star trek science station

Federation Space Stations

Known Stations Uncertain Stations Unknown Stations

Known Stations

Uncertain stations, unknown stations.

Deep Space 3 , mentioned in TNG: "Interface"

Deep Space 4 , mentioned in TNG: "The Chase", shut down in 2400 as stated in PIC: "The Next Generation"

Deep Space 11 , mentioned in PIC: "The Next Generation"

Deep Space 12 , preliminary destination of La Sirena in PIC: "Broken Pieces", to have Dr. Jurati arrested

Hubble Space Telescope , listed on a display in TNG: "Inheritance"

This is likely a new installation, named in honor of the current Hubble Space Telescope

Star Station India , mentioned in TNG: "Unnatural Selection"

Starbases 2, 4, 6, 9, 10, 12, 27, 200 , mentioned in TOS

None of these starbases could be seen, but we may assume that starbases usually have spaceborne facilities. The name "Starbase 6", mentioned in TOS: "The Immunity Syndrome", was also given to the previously unnamed station in TOS-R: "The Ultimate Computer" (see above ).

Starbase 11 , shown as a facility on planet M-11 in TOS: "Court Martial" and TOS: "Menagerie"

I assume that this seemingly important starbase has orbital facilities too.

Starbases 12, 14, 23, 24, 36, 39-Sierra, 47, 67, 73, 82, 83, 87, 97, 103, 105, 117, 118, 123, 129, 152, 153, 157, 185, 211, 212, 214, 218, 219, 220, 227, 231, 247, 260, 295, 301, 310, 313, 324, 328, 336, 343, 416, 440, 495, 514, 621, 718 , mentioned in TNG

None of these starbases could be seen, but we may assume that starbases generally have spaceborne facilities. In particular, this should apply to Starbase 152, where the Enterprise was to undergo repairs after the Gomtuu attack in TNG: "Tin Man".

Starbases 41, 58, 63, 137, 201, 401 , mentioned in DS9

None of these starbases could be seen, but we may assume that starbases usually have spaceborne facilities.

Starbases 6, 179, 515 , shown as planetside facilities in TNG

I assume that these starbases have orbital facilities too.

Starbase 234 , drydock type 3 shown in TNG: "Redemption"

This starbase probably consists of more facilities than the type-3 drydock, considering that not only the shown Nebula-class USS Sutherland, but several more ships were being prepared for launch there.

Starbase Earhart , interior shown in TNG: "Tapestry"

Starbase G-6 , mentioned in TNG: "Hide and Q"

Starbase Lya III , mentioned in TNG: "The Defector" and TNG: "The Hunted"

Lya III probably denotes the planet where the starbase is located. It is possible that this station is identical to the stardock called "Lya Station Alpha", or that the latter is part of the starbase Lya III which may include a "Station Beta" too.

Station Lya IV , mentioned in TNG: "The Most Toys"

Since it seems to be located in the same system as the above Starbase Lya III, it is safe to assume that this is a Federation (trade) station.

Starbase Montgomery , shown as a planetside facility in TNG: "The Icarus Factor"

Station Nigala IV , Federation station, mentioned in TNG: "Déjà Q"

Station Salem One , Federation station, mentioned in TNG: "The Enemy"

Xendi Starbase 9 , mentioned in TNG: "The Battle"

Maybe the Xendi are a member race of the Federation and this is their ninth starbase, which would explain the strange nomenclature.

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Last modified: 18 May 2023

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Xerxes IV science station

• 1 Specifics
• 3 Notable personnel
• 4.1 Connections
• 4.2 Appearance

Specifics [ ]

The installation had kitchens , quarters , communications equipment, a storage area, and laboratories.

History [ ]

In the 2380s , a team of scientists had worked there together for a year , discovering three species that had genetic material which potentially could cure Irumodic Syndrome . An ion storm struck the world for a week, triggering an unusual devolution process to unshielded life . In particular, facility personnel mutated into a Neanderthal state.

A rescue team arrived to find the station's exterior walls damaged by phaser fire and the interior ransacked. Team leader Doctor Heidi Schipp was still human enough to brief the landing party , but feared that the devolution effect would mutate those three species so much that they would lose the cure to Irumodic Syndrome. ( Adventures RPG module : Core Rulebook mission: "The Rescue at Xerxes IV")

Notable personnel [ ]

• Doctor Jasper Conrad , assistant
• Doctor Heidi Schipp , team leader
• Doctor Helena Burlette , scientist

Appendices [ ]

Connections [ ], appearance [ ].

• Adventures RPG module : Core Rulebook mission: "The Rescue at Xerxes IV"
• 1 USS Voyager (NCC-74656-A)
• 2 Ferengi Rules of Acquisition
• 3 Lamarr class

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Published Jan 30, 2017

Starbases of The Federation: From K-7 to Yorktown

The United Federation of Planets relied on its massive fleet of iconic starships to seek out new worlds in the 23rd and 24th centuries, but its network of starbases and outposts proved just as valuable to the exploration of space and the protection of Federation citizens. Most space stations shared similar roles, such as maintaining the capability to repair starships, but the type and location of each outpost dictated its primary role. While many starbases also included ground-based elements, this piece will only focus on the spaceborne facilities.

Deep Space Station K-7, introduced in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode " The Trouble with Tribbles ," played a vital role in the Sherman's Planet region claimed by the Federation and Klingon Empire. Acting as Starfleet's presence in the area, K-7 also served the tactical purpose of observing the Klingon border and providing storage for the development of Sherman's Planet. As with most starbases, K-7 maintained facilities to entertain weary travelers, Federation officials and even Klingon warriors. The relatively small station still retained the ability to store significant quantities of quadrotriticale, the grain necessary to seed Sherman's Planet and secure the Federation's claim on the world. Thus, Deep Space Station K-7 performed multiple functions, ranging from protecting the border to asserting ownership over territorial gains.

The Federation outpost Regula I worked toward a very specific goal in the Mutara sector during the events of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . Operated by civilian scientists, the station was tasked with the advancement of the Genesis Project. Regula I's remote location proved a necessity, allowing for discrete and undisturbed research. Due to its classified mission, Regula I did not permit casual guests or publicly announce its true purpose, whereas other Federation starbases tended to do so. The outpost's small size probably meant it had limited starship repair capabilities, if any at all. The U.S.S. Reliant, attached to Regula I as a scout vessel, most likely traveled to other stations for its upkeep.

The massive form of Earth Spacedock easily eclipsed the various starships that docked in its berths and visited Sol III. The station launched new vessels, repaired others and decommissioned obsolete ones while maintaining a detachment of active starships ready to defend Sector 001. Although never canonically stated, Spacedock's size and strategic location seem to indicate its complement also included defensive weaponry for Earth's protection. In this sense, the starbase performed the role of securing a particular region of space, much like K-7. However, the Federation charged Spacedock with the fortifying its very heart rather than the edge of explored space. While the station's status as a shipbuilding facility remains unclear, the U.S.S. Excelsior did undergo tests and early transwarp trials at the starbase.

Stations similar in design to Earth Spacedock, such as Starbases 74, 84, 133, and Lya Station Alpha, appeared numerous times in Star Trek: The Next Generation . Why would Starfleet also construct these large outposts in seemingly innocuous systems rather than only near worlds central to the government? Ironically, the question most likely answers itself. As the regions where the stations were located tended to be away from major population centers, logic dictates that the starbases functioned as hubs for Federation activity in distant but strategically positioned areas. Sectors devoid of core planets require a place to repair starships, offer respite to weary crews, and fortify Starfleet's presence outside of prominent systems such as Vulcan, Andor, Sol, Tellar, Betazed and Trill.

The renowned port of Deep Space 9 changed its mission, and its location, following the joint Federation-Bajoran takeover of the station. Originally known as Terok Nor, a Cardassian ore-processing plant and symbol of occupation, the starbase became the operational center overseeing the rebuilding of Bajor. DS9 soon gained an additional task when Commander Sisko and Lieutenant Dax discovered the stable wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant in the Denorios belt and moved the station close to the anomaly. Suddenly, the starbase found itself to be an important locale for trade and exploration, welcoming travelers from Qo'noS, Vulcan and beyond.

As the threat from the Dominion increased and a full-scale war erupted, Deep Space 9 earned a reputation for its vital part in guarding the wormhole and preventing reinforcements from entering the Alpha Quadrant. The starbase displayed versatility in taking on additional roles beyond its original mandate to watch over Bajor, also acting as a repair hub for Federation, Klingon and Romulan forces during the war. From refinery to strategic necessity, Deep Space 9 helped to shape the future of Bajor, the exploration of the Gamma Quadrant and the outcome of the Dominion War.

When Cardassian and Dominion forces reoccupied Terok Nor in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode " Call to Arms ," the Federation lost its primary foothold against its foes. Starbase 375's proximity to the combat zone made it the natural fallback position for Starfleet. Otherwise a typical Federation station, Starbase 375's location turned it into a key staging area for starship deployments and Operation Return, the mission to remove the Dominion's presence from Deep Space 9. The progression of the war shifted the purpose of Starbase 375 to an unexpected trajectory, again displaying the adaptability required for Federation stations to operate at maximum efficiency.

A highlight of the film Star Trek Beyond , Starbase Yorktown proved to be a visually stunning marvel of technology. Easily the largest Starfleet facility ever depicted, the intricate structure houses millions of inhabitants and serves every duty imaginable. Located near uncharted space and the Necro Cloud nebula, Starbase Yorktown resupplies vessels, conducts repairs, builds new starships, acts as a home for crews and their families, dispatches missions of exploration, flies the Federation flag in the region and maintains defensive armaments. With its sprawling arms covered in cityscapes, interior tunnels funneling starships to their births and awe-inspiring transparent exterior, Yorktown represents the peak of Starfleet engineering. In addition to its variety of practical uses, Starbase Yorktown also helps the Federation avoid diplomatic incidents between new members by being positioned in interstellar space, rather than on the surface of a particular planet.

Without a reliable system of starbases, Federation vessels would not be able to function in deep space for extended periods of time. Starships receive most of the glory, but these stations offer safe harbors and defensible locales upon which the fleet relies. Whether orbiting Earth, overlooking the Bajoran wormhole, or sitting on the edge of the frontier, starbases ensure that crews always have a home away from home to visit.

Jay Stobie is a science fiction writer who admits he has a perfectly normal obsession with Star Trek. He can be found on Twitter at @CaptStobie .

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Science Station 2: An Introduction

A star trek & science podcast.

Science Station 2 will look at science, psychology, sociology, humanity, and technology as it relates to the very human elements at the core of Star Trek!

• Space stations
• Season Fifteen: Age of Discovery

Delta Volanis Science Station

• VisualEditor

The Delta Volanis Science Station is a Federation research facility located in the Delta Volanis Cluster in 2256 .

Missions involved [ | ]

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Science Friday

Star trek’s science advisor reveals the real astrophysics on screen.

29:26 minutes

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Science concepts have always been integral to the Star Trek franchise: from warp speed travel to dilithium. But how much does the series accurately depict?

Ira speaks with astrophysicist Dr. Erin Macdonald, science consultant for Star Trek about the legacy of the franchise, and how accurate the science is within the series.

Further Reading

• Learn more about Dr. Macdonald’s work .
• Watch Dr. Macdonald explain the real science behind the Gorn Chase scene in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
• Watch another video of Dr. Macdonald explaining warp drive .

Segment Guests

Dr. Erin Macdonald is scientific consultant to the Star Trek franchise. She’s based in Los Angeles, California.

Segment Transcript

IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I’m Ira Flatow. There are a few pop culture franchises that do science quite like Star Trek.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SPEAKER: Space, a final frontier.

IRA FLATOW: Is there a more recognizable opening line on television more iconic than that one? The Star Trek series released in 1966, starring William Shatner as Captain Kirk, Leonard Nimoy as Spock. And since then, there have been a dozen shows exploring the Star Trek universe.

Some have been live action. Some animated. But all explore concepts in astrophysics. And when I watch these shows, I love them. I always think how accurate is the science in this franchise? It’s an apt question, for our next guest is going to tell me all about it.

Dr. Erin Macdonald, scientific consultant for the Star Trek franchise. She has a PhD in astrophysics, and she joins us from Los Angeles. Welcome to Science Friday.

ERIN MACDONALD: Hi, Ira. I’m really honored to be here. Thanks for having me.

IRA FLATOW: I’m so happy to have you. Tell me a bit about your history as a science consultant for Star Trek. When did that all start? How did you get involved?

ERIN MACDONALD: Yeah. It’s been going back to season three of Star Trek Discovery was when I came on, when they jumped forward to the future. My background, as you mentioned, is in astrophysics, particularly in gravitational waves. I’ve always used science fiction to teach science. And when I left academia, I started giving talks at pop culture conventions, which sort of led me into the entertainment industry.

IRA FLATOW: That’s terrific. We want to get our listeners in on this. Because I know we’re going to melt the phone lines when I give out the phone number. Our number is 844-724-8255, 844-724-8255, to talk about the science that’s in Star Trek, or tweet us @SciFri. Were you always a big Trekker, a Star Trek fan?

ERIN MACDONALD: Yeah. I mean, I wasn’t really exposed to it until I was in college. I was doing my undergraduate degrees in physics and math. And in the Venn diagram of Star Trek fans and physics majors, there’s a big overlap in the middle there.

And so at our sort of college parties, we would watch Next Generation. And that was kind of my first exposure to it, and I fell absolutely in love with it. The big moment for me was when the 2009 Kelvin film came out. That was the night we all graduated.

And so we did our big graduation, and then we went to the midnight premiere, back when those were actually at midnight, and surrounded by Star Trek fans I realized like, these are my people. This is where it’s at.

IRA FLATOW: And how many Star Trek shows are airing at the same time these days?

ERIN MACDONALD: Now, I think we’ve had five going. So there’s a lot– different flavors, as you mentioned. Some are live action. Some are animated. Some are targeted at kids. And what’s great is that they all kind of have different flavors of science, and they all approach their storytelling differently, as Star Trek always has.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah. So give me an idea of what a day in the life of a science consultant looks like. What kinds of things are you actually doing?

ERIN MACDONALD: Yeah. A lot of it is working directly with the writers and showrunners. And so they’ll reach out to me if they have specific questions. And then I sometimes try to sit about once a week in the writers room itself helping them break ideas, if they have questions in the moment, or come up with story concepts.

I work as a writer. I’m a big fan of science fiction anyway. So being able to help with that process. And then a big part of my job is literally just editing scripts– going through them, and at the very minimum, making sure we don’t say anything wrong– a big job.

IRA FLATOW: What do you mean say anything wrong– for example?

ERIN MACDONALD: For example, like refer to our solar system or a star system as a galaxy. That’s a common mistake that happens in science fiction all the time, and getting those things conflated. Making sure we talk about planets the right way, making sure we talk about nebulas the right way, and that they’re just dust and gas, and all of those little nuances that can sometimes slip by.

IRA FLATOW: One of the central tenets of watching a film, a fiction film, is the willful suspension of your belief, right?

ERIN MACDONALD: Absolutely.

IRA FLATOW: How does that play into what you do, and in Star Trek, in general?

ERIN MACDONALD: Well, I think sometimes– a lot of what I do when I say I don’t want them to say anything wrong, sometimes we’ll have great fun, fantastical storylines that isn’t really rooted in science. And the advice is to just not try to explain it.

Because I think that’s when that suspension of disbelief– when you’re talking about a giant energy being that’s grabbing a hold of the ship, as soon as you start to apply science to it, that’s when you’re going to start to lose people, when if you just let it be, you could just ride the story.

IRA FLATOW: But sometimes over the years, if you wait around long enough, some of the things that you may think are– you need to suspend your belief actually come true. And I’m thinking about all the times we used to watch Captain Kirk or Jean-Luc Picard talk to the computer– like, verbally speak to– like, really? It understands what you’re saying? But now we can do that.

ERIN MACDONALD: We have that indeed. In fact, my own little in-home listening system responds to computers well. Can’t be a Star Trek fan without that. And yeah, I mean this long legacy. Even I remember the original series, x Kirk would video call down to the medical bay. And that seemed so fantastical. And now that’s almost how we live our lives.

IRA FLATOW: Or Hurra would have a little thing in her ear. You can’t have a tiny little receiver in your ear, right?

ERIN MACDONALD: Right. Right. A little wireless receptor– who’d have thought?

IRA FLATOW: Do you have a favorite science plot line you’ve consulted on?

ERIN MACDONALD: Yeah. I mean, there’s been a few. My first one was to do the big story arc for season three, which was called The Burn. And what I was brought on for was to really apply some science to the dilithium, which is a fictional Star Trek element that’s been around since the ’60s, and plays a role in the technology of these starships. And I was able to kind of add on some canonical explanations to it that was really exciting and really special.

And then in that same season, I also consulted on episode five, I believe, where they encounter a coronal mass ejection. And that was the first time that we’ve had one of those in Star Trek before. So that was fun.

IRA FLATOW: That is dilithium crystals. Really? Where do they come– where do they come from? Do we have a history on that?

ERIN MACDONALD: Well, yeah. The first thing I had to establish was is it dilithium or is it dilithium? Because as many Star Trek fans, who are also chemistry majors, will point out that lithium does not allow itself to be combined in such a way. And so we established, nope. It is just called dilithium, and it’s its own thing. I came up with these subatomic particles that tap into subspace to make the story work that way.

IRA FLATOW: You talked about just having to accept things when something big happens. You don’t want to explain it. And I think one of those things that I’ve always wondered about, and we have gotten calls about in the past, is warp speed. How do you how do you survive going to warp speed? The human body can’t really take that kind of acceleration.

ERIN MACDONALD: No. This is true. I mean, the ships do have inertial dampeners, which is kind of the equivalent of seat belts.

IRA FLATOW: Oh, I forgot about that– the intertial dampener.

ERIN MACDONALD: Yeah. Yeah. Because inertia is the thing that’s going to get you, right? But when you do go to warp, the whole concept of warp drive mathematically is really interesting, and it is actually possible. The concept is that you’re building a bubble of space time around your ship.

So on the ship itself, you’re still traveling, I mean, at the speeds they are, much faster than we can conceive of now. But even then, they’re not quite at the speed of light. And then the bubble of space time just carries the ship faster than light. Because in our rules of general relativity, nothing says that spacetime itself can’t go faster than the speed of light. It’s just stuff on the surface of it.

IRA FLATOW: I love that explanation. Let’s go to– I’m going to hit– there are a couple of harder ones on the phone I’m going to get them to ask you. Marti in Ellensburg, Washington. Hi. Welcome to Science Friday.

AUDIENCE: Hi. Thanks. I’m just wondering, especially since I just got a new knee, are the Borg really possible?

ERIN MACDONALD: Oh, the Borg. Yeah.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah. Tell us what the Borg are, if you will, first.

ERIN MACDONALD: Absolutely. So the Borg is probably something a lot of young Star Trek fans remember is the first thing that gave them nightmares. But it’s essentially a sort of cybernetic species that goes around assimilating different cultures, and they incorporate a lot of technology into their beings.

But the big thing that the Borg have, that was kind of established in Star Trek Voyager in more detail, is these nanoprobes– so these little itty-bitty mechanical devices that swim throughout your bloodstream and coordinate all of the cybernetic implants that you’ve got.

So I don’t think we’re quite there yet. I don’t know if you have to worry about that with your knee quite yet. But it’s certainly interesting. And I think this idea of integrating– it’s really biotechnology– integrating robotics with our bodies– we are not far away from.

IRA FLATOW: Do you ever go in the opposite direction? Do you ever suggest something that they could incorporate into the script that you’re thinking about?

ERIN MACDONALD: Yeah, quite a few times. I mean, I don’t want to take too much credit because these writers, they come up with really, really cool stories.

But like the CME, the Coronal Mass Ejection, that I mentioned, that was a big one where it was like, let’s just have a space disaster. We just want a cool space disaster that’s going to interrupt the transporter. What would be a fun one that we could use with that?

And so then we kind of built the story around it being a coronal mass ejection, which is, for people who aren’t aware, it’s like a solar flare plus. It carries a lot of massive radiation particles, in addition to the kind of normal solar flares that we see.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah. A lot of people want to talk to you. Let’s go to Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin. I don’t think we’ve ever been there. Jeff, welcome to Science Friday.

AUDIENCE: Hi. Yeah, thanks. I’m reading a series of books now. And they use something called an Alcubierre drive. Supposedly, it’s a real theoretical thing. And I was just wondering is that the same thing as the warp drive?

ERIN MACDONALD: Yeah, absolutely. So the Alcubierre drive was the first major warp drive that was mathematically laid out. And so as I talked about where warp is about building a bubble of spacetime around your ship, the Alcubierre drive takes that concept.

And the key with it– so mathematically, this warp drive, the Alcubierre drive, could work. The issue is the amount of energy required to do it. Because mass bends spacetime– that’s the bowling ball on the trampoline analogy.

If you don’t have that mass to build a warp bubble, you need an equivalent amount of energy, which is times the speed of light squared. So that’s a level of energy we don’t know how to harness yet. So that’s the barrier that’s keeping us from getting there.

IRA FLATOW: You have to keep up with all these things, don’t you?

ERIN MACDONALD: Yeah. And sometimes the writers get to it before I do. A lot of the writers love science. They’re really interested in it. And so I’ll pop into a writers room. And they’ll be like, hey, Erin, tell us about this new black hole finding. And I’ve got to go look it up. And it’s really cool. It’s great to have a team that’s so invested in science as well.

IRA FLATOW: All right. We’re talking with Erin Macdonald. She’s science consultant for Star Trek. She’s based in Los Angeles. If you’d like to join us, please. You can tweet us– some more tweets coming in– @SciFri. Or you can call us 844-724-8255. We have to take a break. We’ll be right back. Stay with us.

This is Science Friday. I’m Ira Flatow. I’m talking with Dr. Erin Macdonald, science consultant for the Star Trek franchise. She’s based out in Los Angeles, of course. Our number– 844-724-8255 if you’d like to talk to us and ask a question– 844-SCI-TALK.

Dr. Macdonald, do you ever view this as more than just a science fiction thingy, but maybe a teaching experience?

ERIN MACDONALD: Oh, absolutely. I think it’s hard to undersell how influential Star Trek has been on science. It’s been around for, gosh, 60-plus years at this point. And it has influenced and inspired people to become scientists.

And so there is some responsibility to uphold that legacy of inspiring people and getting the science correct. And particularly, with the new show Star Trek Prodigy, which is targeted at kids, a lot of that is actually more of a teaching job and leaning on my teaching background to try to explain difficult concepts to kids, and hopefully inspire them to become scientists.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah. Because it can inspire a lot of people to think about the laws of physics. I mean, seriously. I mean, let me go to, for example, my next caller. Let’s go to Nicholas in New Bedford, Mass. Hi, Nicholas.

AUDIENCE: Hi.

IRA FLATOW: Go ahead.

AUDIENCE: So in the latest season of Star Trek Discovery, we see the ship go past the edge of our galaxy into another galaxy where the laws of physics seem to differ very greatly. Now, is this some way something theoretical? Is there actually evidence that suggests that in another galaxy, but still in our same universe, there could be very different laws of physics?

ERIN MACDONALD: Understood. Yeah. No, I really appreciate that question. So yeah, in season four of Star Trek Discovery, the crew go past the galactic barrier, which was inspired from all the way back to the original series. And then they enter a what’s actually a star system, where species 10-C lives.

And what the species 10-C has done is they create a bubble that’s almost like a Dyson sphere plus that surrounds the entire star system and is protecting them from the outside. So that was more on the science fiction side. It’s always a bit of a spectrum. But what’s fun about exploring the galactic barrier, because that was more on the legacy of Star Trek, we did actually try to look up if there was any science based on that.

And just really quickly, we do have this thing called the heliopause at the edge of our solar system, where radiation particles from the sun kind of get stopped because they don’t have enough escape velocity to fully escape our solar system and the gravity well of the star.

And I was thinking like, well, what if there’s something similar at the edge of our galaxy, like galactapause, if you will. And actually, since we kind of were coming up with that idea, I did actually see a paper hit the preprint archive on the idea of a galactapause. And so this idea that there is radiation particles.

Now, it’s not so much that the laws of physics in the species 10-C star system had changed, but more that they had created an environment in which they could live and be protected from the exterior intergalactic space.

IRA FLATOW: Very well put. That’s like a master’s thesis right there.

ERIN MACDONALD: [LAUGHS] Sorry. A lot of science in one sitting, I know.

IRA FLATOW: I want to talk about Data. Because Data is, I think, one of the unique things about the Star Trek. Data– for both of you who have been in a cave for decades, Data is an Android. He’s a key star in Star Trek. And his desire to become more human all the time is giving him a personality now less science fiction-like and more science present, do you think?

ERIN MACDONALD: I do think so. And for people who might not be aware, I could recommend– it’s in my top five episodes of Star Trek to watch– is The Measure of a Man from an original series– or from the Next Generation– excuse me– that explores the rights of Data.

And I think watching that with a context now that we have with artificial intelligence, and these great strides that are happening faster than we can keep up with, is even more interesting than it even was back in the day. Because it really forces you to think about the rights of artificial intelligence. And I do think this is a conversation that we’re going to be having for a long time, and it’s going to dominate our culture in the next decade.

IRA FLATOW: Kurt in Fort Dodge Iowa. Hi, Kurt.

AUDIENCE: Yes. Hello.

IRA FLATOW: Hi there. Go ahead.

AUDIENCE: Well, I was just wondering through all the different shows and the exploration that they represent and everything that they do in the universe, I was just wondering how come you don’t really see a whole lot of exploration or explanation around trying to understand black holes.

ERIN MACDONALD: Oh, that’s a–

IRA FLATOW: You do, but you can’t see it. No, that was a bad joke. I’m sorry.

ERIN MACDONALD: [LAUGHS] Yeah. I mean, we do try to incorporate some of that. I mean, thinking about the history of science. I talked about how science is integrated with Star Trek for so long.

One of the cool things is that in the original series back in the 60s, we still hadn’t detected a black hole. It hadn’t even been coined in the literature. And I think Captain Kirk at one point says that there was like a void of blackness in space. And within a year, the term black hole had been coined in publications, which is about chicken and the egg. We don’t really know which came first with that one.

But we have tried to integrate some, and even with things that we’ve discovered through gravitational waves, we’re starting to build out our pictures of black holes even just better than we knew 10, 15 years ago. And so those start to fold into our stories a little bit more, this idea of roaming black holes. And yeah, obviously, you have to have some visual imagery that’s going to be fun to go with it.

In the recent season, season one of Strange New Worlds, they actually escape an enemy. I won’t spoil it too much, they escape an enemy by utilizing gravitational time dilation and sling-shotting around a black hole. So it’s all about just trying to find the right scientific phenomena that fits the story.

IRA FLATOW: You’re never fearful of going through your wormholes though, right?

ERIN MACDONALD: Oh, those.

IRA FLATOW: Star Trek goes through wormholes a lot.

ERIN MACDONALD: Exactly. In fact, Deep Space Nine was pretty much set at a wormhole. [LAUGHS]

IRA FLATOW: Jerry in Heber Springs, Arkansas. Welcome to Science Friday.

AUDIENCE: Hey. How you doing, Ira?

IRA FLATOW: Hey, there. Go ahead.

AUDIENCE: Hey. So I got just kind of an off-the-wall question. It’s more in personality than technology. But for your guest there, has there ever been anything that was presented by a writer or the staff where you just went, ah, yeah, no. That’s not going to work.

ERIN MACDONALD: [LAUGHS] I appreciate that question. I do think–

IRA FLATOW: Do you have that power  [LAUGHS] ?

ERIN MACDONALD: Right. I will say I do think it’s important as a science advisor to be a positive force in the room and to not squash people’s dreams and ideas. And so I try to take a “yes and” approach to story ideas that are presented to me. And sometimes it’s more important to just say that’s a really cool idea. Let’s not explain it. Let’s just let that be, and try to adjust as necessary to what we do know in science.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah. Well, because Rich in– where is it– Yorba Linda, California, is going to ask about something like that. Go ahead, Rich.

AUDIENCE: Yeah, thanks. My question was how legitimate is the transporter and the replicator. What kind of science do you justify that whole concept?

ERIN MACDONALD: I love– I love the transporter. OK, I’ll make this really brief. So the transporter with our physics knowledge we have now could never work. Because you break down all of the particles of the body down to almost the subatomic particles, and you have to know exactly where they are to put them back together.

And Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which is a physics concept, doesn’t allow that. The more you know about where a particle is, the less you know about the speed it’s going. And then there’s an ultimate Heisenberg limit that you can’t reach.

But in Star Trek– The Next Generation, they’re repairing the transporter at one point, and there’s a Heisenberg compensator.

IRA FLATOW: Oh, wow.

ERIN MACDONALD: And that compensates for Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. And how does the Heisenberg compensator work? It works very well. Thank you.

IRA FLATOW: You know what I want to see in Star Trek? I want to see you bring in spooky action at a distance somehow. That would be really fun. One thing happening on one side of the universe being reflected on the other side of the universe in the same way.

ERIN MACDONALD: That would be awesome.

IRA FLATOW: That– yeah. Have you had moments where you’ve actually had to change the science because it’s not working for the story?

ERIN MACDONALD: Yeah. Actually, we did with– in Discovery, there was one time where they were trying to escape– we had the dark matter anomaly, and they were writing the gravitational waves out of it, which is my technical scientific background. And gravitational waves don’t exactly work the way we were visualizing it.

The visuals, as they’re all standing around the table in The Ready Room trying to plan this, were looking like ocean waves. And gravitational waves really look more like sound waves, like compression waves that are happening in multiple dimensions.

And so they tried– to their credit, they tried to image it correctly like gravitational waves look, and it immediately pulled people out. Because you hear wave, and you expect to see something. And so we decided to just leave it looking like an ocean wave because it wasn’t worth the time and explanation it would take to explain to people why it looked that way. They’re just trying to say they’re going to ride the waves out.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah. Yeah. One concept that we’re getting closer to with virtual reality is the Holodeck, right?

ERIN MACDONALD: Yes. Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

IRA FLATOW: Was that one of the original ideas in Star Trek? Did someone in the early years come up with that, or did that trickle down later on?

ERIN MACDONALD: I think it was really more in the next generation is when they explored the Holodeck. And I will say– I mean, I have a virtual reality device, and it does throw you. It is a weird experience, and it does feel like the Holodeck sometimes. And I do think, yeah, we are going to get close to that technology soon.

IRA FLATOW: Jeffrey in Pittsburgh. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi, there. Jeffrey, are you there?

AUDIENCE: Hello. Yeah, I’m sorry. I just had a break in the signal and then your voice. Ira. Ira, Dr. Macdonald, thank you for the very entertaining and interesting conversation. Mine is a comment and then a quick question.

As an emergency physician and somebody that’s old enough to be a fan of the original Star Trek, a medical tricorder was fascinating to me. And as I see patients today in my practice, it occurred to me that with the micronization of sensors, as well as artificial intelligence, machine learning, which I’m getting into and interested in, we’re getting close faster than I think most people realize to an early medical tricorder. And Dr. Macdonald, with your access to the scientists that you talk to, what are your thoughts on that?

IRA FLATOW: Yeah. Good question. Thanks, doc.

ERIN MACDONALD: Yeah. I mean, you know, what’s interesting is I do think necessity drives invention. And in the last couple of years, we’ve tried to– we’ve been at a place where we’ve had to have more remote medical diagnostic capabilities, where you’re able to diagnose people from a distance or without touching them.

And then also technologies. I mean, I’m wearing a device on my wrist that’s measuring my heart rate, is measuring my pacing and all of those. And so, yes, certainly our technology is getting us there.

And I think even a few years ago– it’s probably close to a decade now– there was an XPRIZE to try to develop a device that could diagnose, I think, it was like five vital signs and diagnosed 12 diseases. And someone did win that. It’s just, at the time, prohibitively large and expensive.

But the technology does exist. And I do think, as you mentioned, the miniaturization of technology will get us there as well, as well as machine learning.

IRA FLATOW: You know, I kind of think that– you touched on this before, a little bit about science education. But I think speaking and talking about these things actually makes some of them happen. I’m thinking of the first flip phone, that Motorola flip phone, was based on Star Trek, wasn’t it?

ERIN MACDONALD: Yeah, absolutely. Everyone wanted to pop open that phone and call the Enterprise. And it drives that. And I– also, the one I think of too, is when we all started getting e-readers. Those were the exact shape and size of the data pads in the next generation.

And you can’t avoid the fact that people are watching this on Star Trek, or any science fiction, and think, I really want that. And then they work toward it, and they end up inventing these things.

IRA FLATOW: Cool. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Comment from Dan on Twitter who says, I teach a first-year college course called Science Fiction, Science Fact, and we watch some episodes of Star Trek- The Next Generation to discuss the importance of science fiction in understanding science. Which episodes would you recommend for teaching science? I love Measure of a Man on Data.

ERIN MACDONALD: Oh, that’s a great question. I think one of the best things– oh, there’s so many good ones– is like the science is so embedded in the DNA of Star Trek that– my personal favorite episode of Star Trek ever is Voyager’s Counterpoint. And that’s where Janeway is trying to discover where a wormhole is going to appear.

And it’s not so much about educating like what a wormhole is, but I think seeing scientists science. And Star Trek does have a lot of that, where there is a scientific problem the crew is faced with, and they approach it as scientists. And that’s something– a role I play, as well as a science advisor, is to advise on what information you need and how you approach problems.

IRA FLATOW: You know, I see the evolution, so to speak, of Star Trek from the Kirk days, where they would settle things by fighting out in the back lot someplace on a cheap set. That’s how they settled things. And then they got more cerebral later, right? But Picard solved everything with his brain. He outsmarted you. He outthought you.

ERIN MACDONALD: Yeah, absolutely. They all have their own little approaches. And you mentioned fighting on the planet with fisticuffs. But in that episode in arena, Spock and McCoy are up watching this fight go on and be like, he’s not going to figure it out. He’s got to do the chemistry. He’s got to do the science, and he eventually figures it out.

IRA FLATOW: If you could move Star Trek in some generation, some direction, I mean, where would you like to see it go?

ERIN MACDONALD: I’ve really enjoyed Prodigy and reframing these classic Star Trek ethos. Like you said, the philosophical, as well as the problem-solving and the scientific to be targeted at kids. And seeing more of that, having these more hard sci-fi shows that are accessible and available to kids, I think, really can influence an entire generation in how they decide to pursue their careers.

IRA FLATOW: Is there a teaching material? I mean, do they make teaching materials out of Star Trek episodes that they could use in school? Maybe they should be doing that.

ERIN MACDONALD: I mean, I’ve heard– I’ve certainly heard a lot of teachers, as the commenter mentioned, who use science fiction. In fact, I did as well. And for Star Trek Prodigy, we also did a series of webisodes that people can watch that was the science of Star Trek Prodigy, where we did short 5, 10-minute explainers of the science in these episodes.

So people can go and find them. They’re where you watch Prodigy, and they’re also available streaming online. Because we do want to find ways to teach through Star Trek. I think it is so effective.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, it is. And I guess once you get hooked on Star Trek, you’re hooked.

ERIN MACDONALD: You’re hooked.

IRA FLATOW: You’re hooked. So if you get hooked on– because kids are natural-born scientists. They want to know how everything works. They want to take it all apart. They’ll make mistakes. And you kind of get that vibe from Star Trek, so–

ERIN MACDONALD: Absolutely. Yeah, I agree. We’re all scientists at heart starting out. We problem-solve.

IRA FLATOW: Dr. Macdonald, good luck. You have an enviable job, I think.

ERIN MACDONALD: Thank you.

IRA FLATOW: Dr. Erin Macdonald, Science Consultant for the Star Trek franchise based in Los Angeles. Thank you for taking time and sharing what you know.

ERIN MACDONALD: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Meet the Producers and Host

About kathleen davis.

Kathleen Davis is a producer at Science Friday, which means she spends the week brainstorming, researching, and writing, typically in that order. She’s a big fan of stories related to strange animal facts and dystopian technology.

About Ira Flatow

Ira Flatow is the host and executive producer of Science Friday .  His green thumb has revived many an office plant at death’s door.

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15 min read

55 Years Ago: Star Trek Final Episode Airs, Relationship with NASA Endures

Johnson space center.

The voyages of the Starship Enterprise came to a sudden and premature end on June 3, 1969, with the airing of the final episode of the Star Trek original television series. Ironically, the show’s cancellation came just six weeks before humanity embarked on its first voyage to land on another celestial body. Although the show ran for only three seasons, it generated a devoted fan base disappointed by the cancellation despite their write-in campaign to keep it on the air. But as things turned out, over the decades Star Trek evolved into a global phenomenon, first with the original episodes replayed in syndication, followed by a series of full-length motion pictures, and eventually a multitude of spin-off series. With its primary focus on space exploration, along with themes of diversity, inclusion, and innovation, the Star Trek fictional universe formed a natural association with NASA’s real life activities.

Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry first had the idea for a science fiction television series in 1964. He presented his idea, a show set in the 23 rd century aboard a starship with a crew dedicated to exploring the galaxy, to Desilu Productions, an independent television production company headed by Lucille Ball. They produced a pilot titled “The Cage,” selling it to the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) network that then bought a second pilot titled “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” NBC introduced the show to its fall 1966 lineup, with the first episode “The Man Trap” airing on Sep. 8. To put that date in perspective, NASA launched Gemini XI four days later, one of the missions that helped the agency achieve the Moon landing nearly three years later. Meanwhile, Star Trek’s Starship Enterprise continued its fictional five-year mission through the galaxy to “seek out new life and new civilizations.” The makeup of the Enterprise’s crew made the show particularly attractive to late 1960s television audiences. The major characters included an African American woman communications officer, an Asian American helmsman, and a half-human half-Vulcan science officer, later joined by a Russian-born ensign. While the show enjoyed good ratings during its first two seasons, cuts to its production budget resulted in lower quality episodes during its third season leading to lower ratings and, despite a concerted letter-writing campaign from its dedicated fans, eventual cancellation.

Despite the show’s cancellation, Star Trek lived on and prospered in syndication and attracted an ever-growing fan base, turning into a worldwide sensation. Often dubbed “trekkies,” these fans held the first of many Star Trek conventions in 1972. When in 1976 NASA announced that it would name its first space shuttle orbiter Constitution, in honor of its unveiling on the anniversary of the U. S. Constitution’s ratification, trekkies engaged in a dedicated letter writing campaign to have the orbiter named Enterprise, after the starship in the television series. This time the fans’ letter writing campaign succeeded. President Gerald R. Ford agreed with the trekkies and directed NASA to rechristen the first space shuttle. When on Sept. 17, 1976 , it rolled out of its manufacturing plant in Palmdale, California, appropriately accompanied by a band playing the show’s theme song, it bore the name Enterprise. Many of the original cast members of the show as well as its creator Rodenberry participated in the rollout ceremony, hosted by NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher . Thus began a lengthy relationship between the space agency and the Star Trek brand.

During the development of the space shuttle in the 1970s, the need arose to recruit a new group of astronauts to fly the vehicle, deploy the satellites, and perform the science experiments. When NASA released the call for the new astronaut selection on July 8, 1976, it specifically encouraged women and minorities to apply. To encourage those applicants, NASA chose Nichelle Nichols, who played communications officer Lt. Uhura on the Starship Enterprise, to record a recruiting video and speak to audiences nationwide. She came to NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston in March 1977, and accompanied by Apollo 12 and Skylab 3 astronaut Alan L. Bean , toured the center and filmed scenes for the video in Mission Control and other facilities. NASA hoped that her stature and popularity would encourage women and minorities to apply, and indeed they did. In January 1978, when NASA announced the selection of 35 new astronauts from more than 8,000 applicants, for the first time the astronaut class included women and minorities. All distinguished themselves as NASA astronauts and paved the way for others in subsequent astronaut selections. Nichols returned to JSC in September 2010 with the Traveling Space Museum, an organization that partners with schools to promote space studies. She toured Mission Control and the International Space Station trainer accompanied by NASA astronaut B. Alvin Drew . She also flew aboard NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) airborne telescope aircraft managed by NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, in September 2015.

Meanwhile, the Star Trek brand renewed itself in 1979 as a full-length motion picture with the original TV series cast members reprising their roles. Over the years, several sequels followed this first film. And on the small screen, a reboot of sorts occurred in 1987 with the premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a new series set in the 24 th century aboard the Enterprise-D, a next generation starship with a new crew. That series lasted seven seasons, followed by a near-bewildering array of spin-off series, all built on the Star Trek brand, that continue to this day.

James Doohan, the actor who played Lt. Cmdr. Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, the Starship Enterprise’s chief engineer, had early associations with NASA. In April 1967, Doohan visited NASA’s Dryden (now Armstrong) Flight Research Center in California, spending time with NASA test pilot Bruce A. Peterson. A month later, Peterson barely survived a horrific crash of the experimental M2-F2 lifting body aircraft. He inspired the 1970s TV series The Six-Million Dollar Man, and the show’s opening credits include film of the crash. Doohan narrated a documentary film about the space shuttle released shortly before Columbia made its first flight in April 1981. In January 1991, Doohan visited JSC and with NASA astronaut Mario Runco (who sometimes went by the nickname “Spock”) toured the shuttle trainers, Mission Control, and tried his hand at operating the shuttle’s robotic arm in the Manipulator Development Facility. In a unique tribute, astronaut Neil A. Armstrong , the first person to step on the lunar surface , spoke at Doohan’s retirement in 2004, addressing him as “one old engineer to another.”

George Takei, who played Enterprise helmsman Lt. Hikaru Sulu, and his husband Brad, visited JSC in May 2012. Invited by both Asian American and LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Groups, Takei spoke of leadership and inclusiveness, including overcoming challenges while in Japanese American internment camps during World War II and as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. He noted that Star Trek remained ahead of its time in creating a future when all members of society could equally participate in great undertakings, at a time when the country struggled through the Civil Rights movement and the conflict in Southeast Asia. The inclusiveness that is part of NASA’s culture greatly inspired him. JSC Director Michael L. Coats presented Takei with a plaque including a U.S. flag flown aboard space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-135 mission. He also visited Mission Control and spent some time with Robonaut.

Leonard Nimoy played the science officer aboard the Starship Enterprise, the half-human, half-Vulcan Mr. Spock. The actor watched in September 2012 when space shuttle Enterprise arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, on the last leg of its journey to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, where it currently resides. “This is a reunion for me,” observed Nimoy. “Thirty-five years ago, I met the Enterprise for the first time.” As noted earlier, the Star Trek cast attended the first space shuttle’s rollout in 1976. Following his death in 2015, European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti paid tribute to Nimoy aboard the International Space Station by wearing a Star Trek science officer uniform, giving the Vulcan greeting, and proclaiming, “Of all the souls I have encountered … his was the most human.”

Captain James T. Kirk, played by actor William Shatner, a life-long advocate of science and space exploration, served at the helm of the Starship Enterprise. His relationship with NASA began during the original series, with references to the space agency incorporated into several story lines. In 2011, Shatner hosted and narrated a NASA documentary celebrating the 30 th anniversary of the Space Shuttle program , and gave his time and voice to other NASA documentaries. NASA recognized Shatner’s contributions in 2014 with a Distinguished Public Service Medal , the highest award NASA bestows on non-government individuals. NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Communications Robert “Bob” N. Jacobs presented the medal to Shatner. The award’s citation read, “For outstanding generosity and dedication to inspiring new generations of explorers around the world, and for unwavering support for NASA and its missions of discovery.” In 2019, Shatner narrated the NASA video We Are Going , about NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the Moon. He has spoken at numerous NASA-themed events and moderated panels about NASA’s future plans. On Oct. 13, 2021, at the age of 90, Shatner reached the edge of space during the NS-18 suborbital flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle, experiencing three minutes of weightlessness.

Elements of the Star Trek universe have made their way not only into popular culture but also into NASA culture. As noted above, Star Trek fans had a hand in naming the first space shuttle Enterprise. NASA’s Earth observation facility aboard the space station that makes use of its optical quality window bears the name the Window Observational Research Facility (WORF). The connection between that acronym and the name of a Klingon officer aboard the Enterprise in the Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series seemed like an opportunity not to be missed – the facility’s official patch bears its name in English and in Klingon. Several astronaut crews have embraced Star Trek themes for their unofficial photographs. The STS-54 crew dressed in the uniforms of Starship Enterprise officers from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, the second full-length feature motion picture of the series. Space shuttle and space station crews created Space Flight Awareness (SFA) posters for their missions, and more than one embraced Star Trek themes. The Expedition 21 crew dressed in uniforms from the original series, while the STS-134 crew chose as their motif the 2009 reboot motion picture Star Trek.

As much as Star Trek has influenced NASA, in turn the agency has left its mark on the franchise, from episodes referencing actual and future spaceflight events to NASA astronauts making cameo appearances on the show. The first-season episode “Court Martial” that aired in February 1967 featured a photograph of the December 1965 Gemini VI launch adorning a wall aboard a star base. In the second-season episode “Return to Tomorrow,” airing in February 1968, Captain Kirk in a dialogue about risk-taking remarks, “Do you wish that the first Apollo mission hadn’t reached the Moon?” a prescient reference to the first Apollo mission to reach the Moon more than 10 months after the episode aired. Astronaut Mae C. Jemison , who credits Nichelle Nichols as her inspiration to become an astronaut, appeared in the 1993 episode “Second Chances” of Star Trek: The Next Generation , eight months after her actual spaceflight aboard space shuttle Endeavour. In May 2005, two other NASA astronauts, Terry W. Virts and E. Michael Fincke , appeared in “These are the Voyages…,” the final episode of the series Star Trek: Enterprise.

In the 2016 documentary “ NASA on the Edge of Forever: Science in Space ,” host NASA astronaut Victor J. Glover states, “Science and Star Trek go hand-in-hand.” The film explores how for 50 years, Star Trek influenced scientists, engineers, and even astronauts to reach beyond their potential. While the space station doesn’t speed through the galaxy like the Starship Enterprise, much of the research conducted aboard the orbiting facility can make the fiction of Star Trek come a little closer to reality. Several of the cast members from the original TV series share their viewpoints in the documentary, along with those of NASA managers and scientists. Over the years, NASA has created several videos highlighting the relationship between the agency and the Star Trek franchise. In 2016, NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden led a video tribute to celebrate the 50 th anniversary of the first Star Trek episode.

In 2021, on the 100 th anniversary of Gene Roddenberry’s birth, his son Rod hosted a virtual panel discussion , introduced by NASA Administrator C. William “Bill” Nelson , about diversity and inspiration, two ideals the Star Trek creator infused into the series. Panelists included Star Trek actor Takei, Tracy D. Drain, flight systems engineer for the Europa Clipper spacecraft at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, NASA astronaut Jonny Kim , Swati Mohan, guidance and operations lead for the Mars 2020 rover at JPL, and Hortense B. Diggs, Director of the Office of Communication and Public Engagement at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The mutual attraction between NASA and Star Trek stems from, to paraphrase the opening voiceover from the TV series, that both seek to explore and discover new worlds, and to boldly go where no one has gone before. The diversity, inclusion, and inspiration involved in these endeavors ensure that they will live long and prosper.

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Saturday, March 7, 2009

James rugg and tos special effects: spock's science station moire.

The exact pattern was taken from one of the moires published in the 1964 booklet from Edmund Scientific called "The Science of Moire Patterns" by Dr. Gerald Oster. (The static patterns seen on the non-working or dummy TOS communicator props also came from this same source.) The front and back booklet covers are shown below ...

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Science Station 2: A Star Trek & Science Podcast will look at science, psychology, sociology, humanity, and technology as it relates to the very human elements at the core of Star Trek!

Science Station 2: A Star Trek & Science Podcast Trek Geeks Network

• TV & Film
• 5.0 • 1 Rating
• JUL 8, 2021

001 - Social Progress

In this first episode of Science Station 2 host Hayley Stoddart and guest Dr. Ethan Siegel discuss the social progress that is seen in Star Trek, then compare that to where societies of Earth are currently and what will potentially need to happen for us to achieve the level of global equality in Star Trek. How do we start the process of achieving true equality in the United States, then translate that on a global scale? What policy changes need to happen? Who decides what needs to change first, and how do we make it happen? These are questions that Hayley and Dr. Siegel ponder in this first episode of Science Station 2.

• 1 hr 11 min
• JUN 28, 2021

000 - Introduction

Science Station 2 will look at science, psychology, sociology, humanity, and technology as it relates to the very human elements at the core of Star Trek!

• © Trek Geeks

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Star Trek: Who Are the Kellerun?

Science fiction is all about asking questions, and Star Trek has done that since day one. Different alien species explore different societal and philosopical issues. First introduced in Deep Space Nine, this lesser-known alien race asks viewers: What could drive an entire species to attempt mass murder for the sake of peace?

The Kellerun, a lesser-known but compelling alien species in the Star Trek universe, first drew viewers' attention in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. As was often the case in DS9 , they posed unsettling questions, this time about the extremes a society might pursue to secure a lasting peace.

Star Trek: What Does 'Deep Space Nine' Mean?

What is in a name? Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's space station designation had a meaning.

Kellerun and the Armageddon Game

The Kellerun first appear in the Deep Space Nine episode "Armageddon Game." After being locked in a brutal, centuries-long conflict with a species called the T'Lani, the Kellerun developed deadly biological weapons known as Harvesters. However, their "weapon to end all wars" succeeded only in causing catastrophic devastation to their ecosystem.

In 2370, with the horrors of war fresh in their minds, the Kellerun and T'Lani made a joint resolution. Together, they agree to destroy their Harvester stockpile and erase all knowledge of the weapons. In "Armageddon Game," Dr. Julian Bashir and Chief Miles O'Brien find themselves embroiled in a dangerous mission to deactivate the deadly bioweapons. With Bashir's skills in medical and bio-science, and O'Brien's genius with technology, it seems like a surefire win for the purpose of peace.

However, their involvement took a sinister turn. Bashir and O'Brien became targets of assassination, along with any scientists who had knowledge of the Harvesters. Both the Kellerun and T'Lani proved that they were willing to go to horrifying lengths to eradicate their dark past. They both manage to escape the assassination attempt by beaming off the Kellerun space station where the bioweapons were stored, but not before Miles is severely injured during a harrowing confrontation with a Kellerun death squad.

In the midst of their escape, O'Brien is infected with a Harvester sample. Bashir's medical expertise is put to the test as he battles against time and limited resources to save his friend, all while trying to avoid being tracked down on the Kellerun homeworld's devastated surface.

" I suppose another day won't kill me. "

" That's the spirit. "

In the end, a clever ruse by Sisko allows Bashir and O'Brien to escape. However, it seemed likely that the Kellerun and T'Lani would have a long and difficult road ahead of them, as they sought better ways to guard against the possibility of war.

The Kellerun in the 31st century

The Kellerun experienced further hardships in the centuries ahead, particularly in the 32nd century. Rayner, a Kellerun who would go on to become the USS Discovery's first officer, experienced the horrors of war renewed under the Breen occupation of his homeworld.

The reintroduction of the Kellerun in Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 was a surprising move that excited fans of the apocrypha. The devastation wrought on the Kellerun homeworld by the Breen's ruthless invasion, led by Primarch Tahal of the Breen Imperium, left deep scars. These wounds were particularly poignant for Commander Rayner, whose entire family had been killed on Tahal's orders.

Rayner's fervent desire for justice, bordering on rage, created powerful tension with his Starfleet training and Federation ideals. Yet, despite these traumatic events, Rayner found purpose and camaraderie within Starfleet. As a member, he forged enduring friendships and earned respect for his leadership skills and strategic acumen. His tenure as captain of the USS Antares, and later as executive officer aboard the USS Discovery, showcased his dedication to his crew and his unwavering commitment to Starfleet's principles of exploration and cooperation, personal feelings notwithstanding.

Kellerun Culture and society in Star Trek

What little fans know of Kellerun society gives the impression of a highly militaristic people. Their prolonged conflict with the T'Lani shaped their societal structures, making them a people deeply entrenched in the practices of war and survival.

The top-knot style of haircut was apparently preferred by many Kellerun in the 24th century. It is reminiscent of the chonmage haircut popular during Japan's Edo period, a possible visual clue to the structure of their society. Viewers also know that Kellerun have practiced the art of crafting ballads at one point in their past, as the "Ballad of Krul" is considered classic literature among their people.

Key Points about the Kellerun

• During their centuries of conflict with the T'Lani, horrible weapons known as Harvesters devastated their world.
• They murdered all scientists associated with the Harvesters to avoid history repeating itself.
• The Kellerun xperienced a harsh occupation of the Breen Imperium in the 32nd century.
• The Breen war leader, Primarch Tahal, was responsible for many Kellerun deaths, including the family of Commander Rayner, the USS Discovery's First Officer in the fifth season.

The Kellerun, despite their relatively limited screen time in the Star Trek franchise, bring a distinctive and thought-provoking element to the series' exploration of ethical dilemmas and the consequences of war. Their narrative delves into the extremes of wartime morality and the lengths to which a society might go to secure peace for themselves, even at the cost of their own integrity, and the lives of innocents.

Star Trek: Discovery

Release Date September 24, 2017

Genres Drama, Action, Adventure

Rating 7.1/10

Creator Bryan Fuller, Alex Kurtzman

11 sci-fi concepts that are possible (in theory)

These common sci-fi tropes could one day be science fact.

Science fiction novels and movies are packed with far-out ideas, most often as the springboard for an action-packed adventure rather than a serious attempt to predict future trends in science or technology . Some of the most common tropes, such as accelerating a spacecraft to fantastic speeds in a matter of seconds without crushing the occupants , are just plain impossible according to the laws of physics as we understand them. Yet those very same laws appear to permit other seemingly far-fetched sci-fi concepts, from wormholes to parallel universes. Here's a rundown of some of the sci-fi ideas that could really be done — in theory, at least.

1) Tractor beams 

In sci-fi films, nothing raises tension quite like the good guys' spaceship getting caught in an invisible tractor beam that allows the baddies to slowly reel them in. And now scientists are developing a real-life tractor beam . But instead of trapping helpless starship pilots, the goal of the real-life version is to pull defunct satellites out of harm's way and into a "graveyard orbit" around Earth.

The real-life tractor beam, known as an electrostatic tractor, would use a servicer spacecraft that fires electrons at a target satellite, leaving the target with a negative charge and the servicer with a positive charge. The electrostatic attraction between the two spacecraft would cause them to "stick together" and allow the servicer to slowly pull the satellite away.

Several experts are convinced that the prototype technology could work in practice. But it will cost tens of millions to get a working version into space, which could prevent it from making the jump to reality.

2) Wormholes

The idea of a wormhole —a shortcut through space that allows almost instantaneous travel between distant parts of the universe — sounds like it was created as a fictional story-driver. But under its more formal name of an Einstein-Rosen bridge, the concept has existed as a serious theoretical concept long before sci-fi writers got hold of it. It comes out of Albert Einstein 's theory of general relativity , which views gravity as a distortion of space-time caused by massive objects. In collaboration with physicist Nathan Rosen, Einstein theorized in 1935 that points of extremely strong gravity, such as black holes , could be directly connected with each other. And so the idea of wormholes was born.

The forces around a black hole would destroy anyone that came close to it, so the idea of actually traveling through a wormhole wasn't given serious consideration until the 1980s, when astrophysicist Carl Sagan decided he was going to write a sci-fi novel. According to the BBC , Sagan encouraged fellow physicist Kip Thorne to come up with a feasible way to travel interstellar distances in a flash. Thorne duly devised a way — possible in theory, but highly improbable in practice — that humans might achieve interstellar travel by traversing a wormhole unscathed. The result found its way into Sagan's novel " Contact " (Simon and Schuster: 1985) which was subsequently adapted into a film with Jodie Foster in the lead role. 

While it's highly unlikely that wormholes will ever become the simple and convenient methods of transportation portrayed in movies, scientists have now come up with a more viable way to construct a wormhole than Thorne's original suggestion. It's also possible that, if wormholes already exist in the universe, they could be located using the new generation of gravitational-wave detectors.

3) Warp drive

An essential prerequisite for most space-based adventure stories is the ability to get from A to B much faster than we can today. Wormholes aside, there are multiple stumbling blocks to achieving this with a conventional spaceship. There's the enormous amount of fuel required, the crushing effects of acceleration, and the fact that the universe has a strictly imposed speed limit . This is the speed at which light travels — precisely one light-year per year, which in a cosmic context isn't very fast at all. Proxima Centauri, the second-closest star to Earth, is 4.2 light-years from the sun, while the center of the galaxy is a whopping 27,000 light-years away.

Fortunately, there's a loophole in the cosmic speed limit: It only dictates the maximum speed we can travel through space . As Einstein explained, space itself can be distorted, so perhaps it's possible to manipulate the space around a ship in such a way as to subvert the speed limit. The spaceship would still travel through the surrounding space at less than the speed of light, but the space itself would be moving faster than that. 

This was what the writers of "Star Trek" had in mind when they came up with the concept of a "warp drive" in the 1960s. But to them it was just a plausible-sounding phrase, not real physics. It wasn't until 1994 that theoretician Miguel Alcubierre found a solution to Einstein's equations that produced a real warp drive effect, Live Science's sister site Space.com reported , contracting space in front of a spaceship and expanding it to the rear. To start with, Alcubierre's solution was no less contrived than Thorne's traversable wormhole, but scientists are attempting to refine it in the hope that it might one day be practical.

4) Time travel

The concept of a time machine is one of the great sci-fi plot devices, allowing characters to go back and change the course of history — for better or worse. But this inevitably raises logical paradoxes. In "Back to the Future," for example, would Doc have built his time machine if he hadn't been visited by the future Marty using that very same machine? It's because of paradoxes like these that many people assume time travel must be impossible in the real world — and yet, according to the laws of physics, it really can occur .

Just like with wormholes and space warps, the physics that tells us it's possible to travel back in time comes from Einstein's theory of general relativity. This treats space and time as part of the same "space-time" continuum, with the two being inextricably linked. Just as we talk about distorting space with a wormhole or warp drive, time can be distorted as well. Sometimes it can get so distorted that it folds back on itself, in what scientists refer to as a " closed timelike curve " — though it could just as accurately be called a time machine.

A conceptual design for such a time machine was published in 1974 by physicist Frank Tipler, according to physicist David Lewis Anderson, who describes the research on the Anderson Institute , a private research lab. Called a Tipler cylinder, it has to be big — at least 60 miles (97 kilometers) long, according to Humble — and extremely dense, with a total mass comparable to that of the sun. To get it to function as a time machine, the cylinder has to rotate fast enough to distort space-time to the point where time folds back on itself. It may not sound as simple as installing a flux capacitor in a DeLorean, but it does have the advantage that it really would work — on paper, at least.

5) Teleportation

The archetypal sci-fi example of teleportation is the "Star Trek " transporter, which, as the name suggests, is portrayed simply as a convenient way to transport personnel from one location to another. But teleportation is quite unlike any other form of transport: Instead of the traveler moving through space from the starting point to the destination, teleportation results in an exact duplicate being created at the destination while the original is destroyed. Viewed in these terms — and at the level of subatomic particles rather than human beings — teleportation is indeed possible, according to IBM .

The real-world process is called quantum teleportation. This process copies the precise quantum state of one particle, such as a photon, to another that may be hundreds of miles away. Quantum teleportation destroys the quantum state of the first photon, so it does indeed look as though the photon has been magically transported from one place to another. The trick is based on what Einstein referred to as "spooky action at a distance," but is more formally known as quantum entanglement . If the photon that is to be "teleported" is brought into contact with one of a pair of entangled photons, and a measurement of the resulting state is sent to the receiving end — where the other entangled photon is — then the latter photon can be switched into the same state as the teleported photon.

It's a complicated process even for a single photon, and there's no way it could be scaled up to the kind of instant-transportation system seen in "Star Trek." Even so, quantum teleportation does have important applications in the real world, such as for hack-proof communications and super-fast quantum computing.

6) Parallel universes

The universe is everything our telescopes reveal to us — all the billions of galaxies expanding outward from the Big Bang . But is that all there is? Theory says maybe not: There might be a whole multiverse of universes out there. The idea of "parallel universes" is another familiar sci-fi theme, but when they're depicted on screen they typically differ from our own universe only in minor details. But the reality may be much weirder than that, with the basic parameters of physics in a parallel universe — such as the strength of gravity or nuclear forces — differing from our own. A classic portrayal of a genuinely different universe of this kind, and the creatures living in it, is Isaac Asimov's novel "The Gods Themselves " ( Doubleday : 1972) .

The key to the modern understanding of parallel universes is the concept of "eternal inflation." This pictures the infinite fabric of space in a state of perpetual, incredibly rapid expansion. Every now and then a localized spot in this space — a self-contained Big Bang — drops out of the general expansion and begins to grow at a more sedate pace, allowing material objects like stars and galaxies to form inside it. According to this theory, our universe is one such region, but there may be countless others.

As in Asimov's story, these parallel universes could have completely different physical parameters from our own. At one time scientists believed that only universes with virtually the same parameters as ours would be capable of supporting life, but recent studies suggest the situation may not be as restrictive as this, Live Science previously reported . So there's hope for Asimov's aliens yet — though perhaps not for making contact with them, as happens in the novel. Nevertheless, the traces of other universes might be detectable to us by other means. It's even been suggested that the mysterious "cold spot" in the cosmic microwave background is the scar from a collision with a parallel universe, Ivan Baldry, a professor of astrophysics at Liverpool John Moores University in the U.K. wrote in The Conversation .

7) Habitable Mars

Who wouldn't want to live on the Red Planet? It has less gravity than Earth does, so even simple things like walking are difficult — and childbirth may be impossible. Marst gets less sunlight than our home planet does, so even the balmiest days barely pass as bearable. The only water is locked up in ice under the soil or at the poles. Not to mention, there's no breathable atmosphere … or really any atmosphere at all.

But almost every sci-fi story set far enough in the future has humans living on Mars. The key here is terraforming, the process of turning the planet's frigid, empty atmosphere into something more like Earth's. While not impossible, it's no easy task, because Mars does not contain enough volatile materials (such as water, nitrogen and carbon dioxide) to build a thick atmosphere of its own. So we would have to import it from elsewhere, like by towing in comets from the outer solar system and slamming them into the planet.

This kind of mega-engineering isn't impossible. It's just really, really difficult and would involve generations of humans working tirelessly to bring about an Earth 2.0.

8) Easy fusion

Even the wildest sci-fi spaceships need some sort of power source, and sci-fi writers seem to have three standard go-tos: some sort of made-up substance, like dilithium crystals; antimatter; or good old-fashioned nuclear fusion . That last one is perhaps the most plausible as a long-term, sustainable source of energy for everything from spaceships to off-world settlements.

Heck, humans already harness nuclear power in portable ships on Earth, under the ocean. But those are fission-based power planets, which derive power from splitting atoms apart. Fusion — in which two small atoms are smooshed together to form a new, larger one — is a whole different animal. Fusion requires much more sophisticated technologies to control and harness the energy produced (we already figured out how to trigger uncontrolled fusion reactions, which is what hydrogen bombs are). 

In 2022, scientists with the Department of Energy's National Ignition Facility made a huge advance: For the first time ever, they generated more energy out of a fusion reaction than went into it. That remarkable achievement is only the first step, however . That net-positive energy gain didn't include the power lost to inefficiencies in the lasers themselves or a method to capture that energy and put it to useful work.

Still, scientists and engineers around the globe are hard at work to crack the fusion puzzle, and it may yet become a staple of our future.

9) Rock-throwing warfare

Long, long ago our ancestors took the latest technological breakthrough at the time, sharpened rocks, and did their best to beat each other over the head with them. We have since progressed to more advanced means of armed combat, including spears (sharpened rock on a stick), swords (very long sharpened rocks), arrows (long-distance sharpened rocks), bullets (extremely fast, long-distance sharpened rocks) and even bombs (highly explosive, miniaturized sharpened rocks).

In the future, it will be no different. The solar system is chock-full of rocks whizzing around at tens of thousands of miles per hour. At those speeds, rocks pack a ridiculous amount of kinetic energy. Even micrometeoroids, less than a millimeter across, can bury themselves in our most well-protected spacecraft.

As NASA's DART mission successfully showed, it doesn't take much to alter the course of a massive asteroid. Hurling rocks at each other — with impacts powerful enough to end entire civilizations — will surely be a hallmark of future warfare.

10) Artificial gravity

Sci-fi writers often introduce artificial gravity as a plot point to save budgets and film their actors on a normal soundstage; otherwise, they would have to use wires or complex visual effects to simulate weightlessness. 

But creating gravity at will is easier than you might think. The first trick is to replace acceleration with rotation. If you've ever been in one of those carnival rides that spins really quickly, you've known how strong the centrifugal force can be. So if future Earthlings set up a rotating space habitat and arrange everything so that the outermost edge is "down," then people will feel right at home. Well, almost, because they'd have to deal with the dizziness from the rotation and the counterintuitive motions caused by the Coriolis effect.

The other trick to replicate gravity is to keep moving. Einstein realized that acceleration is the same, regardless of whether that acceleration comes from a massive gravitational object or the push of a rocket, and you can use that to your advantage. If you fire your rocket engines and maintain a constant acceleration of 9.8 meters per second squared, unless you look out the window, you'll have no idea you're in a spaceship. Of course, it will take a lot of fuel to maintain that kind of acceleration, but that's a different problem.

11) Ultra-personalized health care

You know the scene from your favorite sci-fi show. The protagonist gets injured, maybe even severely. They go to the medical bay — it's always a medical bay — and the doctor waves a wand over their body and/or plugs in something very simple to their arm. And then the healing begins.

In our own reality, medicine has made enormous strides since the introduction of the scientific method into the field over a hundred years ago. Afflictions and diseases that struck fear into our ancestors, like smallpox, barely even register to us today. From the outright miracles of vaccines and antibiotics to day-to-day routine lifesaving surgical procedures, we're much better off. And healthcare is only getting more advanced. Recently, gene-editing technologies like CRISPR have taken off, offering the promise of tailor-made drugs and therapies for each individual patient. It's not unreasonable to envision a future in which your doctor knows you down to the molecular level and can prescribe the exact right remedy to fix whatever ails you. Of course, it's impossible to say where our continued research into medicine will take us, but it's not crazy to imagine advances in disease management, healing, and overall wellness.

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Paul M. Sutter is a research professor in astrophysics at  SUNY Stony Brook University and the Flatiron Institute in New York City. He regularly appears on TV and podcasts, including  "Ask a Spaceman." He is the author of two books, "Your Place in the Universe" and "How to Die in Space," and is a regular contributor to Space.com, Live Science, and more. Paul received his PhD in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2011, and spent three years at the Paris Institute of Astrophysics, followed by a research fellowship in Trieste, Italy. 

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What ultimately happened to the USS Discovery in the 'Star Trek: Discovery' series finale?

Strangely, the Star Trek: Discovery ship's far-future fate was revealed in 2018 'Short Trek' episode 'Calypso'.

What happens to Discovery at the end of season 5?

How is the uss discovery sentient.

• What happens next?
• What is Zora's final mission?

Over five seasons of "Star Trek: Discoverywe got to know Michael Burnham and the crew of the USS Discovery, but the show's final scene is reserved for its eponymous starship. In the series finale " Life, Itself ", self-aware computer Zora fires up the spore drive for the final time to embark on one last mission. 

We still have no idea why she's given a top-secret Red Directive to wait indefinitely at these particular coordinates, but a 2018 " Short Trek " episode "Calypso" has already revealed the next stage of her journey. Here's what's in store for Zora and Discovery a millennium down the line — watch out for spoilers. (And if you need a refresher on all things Trek, check out our Star Trek streaming guide for how to watch nearly every series on Paramount Plus .)

Paramount+ Essential (ads): $5.99 /mo Paramount+ with SHOWTIME (no ads): $11.99 /mo

Catch up on the adventures of Michael Burnham and the crew of the Discovery on Paramount+. As the home of Star Trek, signing up means you'll also get access to an enormous library of other Star Trek shows and movies.

Several decades after the Discovery crew tracked down the Progenitor technology — long enough for Admiral Michael Burnham and Cleveland Booker to see their son, Leto, rise to the rank of Starfleet captain — the ship is assigned one final mission.

Burnham arrives on the bridge to give the ship's sentient computer, Zora (voiced by Annabelle Wallis), her briefing. "I'm going to bring you to a set of coordinates in deep space," explains the admiral. "Then me and your crew will leave. After that, you wait."

"For what?" Zora asks, but she doesn't get a definitive answer. 

"This is a Red Directive; we both know how transparent those are," replies Burnham, referring to the beyond-classified instructions that have become the mysterious Dr. Kovich's stock-in-trade. "I did hear a word in passing," the admiral adds. "'Craft'. I'm not sure if that's a person or a vessel or…"

That word will prove to be important, but as Burnham correctly predicts, she'll be long gone when Zora finds out what it means.

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After this emotional farewell, Discovery is waved off by an armada of Starfleet vessels and a few bars of Alexander Courage's iconic " Star Trek " theme. Then, Zora fires up the spore drive and jumps away to her mystery destination. 

Related: Star Trek: Discovery is at an end: Here are 5 things season 5 needed to fix

Starships often come to feel like characters in their own right, but never has this been as true as it is for Discovery.

Zora is much more than some glorified Siri or Alexa substitute, thanks to Discovery's 23rd century computer merging with hundreds of thousands of years of data collected by an ancient alien Sphere. Discovery was protecting this precious information when it jumped forward to 3189. 

The newly created super-computer gradually develops sentience, emotions and a personality, and decides to name herself Zora (which means "dawn" in several Alpha Quadrant languages). She's eventually recognized as a lifeform in her own right, and awarded the rank of Specialist by Starfleet.

What happens next? And what does it have to do with 'craft'?

Not a lot. For around 1,000 years, Zora sits and waits at the designated coordinates, getting some "alone time" inside some kind of interstellar storm cloud. Then she runs into an escape pod with a sole occupant — a man who calls himself Craft. 

This "reluctant" soldier (played by Aldis Hodge) hails from Alcor IV, and has spent the last decade at war with the V'draysh, which — based on comments from criminal boss Zareh in " Discovery" season 3 — appears to be a Pidgin word for the Federation. (This may explain why the enemy vessel Craft has commandeered contains an extensive collection of Earth cartoons from "the long ago".)

During their time together, Zora introduces Craft to tacos, the concept of Tuesday, and her favorite movie, 1957 Audrey Hepburn/Fred Astaire rom-com "Funny Face." She falls in love with the visitor, but he ultimately departs in the hope of finding his wife and son. She refuses to give him a lift home in Discovery, however, reasoning that she has to maintain position to complete her mission.

All this was revealed in 2018 "Short Trek" episode "Calypso", though back then — before season 2 had aired — we had no idea that Discovery would depart for the 32nd century, that the Sphere data would help Discovery's computer evolve into Zora, or that Burnham (then a science officer) would be promoted to captain. These days "Calypso" makes a lot more sense. 

So what exactly is Zora's final mission?

Beyond waiting for a long, long time, that remains unclear. But, seeing as her mission has top secret Red Directive status, it's pretty much certain that Dr Kovich — now revealed to be Temporal Agent Daniels of " Star Trek: Enterprise " fame — has a plan for Zora, and that her bumping into Craft is no accident. 

But whoever she encounters next, it's sure to have major ramifications for the galaxy — and perhaps beyond. Burnham promised a "new beginning" for Zora when she eventually comes back. Who knows what that might mean…

All five seasons of 'Star Trek: Discovery' and the 'Calypso' 'Short Trek' are now available to stream on Paramount Plus. To find out where to stream every other Star Trek movie and show, check out our Star Trek streaming guide .

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Richard's love affair with outer space started when he saw the original "Star Wars" on TV aged four, and he spent much of the ’90s watching "Star Trek”, "Babylon 5” and “The X-Files" with his mum. After studying physics at university, he became a journalist, swapped science fact for science fiction, and hit the jackpot when he joined the team at SFX, the UK's biggest sci-fi and fantasy magazine. He liked it so much he stayed there for 12 years, four of them as editor. 

He's since gone freelance and passes his time writing about "Star Wars", "Star Trek" and superheroes for the likes of SFX, Total Film, TechRadar and GamesRadar+. He has met five Doctors, two Starfleet captains and one Luke Skywalker, and once sat in the cockpit of "Red Dwarf"'s Starbug.  

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As my Star Trek character commanded the weight of a starship, I was hours away from becoming a father

The lines between fiction and reality collided when i welcomed my child into the world.

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This First Person column is the experience of Patrick Kwok-Choon, who was born and raised in Montreal. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ .

I was on the set of Star Trek: Discovery and my character Gen Rhys had been thrust into the captain's chair, burdened with making life-and-death decisions for himself and his crew.

I can't believe this was happening to me.

It was a milestone for my character — the first time as acting captain on the Starship Discovery — but also an important moment for me as a lifelong fan of the franchise.

Sitting in that chair, I couldn't help but think of the iconic performances by Patrick Stewart, Kate Mulgrew and Avery Brooks. The weight of their legacy was palpable, and being part of that tradition felt incredibly significant.

But my real concern wasn't the scene; it was the crisis unfolding at home.

At 3 a.m., my wife went into labour. When her contractions increased, we called our midwife at 9 a.m. Despite the unpredictability of childbirth, she assured me, based on her extensive experience, that it was OK for me to go to work. She mentioned that while it's not guaranteed, deliveries typically occur at night, offering me some peace of mind.

I was contractually obligated to go into work that day and my wife reassured me that her contractions were only uncomfortable, not painful. She insisted I go.

With a heavy heart, I asked my neighbour to watch over my wife and to call me if there was any emergency. I would come home immediately, regardless of the consequences.

When I arrived at work, my castmates greeted me with joy. The higher-ups were quickly informed and a production head came down to assure me that everything was being done to expedite my departure. The shooting schedule was rearranged so all my scenes would be filmed first. I immediately called my wife to share the news.

As I spoke with her, another production head approached, offering congratulations and reiterating the plan. But he added, "If things get too crazy at home and we haven't finished, just bail." I told him my wife felt we were still in the early phases of labour, and we should still have time. He leaned in, gave me a hug, and whispered in my ear, "Just bail."

All hands on deck

I was at a loss for words — studios aren't obligated to accommodate actors in such situations. I've heard terrible stories of actors unable to attend births, weddings and even funerals due to rigid shooting schedules. Yet here, amid the bustling set of a multimillion-dollar shoot, this person was giving me permission to prioritize my family. It was a heartfelt gesture that I'll never forget.

Returning to the chair, it felt like an actual "all hands on deck" moment straight out of Star Trek. Each department rallied together with precision and urgency, and I could feel their support willing me forward. Together, we navigated the challenges of the day, ensuring I could fulfill my duty as both actor and father-to-be.

After what felt like an eternity, the first assistant director called out, "That's a wrap on Patrick. He's free to leave."

I leaped out of my chair and shouted, "I'm going to have a baby!" to the applause of the cast and crew.

At this point, I had been at work for nine hours and it was 8 p.m. I rocketed out of that studio at warp speed. When I got home, my wife's contractions had reached the point where the midwife advised it was time to go to the hospital. I couldn't believe my luck. Despite the chaos of the day, I had made it just in time for the delivery.

Five hours later, as I held my newborn in my arms, I was overwhelmed with a sense of relief and profound joy. The juxtaposition of the day's events felt surreal — acting out life-and-death stakes on set only to experience the miracle of life in reality.

My child is now 20 months old. Just this weekend, I had the luxury of taking my child out for a morning stroll, pushing them for what felt like an eternity on the swings, and sitting in silence together on a park bench as I watched them slowly gobble up a muffin, basking in the absolute wonder of this little miracle. A gift. My gift.

I am miles away from the fearful day on set and have come safely to the other side of things – just as I'm light-years from my youth when I feared becoming a parent because, in my naive mind, it meant getting trapped into something or sacrificing my career, time and energy.

But I think most parents would agree: what you gain is absolutely priceless. No longer do I find myself consumed with work or clinging desperately to career aspirations. I have reshaped my understanding of what's really important to me and my life is immensely richer for it.

The day I spent in the captain's chair on Discovery will forever be etched in my memory, not just for the professional milestone it represented but for the personal journey it paralleled. The lines between fiction and reality blurred, the weight of commanding a starship colliding with the anticipation of welcoming new life into the world.

It was a stark reminder of the beautiful, unpredictable nature of life, where our most significant moments often unfold in the most unexpected ways.

Do you have a compelling personal story that can bring understanding or help others? We want to hear from you. Here's  more info on how to pitch to us .

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Freelance contributor

Patrick Kwok-Choon was born and raised in Montreal. He is best known for the five seasons he spent on the hit CBS/Paramount+ show Star Trek: Discovery.

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Netflix Is About to Drop 20 New Star Trek Episodes on One Day

Move over, Canada Day.

Ever since Star Trek began in 1966, the adventures of each starship and space station have been spooled out over time. Shows like The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise all debuted new episodes weekly, and so, like most TV shows, waiting for future installments was part of the format.

Until now. Unlike any Star Trek series before it, the entirety of Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2 will hit Netflix at once on July 1, 2024. Will this help the fledging spin-off series, or will the binge model hurt Prodigy’s ability to make a comeback?

After being removed from Paramount+ and then rescued by Netflix, the tween-centric Prodigy Season 2 will depict the further adventures of the late USS Protostar’s rag-tag crew. Yes, that experimental Starfleet ship was destroyed in the Season 1 finale of Prodigy , “Supernova Part 2.” Alluding to the plot point on Twitter, creators Dan and Kevin Hageman recently said , “In the first season, they stole a ship. Now, watch them earn one!”

This implies Prodigy Season 2 will focus on Dal, Zero, Jankom, Gwyn, Murf, and Rok-Tahk making their way in Starfleet under the guidance of the real Admiral Janeway, rather than her hologram counterpart from Season 1. But what will this season actually be about? As the Hagemans have hinted — and as the Season 1 finale suggested — the kids have to get a new ship.

What will the crew do in Season 2? And how quickly will you have to watch to find out?

Unlike other modern Star Trek series, like the recently completed Discovery and Picard, Prodigy has 20 episode seasons, not 10, albeit while only running for about 24 minutes each. Prodigy’s first season was gradually released on Paramount+ in 2021 and 2022, which in some ways made Season 1 feel like two distinct seasons. Now, TrekMovie and other outlets have confirmed that Netflix won’t treat Prodigy the same way, and will instead release it all at once like a traditional Netflix show.

Is this good for Prodigy ? Possibly. Despite being aimed at a younger audience, Prodigy is heavily serialized. When Season 1 aired, it may have been hurt by the lack of episodes that could be watched back-to-back. Maybe the binge model will be good for families hoping to absorb more of the story quickly.

But Prodigy Season 1 also had a lot of spoilers tucked into its 20-episode run. From cameo appearances by classic Trek characters to famous alien villains and the aforementioned starship destruction, there’s a ton of cool stuff you can accidentally spoil yourself on if you don’t power through all the episodes at once.

Netflix’s big genre shows have been dealing with this for years; a new season of Stranger Things drops at midnight, and suddenly you have to be on guard for spoilers for not just the first episode, but also the finale. But Star Trek has never done this before. The franchise has always rolled out episodes in a way that makes spoilers much easier to avoid.

This gives Prodigy Season 2 even more of a challenge than Season 1. While the first season struggled to find its audience, the second season seems poised to alienate — or at least annoy — its core audience by giving away all the Trekkie goods way too quickly. As Captain Kirk once said, “Too much of anything, even love, isn’t necessarily a good thing.”

Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2 hits Netflix on July 1, 2024.

• Science Fiction

Tactical station

Worf retrieves a hidden phaser from his console

The tactical station was one of the primary weapons control stations found on the bridge of a starship . This station allows the tactical officer to control the ship's phasers , torpedoes , and shields . 24th century Starfleet tactical stations also often access/control communications functions as well as the ship's long range sensors . The tactical station may also be known as the weapons console ( Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan ) or weapons station . ( DS9 : " The Way of the Warrior ")

During the mid- 23rd century Constitution -class starships the tactical station was operated from the navigation and helm and worked in conjunction with the phaser control room located elsewhere on the ship. ( TOS : " The Corbomite Maneuver ")

Some Galaxy -class starships secure phasers at the tactical station for security personnel use. ( TNG : " Ship In A Bottle ")

Defiant -class starships have two tactical stations, on opposite sides of the bridge . ( DS9 : " Defiant ")

• 1 Daniels (Crewman)

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30 Years Ago Today, Deep Space Nine Made Star Trek’s Deadliest Threat Clear

While the opening volleys of that conflict are some of its most famous, for good reason, the actual turning point that sees DS9 begin to pivot to a war footing happened 30 years ago today with the broadcast of the season two finale, “The Jem’Hadar,” and the start of a Cold War that would soon turn hot, and present Star Trek the most radical challenge to its ideals thus far. For the most part, it’s a Trek episode like many before it. Thinking he was getting a quiet vacation to the Gamma Quadrant with his son Jake, Commander Sisko finds himself dealing with the complicated annoyance of Jake’s best friend Nog tagging along, and then Nog’s uncle Quark, hoping to get the Commander’s ear, joining uninvited, only for them all suddenly to find themselves prisoners of a strange, hostile new race they’ve never encountered before the first night they make camp.

Little in the way of resources—Deep Space Nine didn’t have a ship at this point, so our heroes just have their runabout shuttle, and what camping gear they bought with them—and facing an unknown enemy with all the power, this is the kind of episode we’ve seen many times before in Star Trek, as Sisko, Quark, and a potential new ally in a psychic alien woman named Eris who was likewise caught fleeing the titular Jem’Hadar, try and fail to either escape the clutches of their new foes or even connect and understand them diplomatically. It’s perhaps otherwise the kind of episode that ends with our heroes getting rescued, or breaking out, and proving that Starfleet’s finest and their allies, even caught unawares and without their usual resources, can work together, save the day, and make it out of harm’s way. They’re Star Trek heroes! That is what they do. But “The Jem’Hadar” is not a typical Star Trek episode in what was already not a typical Star Trek show, and while we get that in part, it’s the climactic twist that makes Deep Space Nine’s boldest gambit crystal clear.

In the climax of the episode, after Sisko has failed to check in with the station, Kira and Odo work with the Federation to send the USSOdyssey, and another runabout to the Gamma Quadrant in search of the Commander. They meet up, Jake and Nog rescue Quark, Sisko, and Eris, and a fight breaks out between the Jem’Hadar and the Odyssey. A fight the Odyssey very quickly starts losing. This too is perhaps expected sometimes—Star Trek has plenty of firefights break out where our heroes can seemingly not land a shot, but their foes can find ways to lance through their shields, usually before some clever techno babble and problem-solving finds a way to turn the odds in Starfleet’s favor. That doesn’t happen here, and then the other shoe drops: as the Odyssey and the runabouts begin to retreat back to DS9, the Jem’Hadar ship—unharmed by what little the Odyssey could throw at it despite it being the overwhelmingly larger ship—performs a kamikaze charge directly at the cruiser, blowing itself and the Odyssey up instantly. In stunned silence, the remaining shuttles are left to hobble back home.

With one final twist—that Eris was in fact working with the Jem’Hadar, and is a representative of their shared masters in the Dominion, who do not want the Federation encroaching on their territory; she teleports away to parts unknown before she can be detained—the season ends in this uneasy space. This one fight is over , and was arguably over before it even began, but the Dominion will inevitably return… and Starfleet is clearly not ready for what it is capable of.

It is the moment everything changes on Deep Space Nine. The show had dire threats before this—the station had been boarded and occupied in a hostile coup d’etat, Sisko had already dealt with the emergence of a new guerrilla front in the Maquis, opening up old wounds with the Cardassians. But there is a weight in seeing a ship like the Odyssey not just unable to touch the Jem’Hadar, but be taken out like nothing, just to send a message that the Federation has no idea what it’s dealing with. It’s an especially potent message, because the Odyssey is not just any Federation ship, it’s a Galaxy-class cruiser, at that point the idealized apex of Starfleet shipcraft, the vision of its scientific expansionary aims. It’s not just the best of Starfleet, it’s the best of Star Trek: the Galaxy-class was the Enterprise. It was The Next Generation. And here was its successor show, having already danced with the complicated legacy of its predecessor, blowing that symbol up: what the Federation is, what Star Trek was before this, is not prepared for what is to come.

The impact was made clear when Deep Space Nine returned. We’re immediately introduced to the Defiant in “The Search,” the first Starfleet vessel we’ve seen on-screen explicitly designed for combat, a two-part premiere that shows even with Starfleet baring its teeth like this, Deep Space Nine’s heroes are still not ready for what the Dominion represents. The next few seasons of the show represent a slow and certain splintering of the Alpha Quadrant powers as we’d come to know them over TNG and the opening seasons of DS9, as the Dominion’s agents sowed paranoia and distrust—the seeming destruction of the Cardassian and Romulan intelligence agencies, a return to hostility between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, brewing military coups at the heart of Starfleet itself.

By the time the Dominion War turns hot at the climax of season five, Deep Space Nine has all but completed its transition into the show it is now always lauded for being. But even as it went on to those great heights, there are still few more potent images in the entire series than the Odyssey wreathed in flames as its hull splinters into pieces—a warning, and a promise that Star Trek would never be the same.

Times of San Diego

Local News and Opinion for San Diego

Sci-Fi Fans Can Soak in ‘Science of Story’ at UCSD, See ‘Star Trek’ Stars, ‘Jaws’ Too

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San Diego Comic-Con exerts a certain pull arouond town when July rolls around – a great thing for sci-fi fans and pop culture vultures alike.

UC San Diego is not immune. The university’s ArtPower program will launch “ The Science of Story ,” billed as a “Pre-Con Masterclass” which kicks off July 23 and includes an iconic film and franchise.

The series of events, in conjunction with the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Masterclass, opens with “A Tale of Two Sulus: An Evening with George Takei and John Cho,” who both played the character, Takei in the landmark Star Trek television series, and Cho in the most recent films.

A screening of one of those films, 2009’s Star Trek , follows on July 24, accompanied by the San Diego Symphony. And on July 26, as a part of Shark Week, there will be a screening of the Steven Spielberg classic Jaws .

The Takei/Cho event and the screenings take place at the Epstein Family Amphitheater. Tickets for Jaws are $10, with admission for the two other events ranging from $25 to $120.

But there’s a lot more going on at “The Science of Story,” which officials call a “unique celebration of storytelling, science fiction and fantasy.”

Packages start at $425 for the full experience, including VIP access to the aforementioned events, a chance to learn from faculty and alums from the Clarion Writers’ Workshop and speakers and forums at UCSD’s Park & Market in the East Village. Attendees may opt for housing at UC San Diego in the $1,200 package.

And hint, hint Comic-Con attendees. There’s an option with housing, meals, a trolley pass and limited access to UCSD events if you’re finding that July is fully booked in San Diego. At $640, it might be worth a look.

But there’s a catch: the option is only open to students enrolled in University of California, California State University or California community college campuses, along with any UC alumni.