Five Star Trek questions this time, and the first one gets a hot take out of me: I feel like we over-glorify Voyager, and we over-glorify who Janeway is in it.

This is the Know-It-All Files, where I go onto Quora and Reddit and look up your questions on a topic. You had an awful lot of Star Trek questions last time, so we’re going to cover some more. If you’d rather I didn’t go searching and scrounging around the internet for them, ask me yourself. I’d love to answer it.

Three Janeways

The question: how would you compare and contrast Captain Kathryn Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager with Hologram Janeway from Star Trek: Prodigy, and now the appearance of Admiral Janeway in Prodigy?

I kind of already answered this one, but I’m going to come at it from a slightly different angle.

I do think the captain on Voyager was a much more compromising individual. I believe now she’s kind of leaned into the mythology of who she is. As an admiral, I believe she’s intelligently wrapping herself in the mythology of her position. That’s okay. Everyone’s done that. Kirk’s done that. I mean everyone, literally. You wrap yourself in what people think of you, and that’s the end of that.

What about Hologram Janeway? I think she started with a template. But look at the EMH, the Doctor from Voyager. Through her own ability to learn, I think the Janeway hologram would evolve on her own. And I believe we’re eventually going to get a scene in Prodigy where Vice Admiral Janeway is actually having a philosophical debate with Hologram Janeway. I think that’s absolutely going to happen.

If you tell me the major difference is that she switched from coffee to tea, I’m just going to ban you. No, I’m kidding. I’m totally nice. I just think there are more meaningful answers than that.

Could a Portable Holographic Emitter Build a Working Replicator?

The question: could a portable holographic emitter create a working mass replicator able to replicate large real items?

Yes. As a former chief engineer, I kind of do understand how the technology works.

One of the things you have to understand is that life for humanity changed when matter synthesizers became a reality. The minute you could make something from nothing, want, hunger, all of those things went away. What you’re left with is the human condition, according to the utopian society set forth in Star Trek.

Not to confuse the terminology, but holodecks are a combination of replicator and transporter technology. When you go to the holodeck, the person you’re interacting with, the hologram guy, is a hard light construct. That’s what a hologram is in Star Trek. The chair you’re sitting in isn’t a hard light construct. That would take too much energy and too much information. What doesn’t take a lot of information is a replicated chair, the same kind of chair you’d replicate for yourself right down in engineering, or in the shuttle bay, or in your quarters.

So what happens when you turn it off? The same thing that happens when you’re done eating your food in Ten Forward. It gets reintegrated, or disintegrated, but it’s a disintegration that doesn’t destroy it. It breaks it back down into a pattern. Period.

Remember, replicated food is essentially transported pattern buffer food. You’ve programmed it, the computer understands it, and now it’s data. The same process that converts you into information to teleport you places is the way they process that information to synthesize matter later.

So could a portable holographic emitter create a working mass replicator able to replicate large real items? Absolutely, unequivocally, yes.

Utopian Storytelling Is Why Star Trek Is Star Trek

The question: what are your thoughts on utopian storytelling in Star Trek?

I love it. That’s why Star Trek is Star Trek. Really, that’s what it’s about.

Part of the reason some people want to push back on NuTrek (I hate that term, by the way, NuTrek is silly) is this idea. When I was first watching Star Trek, the original series and The Next Generation, they held up humanity, Earth people, Terrans if you will, us, as having finally overcome all of the nonsense that was our shortcoming. Racism, ego, the acquisition of wealth, class, all of it. Once you got rid of those things, all you had left was the betterment of humanity in each other. Again, you were stuck with the human condition, and how do we improve it?

Now, when we face other species, the Cardassians, Klingons, Romulans, the Ferengi, we’re seeing a parallel to ourselves today. The problems are shown as alien in nature. Humans have overcome this. We’re watching a reverse engineered telling of the story of us. We’re seeing hope. We’re seeing how we could move forward.

In that context it’s wonderfully fun, and it’s one of the reasons I fell in love with Star Trek from the very beginning. It’s showing me how things could be, and sort of the path to that. We get to see our everyday issues dealt with through the eyes of, you know, ignorant, rose-colored-glasses aliens. Then we come in as the humans who’ve already gotten past those problems, and we’re like, let’s tell you how we did this. Let’s help you fix this and get to where we are.

I believe that’s what makes Star Trek an odyssey, versus making it sort of sci-fi fantasy like Star Wars or something else like that.

A Seven of Nine Show

The question: what would you think about a Seven of Nine spin-off Star Trek series, and specifically the live-action reunion of Seven and Admiral Janeway?

That’s what I want. I want that all day. I want a Seven of Nine show. Make her whatever. Give her command of a ship. Whatever you want to do.

It’s unfortunate, but I think we’re probably not going to see much of her after Picard. I think we could, I think it’d be wonderful, and I think we absolutely should. If nothing else, Picard has proven there are final stories to tell, final runs around the block so to speak, that are needed. We’ll see how that all works out. I want that show.

The live-action reunion of Seven and Janeway would be fine. They haven’t had any issues since Voyager’s original run, and that was only because of the circumstances under which Jeri Ryan joined the series. I’d love to see them meet again.

Right now the two fandoms I’m leaning into the heaviest are Doctor Who and Star Trek, because those are my two favorite fandoms. In that order: Star Trek first, Doctor Who second.

My Last Opening Night

The question: when was the last time you went to see a Star Trek movie on opening night?

I was originally going to say Star Trek VI, because I did see The Undiscovered Country on opening night. But the truth is it would most likely be the 2009 Star Trek, the J.J. Abrams Star Trek. I didn’t get to see Into Darkness on opening night, and I didn’t get to see Beyond on opening night either. I did see the 2009 one on opening night, and that was really good. It was a lot of fun.

There you go, now you know, and if knowing is half the battle, you’re halfway to being a know-it-all yourself. Never forget, everyone loves a know-it-all.

Your turn. What would you call the major differences between Captain Janeway, Hologram Janeway and Vice Admiral Janeway? Would Seven and Janeway have any issue sharing the screen again? And what was the last Star Trek movie you saw in theaters? Tell me in the comments on the video above, and leave your own question there for the next Files.