USSBurritoTruck

• The Orion starship we see in the opening is visually similar to the Orion interceptors seen in “Borderland” with some distinct differences.

     • Notably, this interceptor has a pair of arms extending from the underside of the ship, similar to the Orion starship seen in the TAS episode, “The Pirates of Orion.”

• Starting with Risik’s tattoos, we see several examples of the Orion alphabet introduced in “Borderland”.

• Among the plunder the Orion lower deckers are sorting is:

     • A Bat’leth

     • A number of 24th century Starfleet type-2 phasers

     • A Vulcan harp

     • A 23rd century Starfleet type-2 phaser

     • A Starfleet compression phaser rifle

• ”Hey, did you guys see that Maleer got big pieces of metal attached to her head?” In “Borderland” we were introduced to the idea that Orion body modification practices do include grafting bits of what appears to be scrap metal to their bodies.

• The captain’s chair aboard the Orion ship is similar in shape to the one seen in “The Pirates of Orion”.

• The Mysterious Threat destroys the Orion vessel, just as it did the Klingon Bird-of-Prey, IKS Che’Ta’ in “Twovix”, and a Romulan ship in “I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee”.

• “I have put my foot in my mouth enough when it comes to Orion stuff.” Tendi was hurt by Mariner’s insistence that all Orions are pirates who love to pillage in “Crisis Point”, and Mariner again insulted Tendi by suggesting she use her pheromones to influence a dom-jot game they were attempting to hustle in “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris”.

• Among his possessions on display, Boimler has a USS Cerritos commemorative plate.

• Tendi, Mariner, and T’Lyn take the Yosemite II shuttle on their away mission/girls’ trip. The original Yosemite was destroyed in when Mariner and Boimler were caught in a gravity well and forced to crash land in “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie”, and the Yosemite II was introduced in “Grounded”.

• As the shuttle approaches Orion, we see an Orion barge of the type operated by Harrad-Sar in “Bound”.

• Several of the buildings on the Orion skyline bear the symbol worn by the Orion crew in “The Pirate of Orion”.

• “You grew up in a castle, like friggin’ Billups?” We learned that chief engineer Billups grew up as heir to the throne of the human colony Hysperia, which is populated entirely by “ren faire types.”

• Tendi confirms that her family is part of the Orion Syndicate, a criminal organization first mentioned in “The Ascent”.

• B’rt Tendi is played by Nolan North, who’s portrayed several Trek characters, including:

     • Bridge officer of the USS Vengeance - “Star Trek Into Darkness”

     • The Half a Rascal - “Much Ado About Boimler”

     • Cerritos transporter chief, Lundy

     • Sokel - “wej Duj”

     • K’ranch - “The Least Dangerous Game”

• The A.B. Chambers is the steamboat that Mark Twain briefly worked on.

• Boimler and Rutherford both show up dressed as Mark Twain. The real Samuel Clemens encountered the crew of the USS Enterprise D when they travelled back to 1893 in “Time’s Arrow”.

• Tendi was first referred to as the Mistress of the Winter Constellations in “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris”.

• The bottle the Slit Throat bartender pours from features an image of the Orion captain from “The Pirates of Orion”.

• The stir stick in Madam G’s drink is topped with the symbol worn by the Orion crew in “The Pirates of Orion”.

• New Seattle is a colony on Penthara IV, a world the Enterprise D responded to a disaster on in “A Matter of Time”.

• The pattern on the privacy screens of the hump dungeon mirror those of the fence in the fantasy Captain Pike experienced of Vina as an Orion “slave girl” in “The Menagerie, Part II”.

• T’Lyn observes that the male Orions in the hump dungeon appear to be under the influence of pheromonal chemical manipulation. It was established in “Bound” that Orion culture is actually matriarchal, with women controlling the men via the use of pheromones.

• ”Tendi’s made it clear that Starfleet made those pheromones up.” Actually, all Tendi ever said in “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris” is that she’s, ”not even that kind of Orion.”

• Coqqor is played by Eric Bauza, who’s portrayed several PRO and LDS characters, including:

     • Barniss Frex - “Asylum”

     • Scot’Ee and Sool’U - “All the World’s a Stage”

     • Assface and Screwhead - “Skin a Cat”

• Though there has previously not been any canon Chalnoth ships, the design here appears to be based on the ships seen on the cover of DC Comics’ “Star Trek: The Next Generation” #61, published in 1994.

• The starship boneyard that Tendi and D’Erika used to play in as children contains a Federation exploration vessel of the same design as the USS Raven, which Seven of Nine’s parents used to study the Borg and get assimilated. Ship type was first seen in “The Raven”.

• Coqqor devours Rutherford and Boimler’s bonsai tree. In “Allegiance” the Chalnoth Esoqq was unable to eat the food disks provided to Picard and the others by their captors, but did strongly imply that he could subsist on the Mizarian prisoner.

• ”I may not be a pirate, but I’ve rerouted my share of EPS conduits.” Tendi demonstrated her shipjacking abilities in “Hear All, Trust Nothing”.

• ”A report without the subject’s consent would be unethical.” Vulcans monitor other species without their consent all the time, such as in “Star Trek: First Contact”, “The Andorian Incident”, and “Carbon Creek”.

• Boimler and Rutherford end the episode on the holodeck, both dressed as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The works of Mozart have been featured in:

     • “Where No One Has Gone Before”

     • “The Ensigns of Command”

     • “Sarek”

     • “A Matter of Time”

     • “A Fistful of Datas”

     • “Cogenitor”

• Cap’n Freeman’s log records the stardate as 58759.1.

• The world of Corazonia is an artificial ringworld circling a star. In “Rosetta” and “Coming Home” we saw that Species Ten-C used similar Dyson rings to harvest energy from the stars of their original home system, and their newly established home.

     • The scale of Corazonia and its star is…questionable, but that’s hardly a new issue in Trek. Consider the USS Voyager traveling through the planetary ring in VOY’s title sequence, or the utterly massive Borg cube being visible in Jupiter’s eye in the PIC finale, “The Last Generation”.

     • Not canon, but Corazonia very much resembles the Ringworld from the cover art of Larry Niven’s 1970 novel, “Ringworld”, set in his Known Space series, which is also the origin of the Kiznti.

• Corazonia’s climate is controlled by a sentient computer, Vexilon. Other planet controlling computers have been seen in:

     • “The Return of the Archons” - Landru

     • “The Apple” - Vaal

     • “Spock’s Brain” - The Controller

     • “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky” - The Oracle of the People

     • “When the Bough Breaks” - The Custodian

• Freeman roles up her sleeves before getting to work on Vexilon, not unlike the way Mariner keeps her sleeves all the time, despite it landing her in the brig at least once.

• Freeman states that she ”minored in archaic technology back at the Academy.” If Mariner is to be believed in “Room for Growth”, the USS Cerritos has been overwritten by D’Arsay technology three times.

• Boimler’s team’s shuttle is the Kings Canyon, presumably named for Kings Canyon National Park

• ”Statistically, ensigns serving under recently promoted commanders are more likely to experience death and/or dismemberment.” Wesley Crusher’s entire team in “Pen Pals” died during his first time in charge, and he wasn’t even recently promoted.

• Inside the anomaly storage room we see:

     • A probe resembling the Kataan probe from “The Inner Light” but with some notable differences

     • What appears to be an oversized Vulcan lirpa

     • Nomad from “The Changeling”, or a very similar Earth probe transformed into an artificial life form

     • A Wadi board game, from “Move Along Home”

     • What appears to be an empty transport case for a Medusan, including a visor missing the red protective lens; Ambassador Kollos used one in “Is There in Truth No Beauty?”

     • A bat’leth

     • A Betazoid gift box, like the one seen in “Haven”

     • A 23rd century Romulan cloaking device, like the one Kirk and Spock stole in “The Enterprise Incident”

• Billups’ pet ferret is named Lancelot; it was established in “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie” that Billups comes Hysperia, a planet colonized by “Ren faire type” humans.

• Tendi, Mariner, and Rutherford are using T-88 scanners to check the chips in the isolinear chip junction. T-88s were first seen in “Cupid’s Errant Arrow” and weren’t available fleetwide yet, but Rutherford and Tendi did steal a bunch from the USS Vancouver.

• ”Is it a unotronic?” Duotronic and multitronic systems were designed by Richard Daystrom, which we learned in “The Ultimate Computer”. This is the first mention of a unotronic system, though it’s not entirely clear if that’s an actual thing, or simply a bit for Billups’ joke.

• Dirks claims he was trapped in the Wadi game for a month as a child. The Wadi are a gamma quadrant civilization who were first encountered in 2369, 12 years prior to this episode.

• Boimler refers to the large blue guy as ”Big Merp.” In “I, Excretus” the scoreboard showed that another member of the same species was also named Merp. Are all members of the species named Merp? Is it the name of their species and just what they’re all called? Or is Merp simply a common name among their species?

• Rutherford ends up in the Wadi game, where he encounters the same puzzles Captain Sisko, Kira, Doctor Bashir, and Jadzia did in “Move Along Home”.

• Dirks states the Tellarite slop jazz musician Fats B’zirtak overdosed on ketracel-white. Assuming fats was not a Jem’Hadar, I believe this is the first time we’ve heard of a non-Jem’Hadar consuming ketracel-white in canon.

• The Betazoid gift box gets zapped by the not-Kataan probe and experiences an entire simulated life, similar to what happened to Captain Picard in “The Inner Light”, though at no point from Rutherford’s perspective does the gift box appear to be unconscious.

     • ”I miss my wife.” The gift box repeats Michael Sullivan’s line from two episodes ago in “Twovix”.

• After he dies we see Boimler in room which appears to be inspired by the red room from “Twin Peaks” based on the floor pattern, lamp, and end table. Outside the window he sees the black mountain, which Shaxs described as a ”spiritual battleground” in “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris”.

     • The Koala appears, and according to the subtitles it’s ”speaking Koala” but if you reverse the audio it says, “It is not your time, Bradward Boimler.”

     • This is the second time Boimler has seen the Koala, the first being when he nearly drowned in “First First Contact”.

     • Despite being at the Black Mountain, Boimler did not have to fight three faceless aspirations of his father, nor did the surviving father feed Boimler his own heart, as Shaxs described in “We’ll Always have Tom Paris”.

• ”You never forget your first death.” Ransom implies that he too has died.

• The title refers to the Gorn Hegemony, the name of the polity from which the Gorn hail. It was first mentioned on screen in the ENT episode, “Bound”, but it as used non-canon as early as the 1992 novel, “The Disinherited”.

• Captain Betel’s log gives us the stardate as 2344.2. Seeing as we’re in the season finale, let’s look at both seasons.

• The USS Cayuga is visiting a world outside Federation space, Parnassus Beta, which a colony built on the ”small town model,” and it was “made to look like the old Midwestern United States,” and certainly not like a backlot in Pickering, Ontario, just outside Toronto. In “Sub Rosa”, we were introduced to the Caldos colony, which was modelled to look like a Scottish village.

     • Like an authentic midwest American town, the Parnassus Beta colony is having trouble making sure everyone is vaccinated.

     • The Parnassus system is named for the mountain in Greece, and all the businesses we see are also named for Greek mountains or mountain ranges.

     • Despite being outside the Federation, the medical clinic still features the Starfleet Medical caduceus.

• Several the officers on the planet are wearing excursion jackets, and we get close up enough on Batel to see that the patch on her shoulder reads "USS Enterprise".

     • Based on the length of the word, it also looks like ensign Doug's shoulder patch is also the Enterprise one, we don't get a clear enough look at it that I saw.

• Nurse Chapel has tagged along for the ride so she can reach her fellowship with Doctor Korby. Korby was first mentioned in “What Are Little Girls Made Of” as Chapel’s fiancée. His expedition will go missing on the planet Exo III approximately two years after this episode.

• ”I’m not busting into song every ten minutes, so that’s a minor victory.” Pike is referring to the events of the previous episode, “Subspace Rhapsody”.

     • Pike is fidgeting with the Opelian mariner’s keystone Batel gifted him in “Among the Lotus Eaters”.

• A Gorn Destroyer, previously seen in “Memento Mori” breaks through the atmosphere.

• ”I’ve seen them up close and personal, and they’re not hard to understand, Bob. They’re monsters.” In “Arena” Kirk monologued of the Gorn, “Like most humans, I seem to have an instinctive revulsion to reptiles. I must fight to remember that this is an intelligent, highly advanced individual. The Captain of a starship, like myself. Undoubtedly a dangerously clever opponent.”

• According to Spock’s display, the Cayuga was a Constitution-class Heavy Cruiser, which settles the question as to whether or not it might be a second Sombra-class starship.

• We previously saw the Gorn Hunter ship class in “Memento Mori”.

• The Gorn have sent Starfleet an image with a demarcation line separating the Parnasus system. According to Tim Peel, the motion graphics designer for SNW, the intent is that as planets move through the system they’ll end up on the Federation side, tempting Starfleet to engage in rescue or reconnaissance missions, and eventually the planet will cross back into the side claimed by he Gorn, at which point any stragglers will be fair game to use as food, or breeding incubators.

     • According to display of the planet, Parnassus Beta’s year is 402 days. Whether that’s Earth days, or the 26.5 hour Parnassus Beta days is not explicitly clear.

• The crew has duct tapped random bits of scrap to a shuttlecraft so they’re disguised as debris to fool the Gorn Hunter. In “Lower Decks” Geordi and Taurik marked a shuttle with phaser burns to fool the Cardassians.

• ”Don’t worry, I did this a hundred times during the war.” It was established in “Those Old Scientists” that Ortegas served on the front during the Federation-Klingon War.

• “I thought you were a test pilot.” Pike’s first assignment out of the Academy was test pilot, as per “Light and Shadows”.

• La’an relates her memories of surviving on the Gorn breeding planet as a child. La’an’s history with the Gorn was established in the series premiere, “Strange New Worlds”.

• La’an questions why the Gorn ”younglings” aren’t fighting for dominance, which they apparently did in her experiences on the breeding planet, as well as when we saw them in “All Those Who Wander”.

• It’s Scotty! From Star Trek! Montgomery Scott first appeared in the second TOS pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before” played by James Doohan. Since then the character has been played by Simon Pegg in the Kelvinverse films, as well as Matthew Wolf briefly offscreen in the alternate future Pike experienced in “A Quality of Mercy”. Here he’s played by Martin Qinn, who, unlike all the previous actors, is Scottish.

• Doctor M’Benga and Ortegas discuss having learned that Nurse Chapel beamed back to the Cayuga right before the Gorn arrived in system. ”I’m not sure how I’m going to tell her sister,” Ortegas mentions having once met Chapel’s identical sister who is named Kristine, and happens to also be a nurse serving in Starfleet.

• ”If you had answered like that in my class, I would have given you an A+.” Number One received a C in Pelia’s class at the Academy, as per “Lost in Translation”.

• ”Placing those rockets is a near impossible task. No human can do this.” Spock was a huge influence on Captain Solok, introduced in “Take Me Out to the Holosuite”, who published over a dozen papers on the relative merits of humans and Vulcans.

     • “...I am the only member of the crew who can pull this off.” Apparently it’s not just humans, but also Tellarites, Andorians, Illyrians, Lanthanites, Bolians, Denobulans, and whatever other non-Vulcan crew people are serving aboard the ship whom Spock looks down on.

     • Spock was right; no human could possible place a rocket on to the ship, wait for it to adhere itself, and move on to the next spot to repeat the process, which is what we see Spock doing on the wreck of the Cayuga.

• We see an adult Gorn with a rather lengthy tail. Or at least a mechanical tail built into its space suit. In previous episodes where we’ve seen adult Gorn -- “Arena”, “The Time Trap”, “In a Mirror Darkly, Part II”, “Veritas”, and “An Embarrassment of Dooplers” -- none of them have had tails.

     • We also saw a Gorn skeleton in “Context is for Kings” and no signs of tail.

• Batel has been infected by Gorn eggs. She claims it takes ”about a day and a half” for the eggs to mature. According to the records aboard the USS Peregrine in “All Those Who Wander” it took days for the eggs to mature in a human host.

• Batel invokes Hemmer and his sacrificing his own life for the good of everyone else in “All Those Who Wander”.

• The saucer of the Caygua crashes into the surface of Parnassus Beta, destroying the Gorn interference field tower. Fortunately Chapel was certainly the only one aboard the ship at the time of the attack who survived, and Spock didn’t just send a bunch of others still unconscious or trying to work their way off the ship to their deaths.

• We see a Gorn transporter effect, and it is green.

• Pelia is the only person this episode to call lieutenant Scott ”Scotty.”

• Admiral April orders the Enterprise to withdraw from the Parnassus system, despite the fact that Starfleet officers, and human colonists, were just beamed up by the Gorn. In “Saints of Imperfection” Pike gave a speech: ”Starfleet is a promise; I give my life for you, you give your life for me, and no one gets left behind.”

• In the final scene of the episode, Scotty and Pelia are working on his jury-rigged Gorn transponders in sick bay when the eggs in Batel’s arm hatch, exploding out out and spattering emerald viscera all over Scotty’s face. We get an extreme close up on his hundred yard stare, as he whispers hoarsely, ”It’s green,” echoing lines spoken in “By Any Other Name”, and “Relics”.

• Uhura provides the stardate 2398.3 in her communications officer’s log.

• Uhura is routing communications manually like a switchboard operator, because apparently every extra bit of computing power is necessary for an experiment Spock is running. Among the calls she takes are:

     • Captain Pike requesting a hail be put through to Captain Batel, who was introduced in the series premiere, “Strange New Worlds”.

     • Number One requesting an update on the arrival of James Kirk from the USS Farragut. James is Sam Kirk’s brother, who was introduced in the episode “Where No Man has Gone Before”. The Farragut was first mentioned in “Obsession”.

     • Chapel is awaiting a reply from Doctor Korby regarding her application to his fellowship. In “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” we find out that Chapel and Doctor Korby were engaged before he went missing on the planet Exo III in 2261.

     • Uhura’s console shows names and ranks of people whom are using the communications, though we only see named characters and ”cadet” who apparently doesn’t rank having a name. Interestingly, Number One’s is listed only as ”Lt. Una”, whereas characters other than Spock have their first initial and full surname; also, Number One’s rank is lieutenant commander, not lieutenant.

• We see lieutenant Mitchell in the captain’s chair, I believe for the first time.

     • When Pike arrives on the bridge later, Mitchell is back at navigation, and an unnamed gold shirt is in the big chair.

• The captain of the Farragut sent a message ahead of James’ arrival on USS Enterprise but we’re not given that character’s name. Previously, the ship was commanded by Captain Garrovick, but he was killed by a predatory cloud two years earlier than this episode, according to “Obsession”.

• The drink James mentions refers to the time La’an contacting under false pretenses after watching an alternate universe doppelganger of him get killed by a Romulan agent in the past in “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”.

• Doctor M’Benga echos the claim Spock makes in “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” that Doctor Korby is ”the Louis Pasteur of archaeological medicine.”

• The song Uhura sends through the subspace fold is “Anything Goes”, written by Cole Porter for the 1934 musical of the same name. The version she selects was recorded by Eileen Rodgers in 1962.

• Spock begins singing his report, and is followed by the rest of the cast, for “Status Report”. The first time we saw a character sing in Trek was in “Charlie X” when Uhura sings in the rec room.

• The opening credits are accompanied by an a capella version of the theme.

• The Heisenberg compensators are a transporter component introduced in “Realm of Fear”.

• During the song “Connect to Your Truth”, Number one sings, *”I can see myself up on the stage, And for three hours a night, And to everyone’s delight, I’d regale them all with my renditions, Of Gilbert and Sullivan.” While trapped in a turbolift with Spock in “Q&A” the pair sang a piece of the “Major-General’s Song”.

     • The theme of the song is based in Number One’s new philosophy that she should not be so closed off from the crew, though in “Q&A” she advised Spock that it was necessary ”keep [his] freaky to [himself]” if his ultimate goal was command.

• While she sings “How Would That Feel” La’an opens a case in a drawer in her quarters to reveal she’s held on to the diver’s watch she and the alternate James Kirk used in “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”.

     • In her fantasy, we see the hotel room she and that James shared, which he was able to pay for in cash after winning a bunch of chess games.

• During “Private Conversation” we learn that Captain Batel’s first name is Marie. Surely this, and the sudden priority one mission the USS Cayuga is assigned at the end of the episode can only mean good things for her long term prospects as a character.

• The improbability field causing the Enterprise crew to break out into song is expanding to the entire fleet, including the USS Cayuga. Uhura projects a map of the local subspace network on the main viewer, and in addition to the Enterprise and the Farragut we see listed:

     • USS Lexington; Constitution-class - first seen in “The Ultimate Computer” but listed on a chart of ships at Starbase 11 in “Court Martial”

     • USS Potemkin; Constitution-class - first seen in “The Ultimate Computer”

     • USS Kongo - only listed on a chart displayed in “Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country” and named on the pin Spock wore for Starfleet Remembrance Day in “Memento Mori”.

     • USS Republic - James is mentioned as having served aboard the ship in “Court Martial”

     • USS Hood; Constitution-class - first seen in “The Ultimate Computer” but listed on a chart of ships at Starbase 11 in “Court Martial”

     • USS Valiant; Valiant was one of 14 names proposed for Constitution-class ships by the producers of TOS’ second season

• ”...And those feelings pose an actual space-time security risk.” La’an is referring to the events of “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”.

• *”The secrets I keep safe inside, A skill I perfected, So I could survive.” During the song, “Keeping Secrets”, Number One refers to the fact that she previously hid the fact that she’s an Illyrian, and subject to prejudice and discrimination in the Federation.

• ”The last thing anyone wants is singing Klingons.” Klingons have a rich history of opera and drinking songs.

• General Garkog is played by Bruce Horak, who has previously portrayed Hemmer in season one, and the illusion of Zombie Hemmer in “Lost in Translation”.

• “Some of us need fun to deal with the constant threat of dying.” Kirk is killed by flying extragalactic parasites on the Deneva colony after leaving Starfleet, and his corpse is found in “Operation -- Annihilate!”

• During “I’m Ready” Chapel sings, “The sky is the limit, My future is infinite, My possibilities are endless.” Chapel continues serving aboard the Enterprise for over a decade, eventually becoming and MD and taking over as chief medical officer until Kirk has Doctor McCoy drafted in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”. She does not appear to be part of the crew when the ship is reassigned as a training vessel, but does show up organizing relief efforts on Earth during “Star Trek: The Voyage Home” when the whale probe begins to destabilize the planet.

• La’an calls the incoming Klingon vessel a K’t’inga-class ship. The term originated in Gene Roddenberry’s novelization of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”; this is actually the first time it’s been said on screen.

     • The model we see is the same as the one used for the D7-class introduced in “Through the Valley of Shadows”. Whether or not the K’t’inga and the D7 are the same ship has been a matter of some dispute among fans since 1979, and this likely isn’t to change that.

• James mentions his baby mama, Doctor Carol Marcus, who was introduced in “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan”.

     • Doctor Marcus is pregnant with their son, David Marcus, which would mean he’s around 25 years old when he appears in “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan”.

• Spock sings “I’m the X”, as song about how he needs to close himself off from his emotions to avoid being hurt in relationships. In “This Side of Paradise” he encounters Leila Kalomi, a woman who fell in love with him six years earlier in 2261, but he never expressed his feelings to her.

• In “Keep Us Connected” Uhura recounts how everyone around her dies, beginning with the deaths of her family via shuttle crash, which we learned about in “Children of the Comet”, and then Hemmer’s demise in “All Those Who Wander”.

• Spock asks how they’re going to get 200 crew members to sing in spontaneous unison. The Enterprise had 203 crew people during their visit to the Talos system according to Pike in “The Menagerie, Part I”, as well as Burnham’s scans of the ship in “Brother”.

• During “We Are One”:

     • James sings, “If I make captain, It’ll be thanks to all of you.” Seems like he’s getting a little bit ahead of himself.

     • We see the interior of the IKS par’Machstreet Boys, and it is significantly different from any Klingon bridge we’ve seen before, including being extremely deep, as well as having a captain’s chair that appears capable of dollying backwards.

     • The Klingon captain’s chair has Klingon glyphs on it, which appear to read “Kahless Rocks”.

     • The mek’leths the Klingons are dancing with are the simpler version originally introduced in “The Way of the Warrior” as opposed to the more ornate iterations seen in season one of DIS, beginning with “Battle at the Binary Stars”.

• Spock once again was able to drink the Klingons into not wanting destroy the Enterprise, as he did in “The Broken Circle”. This is not a technique he employed in other encounters with the Klingons, such as in “Errand of Mercy”, “Friday’s Child” or “Day of the Dove”.

• ”Sorry, earworm.” In “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan”, Khan inserted Ceti eel larva into the ears of Captain Tarrell and Chekov, causing them to be extremely susceptible to suggestion.

• In the episode “No Small Parts” Ransom explains to Captain Freeman that he calls the 2260s the ”TOS Era” in honour of ”Those Old Scientists” like Spock and and Scotty. Of course, this episode takes place in 2259, so clearly it’s time for a shake-up among the SNW production team.

• This episode was co-written by Kathryn Lyn, who also wrote “wej Duj” and co-wrote “Charades”. She was initially hired to be a canon consultant for LDS, before becoming an executive story editor for that series in season two, and is currently the supervising producer for SNW season two.

• Johnathan Frakes directed this episode. Trekkies will recognize him as the director of several episodes and movies, including:

     • “Sub Rosa”

     • “Meridian”

     • “Parturition”

     • “Project Daedalus”

     • “Two of One”

     • “Star Trek: Insurrection”

• It’s Bradward Boimler! From Star Trek! Boimler is voiced, and performed in live action for the first time, by Jack Quaid.

• Boimler records the stardate as 58460.1, which, because LDS has a functioning stardate system, would put this adventure between “Hear All, Trust Nothing” (58456.2), and “Trusted Sources” (58496.1).

• It’s Beckett Mariner! From Star Trek! Mariner is voiced, and performed in live action for the first time, by Tawny Newsome.

• It’s Samanthan Rutherford, and D’Vana Tendi! From Star Trek! Rutherford and Tendi are voiced by Eugene Cordero, and Noël Wells respectively.

• Rutherford has a holo-imager identical to the one introduced in the VOY season five episode, “Drone” when photography became one of the Doctor’s hobbies.

     • The viewfinder display on the holo-imager is also accurate to what we see in VOY, starting with “Infinite Regress”.

• Tendi has previously demonstrated being sensitive about the common association between Orions and piracy in the minds of her fellow Starfleet officers, going back to “Crisis Point”.

• As he’s being portaled by the portal, Boimler cries out, ”Remember me!” which is also the title of a TNG episode in which a swirling energy vortex repeatedly tries to pull Doctor Crusher into itself.

• The portal dumps Boimler 122 years in the past.

• The SNW opening credits are recreated in the animation style of LDS, with some slight adjustments to the angles at which things are seen. Fortunately they kept in all the usual elements, such as the glowing space leach attempting to digest the nacelle, and the Koala.

• Pike’s gives the stardate as 2291.6 in his captain’s log.

• The USS Enterprise is en route to Setlik II to deliver a shipment of grain. This is the first direct mention of the planet, but Setlik III was established in “The Wounded” as the site of the Setlik III massacre during the Federation-Cardasssian War.

     • The grain is tritriticale. In “The Trouble With Tribbles” there was a large amount of quadrotritricale grain being stored at Deep Space K-7 with the intent of transporting it to Sherman’s Planet, and in “More Tribbles, More Troubles” the Enterprise was escorting too transport ships loaded with quintotriticale grain, again to Sherman’s Planet.

• Number One explains to Pike that Boimler’s badge is also a communicator. Pike first saw such a device when Section 31 agent Ash Tyler used his badge as a communicator in “The Saints of Imperfection”.

     • ”But flipping it open’s the best part.” Pike is objectively correct.

• “Computer end program.” Boimler attempts to shut down the past like a holodeck simulation.

     • In “The Inner Light” Picard gives the same command after awaking as Kamin in the memories imparted to him by the Kataan probe.

     • In “Ship in a Bottle” Barclay tests to see if using that command will shut off a simulation of the USS Enterprise D after encountering Moriarty, and his being trapped in a simulation.

• The soles on Boimler’s boots have the delta and star print on them that they do in animation on LDS.

• In “Cupid’s Errant Arrow” Boimler gets the computer to replicate him the coolest outfit ever in a ”Boy’s size small,” and in ”The Least Dangerous Game” transporter chief Lundy accurately guesses Boimler’s weight to be 61.2 kilograms, and asks him to volunteer for his afternoon life drawing class because they need ”a skeletal boy.” However, Boimler is taller than every every member of the bridge crew, and thus we can only conclude that everyone serving aboard the Enterprise is tiny.

• ”It’s a classic S/COMS operating system.” ”Spacecraft Operations and Management System” was seen on screen in “First Flight” and the ENT showrunners consciously adapted the displays to feature more familiar elements from the TOS computers as the series continued.

     • S/COMS would be considered a classic by Boimler, because by the time of “Encounter at Farpoint”, Starfleet has adopted LCARS as their operating system.

• ”Definitely won’t happen again, Worf’s honour.” Worf suffered discommendation and was stripped of his honour in “Sins of the Father”.

• “And, perhaps most important, don’t make any attachments.” La’an became attached to an alternate version of Sam Kirk’s brother James when they travelled to the past together, and she watched him get killed by a Romulan agent.

• ”Riker!” Boimler swings his leg over the saddle in an imitation of the Riker maneuver, a practice he would have no doubt been witness to during his brief time serving aboard the USS Titan.

     • According to an interview, the line was ad libbed by Jack Quaid and, of course, Jonathan Frakes was in the room directing when he did it.

• “I’m sorry, my friend Mariner, would be freaking out right now.” Though Tawny Newsome has stated in interviews what an important character Uhura is to her, Mariner has never mentioned Uhura in LDS. The only direct mention was actually by Boimler, when he was dehydrated talking to a hallucination of Sulu in “Crisis Point 2: Paradoxus”.

• “‘Explode,’ you said?” In “Arena” the Gorn were able to cause Spock’s tricorder to explode during their attack on the Cestus III outpost.

• An Orion scout ship arrives in orbit of Krulmuth-B. It’s design is inspired by the Orion vessel seen in the remastered version of “Journey to Babel”; in the original episode, the ship was merely a blip of spinning light.

     • ”Some Orion vessels are specifically designed to fool sensors.” Spock surmised that the Orion ship in “Journey to Babel” either had a dense enough hull, or was cloaked in some other way to prevent sensors from being able to get specific readings.

• ”What would come after the dash?” A bloody A, B, C, or D. Or E. Or F. Or…G unfortunately. Or J.

     • La’an’s statement implies that Starfleet has not yet adopted the custom of maintaining a Starship’s legacy by preserving its designation and registry number.

     • The Federation survey ship the Enterprise learned crashed on Talos IV in “The Menagerie, Part I”, the SS Columbia, had a registry of NC-5940-1, as seen on the printout of their distress call.

• Boimler built a model of an Orion scout ship in a bottle. Building ships in bottles is a hobby he shares with Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Miles O’Brien, as per “Booby Trap”. Lieutenant Carey also spent all his time aboard the USS Voyager between seasons one and seven building model of the Voyager in a bottle, which we see in “Friendship One” after his death. ”Ships in bottles. Great fun.”

     • The episode “Ship in a Bottle” does not feature any ships in bottles.

• ”He was so excited to see me, that for a second it felt like maybe my future wasn’t so bad.” Pike’s future, so far as he’s aware, is ending up in a disfigured and living in a life support chair, able to communicate only through beeps after being exposed to delta radiation, which we see in “The Menagerie, Part I” and he sees in “Through the Valley of Shadows”.

• ”I know, but like smaller jetpacks.” In “A Moral Star, Part I” we see the Protogies using significantly smaller thruster packs than the ones seen in “The Vulcan Hello” or “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”.

• Ortegas tells Boimler she’s going to give him all the credit for the birthday party they’re going to throw for Pike. In “Temporal Edict” captain Freeman instituted the Boimler Effect, encouraging officers to add buffer time as needed into their scheduled tasks, something which Boimler also did not want credit for, but we see is his legacy far into the future in that same episode.

• Chapel assures Boimler he is not responsible for Spock’s recent exploration of his emotions. Spock broke his Vulcan mental conditioning in order to fight the Gorn in “All Those Who Wander”.

     • “I’ve read literally every book about Spock and they mention his upbringing on Vulcan, his pet sehlat, his relationship with his mom and his dad--” The books on Spock are apparently far more forthcoming about his life than he is; in “Journey to Babel” Kirk was unaware of the fact that Spock’s father was one of the most respected Federation ambassadors, and in “Yesteryear” after watching I-Chaya die while in the past, Spock only told Kirk that a pet died, not his own childhood pet.

• ”For all I knew you were dead, or stuck in a dystopian San Francisco in the middle of a riot.” Mariner is referring to the Bell Riots, as seen in “Past Tense, Part II”.

Continued in Comment Below

• The episode title of course refers to a popular party game. In the PRO episode, “Mindwalk”, the Protogies where had to communicate with Dal using charades, because he didn’t learn any Morse code.

• Both Nurse Chapel’s and Spock’s personal logs gives us a stardate of 1789.3.

• The USS Enterprise is travelling to the Vulcan system, first seen in “Amok Time”.

    • Alternatively, one could argue that the first visit to the Vulcan system was when the Enterprise visited the planet Delta Vega to affect repairs after sustaining damage attempting to travel through the Galactic Barrier in “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. Delta Vega is also the planet that Nero marooned prime Spock on (and Kelvin Spock marooned Kelvin Kirk on) in 2009’s “Star Trek”, and Spock was able to watch the destruction of Vulcan. In an interview, Robert Orci claimed they ”moved” the planet for the film because the easter egg of the name was more important than coming up with a new name fans wouldn’t be familiar with.

        • Both the 2011 Kelvin universe “Star Trek“ comic series, and “The Enterprise War” novel attempt to reconcile this by claiming there are two Delta Vegas.

• We learn of the Kerkhov moon, and the fact that there was an ancient civilization there that vanished at one point. Other ancient civilizations which have disappeared from the galaxy leaving behind only ruins and mystery are:

    • The Greek Gods

    • The Arretans

    • The Preservers

    • The Tkon Empire

    • The Iconian Empire

    • The D’Arsay

    • The Hur’Q

• The Vulcan Science academy was first mentioned in “Journey to Babel”.

    • On Vulcan they preface everything by distinguishing that it’s Vulcan because it’s important to them that the rest of the galaxy be aware that it’s theirs.

• ”What are Korby’s three principles of archaeological medicine?” Spock mentioned Roger Korby is referred to as the Pasteur of archaeological medicine in “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”

    • Roger Korby will be Chapel’s future fiancée.

• The notion that Vulcans use nasal suppressants to overcome how debilitatingly pungent humans are was introduced in “The Andorian Incident”.

    • ”Not to be indelicate, Captain, but the scent of humans is something most Vulcans must become…used to.” Spock grew up with a human mother, and human adopted sister.

    • In “Broken Bow” Archer comments that Vulcan females specifically have a heightened sense of smell, but in “The Andorian Incident” it is a male Vulcan monk who comments that the smell aboard the NX-01 “must be intolerable.”

        • Later in this episode, T’Pril repeats the claim that Vulcan women are more sensitive to odours.

• ”I am still not speaking to my father.” It was established in “Journey to Babel” that Spock had not spoken to Sarek in 18 years, which would mean their communication ceased nine years prior to this episode.

• The shuttlecraft Spock and Chapel take to scan Kerkhov is the Cervantes, which was previously used on the mission to investigate the USS Peregrine after it was divested by Gorn hatchlings in “All Those Who Wander”, and transported Captain Pike, La’an, and Doctor M’Benga down to Rigel VII where they lost their memories and were subject to a Starfleet yeoman turned Tyrant in “Among the Lotus Eaters”, and maybe they should leave the *Cervantes” in the shuttlebay next time.

    • The Cervantes is also the shuttle Ortegas pilots herself, Chapel, and Uhura in back to the anomaly when they revisit it.

• ”The Vulcan Science Academy would be lucky to have someone of your experience.” “Battle of the Binary Stars” established that as of 2249, ten years earlier, Michael Burnham was the only human to have attended the Vulcan Science Academy. However, in “Brother” in 2257, Paul Stamets had accepted a full time teaching position there, so they weren’t entirely opposed to the idea.

• After the Cervantes crash, Spock had to be healed by the Kerkhovians who made him fully human. In “Faces” a Vidiian scientist split B’Elanna Torres into two separate beings, one fully human, and the other Klingon. The Klingon died to save her human counterpart during the escape, and the Doctor was later able to restore B’Elanna to her hybrid self using genetic material from the deceased Klingon.

    • In “Spock Amok” Spock had a dream that he was human, fighting a fully Vulcan counterpart, but he later lied and claimed that in his dream he was the fully Vulcan half.

• The episode cuts off before Spock can finish saying, “What the fairly intriguing development.” As we all know, Spock was unfamiliar with profanity until visiting Earth’s 1980s in “Star Trek: The Voyage Home” despite living on a starship and closely working with one Doctor Leonard McCoy.

• As a human Spock chooses to eat bacon despite most Vulcans including himself being vegetarian. In “All Our Yesterdays” Spock appears to be disgusted with himself for enjoying consuming animal flesh after being transported to the past causes him to regress to an earlier stage of Vulcan cultural development. As we all know, all humans eat meat, and this scene certainly didn’t disgust any vegans who might be watching and then later writing a point form list of how the episode ties in to other Trek canon.

    • According to T’Pol in “Broken Bow”, Vulcans also do not touch food with their hands, but we see Spock picking up the bacon with his fingers here. Of course, Spock also touched his food with his hands in “All Our Yesterdays” as well as his marshmallow in “Star Trek: The Final Frontier” so perhaps that’s a cultural practice that fell out of usage between ENT and DIS/SNW/TOS.

        • Later this episode, Sevet does not hesitate to go in on some tevmel with his hands.

• ”I just thought that my field work would be relevant.” In “Journey to Babel” Kirk argued to Amanda Grayson that Spock’s time aboard the Enterprise was “a better opportunity for a scientist to study the universe than he can get at the Vulcan Science Academy.”

• ”She did seem awfully enthusiastic about purchasing dilithium.” The Federation of this era is a moneyless society, as established in such episodes as:

    • “Mudd’s Women” - The character of Harry Mudd is transporting three women around to find them husbands out of the goodness of his heart, and lithium miners on Rigel XII offer to give the crystals to the Enterprise for free.

    • “Errand of Mercy” - Kirk intimates to Spock that Starfleet would not be troubled by their potential deaths, because their training cost nothing.

    • “Catspaw” - Lieutenant DeSalle says he would make a bet on the effectiveness of their strategy, but there is no money and hence no gambling.

    • “The Trouble With Tribbles” - Cyrano Jones gives away exotic animals, and no one pays for drinks at the bar, because what would they pay with?

    • “The Escape Artist” - We see several android duplicates of Harry Mudd captured by concerned citizens intending to hand him over to Federation authorities, because there’s no need to collect a bounty when everything is free. Also, Mudd doesn’t complain about Federation taxes, because what would they tax?

Continued in Comment Below

• The title refers to the Homer’s “Odyssey” when Odysseus’ voyage reached the land of the Lotus-eaters. These people’s primary food source was the fruit and flowers of the lotus, which was powerfully narcotic, and caused those of Homer’s crew who ate it to forget their desire to return home.

• Pike’s personal log records the stardate as 1630.1. Ortegas’ personal logs record the stardate as 1630.3, and 1632.2.

• The USS Cayuga previously appeared in “A Quality of Mercy”.

• Captain Batel gives Pike an Opelian mariner’s keystone, a device worn by ancient Opelian captains to ”guide lost sailors home.” Another reference to Odysseus’ journey.

    • Batel says she found the keystone on a planet which the subtitles spelled ”Galt.” Worf lived for a time on Gault with his adopted mother and brother, and headbutt another child to death there during a soccer match; that world’s name was pronounced the same as this.

• Captain Patel was passed over for a promotion to commodore; she believes it’s a result of Admiral Pasalk punishing her for losing the trial against Number One in “Ad Astra per Aspera”.

• Rigel VII was first mentioned in “The Menagerie, Part I”. Pike and crew were shown via Talosian record, and Pike and Doctor Boyce discussed losing three crew people on the away mission, and its impact on Pike. In “The Menagerie, Part II” we saw that the Talosians forced Pike to relive his fight with one of the brutish Kalar.

• Number One describes Rigel VII as ”a remote M-class planet”. However, there are several other inhabited worlds in the Rigel system:

    • Rigel II - According to “Shore Leave”, Bones was familiar with two women from a chorus line in a cabaret there

    • Rigel III - In the alternate future of “All Good Things…” Geordi retired to this world with his wife to become an author

    • Rigel IV - The entity Jack the Ripper resided there for a while, murdering women to feed its need for fear, and possessed Hengeist before moving on to Argelius II to continue in “Wolf in the Fold”

    • Rigel V - The homeworld of the Rigelians, first mentioned in “Journey to Babel”

    • Rigel VI - I would argue that the canonicity of this world being habitable is dubious at best, as it’s only mentioned on a menu screen in the post credits commercial for Tribbles cereal at the end of “The Trouble with Edward”

    • Rigel X - A colony world occupied by a wide variety of aliens, seen in “Broken Bow”.

    • Rigel XII - The earliest mention of a planet in the Rigel system, in “Mudd’s Women” the USS Enterprise stopped there to negotiate purchase of lithium crystals to replace the cracked lithium crystal circuits necessary for controlling the ship’s power flow from the warp core.

    • The “Star Trek: Star Charts” have attempted to reconcile this abundance of worlds by relabelling the Rigel star close to the Sol system in the star chart seen in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” as Beta Rigel. This would be where Rigel X is located, considering it was the first planet visited by the NX-01 after launching from Earth. Presumably, Rigel II, Rigel III, Rigel IV, and Rigel V as well. Rigel VII and Rigel XII would be more remote, where the actual Rigel star is, some 860 light years from Earth. The map of the Alpha and Beta quadrants seen in Admiral Clancy’s office in “Remembrance” did have that star labelled as Beta Rigel as well, but there is nothing official stating that the various worlds are in that system.

• The display for information for the Enterprise’s first mission to Rigel VII, five years earlier, says the stardate was 2455.4. If Pike is Odysseus, I am Sisyphus.

• ”Last time we went down there we were in uniform; I am not making that mistake twice.” Despite the prime directive an concerns about altering cultural development, during TOS it still seemed to be general policy for Starfleet crews to beam down to pre-warp civilizations in uniform, with their gear.

• ”I like her,” Number One says of Batel, the woman who arrested her in “A Quality of Mercy”, and prosecuted criminal charges against her based solely on her species in “Ad Astra per Aspera”.

• In her quarters, Ortegas has models of Constitution, Walker, and NX-class starships.

• Ortegas refers to the Kalar as Kalarans. Apparently ”Recon 101” does not include more than skimming the mission brief.

• ”I may not be Erica Ortegas, but I was a test pilot, remember?” “Light and Shadows” established that Pike’s first assignment out of Starfleet Academy was test pilot.

• The away team’s shuttle is the Cervantes, which was introduced in “All Those Who Wander”.

• ”We’ve got subdermal universal translators.” This is the first mention of Starfleet personnel having translators implanted beneath the skin. In “Little Green Men” we saw that Ferengi had translators implanted in the ear canal, but Starfleet translators have always been part of the communicator or combadge, a function of the ship or station, or a wholly separate device.

• The Kalar palace is featured in season two’s opening credits.

• The type-3 phasers the Kalar carry are identical to the ones introduced in season one of DIS.

    • The Kalar have at least eight type-3s, which raises the question of how many they took with them to during the first away mission.

• Yeoman Zac Nguyen has been taken in by the Kalar and given a position of authority as High Lord Zacarias.

    • In "Bread and Circuses", Merchant Marine captain, and Starfleet Academy dropout, R.M. Merik was stranded on a planet where he became First Citizen Merikus of a society that mirrored Earth's Roman empire.

    • In "Patterns of Force", former Starfleet Academy history instructor, John Gill introduced the planet Ekos to the concept of fascism, and set himself up as Fuhrer, because he believed fascism to be the most efficient form of government, meaning John Gill was terrible at both understanding history, and not getting assassinated by members of the explicitly Nazi party he installed on an independent world.

    • In “The Omega Glory”, Captain Tracey integrated himself with the Kohms assumed a position of authority.

    • In “All the World’s a Stage” we saw the Enderprizians, who took in ensign David Garrovick and made him to be a heroic figure, En Son.

• The radiation affecting the Enterprise crew doesn’t appear to be something Number One’s Illyrian healing glow works against, despite the fact that we’ve seen her survive the radiation of a near warp core breach in “Ghosts of Illyria”.

• Ortegas’ file says she was born in 2233, making her 26 years old. Melissa Navia is 38.

    • The files specifies, “Lieutenant Ortegas is a 23rd century Federation Starfleet officer.” Presumably it’s necessary for the files to have information about the century in which an officer serves due to all the time travel.

• The Enterprise computer illuminates wall panels to guide Ortegas to her quarters. In “Encounter at Farpoint” Riker was guided to the holodeck and Data by a similar system.

• La’an and Doctor M’Benga once again share the gesture where they trace a line under the right eye with their index finger. They did this in “Strange New Worlds” and “The Broken Circle”.

• Pike makes the decision to remove the asteroid emitting the radiation causing the Kalar to forget from the surface of the planet, back to the debris field in orbit. Spock asks if it’s a violation of the Prime Directive, and Pike claims that it’s not because the asteroid interfered with the natural development of the planet for thousands of years. We’ve previously seen Pike make such unilateral decisions to ignore General Order 1 in “The Sound of Thunder” when the USS Discovery was used to amplify a signal that triggered puberty for every Kelpien on Kaminar.