Starfleet Remembrance Day Pins
The crew all wear specific round buttons that honor past starships they all have some connection to. Although it’s tough to see all the pins, the co-writer of this episode, in a recent interview with the author of this piece, Davy Perez explained the significance of the pins like this:
“I liked the idea of introducing a way to honor Starfleet’s fallen. Part of what I was hoping to do with Remembrance Day, in my own small way, was to take the trope about “redshirts getting killed” that is often joked about and give that a dramatic meaning. These are Starfleet officers we’re talking about after all!”
But who’s pin honors which ship? Here’s what Perez said:
“Ortegas’ ship was the Palenque. I remember that for sure. I believe Chapel’s was the Farragut. Someone wore Yorktown, that could be Pike’s pin. And Kongo was also in the mix, I think Spock might have worn Kongo because he isn’t allowed to acknowledge that he lost his sister on Discovery.”
The Farragut is probably a reference to the ship James T. Kirk served on in roughly 2257, which would be just a few years before this episode. In the TOS episode “Obsession,” we learn Kirk was on the Farragut when it was attacked by a cloud creature. Yorktown was an early candidate for the name of the Enterprise. And, the Kongo popped up in several older Star Trek books, starting with The Making of Star Trek, which lists it as possibly one of several sister ships of the Enterprise.
S.S. Puget Sound
Named for a region in Washington state, we also learn that as a little kid, La’an served on the S.S. Puget Sound, a non-Starfleet colony ship. However, the jackets worn by La’an and her brother in the flashbacks indicate the Puget Sound was very much a Federation ship, as evidenced by the “UFP” on the shoulders of the jackets. Also, the jackets themselves slightly resemble the design worn by Chris Pine’s Captain Kirk in Star Trek Beyond, which may or may not be intentional.
