I was thinking maybe a seahorse kind of thing.

I dunno, having Yar’s baby momma show up and drop off a kid would have been a challenge to write in the late 80s / early 90s.

It’s always been both, just with our current problems offloaded to aliens for scrutinization. That they’re no longer using aliens for commentary is the problem.

Something I would have liked to have seen is Vidiians being assimilated by choice on the basis that being part of the Collective had to be better than suffering from the Phage. Instead of them just being enemies, they should have really leaned into how horrible it would be to live with that plague hanging over their heads. It’s also implied in an episode or two that there are uninfected populations somewhere, probably under quarantine, which would have been interesting to explore.

I’m still impressed McNeill was able to say, “Yes, ma’am, his army of evil,” with a straight face.

Firmware updates fix some bugs and introduce others.

There are actually differences in the Prime and Kelvin timelines that happened before Nero’s incursion. For instance, Kirk’s date of birth is off by several months. They tried to justify that afterwards by saying something about the event sending shockwaves through time to change things before it even happened or something like that. The real reason probably lies in that interview where JJ Abrams admitted he never liked Star Trek, but you could argue that the removal of various down-stream time travel events, like the events of “The City on the Edge of Forever” likely not happening in the modified timeline, could actually cause retroactive changes to the timeline.

But anyway, the Kelvin timeline already diverges before the Kelvin-Narada thing, because reasons.

That is definitely a TOS Romulan BoP.

Tough little model.

I’m honestly impressed they successfully modeled it at that scale at all. That it actually looks pretty accurate is a bonus.

Nah, too vertical.

That’s not new. Turbolifts on the Discovery were depicted that way pre-refit, back in the TOS-ish era. It’s a (mind-boggling) stylistic choice or something.

DS9 is a Bajoran station, not a Federation one. The Bajoran economy is not post-scarcity and still runs on money. Either Starfleet officers get a stipend to purchase things when posted on such assignments, or Quark simply bills Starfleet. Either way, Starfleet/the UFP likely has a reserve of latinum and other resources for trade with other nations.

That was entirely dependent on Stewart’s contract negotiations, though, rather than anyone wanting to kill off Picard.

They didn’t want to fire her, but she did want to quit. She wasn’t happy with the direction they were taking her character. I wouldn’t be surprised if she also had issues with the same guy McFadden did. Jadzia was killed off because Berman wouldn’t let Farrell switch to being a recurring rather than a regular, which may be what you’re thinking of.