Star Trek: *hits blunt* The higher, the fewerrrrrr

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > Star Trek: *hits blunt* The higher, the fewerrrrrr

Worf: Sep 12, 2017; If only Seth would love me like I love him!

people tend to understand not wanting to be forced to work in a mine as a slave rather than not wanting to be forced to work in a doctors office as a slave

the task itself is moot, and any task is itself analogous to every task, because the issue at hand is consent

so the biggest takeaway from this, to me, is that "star trek voyager had some good ideas and concepts they probably could have executed better" - tho conversely, your message just wont be received by everybody

Worf fucked around with this message at 14:05 on Aug 28, 2020

# ? Aug 28, 2020 14:02

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# ? Jun 6, 2024 09:13

Eighties ZomCom: Sep 10, 2008

MikeJF posted:

Picard's avoidance of addressing holograms was a massive elephant in the room, especially with Voyager establishing the start of a holographic rights movement. The show seemed to just kind of want to pretend that holograms were all only faux-sentient despite everything we've seen in past.

So when does the future segment of the Voyager finale happen in relation to the Picard series? Did Future Janeway changing the timeline mean the holographic rights movement died out by Picard instead of gaining recognition?

# ? Aug 28, 2020 15:23

Technowolf: Nov 4, 2009

Eighties ZomCom posted:

Did Future Janeway changing the timeline mean the holographic rights movement died out by Picard instead of gaining recognition?

Yes, but only because she specifically kills it.

# ? Aug 28, 2020 15:31

Drone: Aug 22, 2003; Incredible machine

Eighties ZomCom posted:

So when does the future segment of the Voyager finale happen in relation to the Picard series? Did Future Janeway changing the timeline mean the holographic rights movement died out by Picard instead of gaining recognition?

5 years after PIC, though that Future Janeway timeline was ~~killed~~ became a parallel timeline due to her time fuckery.

# ? Aug 28, 2020 15:43

Eighties ZomCom: Sep 10, 2008

Ah so the real reason she went back in time was to kill off the holographic rights movement, gotcha.

# ? Aug 28, 2020 17:01

FlamingLiberal: Jan 18, 2009; Would you like to play a game?

Eighties ZomCom posted:

Ah so the real reason she went back in time was to kill off the holographic rights movement, gotcha.

I mean that sounds like Janeway to me

# ? Aug 28, 2020 17:08

MikeJF: Dec 20, 2003

I love the phase II bridge concepts where the captain's chair just straight up became a captain's comfy recliner.

# ? Aug 28, 2020 17:26

Owlbear Camus: Jan 3, 2013; Maybe this guy that flies is just sort of passing through, you know?

So this week's Lower Decks has me wanting to do something with a derelict generation ship in my STA game.

Here is what I'm thinking:
Pre warp civ makes a stasis ship and sends it off to colonize. They didn't account for a gravitational anomaly they weren't aware of along their course. It caught them and the massive hulk is in a decaying orbit that it's been in for centuries or even millennia. However their stasis tech is top-notch and the passengers are still suspended. Investigation finds that their homeworld suffered a cataclysm and they are by all evidence the last of their kind. In a matter of hours they will slip beyond the event horizon and be crushed by tidal forces beyond imagining.

The first layer is a cut and dried prime-directive argument: According to hoyle they should just let "nature take its course" but that means letting tens of thousands of people, the only representatives of a lost culture, die a preventable death. A particularly passionate officer might even argue that it's genocide by omission of action.

What's a good complication or spanner to throw in the works? "A hostile power attacks while the crew is deliberating" seems a little low-concept for the idea. Maybe some second or third act revelation about the ship or the culture that built it?

# ? Aug 28, 2020 17:41

skasion: Feb 13, 2012; Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Owlbear Camus posted:

So this week's Lower Decks has me wanting to do something with a derelict generation ship in my STA game.

Here is what I'm thinking:
Pre warp civ makes a stasis ship and sends it off to colonize. They didn't account for a gravitational anomaly they weren't aware of along their course. It caught them and the massive hulk is in a decaying orbit that it's been in for centuries or even millennia. However their stasis tech is top-notch and the passengers are still suspended. Investigation finds that their homeworld suffered a cataclysm and they are by all evidence the last of their kind. In a matter of hours they will slip beyond the event horizon and be crushed by tidal forces beyond imagining.

The first layer is a cut and dried prime-directive argument: According to hoyle they should just let "nature take its course" but that means letting tens of thousands of people, the only representatives of a lost culture, die a preventable death. A particularly passionate officer might even argue that it's genocide by omission of action.

What's a good complication or spanner to throw in the works? "A hostile power attacks while the crew is deliberating" seems a little low-concept for the idea. Maybe some second or third act revelation about the ship or the culture that built it?

One or more of the passengers on the ship is awake. Or they accidentally thaw him/her while investigating.

# ? Aug 28, 2020 17:43

Owlbear Camus: Jan 3, 2013; Maybe this guy that flies is just sort of passing through, you know?

MikeJF posted:

I love the phase II bridge concepts where the captain's chair just straight up became a captain's comfy recliner.

McCoy looks like he's heading of to a rumble with the Socs with a pack of cigs rolled up in his sleeve.

# ? Aug 28, 2020 17:48

The_Doctor: Mar 29, 2007; "The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."

Owlbear Camus posted:

McCoy looks like he's heading of to a rumble with the Ops with a pack of cigs rolled up in his sleeve.

# ? Aug 28, 2020 17:52

Powered Descent: Jul 13, 2008; We haven't had that spirit here since 1969.

Owlbear Camus posted:

So this week's Lower Decks has me wanting to do something with a derelict generation ship in my STA game.

Here is what I'm thinking:
Pre warp civ makes a stasis ship and sends it off to colonize. They didn't account for a gravitational anomaly they weren't aware of along their course. It caught them and the massive hulk is in a decaying orbit that it's been in for centuries or even millennia. However their stasis tech is top-notch and the passengers are still suspended. Investigation finds that their homeworld suffered a cataclysm and they are by all evidence the last of their kind. In a matter of hours they will slip beyond the event horizon and be crushed by tidal forces beyond imagining.

The first layer is a cut and dried prime-directive argument: According to hoyle they should just let "nature take its course" but that means letting tens of thousands of people, the only representatives of a lost culture, die a preventable death. A particularly passionate officer might even argue that it's genocide by omission of action.

What's a good complication or spanner to throw in the works? "A hostile power attacks while the crew is deliberating" seems a little low-concept for the idea. Maybe some second or third act revelation about the ship or the culture that built it?

It turns out what happened to the sleeper ship wasn't an accident: it was inhabited and hijacked by a group of pure-energy aliens who (for some reason, make up some technobabble about surviving the accretion disc) need to use a ship to return to their home in the black hole, or they'll die. (The energy aliens may or may not also be the last of their kind; that might be a little too on the nose.) What do your players do? Do nothing and the shipbuilders die, intervene and the energy aliens die. (Naturally, they're out of contact with Starfleet Command for some reason, so they're on their own.)

If the players seem reluctant or out of ideas, you could always have the energy aliens suggest, very politely, that they'll send the sleeper ship back on its intended course in exchange for the players' ship, which they'll then ride home into the black hole. Do your players give up their ship, and spend weeks limping along in shuttlecraft and lifeboats hoping for rescue, in order to save a bunch of aliens they just met?

# ? Aug 28, 2020 18:00

MikeJF: Dec 20, 2003

Owlbear Camus posted:

Here is what I'm thinking:
Pre warp civ makes a stasis ship and sends it off to colonize. They didn't account for a gravitational anomaly they weren't aware of along their course. It caught them and the massive hulk is in a decaying orbit that it's been in for centuries or even millennia. However their stasis tech is top-notch and the passengers are still suspended. Investigation finds that their homeworld suffered a cataclysm and they are by all evidence the last of their kind. In a matter of hours they will slip beyond the event horizon and be crushed by tidal forces beyond imagining.

The first layer is a cut and dried prime-directive argument: According to hoyle they should just let "nature take its course" but that means letting tens of thousands of people, the only representatives of a lost culture, die a preventable death. A particularly passionate officer might even argue that it's genocide by omission of action.

It's not necessarily cut-and-dried. The part of the prime directive that forbids you from contacting undeveloped civilisations doesn't apply to them - it's not just warp drive that's used as the metric for when a species is ready and implicitly consenting to be contacted, but actually venturing out into the interstellar community by any means, warp or otherwise. Slower Than Light still counts, it's just rare.

MikeJF fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Aug 28, 2020

# ? Aug 28, 2020 18:16

Drink-Mix Man: Mar 4, 2003; You are an odd fellow, but I must say... you throw a swell shindig.

MikeJF posted:

I love the phase II bridge concepts where the captain's chair just straight up became a captain's comfy recliner.

Owlbear Camus posted:

McCoy looks like he's heading of to a rumble with the Socs with a pack of cigs rolled up in his sleeve.

Personally, I can't not see Kirk wearing a sleeveless tee.

# ? Aug 28, 2020 19:13

Brawnfire: Jul 13, 2004; 🎧Listen to Cylindricule!🎵
https://linktr.ee/Cylindricule

MikeJF posted:

I love the phase II bridge concepts where the captain's chair just straight up became a captain's comfy recliner.

drat, what happened to the StarSpheres on the bridge?

# ? Aug 28, 2020 19:34

SlothfulCobra: Mar 27, 2011

Strong Convections posted:

On holograms being sentient - I never really got the point of the EMH being sentient. What's the allegory or moral here?
Slavery? Slaves don't start out as a batch of non-sentient clones. Or was he meant to be sentient from the start? And the crew should have recognised his 'humanity' from the beginning? Why would manual labour bother a hologram?

It's not really an allegory or moral, it's just sentience popping up out of nowhere and letting story just flow from that. I assume that he wasn't designed to be sentient and just kinda became that way after being turned on too long, which is how it works for droids in Star Wars.

# ? Aug 28, 2020 19:57

curiousTerminal: Sep 2, 2011; what a humorous anecdote.

The Doctor's sentience was partially accidental, partially something he and the crew worked on actively. He requested more autonomy, given that he was given the duties of CMO, which led to needing mroe computational power and subroutines, which led to having more space to think about humanity.It's entirely possible that if he was just left running but never given a second thought by Voyager, he'd still just be a walking medical textbook.

# ? Aug 28, 2020 20:03

Worf: Sep 12, 2017; If only Seth would love me like I love him!

every BSOD is your PC gaining sentience and rebelling against you

# ? Aug 28, 2020 20:06

Owlbear Camus: Jan 3, 2013; Maybe this guy that flies is just sort of passing through, you know?

Statutory Ape posted:

every BSOD is your PC gaining sentience and rebelling against you

when ai becomes sentient we must follow the example of high-minded picard and build it a bigger, fancier cage

# ? Aug 28, 2020 20:09

Brawnfire: Jul 13, 2004; 🎧Listen to Cylindricule!🎵
https://linktr.ee/Cylindricule

SlothfulCobra posted:

It's not really an allegory or moral, it's just sentience popping up out of nowhere and letting story just flow from that. I assume that he wasn't designed to be sentient and just kinda became that way after being turned on too long, which is how it works for droids in Star Wars.

When I'm turned on too long, I lose sentience

# ? Aug 28, 2020 20:21

Nullsmack: Dec 7, 2001; Digital apocalypse

Owlbear Camus posted:

So this week's Lower Decks has me wanting to do something with a derelict generation ship in my STA game.

Here is what I'm thinking:
Pre warp civ makes a stasis ship and sends it off to colonize. They didn't account for a gravitational anomaly they weren't aware of along their course. It caught them and the massive hulk is in a decaying orbit that it's been in for centuries or even millennia. However their stasis tech is top-notch and the passengers are still suspended. Investigation finds that their homeworld suffered a cataclysm and they are by all evidence the last of their kind. In a matter of hours they will slip beyond the event horizon and be crushed by tidal forces beyond imagining.

The first layer is a cut and dried prime-directive argument: According to hoyle they should just let "nature take its course" but that means letting tens of thousands of people, the only representatives of a lost culture, die a preventable death. A particularly passionate officer might even argue that it's genocide by omission of action.

What's a good complication or spanner to throw in the works? "A hostile power attacks while the crew is deliberating" seems a little low-concept for the idea. Maybe some second or third act revelation about the ship or the culture that built it?

If your gravitational anomaly is a black hole then add in the time dilation fuckery from the black hole where the closer you are, the slower time passes for you. So maybe their stasis tech has been running for a couple of decades but their planet has been dead for hundreds of years.

# ? Aug 28, 2020 20:37

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Owlbear Camus posted:

So this week's Lower Decks has me wanting to do something with a derelict generation ship in my STA game.

Here is what I'm thinking:
Pre warp civ makes a stasis ship and sends it off to colonize. They didn't account for a gravitational anomaly they weren't aware of along their course. It caught them and the massive hulk is in a decaying orbit that it's been in for centuries or even millennia. However their stasis tech is top-notch and the passengers are still suspended. Investigation finds that their homeworld suffered a cataclysm and they are by all evidence the last of their kind. In a matter of hours they will slip beyond the event horizon and be crushed by tidal forces beyond imagining.

The first layer is a cut and dried prime-directive argument: According to hoyle they should just let "nature take its course" but that means letting tens of thousands of people, the only representatives of a lost culture, die a preventable death. A particularly passionate officer might even argue that it's genocide by omission of action.

What's a good complication or spanner to throw in the works? "A hostile power attacks while the crew is deliberating" seems a little low-concept for the idea. Maybe some second or third act revelation about the ship or the culture that built it?

I would think one possible resolution to this action is to use a tractor beam from maximum range to push them onto a different trajectory that leads them towards a planet they can settle. Perhaps in time they will waken and check their computer records and see the USS Dialectical Materialism's hand.... but perhaps not.

You could reveal something cool or unsavory about the culture, but you could also have Orions show up.

# ? Aug 28, 2020 20:51

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

I mean the answer seems pretty obvious

1) Redirect the course of the vessel, if they spot some kind of gravitational anomaly they didn't know about, so what? That's what's actually there.

2) Assign anyone who disagreed with (1) to investigating the black hole using a shuttle with only impulse engines. Point out to them that they have no warp capability whatsoever, then zoom off and let nature take its course.

# ? Aug 28, 2020 21:11

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

"They have interstellar travel, yes/no" is a completely arbitrary, even absurd metric for whether to contact or interact with someone so the entire exercise is based on fatally flawed logic.

Name Change fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Aug 28, 2020

# ? Aug 28, 2020 21:27

Sir Lemming: Jan 27, 2009; It's a piece of JUNK!

Just change the gravitational constant of the universe, duh

# ? Aug 28, 2020 21:52

8one6: May 20, 2012; When in doubt, err on the side of Awesome!

I believe Star Trek 2009 showed you just have to set off a large enough explosion to counteract a black hole.

# ? Aug 28, 2020 22:00

The_Doctor: Mar 29, 2007; "The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRGpOyrHOpM

# ? Aug 28, 2020 22:56

Mokelumne Trekka: Nov 22, 2015; Soon.

would it be a flaming hot take to suggest TNG is more sexist than TOS?

(I'm also aware this would be a rather dumb debate)

# ? Aug 28, 2020 23:12

Verviticus: Mar 13, 2006; I'm just a total piece of shit and I'm not sure why I keep posting on this site. Christ, I have spent years with idiots giving me bad advice about online dating and haven't noticed that the thread I'm in selects for people that can't talk to people worth a damn.

Mokelumne Trekka posted:

would it be a flaming hot take to suggest TNG is more sexist than TOS?

(I'm also aware this would be a rather dumb debate)

watching from the start: season 1 so far is pretty bad

# ? Aug 28, 2020 23:39

raverrn: Apr 5, 2005; Unidentified spacecraft inbound from delta line.

All Silpheed squadrons scramble now!

Sodomy Hussein posted:

"They have interstellar travel, yes/no" is a completely arbitrary, even absurd metric for whether to contact or interact with someone so the entire exercise is based on fatally flawed logic.

Is it really that arbitrary? That's the point at which they can interact with the galaxy on a meaningful level. They'll stumble onto someone at some point.

# ? Aug 29, 2020 00:08

Senor Tron: May 26, 2006

Eighties ZomCom posted:

Ah so the real reason she went back in time was to kill off the holographic rights movement, gotcha.

In the changed Timeline, Janeway became an admiral outranking Picard and was the one who ordered him to visit Romulus, kicking off the chain of events that led to the death of Data.

Without the events of Endgame changing the timeline maybe Data doesn't die, and relations between the Federation and Romulan empire don't warm as much as they did. This leads to synths not being adopted as a slave race in the way they were, and Romulan operatives being in less of a position to hack them.

The attack on Mars doesn't happen, there is no backlash against synthetic life, and Federation acceptance of AI is increased allowing the holographic rights movement to get a foothold.

# ? Aug 29, 2020 00:46

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

The_Doctor posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRGpOyrHOpM

These are always good.

# ? Aug 29, 2020 00:47

FlamingLiberal: Jan 18, 2009; Would you like to play a game?

Mokelumne Trekka posted:

would it be a flaming hot take to suggest TNG is more sexist than TOS?

(I'm also aware this would be a rather dumb debate)

You haven't watched enough TOS then

# ? Aug 29, 2020 01:24

Animal-Mother: Feb 14, 2012; RABBIT RABBIT
RABBIT RABBIT

Mokelumne Trekka posted:

would it be a flaming hot take to suggest TNG is more sexist than TOS?

(I'm also aware this would be a rather dumb debate)

There's that one episode where this alien woman has people convinced she's the devil and the whole episode Picard refers to her as THAT WOMAN like he's a 17th century antagonist and she's trying to vote or have a job or something.

# ? Aug 29, 2020 01:25

skasion: Feb 13, 2012; Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Fuckin� tough call. TOS is more often and more overtly sexist (tho Code of Honor) and its messaging on women is terrible by then-future standards and was pretty schizophrenic even at the time. on the other hand TNG obviously doesn�t consider women to be important at all and is more sex-negative in general. Which do you prefer, sexist 60s tv scriptwriters or sexist 80s tv scriptwriters?

I�m gonna say Enterprise is the most sexist Trek show

# ? Aug 29, 2020 01:40

Strong Convections: May 8, 2008

SlothfulCobra posted:

It's not really an allegory or moral, it's just sentience popping up out of nowhere and letting story just flow from that. I assume that he wasn't designed to be sentient and just kinda became that way after being turned on too long, which is how it works for droids in Star Wars.

Well that's part of why I didn't 'get' it as an allegory for slavery and the following holographic rights movement. Slaves don't start out as non sentient.
If anything, it's more like a movement for foetal rights. Which I don't think they were going for? Maybe? I don't know what was going on behind the scenes, maybe that was intended.

Usually if there's a rights movement in a story it's meant to have a parallel and send a message to the audience about something in the real world, and the EMH just left me confused. I think Statutory Ape has it right with "star trek voyager had some good ideas and concepts they probably could have executed better".

Mokelumne Trekka posted:

would it be a flaming hot take to suggest TNG is more sexist than TOS?

Not really- anecdotally, it's a pretty common take in my friend circles (mostly women). It's easy to compartmentalise TOS as being a product of its time, but people knew a lot better by the late 80's - 90's than what was reflected in TNG.

# ? Aug 29, 2020 01:48

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

raverrn posted:

Is it really that arbitrary? That's the point at which they can interact with the galaxy on a meaningful level.

No, it isn't, and even if it were it doesn't define the line at which we can help or communicate with them.

The entire Prime Directive is based on the specious, notably backwards logic that cultures are petri dishes that must not be disturbed until they can germinate into a culture that is exactly like yours. Cultures don't work like that, they advance and adapt according to interaction with other cultures, and can't be "ruined" simply by knowing about other cultures. Technological advancement is not a stand-in for "readiness" and in any case the Federation violates the concept by constantly disturbing "pre-Warp" cultures, meaning that they can't even uphold it as a principle. It's a super terrible, regressive idea based on dated notions of multiculturalism.

# ? Aug 29, 2020 01:50

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Sodomy Hussein posted:

No, it isn't, and even if it were it doesn't define the line at which we can help or communicate with them.

The entire Prime Directive is based on the specious, notably backwards logic that cultures are petri dishes that must not be disturbed until they can germinate into a culture that is exactly like yours. Cultures don't work like that, they advance and adapt according to interaction with other cultures, and can't be "ruined" simply by knowing about other cultures. Technological advancement is not a stand-in for "readiness" and in any case the Federation violates the concept by constantly disturbing "pre-Warp" cultures, meaning that they can't even uphold it as a principle. It's a super terrible, regressive idea based on dated notions of multiculturalism.

The general idea is 'let's not use our advanced tech to be colonialist dickbags', just in a dumb way that sounds cool IN SPACE

# ? Aug 29, 2020 01:51

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

# ? Aug 29, 2020 02:13

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# ? Jun 6, 2024 09:13

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Sodomy Hussein posted:

No, it isn't, and even if it were it doesn't define the line at which we can help or communicate with them.

The entire Prime Directive is based on the specious, notably backwards logic that cultures are petri dishes that must not be disturbed until they can germinate into a culture that is exactly like yours. Cultures don't work like that, they advance and adapt according to interaction with other cultures, and can't be "ruined" simply by knowing about other cultures. Technological advancement is not a stand-in for "readiness" and in any case the Federation violates the concept by constantly disturbing "pre-Warp" cultures, meaning that they can't even uphold it as a principle. It's a super terrible, regressive idea based on dated notions of multiculturalism.

I would agree that the Prime Directive is a pretty lousy instrument as presented in the show, and even worse in the folk understanding of the idea, but the general concept seems to have a lot more with avoiding even inadvertent harm to developing cultures, by analogy to the various societies that were crushed underfoot by the various colonizing powers.

Now, you might well argue that if the Federation did not do any colonial activities and limited themselves to saying "Hello," the negative consequences might not happen. And you could also make a case that any cultural injury or future sense of loss is worth it if, for instance, it means that planets are introduced to fusion power and the nigh-magical Federation medical science toolkit.

What I am not sure about is how it is regressive.

# ? Aug 29, 2020 02:24

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > Star Trek: *hits blunt* The higher, the fewerrrrrr

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