I never understood people that name their kids that way. Though I understand that the one that got eaten by a lava monster a few weeks ago changed his name to Guy.

I thought the intro was perfectly suited to a pre-Federation humanity taking its first steps amongst the stars after pulling itself back together from WW3. Right up until they retooled the song to be peppier while also making the show darker.

Dramatization of encounter between OP and therapist: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6lHgbbM9pu4

Maybe, but the Romulans and Cardassians would do it in a heart beat.

Humans being the new kids on the block with inferior technology is a pretty common thing. Babylon 5 had humans buy, trade, and negotiate for most of their tech and are barely more advanced than the average small independent world at the start of the show. Farscape had Earth as a backwater, uncontacted, pre-interstellar world and made humans unusually frail with poor eyesight compared to the other species. Even in Trek, humans are physiologically inferior to most everyone and ENT depicted our tech as being far behind everyone else.

The real advantage humanity is consistently depicted as having, regardless of setting, franchise, or even sci-fi vs fantasy, is that we develop new technology faster than just about anyone else. In sci-fi settings, we'll go from barely getting to Mars to colonizing the entire Orion Arm in a couple decades. In fantasy settings, we'll be first to develop firearms and rudimentary industrialization.

It ranked pretty highly as a write-in candidate at a con once.

"The Cage" also technically isn't part of continuity while "The Menagerie" definitely is. Also helps to smooth out some other stuff, like Pike making sexist comments in "The Cage"; that isn't part of "The Menagerie" so it didn't happen in continuity.

I figured they were more diverse before they started conquering other species. Military service seems to be pretty strongly associated with the nobility. My guess is that when they got some other worlds and species under their control Klingons as a whole became quasi-nobility and other species started filling menial jobs. This probably came to a head around the time of ENT. Some jobs, like lawyers and scientists, are probably restricted to Klingons for security reasons, but not as well respected since they're not traditional professions for nobles.

I do think Into Darkness was bad, and I could take or leave '09 (so much in those two just doesn't make sense) but I love Beyond.

I actually love Beyond. It's one of my favorite Trek movies.

Probably the whole 'linked ships taken over by the badguys' thing. It happened in Lower Decks, too.

Though at this point it's usually because the original actor is dead. Saavik, Alexander, and Ziyal were the only significant recasts for ages.