DIS - Point of Light

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Very interesting clearspira.

As far as the evolutionary efficacy, I'm tempted to harken back to the Bajoran occupation. Saru as a species as I see it were grown as stock but were also sentient as people. You can assert that his species marries these two conditions, as we see he is still treated as a cannibalized culture in the MU.

As we know, admission into the federation would never allow such a construct, as one of the explicit rules is to not have an active caste system on your planet. Never mind the apprisal of Federation not allowing a history of human rights violations that we learn about in The Next Generation because that would be hypocritical of Earth given its history and we obviously need more information on the matter.

This is all unless you're talking about the other coevolutional species that overtook them as the apex predators, but to be candid I'm not sure whether that changes things.

edit: hmm I see that that still leaves some evolutionary questions on the matter.

edit2: Hmm, so if we're relegated to considering Saru's evolution pre-retcon, I don't see much of a problem of them gaining sentience considering they could have socially devolved into the condition still given a reasonable condition of alien evolutionary competition on their planet.

[Link8909]

Something in this episode I really like but SFDebris didn’t cover (because it was in Klingon) was that the D7 battle cruisers (that we would see in TOS) creation is being overseen by all the Klingon Great Houses, and is being created as symbol of Klingon unity.

I like this because it gives the ship more meaning, its not just the next powerful ship in the Klingon fleet, it’s a symbol of the now united Klingon Great Houses, and symbols are very powerful things, when people see this ship, they aren’t just up against a single House or just another Klingon, but a united Klingon Empire and the Klingon Race itself.

With that in mind it also gives some much-needed context as to why the Discovery era Klingon ship look very different and, in most cases, very un-Klingon like in design, an augment can be made that these individual ships are meant to represent individual Klingon Houses, and how far the Klingon Empire has fractured.

Obviously, Bryan Fuller wanted to redesign the Klingons when he was working on Season 1 of Discovery, and that included not just the Klingons themselves but their ships, so that would be the reason, but I do like this idea as a in universe explanation for the ships.

And in hindsight I personally think that there should have been more different Klingon people designs to push that idea further that the Klingon Empire is fractured, they could still have the new design, but have the different Great Houses being represented by other types of Klingons for all the eras of Star Trek (TOS, TMP, TNG etc), even the Kelvin Timeline versions, I personally liked the helmeted version because it gives me the impression that those Klingons are like the ones in TOS, but they are ashamed of their Smooth foreheads and use the helmets to cover themselves (they could also lead to some really cool designs and could even be used as weapons).

And I also think the team working on Star Trek Picard leaned this, as the Romulans in Picard not only have Smooth foreheads like in TOS, but also have the TNG version as well, even pointing out the difference.