It might be useful to compare this interpretation of regeneration to the experience in Star Trek (DS9, Discovery) of Trill hosts with their symbiotes, where past personalities and memories continue to be accessible to the current host.

If Star Trek novels can count as canon, Spock also visited Earth in the 1800's, as per Barbara Hambly's "Ishmael". It offered a Star Trek crossover with the TV series "Here Come the Brides" which starred Mark Lenard, the original Sarek actor, as an early resident of Seattle, supposing him to be an ancestor of Amanda Grayson, Spock's mother.

I was left with a niggling sense of disappointment after watching "Joy to the World", and this article has helped me bring it into focus. I am currently also rewatching Tom Baker's run as the Doctor, which was my introduction to the series back when it first became available in the US in the seventies/eighties, and the contrast is telling. Much as I appreciate modern Doctors occasionally letting their companions take center stage, "Doctor Who" is still the name of the show, and s/he is the titular hero. Time for Ncuti Gatwa to fully embody the role.

Does it really matter whether or not Dean was Ben's biological father? I agree that there seemed to be ing evidence, but as an adopted person myself, I can assure that the relationship with an adoptive parent can be just as deep, loving, and foundational...or not, just as with biological parents. That they connected in ways that neither had previously experienced was what mattered most.

Roddenberry suggesting such a pairing does not make it a good idea, by any stretch. Pike and Chin-Riley are friends and colleagues, not to mention consummate professionals, and would recognize the division and loss of respect that such a relationship could bring to the Enterprise, especially if it ended badly. The negative possibilities of an affair between a superior and subordinate are richly demonstrated in the TOS episode "Mirror, Mirror"(S2, ep.4), ittedly to an extreme, as well as by iral Cornwell's blind spots regarding Captain Lorca's conduct in the first season of Discovery. Neither Pike nor Number One would ever seriously consider it. Stamets and Culber, on the other hand, would be a good example of a couple working on the same ship, in different departments, with no direct line of authority between them.

One thing I consider more realistic in the Jeffrey Deaver novels is that Shaw travels in a camper with a motorbike onboard rather than a trailer and monster truck. When he needs to get around a populated area, he rents an unobtrusive sedan locally, intended to be less noticable, the opposite of the huge pickup. That approach is much more adaptable to a variety of settings.