The Founders strengths are genetic engineering and the ability to maintain individuality inside of a collective. I think both of these have been shown to absolutely crush the Borg and the Founders would see the Borg as a fitting solution to the solids.

The issue is then you have poked God Emperor Sisko of the sacred temple. A being with unending rage against the borg, a willingness to commit war crimes, and the ability to exist outside of time. Sisko is the only captain who faced a power scaling issue of his own power being too high as he was literally born with plot armor.

It was significantly harder as a writer to research a subject before the 2000s than it is today. This is before Wikipedia and Google where researching a topic like this could take months and misinformation was harder to refute. Look at how they did poor Chakotay.

Writers used personal experience, cliches and stereotypes to inform their characters. I find the Institute characters to be extreme representations of kids that grew up with parents that would go too far to make their kids the smartest.

I think Bashir is “lucky” not because the surgery didn’t have extreme side effects. He is lucky because his parents pushing him resulted in him being the type of person that society could accept. His trauma made him a people pleaser rather than a recluse or a hedonist or neurotic.

Movie Star Trek is different from TV Star Trek. Except for Insurrection which is just a 2 part episode in a movie trench coat. And probably Section 31 but I don’t plan to watch that and find out.

SNW S1E2 - Children of the Comet. This is a tricky one because of potential predestination and the end result being an accidental major break of the prime directive. A warp capable civilization is certain that a comet must destroy a pre warp civilization and refuse to let that change. The issue is that the ship/comet wants the Federation to interfere and does not intend to hit the planet. This is all in Federation space.

Another in Federation space that is also a loose fit is LD S5E7 - Fully Dialated where the crew must recover Data’s head from an alternate reality that has fallen on a pre warp world. The loose fit here is that the only reason they count as external is that it is Purple Data who is not technically a a member of this realities Federation and thus an outsider.

Lastly a decent fit but outside Federation space is Prodigy S1E7 - First Con-Tact. The crew first breaks the prime directive by making first contact with a pre warp civilization but then defends it by stopping a Ferengi from influence the civilization negatively. This is outside Federation space though.

Specifically for a new viewer who wants 3 shows that would be different and enjoyable:

TNG:

The Inner Light, Cause and Effect, Lower Decks

DS9:

Duet, The Visitor, Trials and Tribbleations

Prodigy has holoemitters on every deck and is able to reconfigure the bridge using them. It is possible but they just need a reason.

We have like three entirely reasonable shows all setup that they keep not even touching. All of them episodic, all of them able to both speak to new generations and old.

Upper Decks: Live action show with the characters from Lower Decks. Primary focus is the main characters coming to terms with the fact that they are good enough to be senior members of a crew. Continue the idea that they are the little ship that could and their missions focus around support rather than flagship or the biggest of the bads.

Prodigy 2.0: Again live action, with Ella Purnell as a captain who is super in demand and capable and would be fantastic in the role. Focus here is again episodic, when the rest of the Federation has abandoned exploration due to all the BS at the start of Picard, they are the only crew left with the charter to seek out new life and new civilizations. You have an incredibly young but capable cast and easily could bring in some heavy hitters to support them.

Legacy: This idea has floated around a ton since Picard S3, honestly its the least developed of the ideas and I’d rather see a way to roll it into one of the much better and more fleshed out ideas above. I feel like the final scene in Picard was an afterthought while both Lower Decks and Progidy it was a true capstone.

The new 20 episode season is a 10 episode season with 5 webisodes and a cheaper side project like a cartoon or anthology.

Honestly this is better to me because it enables the good plots of the smaller episodes to get all the focus without forcing some awful secondary plot to fill run time.

I see this a lot which is wild to me because I feel like S4 felt like it finally was real Star Trek but just rushed and some of the damage to some characters couldn’t be fixed. All the major plot points that make Enterprise relevant to Star Trek happen in S4.

I’m curious where you put Discovery? That is the one I struggle the most with. My primary issue there is that for me I have to actually like and want to be invested in a character but as far as I’m concerned 10 episodes in to Discovery if the ship blew up all hands lost the Federation I can’t think of anyone I’d feel sad for. Enterprise though has Trip and Phlox who are S tier, a few fantastic guest stars, and no character that is bottom bin material to me no matter how much fanfic quality writing they tried to force on T’Pol.

I think this looks great. I’m not going to run a 20 foot USB cable accross my living room so wireless is pretty much a must. I think the only concern I have is if it discharges if I store it and if so what the bringup time would be.

Normal for a person, but not normal for him. We see him as a very passionate person before he gets his implant who treats the dulling of his emotions as a boon.

I’d be shocked if the person influencing this writing of his character had never dealt with SSRIs or a similar medication.

No Star Trek show loved Star Trek more than Lower Decks.

I hope this is not the last time we see these characters. Between losing Prodigy and Lower Decks it has been sad for Star Trek as of late.

Rutherford upgraded his implant to be little more like Alternate Rutherford who had a super implant that also blocked out his emotions entirely.

This wasn’t a story about how his implant was bad at dealing with alternate universe versions of technology. His story was about how he had always used his implant to protect him from feeling emotions. Cranking it up slightly was all it took to finally block him from loving anything. Himself as he is, the Cerritos, Tendi. As soon as he took it out all of those emotions flooded in.

I mean the issue with TikTok is that they give the data and videos over to the Chinese government to be able to mass process it and search for vulnerabilities or enable social engineering attacks on the US government.

Meanwhile Twitter/X is totally different in that they give the data and videos over the US government to be able to mass process it and search for vulnerabilities or enable social engineering attacks on US citizens.

Admiral April and Admiral Forrest are both solid options.

I think April did a really solid job of showing what a great but imperfect leader looks like in Ad Astra per Aspera.

Forrest was supportive and helpful. Willing to bend the rules to support his people rather than vice versa.

Syndication is also called reruns, when the show is rerun out of order on TV at a standard Timeslot. Like for me TNG was on every night at 7pm M-F. It was shown in random order as far as I know with I believe them skipping less popular episodes, I honestly never noticed if they did hits for a bit then did a rerun through it or what.

The first season of TNG is considered weak as a heads up, similar for DS9 though DS9 has some bangers in S1, TNG is mostly weak. That said if you like it, you’ll LOVE the rest.

SNW is fantastic and I really recommend it, it is certainly New Trek but it’s a MUCH better successor to the legacy than Discovery.

Start with the best episodic episodes of TNG and DS9. Most of us were introduced to Star Trek out of order, it isnt like modern TV. 90s TV and prior was focused on syndication.

My recommendations would be, TNG: Darmok, Tapestry, The Wounded, Inner Light, Cause and Effect, Lower Decks (The episode that inspired the show). For DS9: In The Pale Moonlight, Duet, Trials and Tribbleations, The Visitor (Rest in peace Tony Todd)

Yea, if you want more leftist policies than right, vote and work with Democrats at the federal level and try to get Ranked voting in more places. Exactly like Bernie has. Continue to support your third party in local until they become able to actually get folks elected to even a Senate post. As long as the Green Party can’t even manage to get the most hippy district in the nation to get a single House Rep elected you might as well just cast your vote for Bob Ross.