Russel Means working on Trek is awesome. A farcry from the phoney who had that job OTL. The native american stuff in Voyager always made me a little uncomfortable, since the writers changed Chakotay's tribe based on what they needed for the script, and the actor wasn't even tribal (nothing against Beltran). I assume Chakotay won't have any tattoos ITTL, but will he wear some thing else outside standard starfleet regulation to stay close to his heritage?
Yeah, Beltran was a good actor, but a character like Chakotay really should have been played by somebody of that heritage. Lakota tribes didn't use tattoo, at least as far as my research has shown, so Chatan won't have tattoos. As I'll explain in a little bit, the uniform regulations on
Odyssey won't be as strict as they are on other Starfleet vessels, because they can't waste the energy synthesizing new uniforms, and most of the crew aren't actually in Starfleet.
Will there be ant Stupid Falox Moments ITTL?
Falox will have some moments of comic relief, mainly stemming from his particularly alien nature, even compared to the other aliens on the ship. He won't be the Neelix of OTL, and if anything, will be a bit of a sleazeball that is only really there because his knowledge of the local space and species is too good to pass up. Over time, his knowledge of the immediate vicinity will diminsh though, as they get closer to the Alpha Quadrant. I'll put a bit on that below.
Odessey is turning into an interesting show indeed.
Surprised it goes to syndication instead of network, would have thought it might have stayed as the ‘2nd show’.
Claudia Christian as Janeway? Awesome.
Is Tuvok the same in terms of background? Having a Vulcan and Half-Romulan on the crew should be fun.
Any chance of a background Klingon in Starfleet please? Just to empathise that Worf was the first, not the only, plus they could be useful for another viewpoint character/lower decks episodes- perhaps an scientist?
Fixing the Native American elements= thank you
Will the Marquis be wearing non-Starfleet uniforms?
Hopefully Falox does not overstay his welcome.
Tuvok is basically the same character as OTL, which is another reason why I chose a half-Romulan. Not only is it a sort of mirror to Spock, showing how different the two cultures have become, but it will be one of the many things that adds tension.
As for a background Klingon, that may be coming sooner than you'd expect.
The Native American elements have always bothered me, especially with Chakotay's ever changing tribal affiliation.
Both the Maquis and Cardassian crews will wear non-Starfleet uniforms, though the uniforms will have a clear indication as to the provisional rank that they have been granted. The Cardassian attire will be slightly different, though I can only describe it, I'm no artist. I got the feeling that the Cardassian uniform we saw would be quite uncomfortable for the actors, and I didn't see any clear rank designation on it, so I think that they'll use a slightly more casual attire, with perhaps a unified uniform starting to appear in the crew over time as the groups begin to integrate, becoming something not quite Starfleet, Maquis or Cardassian.
Just a few things I wanted to say (that will likely make their way into updates at some point.
The Janeway of TTL will be written as being captain basically because the
Odyssey is her ship and neither the Cardassiand or Maquis will serve under the captain of the other group, but that she often has to delegate to Evek and Chatan as they both have far more command experience than her. The command style will be more "open plan" than the strict "top-down" one we've seen before. This is a ship in a completely new situation, and it's going to have to act accordingly.
Also, as the
Odyssey has the same design as
Voyager from OTL, I'm making a few things about warp , speed and space different ITTL. Firstly, the nacelles are there to avoid the subspace issue, moving to modify the shape of the subspace bubble, rather than using the more brute force method of fixed nacelles, as a few beta canon sources say. On from this, a couple of things about the
Enterprise-E. It's faster than the D, but not because the warp drive is more powerful. Much of the technology on the E isn't better than that of the D, but it is miniaturised. Becuase the E is a smaller ship, it has a smaller subspace profile, so the actual amount of subspace distortion from the bubble that can be produced safely is greater, so it has a greater cruising speed. It's also more powerful than the D, but that's just that Starfleet is getting more paranoid and is arming its ships better.
The size of the Federation is unclear in canon, but I'm saying that the 8000 cubic light years thing is wrong. Given the stellar density of the Milky Way round where we are, that would put the Federation at about 32 stars. So I'm saying that the Federation is 8000 light years across (furthest distance between two points in Federation space). Technically, that does mean that at warp 9, it would take out about 5 years 4 months to get from one edge to the other, but to me that makes more sense than the Federation being tiny. I'm going to say that the galaxy is on the larger end of the estimate of our range (the Milky Way is somewhere between 150 and 200 kilolightyears across).
Odyssey will be flung about 100 thousand light years away, making the trip take about 70 years at Warp 9. I may make a diagram at some point. On a side note, this means that the Federation covers a miniscule portion of the galaxy. Not even 5% from end to end, and that's just diameter. There's plenty of strange new worlds to explore just in the neighbourhood.
Due to this, Falox will be of limited assistance in later seasons, if he sticks around that long, as we hit territory that's uncharted even for him. At that point, the crew may not tolerate him and his ways quite as much. While the trip will be 70 years to begin with, you can bet that with
Odyssey meeting various species, seeing new technologies and having unexpected encounters, that amount may be cut down by shortcuts and warp core optimisations. They may well be able to push the ship to "unsafe velocities". (I rewatched Nemesis with my parents last night)
Speaking of speed, I'm using the power of 10/3 rule for my speeds. However, unlike in OTL, this doesn't become an exponential above here. the Warp 10 barrier is another barrier like the light barrier. Nobody's been able to get something to go faster than that, other than subspace communications. It will come up a few times in the show, but I promise you this: If they do break Warp 10,
NOBODY IS TURNING INTO LIZARDS. Warp 10 isn't infinite speed, just as best they can tell, it requires infinite energy (sort of like our current knowledge of light speed). As subspace communications use massless subspace particles, their top speed is technically unlimited, but increasing the speed does require more and more power (just not infinite), and the signal has higher amounts of information loss at higher transmission speeds. God, I've been thinking too much about this. There's a good bit of "Creative Lisence - Physics" at work here, but at its heart, it's just Treknobabble.
Odyssey is giving me a chance to express my inner-inner nerd it would seem. I have some fun ideas for the show that will deal with certain things from actual physics. Finally, my degree I'm studying for is coming in handy! If there's a market for it, I may make a couple of proper Treknobabble updates for the Appendix.
By the way, first DS9 Season 2 update should be out today.
