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Someone at DisruptorBeam has a hosed-up sense of humor - this is this week's big event banner
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# ? Feb 20, 2020 23:35 |
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# ? Jun 13, 2024 06:13 |
So the destruction of Romulus, did it take most of Romulan territory as well? Like, sure, losing your home planet would suck, but they had a vast Empire. Presumably there were more planets in there? That they colonized?
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# ? Feb 20, 2020 23:38 |
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thrawn527 posted:So the destruction of Romulus, did it take most of Romulan territory as well? Like, sure, losing your home planet would suck, but they had a vast Empire. Presumably there were more planets in there? That they colonized? Our sun is ~8 light minutes from the Earth. The next 9 closest star systems are between 4-10 light years from us. A supernova's blast radius is in the range of 30-40 light years. It likely took out a significant chunk of the Empire - presumably their populations would be most dense in the few star systems nearest to Romulus itself. Last week's ep, I think, specifically mentions that the goal was to move people from affected planets to other planets in the Romulan sphere of influence; presumably any Class M planets in that region would already have at least some preliminary colonization. Snow Cone Capone fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Feb 20, 2020 |
# ? Feb 20, 2020 23:42 |
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I assume only the core worlds of the Empire were destroyed, but in their weakened state they have lost control of large parts of their former empire, like the planet last week. It’s also not clear if the Romulan Free State they have mentioned is the only successor state to the Romulan Star Empire.
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# ? Feb 20, 2020 23:46 |
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thrawn527 posted:So the destruction of Romulus, did it take most of Romulan territory as well? Like, sure, losing your home planet would suck, but they had a vast Empire. Presumably there were more planets in there? That they colonized? Someone here mentioned that it's probably like Rome where once the capital fell or was taken over, it was a big loss and pretty demoralizing despite having a huge empire. Probably even moreso for the Romulans as I would assume most decisions were made on Romulus. There are probably dozens of Romulan
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# ? Feb 20, 2020 23:47 |
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Snow Cone Capone posted:Our sun is ~8 light minutes from the Earth. The next 9 closest star systems are between 4-10 light years from us. A supernova's blast radius is in the range of 30-40 light years. A supernova's blast also travels at fractions of a the speed of light so you'd have centuries to get ready if you weren't on Romulus. If this were a real supernova. This is all trying to make sense of 'JJ Abrams doesn't understand how space works' though but also this is star trek so there's nothing wrong with saying this was a special supernova for reasons. The story requires us to accept that the Romulan Empire suffered a disaster damaging enough that it essentially caused total state collapse. The rest of the detail is irrelevant if it isn't important for the purposes of the story, which it isn't.
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# ? Feb 20, 2020 23:49 |
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Probably safe to assume the Romulan Free State is the Russian Federation and the Romulan Star Empire is the Soviet Union.
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# ? Feb 20, 2020 23:50 |
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Alchenar posted:A supernova's blast also travels at fractions of a the speed of light so you'd have centuries to get ready if you weren't on Romulus. If this were a real supernova. This is all trying to make sense of 'JJ Abrams doesn't understand how space works' Sure, but we know absolutely -nothing- about Romulan space beyond a half-dozen named planets (most without mentioning what system they're in), and I'm assuming an evacuation of billions would take months-to-years to finish. There's a shitload of unknowns but nothing that specifically negates "90% of the Romulan race was concentrated on the n planets in the Romulan system" so you're right, the details are irrelevant in this case, but it's an interesting set of logistics to think about.
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# ? Feb 20, 2020 23:52 |
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Big Mean Jerk posted:I think it’s been more or less clear everything dealing with money in the show has taken place outside the Federation, so I don’t have an issue with it. Rios is a freelancer, Freecloud and the Romulan planet are outside the Federation proper. Rafi’s living situation seems to be her own choice and her comments about Picard giving up and living a cushy life seemed to be more of a stab at his willing irrelevance instead of jumping to action and taking a moral stand like he would have in the old days. Nothing in the show so far screams “the future sucks now and it’ll never get better” to me. If anything, the show for the most part has been Picard and the others actively trying to make things better. Those things are all implied, but it's also the case that these are a new set of show runners, creating a show set decades after we last visited. I think what you say is the case, but it's still entirely possible that they have fundamentally changed the state of the Federation. Hell, even if they have I'll adapt and get on board with understanding it in that context, it's just not being sure what is a decision to show contrast and what is a change that keeps jolting me out of the experience. Alchenar posted:A supernova's blast also travels at fractions of a the speed of light so you'd have centuries to get ready if you weren't on Romulus. The physical matter erupted from a supernova expands much slower than light yes, but the energy burst literally expands at light speed. If it was a supernova threatening nearby star systems that would actually fit in that there was enough time for the Federation to start building an evacuation fleet from scratch. Also for all his time/space scaling issues, can't entirely blame JJ for this one. Generations really messed it up as well. (Except for the funny part where they had to outrun a supernova so just did it at a leisurely Warp 1).
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# ? Feb 20, 2020 23:59 |
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Senor Tron posted:
Still literally a decade. But it's a magic star trek supernova, they had some warning but not years of warning. It's something that's okay to accept given everything else Star Trek has us accept.
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 00:30 |
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Snow Cone Capone posted:Back on topic, I rewatched and the horrible secret pretty much has to be synths trend towards collectives and the Romulans were the first to find out because their synths became the Borg. If it's that, I won't mind it as long as it's a Borg instead of the Borg, in the sense that it is a threat that has a chance of independently arising from any sufficiently advanced civilization, like warp travel. I hope it's something that I'm not expecting, something worse than that. Most of the episode was all right, except for the eyeball scene. I think the context of episodes afterward can make an episode seem better in retrospect. galenanorth fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Feb 21, 2020 |
# ? Feb 21, 2020 01:00 |
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was that character actually named "vajazzle"?
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 02:59 |
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kidkissinger posted:was that character actually named "vajazzle"? Yes. For what it’s worth, I appreciated her calling Seven Annika, and how it turned from a power move to an act of desperation the long the situation went on and she keened to how absolutely loving pissed Seven was at her.
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 03:05 |
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kidkissinger posted:was that character actually named "vajazzle"? Bjayzl, but well, yeah.
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 03:07 |
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We realistically have no idea what "supernova' means even in this case since wasn't it some magic special star stuff from spock or something that caused it? gently caress I dont remember. Assuming it obeys the laws of a normal supernova realistically only stuff in a narrow radius - like 1-4LY would be majorly affected. Most of the energy of a traditional supernova is light. Not a ton if just electromagnetic or matter. My college astronomy courses tell me that if we pretend this was a normal supernova of a star that had 8x solar radius (about the low end for a Type II supernova) it'd be deadly to everything in a 2-4LY radius, pretty harmful to most planets out to 10LY and noticeable out to about 30LY. Nasa says you could see affects from a supernova out to about 50LY but that's assuming a pretty large hypergiant. But again, magic star trek supernova so who knows? There is precedent though for races living mainly on one planet - a la bajor - so maybe that's what the romulans did. Or think of a country where a massive amount of its population lives in one city. if you were to remove that city what would remain?
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 03:19 |
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The magic Spock stuff was supposed to stop the supernova
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 03:32 |
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Cojawfee posted:The magic Spock stuff was supposed to stop the supernova It seriously seems like they're ignoring every aspect of Star Trek 2009 beyond "a supernova destroyed Romulus," which is for the best.
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 03:39 |
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Supernovas can give off deadly gamma ray bursts that can hit systems hundreds of light years away. There's some evidence that Earth got hit by one hundreds of millions of years ago, causing a mass extinction. Obviously, that would only spread at the speed of light, but it means a lot more worlds than just Romulus would need to be evacuated sooner or later.
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 03:42 |
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I'm still trying to process my thoughts on this episode (I liked it even if it left me kinda miserable afterward), but I love Elnor being a pure precious bean about everything other than physical violence against other people. I love this dipshit murderboy.
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 03:46 |
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"I didn't get one "
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 03:55 |
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My usual no-particular-order hot takes.
Overall reaction: Well, I didn't hate it, but this is still probably my least favorite episode so far.
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 04:28 |
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I did like the little throwaway line about Icheb not having a cortical node makes you think someone is at least trying to keep things straight. I mean I don’t know if I like how everyone’s life is poo poo and everything is lovely now but I’m willing to give the rest a chance. Maybe the Rikers are doing alright and not living in misery haunted by personal tragedy.
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 04:38 |
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Snow Cone Capone posted:"I didn't get one " Probably the best thing in the episode
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 04:42 |
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HD DAD posted:
Did you say Patrick Stewart in a dune buggy? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cegk6G94FC8&t=105s
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 04:43 |
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Honestly, Elnor being a naive oblivious weirdo is pretty great. He’s like the emotional lovechild of Worf and Data.
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 04:45 |
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I didn’t like that. I skipped all the unread posts so this is probably hashed out already but I don’t like seeing someone like Seven acting un Starfleet like. Come to think of it, there’s a lot of that. Having scaredy cat be a villain was also silly. All i can think of is she really had a talking to from sunglasses lady. I’ll try to write something better later.
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 04:51 |
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I think it was the worst episode so far but mostly because it had the least amount of Picard out of the five. And yeah, it does seem like it's going to be that synths eventually turn on people and the zhat vash are working against that. The big question I'm wondering about is if the storyline is going to be contained in just the season or if it's going to span multiple - possibly even the whole series. Disco story lines concluded at the end of each season, so I hope this one does the same, but with just how many conspiracies there are I can't believe they'll wrap it up by the finale.
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 05:12 |
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Based on how slow this is going, it has to conclude this season. They didn't get a season 2 until they finished season 1, so I hope they weren't just counting on a season 2. I'm assuming that they didn't have enough episode ideas so they are just dragging everything out to last for 10 episodes.
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 05:15 |
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I just do not jibe with this show's pacing at all; the scenes are fast, but the overarching story is so slow. I feel like the whole thing would congeal a lot better if you excised any single character from Picard's crew.
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 05:25 |
So I've been unrelentingly positive about this show. All the nitpicks and pessimism just haven't mattered to me. But this episode bothered me. I actually watched all of Voyager in preparation for this show. Mainly because I hadn't seen most of it before and it was new Trek to me that I had been meaning to see, but this show motivated me to get into it 'cause I knew Seven was going to be in it. I had no idea who Icheb was before I watched Voyager a couple months ago, but he ended up being one of the most compelling characters on that ship to me. His story and development and relationship with Seven were all some of the most charming surprises in the general mess that was Voyager. I honestly wish I hadn't bothered. Killing Icheb in such a visceral disgusting way was bad and I didn't like it. It didn't make me invested and uncomfortable at the horrors being committed in the fiction, it took me out of it and made me think the writers were themselves cruel assholes. That's a personal reaction, but it super didn't land for me, and took me way out of everything else. "Oh, they're dressing up and doing a silly heist on a casino planet? Yeah, sorry, I'm still thinking about the mechanical viscera dripping from the still living but nearly dead earnest young man who faced all sorts of abuses and trauma in his life but kept trying to fit in and be helpful." That's not the tone I want this show to take at all. Honestly, it soured me on the rest of the episode, but when I try to put my other criticisms down it doesn't seem that bad. Seven going back to kill that woman secretly to preserve Picard's hope felt really lovely at the time, but I feel like it was actually a pretty solid continuation of the moral discussion they were having earlier about being a vigilante. That crime woman wasn't on her way to jail, she was gonna commit more atrocities if they let her go. It wasn't an abandonment of idealism or humanity, it was a continuation of Seven's new life as a do-gooding vigilante. It had an incredibly dense emotional core for Seven- her motives were not remotely pure- but they didn't need to be. If she was silently rebuking Picard by going back it wasn't because he was wrong about vengeance and humanity, it was because he was wrong about acting outside the law, in this case. Which is a discussion they had earlier in the episode so I'm not just pulling this out of nowhere. Elnor is surprisingly fantastic. I like these characters. I hope Raffi dealing with her thing is going to make her more fun to be around. When she's helping to plan things I quite like her. Not that personal issues aren't important, but one of the appeals of Star Trek has always been a group of people working together, so less obstacles to that are good. The twist at the end will be either good or bad depending on how the puzzlebox turns out. No judgement on that yet. I'm not going to waste time suspecting the worst, but I'm also not actually going to be into it until the plot proves coherent.
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 05:30 |
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Is the puzzlebox a reference I don't get or something? I have no idea what the deal with it is.
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 05:34 |
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Snow Cone Capone posted:Is the puzzlebox a reference I don't get or something? I have no idea what the deal with it is. No idea, it just looks like something that was in the room of Romulan ExBorg. IIRC there were tables full of games and stuff in there, like the tarot thing the one ExBorg was working on.
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 05:37 |
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HD DAD posted:Basically, you have Kurtzman helming two novelists and dune-buggy Stewart, and it’s all coming off super awkward. I've had a lot of niggles with the show but I hoped this week might be the first really decent episode. But it totally killed any optimism I had, it was bloody awful. Weird pacing/one, bizarre characterisation choices and a really dumb plot with stupid twists. The clunky exposition dump in the middle of an armed standoff was awkward, and Raffi's B plot was the blandest soap opera junk. The musical score is still the sonic equivalent of pouring a thick layer of salt on bland food thinking it'll magically make it delicious. Just fatiguing. It drives me nuts the way the omnipresent music makes it obvious how each scene is gonna play out. The characters I thought I'd hate (Romulan Legolas and Generic Cocky Rogue Pilot) turned out to be the standouts though. And I liked the Romulirish housekeeper too. Cheeky fecker.
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 05:49 |
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Biscuitbeard posted:
I feel like they're all the ones who just aren't constantly in the midst of a personal journey of trauma and sadness. They're the ones that are just kind of fun to watch and seem to be along for the ride, so they aren't constantly walking towards another scene about how hard and difficult to watch being them is. I'm watching bits of DS9 episodes now and it's strange how different, and more interesting these DS9 episodes end up being, with characters going about their lives as new situations arise, and finding out bits of each episode's mystery at the same time as we are -- instead of being on step 5 of a 10 step journey of personal grief towards a mystery so profound and terrible, that you'll have to watch all 10 episodes just to find out why it's interesting. piratepilates fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Feb 21, 2020 |
# ? Feb 21, 2020 05:52 |
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now i gotta watch the rest of this bullshit show to find out what the terrible secret of space is but if they string out the mystery past the end of the season i am done. honestly it would be a mercyDelthalaz posted:What the gently caress is this poo poo? forget it, delthalaz. its Prestige Drama
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 05:55 |
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Hed posted:I skipped all the unread posts so this is probably hashed out already but I don’t like seeing someone like Seven acting un Starfleet like. Come to think of it, there’s a lot of that. ...Seven was never in Starfleet, though? And on Voyager she constantly disagreed with Janeway's Starfleet policies, and turned a wounded alien over to the Hirogen to be killed.
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 05:56 |
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i love you p. stew but you must be kept away from the writer's room for your own protection
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 05:59 |
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Episode 5 thoughts I was surprised that Icheb was mentioned at all, but goddamn that kid had a rough life. He was abandoned by his parents who tried to make him into a weapon against the Borg, then actually made it through the Academy and became an officer only to get carved up on some biobed like a piece of meat. I would really like to know why there is suddenly this big hunt for ex-Borg parts, which is something that never came up in previous Trek properties. I liked Seven, although it feels like we may already be done with her on the show, which would be disappointing. I wish there was more detail as to why the UFP would let the Neutral Zone collapse and this lawless area exist along its border. That makes zero sense to me at all. It would also be nice to know how many former Borg are out there, because this show makes it seem like there are a lot of them. The cast really comes together well for the most part in this episode, even if it feels like they kind of take over everything with Picard just standing on the sidelines. I wish we got more of Maddox considering his importance to Data, but I'm sure we will learn more about his deal soon enough. It was a decent episode but I'm struggling to figure out how they are going to wrap all of this up in just four more episodes. Plus somehow we have to still run into Riker and Troi.
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 06:04 |
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who remembers whoever the gently caress that borg dude from late voyager who got ganked was but wants trek to be this? who is this written for? FlamingLiberal posted:
they won't
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 06:18 |
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# ? Jun 13, 2024 06:13 |
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Eiba posted:So I've been unrelentingly positive about this show. All the nitpicks and pessimism just haven't mattered to me. That is a good observation. It kind of reminds me of when Data pulled the trigger on that Fajo guy in "The Most Toys." The acting is great in this show. I thought Raffi's big scene in the clinic had a lot of cliches and some lines that would have been pretty corny in the hands of lesser actors, but they really made it work.
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 06:24 |