector dish, docking port, and phaser emitter usually are.

There’s always room for more shit in the nose of a Defiant.

I’m quite happy with the way it ultimately went, but it’s a pretty interesting thought experiment.

It’ll make one hell of an oral history some day.

As I understand it, the original plan was that Captain Kim was going to be kind of like Admiral Shelby [Elizabeth Deneny], that was going to be you.

Correct.

So, I was wondering how far down the road did they go with you on that?

It went all the way to my manager saying, “You’ve been cast.” It was originally a three episode arc, which then changed to two, then then changed to one. But I was told by my manager that I needed to be in the LA area in January for a fitting for Picard. So it was there. It had progressed fairly far actually having Harry on that show, pretty darn far. The script was written. Harry’s name was in there… Jeri Ryan said to me, “It’s so funny because we got sent a script, and Harry was in there, and all sudden, the revisions, Harry wasn’t in there.” I was like, “Oh, wow.” So, it went pretty darn far. And I’ll be perfectly honest, being a sci-fi fan, I was depressed for months after that when it didn’t happen. I was literally crying into my own sleeve. [laughs]

I haven’t listened to the audio, so I don’t know what Wang’s tone is like during this story, but…that sounds really shitty. Possibly worse than filming something that later got cut.