Modiphius' Star Trek Adventures TTRPG is getting a second edition this year, and the last of the sourcebooks for first first edition has been published, so I thought I would go through the entire collection and share some of my favourite art from the game.

STA Core Rulebook

Klingon Empire Core Rulebook

Rules Digest

Utopia Planitia Sourcebook

Command Division Supplement

Operations Division Supplement

Science Division Supplement

Division supplements cover triptych

Beta Quadrant Sourcebook

Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook

Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook

Delta Quadrant Sourcebook

These are the Voyages Mission Compendium

Strange New Worlds Mission Compendium

Shackleton Expanse Campaign Guide

Keyhole to Eternity Campaign

Discovery (2256-2258) Campaign Guide

Lower Decks Campaign Guide

Federation-Klingon War Tactical Campaign

Two episodes to go. I'm gutted this is going to be the end, just as the show truly found its stride and grew the beard. Feels a lot like the end of Enterprise. Every season has been better than the last, and the earlier episodes were pretty good. I recently started rewatching S1 after getting an IRL friend into it and he's absolutely loving it. DISCO gave us something unique and different, and if you ask me, Trek is a big enough tent to try new things sometimes, even if they don't always work out the way they hoped.

If Michelle Paradise ever reads this - you've done incredible work and I'm sorry so many of the fans are haters. Looking forward to what comes next.

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The title refers to Labyrinths of the Mind, a book written by Dr Marina Derex, a Betazoid and one of the group that hid the Progenitor technology 800 years prior. A labyrinth is also a term for a maze, the original designed by the inventor Daedelus of Greek myth to house the Minotaur.

As mentioned in DIS: “Erigah”, L’ak was the Scion, a direct descendant of the Breen emperor, and held the genetic code of the Yod-Thot, “they who rule”, without whom his uncle, Primarch Ruhn, could not claim the throne. In DIS: “Jinaal”, Stamets discovered the the Progenitor techonlogy could potentially bring someone back to life.

Discovery jumps to just outside the Badlands, first appearing in DS9: “The Maquis” as an area of violent plasma storms in proximity to Bajor and Cardassia.

The shape of Hy’Rell’s head bumps resemble those of Xindi-Primates, first appearing in ENT: “The Xindi”, one of six intelligent Xindi species that were native toCerenkov The other possibility, taking into account her long white hair and blue eyes, is that she’s an Efrosian (ST VI).

Cerenkov radiation is created when particles exceed the speed of light in a given medium, creating a shockwave with a characteristic blue glow. In real life, it is most often seen around nuclear reactors submerged in water (the speed of light in water is 75% of that in vacuum, allowing emissions from the reactor to exceed that).

Discovery was given the ability to cloak when it was refitted (DIS: “That Hope is You, Part 2”). During the 24th Century, the Treaty of Algeron forbade the Federation from using or developing cloaking devices (TNG: "The Pegasus"), with a notable exception being the Defiant during the Dominion War (DS9: “The Search”). Apparently that prohibition no longer applies in the 32nd Century.

Kwejian, Book’s world, was destroyed in DIS: “Kobayashi Maru”, making him one of the last of his species.

The scenes in the Eternal Archive were filmed at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library in Toronto, Canada.

An oubliette is a specific type of dungeon, of which the only access is a trap door installed in the ceiling of the dungeon, and usually extremely narrow, such that the prisoner was unable to sit down.

The Tuli tree was native to Kwejian and had a distinctive smell to its sap. The decor of Book’s ship was made to simulate Tuli wood (DIS: “Stormy Weather”). Inside the box are cuttings from the World Root, a tree root system that reached all the way around the planet (DIS: “Kobayashi Maru”) and was sacred to the Kwejian.

Culber identifies the device affecting Burnham as a nucleonic emitter. Nucleonic particles appear in a number of places in Star Trek lore, but most appropriately in TNG: “The Inner Light”, where a nucleonic beam from a Kataan probe was responsible for sending Picard into a mindscape where he lived out a simulated lifetime in a similar manner to what Burnham is experiencing. In that episode, an attempt to disrupt the beam nearly killed Picard, which is the risk Culber is alluding to.

The old school card index drawers Burnham looks at makes me nostalgic for the days when I was a student librarian (yes, I’m old). The mindscape Archives’ category number for history is 002818/5 - in our Dewey Decimal System, history (and geography) is 900.

Book says “Those who learn history aren’t doomed to repeat it.” The usual phrasing of that adage is “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” The philosopher George Satayana is credited with the original “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Burnham refers to the itronok, a predatory species they encounted on Trill while searching for the clue there (DIS: “Jinaal”).

Trémaux’s algorithm is a maze-solving method devised by Charles Pierre Trémaux, which involves drawing lines on the floor marking a path. A version of it - called a depth first search - is used to search tree or graph data structures.

Derex’s reading list references Talaxians, Neelix’s species from VOY and Hupyrians, the species of the Ferengi Grand Nagus’ servants (DS9: “The Nagus”, et al.). Euclid was a Greek mathematician who devised an axiomatic system for geometry.

Rhys intends to use the plasma storms for cover, which is exactly what made the Badlands effective as a hiding place for the Bajoran Resistance and the Maquis back in their day.

Matching weapons to shield frequencies to get past them is a tried and true method, demonstrated most dramatically when the Enterprise-D was destroyed in ST: Generations. Duodeca is a base-20 system.

Hysperia is a planet where the inhabitants have a culture based on a medieval fantasy motif (LD: “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie”). In the 24th Century, Chief Engineer Billups of the USS Cerritos was a native of Hysperia and the ostensible Crown Prince, although he abdicated that position.

Commander Jemison shares a last name with former astronaut Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman in space, who appeared in TNG: “Second Chances” as LT jg Palmer.

A tergun is a sacred Breen oath. Ruhn’s remark that the Federation to save the few would risk the many is reminiscent of Kirk’s inversion in ST III of Spock’s adage about the needs of the many and the few from ST II: “The needs of the one outweighed the needs of the many.”

“Never turn your back on a Breen” is a Romulan saying (DS9: “By Inferno’s Light”), cited by Rayner in DIS: “Erigah”.

• The episode’s title, “Erigah”, refers a form of Breen “blood bounty” first mentioned a couple episodes ago in “Mirrors”.

• The opening shot is of the USS Locherer, first seen in “Jinaal”, and the Terran warp pod that Moll and L’ak escaped with in “Mirrors”.

• It’s Nhan! From Star Trek! Nhan was introduced in “Brother” and is played by Rachael Ancheril.

• ”Last time I saw you, also a personal situation, you fired on Discovery with photon torpedoes, and set off an isolytic weapon.” Nhan is referring to the season four episode, “Rubicon”.

• ”You did this to him!” Moll stabbed himself while in a fight with Burnham in “Mirrors”.

• ”Fierce as a sa-te kru.” This is the first mention of a sa-te kru on screen, but the cat like predator from Vulcan/Ni’Var originated in a six page comic called “When Worlds Collide: Spock Confronts the Ultimate Challenge” written by Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci, and drawn by Paul Pope that was published in a 2009 issue of “Wired”.

• Throughout the course of the episode, outside of Federation HQ, in addition to the USS Discovery A we see:

    • Two Mars-class starships

    • USS Excalibur - 32nd century Constitution-class

    • USS Credence - Introduced in “Choose to Live”

    • USS LaMar - A ship of the same class as the USS Dresslehaus

    • USS Lochlerer - Merian-class

• The fourth piece of the Progenitor technology researchers’ map piece is now included in the opening credits sequence.

• ”Let’s not forget what happened last time Breen entered Federation space.” The last time we know for certain that the Breen entered Federation space was in “The Changing Face of Evil” when they attacked Starfleet HQ on Earth during the Dominion War, some 834 years ago. It is entirely possible that Rayner is referring to a more recent event that we the audience are unaware of.

    • Later, Tilly claims, ”The last time the Breen paid a visit to the Federation, they destroyed an entire city.” That might be a reference to the attack on San Francisco in “The Changing Face of Evil”, though it would be an exaggeration of the scale of the destruction. And again, 834 years have since passed.

• Rayner evokes the Romulan saying, ”Never turn your back on a Breen.” While in a Dominion prison station in “By Inferno’s Light” a Romulan fellow prisoner told Doctor Bashir that was a saying among her people.

• The Betazoid emblem on the clue that we will learn is a library card, was originally designed by a Trek fan named David Bilic for the “Birth of the Federation 2” mod. It was first seen on screen in “The Star Gazer”.

• The USS Mitchell was first seen in “Rubicon”.

• ”What’s worse than death?”
”This conversation, for starters.”
In “Magic to make the Sanest Man Go Mad”, Harry Mudd claimed that the weaponized dark matter beads that Captain Lorca had were rumoured to be the most painful way to die; now they need to be downgraded to number two.

• Jett Reno apparently makes a cocktail called the Seven of Limes, presumably named for the notable captain of the USS Enterprise G.

• Unlike the 24th century Breen Interceptors, the Breen Dreadnought appears to be more or less symmetrical.

    • It is stated that this Dreadnought is the one Burnham and Rayner saw outside the destroyed Federation HQ in a possible future in “Face the Strange”, though I will be honest, it was too dark for me to make out on the screen at the time.

• Burnham learned that Kellerun was used as a Breen outpost. Apparently that didn’t come up when she did the research in to Kellerun culture she mentioned in “Mirrors”.

    • Does this indicate that Kellerun is not part of the Federation, or is the attack on Kellerun the previous entry into Federation space that Rayner mentioned earlier in the episode?

• Reno claims she had ”tons of contacts in the book trade” 800 years earlier. Discovery and its crew jumped to the 32nd century 933 years earlier. I think it’s safe to assume that Reno was rounding off, however, 133 years is still a pretty big gap. This can only mean that at some point before the jump to the 32nd century, Reno also found herself in the 24th century smuggling books. I eagerly await that spin-off.

• President T’Rina bluffs Primarch Ruhn by claiming the Federation has received an offer from another Breen Primarch for Moll and L’ak. As we all know, Vulcans cannot lie.

    • Vulcans lie all the time.

• ”This bluff wouldn’t fool a hatchling.” Ruhn’s remarks imply that Breen are oviparous.

• Rayner states that Primarch Tahal named her ship the Tau Ceti ”After a lethal viper with a slow acting venom.” It’s unclear if this viper is native to the Tau Ceti system, which can be seen on star charts going back to “Conspiracy”.

• Book is able to get a psychometric reading off the library card to to figure out where the Archive is. This is the second time Book’s extrasensory abilities have been the key to solving one of the clues, the first being in “Jinaal”.

    • The reading from the library card indicates the archive is in the Badlands, a volatile region of space, conceived of for the premiere of VOY, “The Caretaker”, and first seen in the DS9 episode, “The Maquis, Part 1”.

• ”Sell me a goat farm on Bopak III while you’re at it.” Bopak III is the world where the Jem’Hadar first, Goran’Ager enlisted Doctor Bashir to try and use the locally available materials to cure his men of addiction to ketracel white in “Hippocratic Oath”.

• After stabbing himself and intentionally overdosing on medication meant to save him, L’ak dies as he lived. Stupidly.

    • In an interview with TrekMovie, series editor Carlos Cisco said that while Breen are less vulnerable in their solid form -- still susceptible to self inflicted stab wounds though -- the act of maintaining it requires so much energy they are slower, more sluggish, and less intelligent while doing so. This is the form that L'ak chooses to remain in.

• Rayner advocates for firing on the Breen before they can make the first move. in “The Vulcan Hello” Burnham so strongly believed that the USS Shenzhou should fire the first shot against the Klingons that she was willing to foment a mutiny to do so, a fact that she later points out to him.

She's always this small, fair skinned dark featured woman, but more importantly is her strength and gentleness, and how they empower eachother. The subtleties are differently from series to series, but they're all good portrayals of a complex, interesting character.

It's been a while since I've watched the entire show. Unfortunstely, I'm already involved in some other binge watching of a show, so, I'd like to hear about your favourite episodes of TAS so I can toss them in between.

Whenever I see a conversation along the lines of "what episode should I show my friend/partner/etc. to get them hooked on Star Trek," the suggestions are pretty predictable - your "best" episodes that are regarded to represent the franchise at its peak.

I like to take a different approach, trying to find episodes that I feel are most representative of the series - the "average" Star Trek episode. If you show someone the "best," there's nowhere to go but down, and it can set someone up for disappointment.

In the case of Star Trek, I actually find this pretty difficult, and I don't think I've come up with any that I feel are really good answers, so I'm taking it to the crowd: what are the most representative episodes of Star Trek.

To me, these are the boxes that probably need to be ticked:

• Enjoyable (obviously).
• A conventional structure that doesn't deviate from the norm too much - this is a flexible concept, but I think it excludes things like "Darmok," or "Tapestry," or "In the Pale Moonlight," which are not really conventional.
• Any series is fair game.

What do you think? What are some "normal" Star Trek episodes that would serve as good representation of what the franchise usually is?

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As stated in DIS: “Mirrors”, an erigah is a Breen blood bounty.

The ship holding Moll and L’ak’s shuttle in a tractor beam is the USS Locherer (NCC-325062), a Merian-class starship first seen in DIS: “Jinaal” and named after the late J.P. Locherer, who was a cinematographer on the show.

Burnham identifies subspace frequency Epsilon 19 as a courier channel and that “special offer” is a courier distress code. With her is Commander Nhan, a Barzan who journeyed with Discovery from the 23rd Century but subsequently transferred to Federation Security in the 32nd. She was last seen in DIS: “Rubicon”.

Nhan refers to what happened between her and Book at their last encounter, when she argued for destroying his ship to prevent him using the isolytic weapon she mentioned. So there’s a bit of awkward history there.

A sa-te kru cat is a Vulcan species, a large predator similar to the le-matya. It was mentioned in the novel Vulcan’s Forge, but this is its first on-screen mention.

Given the Breen first appeared in DS9, there are plenty of back references to the series.

Culber says that there’s some evidence Breen are capable of “somatic cell” regeneration in extreme cold. This tracks with reports that the Breen homeworld had a freezing climate (DS9: “Til Death Do Us Part”) and that they wore refrigeration suits (DS9: “The Changing Face of Evil”). I’m not sure why Culber needs to distinguish “somatic cell”, since that is really any other cell in the body aside from sperm and egg cells, but I guess it sounds medically cool.

Breen Dreadnoughts (Rezeth Destroyers) are ships from Star Trek Online. As we see later, the 32nd Century version is much bigger.

The Breen used to be a Confederacy in the 24th Century (DS9: “Strange Bedfellows”) but somewhere along the way it’s become an Imperium. There are six primarchs vying for the throne in the wake of the emperor’s death.

Rayner talks about the last time the Breen entered Federation space. With Vance saying that Starfleet was caught flat-footed, this is probably referring to the Breen sneak attack on Earth during the Dominion War which heavily damaged Starfleet Headquarters and San Francisco (“The Changing Face of Evil”). Tilly’s later remark about the Breen “destroying an entire city” may also refer to this.

Using thoron emitters and duranium shadows to fool enemy sensors is a reference to DS9: “Emissary”, when the station used such a tactic to block sensors and make themselves appear better armed than they were. In DS9: “The Way of the Warrior”, the Changeling Martok believed the station was pulling the same trick, but that time he proved to be wrong. The Romulan saying “Never turn your back on a Breen” is from DS9: “By Inferno’s Light”.

The yellow alert symbols are the same design as the “Alert: Condition Red” indicators dating back to ST II, albeit in yellow. The USS Mitchell (NCC-325027), another Merian-class starship, is named after the late Kenneth Mitchell, who played Kol, Kol-sha and Aurellio in DIS. She was last mentioned in DIS: “Coming Home”.

L’ak is Primarch Ruhn’s nephew and carries within him the genetic code of the Yod-Thot, “they who rule”. He is also a direct descendant of the emperor and Ruhn cannot claim the throne without him.

One of Reno’s former jobs was as a bartender - the closed captioning says “Ashalon IV”, but it might be a misspelling of “ Aschelan IV”. Aschelan V was a planet which housed a Cardassian fuel depot (DS9: “Dreadnought”). She refers to a cocktail named “Seven of Limes”, which is an obvious pun on Seven of Nine, although Reno may not know the name’s provenance given that she left for the future about a century before Annika Hansen was assimilated.

A “Code One Alpha” is probably related to or the same as the 23rd-24th Century “Code One Alpha Zero” which is an emergency condition ordered when there is an attack (ST 2009) or a distress call (TNG: “Relics”).

Kellerun was, for a time, used as a Breen forward base by Primarch Tahal. Since Rayner was there, it must have been relatively recent, although to be fair we don’t know how long Kellerun live.

Reno remarks that the hunt “sounds like something out of a holodeck adventure for the littles.” She may be referring to The Littles, a series of children’s adventure novels featuring a family of tiny humanoids with mice-like faces and tails that were written between 1967 and 2003 by John Peterson. There was also an animated series that ran for 3 seasons between 1983 and 1985. Or I’m overthinking and she’s just talking about kids in general.

Rayner says Tahal named her ship the Tau Ceti after a lethal viper with a slow acting venom. Tau Ceti, is of course, the name of a star 12 light years away from Earth and has been mentioned many times in Star Trek.

Bopak III was an uninhabited planet (at least in 2372) in the Gamma Quadrant and the location for the events of DS9: “Hippocratic Oath”.

Tricordrazine is a stimulant apparently derived from cordrazine (TOS: “The City on the Edge of Forever”) and appeared in several TNG episodes, including TNG: “Ethics” and “Shades of Grey”.

The Badlands is an area of space in proximity to Cardassia and Bajor (and DS9), known for its violent plasma storms (DS9: “The Maquis”). Both the Bajoran Resistance and the Maquis used it as a staging area to hide from enemy patrols during their respective conflicts. In 2371, while pursuing a Maquis ship there, the USS Voyager was hurled across the galaxy to the Delta Quadrant by an alien force (VOY: “Caretaker”).

Written by: M. Raven Metzner

Directed by: Jon Dudkowski

• Doctor Kovich gives Burnham a list of the five scientists who had the task of researching the Progenitor technology, three of whom we’ve already learned about. The remaining two are a Denobulan, Hitoroshi Kreel, and a Betazoid named Marina DeRex. The first Betazoid we were introduced to in Trek was TNG’s Deanna Troi, played by Marina Sirtis.

• The opening sequence now shows the third map piece being added to the whole.

• Burnham gives Tilly a rundown of what she learned about the pre-warp Halem’nite language. It was established in the series premiere, “The Vulcan Hello”, that Burnham’s expertise is xenoanthropology.

    • The episode is named for the whistlespeak that the Halem’nites use to communicate over long distances. This mode of communication is used briefly early in the episode, and never again, including during the climax that relies upon a child communicating with their father.

• When Burnham and Tilly beam down to Halem’no, they arrive with markings on their foreheads to appear as Halem’nites. Starfleet officers being surgically altered to blend in with the locals during an away mission goes back to “The Enterprise Incident” when Captain Kirk was disguised as a Romulan, but this is the first time we’ve seen those alterations be applied mid-transport.

• “Turns out you have a perfectly typical, healthy, and rather handsome human brain.” Doctor Culber’s body was recreated out of mycelial network fungus matter in “Saints of Imperfection”.

• “I’m the queen of endurance.” In “Point of Light”, Tilly, with some help from a jahSepp inhabiting her body, set a course record running a half-marathon through the corridors of the USS Discovery.

• The weather tower control board features Denobulan script, first seen in “Stigma”.

• It is revealed that the winner of the Journey of the Mother Compeer gets sacrificed to the gods in order to bring the rain.

    • There are a few examples of sentient beings being ritually sacrificed in Trek, though most are talked about as something done in the past, such as on live sacrifices to Molar on “Qo’noS” being mentioned in “Will You Take My Hand?”, or the inhabitants of the planet featured in the VOY episode, “Muse” having replaced live sacrifice with theatrical plays.

    • We saw that Kelpiens culture viewed their being taken by the Ba’ul as a sort of ritual sacrifice in “The Brightest Star”.

    • In “Life Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach”, the Majalans regularly sacrifice a child referred to as the ”First Servant” to a slow and painful death to maintain the technology which enabled their civilization.

• The walls of the weather tower’s vacuum chamber are made of solid tritanium, and apparently too dense to allow for a transporter lock. The hulls and bulkheads of many Federation starships including the Discovery and the USS Enterprise D were made of tritanium, but did not impede transporter functions.

• Burnham makes the decision to disregard the prime directive as opposed to letting Tilly and Ravah die. Kirk frequently ignored the prime directive to save lives, such as in “The Return of the Archons”, “A Taste of Armageddon”, and “The Apple”. Even Picard violated the prime directive in “Justice” to save the life of Wesley Crusher, and “Who Watches the Watchers” to prevent the Mintakans from worshiping him as a deity.

    • The punishment for violating the prime directive is apparently a significant amount of paperwork. In “Bread and Circuses” it is stated that Starfleet officers swear to die before violating the prime directive.

• The handle Ohvahz uses to open the sacrificial vacuum chamber functions very similarly to 24th century manual access clamps, such as the ones seen in “Star Trek: First Contact” and the LDS episode, “First First Contact”.

The whales Gracie and George were stated to have wandered into San Francisco as calves. Outside of feeding events which can include the famous bubble nets, humpback whale pods usually consist of a lone mother and calf (or calves) pairing with a trailing "escort" male. Humpbacks are one of the few mammals that can be nursing and still get pregnant. So anyway, the implication seems to be that if they were both calves and coming in the same time as a pod, they must have been orphaned from their mother and part of the same family group. Therefore, when its later revealed that Gracie is pregnant this one question comes to mind:

"Was the pregnancy a product of incest?"

No wonder they were originally going to be called Adam and Evie.

So, the plot in season five of Disco is hunting down clues left behind by scientists who uncovered the technology left behind by a precursor race of alien beings who panspermiad their genetics all over the galaxy, resulting in all your favourite humanoids, like humans, Klingons, Romulans, and Cardassians, as seen in the TNG episode, "The Chase".

And the antagonists of the season are not actually the tragically dumb young lovers, Moll and L'ak, but instead appear to be the Breen. We've learned Breen are, as Captain William Shaw might say, goo people. Or at least they're semi-transparent so long as they're within the confines of their refrigeration suit. If L'ak is any indication they can take a more solid, humanoid form, but the Breen appear to prefer to be Sour Patch Kids.

I'm going to speculate that we will learn that the Breen are not actually one of the species who resulted from the Progenitors seeding the galaxy, and as such the Progenitor technology is of limited use for them.

I've known for years that Gene Roddenberry wrote lyrics for Theme from Star Trek so that he could receive 50% of the royalties, but it never occurred to me that I should try and find out what those lyrics were. However, the lyrics did come up recently in a nerdy trivia show I watch, "Uhm, Actually", and now that I know them, I thought it important to share.

Beyond the rim of the star-light

My love is wand'ring in star-flight

I know he'll find in star-clustered reaches

Love, strange love a star woman teaches.

I know his journey ends never

His star trek will go on forever.

But tell him

While he wanders his starry sea

Remember, remember me.