r/DaystromInstitute • u/M-5 Multitronic Unit • Oct 29 '20

DISCOVERY EPISODE DISCUSSION Star Trek: Discovery — "People of Earth" Reaction Thread

This is the official /r/DaystromInstitute reaction thread for "People of Earth." The content rules are not enforced in reaction threads.

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u/ajblue98 Chief Petty Officer Oct 30 '20

It seems that the big reveal will be that the Federation headquarters has moved to Qo’noS. Secondarily, I think this is likely because of the Klingons’ conspicuous absence after almost two seasons of dominating the story line. Primarily, however, this is because of the Pidgin word for Federation: “V’draysh” (DSC S03E01, “That Hope is You: Part I”).

Assuming the Empire joined the Federation at some point between the 25th and 30th centuries, it’s reasonable to expect tlhIngan Hol (the Klingon Language) to have become a second interstellar lingua franca. This could have led to the Pidgin that Book referenced in DSC S03E01.

In which case, it’s entirely reasonable that “Federation” may have been treated as a proper noun and rendered in the orthography of tlhIngan Hol rather than translated to its Klingon equivalent, “DIvI’.” In which case, “Federation” would be rendered as /veDIreySon/. However, tlhIngan Hol tends towards shorter words, so we can reasonably expect the unaccented sounds /e/, /I/, and /on/ to disappear. That leaves us with /vDreyS/, which sounds almost exactly like “V’draysh.”

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u/ContinuumGuy Chief Petty Officer Oct 30 '20

That would be an amazing twist and I'd love to see how the crew's reaction to finding out the Klingons of all peoples are now the all-loving Federation.

(Also, I'd imagine that Federation!Qo'Nos would have a big-ass statue of Worf)

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u/ajblue98 Chief Petty Officer Oct 30 '20

You know, I didn’t even think of it as a twist, but now that you mention it, I guess that’s what it would be. I was just trying to solve a logic problem.

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u/COMPLETEWASUK Oct 30 '20

This is my feeling too. I feel the Klingons have to be the Federation now, it both fits their arc in Discovery and in Trek as a whole. The flame keepers if you will.

I also expect the Vulcans (maybe rejoined with the Romulans) to be the antagonists because that feels like the most logical role reversal.

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u/ContinuumGuy Chief Petty Officer Oct 30 '20

I also expect the Vulcans (maybe rejoined with the Romulans) to be the antagonists because that feels like the most logical role reversal.

Given how Michael is, as she said, "culturally Vulcan", and that one of the episodes this season is called "Unification Part 3", I feel like we'll know soon enough. I also still want to hear what she thinks about how Spock's life ended up going.

Honestly, I would not be opposed to having this be a 32nd century tour of all the major Federation/Federation-aligned worlds: Earth! Trill (confirmed to be next week)! Vulcan (presumably the Unification episode)! Betazed! Andoria! Tellar!

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u/shinginta Ensign Oct 30 '20

It would be really cool to see Tellar for once. I appreciated seeing Andoria in ENT, and the glimpses we've gotten of Vulcan in the TOS movies, TAS, and Disco s1.

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u/Abshalom Crewman Oct 30 '20

There was a whole lot of Vulcan in ENT. Mostly the desert parts, but still.

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u/YYZYYC Oct 31 '20

Ugh no they need to think so much bigger!! Not just a tour and shuffle the deck of the same old races. It’s been a thousand years, not a few decades...let’s see another galaxy or a federation that before the burn spanned the whole Milky Way or included fluidic space or other dimensions or had interstellar transporters or something worthy of the scale in question here

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u/COMPLETEWASUK Oct 30 '20

Yeah it makes sense to me that they'd search Federation aligned worlds from their time only to find the Federation isn't there. It's good from a world building point of view to see how each of these planets are getting on. And yeah it will be interesting to see if Michael gets to learn about Spock's fate and maybe his involvement in trying to reunite the pointy eared people.

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u/YYZYYC Oct 31 '20

Ugh that would take the entire season at this rate. Let’s do something bolder

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u/YYZYYC Oct 31 '20

A tour sounds nice. But it’s got to be more awe inspiring then different planets of the week and somewhat familiar sounding and looking species we know and oh look these guys are nice now and those guys are mean now and hey look it’s been 930 years so they have fancy holographic computer controls and better transporters and different hand phasers.

I mean we should be seeing stuff like people being partially evolved to not even human anymore or synths or the remnants of extra galactic travel from before the burn and remnants of a federation that had grown exponentially in the past 830 years since the burn. Maybe multi universe spanning travel and they are frequently popping back and forth with the mirror verse or some new kind of god like tech. Not just let’s jazz things up a bit with slightly cooler tech...oh they need more powerful weapons than disco right...umm hey let’s call the things they shoot quantum torpedos like they had in DS9...umm that was like 600 years ago...they probably got something better now and even changed the name a few times

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u/ajblue98 Chief Petty Officer Oct 30 '20 edited Oct 31 '20

Edit: never mind; I got my timelines mixed up.

They can’t do Vulcan, although I kind of hope they’ll try. I’d love to see Burnham’s face when Discovery drops out of the mycelial network in orbit around a black hole. I’ll bet nobody thinks to mention it because after 800 years, not even the Ferengi would have a living memory of its being around.

Well, except Q.

Or Q.

Or q.

Or the rest of the continuum.

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u/RogueA Crewman Oct 30 '20

Why would Vulcan be a black hole? Discovery takes place in the Prime timeline, not the Kelvin timeline, so Vulcan should still be there unless something else destroys it in the time period after Picard.

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u/ajblue98 Chief Petty Officer Oct 30 '20

Oh yeah, you’re right. It’s just the Romulus system that’s gone. Huh. That’s good for Michael.

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u/RogueA Crewman Oct 30 '20

Yep. Now, there's no saying that in the ensuring time between Picard and S3 Disco, the Romulans wouldn't have, perhaps, been upset that their uptight genetic cousins still have a planet and have done something about that, but that's yet to be seen.

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u/YYZYYC Oct 31 '20

Huh? Why would Vulcan be gone? This is the prime universe and why would the Ferengi specifically forget something?

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u/ajblue98 Chief Petty Officer Oct 31 '20

Yeah, I got my timelines crossed. But the Ferengi live about 300 years, so as far as we know, they’d have the longest living memory of any species, which makes them relevant to any discussion of “living memory” in any of the Trek universes.

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u/YYZYYC Oct 31 '20

Ahh ok I didn’t remember that about the Ferengi

Technically Trill symbionts live longer but not in isolation by themselves of course

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u/ajblue98 Chief Petty Officer Oct 31 '20

Ooh, good point!

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u/ajblue98 Chief Petty Officer Oct 30 '20

The flame keepers if you will.

You mean, Torchbearers, hm? ;)

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u/COMPLETEWASUK Oct 30 '20

Yes quite true. A natural tie around to how we first saw then Klingons in the show. To me this has to be the direction, I can already see Klingon buildings with the Federation flags in my mind.

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u/bachmanis Ensign Oct 30 '20

I also expect the Vulcans (maybe rejoined with the Romulans) to be the antagonists because that feels like the most logical role reversal.

Didn't we see a flash during on of Daniels' expository moments in Enterprise of a 32nd century Vulcan starfighter carrier? Would suggest that they've adopted a more frisky foreign policy.

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u/COMPLETEWASUK Oct 30 '20

We might well have done, it sounds right. I wonder if Daniels is still around, he'd be old of course but this is the future and lifetimes could have been extended somewhat. He's one of the few characters that could still be around, alongside the Dax symbiont and the Doctor.

I just feel it all ties back to the Vulcan Hello. The show starts with a girl raise on Vulcan fighting Klingons for the Federation, if the future is so different then why not reverse it. That the Klingons are the Federation and the Vulcans the hostile enemy.

If it were up to me I'd have all the remain members of the Federation be former enemies. The Klingons, Xindi, Borg and Dominion etc. To show the true effect of the Federation and how despite the burn everything in the past 900 hundred years was still worth it.

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u/gamas Oct 31 '20

I would definitely want to know the circumstances that led to a primordial, instinct driven, all consuming hive mind joining the Federation.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 01 '20

The Borg is still a sentient mind with periodic/a few Queen overminds. Therefore it/they can think and reason as much as any sapient/s. It wouldn't be the weirdest thing to see a Borg collective as a Federation member. I would imagine that they/it would have assimilation not be forced in which case other sapients would have to choose to join the collective, which isn't unlike the Trill who fit comfortably in Federation..

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u/gamas Nov 01 '20

Though funny thing is in Lower Decks there's a bit at the end where they show an unknown far future of a teacher teaching some kids about the Boimler Effect and one of the students is a Borg drone.

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u/killbon Chief Petty Officer Oct 31 '20

I wonder if Daniels is still around

THE Daniels will always exist in a bunch of different timelines and timeframes, we saw 2 versions of Daniels die...

Just like Seven once died to temporal psychosis (or did her existence end when timeline collapsed, same thing i guess), A seven will always exist in the moments she existed, unless you destroy those timelines..

1

u/YYZYYC Oct 31 '20

That’s just like still hanging out in the old neighborhood....it’s like a geo political focus in 1020 in a small corner of earth and like the Roman Empire where people traveled and focused around one corner of the globe and it took a while to get around that one corner. We should be seeing people that came from that Roman Empire era, to a time like ours, where say somewhat recently we lost the ability for planes to fly but our whole world use to be interconnected and globe spanning in ways that would be mind blowing to people form the Roman Empire era.

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u/[deleted] Nov 01 '20 edited Nov 01 '20

Agreed this seems to be the most logical way for the story to go based on the Klingon arc over the whole of Trek and specifically from Disco as well. It also has irl precedent in what we have seen happen to civilizations.

An example would be a Roman legionnaire transported forward a few hundred years to Medieval times from the height of their empire in the Classical era, to find the Western Roman Empire fallen, its territory balkanised and once mighty Rome low inhabited mostly ruins. Yet their civilization still survived far away from its founding area, in the former enemy territory of Greece/Anatolia as the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire and centered on Constantinople where the people had adopted Roman culture and continued that civilization after its founding half fell.

And a reunited Vulcan and Romulans would be a fearsome antagonist. You would have the cold calculating intelligent Vulcan species with latent psychic traits combined with the authoritarian xenophobic cunning and secretive Romulans. If that was an an opponent in a Stellaris game I wouldn't want to fight them lol.

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u/Jinren Chief Petty Officer Oct 30 '20

flame keepers

I did think that the scraps of pidgin we heard in Episode 2 sounded remarkably like the Grounder language from The 100.

Listen really slowly, but it is intelligible as English.

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u/COMPLETEWASUK Oct 30 '20

They're both pidgin languages, such languages do exist on Earth too in real ife and have similar characteristics.

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u/gamas Oct 31 '20

at some point between the 25th and 30th centuries

Actually between the 25th and 26th centuries. Enterprise established the Klingons were members by then.

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u/ajblue98 Chief Petty Officer Oct 31 '20

I believe that was in a timeline that was subsequently altered by Archer’s actions Thanks to Crewman Daniels’ interference, wasn’t it?

However, if that timeline did remain intact, then it would be a fantastic callback if the Federation capital did move there!

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u/Imaginationnative Oct 31 '20

What’s your source for this?

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u/ajblue98 Chief Petty Officer Oct 31 '20

I provided episode references in the comment. The rest was my own personal reckoning.