There was a beautiful expression that Alex [Kurtzman] gave me. Being in his Khionians form is like exhaling. So to be in his skin is to breathe. And this wedding does not feel like a place where Darem can breathe. I think this is a pinnacle point of something that Darem had actually been running away from his whole life. He says at the start of the episode, “I thought I had more time.” I thought I could go and explore an adventure for a few years and then come back to my responsibilities. For me, how I made sense of it was Darem can’t breathe here. This is not a free place for Darem to be.

That’s…a very thoughtful way to address what looked to be like a budget-saving measure.

Our screwy Mastodon federation strikes again…

Yeah, I exaggerate, but I think the message was definitely that it’s okay to embrace your inner cockiness, which I think is an untraditional (but interesting!) message.

But despite a lot of talk about seaweed and “we’ve all got gills”, everybody looks peculiarly human.

I assume because this moon has (conveniently) become a desert over the years.

The responses are all live in the thread! Or you can check out the u/karim account to see them all in chronological order (but without the questions, which is…challenging).

I watched the first few as a curiosity, but checked out after that.

Does anyone have kids in the target demographic that have seen it?

…dammit, that’s a good thought.

Well, that was certainly a low-stakes palate cleanser after last week’s more intense episode. Probably a little too low-stakes for my liking.

They seemed intent on inverting common tropes in this one:

The “arranged marriage” storyline didn’t play out in a way that we’ve really seen before.

Similarly, Darem’s overall arc of “I need to stop being such a people-pleaser so I can be my more authentic, dickish self” is…a twist.

Caleb and Genesis put any “will they/won’t they” plotlines to rest (though I suppose they could revisit it).

And Genesis’ deep, dark secret turned out to be…not that deep. As much as I appreciate the inversion and that she didn’t turn out to be a Species 10-C spy or something, I feel like we still don’t know enough about Genesis. We’re going to have to meet her dad to really get to the bottom of her character, I think.

We’ve done it. We’ve achieved the Lazy Cliche Singularity.

We wanted to make sure there was lots of time to accumulate questions, but the Fediverse is unsurprisingly rising to the occasion.

What was the audition process like? Did you have any clue what you were auditioning for, or was it buried under 47 layers of secrecy?

I struggle to think of things to say about “Nemesis”, one way or the other.

I do like the Remans. We need more Remans in our lives.

We’re always here if you want to hang out with the best group of dumbasses you’ll ever find online.

Much has been made about the expansive Starfleet Academy set, but have you done much location work so far? Are there any interesting places you can mention?

I haven’t done a deep dive into the reviews, but it looks like it’s going to be one of those “fine, if you’re into that sort of thing” games.

Okay, I have to admit, I had no idea this thing was even close to a full release…

It’s nerds all the way down.

This is probably as good as you’re likely to get.