I memorized the first verse of “Dessous mon pull” (Under My Sweater) by Serge Gainsbourg.
I weighed 88.25 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since last Monday, but not as heavy.
I played my Martin acoustic during song practice for the last of two sessions and it went out of tune during all but one song.
I weighed 89.3 kilos before lunch. That’s the hardest I’ve been on the scale in the early afternoon in a week.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back and it was quite warm for spring. I wore an open button shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
I weighed 88.95 kilos at 18:15. April 4 was the last time I was that fat in the evening.
I was caught up in my journal at 19:31.
I put a microphone close to my right speaker and plugged the mic into my audio interface. I played the cassette tape that I tried to digitize yesterday but that didn’t work with a line-in recording. I turned the volume up to 0, set the gain below clipping and just let the tape record into Audacity. This was a Christian and the Lions concert at The Rivoli. As I recall this was a U of T Bookstore event and we were invited to play after the readings. The first song, which was probably “Megaphor” didn’t get recorded. We did my songs “Hungry Hippunk Goes to Work”, “Calendar Girl”, “Tropic of Ulcer”, “Me and Gravity”, “Sixteen Tons of Dogma”, “Thin Red Line”, “The Next State of Grace”, and “Angeline”. “Angeline” was by itself on the other side of the tape and it was recorded with a much lower volume. Tomorrow I’ll re-record just “Angeline” with the volume higher.
I had a potato with gravy and three pork ribs while watching the season finale of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.
Caleb’s wounded mother Anisha has been beamed up to the Athena. When she wakes in sickbay she realizes she’s on a Federation ship and begins to panic. This is made worse when Nahla, the one who took her child away, enters the room. Caleb holds his mother back from attacking her while Nahla tells her they could be attacked by Braka at any time. She says under any other circumstances she’d give her a ship to leave in but right now she needs her help on the bridge.
All of Federation space has been surrounded by Omega 47 mines with energy fields thsat overlap each other and so there is no way between them. If one of them were to detonate, 80,000 cubic light years of space would be destroyed and at least 160 billion would die. Braka is trying to organize a coalition in a mutual protection pact against the Federation.
Suddenly six Vanari Ral vessels come out of warp and attack. The Athena saucer tries to escape. Caleb, Genesis, Kraag, SAM, Darem, and Tamira are hidden in an air lock. Braka and several Vanari Ral warriors beam onto the bridge. He is surprised to see Anisha alive but she faked her death to get away from him after he broke her out of prison. He says he’s going to take Anisha and Nahla with him and then he’ll destroy the ship. Nahla tells the Doctor to “leap clear of all the discorporeal and make yourself greater”. Braka transports away with Nahla and Anisha. Reno asks the Doctor what Nahla meant. He says she was telling him to run training mission Hermes 19. He’s carried it with him for thousand years. Reno places it onto the console and it blends into the system and the Doctor disappears.
Braka opens fire on Athena and destroys it. The Vanari Ral ships leave and we see that the Athena was not destroyed. The Doctor extended his matrix through the deflector dish to create a hologram of the Athena to serve as a decoy. The Doctor is still inside the main computer. The Doctor reappears and starts speaking gibberish. “Tango parrot shoes through the mango patch”. He tells Reno to use more glue. “There’s glue on the shoe”. He’s taken for a full diagnostic. SAM goes with her father. Kraag is told to serve in sick bay.
The rest of the cadets occupy positions on the bridge. Reno says they have to hide Athena while repairing it. She tells Tarima to look for the sub-space frequency Braka is using to control the wall of Omega 47 mines. Once that is found Caleb has to try to calculate a program to shut it down. On Braka’s ship Nahla embraces the reluctant Anisha to whisper that Caleb is alive.
Braka puts Nahla on trial and through her symbolically the entire Federation. Several honoured guests from his proposed coalition are there in hologram projections as he broadcasts the trial throughout the quadrant.
Braka tells the story of growing up on a poor mining colony that was ignored by Starfleet ships that flew over. Braka’s father built a weapon to take down a Starfleet ship but it missed. He says Starfleet responded by decimating their colony with “red hellfire”. Only eight colonists survived. He says the Federation has developed Omega 47 which could make the Burn happen again and he is the only one that can stop it. He tells the people that in the world they build together everyone will have a voice. He sets Anisha up as judge and jury over Nahla.
Reno tells the cadets one learns more when things go wrong than when they go right. She takes Caleb with her to fix the warp core and tells Genesis to take the captain’s chair. Genesis sits in it and then says she has to pee.
Nahla responds to Braka’s childhood story and states that never in the history of Starfleet have they ever opened fire on civilians. Omega 47 was being developed as a power source and not a weapon. A single particle could provide for an entire planet for a million years. She asks Braka what his colony mined and he answers strontium. She says that Starfleet was occupied with saving people that had nothing and were in crisis. If his colony had strontium they didn’t qualify as being needy.
Genesis learns the Doctor is still unstable and SAM is very upset. She goes there and the Doctor says, “The glue is the bond”. Kraag suggests that the Doctor is not speaking nonsense but rather a language that they do not understand. The Doctor nods and says, “Know to cross the rubincon with glue on your shoes. Cam SAM hued shoes. SAM, who used all the glue? Don’t cross the rubincon, the rubinpart. Find the glue on your shoe”. SAM thinks and asks, “You mean Rubin particles?” and he smiles. She remembers that when Starfleet created Omega 47 they used Rubin particles to make it easier to stabilize and added gluons to increase the strength of the molecular bonds. Kraag remembers the gluons hold quarks together and says the Doctor is telling them how to stabilize Omega 47. The Doctor nods with approval and kisses SAM on the forehead.
SAM tells Reno that if they reduce the Rubin particles the remaining gluons can stabilize the remaining molecules at the hearts of the Omega 47 mines. They run computer simulations to arrive at the proper reduction to achieve stability. Caleb says if they can transmit an algorithm over Braka’s frequency that adjusts the particles to the required concentration then the mines will be rendered harmless.
Tamira isolates the subspace frequency but has only narrowed his location down to one start system. Caleb goes to Tarima and asks her to trust him. They join hands and go to the safe place in her mind. He tells her that he believes she can control her gift without an implant. He asks her to find his mother in his head and then use her powers to locate her because that’s where they’ll find Braka. They return to the bridge and Tarima removes her implant. She finds Anisha and gives the coordinates. She tells Caleb, “I love you too” after reading his thoughts.
They’ve repaired the warp drive and head for Braka while SAM works on the algorithm. They tune in on Braka’s broadcast of Nahla’s trial. Anisha declares Nahla guilty. As Braka begins to ask Anisha to pass Nahla’s sentence he is interrupted by someone telling Braka that Caleb Mir is approaching in a shuttle and seeking asylum.
Caleb beams aboard and tells Braka he has something to say. Braka says the trial is over. Caleb says, “You made me a part of this and now you want to silence me in front of the entire quadrant?” Braka says, “Well played” and gives in.
Caleb reminds his mother that she always told him that the infinity in the stars is the same as the infinity in his heart. He tells her that he never understood that until he joined Starfleet. He knows it’s a betrayal and he’s felt that every day. He’s been searching for her and he’s been searching for home. He’s found both through Starfleet. Braka tells Caleb he’s been brainwashed.
Nahla asks Caleb if he studied Exochemistry at the Academy. He confirms he did. She asks him to talk about strontium. He says it’s a cheap fuel source but lethal because when it hits anything volatile it explodes. Nahla says, “Like a buildup of toxic oxides in an atmosphere”. She asks, “What colour does strontium burn?” Anisha answers, “Red”. Nahla reminds everybody that Braka claimed that Starfleet rained red hell fire down on his colony. Caleb says that’s impossible because Starfleet weapon fire for the last few hundred years has been blue or green. Nahla tells Braka that his father built a weapon from strontium and that he fired it at a Starfleet ship but when it missed it ignited in the atmosphere and rained down red hell fire on his own colony.
The holograms of Braka’s potential allies begin popping away. Braka pulls out his remote detonator and pushes the button but SAM has just completed the algorithm and the Omega 47 particles have been stabilized. The mine field is neutralized and now several Starfleet ships have Braka’s ship and the Vanari Ral ships surrounded. Braka is taken into custody and both Anisha and Nahla punch him in the face before he is led away. It’s pretty inappropriate and dishonourable to be punching someone whose arms are restrained. If they’d wanted to show them punching him they should have written a fight between them and Braka into the finale.
Caleb and his mother are preparing for a summer vacation on Earth but she has accepted that he will be returning to Starfleet in the fall.
The season closes with the song “Beautiful Child” by Rufas Wainright. He has a great singing voice but I hate how it sounds. It’s actually kind of lifeless.
Caleb was played by British Canadian actor Sandro Rosta in his screen debut. He was born in London but grew up in Toronto. He provided the voice of Punch in the thesis film Snitches Get Stitches at the Creative School of Metropolitan Toronto University. He graduated from the Oxford School of Drama. He made his professional acting debut in “Harmony Test” at the Hampstead Theatre in 2024. He was cast in Starfleet Academy two weeks before shooting began and chosen from 400 candidates after all the other cadet roles had already been cast.
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