Daystrom Institute
Welcome to Daystrom Institute!
Serious, in-depth discussion about Star Trek from both in-universe and real world perspectives.
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Rules
1. Explain your reasoning
All threads and comments submitted to the Daystrom Institute must contain an explanation of the reasoning put forth.
2. No whinging, jokes, memes, and other shallow content.
This entire community has a “serious tag” on it. Shitposts are encouraged in Risa.
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Episode Guides
The /r/DaystromInstitute wiki held a number of popular Star Trek watch guides. We have rehosted them here:
- Kraetos’ guide to Star Trek (the original series)
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: The Animated Series
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: The Next Generation
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- Darth_Rasputin32898’s guide to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- OpticalData’s guide to Star Trek: Voyager
- petrus4’s guide to Star Trek: Voyager
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I think the premise is interesting. Klingons are interesting. Spock in command is interesting. M'benga and Chapel fist fighting Klingons? God save us all. And then to face no consequence. It's a shame such an interesting premise is muddied with all of the nonsense.
From what I understand based on what they said in BTS stuff, the fight was partly inspired by the fact that Babs Olusanmokun is a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Why they had to have him be juiced-up fighting Klingons, I don't know. Lord knows he could have been fighting humans without steroids.
I think the reason was simply that klingons (like vulcans) are usually depicted as significantly stronger than humans on a baseline, which is why we usually deal with them with weapons rather than fist fights. That being said, I think it was an answer looking for a question, and agree it wasn't entirely necessary for the plot.
Why would they face consequences?
Given the history of dangerous substances radically changing a person's physiology in Star Trek, they'll be fine. People turn into completely different species and then return to normal without any scarring, or indeed even a hair out of place.
I wish there was some time given to recovery from such extreme bodily trauma, but the precedent has been long established that you just spend a minute in sickbay, maybe get a hypospray, and you're back on duty in no time.
I mean, the way it was portrayed, it seems like M'Benga has done this before, and that it's dangerous and/or has long-term effects. I assume this will be picked up again later in the season.
That was my thought exactly.
Chapel’s question to M’Benga whether he wanted to do that to himself again clearly implied there is a physiological or psychological cost to using the substance, perhaps even an addiction that he’s already struggled with.
Do we know what this substance is?
Not yet - Memory Alpha is referring to it as "a stimulant."
Yeah I think there are probabllllyy consequences to taking that substance, maybe the show won't deliver on them but I would be a bit surprised if it didn't. I don't feel like they are just not going to mention that again.
I have a feeling the go juice will resurface in later episodes with consequences, it did seem to have ominous introduction so don't think it will be forgotten....hopfully.