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.
3. Be diplomatic.
Participate in a courteous, objective, and open-minded fashion. Be nice to other posters and the people who make Star Trek. Disagree respectfully and don’t gatekeep.
4. Assume good faith.
Assume good faith. Give other posters the benefit of the doubt, but report them if you genuinely believe they are trolling. Don’t whine about “politics.”
5. Tag spoilers.
Historically Daystrom has not had a spoiler policy, so you may encounter untagged spoilers here. Ultimately, avoiding online discussion until you are caught up is the only certain way to avoid spoilers.
6. Stay on-topic.
Threads must discuss Star Trek. Comments must discuss the topic raised in the original post.
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
view the rest of the comments
My main takeaway from this episode was the Romulans and Vulcans being the same and what the implications on that for Starfleet and Spock especially.
Romulans are like Vulcans? Does that make Vulcans bad? Romulans good? Spock is already the different one on the bridge? Will the rest of the crew believe in Starfleet ideals or will they turn on Spock and allow racism to rule the day.
Tie this to treatment of Japanese civilians in the US during world war 2 (something Sulu's actor was unfortunately quite familiar with). Are all members of a race bad because the governments are at war? Obviously not but this is a common refrain from the ignorant and afraid during conflicts.
Ultimately the Enterprise and the Romulan captain stop seeing themselves in terms of soldiers fighting for their side and instead as 2 people caught in the middle of the fight between their governments. The Romulan captain's sacrifice in the end exemplifies the realization. Rather than continue the conflict and drag both sides into a brutal patriotic conflict, he sees the humanitarian cost of such a conflict and therefore, the intrinsic value of life of both sides.
The episode wants to drive hope the point that people are people, no matter nationality or political conflict. At the end of the day we are all the same. Despite Stiles racism toward Spock, Kirk and by extension the Federation-idealized humanity, will have none of it.
That was very nice to read. Yes I agree, something that must be done to prevent a war between the two powers.