Star Trek: Strange New Worlds [SPOILERS]

Yes, but if humans, Klingons, Romulans, and Cardassians were at all similar (certainly if they were similar enough to interbreed!), they wouldn't have needed to find the message to let them know that they were related.

Presumably the Romulans--like their Vulcan cousins--have copper-based blood. That alone would make them so extraordinarily different from humans, that interbreeding wouldn't be remotely possible. Like I said, an elephant (or any other animal on Earth) would be a closer match.

I suppose it changes the assumption that the ability to crossbreed is a happy coincidence into the knowledge that it was an intentional alteration.

Presumably there's something in the "junk DNA" that we take for granted that makes it possible. After all, people with wildly different blood types can still have children together, and pregnant women can safely carry fetuses with a blood type that would kill them if they received it through a transfusion.

are you trying for a "greatest hits" thread?

Why? They could think that the ability to interbreed was just a happy accident.

Or it could be that cultural or other biases get in the way of the obvious nature of their similarities. In the real world, people thought for centuries (and still think in many cases/ways) that relatively minute biological differences make members of various races inherently different, and that interbreeding between groups would be unnatural.

I mean, slave owners in the 18th century saw slaves as basically farm animals.
Well...then they really loved to fuck farm animals then.
Including the third US president.

No. Believing an astronomically unlikely occurrence to be a happy accident would be almost as implausible as it being a happy accident.

Human: "Wow! It turns out our species can actually interbreed! That's incredible! How could that possibly have come about? Are we related? Did someone engineer us to be compatible?"

Vulcan: "It's what you humans call s happy accident."

Human: "Oh. Darn, I thought I was onto something there..."

Cultural inhibitions are one thing, biological compatibility is another.

I've got to throw a big "maybe" on some of that. We don't know if life could evolve without DNA/RNA, so it's entirely possible that any aliens we encounter will have DNA/RNA because it's necessary for life to exist. (Then again, life may not need DNA/RNA, which complicate hybridization immensely.) Of course, in the Trekverse, we know that a good chunk of the alien species all have a common ancestor, so a human/Vulcan hybrid wouldn't be as difficult to create as one between a human and a Horta, for example.

Even ignoring the common ancestry of humans and Vulcans, since both species have DNA/RNA, there's a good chance much of their biochemistry (at least in terms of things like ph levels, etc) wouldn't be wildly different than that of humans. There have been attempts to create DNA using something other than the CGAT ones found in all living things on Earth but nothing's worked. (There's a controversial study that claimed they managed to get arsenic incorporated into DNA instead of phosphorous, but everything credible I've seen on that study says it was flawed and the results should be discounted.)

On Earth, there are species that do not share a common ancestor (at least in the past million years or so) and have independently evolved the same characteristics (say bioluminescence, for example) and they share the same genetic code for those characteristics. It's entirely possible, and I'd say plausible, that if you want a certain characteristic using DNA, there's a very limited number of ways it can be accomplished. Meaning that a bipedal organism with two arms is going to have a lot in common with any other bipedal organism regardless of species or where it evolved. In his The Left Hand of the Electron, Asimov lays out a pretty convincing argument as to why it's unlikely that a non-oxygen breathing species could ever evolve to be as intelligent as humans, simply because the yield from the chemical reactions using a gas different than oxygen to breath are either lower or require far greater energy than those using oxygen. That's not to say that species couldn't evolve that breathed fluorine, for example, just that they'd likely not be terribly complicated organisms. Of course, if they have something other than DNA, then all options are on the table.

Eh, not necessarily. We really don't know why Sarek and Amanda hooked up. It's entirely possible that one of the reasons why was because they turned out to be highly genetically compatible, despite being largely different species. And given Spock's got part of Amanda's genetics, it might not have been much more complicated than someone having an organ transplant from a close relative today. (Though, given that docs carry around pills that enable people to regrow a kidney in almost no time, the science of anti-rejection drugs might have been lost.)

It seemed pretty clear from The Chase and elsewhere in Trek that it is a commonplace attitude among Romulans, Klingons and Cardassians to pride themselves as culturally if not biologically superior to other races. Even given the message in The Chase and with the evidence of the possibility of interbreeding, there was at least one group (I forget which) that refused to believe it. Again, the real world experience shows that members of different races are genetically compatible and yet to this day, it is a not uncommon belief that members of X race are superior to Y race as to Z trait.

I think you mean third, i.e. Thomas Jefferson. I don't think that John Adams had slaves or had sex with them.

Corrected!

Any idea when we'll get a trailer?

None.

Given how the Prodigy stuff didn't start dropping until we were practically right up on it, I'll guess January-February.

Maybe.

hmmm... Toronto locals 873 and 416 (craft services, specifically IIRC) aren't on there. wonder if that'll effect/not effect local production or if it's jsut another GWB on 9/13/01 forgetting Canada exists?

Not so fast.

A reliable source says SNW is going to start production on season 2 in early 2022.

So that's both Picard and SNW cranking multiple seasons out in rapid fire succession.

https://trekmovie.com/2021/11/01/re...-new-worlds-planning-production-for-season-2/

Filming apparently started in February 2021, so seems about right.

Now give us a trailer.

You've already got one. Buy your folks some condoms, ffs.

kinda tickled that they're releasing it the day after star wars day and not first contact day instead.

Teaser poster.

Also, confirmation that La'an is related to Khan somehow.

https://trekmovie.com/2022/02/01/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-teaser-poster-and-details-revealed/

That ship.

Tango!

Neat.

I do wonder how you’re going to defend this retcon.