This is a question worth asking. As others have pointed out there sort of seems to be clear that the rules are the rules and business rules trump all other rules. The Rules of Acquisition tend to be the Ferengi Alliance's highest law. It's both a religious law and a practical one and I think therein is where the problem lies. You can't make profit outside of the constrains of normal ethics because whatever makes profit is what is ethical to do.

This is why so many contradictory Rules exist in this system. War is good for business and peace is good for business, and neither of these are statements on what is "bad" for business. There's nothing here that says not to do anything and I think in this way Ferengi ethics largely comes down to there's no precept that says I shouldn't do this and I was able to exchange doing it for profit so ultimately it serves a higher purpose.

And since it seems like there is a fair amount of legalize extortion that happens in Ferengi while it might be technically illegal to do slavery, it might be more profitable to do it and therefore on the whole you can come out with an ethical conclusion that is "good" especially if you're some mid-level Ferengi in charge of making sure that slavery doesn't happen and you're able to take a little bit of a kickback.

that we shouldn’t take dates on the show literally other than as an indication of the general order in which things happened

I absolutely am fine with this take now, especially. Ultimately, what we are talking about is the narrative importance of the events. If we want to have episodes where the characters go to "today" today must continue to exist within the narrative. If the narrative says that the world was noticeably different in 1996 - move it to 2036. If we're still going strong move it to 2056.

These changes don't make as much difference in the narrative that was being told to begin with.

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.

Tuvok is such an example as he is almost always referred to as Lieutenant and later he's promoted to Lt. Cdr properly, but he wore Lt. Cdr. rank insignia for like maybe the first season without anyone really correcting it.

It's true that Tilly was not 'promoted' to any rank and kept her rank simply being assigned a position, however, I think it's weird for her to be the XO except that she was part of the principle cast and they needed to give her a reason to be part of the overarching narrative for each season.

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.

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.

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 don't think there's anything that would prevent Dal from obtaining citizenship in the Federation. He could not however serve in Starfleet. Lying about it to Starfleet could be criminal, but probably just being modified isn't. Even Una says that she lived on a provisional colony where segregation existed between modified and unmodified Ilyrians suggesting that those Ilyrians would eventually be able to be granted citizenship in the Federation despite their status as modified.

Una had to be sponsored to join Starfleet which suggests that the colony didn't actually ever join the Federation entirely - whether it granted her citizenship status or not is unclear, but since she was sponsored into Starfleet she's probably not a Federation citizen as such.

I would really like to see Prodigy take cues from SNW here and address Dal's genetics. Janeways says Starfleet will never allow him, but maybe he's just the right person to further change the law and Starfleet policy.

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.