Yeh. I think part of it is it’s just hard to match season 4. I think the series’ single funniest dialogue comes from “Trusted Sources”.

Ransom: “How much do bench?”

Magistrate: “We don’t do it for the numbers. We do it to quiet the voices in our heads!”

Ransom: “Cool. I bench 25.”

(Starts Daystrom Institute post on how US OSHA became UE OSHA became UFP OSHA)

Also, half-dead macrovirus infected with a worm put in charge of Starfleet Medical.

Phasers or Bat’leths (Mek’leths are fine as well)?

We could also do a round of Chula, a solar sail race, ambo-jitsu, springball, darts, etcetera.

Burnham falls afoul of the “no promoted mains” rule, unfortunately.

I find it kind of sad they haven’t done anything in the 2290s-2350s era. I think it would be fun to have a series with April in monster maroon coming up on his second retirement in the late 2310s or early 2320s.

The IDW miniseries Picard’s Academy was set in this era (aligning with previous canon of when Picard went to the Academy). I enjoyed it (checked it out from my local library), though probably half just because of Spock’s outfit, honestly.

EDIT: April probably wouldn’t be the primary focus. It would probably focus on a diplomatic ship or maybe even the Academy or civilians. It probably couldn’t be too action-based, as we don’t want to undermine this being one of the most peaceful eras in Federation history - I worry to do anything interesting, you’d have to pull Disco-style shenanigans again. No matter one’s opinion on Disco, I feel like it would be kind of obnoxious to do another “this secretly happened and no one knows about it” series.

My only theory is they were kind of as prolific as the TOS film uniforms and lasted into the 2240s and were getting rare but still seen occasionally in the 2260s.

Can’t be as bad as Earth: Final Conflict - I’ve watched the first season-and-a-half and was sustained at first by plot and then by awe at how shark jumpy it got after Boone died and how alien space baby rapid aged into an adult man and replaced him as the main character.

After watching other Star Trek shows, you’ll find the true beauty is the vast majority of Lower Decks completely fits into canon, as “the true Star Trek lore” contains some ridiculous stuff.

I just realized something else - I think this episode might contain the first mention of Cetacean ops going on an away mission, which reveals a lot about how their Starfleet lives might work.

I still wonder about several things, which I’ve been wanting to make my own post about anyway and probably will soon.

You dare defile Lower Decks by calling other stuff “More cannon”! Experience bij, petaQ! 😉

In all seriousness, though, I would say DS9. The first season is much better than TNG season 1 in my opinion - not perfect, but livable. It mostly gets better from there, though like VOY, be prepared for sudden urges for Rick Berman to “accidentally fall out an airlock”, if you know what I mean.

This might be tinted by DS9 being my favorite Trek series, although Lower Decks is putting up fierce competition for DS9’s top spot in my heart.

Still waiting for word on LD soundtrack vol 2. I want more of those good Westlake tunes!

I need to the h*** give Babylon 5 a try eventually.

I have a few questions on uniforms.

For one, I just find it a bit strange some of them are wearing ENT-era uniforms, especially considering the base was updated in the 2260s. Although the uniforms look slick, chronologically, it almost feels like a run down American naval wessel in the 1970s wearing revolutionary war uniforms. I wonder if this points to the ENT uniforms being used for a really long time (no, my time is not finally here) much like the TOS film uniforms, if at least as a starbase uniform. Thus, it was still perfectly normal to see an ENT uniform in the 2230s and 40s, and not all that uncommon in the early 2260s.

Now what really confuses me, though, is how the base says they don’t have combadges, which conflicts with the previous depictions of base officers in LD:“Trusted Sources”:

I at first thought that maybe they were just embroidered like TOS uniforms. However, someone on Memory Alpha also caught this frame of one of these same personnel in 5x05:

The badge is gone, which suggests they are removable. This implies two possibilities: they were aesthetic, non-functioning badges, or they were real combadges.

I wonder why they disappeared. One theory might be the station used to be able to support a few, but the system broke and the few combadges in circulation were retired.

This beings up an intriguing question of when Kahless being a clone became common knowledge.

We only deal in gold pressed Latinum here.

There’s plenty of other crappy Starbases in the Federation… certain of that.

It’s going to be about the Post-Atomic Horror… Or else! Give me my campy Kangaroo court.

To be fair, I wouldn’t exactly call original Khan good representation either, in the sense that he draws on some negative ethnic stereotypes.

Still a fun villain, though.

After more research, there’s different frames than the one Memory Alpha has for Captain Tersal that confirm that at least the upper part of the uniform is a normal TNG uniform and the highlights were just lightning. The cuffs are different, but that could be personal choice - she is the captain after all.

Actually kind of disappointing - they could have thrown in the abandoned uniforms for Generations as sort of a nod to the inspiration for the LD uniforms.

I might also add that Ma’ah’s family career is very similar to Boimler’s in some aspects, staying in line with how in Wej Duj he was supposed to be a Klingon analog of Boimler.