It’s Star Trek Day, and this one’s Mrs. Know-It-All’s first celebration. I’m super excited about that.

I’d been posting Star Trek Day questions on Twitter all day, I was showing her what I’d put up, and she said, well, we should talk about some of them. So I said all right, let’s do that. If you want to follow along, they’re all sitting at @arealknowitall on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

An Anomaly, a Ship From the Future, and Who’s in the Chair

The first question I asked that morning was a simple one. On this Star Trek Day of 2023 there’s an anomaly in space, and it brings a ship from the far-flung future. Who do you want in command? Captain Picard, Captain Christopher Pike, Captain Seven of Nine, or Captain Jonathan Archer.

Mrs. Know-It-All can only choose from who she knows, and she knows three out of four. Aren’t you proud? She watched Picard with me, and she’s loving Strange New Worlds like you wouldn’t believe. Her answer had to be Pike. “I really like Picard, but I feel like Pike would be like, well, let’s go check it out.”

Then she said, “I don’t know who that other guy is.” That’s Archer. Don’t worry, he’s not that important. I’m kidding, I’m kidding, Enterprise fans. He’s from Enterprise, the show that came after Voyager.

Me, honestly, I’m going with the new captain, Seven of Nine. I’d love to be on the new Enterprise, the Enterprise-G at this point. Man, that would be awesome.

The Captain’s Missing

Next question. The captain’s missing, so who takes command? Spock, Una Chin-Riley, Raffi, or Commander Riker.

She took a second with it and landed on Una.

I’m going with Riker, and she saw that coming. Good old-fashioned. If anybody’s been the right hand of his captain, it’s Riker, and if I trust anybody, it’s that guy.

Who Wore It Best

The last of the original questions was who wore it best, meaning the name. The USS Enterprise from the TOS era. The Next Generation era, so the Enterprise-D specifically. The Enterprise from the motion pictures, the old-school movies with the red outfits, which was the refit version. Or the NX-01, the quote-unquote original warp version of the Enterprise that we saw on the show Enterprise.

She’s got to say the movies, because that’s how she first knew Star Trek back in the day. That ship is kind of embedded in her head, the same way she figures the original series Enterprise is embedded in other people’s heads.

My answer, and honestly Picard really got it right for me, is the Enterprise-D. It was my first big starship, the one I really knew and started to love and understand, and I just thought it was cool as could be.

How Mrs. Know-It-All Ended Up on Deep Space Nine

She started watching Star Trek with Picard. Then she started on Strange New Worlds, and I’d make her watch certain things from the original series and from Next Gen, and obviously we watched Lower Decks with Baby Know-It-All. So she’s getting more familiar, and she started having a bunch of questions, specifically about the changelings.

I told her, you’ve got to start watching Deep Space Nine then. So that’s what she’s started to do.

“I really like it. Like, I really like it.” I went to pick up Baby Know-It-All from work the other night and told her to just finish the episode she was on. She just kept going.

When we were getting dressed to do this video, I’d given her the original Next Generation combadge, and she asked if she could have the squared-off one instead. Absolutely, no problem, why not. I’m personally a big fan of the newer uniform, which is why I’m wearing it. And right after she asked for the badge she said, can I get a uniform too? So we’re getting her that Voyager-style, Deep Space Nine era uniform with the colored top. Be looking out for that, and I’ll make it available on the Know-It-All Nation store as a new Explorer uniform.

Pick Your Doctor

Since we’d gotten to Deep Space Nine, she wanted one more: the doctors. If you have a medical problem, who’s your medical officer? Dr. M’Benga, Dr. Crusher, the Doctor from Voyager (he’s a hologram, so he didn’t have a name, he was just called the Doctor), or Dr. Bashir.

She couldn’t decide between two. She really likes Dr. Bashir, but right now she’d probably say M’Benga more than anything.

I was a big fan of Crusher. I think Dr. Crusher crushed it. Seriously, though. Gates McFadden was gone for season two over a contract disagreement. She stuck to her guns, she wanted what she wanted, and so they wrote her out. And they didn’t waste time bringing her back. It was, okay, this new Dr. Pulaski thing’s not working, can we bring you back? That’s exactly what happened, and it was really cool to see her again.

Two Tribble Episodes, Back to Back

Here’s how the Deep Space Nine thing actually started. We were sitting around bored, I said hang on, I’ve got an idea, and I didn’t say another word. I just went and found it and put it on, and we watched the original, The Trouble with Tribbles. It was wonderful. When we finished I said hang on, I have one more thing to show you, and I put on Deep Space Nine’s Trials and Tribble-ations.

She was really happy to see them literally back to back. “I can only imagine how Star Trek fans felt when they saw it.”

I was hoping she’d say that, because it’s what she said while we were watching. She could completely see how we must have flipped out. And man, did we. I watched that one originally with the USS Star Quest, our Star Trek fan club in Naples, part of STARFLEET International, and it was so exciting to see. We were all sitting there going, how are they going to do this?

Today we see cool stuff like that all the time, where they’re doing a little jiggery-pokery. She caught why it mattered, too, because we do talk about film a lot here. It was so new back then. To see how they were overlaying that footage was so cool, and she thinks that’s another reason she got sucked into Deep Space Nine, because I showed her that right afterward.

The Dominion War

The Dominion War is such a fun era of Star Trek because it was such a unique one. There was so much really good storytelling, especially toward the back half of Deep Space Nine, and I can’t wait for her to see some of those things.

We cherry-picked through the first two seasons just to get to The Jem’Hadar at the end of season two. Next thing I know, I come home and that’s all I hear about. She says it’s on me: every time I watch Star Trek, all she hears about is the Dominion War, so that piqued her attention.

So I walk in with Baby Know-It-All and sandwiches and ask what she’s doing, and she goes, “Yeah, they already have the Defiant.” She knows what’s going on. It was great. And the Defiant, by the way, is pretty awesome. Her words: “That’s pretty cool.”

I appreciate you joining us every time you do. I hope you’re having a great Star Trek Day.

Your turn. Who’s in command of the ship from the future, who takes over when the captain’s missing, which Enterprise wore the name best, and who’s your doctor? And give Mrs. Know-It-All some recommendations: what are your favorite Deep Space Nine episodes? The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.