This really is a great piece.

Interesting first-person perspective on Carney as a fellow graduate student at Oxford.

But it was the latter half of the piece, that reflects on how Canadians who study in the UK or US are constantly subjected to overly aggressive declarations that deny Canada as a nation, which really hit home for me.

As a Canadian who attended graduate school in the US, I experienced almost verbatim every denial and put down in this piece.

And so many more constant and dumbfoundingly bizarre nonsequitur microaggressions. (One of the American I shared office space with lashed out that Canadians didn’t have any ‘real’ Black people so we had to borrow them from Jamaica to compete as athletes in Track and Field.)

So many of these offensive remarks were self contradictory - e.g.,

• Canada doesn’t exist as a nation or culture but at the same time Canadian students are vocally criticized for being ‘so nationalistic’

• there’s no need to include Canada in a listing of macroeconomic indicators of major economies because it’s ‘just a regional economy in in North America’ but only the US indicators are included. Meanwhile, California is profiled and discussed as a separate economy because it’s ‘so large’.

• or a renowned professor who I worked for as a research assistant observing at some random point when he realized where I had done my undergraduate degree ‘Oh, you went to a real place’ - which given how difficult it was to get into that school and program, should never have been a question.

Clearly, the ability to be outside in appropriate clothing for activities isn’t being mandated. This is where a temperate climate enables ridiculous practices to persist.

All I can think about when I see this image is how in Ontario, the responsible provincial ministry requires all schools and ‘day nurseries’ (read day and after school care) to put the kids out in the yards twice a day unless the weather conditions are severe (Less than -20 or more than +30 Celsius.).

Parents are responsible to send their kids with suitable clothing for the cold. One rarely sees little girls in skirts in schools unless they are wearing tunic dresses over leggings.

In an earlier era, pre 1970s, when skirts were mandatory for girls, that meant switching to pants or snow pants from the skirts 3 times a day to go outside in winter (two breaks and leaving end of day).

Going to be that person and suggest the OP try Voyager.

It seems to be the most accessible of the older shows for younger, newer viewers. It was the most watched of all the classic shows on Netflix.

It covers all the classic tropes and provides endless fodder for memes here.

It’s uneven throughout its entire run, but also has some of the very best episodes ever. New fans really attach to the characters, and there’s no refuting that it unabashedly leaned into the weird.

There was a reference in Discovery season one or two to SQL, as if it was cool. Sigh.

That was likely added to quell reactions to a woman as a first officer. But the Network had notes even so on how negatively test audiences reacted to Majel Barrett’s Number One.

Roddenberry tried another tack with blonde, beehived, Whitney in a miniskirt as Yeoman Janice Rand. She was supposed to be a woman main character but even that was too much for the executives and she was written out by the end of the first season.

They do have these platforms, but many people have become dependent on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to link to information.

So the territorial government is literally posting on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter telling people how to search for CPAC Canada and CBC Radio so they can find the sites.

Compare that to the duty of all broadcasters in a public emergency to carry the key evacuation information on radio and television and tell people where to get more detailed emergency instructions.

20 seems unrealistic given the longer shooting time per episode and actors’ wanting flexibility to be able to work on more than one project.

12-15 however seems very possible especially with the episodic format. Producing a longer season after the strike especially would seem wise. It would also allow Paramount to take a brief hiatus midseason (the way Discovery did originally) to stretch out the schedule.

SNW has already demonstrated that it is an ensemble show with a full cast that can basically carry or star in their own episodes. Not every main cast member needs to be on set every production day, and even the principal character, Pike, can step back in some episodes.

I understand your reaction.

For me, this is in many ways a less dark and cynical take than DS9 In the Pale Moonlight and certainly the Section 31 references.

What was critical here was the difference between the journey of individual traumatized officers who had been forced repeatedly to take actions in wartime that compromised their values, and brought out capabilities they never sought to own, vs Starfleet leadership taking cynical action. It’s also a direct outcome of Starfleet’s cynical actions in having M’Benga develop the serum and then use it.

Starfleet’s postwar directive, and Pike’s insistence on pressing it with his senior officers, created the immediate crisis.

However, we need to take account of the fact that it was the ambassador’s own repeated insistence on confronting, engaging and attempting to recruit M’Benga to assist in his mission that led to the break.

M’Benga seemed to be processing his trauma and managing it as well as he could. He wasn’t at the point of exposing the ambassador’s deceit although he appeared to have been contemplating it.

It was the ambassador’s decision to seek M’Benga out again, in his own safe space, his private office, and own refusal to take M’Benga’s rejection that seemed to take the contemplation to action.

The cover up by Chapel and M’Benga is serious, and in the case of M’Benga this is the second case of his hiding something of significance from his captain. He’s an understandable but grey character, and we will have to see where the show takes him.

In Chapel’s case, we have been shown that her bright effervescence hides much darker experiences. It’s now easier to imagine how she will evolves to the very restrained version of herself in TOS.

I feel this is a very authentic portrayal of the chronic legacy unaddressed of trauma in individuals, how a military service and society will need to move on after a society-wide war when its individuals are not yet ready to do so, and how disasterous the potential outcomes when the divide been societal and individual needs in healing are ignored.

It’s not the 24th century Starfleet we’re seeing where there has been a long period of peace and officers can be treated effectively for trauma before returning to duty and it locks in with chronic effects.

I agree that it does not show Pike’s leadership in a positive light, but I find it realistic. What it does show is the gulf between war veterans and those senior officers who, while veterans of other kinds of conflicts, were not involved.

Starfleet needs senior officers, without direct personal history, like Pike to lead the peace and move forward, just as the western allies needed to find a way with some German leaders and scientists after WW2. But not every individual at the front can withstand the stress of that direct engagement with a former enemy.

Starfleet’s order to force veterans into direct contact with a former enemy was psychologically unhealthy and unrealistic, but a value-focused officer like Pike would not have the insight to see that.

This gulf was underscored at a personal level by Chapel’s conversation with Spock, when she could not share her experience with him and he could not ease her pain. The scene between them was an essential confirmation.

What I found interesting is that Number One had the best read on the situation. She saw the pressure the ambassador was putting directly on the veterans in the crew.

As the executive officer, it’s her job to manage personnel, to assess readiness, to deliver a functioning ship for the captain’s command. She accurately saw the problem and recommended action to mitigate the situation by reducing the time to deliver the ambassador to Starbase 24.

What she was not able to do however was to convince Pike to stand down a bit on Starfleet’s toxic order to require veterans of the war to show acceptance of the ambassador. Nor did we see her attempt to try to convince Pike. He was leading from his values and unable to really take measure of its impact on the individuals.

I find it interesting that this show is giving us episodes that show the negatives of Pike’s command style as well as the strengths. While we’ve seen the negatives in Kirk’s and Picard’s temperament’s and command styles acknowledged in the movies and in Picard, this seems to be the first time we’ve had it done with a hero captain in an ongoing television series when he’s in active command of the ship.

Having Pelia say it, with the lens of historical perspective, is perfect.

The Federation may not use the word or describe its society that way, but someone who’d lived in the United States in the 20th and 21st century might.

I didn’t expect to like this episode as much as I did.

Wesley’s Kirk is growing on me, and I give the EPs credit for using the alternate timeline Kirk’s to let his performance coalesce. I also like the deft weaving of the crazy car driving, heartbreaker Kirk with the think five steps ahead genius that he also had to be.

The acknowledgement in-universe that the timeline and humanity’s development has been interfered with is entirely credible given the accretion of temporal incidents across every era of the franchise.

I’m not sure how I feel about it giving comfort to those who feel so strongly that this isn’t the same timeline as the original TOS one. (I see some chortling on this point elsewhere.) Likely the temporal physics of this is best left for a deep dive /c/Daystrom Institute discussion, but I prefer hold to a view that this is absolutely still the same Prime timeline but that the timeline itself has been perturbed repeatedly even if the key events have kept their integrity. In fact, the Romulan temporal agent, while not a reliable narrator, gave credence to the idea that the Prime timeline had proven unexpectedly robust against major intervention by humanity’s enemies.

I was delighted to see DTI show up and be named. It seems all of a piece of DTI’s rigidity that they would leave La’an alone to deal with the trauma. It does however mirror Pike’s own experience in sealing his future with the time crystal. One senses that there must be some kind of intersection or mutual revelation to come, leaving aside the Chekhov’s gun of the temporally dislocated watch.

Knowing that Anson Mount had to relocate to Toronto with his wife and newborn explains why episodes featuring others in the ensemble were front loaded for this season. He’d said before he committed to the show that creative conversations would be needed as he wasn’t wishing to repeat the production experience he had in Discovery season two. A creative conversation with the EPs that limits a principal character’s presence is fairly extraordinary, but Mount seems to have done it in a way that’s generous to the rest of the ensemble.

With an ensemble so strong, and as we didn’t see as much of Chapel or Una as we would have liked last season, I’m fine with waiting to see more Pike later in the season. It sounds as though we have a Spock focused and an Ortegas to come before some big ensemble pieces in the back half.

Affordability does not appear to be a consideration in this index.