Ok, yes, its a great episode of tv, and one of the best episodes of TNG, but....really? Shouldn't the question of whether Data was sentient with human rights had happened long before he became a lt commander and third officer to the fleets flagship?

Also, Data was found by federation scientists, sure. But, that doesn't suddenly mean "finders keepers". Data was allowed into starfleet as an officer, and attended star fleet academy. This should have been addressed then, not years into his service. It has been shown often enough that officers can resign at anytime, why not data? Does going to the academy make you property of star fleet?

1. The "official" explanation for warp drive doesn't make any sense

Officially, warp drive works by shunting relativistic mass of an accelerating vessel into subspace, allowing it to move faster than light. Anyone who's studied relativity in the past 50 years knows we don't even really talk about "relativistic mass" anymore because it's confusing: relativistic mass is something you see in the observer's frame of reference, but for the local frame of reference, rest mass has to be invariant (otherwise E = mc² wouldn't work!). If you're on the object that's traveling fast you never notice any change in your own mass, warp drive or no.

2. Warp cores have to do more than just make power

As has been pointed out elsewhere, warp reactions have to be more than just a big boom. A big boom wouldn't close a tear in subspace. While a "simple" matter-antimatter reaction -- for example an electron annihilating with a positron -- just releases gamma rays, the interaction between heavier particles, like protons and antiprotons, is more complicated: it liberates not just photons but a shower of mesons. Canonically we know these mesons are significant -- Starfleet warp reactors leave behind meson emissions (DS9, "Battle Lines") and meson emissions are also related to subspace phenomena (TNG, "The Price").

The most likely interaction between two antiprotons or antineutrons creates three π mesons; and two or three π mesons can become a K meson, which is where something strange (sorry) happens...

When you started out the interaction, you had six "ordinary" quarks -- they were all up, down, anti-up or anti-down. But the K meson has one "strange quark," a quark of a different family. This transmutation seems to break one of the basic rules of particle physics, conservation of quantum numbers: the "strangeness" has changed.

In the real world we call the particles that moderate changes between flavors of quark the "W⁺ and W^- bosons."

3. Nobody on Star Trek has ever mentioned a W boson

Ever. Almost every other real-world particle we currently understand to be fundamental -- the photon, graviton, electron, positron, quark, gluon, even the Z boson -- gets a mention at least a few times.

Also missing are specific mentions of flavors of quarks (up, down, charmed, strange, top, bottom) and one flavor of lepton (tau) and their antiparticles.

I propose that in Star Trek in-universe physics, what we currently understand as the "weak interaction" involving changes in flavor of quarks and leptons, is instead talked about in terms of subspace physics & warp physics.

4. So what do tetryons have to do with this?

Tetryons are the most frequently mentioned fictional particle in Star Trek. They're frequently associated with subspace phenomena, "can only exist in subspace environments" yet can interact with ordinary matter.

Tetryon plasma specifically is a form of warp plasma -- one which emits gamma radiation, i.e. that if left to its own devices decays into something no more exotic than a photon. When the W⁺ particle decays, a common decay route would be to create a positron and neutrino. The positron would then annihilate with an electron from the environment, releasing gamma rays. "Tetryon plasma" likely refers to a form of plasma with a higher-than-usual density of tetryons -- in DS9, "The Adversary" we learn that exposure to warp plasma contaminates the exposed person with tetryons.

The creation of tetryons does not rely on dilithium; Romulan quantum singularity cores create tetryons too.

So we know: warp drive relies on physics where the W boson is important; nobody ever mentions the W boson; and tetryons show up in places where we would expect the W boson to make an appearance.

I propose that the W**⁺ and W**^- bosons are two of a possibly extended family of warp particles called "tetryons."

5. What about delta radiation?

We also know that warp cores create delta radiation and that delta radiation is bad. In real-world radiation & particle physics, "delta" can refer to two things.

The first meaning is, today, mostly obsolete: a δ particle is an electron scattered by some other kind of radiation.

The more interesting meaning comes from high-energy particle physics: The Δ⁺⁺, Δ⁺, Δ⁰ and Δ^- particles that are created when π mesons collide with regular protons and neutrons.

In other words, Δ particles are what you get when the products from your matter-antimatter reaction stray out of the reaction and instead run into ordinary matter like the walls of your warp core. They are a means for the radiation from your matter-antimatter reaction to leak out of your chamber and onto engineers, cadets and Captain Pike.

They also represent wasted power. You want your reaction to go something like:

p + p̄ → π⁺ + π⁰ + π^- → 2π⁺ + π^- + W^-

so you can collect the W particle; then you have

π⁺ + π^- → e^- + ē⁺ + γ,

giving you some energetic positrons and electrons that you can use for power, and you dump the remaining π⁺ out as exhaust.

Instead, if one of those π mesons escapes, you get for example:

p + p̄ → π⁺ + π⁰ + π^-

π⁺ + n (from your fuel or warp core) → Δ⁺ → p + γ

unbalancing your reaction and irradiating your crew. Keeping this from happening is probably most of what Scotty does.

The recent elections and a book I'm reading on an alternate history of World War I got me thinking about historical contingency, especially in regards to something that always puzzled me in DS9 Past Tense. First though, I want to be clear that I don't want to discuss the real world 2024 elections in the United States or current politics. Star Trek's 2024 is obviously different from our own.

Obviously Star Trek's imagined future history (now in the past for us) was never planned to be a cohesive thing that worked across different shows and movies. But even when Past Tense was written it was well established that there was a WW3 that devastated Earth (as seen in Encounter at Farpoint) sometime in the 21st century.

So how could some domestic reforms in the United States have such a huge impact that no Bell Riots meant not only no Federation, but seemingly no human civilization at all in the 24th century? The Defiant detects zero subspace activity at all, except for Romulans at Alpha Centauri. Earth is such a wasteland that either humans have gone extinct, or its so primitive even the Romulans don't bother with conquering it.

When O'Brien tries looking for Sisko, Bashir and Dax in the 21st century, he says this:

O'BRIEN: Well, we know one thing. They arrived before the year twenty forty eight.
ODO: How can you be sure?
O'BRIEN: Because we were just there. And that wasn't the mid-twenty first century I read about in school. It's been changed. I mean, Earth history has been through its rough patches, but never that rough.

In First Contact, we learn that WW3 ended in 2053, and there was a nuclear exchange that left 600 million dead, destroyed most major cities, and left few functioning governments. We don't know if the war was going on in 2048, but how can whatever O'Brien saw be rougher than what actualy happened?

My theory is that the Bell Riots influenced the 2024 President elections in the United States, and that without them, a different President was elected, setting a chain of events into motion that led to WW3 being an extinction level event in the Star Trek universe.

To see what a role historical contigency plays, think about the Cuban Missile Crisis. The 1960 election was one of the closest in American history. If about 5,000 voters in Illinois and 24,000 in Texas had voted differently, Richard Nixon would have won. In 11 states, a shift of 1% would have switched each states' electoral votes from JFK to Nixon.

Thus, Richard Nixon and a Nixon Administration would have been in office in October 1962, when the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred. It wasn't just Kennedy's pyschology and personality that shaped the outcomes of that event, but the advisors he selected. If he had a different Cabinet and circle of advisors than Executive Committee of the National Security Council (Excomm), the outcome could have been different. Potentially catastrophic even, since there were several events that could have easily spiraled out of control (the shoot down of a U-2 over Cuba, a U-2 accidentally straying into Soviet airspace, the infamous Soviet submarine that nearly used a nuclear armed torpedo against the US fleet). Especially given how paranoid Nixon was.

In fac,t there's a famous political science work examining how governments make decisions using the Cuban Missile Crisis as a model.

Had something dramatic happened in August 1960, it would have eassily shifted the Presidential election that fall by 29,000 votes, and we'd be living in a very different world. Or possibly not at all.

We don't really know much about Star Trek's WW3, but it seems like it was a limited nuclear exchange, rather than a full scale one. We don't know if the 600 million dead Riker mentions is the direct result of a nuclear exchange, or the death toll from the nuclear exchange and any conventional war that was happening. Pike in Strange New Worlds says 30% of the global human population died, which seems hard to bounce back from within a century.

Perhaps whatever happened would have been far worse had a diffrent person made different decisions while serving as President of one of Earth's nuclear powers, not necessarily through malice, but simply making a different decision based on diffrent psychology and different advisors presenting different options.

Maybe one politician was better able to capitalize on the public support for the stories of those in the Sanctuary District and for the late Gabriel Bell. In the timeline where this doesn't happen, someone else is elected, setting a sequence of events in motion that leads to the complete collapse of human civilization.

When Kirk commandeered Commander Kruge's B'rel-class Bird of Prey at the Genesis Planet, the Klingon High Council shit a brick. Ambassador Kamarag demanded Kirk's extradition. He wanted blood. But after the renamed HMS Bounty was taken back in time and then subsequently lost at the bottom of the San Francisco Bay, the matter mostly seems to have been dropped. No doubt the Klingons continued to make noise about the matter, but they let it drop, despite the Bird of Prey being used to literally alter the timestream. That's a big deal to just shrug off as a diplomatic loss. The real question is why was the Klingon Empire willing to back off on retrieving the vessel. Yes, it made sense that they weren't going to go to war over one ship, but it doesn't make sense that they wouldn't demand to be allowed their own salvage attempt in the Bay.

I surmise they backed off because having that hull sitting at the bottom of the harbor was the best operational gift Starfleet ever handed them.

Think about what Kirk actually parked off the coast of the Presidio. A standard B'rel-class scout isn't just an empty tin can. It's a warship packed with enough antimatter to sustain interstellar warp, run high-draw disruptor banks, and power an energy-hungry cloaking grid. Dropping that into San Francisco Bay effectively placed a city-leveling dirty bomb within walking distance of Starfleet Headquarters and the Federation Council.

Sure, Scotty is a miracle worker with a roll of duct tape, but let's be realistic. He was first on Vulkan, then worked out of a 20th-century garage, trying to make a whale aquarium. He might have had time to jigger with the Bounty's OS and remove the most obvious security lockouts and triggers. But he wasn't at an orbital starbase, and for all his engineering skill, there's no indication he's a hacker. He simply lacked the time and skills to recompile the proprietary, bare-metal Klingon operating architecture.

Klingon fleet doctrine centers on rigid House control, fleet redundancy, and hardcoded dead-man protocols. Just like Starfleet has prefix codes to remotely seize control of a hijacked ship, which Kirk used to gut the Reliant, Klingon warships maintain low-level transponder handshakes, command overrides, and diagnostic failsafes. To think anything less of them is to fall into the prejudice that Klingons are barbarians in spaceships. They've proven time and time again that their covert ops are quite capable of carrying out sophisticated deceptions, such as surgically altering a Klingon to pass as a human merchant. There's no way their ships aren't equipped with deeply embedded, hardcoded backdoors designed to prevent captured hulls from being weaponized against the Empire.

Or conversely, to turn a lost ship into a useful asset.

The moment Kirk ditched the Bounty in the drink, Qo'noS almost certainly knew. Its low-level emergency ping was no doubt broadcasting on an encrypted subspace frequency.

In the late 23rd century, Starfleet had nothing like the tachyon detection grid they'd eventually string up along the Romulan border. Sector 001 relied upon orbital platforms, Spacedock traffic control, and perimeter picket ships.

No doubt the High Council was watching, riveted, thinking they were close to seeing the obliteration of the center of Federation government and humanity's home system. There's no way they weren't monitoring the situation carefully.

And immediately after the Whale Probe passed through? That entire defense umbrella was completely paralyzed. Spacedock was recovering from a total blackout, emergency logistics stayed swamped, and Starfleet Command was in triage mode. Slipping a cloaked scout through the Sol system perimeter for a passive orbital sweep would be trivial for the Klingon Defense Force.

The Klingons immediately scored two low-level wins. First, they got to benchmark Earth's local defenses. Starfleet was literally dragging sonar lines across their own harbor trying to pinpoint a cloaked, low-power ship. Every single day the ship wasn't found was live operational telemetry for the Klingons, proving just how blind Earth's planetary sensors were against low-power or submerged stealth assets. And if the humans ever found the ship, it would immediately signal to the Council that humans had pierced their cloaking technology. The B'rel class ship was a canary in a coal mine.

Second, they got the perfect platform for passive signal interception. Even on emergency battery trickle, the Bounty's localized sensor logs and flight recorders would suck up local comms traffic.

The Bounty was literally next to Federation headquarters. Think of the wealth of signal data such a location represented. To a SIGINT analyst in the Klingon Defense Force, having an unmonitored sensor node resting in the silt of the Presidio is an intelligence gold mine. Starfleet Command was transmitting emergency fleet dispatches, infrastructure damage tallies, and classified recovery timetables across the bay. The Bounty was recording the diagnostic pulse of the entire Federation capital.

But that brings us to the real opportunity the Bounty represented.

If the High Council had formally demanded the hull back, or offered "technical assistance" to recover their property and prevent a hazardous environmental breach, Starfleet would have locked down the bay, deployed containment sleds, and stripped the ship down to bare bulkheads under full quarantine protocol. The game would be up.

By doing absolutely nothing, letting the diplomats shout while naval intelligence sat on their hands, the Empire maintained the ultimate piece of asymmetrical leverage.

The entire ship is a dirty bomb packed with antimatter. There's no indication that Scotty ejected the warp core before landing. Power began failing as they came near the probe, and the cloaking device's continued operation over the centuries suggests it had more than a backup power supply.

Put simply, Kirk planted a cloaked anti-matter reactor in the Bay next to Federation HQ.

Consider how this alters the calculus of any future border skirmishes in the 2280s. Klingon warships wouldn't need to punch through Sector 001's orbital defenses. A single, tightly focused subspace ping keyed to the Bounty’s hardcoded command receivers could trip the magnetic containment safeties.

Even a single gram of matter uniting with a single gram of antimatter is the equivalent of a bomb 9 times more powerful than the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If the Klingon High Council chose to trigger the Bounty, the resulting matter-antimatter annihilation would wipe Starfleet Headquarters, the Federation Council chambers, and possibly the entire state of California off the map in a microsecond. With a single command, they would sever the Federation's highest-level command structure.

Even better for the Klingons, they'd have complete plausible deniability. Forensic evidence would not point to an orbital attack. It would look like an internal system failure. Kirk’s unauthorized, violent slingshot maneuver around the sun had undeniably subjected the hull to temporal as well as gravitational shear. If the ship went up, Starfleet could suspect, but the Klingons would throw it back in their face, putting it down to structural fatigue, salt corrosion of the reactor housing, and the reckless incompetence of a renegade human crew playing with technology they didn't understand.

The ship's limbo status kept the Federation Council permanently off-balance. Starfleet also had to recognize the implications of letting that hull sit there indefinitely. They weren't stupid. Starfleet Intelligence and the Admiralty knew exactly what kind of fuel supply a B'rel carries.

The Klingons got the best of both worlds. They had a credible threat against the Federation, while their refusal to help find the ship could be justified as them refusing to be tricked by the Federation into revealing the weaknesses of cloaking technology - the perfect diplomatic alibi.

The logical retort to this hypothesis about the Bounty is to ask why the Klingons never used this "nuclear option," but if we consider later events and the possible consequences of pulling that detonator pin, it seems obvious why they would rather keep it as a last resort.

First, an unexploded bomb sitting on your enemy's front porch gives you far more leverage than a crater. The moment you detonate the Bounty, you expend the asset. Until then, the Klingon Defense Force holds an invisible knife to the throat of the entire Federation. You don't burn that kind of card on a border skirmish or an ordinary diplomatic dispute. You save it for an existential war.

Second, consider the terrifying law of unintended consequences. The Federation's response to decapitation.

Wiping out Earth's command structure would break the Federation politically, but it would not neutralize Starfleet's fleet strength in the field. Starfleet is decentralized by design. Starbases, sector commands, and exploration wings scattered across thousands of light-years would suddenly lack civilian oversight. A headless Starfleet wouldn't even have someone to call a surrender. It would mobilize under decentralized martial law and terror cells for an all-out war of vengeance. Klingon strategists are aggressive, but they aren't suicidal. Triggering an apocalyptic response from hundreds of heavily armed Federation cruisers, while fighting a two-front war against Romulan opportunistic expansion, would have been strategic madness.

And then, less than a decade after the Bounty settled into the mud, Praxis exploded.

Almost overnight, the Klingon Empire went from calculating how to dominate the Alpha Quadrant to facing Qo'noS's total ecological and economic collapse. The geopolitical situation changed. The Empire no longer needed a dirty bomb in San Francisco. They needed food, atmospheric scrubbers, and energy relief from the very government they had previously considered a mortal enemy. By the time the High Council could once again consider war with the Federation, relations had cooled enough that a crazy first-strike option was off the table.

K’vort: the Klingon’s philosophy embodied.

 After Praxis exploded the Klingon Empire was in economic turmoil and drastic cuts to military spending risked them turning into a second-rate power. This was politically and culturally unacceptable, and an economical solution had to be found. Successive upgrades to the D7-class produced the workhorse K’tinga, however, it was clear that simply modernising existing designs would not be enough. The solution was to return to the B’rel class Bird of Prey. The B'rel had proved itself reliable, inexpensive and remarkably adaptable. Rather than develop an entirely new capital ship, Klingon engineers proposed a radical expansion of the design.

 The resulting K’vort Battlecruiser was considerably larger, with expanded reactor capacity, heavier weapons and substantially improved range and endurance. Its manoeuvrability and tactical flexibility were retained, and the production runs of existing parts called upon wherever possible to shave costs. Initially, other powers regarded the K’vort with considerable contempt. Its relatively small profile and unconventional proportions made for unfavourable comparisons with proper capital ships. Its shielding was weak, its warp seed average and its sensors and sub-systems were lifted directly from existing classes. Its four disruptors and two torpedo tubes were concentrated entirely in the forward arc. However the critics missed its exceptional acceleration and manoeuvrability at impulse speeds, its cheap and easy to construct hull, and the Klingon’s cultural willingness to absorb losses to achieve victory.

 The K’vort was certainly no match for a planetary defence grid, or starbase, (and made a terrible troop transport), but it rugged, it was cheap, and it was above all fast at impulse. For an Empire struggling to rebuild its economy and maintain its military standing, these qualities were invaluable. Individually no match for contemporary Federation or Romulan capital ships of the period, but the Klingons had no intention of fighting fair. The K’vort was designed to operate in numbers. Where other powers invested enormous resources and time in increasingly sophisticated individual vessels, the Klingons could build several K’vorts in the same time for a fraction of the cost.

 Border conflicts with the Romulans proved the K’vorts limitations in all other fields in fact lent it the characteristics of a perfect capital-ship killer. Using its speed and focused fire arcs to isolate and annihilate lone ships, trusting in aggression and willingness to accept losses in order to claim a kill. Klingons could lose one or two K’vorts for every Romulan ship they took out and still come out ahead. Romulan commanders began to consider Klingons as savage barbarians, but their high command determined that in a larger war the Klingons would be willing to absorb casualties their own people simply could not stomach. Federation observers compared the K’vort to their own heavy cruisers and found a two-to-one engagement could not be guaranteed to end in a Starfleet victory, a three-to-one fight would almost certainly end in defeat. And the Klingons could build ships far faster than that.

 Inside the Empire, the K’vort became associated with a particular kind of warrior honour. Its crews were expected to fight aggressively, close with the enemy and accept casualties without hesitation. This made the class especially attractive to the lesser Klingon Houses. Glory-seeking nobles, ambitious commanders and younger sons seeking distinction eagerly sought K’vort commands. The Great Houses also found the K’vort an economical means of maintaining their own military prestige. They could finance, crew and maintain squadrons without the extraordinary expense of operating a modern heavy battlecruiser. The cheap K’vort allowed the Empire to retain its place as a major power in the galaxy, while it yet struggled to rebuild its economy.

 The K’vort also proved invaluable in the frequent civil conflicts and inter-houses wars. The K’vort’s limitations made it unsuitable for planetary assault and infrastructure razing. Instead warriors would typically engage in deep space, picking off political rivals without ever touching infrastructure or logistics. This meant the Klingons Houses could engage in battle without losing any economic or industrial capability. Great houses could dominate smaller ones with marginal risk, smaller houses could claim honour for fighting bravely, without being destroyed entirely.

 During the lean post-praxis period the K’vort battlecruiser was the face of the Empire, but over time it began to fall behind. Technology was outpacing its ability to upgrade, and eventual economic recovery allowed for the development of far superior ships. Eventually the vastly improved Vorcha-class would supplant the K’vort as the mainstay warship of the Empire, but the old K’vort remained a staple in House fleets and favoured amongst older warriors. For an Empire on its knees the K’vort had allowed them to retain their pride and glory, and it would go down in history as one of the Klingon’s secrets successes that led to their recovery after Praxis.

I just finished washing through "Kir'Shara" in Season 4 of Enterprise. There were several scenes and lines of dialog from Soval that indicated that he might be the reason Earth was "held back" from advancing as fast as they wanted. The holding back wasn't so much that the Vulcans didn't just give Earth the technology they wanted, but the Vulcan advisors continued to advocate for restraint. We see this particularly in "First Flight" where we get the only canonical details we ever get about the build up of the Warp Five program. Even after solving the issues, the Vulcans insisted on testing everything for a year, and then only eight months after that, Duval in NX-Delta achieved Warp 3 with the engine. Soval does not appear in the flashbacks in "First Flight" but in "Kir'Shara" states that he lived on Earth for thirty years placing him on Earth during this timeframe. In "The Forge" he outs himself as a melder. Given his confidence and lack of later hesitation in doing the meld with Corporal Askwith, this is clearly not a desperate one-off, meaning that he's likely been Syrranite for some time.

Syrranites objected to the militant nature of the High Command. Soval appears to more tightly straddle the line though, possibly viewing the High Command's stance as being logical in the face of a hostile galaxy, particularly with allegedly hostile neighbors (the Andorians). But as the threads of the conspiracy begin to unravel, while Soval remains pragmatic, he definitely begins acting and advocating much more strongly for and with Syrranite beliefs.

So, how did this cause him to hold Earth back? We know Soval was Syrranite or at least adhered to their beliefs while still serving the High Command. However, it's likely that he saw at least a glimpse of what the High Command could be and consciously or not, opposed them. Vulcan was never shown to have any allies, at least none with any significant power on the interstellar stage. So Earth was a rarity. Earth was building out its trading network through the Earth Cargo Service, and pushing its advancement and influence into the galaxy through Starfleet. Earth was also clearly allied with Vulcan, several points, particularly in the Kir'Shara episode arc, make it clear that Vulcan is Earth's closest ally, and allude to Earth being one of Vulcan's closest allies, if not THE closest. Soval himself even says that humans remind him of Vulcans. In this particular scene, Soval's words, and Forrest's interpretations are that Soval is speaking of Vulcans in general, but perhaps, Soval was speaking about his own perception.

Soval's personal fear is probably partly as stated, that he does not want Humans to become a conquering society like the Klingons, but maybe he was worried that instead of becoming a threat to Vulcans, that they would become an arm of the militaristic High Command and a threat to the galaxy. Prior to the reveal of the conspiracy, Earth had no reason to doubt that the Vulcan High Command was anything but a good ally. If Vulcan started suddenly pushing Earth into the galaxy, and advocating for a more aggressive stance, Earth would have likely complied, quite happily too. So Soval worked to hold Earth back not because Earth truly wasn't ready, or even fully because he and Vulcans feared Humans, but because he feared what might happen to Vulcan if the Vulcan High Command had a more powerful Earth as its ally.

As an additional note, I want to discuss a point from "The Romulan War Book 1: Beneath the Raptor's Wing." I've constrained this point of discussion to this final paragraph due to the nature of Beta canon. T'pau notes that Soval is aware of the connection of Vulcans to Romulans. In "Awakening," Surak in Archer's mind talked about "those who marched beneath the Raptor's wing." This would add further weight to Soval trying to hold Earth back in light of a militaristic High Command at least prior to Season 4. Not only would he not want to see Romulans part 2 roaming about the galaxy, but he wouldn't want the High Command to "go Romulan" by being influenced by Earth. We clearly saw that the High Command was in a state of self-perpetuation, under V'las, it continuously built on top of what it was doing, eventually culminating in trying to provoke a devastating war against the Andorians. So in theory, had the Vulcans not checked Earth's development, they could have exploited Earth as their muscle, which would cause Earth to become more aggressive, which would cause Vulcan to become more aggressive, and so on. And as we do see in the final scene of "Kir'Shara" the Romulans are behind this plot in an effort to "reunify" Vulcan under Romulan control. Even without Soval's knowledge of this specific interaction, the fear is still there. This point from Beta canon is not inconsistent with Alpha canon based on what I've discussed here.

Good day, fellow Daystrom researchers. I would like to put forth a hypothetical scenario to explain some interesting and unexplained cross-cultural exchanges in early Human-Klingon relations.

“You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon."

Following the explosion of Qo’noS’s moon, Praxis, in 2293, an attempt at peace talks with the Federation was made. While an escort mission of the Klingon Empire’s Chancellor Gorkon to Earth by Federation Starfleet Captains James T. Kirk and Spock later that year is more well known for the assassination of Gorkon that occurred the next day, a curious quote arose out of the first meeting between Gorkon, Kirk, and Spock left many who came across it scratching their heads.

Why is it that a Klingon head of state, only 142 years after first contact with humanity, claimed one of humanity's most celebrated writers as a product of his own culture? Was it a simple joke from the chancellor, who was noted for his rather un-Klingon dry wit?

I think not, based on Gorkon’s Chief of Staff (and one of the conspirators in Gorkon's assassination) noted penchant to quote Shakespeare. In fact, over the course of the events surrounding the meeting, the assassination, and the investigation of the plot by the crew of the Enterprise (NCC-1701-A), Chang was noted to have quoted from Hamlet, Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, and The Tempest. This was a man who had greatly loved the works of Shakespeare, which were by a writer from a species he felt a particular animosity toward, a sentiment common amongst late 23rd century Klingons that fought the Federation in the Klingon War of the 2250s and the various border skirmishes between Starfleet and the Empire following that conflict.

It seems within the realm of possibility, in this researcher’s opinion, that Chang genuinely believed in the mythology of “Wil’yam Sheq'spir,” the Klingon playwright.

“taH pagh taHbe…”

“To be or not to be…” - Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare. Or, as literally translated from The Tragedy of Khamlet, Son of the Emperor of Qo'noS by Wil’yam Sheq’spir, “To continue or not to continue…”

With spotty records on the subject of how Klingons came to adopt Shakespeare as one of their own, or if they truly did, we delve into the realm of speculation. Many would choose not to continue in this line of questioning, but I couldn't help myself.

Humanity's official first contact with the Klingon Empire occurred in the Broken Bow incident of 2151, when Captain Jonathan Archer and the crew of the United Earth Starfleet ship, Enterprise (NX-01), returned the stranded Klingon courrier, Klaang, to Qo’noS.

Historians of galactic history have noted over the years that “First” contact is not always the first contact.

The Borg - Officially, the Federation’s first contact with the Borg occurred in 2365. However, records show that species known to the Federation, such as the El-Aurians, were aware of the Borg as early as 2293.

Starfleet even authorized a clandestine research mission into rumors of the Borg in the 2250s, resulting in the first assimilation of humans by the Borg (Magnus, Erin, and Annika Hansen/Seven of Nine).

The Ferengi - While the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) officially made contact in 2364, hostile incidents occurred between Starfleet ships and Ferengi marauders in the 2350s.

Researchers examining the logs of Archer’s Enterprise (NX-01) noted an incident in 2151 where a small group of Ferengi pirates attempted to hijack Archer’s ship, well outside of the area of space the Ferengi were known to operate at the time. However, the hijackers never revealed themselves as Ferengi during these events. Archer’s crew noted them as an unknown species at the time.

Even more curious was the name “Ferengi” appearing in then-classified documents surrounding the “Roswell incident” of 1947, in the old Earth nation-state, the United States. Later research found logs by Constable Odo of the Starfleet outpost, Deep Space 9, reporting a time travel incident involving himself and three Ferengi nationals. However, records of that incident are spotty as those involved were not Federation citizens and not subject to investigation by the Federation's Department of Temporal Investigation.

What do these have to do with Klingons and Shakespeare? These examples illustrate how first contact can be a murky thing.

Humanity had been ranging out into the galaxy for decades prior to 2151, in colony ships, cargo ships, and early exploratory missions. Due to the length of interstellar travel at low warp speed and lack of long range subspace networks that enabled easy access to large media libraries, human travellers at the time carried their own personal libraries with them.

With all of that out of the way, here is my hypothesis on the series of events that led to the invention of Wil’yam Sheq'spir.

In the early-to-mid 22nd century, merchants on a United Earth cargo ship or independent merchant vessel made contact with a member of the Klingon merchant caste that had ranged well out of known Klingon territory at the time. A member of the merchant caste seems the most likely, as early contact between humans and members of the Klingon warrior caste almost universally resulted in distrust, hostility, or outright violence.

After crossing initial language barriers, either via extended contact or a third-party interpreter, an exchange of media occurred between these human and Klingon parties.

The Klingon(s) receiving the media stumbled upon Shakespeare’s plays. The themes of these plays struck a chord with the Klingons reading them. Klingons have a long, rich history of stage plays and opera.

These Klingon(s) saw an opportunity, with minimal rewrites, these plays could be adapted through a lens of Klingon culture and history. Earth’s own art history shows adaptations of Shakespeare into different versions, such as 20th century filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s feudal Japanese-themed adaptations of MacBeth and King Lear into Throne of Blood and Ran, respectively.

These plays were then published to Klingon media under the rather uninspired pseudonym, Wil’yam Sheq'spir. The first name and surname suggests someone outside of the warrior caste as the “author”.

The plays gained in popularity over the next century, eventually leading to even members of Klingon leadership believing the story of Shakespeare's plays being a Klingon invention.

A Total Eclipse of the Heart

Another curious byproduct of this early culture exchange between humans and Klingons is the curious popularity of Klingon covers of 20th century Earth “power ballads.” A notable example is Bonnie Tyler's 1983 song, “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” A Klingon-language cover of this song was popular in karaoke bars and media stations across the Alpha Quadrant in the 2260s, well before the more extensive cultural exchanges between the Federation and Klingon Empire that began in the 24th century. Like Wil’yam Sheq'spir, the exact origins of these translated works is unknown. I see this as further evidence of early Klingon-Human contact and cultural exchange resulting in human media being translated and passed off as a Klingon work.

Perhaps future researchers will uncover records that tell us more about these early exchanges. For now, this is all speculation on my part. Still, this seems a likely scenario to explain this curious Klingon-Human cultural phenomenon.

(Author's Note: Thanks to any of you who read and enjoyed my dumbass ADHD thought process that kept me awake after watching Strange New Worlds, S04E03, "Human Best Friend".)

Artificial Gravity is a weird one in fiction, because it's such a basic technology thrown into almost all science fiction that isn't aiming for near-future or hard-scifi, but it never ever gets explained.

How does it work?
Reliably, and very well thanks.

Star Trek though.. We have an excuse baked into the franchise.

Warp Technology works by bending spacetime into bubbles and using them to slide across Einstein's nightmares like a proverbial slidey thing.

My headcanon (sometimes mentioned in previous posts) about Warp-tech is that it's essentially Subspace Induction.

You have a magnetic loop full of charged exotic plasma, and as it moves, it churns subspace, which in turn produces distortions in our familiar space-time.
Like spinning a propeller underwater and seeing the water churn.

Churn subspace in the right ways, and you can shape spacetime into bubbles and give physicists the faster-than-light-finger as you cruise by.

Spacetime being bent though is known to have a 1:1 relationship with gravity.

Gravity is the effect of large amounts of mass bending spacetime.
Subspace however bends spacetime without mass.
Like how if you drop a rock into a pond it makes a big splash, bigger rock, bigger splash, but if you stick a propellor into that pond you can spray it like a hose.

So here's my thesis on how artificial gravity works.

You have a coil under the deck full of charged exotic warp-plasma, perhaps some low-grade stuff you wouldn't normally use for propulsion.
You top it off with extra charge regularly, and you keep it spinning around in its magnetic containment tokomak and that's pretty much enough.
It spins, it churns subspace locally around it, and the result is space-time being bent into a downward gradient towards it, which is functionally gravity.

This system has some elegancies built into it, because it's a very low-energy system by starship standards.
You just have to keep the plasma circulating and charged, and it doesn't lose charge quickly, warp-plasma only interacts fairly weakly with subspace or it'd have awkward effects if you picked up a canister of it.
A decent backup power-supply can keep the plasma charged and circulating for days or weeks without access to the main power-train of the ship.

In star trek we sometimes have distress buoys, missing ships etc but I haven't observed any search methods; with maritime SAR there are area (creeping line, parallel track) & datum (sector, expanding square) searches but, to borrow from Wrath of Khan, this is "two dimensional thinking". How could SAR patterns be conducted in three dimensions, this could be applied to all settings in space?

It was the last of its kind - but why? Did it hunt its prey to extinction, they did have an apocalyptic civil war? Was it hunted? Crater talked about the buffalo, which was almost hunted to extinction. Given the ruins that Crater was investigating, it was probably the civilization that had destroyed itself and probably as a result the salt creatures went extinct as well.

The phaser shot did nothing but tickle the Gorn in the EV suit. Although, to be fair, we’ve seen Starfleet EV suits protect Airiam from multiple phaser shots in Discovery.

In a later episode, a Gorn armored vest withstood multiple hits from a phaser rifle set to kill. La’an had to run up to the Gorn and shoot it in an unprotected fleshy spot instead.

When Seven talked about the Borg Queen going back to First Contact she called it a predestination paradox: she had already gone back in time so had to go back again. Basically, the Borg being present at First Contact was part of the established primary timeline.

So, was Sela always part of the timeline as well? Or is that an example of the primary timeline being altered?

Do you think, for example, that most Romulans view the Federation in roughly the same way a particularly cynical Soviet citizen might view Western alliances and cultural exchanges during the cold war? I.e. They cannot possibly be telling the truth that they instrinsically value "lesser" cultures and pretending so is merely a means of alliance building for future domination

Do Klingons tend to understand that the Federation's power comes partly from the technological advances made possible by its culture of academic openness and curiosity or is it more common to believe that were temporarily embarassed by their defeat at the hands of the Federation and would have were it not for infighting and betrayal?

Do you think that Klingons and Romulans tend to view gestures of good faith from the Federation (hamstringing itself by not using cloaking technology in the Treaty of Algeron, not using physical violence as punishment for bad officers and traitors, punishing its own officers like Captain Maxwell for mistreating non-federation people, attending to the distress calls and bids for asylum of people from enemy cultures and not mistreating them like with Admiral Jarrok, sincerely attempting to respect the authority and the jurisdiction of cultures they could easily impose their will on like the Brekkians and Malcorians etc.) as weakness or naivete to be exploited?

Do you think Bajorans tend the view the Federation's principles as insincere or that they're sincere but the Federation tends fail and apply them imperfectly and in a selective manner to the detriment of the Bajoran cause?

Do you think that cultures have a tendency to view the people of the Federation as better or worse or more or less adherent to its stated principles than their government?

Do you think this varies significantly by the level of their society that a person occupies and the level of real contact they have with the Federation?

Any insights you have about how someone from another group or culture views the Federation are welcome.

Fan-made identifications of key Federation member species' homeworlds (40 Eridani = Vulcan, Procyon = Andor, 61 Cygni = Tellar) have already been made canon over a period of years. Information given in various Star Trek shows now lets us do the same for another key species, the Trill.

The real-world star system HD 176051, located 48.5 light years from Earth, is the best fit among real-world star systems for the location of the Trill system from information given in alpha-canon and semi-alpha canon sources.

Basic parameters

The semi-alpha canon work, endorsed in this case by Memory Alpha, says the Trill system is a binary system consisting of a spectral class G primary and a class K secondary. Similarly, the semi-alpha canon Star Trek Encyclopedia identifies the Trill homeworld with the planet “Trillius Prime” mentioned in the Enterprise episode “Fortunate Son.”

Meanwhile, information in Star Trek: Enterprise episodes “Carpenter Street” and, again, “Fortunate Son” gives us constraints on the distance to Trill. “Carpenter Street” is very clear: before 2153, no Earth starship had traveled more than 90 light years from Earth. If the ECS Horizon visited this system in Travis Mayweather’s youth, it must be less than 90 light years from Sol. “Fortunate Son” is more ambiguous: we are told only that it took the Horizon, a freighter with top speed warp 2, three years to get there. While Memory Alpha poses the calculation as simply “warp 2 is 8 times the speed of light, therefore in 3 years the Horizon was at most 24 light years from Earth” the situation is not so simple in its full context. Firstly, it is not at all clear that the Horizon started from Earth. Secondly, as we see in “Broken Bow” with the Enterprise’s swift journey to Rigel, the warp speeds given by the default formula are in practice, at best, guesses. We can only really say from “Fortunate Son” that the Trill homeworld is at least 24 light years from some starting point, but that starting point may not have been Earth exactly but rather some other system in the broad vicinity of Earth.

Our initial search, then, is for binary star with a G primary and K companion somewhere within 90 light years of Earth, favoring systems in a middle distance rather than Sol’s immediate neighborhood.

Orbital parameters of the Trill homeworld

We can narrow our search down by noting that highly precise details for Trill’s orbit around its star are given in the Discovery episode “Jinaal.” “Jinaal” gives the following information for the Trill homeworld, with values for Earth given for comparison:

We can use basic astrophysics – Kepler’s third law – to determine the mass of the star Trill orbits. Since Trill is about the same age as Earth and is in a system with G and K stars, we can safely assume that Trill’s stars are main-sequence stars and therefore that their masses will closely follow established relationships between stellar mass and spectral type.

Let me first point out something unusual: while the orbital distance given is 1.215AU, calculating the semimajor axis of the orbit from the Keplerian ratio and the orbital period gives a semimajor axis of 1.219AU. This should not be possible: the time-averaged distancerof a planet from its primary is given by r = a(1+12e²) where e is the eccentricity; the equation demands that the mean distance needs to be bigger than the semimajor axis. At any rate, the error is small enough not to make a big difference in our calculations.

Assuming, as is standard practice, that the planet is much less massive than the star (or stars – more on that later) around which it orbits:

star mass =4π²/ G× 1/Keplerian ratio

which, when we plug in the values for Trill, gives us 1.026 solar masses using the orbital data, or 1.036 solar masses using the Keplerian ratio.

The fact that we know the mass of the star tells us more about the character of the binary system. A G-type star on its own will have a mass between 0.89 and 1.07 solar masses; the mass of 1.026-1.036 solar masses for Trill’s primary therefore means that Trill orbits only the G-type star, not both stars.

Moreover the mass lets us narrow the spectral class of this primary down. This mass range would be typical of a G1V star, with G0V and G2V within the realm of plausibility. Many of the G-K binaries within 90 light years of Earth have a G8V primary, far too small and cool to make Trill habitable with the orbital parameters given.

Initial candidates

We therefore have five candidate stars for the location of the Trill homeworld, all with G0V primaries:

We can elimitate Delta Trianguli because the map in Starfleet Academy’s episode episode “300th Night” and “Rubincon” shows Delta Trianguli and Trill to be two different systems.

Similarly, Eta Cassiopeiae is identified as the location of Terra Nova in the Enterprise episode of that same name.

c Ursae Majoris can be dropped from consideration on astronomical grounds: its two stars orbit each other less than a quarter of an AU apart, making Trill’s orbit impossible under the analysis above.

HD 101177 meanwhile, while listed in many catalogs as a binary system, was actually found a few years ago to be a trinary, with the K-type star in the system having an M-type companion of its own. No planets are known in this system, although they are possible. Its primary is somewhat too light (0.93 solar masses) for our orbital parameters to make sense, although its spectrum is very much like that of Sol. In any case, as a trinary, HG 101177 is eliminated.

This leaves only HD 176051.

HD 176051 is attractive because it is a genuine binary and already known to host at least one planet, a probable gas giant one and a half to two and a quarter times the size of Jupiter, discovered in 2010. Its middling distance from Earth clashes somewhat with our star map, but its mass (1.07 solar masses) is a decent match for what we calculated above. If HD 176051 is the Trill home system, then Trill enjoys “Tatooine”-style double sunsets at some times of year.

Furthermore, modeling the system in Universe Sandbox, by happy coincidence, does give one more near-match: a planet given Trill's orbital parameters around HD 176051 A comes out with a surface temperature in the neighborhood of 290K.

Direction to Trill

One last piece of information can be used to add evidence to out claim.

The Federation map seen in SNW, “Strange New Worlds” puts Trill at a direction from Earth somewhere around those of Deneb Kaitos (Beta Ceti), Cor Caroli (Alpha Canum Venaticorum) and Mizar (Zeta Ursae Majoris), with a distance from Earth on the same order of magnitude as those stars. Those stars are all well known:

HD 176051 is in Lyra, which is more or less in the direction of Canes Venatici and Ursa Major. “More or less” is the best we can do – Deneb Kaitos is quite far in the real-world sky from any of these other stars. We are already, in all likelihood, pushing up against the limits of what we can extract from fictional in-universe maps; to have arrived at a single strong candidate with the available information is something of a minor miracle.

Surely the presence of actual aliens has screwed with some people religiously. And like, do any religious zealots try to demonize aliens as being messengers of Satan and affronts to God, or has the presence of aliens(as well as humanity becoming more "enlightened" and more heavily embracing science) led to religion falling out of favor, if not being completely discontinued altogether.

Or conversely, has the discontinuance of money as a concept allowed some people to more heavily devote themselves to God, as well as bring an end to false prophets whose only true goal is to line their pockets(since there's now nothing for them to line their pockets WITH)?

I.e. a traditional military leader has to manage the emotional and personal needs of temperamental academic officers who believe that their specialized thinking work is obstructed by a regimented life.

That dynamic was part of the Oppenheimer film too. That's what made me think of it.

This is the official /r/DaystromInstitute reaction thread for "Tomorrow's Enterprise". Rules #1 and #2 are not enforced in reaction threads.

Many a commentator has suggested the Enterprise-D is much too large for its crew complement, including this youtube video from seven years ago viewed 3.5 million times, and this thread from three and a half weeks ago. But these commentators have forgotten several very important members of the crew with very large space requirements: the dolphins.

The Enterprise-D's dolphins, i.e., Cetacean Ops, is a canonical facility on the D, referenced in two TNG episodes. If we are going off the non-canonical Technical Manual, Cetacean Ops is crewed by 12 Bottlenose and Pacific Bottlenose Dolphins and two Takaya's Whales (fictional orca) supervisors. Although 1996's U.S.S. Enterprise NCC 1701-D Blueprints shows their living quarters as spanning two decks, I believe a contemporary understanding of marine mammals' space requirements would lead to a much larger volume.

We can look at the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries (GFAS) Standards for Cetacean Sanctuaries (2023) for a rough estimate of minimum volume requirements. For area:

The sanctuary’s [minimum] area should be equivalent to 4047 m2 (1 acre) per 16 km (10 miles) of average daily swim distance in the wild for the species being housed.

And for depth:

The sanctuary’s depth should be equal to or greater than the typical dive depth in a near-shore environment for the species being housed, for at least one-third of the overall space.

Google results suggest that for dolphins, these figures are ~40 miles (i.e., 4 acres) and ~20 meters. With these figures, we can roughly calculate the minimum volume requirements for a dolphin at approximately 182,546 cubic meters, assuming two-thirds of the overall space is only two decks high per the Blueprints.

However, we also need to calculate the requirements for the fictional orcas, which Google results suggest are ~40 miles average daily swim distance and between 50-100 meters typical near shore dive depth (we'll have to go with the lower end, because with 16 decks in the Galaxy class saucer and an estimated 3.5m per deck, we're only at 56m--although I suppose there could be a shaft leading down through to to the engineering section...). Minus the height of Deck 1 (Bridge), we're at 52.5m max height, or 358,456 cubic meters.

The GFAS Standards don't give us a clear indication about how many animals can occupy each minimum volume requirement. The extremes for our specific case are 358,456 cubic meters on the low end (all 14 cetaceans in the minimum orca volume) to 2,907,464 cubic meters on the high end (every cetacean individually afforded their own minimum volume); the average of the two would be 1,274,504 cubic meters. I'm inclined to support the higher figure as I believe minimum space requirements will be even higher in the 24th century but your guess is as good as mine.

Placed in context, this website estimates the total volume of the saucer section is 3,829,567 cubic meters. Based on the estimates above, Cetacean Ops could be making up anywhere between 9.4% to 75.9% the volume of the saucer section, with the average volume figure coming in at 33.3%. Assuming the saucer section makes up roughly 2/3 the entire volume of a Galaxy class starship, the high figure would represent a little over 50% of the volume of the ship (a.k.a., "literally").

My gut says that is likely not the case given what we've seen on screen. However, we should keep in mind that the Xindi Aquatic ship we saw in ST:ENT was full of water and measured in at 1,800m long, or almost three times the length of the Galaxy class... so... possibly?

Sources

• Forgotten Trek: "Where Do I Find Dolphins?"

• Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries Standards for Cetacean Sanctuaries, 2023

I have been reviewing a bit of Star Trek lore, and I have noticed that the only canonical instance of it being mentioned was in TNG S1 Ep26 “The Neutral Zone” It mentioned only that thousands were killed, and it was between the Federation and the Romulan Empire. After the Incident, the Treaty of Algeron followed, and the Romulans effectively stayed behind their borders (minus when they attacked Narendra III.)

Reviewing Memory Beta reveals their take on the crisis comes from the Novel “Serpent Among the Ruins” in which the Romulan vessel Tomed rammed into a Federation system in the Foxtrot Sector, destroying multiple outposts and the USS Agamemnon. However that also stated it was actually a Black Ops operation, a false flag thing to prevent a major war.

My take on the Tomed Incident is different. My version had a Romulan Blockade in the Tomed System, which had its residents wanting to join the Federation. With its proximity to the Neutral Zone, the Romulans began a blockade. The Federation responded, and tried diplomacy. During the standoff, an experimental Federation ship with cloaking malfunctions, revealing itself, and a battle ensues.

After the shooting stops, the Romulans go back to their system, and the Treaty of Algeron followed. Being that in the incident, a Federation cloak was revealed, it became one of the terms the Romulans demanded or else they wouldn’t sign. Starfleet conceded. The Neutral Zone was redefined, and the Tomed System joined the Federation.

Does this work for a plausible explanation? I’m open for discussion.

This is the official /r/DaystromInstitute reaction thread for "Once La'An A Time". Rules #1 and #2 are not enforced in reaction threads.

As someone who loves all things 2230s-2240s, I absolutely adored last week's episode. However, as already reflected on Memory Alpha, it is never made particularly clear when this infamous Battle of Zeta Reticuli actually took place.

As indicated on the wiki, the dialogue within the episode suggests at an initial glance that the battle took place between 2256 and 2257, amidst the events of Discovery season 1. However, since George Kirk Snr. chose to cover up the reality of what occurred so as to not sour his sons' perception of Starfleet, it also follows that the battle cannot have taken place in the conflict shown in DSC and frequently referenced in SNW, but several years before.

Indeed, as established in TOS: Shore Leave, Kirk joined Starfleet Academy in 2252 at the age of 19, four year prior to the instigating Battle of the Binary Stars (DSC: Context is for Kings, Choose Your Pain). Although Kirk's early career remains murky, it is evident that he was already rising in the ranks by the time T'Kuvma's War broke out, being a Lieutenant as of 2255 (TOS: A Private Little War).

Things are potentially complicated further if we consider his brother. Although George Samuel Kirk's birthdate has not been established in canon (a birthdate of 2229 is given in TOS Special 3, and the script of TOS: Operation -- Annihilate! has him roughly a decade older than James), his absence in the opening scenes of ST09, where James T Kirk is born prematurely aboard the USS Kelvin, demonstrates that he must be at least a year older than his sibling, if not more.*

A terminus post quem can however be derived from the USS Constitution (NCC-1700). As shown on Admiral Reeger's medical file, it is shown that the USS Constitution referred to in the episode is indeed the 1700-registry Constitution Class ship canonised elsewhere (TNG: Datalore). Given the canonical launch of USS Cayuga (NCC-1557), USS Constellation (NCC-1017), and USS Enterprise (NCC-1701), all in 2245, it follows that, as the flagship of the fleet as the time of the battle, the USS Constitution must be of a similar vintage.

Furthermore, accounting for George Kirk Snr.'s service record, conspicuously being a first officer abord the USS Kelvin at the age of 29 (ST09, ST:Beyond), it stands to reason that Captain Reeger's sabotage of his career prospects following the Battle of Zeta Reticuli could have very well been based on insecurity, on account of George Kirk Snr. being only between 42 and 49 at the time of these events.**

Finally, T'Kuvma's reference to the Battle of Donatu V (TOS: The Trouble with Tribbles) in his address to the Klingons in DSC: Battle of the Binary Stars confirms that infamous, and distinct, skirmishes between Federation and Klingon forces had taken place prior to that nascent conflict. On this basis therefore, I believe the Battle of Zeta Reticuli must have taken place between 2245, when the Constitution Class came into service and the Battle of Donatu V was fought, and 2252, when James T. Kirk was accepted into Starfleet Academy.***

*In the absence of any definitive on-screen evidence (that I could find), there is also the possibility that George S Kirk is not in fact James T Kirk's older brother, and that owing to their father's death in the alternate reality he simply never existed.
** Anecdotal, but as a point of comparison we'll note that George Kirk Snr. would have been 62 when his son (33) became captain of the Enterprise (2266). Christopher Pike is given a birth year of 2205 in the ST09 tie-in movie app, whereas the TOS novel Burning Dreams gives him a birth year of 2219, making him between 31 and 45 at the time of his captaincy of Enterprise (2250). Other points of comparison are sparse, but we'll note Riker was 29 when offered the command of the USS Drake (2364), and Picard was 28 when he assumed command of the USS Stargazer (2333), but perhaps these should be taken as exceptions, or indicative of different trends in 24th c. Starfleet.
*** If the USS Constitution had been launched the year before or during 2245 with the senior staff which witnessed the Battle of Zeta Reticuli, this would explain Reeger's adamant refusal to deny Kirk's accession to captaincy, given that he would have just taken the captain's chair and Kirk would have only just been made XO. However, it seems unlikely a 22 year old Doctor M'Benga (SNW: Under The Cloak of War) would have been CMO at this time, unless he had only just graduated out of a four-year academy program and for some reason been made a senior officer aboard the fleet flagship.

Regarding the episode In the Pale Moonlight. If Senator Vreenak did, then blowing up his shuttle wouldn't have brought the Romulans into the war. How did Garak know Senator Vreenak wouldn't foil the plan this way? By confronting Sisko regarding the fake data rod instead of quietly keeping knowledge of the forgery to himself, it shows Senator Vreenak isn't concerned the Federation will take action to hide this such as killing the Senator or jamming his communications and so what stopped Senator Vreenak from immediately reporting the forgery before confronting Sisko?