The gurl is a bot, and can read and relate to all earth plays in a day of gleeful scanning. Pretty sure she can experience growth from child to teen, then download and integrate a year at the academy and process that input with the new perspective, then move forward still being the same person, just being more complex as a result of the upgrade.

The biggest issue with her 17 year childhood is that she appears to be alone with one other hologram on a starship, which wouldn’t exactly allow her to experience and process many normal experiences for people living in communities with mortal folk and pets n such–unless they added life like simulations, other school students, neighbors of varying ages and attitudes, pets that die…

She needed opportunity to deal with real world stresses as they typically increase in severity with age, but she just seemed to get a very performative and sheltered 17 year biological development cycle added to her program.

Seemed to miss the mark by a mile.

There will always be disasters, and suffering, and unfortunate events, and there certainly have been throughout Star Trek, but I too would prefer we had more protopian sci-fi.

I think SFA is actually trying to be more light and positive and less serious and dramatic, vs Disco for example. SNW seemed to make that intentional shift as well. And I think that’s also why other ST properties like Lower Decks and Prodigy are so highly rated.

SFA started out pretty dark, and I immediately went ‘yuck’… But again, I think they are working their way towards something better. Reopening the Academy is kind of a reboot for the Federation, so it’ll probably be getting better still.

I wonder what kind of insight Karim has into this, that he can share?

SC plays my favorite SFA character… I played a game with my SO to see if she could spot him on the show. She cheated by accidentally seeing him in the credits after the first few episodes. Was fun while it lasted though.

I hope the man gets to your question too, to tell the story himself, but just in case he doesn’t, after the AMA, you can search the web about him and his character and Worf or Dorn. There are articles that briefly talk about the two of them touching base on the subject of portraying Klingons on Star Trek.

But, again, I’d wait till the AMA is over. It’ll likely be more meaningful hearing it direct from the source.

They’re both a bit stranger in a strange land.

That’s a nice catch.