Closing out the year with a couple of runs in Hades 🎮 followed by some Star Trek: The Next Generation 🖖🏻. Here’s to staying on-brand in 2022.

I just finished the midseason finale of #StarTrekDiscovery and I thought it was beautifully done. Space family talking through problems is my fave. This is SOCIAL science fiction. ❤️ Replies may contain spoilers. 📺🖖🏻

Me, watching STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION and seeing a newborn in a glass bassinet in sickbay with the birthing parent nowhere in sight: “What, in the 24th century there’s no rooming in?” (Rooming in wasn’t common in 1990 but it was a thing by 1994.) 📺🖖🏻

I just watched the SHORT TREKS episode “Q & A” and it has me really excited for STRANGE NEW WORLDS. 📺💻🖖🏻

I thought you should know that this Jean-Luc Picard cover of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” (feat. Q) is my new Christmas bop. 🖖🏻🎄

How much do we know about the instructors at Starfleet Academy and their pedagogy? 🖖🏻📺

Anybody else get a little Billy-Crystal-as-Miracle-Max vibe from Brent Spiner’s performance as very-old Dr. Noonian Soong? 🖖🏻📺

This post contains minor spoilers for Star Trek Discovery Season 4 Episode 2, “Anomaly.”

Near the end of the latest episode of Discovery, Lt. Tilly tells Dr. Culbert that something feels off about herself, and that she’d like to talk to him about it in a professional context sometime.

This feels to me like a clear indication that Tilly is dealing with depression, anxiety, or both, and I’m very interested in following where this goes, especially as I read Tilly as my own sort of Discovery-avatar.

Over at Keith R. A. DeCandido’s recap for Tor.com, a commenter says,

The best thread for later is Tilly. Does she miss her mother? Is it about all the stress and loss and responsibility they’ve had? Mental health is an all too often ignored issue, so I hope they do it justice.

I, too, hope they do it justice, but what I don’t need is for there to be something Tilly’s depression is “about.” There certainly are things that can trigger depression, but the depression itself isn’t always a response to trauma. Sometimes it just happens because your body isn’t producing the chemicals it needs to.

I would love to see Tilly work through identifying how she’s feeling, struggling to decide between treatment options (or whether to go beyond talk therapy at all), and dealing with the consequences of whatever treatment she chooses. I’d also just love to see what mental health care looks like in the 32nd century.

But I don’t need there to be a reason she’s depressed.

Because depression doesn’t require a reason to appear.

I watched Star Trek Discovery 4x01 “Kobayashi Maru” last night and I have a lot of feelings. I’m happy to chat if you’d like to. Replies may contain spoilers. 🖖🏻📺

From now on whenever you meet a couple, you are required to ask: Which of you is the Stamets & which of you is the Culbert? (I’m the Stamets AND the Culbert. W. is the Emperor Georgiou.)🖖🏻#StarTrekDiscovery