The Admiral’s Log: My Journey Through ‘Star Trek Online’ – Part LIX

Written by John Edward Betancourt 

The Voyage Home

Well my fellow Trekkers and Trekkies, we’ve come to quite the milestone in The Admiral’s Log. For over the course of the past year, we’ve quite literally visited every single corner of the Milky Way Galaxy in Star Trek Online. We’ve been to the inhabited worlds of the Beta Quadrant; we’ve seen how isolated the Alpha Quadrant is. We’ve endured the rampant chaos of the Delta Quadrant and the silence of the Gamma Quadrant and throughout our travels through the galaxy, we’ve also been privy to some incredible beauty and some wonderful moments, since every corner of this tiny little sliver of the universe we call home, features planets and interstellar phenomena that outright take one’s breath away.
 
But of course, this journey has offered up so much more than incredible visuals and light years to traverse. It also brought us to places that instantly allowed for us to bask in the memories of our favorite Star Trek shows, something that was further enhanced by our ability to transport down to famous worlds in the Federation. Yet while we have seen great wonders over the past year, all good things must come to an end, and we have in fact… come to the end of this grand and magnificent journey. For only one world is left to explore, and that would just so happen to be the seat of the United Federation of Planets and the home of Starfleet Command; Earth.
 
Yet what’s truly unique about visiting the world that helped to found the Federation in the first place, is the sheer fact that you can really only beam down to two places here. There’s Bozeman, Montana; wherein you can explore the Zefram Cochrane Warp Test Complex. But that is only available during April to correlate with the celebration of First Contact Day, so really, you’ll spend most of your time on Terra at Starfleet Academy in San Francisco and that’s honestly not a bad thing by any means. Because the beauty of that city and the Golden Gate Bridge are still on display in 2410, making for a lovely view when you’re in need of one, and the Academy has plenty to offer one as well. 

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​Because you’re able to walk a fair chunk of the halls that great Starfleet captains once did, and you can bask in the beauty of the topiary that Boothby once cared for. If anything, it’s a shame there’s not a hologram of him still doing his thing and well, I suppose even wishing for something like that, just speaks to how much rich history is in this tiny sliver of the game, since everywhere you turn makes you think about Star Trek’s past. And the memorials and monuments present here only enhance that further since they remind everyone of the good and the bad this proud place has seen, since there’s one memorial honoring the founding of the Federation and another that reminds everybody of the lives lost in the Breen invasion/attack on Earth during the Federation/Dominion war.
 
But while all of this is in incredible to see, it is still Earth, the place where every player in this game goes about their daily lives. Which means there’s little else to say about this place other than, it’s a wonderful place to get away from the depths of space and recharge since it is home for all of us, and it is still beautiful and bright in the 25th Century. However, that is that when it comes to this journey and well, that also means that it is time for me to take a break from this log for just a little while. In part because the holiday season sees a quasi-hiatus for Nerds That Geek in the first place, but also because I think it’s high time to change this log up and do some new things with it in 2020.
 
Because if there’s one great lesson I learned from Stephen King, it is that a writer has to constantly challenge themselves in order to keep any story fresh and that definitely applies here. Because it would be a disservice to you, dear reader, to let this slide into boring territory with weekly updates on how I only finished 23 of my 24 Endeavor Missions for the week, or that I changed things up by using Transwarp to get to Deep Space Nine on Tuesday instead of conventional Warp and the Quantum Slipstream drive. But how exactly this blog will evolve, I haven’t quite decided, but I’m sure something will come to me during the break whilst I cruise amongst the stars. So once again, thank you for taking the time to read this Log, your support means the world to me, and if you see me in game, do say hello because that’s just awesome and I hope all of you have a Happy Holidays as well and I’ll see you out there, in the void, in the new year. Until next time.  

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