Strictly speaking, there’s no formal rule - you won’t find a CBS/Paramount definition of “canon” anywhere that I’m aware of.

In practice, they stick with the tv shows and films.

But they’ve also worked very hard over the last few years to keep the tie-in novels and things like that “canon-ish,” in that they flesh out backstories from the shows, and the shows mostly don’t step on their efforts.

It sounds like the podcast is getting that treatment - as far as they’re concerned, this is what happened, and they have no plans to contradict it (and, considering the nature of the story, it’s not likely to come up one way or another).

Honestly, I’d take this with a small grain of salt.

I don’t doubt Variety’s reporting, but this amounts to a bullet point in a larger article, and while I’m sure they’ve “moved on” from whatever they had cooking, I think it’s also possible that they could develop another project with that crew, if they have a script that they like well enough.

We’ll see what happens - it’s been years of them being unable to get a project going, and I don’t expect that to change any time soon.

I don’t think it’s that straightforward. They just gave the South Park guys half a billion dollars, and re-upped Jon Stewart for another year.

The CBS News division is a tire fire right now, but I don’t think there have been signs of creative interference in the studios.

You know, yet.

I wonder is Lear ever tried to meet up with her Noonien Singh relatives?

With Tuvok’s comment about using his position to advocate for augments, I wonder if they’re considering a Tim Russ/Christina Chong spinoff.

I think I agree with your overall sentiment - not the greatest thing I’ve ever heard, but I’m glad they made it.

The highlights for me were the semi-rehabilitation of McGivers, and the fleshing out of Khan’s cult followers. And I’m glad they didn’t go down the “Khan wasn’t so bad” road, instead going with, “Khan was a pretty bad guy who maybe could have turned it around under different circumstances,” which…is a pretty Star Trek message, even if it’s not one I was very interested in exploring.

Klingon society is also deeply patriarchal. Women are denied direct inheritance and cannot sit on the High Council.

This seems to have been a relatively recent development (in TNG terms), as Azetbur seemed to be an uncontroversial pick for Chancellor.

And I think it does a disservice to omit Discovery’s take on the Klingons, if we’re taking about them growing with the audience. They took the feudal aspects and sprinkled in a healthy dose of xenophobia, which directly reflects cultural shifts over the last couple of decades.

Noted?

It bugs me a bit too, but I guess there’s nothing really wrong with it being “the exception that proves the rule” - something extraordinary happened in that case, unlikely to repeat.

And the pre-existing time travel rules weren’t exactly clear-cut, either - my original response glossed over bootstrap paradoxes like “Time’s Arrow”, where the characters travel back in time because they found Data’s head in San Francisco, which was only there due to said time travel.

But then, from the perspective of people in the future, I suppose all time travel events look like bootstrap paradoxes…

the Prime timeline holds together no matter what happens to it.

This isn’t quite true. Most of the time, Star Trek asserts that time travel to the past can and does alter the “prime” timeline - this is directly observed in “Past Tense” and “First Contact” (the movie, of course), when crew members who are protected from the alterations see reality warp before their very eyes. In those cases, the time travelers are forced to do what they can to “repair” history and get events to play out reasonably similar to how they orginally had. I assume things are still different, but they’re considered “close enough”.

The Kelvin event doesn’t just make a new branch going forward. The ripple hits both directions.

This is a little contentious, but I agree with this interpretation, even though the actual films are pretty vague on exactly how the alternate reality came to be. It’s certainly a contradiction of basically every other depiction of time travel. But hey, it was a unique circumstance.

TNG’s “Parallels” deserves a mention as well, since it states that their are infinite parallel realities (and we see a bunch of them).

In general, here’s what I think is true:

1. An infinite number of quantum realities exist. These have nothing to do with time travel, and simply…are.

2. Time travel to the past can, and usually does, alter the future. Separate quantum realities are not created. These are the situations that the 26th century Federation time cops are concerned with.

3. The Kelvin Timeline seems to be an exception to (2), though I suppose there’s a possibility that Spock and Nero simply tunnelled over to a different quantum reality, in addition to travelling through time. This is 100% pure fanon, though.

Rosalind Lear appears to be hiding some kind of alternative motivation for investigating into Khan and Ceti Alpha

I didn’t find this surprising in the sense that she’s seemed…biased, to say the least. But the scene with Tuvok was nice, even though in the moment I was wondering if it was Lear or Delmonda that was meant to be the liar. Context suggests it’s her, though.

The song the young augments were listening to was Your Touch released in 2021.

Interesting. I wonder if it’s a favourite of Kirsten Beyer or something - I’m a little surprised that they went to the effort of clearing a pop song of any kind.

Khan’s odd mercy towards him

I see it as a means to an end - looking like he’s living up to his end of the bargain with Delmonda. A dangerous game to be playing, though.

the inevitable loss of McGiven’s to the Ceti Eel.

I know this is consistent with the film, but part of me wishes she had met her demise more directly as a result of some choice that Khan made, if only to reinforce just how foolish she had been to join his little cult in the first place.

The Lego thing was officially announced a while back.

I think Star Trek merchandise is decent…when it comes to the high-end, ridiculously-priced market.

When it comes to affordable stuff…less so.

The more I think about it, the more I feel like the decision to add these aliens to the story was a good one. It gives Khan someone to be tyrannical toward, since his cultist followers don’t really give him a reason to do monstrous things.

That’s a pain. I guess a delete and repost might do it, or on desktop you might be able to set a different thumbnail URL.

Wrong link?

Okay yes that would be rad.

The San Francisco campus - or at least a large portion of it - is actually the USS Athena, a fully-functional starship that can land on Earth, but also go on mission when needed to provide some hands-on training (and, I assume, help a Starfleet that’s still spread fairly thin). They talked a little bit more about it here.

As far as I’m aware, Federation HQ remains a giant ship/space station.

I finally set aside time to actually watch this thing.

It’s important not to read too much into these things, but this really made me feel like they’re building toward Una’s departure.

I doubt they’re “done” with any particular demo, but they’ve been pretty up-front about being concerned about an aging/dying fanbase, and wanting to make some stuff for younger people.

But I do think that they’ve been pretty good at giving each series its own time and vibe, so hopefully something down the road will appeal to you if this doesn’t.

Looks like it’s (accidentally?) region-locked: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/star-trek-starfleet-academy-official-trailer-1236398403/