LibraryLass

Is SNW now branched off of the original canon into its own timeline?

Well, we know that choosing not to seek help for Una didn't result in the prime timeline. Ergo, it's likely this intervention was meant to occur.

It's important to remember that Earth has an outsize influence on the Federation. The capital is, and always has been, there, and will continue to be until such time as it secedes entirely from the Federation after the Burn. The Academy is there. Starfleet is headquartered there, and grew out of United Earth's space service. Most of Starfleet is human, most Federation colonies are human. Azetbur was mistaken to call itself a "Homo sapiens-only club" but the fact is that from the beginning, as the only planet with friendly relations with Vulcan, Andoria, and Tellar Prime, as the very reason the Federation exists... Earth found itself with a power dynamic that highly favored it.

As such, I don't think it's too surprising that a specifically Earthican problem could weigh heavily on the Federation, even as it grew larger and more cosmopolitan.

"Let's do it."

If I recall correctly usually streaming services outside the US get the new episode the day after it airs, so try tomorrow.

Here's the thing: Does Tom Riker actually prove that? That's the explanation suggested in the episode, but the preponderance of information about the mechanisms of transporter technology, as given both before and after, conflicts with it. But there's another hypothesis, a simpler one, and one that we know for a fact transporters are capable of, because it's a recurring element in Star Trek: Thomas Riker is from another universe, brought to the Prime universe by similar means as many of the various visits to and from the Mirror universe.

Irrelevant to the transporter as the same matter is moved by the matter stream and reassembled in the same order. This is less asking if the ship of Theseus is the same ship after the hull and the mast were replaced and more asking if my kitchen table is still the same after I took the leaf out, folded the legs in, put it in a truck, moved to a new house, and set it back up

but it seems like materialism is the generally accepted philosophy.

Which is absurd as souls objectively exist in Star Trek and at least two major species objectively have them-- which implies most do.

It's not just effectively identical, it's completely identical. The same matter, the same quantum state, the same consciousness.

The simplest answer would be because it doesn't ordinarily work that way.

No the fuck it isn't. Dualism is clearly true in Star Trek's universe and even if it weren't we see consciousness is maintained while beaming but is normally too brief to be perceived. (TNG: "Realm of Fear")

Beaming is no more death than sleeping, or existing for longer than a single Planck unit of time is.