|
Sash! posted:And, of course, Star Trek never engages with the actual implications of their technology so no one says "what if we built a network of small stations that are little more than reactors and transporters, so that we can leap frog people from buffer to buffer without materializing them, moving them inside star systems faster than impulse?" yeah I loved that thing in stargate
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2023 17:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 19:09 |
|
|
Earth to Mars would require a little over ten thousand relays, all of which would basically have to be little ships that would have to constantly thrust to maintain a line between the two, they couldn't just sit in a natural orbit. DS9 is a lot further from Bajor, and they don't exactly have the best industrial base in the Alpha Quadrant. To quote H2G2: 'Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.' MikeJF fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Aug 27, 2023 |
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2023 17:44
|
|
|
Atlas Hugged posted:They had a perfectly good botany lab when Sulu was briefly in the science department. Just copy that. They did suggest it but it would be "making her career into a hobby" Like i said they're decent at covering the basic questions you'd ask about stories. It always feels like there's a person who reads over the script and goes "but why not..." Which I think SNW is missing. And Prodigy is really
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2023 17:59
|
|
|
The tension Keiko had with O'Brien over having to live in a place where she wasn't really satisfied but trying to make the best of things is an extrapolation of an idea that TNG had but never dived deep into. TNG threw in the idea of the crew bringing their families with them to form a large civilian population on the Enterprise in the depths of space, far from any Federation world, but never touched on the interpersonal dynamics of that because all of the main cast of TNG was single and incapable of maintaining long-term romantic relationships.
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2023 18:31
|
|
|
Taear posted:I feel like I'm the only person who hates Far Beyond The Stars. I don't like any episode of a show that goes "Maybe it's not real??" Of all Trek episodes Far Beyond the Stars is the one to not take literally in any sense as far as its place in the world of Star Trek goes. Yes it makes an attempt to have Sisko’s visions be some kind of alien induced vision or whatever but it is, appropriately, mostly a short story disconnected from anything except itself. It’s not just about what happens between Sisko and Russell but also between Avery Brooks and Sisko or Avery Brooks and real people like Russell or the entire Hollywood system and Avery Brooks, or really however high up in the hierarchy you want to go. Benny Russell is the dream and the dreamer. He’s the dream of the oppressed who came before him, who would look at his life and kill to live it, yet he still dreams of something better. Avery Brooks is the dream and the dreamer. Sisko is the dream and the dreamer. It resembles the kind of simple racism story Hollywood loves but because of how it frames the struggle as ongoing and how good people can be broken by it I think it has more teeth than something more typical than something like The Green Book.
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2023 18:32
|
|
|
8one6 posted:old Benny Hill is watching them film DS9. I disagree, it would be a striking image to end the series on
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2023 18:34
|
|
|
Yeah I guess it's good as an individual story, but in context of a larger series, it's just a kind of commentary on it and the society making it as compared to a few decades earlier. The whole idea of the series just being a dream in the contexts of this other universe isn't all that interesting and is probably more annoying in the context of a number of other shows and movies that try to generate interest with the idea that they aren't "real", like that on its own really means anything. But Benny Russell is pretty clear on all of that. It's real.
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2023 18:45
|
|
|
Taear posted:I feel like I'm the only person who hates Far Beyond The Stars. I don't like any episode of a show that goes "Maybe it's not real??" I feel like you might be conflating it with the later episode that calls back to it, because it's only then that they really introduce any hint that the whole series might just be the vision. FBTS is pretty up-front about its intentions as a stand-alone parable, and pretty much just uses the technobabble (or spirituababble?) as a flimsy framework to hang it on.
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2023 20:24
|
|
|
Sir Lemming posted:I feel like you might be conflating it with the later episode that calls back to it, because it's only then that they really introduce any hint that the whole series might just be the vision. FBTS is pretty up-front about its intentions as a stand-alone parable, and pretty much just uses the technobabble (or spirituababble?) as a flimsy framework to hang it on. It's him writing on the walls about it, I mean I hadn't seen that later episode when I watched the episode myself (since it didn't exist)
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2023 21:50
|
|
|
Eighties ZomCom posted:DS9 did in fact have a counsellor. They're mentioned in the O'Brien Mind Prison episode as someone O'Brien is seeing. You just never see them. Oh yeah. Forgot about that. I thought Ezri coming onboard as the station counselor was a whole new billet, honestly, BECAUSE of all the crazy poo poo that happens there.
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2023 23:08
|
|
|
Tunicate posted:nah she was remembering swahili at the end, she just needed something to jog her memory This is as valid an interpretation as any other because ultimately we're trying to figure out what the hell a script from the 1960s was trying to say about memory loss and identity. I see it (or at least this aspect of it) as a sloppy script that was ad hoc interpreted on set and the various components don't necessarily mean anything because you have multiple different perspectives all contributing to the final product. For instance, according to Memory Alpha, the reason why she was speaking Swahili is because Nichols felt that as it was Uhura's first language, that's the language her mind would revert to. Roddenberry backed her up. This doesn't at all match the dialog earlier in the episode that her mind was completely blank, but otherwise undamaged. She could be reeducated and that is stated multiple times. There shouldn't have been any Swahili in her brain though and the only reason she should have been speaking it is because she was taught it by the learning tapes, which sure why not. Like if your goal is to get her to be as close as possible to the original Uhura, teaching her Swahili first is the logical choice. In the scene though, when she's speaking Swahili, she's learning to read again, basic sentences. She gets frustrated because she can't figure out what she's reading and starts complaining in Swahili before Chapel reminds her to use English. She and Bones then have an aside where they wonder if she ever even can be reeducated. This at least implies that the reeducation isn't going flawlessly and that doubt remains that "Uhura" will ever be back, a tense they resolve after Nomad is defeated. The episode ends with Bones proudly declaring that they've already got her back to a university level and that it'll be another week before she's ready to do her job. This seems to imply that her memory wasn't "being jogged" but that she was literally relearning poo poo, just at an accelerated rate (the structure of her brain already being primed to receive this specific set of information?). The biggest issues with the scenario all come down to the fact that I don't think the writers fully understood language development, consciousness, learning, the differences between adult and child brains, and the distinction between knowledge and experiential memory. Like these are weighty metaphysical questions that don't have obvious answers and are still hotly debated in modern philosophy. It's coincidentally where I put a lot of my focus in undergrad, so it leapt out at me as feeling kind of dated and over simplified. But if you want to say that Nomad was simply in error about what he had actually done, I can't argue against that because Nomad being in error is sorta the crux of the whole episode. Scotty's fate is so much less controversial because Bones had that neat line as Nomad was preparing to "repair" Scotty about Nomad's need to work fast. This at least implies that Bones was doing something to preserve Scotty's brain so that if his body was revived, he'd still be the same old Scotty, and that's more or less what we ended up seeing.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 01:09
|
|
|
The whole Uhura thing is one of those aspects of TOS where I think you just have to ignore the literal words they said onscreen and go with the "something like this happened" vague canon interpretation, otherwise yeah, Uhura flat-out died, some new person with no connection to anything that happened before is running around in her body, and worst of all no one on the ship seems to care. I just file it away with all the extremely sexist lines the characters drop from time to time.MikeJF posted:Earth to Mars would require a little over ten thousand relays, all of which would basically have to be little ships that would have to constantly thrust to maintain a line between the two, they couldn't just sit in a natural orbit. DS9 is a lot further from Bajor, and they don't exactly have the best industrial base in the Alpha Quadrant.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 02:37
|
|
|
Brain and brain! What is brain?
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 02:38
|
|
|
Knormal posted:The whole Uhura thing is one of those aspects of TOS where I think you just have to ignore the literal words they said onscreen and go with the "something like this happened" vague canon interpretation, otherwise yeah, Uhura flat-out died, some new person with no connection to anything that happened before is running around in her body, and worst of all no one on the ship seems to care. I just file it away with all the extremely sexist lines the characters drop from time to time. I dunno about that but it is one of the most legitimately creepy (as in horror) scenes in TOS: a robot that can just factory reset your brain in the time it took me to type this post....or less. Another very creepy scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glsDGD9-8jI&t=126s The way Mitchell stops reading and gazes directly at Kirk/the camera through Spock's monitor screen is creepy as gently caress. F_Shit_Fitzgerald fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Aug 28, 2023 |
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 02:40
|
|
|
Knormal posted:The whole Uhura thing is one of those aspects of TOS where I think you just have to ignore the literal words they said onscreen and go with the "something like this happened" vague canon interpretation, otherwise yeah, Uhura flat-out died, some new person with no connection to anything that happened before is running around in her body, and worst of all no one on the ship seems to care. I just file it away with all the extremely sexist lines the characters drop from time to time. I mean, yeah it's this. TOS is weird and doesn't really line up with modern Trek very well and the canon is at best loose. Part of me is always going to see her as "Uhura 2" in the back of my mind, but it's just something that needs to be accepted and we all move on like the crew of the Enterprise did. F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:I dunno about that but it is one of the most legitimately creepy (as in horror) scenes in TOS: a robot that can just factory reset your brain in the time it took me to type this post....or less. It's this too. Any time a character's identity is stripped from them, it's absolutely terrifying. There's a reason it's a go-to punishment in things like Black Mirror and why it popped up again in The Orville in its Black Mirror parody episode. It's also why Bashir is such a loving monster.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 02:45
|
|
|
Atlas Hugged posted:It's this too. Any time a character's identity is stripped from them, it's absolutely terrifying. There's a reason it's a go-to punishment in things like Black Mirror and why it popped up again in The Orville in its Black Mirror parody episode. It's also why Bashir is such a loving monster. And why personality wipes in Babylon 5 are one of the most dystopian punishments since Miles' VR prison sentence.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 02:49
|
|
|
F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:And why personality wipes in Babylon 5 are one of the most dystopian punishments since Miles' VR prison sentence. Amen to loving this. The only thing more horrific in B5 was Franklin's description of being airlocked.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 02:51
|
|
|
Atlas Hugged posted:It's this too. Any time a character's identity is stripped from them, it's absolutely terrifying. There's a reason it's a go-to punishment in things like Black Mirror and why it popped up again in The Orville in its Black Mirror parody episode. It's also why Bashir is such a loving monster. Babylon 5 explored this very deliberately with its "personality death" mindwipes as an allegedly merciful alternative to capital punishment. The episode features Brad Dourif and it uses him well. E: beaten. drat, I didn't realize I'd left the tab open that long.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 02:53
|
|
|
I still want to know why Nomad had planet-killing weapons in the first place.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 03:05
|
|
|
It probably didn't. Tan Ru was likely the armed half since the physical construct of Nomad was different than the original probe. That or just chalk it up to 21st century scientists feeling the need to slap a gun on everything "just in case". I mean, the writing on the episode is all over the place as well, describing the attacks as being equivalent to 20 photon torpedoes but only taking away 20% of the shields. It's once again a great premise, one so good it would be revisited multiple times, but the execution here is at best wonky.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 03:11
|
|
|
I feel you, really. I have a strong background in geology and geophysics and trust me, almost nothing gets geoscience topics right even when they bother to try. Being a STEM student and a scifi fan is to be cursed with the forbidden knowledge of how it really should be in a genre which is almost always more concerned with what is more entertaining. At a certain point you have to learn how to turn the volume down on the little guy in the lab coat screaming "that's not how it loving works!" or you'll never enjoy anything. That's not to say you should turn your brain off, just manage your expectations. And remember that there's almost always just one general science advisor working on a project who's almost never a specialist in your particular subject -- and even if they are, 99 times out of 100 their notes are gonna end up in the trash to do something "cooler". That's how I get through life as I constantly, quietly seethe at The Core ever making it out of predevelopment.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 03:42
|
|
|
Where I'm at with it is I'm just cataloging the things I notice. I'm not placing a value judgment on the show for being wildly scientifically or philosophically inaccurate. The show is very much a product of its time, so it's interesting to see what the franchise has done with this hodgepodge of a groundwork. Spock's betrothed being someone he's known since childhood doesn't work nearly as well as T'Pring actually having been someone he was romantically and physically involved with when he was younger despite the protests of the mother. The broad shape of it is there, but it makes way more sense than the weird pon farr wedding challenge we see in Amok Time. Like where are single Vulcans coming from? Widows and Widowers? TOS is gonna TOS and I'm here for the ride, but there are certain things that have clearly been swept under the rug, and Uhura dying in TOS season 2 is absolutely one of them. Best not to dwell on its implications, but boy does it come out of loving nowhere.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 03:51
|
|
|
Was just thinking about how awesome Remember Me was in TNG. The slow burn of the mystery really created an amazing atmosphere and the tone of desperation and loneliness it captured was awesome. But randomly thought about it today because I loved when Crusher goes to the rest of the crew and is like "I know I sound crazy but this impossible thing is happening" and the whole crew is like "....ok" and despite it being nuts takes her 100% seriously and immediately start brainstorming possibilities. It really drives home the trust amidst insane stuff a starfleet crew must go through. Easily one of my favorite TNG episodes but I often skip it on re-watches because Gates McFadden absolutely crushes it and her performance of panic and isolation is super stressful. You should all re-watch it it rocks.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 03:57
|
|
|
Tom Tucker posted:Was just thinking about how awesome Remember Me was in TNG. The slow burn of the mystery really created an amazing atmosphere and the tone of desperation and loneliness it captured was awesome. But randomly thought about it today because I loved when Crusher goes to the rest of the crew and is like "I know I sound crazy but this impossible thing is happening" and the whole crew is like "....ok" and despite it being nuts takes her 100% seriously and immediately start brainstorming possibilities. It really drives home the trust amidst insane stuff a starfleet crew must go through. The one problem with the episode is that Wesley &/or the Traveller show up halfway through, letting you know there's parallel universe shenanigans going on too early. Or at least that's how I remember it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 04:31
|
|
|
Admiralty Flag posted:The one problem with the episode is that Wesley &/or the Traveller show up halfway through, letting you know there's parallel universe shenanigans going on too early. Or at least that's how I remember it. Yeah you're right here the show chooses to reveal what's really going on at the end of Act 3. Beverly shows up to the bridge and it's just Picard there, and she tries to talk reason to him but he's all "it's always been just the two of us", then he disappears, and at that point it cuts "outside" the bubble where Wesley thinks the warp bubble has collapsed and then the Traveler shows up. Then in Act 4 Beverly has the great conversation with the computer like "do I have the skills necessary to complete the mission as it's described" and the computer starts stuttering. It would have been better to keep the tension and not reveal that she was in a warp bubble until she asks the computer to show her the shape of the Universe which happens in Act 5. The Traveler showing up doesn't add any gravitas, and the "outside" view kind of spoils it. It also takes some weight out of Beverly figuring out what's going on because we already know, whereas before there was a ton of tension because we know she isn't crazy and when a portal appears trying to drag her in the obvious assumption is that this is the portal that has been erasing people, not trying to save her. Act 3 should have ended when she turns around and realizes Wesley is gone, and then maybe drop the reveal at the end of Act 4, with Act 5 being her figuring out the portal is them helping her. I honestly forgot about how they undercut the tension at the end of Act 3 that does diminish it a bit, but I also love the Act 5 "what caused the hull breach" "a flaw in the ship's design" because the ship is larger than the universe it's inside.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 04:44
|
|
|
I read that the Traveler was brought back because "he was popular at cons" and I wonder about the deviants who lobbied for his return.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 06:45
|
|
|
davidspackage posted:I read that the Traveler was brought back because "he was popular at cons" and I wonder about the deviants who lobbied for his return. They’re big into hosed up alien hands. Just imagine getting hosed by those finger trunks.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 06:47
|
|
|
Deep down every Star Trek fan just wants a large-fingered man disguised as a Native American to take him away from it all
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 07:04
|
|
|
McSpanky posted:as I constantly, quietly seethe at The Core ever making it out of predevelopment. How did I know that's where you were going ? I've seen it too, and yeah. Fun movie, but OMFG the science.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 07:45
|
|
|
quote:In response to criticism of his screenplay's lack of scientific realism, screenwriter John Rogers responded that he tried to make the science accurate, but expended three years fighting "to get rid of the ... dinosaurs, magma-walks in 'space-suits', bullshit-sci-crap sources for the Earth's crisis, and a windshield for the ship Virgil." Honestly, wasted effort, they should've just gone full golden age fantastic science nonsense. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 13:50 on Aug 28, 2023 |
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 08:08
|
|
|
"Day of Honour" is continuity-wise a mess. Hey Tom and B'Elanna have only fifteen minutes of air left, Seven can you make a thorium breeder for the Caatati? And then get them over here to approve it? And THEN we have to stick the warp core back in and finally we can go pick them up. Like I get the narrative and rising drama they were going for but the timescale is hosed up.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 09:07
|
|
|
Arivia posted:"Day of Honour" is continuity-wise a mess. Hey Tom and B'Elanna have only fifteen minutes of air left, Seven can you make a thorium breeder for the Caatati? And then get them over here to approve it? And THEN we have to stick the warp core back in and finally we can go pick them up. This happens in episodes all the time and what I've decided is that the action we're being shown in the different locations is not literally happening simultaneously, even when communicators show that it is happening simultaneously because otherwise yeah it doesn't make any loving sense.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 09:30
|
|
|
Discovery pulled a few amazingly audacious ones. There's one where they call a staff meeting in the other room while the ship is five minutes away from being consumed, and I think at one point they reverse engineer the time suit in like a half an hour?
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 09:32
|
|
|
Boxturret posted:Brain and brain! What is brain? My favourite moment in this is when Shatner comically mouths "His... Brain." after McCoy informs him what's happened. Everything about his whole demeanour when he does that is like; "Oh, for fucks sake."
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 11:11
|
|
|
MikeJF posted:Honestly, wasted effort, they should've just gone full golden age fantastic science nonsense. That would've been the other way to do it, full steam ahead Jules Verne-style science adventure.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 13:41
|
|
|
F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:And why personality wipes in Babylon 5 are one of the most dystopian punishments since Miles' VR prison sentence. Similarly, Nerve Stapling in SMAC.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 16:51
|
|
|
Tom Tucker posted:Yeah you're right here the show chooses to reveal what's really going on at the end of Act 3. Beverly shows up to the bridge and it's just Picard there, and she tries to talk reason to him but he's all "it's always been just the two of us", then he disappears, I've always liked that scene. Beverly asks Picard if it seems strange to him that they're the only crew of a starship the size of the D, and he just shrugs like it ain't no thang. It's funny and unsettling at the same time.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 16:51
|
|
|
Atlas Hugged posted:TOS is gonna TOS and I'm here for the ride, but there are certain things that have clearly been swept under the rug, and Uhura dying in TOS season 2 is absolutely one of them. Best not to dwell on its implications, but boy does it come out of loving nowhere. Well, TOS is hardly unique in this regard. There's a TNG ep where basically the same thing happens to the entire ship, people remember skills but their memories are completely deleted, and a Voyager episode where something quite similar occurs to Tuvok. And it's not even limited to scifi, total amnesia plots are a hoary trope of soaps and come up plenty in other genres. You and I know that losing your memory and basically becoming a different person is something that you just don't come back from IRL, but in fiction people magically (or technobabbically) make full recoveries all the time. It's just one of those things, like guns throwing people through windows, just shaking off being knocked unconscious and CPR almost always working.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 17:21
|
|
|
McSpanky posted:You and I know that losing your memory and basically becoming a different person is something that you just don't come back from IRL, but in fiction people magically (or technobabbically) make full recoveries all the time. It's just one of those things, like guns throwing people through windows, just shaking off being knocked unconscious and CPR almost always working. Right, whereas in real life CPR doesn't work at first, and the person next to you starts crying and pulling you away, but then you yell DON'T GIVE UP, drat YOU! YOU NEVER GAVE UP ON ME and then you do it again and they throw up a little water and are immediately ok.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 17:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 19:09 |
|
|
McSpanky posted:Well, TOS is hardly unique in this regard. There's a TNG ep where basically the same thing happens to the entire ship, people remember skills but their memories are completely deleted, and a Voyager episode where something quite similar occurs to Tuvok. And it's not even limited to scifi, total amnesia plots are a hoary trope of soaps and come up plenty in other genres. I appreciated that the recent Strange New Worlds memory-loss episode made an effort to establish the ground rules for how it worked. Paraphrasing: "I could do [simple task] because I've done it a thousand times, it's practically automatic. I wouldn't know I've done it a thousand times, but I could still do it. However, I couldn't do [complex task] even though I've done a bunch of that too, because that one requires a lot of thought and specific knowledge, you can't sleepwalk through it."
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2023 18:04
|
|
