|
Admiralty Flag posted:Don't forget to substitute Si for C in organisms like the Horta -- it can concatenate like carbon does so boom there's your rocky life! The one big thing the replicator seems to leave out is microbiotic organisms but I think at the time of the TNG creation they were not nearly as clear on how important gut bacteria were. This could be a legitimate issue if species can cross-contaminate, but otherwise you can just cultivate that poo poo and either make everyone come get a pill in sickbay once a week or have the replicator spritz some of it on top whenever.
|
#
?
Nov 17, 2019 20:32
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 28, 2024 03:56 |
|
|
Nessus posted:The one big thing the replicator seems to leave out is microbiotic organisms but I think at the time of the TNG creation they were not nearly as clear on how important gut bacteria were. This could be a legitimate issue if species can cross-contaminate, but otherwise you can just cultivate that poo poo and either make everyone come get a pill in sickbay once a week or have the replicator spritz some of it on top whenever. Remember that transporter accident that split Captain Kirk into his good and evil halves? I'd do that to a batch of that probiotic yogurt, and see what the result of ingesting just the good or just the evil bacteria was. And then I could determine if it was better to have a lower intestine that was more forceful and effective (if somewhat lacking in terms of tact), or a lower intestine that's always mild and gentle (but just can't be an assertive leader anymore). Oh, who am I kidding, we all know the Evil Gut would be better.   
|
|
#
?
Nov 17, 2019 20:42
|
|
|
Powered Descent posted:Remember that transporter accident that split Captain Kirk into his good and evil halves? I'd do that to a batch of that probiotic yogurt, and see what the result of ingesting just the good or just the evil bacteria was. And then I could determine if it was better to have a lower intestine that was more forceful and effective (if somewhat lacking in terms of tact), or a lower intestine that's always mild and gentle (but just can't be an assertive leader anymore). This is how you end up with one of those ghost ships the Enterprise comes across.
|
|
#
?
Nov 17, 2019 21:35
|
|
|
Home Soil is a pretty cool sci-fi concept, but christ on a cracker this dialog is execrable.
|
|
#
?
Nov 17, 2019 22:12
|
|
|
DS9 newbie thoughts, continued. I'm shortening these and combining two because I'm sleepy from watching too many in a row. Blood Oath: I'm certain that I've seen this one before as a kid. I wouldn't have known these Klingons were an old actors convention, but Dax with the batleth is an unusual enough image that it sticks out in my mind as something I watched once before. It made for okay filler to watch now, but young me must have loved this episode, because looking at it's airdate it was only months before I started dating a girl who looked like a teenage Dax/Terry Farrell. I've been slowly making those connections in reverse for a while now, but this one made it blatantly clear. Thanks DS9 for re-emerging truths behind one of the more awkward periods of my life. The Maquis: Apparently at some point someone got a great idea to thread one plotline through three Trek shows. The idea seems to go like this: TNG's final season cracks open an egg, DS9 cooks that egg, Voyager serves it into an omelette. The problem is that the Maquis plotline is still more Cardassian border scuffles, and Voyager just sort of forgets it all and takes a hard turn toward gawking at Borg. The end of part one is some "bottom 10 anime betrayals" material. The second part is muuuuch better in how it becomes clearer that Ducat is a man caught between his patriotism and his idealism. He clearly thinks he has a seat at the table, but is kept at a distance and fed bullshit that he's believed too seriously. That isn't to say that Ducat isn't a threat, but he's something more of an unexpected anti-villain? For example, he knows his people's idea of a legal hearing is bullshit, but his sense of patriotism isn't harmed by that because his sense of idealism tells him that high command never makes any error. When high command blames Ducat for an uprising, they've made a clear error, and he can't really defend the Cardassian stance on justice. This was also reflected in Ducat's apology for the Li Nalis slave camp earlier this season, which I thought was disingenuous but would also follow the pattern of someone who think his society was simply mischaracterized for evil, but missed the memo that actually we're really loving evil. The Wire/The Collaborator: I think these two episodes are meant to go together. They're like the secret two-parter that's split by a goofy mirror universe episode. Garak has committed some sort of act of treason against Cardassia, and if this season hasn't made it clear enough that's probably a good thing. After establishing that Bajor would fall apart if a Kai were a collaborator, it's revealed the only previous Kai we knew was actually secretly a collaborator. Garak's exile is essentially to make him something of a whipping boy for the establishment back home, but personally he seems to take it in stride and possibly even enjoys not having to live among other Cardassians. Opaka will have to be remembered by the Bajoran hagiography as some great figure lest the society fall apart, but her reality is living and dying endlessly on a dirtball war planet with some Mad Max mutants. It's poetic in a way. Mirror Universe episode(s): I watched this, but didn't care for it. Mirror Universe Kira must have been what inspired the Power Rangers producers when they designed Astronema for Power Rangers in Space. (There was a two year period where Rangers was like unlicensed Trek fanfic.) I've never watched TOS and the MU stuff in Enterprise and Discovery sounds like the worst way to spend an afternoon. I know the mirror copies come back in one episode per season, but I've decided I'm skipping them for now and possibly may come back after the show ends and watch all the mirror episodes together. It seems like the best way to enjoy those, if I can. Tribunal: The famous Cardassian law procedural that you heard about in prior episodes, now in living color. I remember Rene Auberjonois (thanks Google) being on Boston Legal alongside Shatner and James Spader, so any episode that proposes Attorney Odo sounds good to me. Except all Odo can do is delay the dredgery of evil bureaucracy until he's created the longest trial in Cardassian history (it appears to have taken a couple hours). DS9 has seemed wildly prophetic at times. Obviously the number of times I've seen Space Israel and Space Palestine is intentional, and Winn's analogue is so obvious that Keiko even mentioned evolution/creationism directly. However, this episode is some loving mind-blowing, Metal Gear Solid 2 level commentary that was purely accidental. Cardassian hearings so perfectly represent the mob mentality of the internet once social media mainstreamed, that the verdict (guilty) and the punishment (execution) were predetermined and the only process is figuring out a justification for it. It nearly reaches overkill when the last effort to convict O'Brien rests upon him having used some racist slurs on occasion. I feel like someone is taking a sledgehammer to the camera and yelling "THIS IS TWITTER" but clearly that's impossible. The Jem'Hadar: Quark attaching himself to Sisko's family vacation is a comic premise that is eventually a red herring for the writers to pose some long term questions for the future. This episode mostly worked, although it's clear Jake and Nog are sidelined to comic relief due to being both not present when poo poo goes down and also being too incompetent to be quickly written out to safety. Sisko appears to take the loss of the U.S.S. Otherprise as a call to arms, but I'm guessing the pacifistic diplomat ninnies that run the Federation won't be eager to back him up. And that's season 2. I do kind of wonder if the Dominion is wearing excessive plot armor. The various visitors of the Gamma Quadrant ignoring shields has been a consistent thing for a while now; the guys hunting Tosk way back at the start hacked the station's shields in about 45 seconds. But blowing through shields faster than a Borg cube, AND having the signature threat of the Klingons (ramming) while being immune to it's counter (tractor beams), and especially ability to apparently transport across lightyears of space just seems like an insane thing to try to write around. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Nov 17, 2019 |
|
#
?
Nov 17, 2019 23:02
|
|
|
I don't know if it was intentional, but I liked that Voyager had the Delta Quadrant be unfamiliar with replicators and the Gamma Quadrant have weapons that went right through normal shields. Nice to have at least some technological distinction with these civilizations so far away they'd never had any contact with the familiar Trek world.
|
|
#
?
Nov 17, 2019 23:06
|
|
|
The Dominion advantages are dealt with in a reasonable way over the course of the show IMO, they are not just magically good until they are magically not so good so you can win. I think part of their idea is that they're meant to be a legitimate peer threat to the Federation, while implicitly everyone else the Feds have fought with have either been smaller but with advantages to leverage, or just some kind of hosed up space gorilla horde.
|
|
#
?
Nov 17, 2019 23:08
|
|
|
DS9 did just drop a few things when convenient, though, like the whole Romulan observer/ cloaking officer bit and the psychokinetic Vorta
|
|
#
?
Nov 17, 2019 23:18
|
|
|
I always assumed that first Vorta lady was just using some dominion tech to appear psychokinetic, so as to give them a good (fake) reason for how they managed to escape the holding field they were in, escape the Jem'Hadar with her, and take her back to spy on them for the Dominion. It would need to be some special ability none of them possessed (like psychokinetic powers!) that couldn't be replicated with normal technical ability or some other means Sisko or Quark could provide without her. IE: it was all a psyop to get them to trust her, which is a very Dominion/Founder/Vorta thing to come up with.
|
|
#
?
Nov 17, 2019 23:24
|
|
|
I figured the main advantage of being able to do a hadouken is that they can't spot your psycho power on their sensors, so while there were psychokinetic Vorta they were not heavily used outside of sneaky-sister applications like that one. Psychic powers actually seem kind of consistently "cool but not hyper-powerful" throughout Trek, which is neat. I mean outside of like, the Organians, but the Organians seem to be their own thing. Hell, Trek practically has a taxonomy of gods! Nessus fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Nov 17, 2019 |
|
#
?
Nov 17, 2019 23:29
|
|
|
And the whole reason there were Founders/Vorta/Jem'Hadar was so they could drop ones that fell flat like the Ferengi did, it just turned out all three were awesome.
|
|
#
?
Nov 17, 2019 23:35
|
|
|
Craptacular! posted:Garak's exile is essentially to make him something of a whipping boy for the establishment back home, but personally he seems to take it in stride and possibly even enjoys not having to live among other Cardassians. Well, you're not wrong, after a fashion.
|
|
#
?
Nov 17, 2019 23:58
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:And the whole reason there were Founders/Vorta/Jem'Hadar was so they could drop ones that fell flat like the Ferengi did, it just turned out all three were awesome. Well, they did sure drop the Dominion's merchants like a bad habit. Not sure what to make of that.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 02:09
|
|
|
SlothfulCobra posted:Well, they did sure drop the Dominion's merchants like a bad habit. Not sure what to make of that.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 02:37
|
|
|
That Vorta could just be a custom job with added psychic powers. Apparently it was supposed to be canon that Tosk is a Jem'Hadar knockoff made as a reward for loyalty.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 04:30
|
|
|
I just watched Author Author- Voyager episode where the Doctor writes a holo-novel about his holographic oppression, pisses off his friends, and then has to fight a legal case to get it recalled, which acknowledges him as an artist, if not a person. I don't think I've ever felt so conflicted about an episode. So much of it was awful in so many ways, but its heart was so clearly in the right place. I think, if we're being generous, this might be the most emblematic Voyager episode there is. The opening scenario makes the Doctor's oppression into a joke. Isn't it funny that the melodramatic Doctor thinks he's the victim of such horrible abuses. The lived experience of a minority, as expressed through fiction, is called into doubt. Maybe that black person writing about racism has personally had a good life, and the social issues they're bringing up are exaggerated to raise passion, rather than reflect the reality of their situation. This is an unbelievably lovely message, on par with the "think twice before complaining about rape" and "sometimes rape is the answer, isn't that funny" episodes I've complained about recently. But then the episode goes on to actually call out the real issue- using the likenesses of real people in an allegorical story. And it's actually pointed out that the Doctor is speaking to the condition of holograms in the Alpha Quadrant. But I feel the damage was kind of already done. The Doctor using his lived experiences has already been made into an insensitive joke about his vanity. Nevertheless, there's a trial about the personhood of the Doctor, when the publisher distributes the libelous version without the Doctor's permission, citing the fact that the Doctor isn't legally a person. This is... good? They prove early on that he's an artist, but then try to make a series of emotional appeals to the judge that he's actually a person too. It's Voyager at it's most Voyager. But it's also pretty touching, to be honest. The best line was from Janeway: "Centuries ago, in most places on Earth, only landowners of a particular gender and race had any rights at all. Over time those rights were extended to all humans, and later, as we explored the galaxy, to thousands of other sentient species. Our definition of what constitutes a person has continued to evolve. Now we're asking that you expand that definition once more, to include our Doctor." That's pretty good and touching, in all honesty. In an expected mixed verdict the judge declines to comment on the Doctor's personhood, and admits he's legally an artist so the Bolian publisher can go gently caress himself. (But I thought they had to make the personhood argument because an artist legally had to be a person? They literally said that earlier. Voyager...) Mixed emotions, but all is well. AND THEN New title card: Federation Dilithium Processing Facility Alpha Quadrant Four Months Later... Yeah, it's a long-rear end title card. A dozen snippy Robert Picardo's are literally swinging picks in an asteroid mine, and one of them says to the other, "seen that latest holo-novel?" Run credits. What the gently caress.  In the back of my mind this whole episode I was mentally replacing "hologram" with "AI", because they were arguing for AI rights. The physical/holographic body isn't really at issue at all. The "content of his character" is in the computer. You can copy and edit and delete a computer program. You can use a mindless hologram to just swing a pick. There's no reason to use "extra" hologram programs to... literally do physical labor. That makes no sense. I... I don't think the writers of Voyager understood that at all. They wrote this whole episode without even a rudimentary understanding of what they were pretending to talk about. But... it was, if you squint, an inspiring, if stupid, allegory about expanding minority rights. I just... feel so Voyager right now. Eiba fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Nov 18, 2019 |
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 04:58
|
|
|
I wonder if Zimmermann based the replacement EMH on Andy Dick because people actually found it less annoying that way, or as a "So you people think I'm annoying, do you?”
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 05:34
|
|
|
'Author, Author' is like if you made a copy of 'Measure of a Man' too many times in a copy machine and it just blurs into something that is not like the original
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 05:43
|
|
|
Voyager's Doctor is an amusing concept that's sort of taken too far, given that TNG always sort of put a bit of a fiction-barrier between the computer and an advanced AI like Data. Data never considers the replicators or Ms Majel's Monotone Voice to be his equals, but The Doctor is an emergency subroutine built into the ship's computer, he's no more or less alive than the ship itself. He really shouldn't be experiencing the sort of existential problems like that IMO. That sounds like some Data-with-his-emotions-chip level angst right there. I've never seen the end of Voyager. Do they address in any way how The Doctor could continue operating without being dependent on the ship?
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 05:55
|
|
|
Why waste the energy making holo-slaves when a postwar Breen Confederacy needs to raise capital?
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 05:57
|
|
|
Craptacular! posted:Voyager's Doctor is an amusing concept that's sort of taken too far, given that TNG always sort of put a bit of a fiction-barrier between the computer and an advanced AI like Data. Data never considers the replicators or Ms Majel's Monotone Voice to be his equals, but The Doctor is an emergency subroutine built into the ship's computer, he's no more or less alive than the ship itself. He really shouldn't be experiencing the sort of existential problems like that IMO. That sounds like some Data-with-his-emotions-chip level angst right there.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 06:03
|
|
|
Craptacular! posted:Voyager's Doctor is an amusing concept that's sort of taken too far, given that TNG always sort of put a bit of a fiction-barrier between the computer and an advanced AI like Data. Data never considers the replicators or Ms Majel's Monotone Voice to be his equals, but The Doctor is an emergency subroutine built into the ship's computer, he's no more or less alive than the ship itself. He really shouldn't be experiencing the sort of existential problems like that IMO. That sounds like some Data-with-his-emotions-chip level angst right there. The doctor wasn't dependent on the ship after the first third of season 3 He IS different though because of how complex he is and that he's being run continuously and asked to adapt and improve himself. I wonder if Moriarty died in Generations
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 06:04
|
|
|
The Bloop posted:The doctor wasn't dependent on the ship after the first third of season 3 nah his wee lil box is there, forgotten yet again
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 06:06
|
|
|
It would be tremendously ballsy if they bring Moriarty back in the Picard show, somehow.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 06:06
|
|
|
Nessus posted:It would be tremendously ballsy if they bring Moriarty back in the Picard show, somehow. Daniel Davis is still around, let's make it happen. Edit: gently caress, so's Diana Muldaur. Come on CBS, you cowards.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 07:57
|
|
|
I just rewatched Hot Shots: Part Deux and it is as amazing as I remember. However, I just learned that Brenda Bakke in the film played none other other than the Jerry-curled Rivan in the infamous TNG Justice episode. Mind blown.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 08:10
|
|
|
Ghost Leviathan posted:That Vorta could just be a custom job with added psychic powers. I always figured it was the other way around, that Jem'Hadar were genetically engineered from the base Tosk
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 11:59
|
|
|
The Bloop posted:DS9 did just drop a few things when convenient, though, like the whole Romulan observer/ cloaking officer bit and the psychokinetic Vorta Or the Jem'Hadar being able to go invisible
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 12:28
|
|
|
I'm Midway through season 5 and they haven't stopped going invisible yet. Last couple times I've seen them they didn't really have any reason to go invisible though
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 13:41
|
|
|
MrL_JaKiri posted:Or the Jem'Hadar being able to go invisible They don't really forget about it or drop it. It just doesn't come up because the Dominion shifts from being an enemy the characters mix it up with hand to hand to firing on starships.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 14:36
|
|
|
There's at least one mention of it in Season 6 - "Rocks and Shoals". The Jem'hadar tell their Vorta handler that they cannot use their personal cloaking because they're too low on ketracel white. Which is awfully convenient for both the plot of the episode and the fx budget, but at least the writing room thought about it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 14:48
|
|
|
Uhh they do it repeatedly in The Siege of AR-558?
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 14:55
|
|
|
Ghost Leviathan posted:Also love the Nog episodes with b-plots of increasingly ridiculous chains of deals. I love these episodes. Also they remind me of the same kind of story that MASH did a few times.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 15:14
|
|
|
Lemniscate Blue posted:There's at least one mention of it in Season 6 - "Rocks and Shoals". The Jem'hadar tell their Vorta handler that they cannot use their personal cloaking because they're too low on ketracel white. They also used it at the beginning of the episode to capture Nog and Garak, as I recall.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 15:24
|
|
|
A bit funny given the Klingons can't cloak but have ships that do. I figure the Federation just ignored the treaty about the original Defiant's cloaking device after the first use because it turns out a cloaking device gives you so much plausible deniability.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 15:42
|
|
|
Somewhere on Bajor, Subcommander T'Rul is just enjoying a long vacation, and when necessary sending off reports to her superiors that no, she hasn't seen the Federation violating their agreement, everything's totally fine.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 16:03
|
|
|
FlamingLiberal posted:'Author, Author' is like if you made a copy of 'Measure of a Man' too many times in a copy machine and it just blurs into something that is not like the original My question is "Why di they keep making them?" First, we have a roboticist who makes Data (after first making another robot who he deactivated because he was too much trouble to fix), and then Starfleet decides, "Guess Dats's sentient. Too much like slavery to treat him like a machine.". Then Wesley accidentally let's some medical nanites out, they develop a hive mind, and Captsin Picard decides, "Hey, Dr. Kelso from Scrubs, sorry this might interfere with your once in a lifetime experiment, but these things our doctor uses to prevent scarring are sentient, so we're just going to put them on a planet somewhere. Then the Enterprise runs into a bunch of zombie Bon Neumann cyborgs, that are going to take over the galaxy, and finally come up with a way to shut them down, then decide, "No, that's too much like genocide. Let's not do it" Then they come up with computer generated holograms, and it turns a out they're sentient, leading Chief O'Brian and Dr. Bashir to take a break from first creating and then slaughtering a bunch of holographic Germans and Mexicans, to go visit their friend, the holographic lounge singer, and Captain Janeway to take a break from loving the holographic Irish peasant she created and modified to her specification to listen to her holographic doctor sympathetically when he complains the Federation doesn't recognize holographic autonomy. Look, people, make up your mind. Either create machines to do what you want without worrying if they have rights or not, or just stop making them. All your crises of conscience are doing is giving ethicists headaches.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 16:09
|
|
|
Ghost Leviathan posted:A bit funny given the Klingons can't cloak but have ships that do. There's a scene where Bashir is like 'aren't we not meant to cloak except in the Gamma Quadrant against the Dominion?" and Sisko is like "yeah who's gonna tell them"
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 16:58
|
|
|
Angry Salami posted:Somewhere on Bajor, Subcommander T'Rul is just enjoying a long vacation, and when necessary sending off reports to her superiors that no, she hasn't seen the Federation violating their agreement, everything's totally fine. How very... Romulan.
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 17:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 28, 2024 03:56 |
|
|
Angry Salami posted:Somewhere on Bajor, Subcommander T'Rul is just enjoying a long vacation, and when necessary sending off reports to her superiors that no, she hasn't seen the Federation violating their agreement, everything's totally fine. Of course she can't see them violating the agreement, the Defiant's cloaked! 
|
|
#
?
Nov 18, 2019 18:19
|
|
