The Warp 10 Barrier

I thought the warp 10 barrier story in Star Trek Voyager was one of the silliest scripts I had seen - seriously - de-evolution just isn't a thing. You break Warp 10 and you turn into a gila monster??? I know why the warp 10 barrier was created - to keep speed from becoming a story issue. So I treated it like the sound barrier - it could only be broken by a revolution in warp field design. And - as I hope you see in Episode 15 - that design comes with a terrible price... Wesley Crusher gives the clue to how it works and why it's so dangerous: Reverse Entropy Bubbles...

Politics

I do not depict the Federation as a democracy. It is a coalition of governments, many of which have varying degrees and varying types of democracy. United Earth Governments, representing Earth and most of its scattered colonies, is an odd sort of parliamentary democracy. The UFP is set up along similar lines, but with all kinds of arcane rules to ensure the humans (who pretty much outnumber all other federation races combined) don't just dominate everything. Vulcan is a meritocracy. The Andorian Empire has an empress.

Home World Fleets

Star Fleet is not an arm of the United Federation of Planets. It is United Earth Governments' homeworld fleet. While agressively recruiting all federation species (the Commandant, although born on Earth, is andorian), it is overwhelmingly a human endeavor. Each member government has a homeworld fleet - but most of these stay close to the homeworld. Star Fleet is resourced by the Federation and is very responsive to the Federation - keeping the UFP protected is very much in Earth's self interest.

Demographics

In the movie Star Trek First Contact, there was a mention of an Earth population of 9 billion, all borg. As if 9 billion is somehow too many people. Well hang on to your hats - the UN projects a stable world population of 12 billion by 2100. And those 12 billion can live in a cleaner, more prosperous, safer world. But that will take some effort. I envision a human population of more than 50 billion scattered across the Federation and beyond. And that's not counting hybrids with other species... 

Spelling of klingons, vulcans, bajorans and other races

Typically, these are capitalized. But it looks wierd to say there are 10 Vulcans, 8 Cardassians and 3 humans... Other authors suggest using "Terrans" instead of humans, but in the STH universe, Earth has a population of 14 billion and nearly 2 billion of these are not human (or not entirely human...)

The death of Vulcan

I portray Vulcan as a dying planet. This is not at variance with ST canon, but it is something I don't think any ST series has considered. The biosphere of Vulcan is very slowly succombing to the poisons the vulcans used in their last world war nearly a thousand years ago.

Replicators are not magic

Yes, food comes out of a replicator. But it must have organic material to start with and sooner or later there must be fresh food. A starship can't recycle poop and put it back on your plate indefinitely... So planets that support life are precious - especialy super planets like Earth, Bajor and Romulus (and Romulus is no more - STH takes place after the Hobus event).

Mars and Venus

I had already written about the destruction of Venus when I saw the first episode of Picard. STP starts with Mars on fire. In STH, Mars is a vibrant colony, but Venus is alive with fascinating life forms - until the Venus Incident...

The age of klingons

I'm grew tired of every specis outliving humans. Okay - Kor, Kang and Koloth are all over 130 years old and remember their encounters with Captain Kirk during the DS9 series. But I want my klingons to have a slightly shorter life expectancy than humans - 120 is exceptional for humans. 95 is exceptional for klingons. But Kor, Kang and Koloth are all genetically enhanced - they didn't look like regular klingons when Kirk met them. They later had surgery to appear more klingon. In Star Trek Enterprise, there was an episode involving genetically enhanced humans and one klingon planetary population received some of this genetic material. Which was Star Trek's way of explaining why original series klingons look different. Fine - two can play that game...

The Department of Temporal Investigation

STH tells the story of Star Fleet establishing Star Fleet Temporal Command. The Department of Temporal Investigation is a separate department within SFTC - so how did DTI investigate Captain Kirk (and lodge 17 separate temporal violations against him) and Captain Sisco and Captain Janeway before the SFTC DTI actually existed?

Come on - do you really have to ask?