443 – Monuments, Spoc, And The Borg | Priority One: A Roddenberry Star Trek Podcast

This week on Priority One — the marketing for Picard has reached warp speed, Space Force gets a new Trek-centric name, and a small town in Indiana wants to celebrate Voyager’s 25th anniversary. In Star Trek Online and gaming news… the Borg have resurged! The Clear Skies RPG show announces its STO partnership, and Star Trek Bridge Crew arrives on a new system. Finally, we open hailing frequencies and receive all of your incoming messages.

Of course, as always, before we wrap up the show, we’ll open hailing frequencies for your incoming messages

Let us know on social media like Facebook, Twitter, or by visiting our website!

This Weeks Community Questions Are:

CQ: Have you seen “The Children of Mars”? What did you think?

AND

CQ: We also want to know what some of your favorite moments from the past ten years of Star Trek Online?

TREK IT OUT

by Shane Hoover

Short Treks Trailer and Ties to Picard

Several weeks before the premiere of Star Trek: Picard, in fact a day before this podcast is even published, CBS: All Access will have released the next Short Trek.  This Short Trek is titled “Children of Mars”, and it promises tantalizing connections to the upcoming Picard series. On January 2nd, CBS released a teaser trailer for the new short. In the teaser, we are introduced to 12 year-old classmates Kima and Lil.  The two girls attend a Federation school together, and we see several scenes of the pair picking on each other at school. As they both seem to be facing punishment for their misbehavior, the school is shocked by an emergency alert. A Vulcan faculty member with a worried expression watches something speed past overhead, and we see the frightened girls hold hands. 

Now, there’s a bit to unpack in this 30 second teaser.  The first little easter egg that pops up is the arrival of the School Shuttle on screen. The 24th century school bus is none other than a very worn-looking Star Trek: Discovery era shuttlecraft. There’s little chance this has any meaning for Picard, but it’s a cute bit of ship recycling and a nod to the other show. 

But the more interesting clues in the trailer are the ones that we can tie directly to the new Picard series. To begin with, there’s the title of the short, “Children of Mars”.  Additionally, there’s a fleeting moment in this trailer where a news program is visible on a large wall display behind the alarmed Vulcan teacher. As the Vulcan turns his head, a ship can be seen dashing across the screen. If you’ve been caught up on all of the Star Trek Picard teaser videos to date, there’s no mistaking that ship silhouette.  

It is the same ship seen in several of the recent Picard trailers. These ships are seen approaching Mars in numbers. They’re seen firing weapons over a city while buildings erupt in balls of fire, as Picard’s voice declares “We face a powerful enemy.” They’re seen speeding past an exploding space station. Picard, either in flashback or real-time, is gripped by shock inside a starship lounge as Mars blooms with explosions outside the windows. It might seem like these ships are the attackers, but another Picard trailer throws a twist into the mix. Those ships we’ve seen in so much action are clearly marked with a large Starfleet insignia. 

So the identity of Picard’s “powerful enemy” seems to remain a mystery for now. Is it the Borg? Is it a Romulan faction? Is it a new alien species? It looks very much as if this week’s Short Trek might finally give viewers an up close view of this mysterious enemy as they rain destruction on Mars. Whatever answers the Short Trek provides, you can bet we’ll be discussing it soon in an On Screen segment!

The Space Force and SPOC

While it seems unlikely to ever become what we know as Starfleet, the United States Space Force is now officially a reality. The sixth branch of U.S. armed services was established by December 20th’s National Defense Authorization Act.  And it seems that those in charge have a sense of humor, and just might be Trekkies! Because, according to a U.S. Air Force public affairs article, all of the 14th Air Force’s personnel have been officially reassigned to a new unit called Space Operations Command.  Yes, that’s SPOC for short. According to the article, the SPOC provides space capabilities such as space electronic warfare, satellite communications, missile warning, nuclear detonation detection, and lots of others to the US Space Force and other armed services. No word yet on whether this will be followed by a KIRK or SCOTTY division.

Janeway Monument Reaches Fundraising Goals

This year will mark the 25th anniversary of Star Trek: Voyager, and a group of citizens in Bloomington, Indiana has achieved their hopes of celebrating the anniversary in a special way. Having met their crowdfunding goal of $12,500, the Captain Janeway Bloomington Collective group will commission a monument to Voyager’s fearless captain, Kathryn Janeway. 

Speaking about the achievement, co-leader of the effort, Peter Kaczmarcyk (KAZ – mar-sik), said “Since we announced we hit our goal, people just seem amazed that we pulled this off. We’re not the first people who had this idea, but we’re the first ones who really carried it through.”

So, on May 23rd, shortly after the future birthday of Captain Janeway, a bust of the Starfleet captain will be installed to downtown Bloomington. Along with it, there will be a Starfleet delta-shaped limestone base and an informational table about the Captain. The Collective had originally planned to have the monument installed on May 20th, Janeway’s birthday.  But the overwhelming number of people wishing to attend caused them to reschedule for the following weekend. The community will also celebrate the event with other events all week, like a “Science of Star Trek” event at the local science museum. The group has contacted CBS to help convince Kate Mulgrew to attend the event in honor of her famous role, but no promises have been forthcoming. To find out more about the event, follow the link in our show notes.

Ocasio-Cortez Gets a Dog

Our last story is a little bit silly, and a little bit fun. It certainly seems like Star Trek has stepped into the light in the halls of Washington, D.C.  Last year, Trekkies were abuzz about Senator Cory Booker’s declaration of love for Star Trek at San Diego Comic Con. And this week another elected representative in Washington has teased her own Trekkie inclinations. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted to Instagram to happily reveal that she has adopted a puppy, declaring that she’s /QUOTE/ thinking something Star Trek related or Bronx/Queens/NYC/social good related. /ENDQUOTE/ for the new pup’s name.

While it’s really just a heartwarming little bit of news fluff, it does bring to mind a couple of interesting questions. From a cynic’s perspective, does the Star Trek name dropping on Capitol Hill now just imply that Trekkies have become an important voting bloc? Are candidates actually wooing Star Trek voters, now? Or, more earnestly, what does it mean that the representatives in Washington are Trekkies just like us?

Star Trek Online and Gaming News

by Anthony Cox

Borg Resurgence Featured TFO Event

The announcement arrived during our winter break, and the official details for the Borg Resurgence event are here. Having begun this past Tuesday, January 7th and will run for three weeks, brings remastered versions of Infected: The Conduit, Khitomer Vortex, and Into the Hive. DPS chasers take note, Content Designer John Hegner, says in the announcement blog that Infected will still be a viable DPS check with some wonderful new voiceover. The goal for the remastering was to make these TFOs streamlined and more accessible to new players, with clearly defined success and fail conditions. You can complete any of these three TFOs to earn your daily progress, and once you’ve completed these for 14 days you’ll receive a set of the Cyclical Modulation Ground Weapons. Which includes a Compression Pistol, Sniper Rifle, and Blast Assault. These weapons have a unique tertiary attack that when activated cycles the energy type it is firing while gaining shield  and resistance penetration buffs. These weapons also feature a brand new appearance. As we mentioned previously this will be the final event in the Free Tier 6 ship coupon campaign and there will be the usual Zen buyout option available.

Star Trek Online Asking for Your Favorite Moments

At the end of this month Star Trek Online will begin its tenth anniversary celebration. While we don’t have any details on this major event Star Trek Online is asking fans to share their favorite memory from the past ten years. You can do that by using the hashtag TenYearsofSTO on Twitter and Facebook.

Clear Skies Announces Star Trek Online Partnership

Clear Skies, the Star Trek RPG show from the creators and cast of Shield of Tomorrow, streamed a Roundtable Q&A this past week and made a few announcements. Towards the end of the discussion it was revealed what their partnership with Star Trek Online would entail. The new show will take place aboard the USS Ross, named after the first Native American Engineer, Mary G. Ross, and the ship design will be an original design from Star Trek Online’s Thomas Marrone. The ship will be a variant of the Galaxy class and the design will be an available skin in Star Trek Online sometime in the near future.

Patch Notables

The patch notes for PC had a few interesting things we wanted to mention. The devs have added item filtering and searching in all inventory windows. This includes personal inventory, bank inventory, account bank, etc. There are two new material types for the Guardian Cruiser. 8 and 8B, along with two new window types, five and six. They’ve resolved an issue with the Winter Event buyout not properly processing. And finally Ground Borg enemies will adapt slower to weapons that have a lot of tics per firing cycle.

EVENTS

PC: Junior Officer Weekend

Captains on PC can rank up those Commendations with a Junior Officer Weekend January 16th thru the 20th.

Console: Tholian Red Alert

And Console Captains can fend off the Tholians in a Tholian Red Alert weekend from now until Monday, January 13th.

PRIORITY ONE ARMADA NEWS

This week in Armada News:

Join us for TFO Tuesday – each Tuesday we team up with other Armada members to earn marks and dilithium. 

• Fed Fleets – we now have Alpha, Beta and Gamma Fleets fully upgraded – including the colonies.
• KDF fleets – the House of Martok has its Tier V upgrade for colony itself – and just needs provisions to finish. Please contribute if you have any extras.
• House of Mogh – is now level 81 after completing its final Starbase Tier V upgrade. Well done. Tribbles and Bits – new ongoing weekly event – we want to hear from you – so each week, we are going to ask a random question about Star Trek and about STO and we want your responses. Link posted on the website.

WEEKLY TOP TIP

The Borg Resurgence event brings us a set of new unique ground weapons. While there’s three different versions depending on your ground build flavor, they each have a special third attack that replaces the melee attack and cycles the weapon through all of the different energy weapon types. Now it’s possible that this may not be the weapon for you. Or at least not something your captain plans on keeping equipped. But we do want to mention one good reason to grind out the daily progress to acquire these unique weapons. Often times we get presented with a personal endeavour to complete that requires a specific ground energy weapon type. If you’re like me, I like to stick as close to canon immersion as possible. So my Feds have phasers, Klingons and Romulans carry disruptors, you get the idea. So completing a Tetryon endeavour can be a bit bothersome. Well, with this jack-of-all-energy types I can just cycle to the type I need for the endeavour and finish it right up! So go out there and get the new shiny. It may just come in handy sooner than you think.

Other Gaming News

Star Trek Bridge Crew Now Available for Oculus Quest

The popular VR game, Star Trek Bridge Crew puts you and three of your starfleet crewmates in command of the bridge of a Federation starship, whether it’s the bridge of the original 1701 Enterprise, a Kelvin universe starship, or the 1701-D bridge. Provided you purchase the TNG expansion that is. Well, if you own the all-in-one Oculus Quest system, now you too can beam aboard your favorite bridge and crew your favorite starship in VR. Star Trek Bridge Crew can be purchased for the Oculus Quest for $29.99. This game is cross-platform compatible, so you can play with any of your friends who have the game. Even if they are playing on a PS4 or Oculus Rift. It is worth noting that even if you don’t have a VR rig the game can be played without it.

Tagged as: MMo, Janeway, Indiana, Roddenberry, Occulus, SPOC, STO, quest, Voyager, Clear Skies, trek, picard, cryptic, ViacomCBS.