I don't think that changes anything that was previous established. Picard established that Soong did illegal genetic experiments, but it does not stipulate that his experiments were illegal because of a prior genetic research ban. Soong later recovers the 1996 Khan Project file.

My take is that Romulan time agents went back in time to hide the Khan file. They perhaps moved Soong away from that avenue of research not knowing how the Confederation would play into it. In any case it didn't work because Picard did his own time shenanigans pushing Soong to take more drastic measures.

In less than a year the Khan project has found a new home in Canada with new research partners. The Noonien-Singh Institute has Adam Soong's fingerprints on it somewhere, but it's unclear where. In any case whether there is a connection or not, Soong discovers the Khan project from 1996 in 2023. In SNW the Khan project has only just begun a year later and already has found its Khan.

but it feels big to actually use the word?

I felt the same way. This reminded me of Discovery's Admiral Vance openly admitting to ending capitalism being a goal of the Federation.

I think part of the original intent was to have Starfleet be that Merchant Marine fleet and serve similar roles, however that was largely left on the cutting room floor. As a result I think the best way to understand a Merchant Marine ship like perhaps the SS Puget Sound (a Federation colony ship) could indeed be a Starfleet vessel (made by Starfleet), commissioned by the Federation, but commanded by a crew which hold Merchant Marine ranks and not Starfleet ranks. A Federation Colony Ship.

This would help explain the massive function of a 22nd or 23rd century Starfleet being operated entirely by a military organization. It's not, many aspects of the fleet are controlled by the Merchant Marine service. A Federation Freighter likewise would be any freighter commissioned by the Federation and therefore likely to be crewed by the MMs.

I suspect this isn’t covered for a variety of reasons, but what we do see shows an Earth steeped in nostalgia blending with technology that alleviates the overwhelming majority of material concerns. No one needs to worry about food, shelter, clothing, or profit. They work to better themselves for its own sake and they relax and stuff.

I think the message is that Earth is boring and humans, having created paradise, left it for knowledge of the stars. Civilian life is coffee and breakfast in the morning before dropping the kids off at school, plenty of time to pursue niche hobbies, and probably also time to pursue some career interest and education.

However, you raise an interesting point in that civilians from the perspective of Starfleet officers are even more out there. These are folks who often wanted to go even further than the rest of society wanted to go. Fringe people with eccentricities to un civilized to stay within the Federation. The intersection of these two kinds of civilians is what I would like to explore.

A happy family who have lived in paradise are suddenly Swiss Family Robinson or Lost in Space style thrust into deep space and must survive without the comforts of paradise would be an interesting way to tell the story of what it’s like to be a civilian in the Federation.

Whoa! Good catch. That timeline almost lines up exactly and it's very possible that O'Brien was referring to Una. It could also be that O'Brien is indicating that sentiments have maybe changed somewhat in 100 years, something that we are lead to expect from SNW. And indeed Bashir is allowed to stay in Starfleet without even having to find a technical loophole and Richard's punishment is considered harsh at 2 years. Given the future utopia that we're dealing with and the historical significance of the crime I think what we're seeing is that no one really does this anymore and so it's not really an issue.

I really hate that Prodigy was unrewened because a courtroom episode of Prodigy where Dal gets the right to serve in Starfleet and the Starfleet ban on genetic augments is lifted would be a pretty cool.

Prodigy is canon insofar as everything is canon when it happens on screen. I like to think of the canon containing all Star Trek works right down to your fan fiction novel or your "head canon" with some things being more canonical than others and with those things which are seen on screen either as a film or TV episode are the most canonical of the canon. Prodigy still fits that bill. I doubt that there will be anything as canonical that would "undo" what Prodigy did. But if that happened we would just incorporate the conflict into the canon like we always do.

I want to push back on the conversation between Jack and Bashir in "Statistical Probabilities" a little bit given additional context from Strange New Worlds "Ad Astra per Aspera." I don't think it's fair to say that all augments are treated the same way. It's unlikely I think, that even if Bashir were to have not lied to get into Starfleet he would have been prevented either by law or by policy of doing anything even remotely scientific - including medicine or other gene research.

However, I don't think we can take Jack at his word that he would have been institutionalized in the same manner. If we believe that the genetically modified people we see from the Institute in Deep Space Nine weren't driven mad by their perceived incarceration then we have to believe that side effects of the genetic modification process caused unexpected neurological abnormalities and personality disorders that we see typified by that group.

Dal, for instance, in Prodigy does not fear institutionalization in the Federation, but rather he fears he won't be let into Starfleet. Presumably he may also be precluded from other career choices that he's just not interested in, but I don't think it's fair to say that being an augment is criminal as much as it is laws have created a system whereby modified people, especially modified humans, are treated as second class citizens. This might even extend to people who have DNA sequencing done for legitimate medical reasons like Chakotay. I like to imagine Chakotay and Una and Bashir having similar experiences even though their circumstances were unique. The human willingness to look past reason and into bigotry doesn't go away, but it's focused on the genetically modified.

And it takes decades, centuries even, for the laws to change even a little bit and even longer for the people to accept those changes.

My assumption was that Vasquez Rocks was playing itself and that it was no longer a state park because there was no longer a state. Most of the Earth outside of cities has probably largely been left to the wilderness and as such parking your RV in any place is probably allowed if not unusual.

It's the no warp thing that really limits its ability. The saucer can 1. limp back home. or 2. stay put while the rest of the ship does something risky and then hope they don't have to resort to number 1.

I could see the saucer section being left in orbit to assist with evacuations while the stardrive section "goes for help" but even this seems like a bit situational.

I would like to believe that as well, but we are left with very little to make us believe that other than good will towards Worf. It seems like a particularly glaring oversight to have the season of Picard featuring Picard and Beverly's long lost son, Geordi's daughters, memories of Thaddeus Riker's death, and the first time we've seen Worf in a long time not explicitly mention at least once that Worf is also a member of the parent club.

Instead what we do see are exclusively episodes where Worf's relationship with his son is not treated as a core part of Worf's character - even attempts to reconcile go basically no where.

A single line to Enterprise-D crew about how Alexander is the commander of an entire Klingon battle fleet now and that fills Worf with great pride would have solidified that the characters reconciled. Hell, it's kind of weird that no one asks about Alexander since all the Enterprise-D crew readily know that Worf has a son. But instead, just like the writers, Worf has apparently forgotten that he has a child and so is written as though he doesn't have one.

undefined> It represents an approach to Star Trek that was cut off far too early, one that solves or avoids the most obnoxious pitfalls of the later seasons, and one I desperately wish we could have gotten more of.

I'll comment on this most important concluding statement with agreement. Ultimately, Discovery tried to do something different and did it fairly well. It's downfall was in not being willing to take that kind of storytelling and really lean into it. Fans started talking, loudly, about changes that were made and as a result later seasons of Discovery become far more tempered. The Discovery of season 1 could have ended Season 2 by sending Burnham and Discovery to the future and introducing a whole new cast of main players in a whole new context. Instead of that, they responded to the valid criticisms of the weaker supporting characters who don't seem to have much to do and as a result the show took a much more emotional turn. They haven't abandoned these long arcs, but they've tried to tell that story in a more familiar way and in my opinion this was always Discovery's downfall.

What's up with that "Crossfield" class anyway? Clearly a refit after the end of Discovery or a misidentification I think.

I also didn't make the connection of the black backing indicating the Academy or the Starbase personnel flower-emblem, but this makes sense since she would be an officer and the only other Academy badges we've seen are worn by cadets. Assuming that when she says "she teaches" that means she is currently teaching, perhaps out of a Starbase. Although, I wonder why only Pelia wears the flower-emblem when there are other starbase personnel who seem to be wearing standard issue uniforms.