data1701d

joined 1 year ago
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[–] data1701d@startrek.website 19 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

I haven't watched most of Picard yet except the first few episodes of season 1, but I weirdly picked up this detail from the IDW Picard's Academy comic. I enjoyed it. Maybe not a masterpiece, but it was at my local library and I would read it again just to look at Spock's outfit:

There's just something weirdly fitting about business casual out Starfleet Academy Instructor Spock.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I see Kevin Riley. I say the magic words:

IIIIIIIIII'LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL TAAAAKEE YOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOEEEEEMMMMM AAAAAGGGGGAAAAAIIIIINNNN KAAATHLEEEEEEEEEEEEN

Now, who's up for an Ensign or LJG Riley appearance in SNW?

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 1 points 4 weeks ago

At least later GTK fixed the whole file picker thing, though.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 5 points 4 weeks ago

Jokes aside, I would view this more as a Thomas Riker situation - Voyager was split in two in that moment. Both Kims were the same Kim before the divergence field, so both Kims have the same record before then.

In truth, probably part of Kim being stuck at one rank was probably because of a lack of transfers from Voyager, for obvious reasons - it's practically raining promotions on the Cerritos for instance, and transfer seems relatively frequent in Lower Decks.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 9 points 4 weeks ago (11 children)

Actually, according to an okudagram in PRO, he is at least a full Lieutenant by 2384 in the prime timeline.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 1 points 1 month ago

I mean, they literally defended the rights of the devil. That automatically makes it a great episode.

Yes

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 5 points 1 month ago (3 children)

How old is your laptop? Pretty much every Windows machine I've ever owned after a certain year requires you to type in your Bitlocker key, including my first-gen Surface Go from 2018.

Also, you often have to manually set up encryption on most Linux installs as well - I did it for my Thinkpad. I need to do it for my desktop as well - I should probably do a reinstall, but I'm thinking of backing everything up and trying to do it in-place just for fun. On top of that, we can finally transition to btrfs.

Wink

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 6 points 1 month ago

Always thought that Dukat was space war criminal version of Michael Scott.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 24 points 1 month ago

I like my Quark version:

Quark tells Rom, "If I had a slip of latinum for variations on the "if I had a nickel" template in this post, I'd have two slips. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice."

Seriously, though. Why do Quark and Doofenschmirtz give kind of the same vibes? I guess part of it is a Perry the Platypus dynamic with Odo.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This is simultaneously a post-modern masterpiece and the most disgusting, atrocious thing I have ever seen.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I do use that sometimes. I was able to use it to look at similar laptop models to my Thinkpad to inform my purchase. I then uploaded a probe when I got my hands on it.

I see the need for posts with recommendations in some ways, though - neither the main site or the forum are the easiest to parse, and it doesn't have every computer model. It is nice to have a human to guide you - it just isn't so nice when the community starts to get cluttered with these requests.

Honestly part of it is some of these people just don't do online research, and they might not read the community rules anyway, but it would be nice if we had an explicit rule that hardware recommendations either go to the annual post or be for very oddly specific needs.

 

In an attached clip from the video "game" Star Trek: Klingon (in-universe an educational holodeck program), a holographic Gowron violently shakes the player and yells player, "When I say jump out of an airlock, you will JUMP OUT OF AN AIRLOCK!"

My question is, outside of edge cases where it's actually necessary to win a battle, would this level of order-following actually align with proper Klingon theology?

I feel like this would be an honorless death (kind of like if your commander told you to stab yourself with a d'k tahg), and thus if you were actually given an order like this, the proper Klingon thing to do would be to challenge your commanding officer to honorable combat. I could see a more Martokian view that honor demands you follow your commander, though, but I feel like even he would have limits.

I can think of three explanations for what Gowron said: 1) It's simply a hyperbole. 2) Gowron isn't exactly a beacon of Klingon honor (as seen in the last episodes of DS9), so maybe it's a misinterpretation. 3) It's a mistake in the program. Either it's a glitch if it was made in cooperation with the Klingons or it was done entirely by Federation researchers who messed up a bit.

Obviously, this game falls more in Memory Beta territory, but I'd argue it's reasonably canon, as it's basically screen (live action or animated) Star Trek and a song in this game was later canonized in DS9.

 

That scene where they pull away from the station feels like an invisible hand is pulling on my brain.

Also, sometimes I think, "What if this could all be as beautiful as the remasters in What We Left Behind?"

Finally, why does my mind read this in the voice of Vic Fontaine?

 

I’ve made a bizarre observation: commemorative plates tend to be associated more with Star Trek or Star Wars more than other franchise (Stargate seems to have some, too.), and I kind of wonder why.

Obviously, they’re not actually that popular anymore and have faded into kitsch, as the only plate that seems to have come out since DS9/VOY era is the Lower Decks Tom Paris plate - there are no DSC, PIC, Kelvin, or even ENT plates, while newer Star Wars plates don’t seem all that common as well unless you want paper plates.

I’m wondering if it has to do with 2 factors, still somewhat true today but especially in the 1990s:

  • Both Star Wars and Star Trek are decently large fan bases with large proportions of very passionate fans that are more likely to make purchases based on their fandom.
  • Both tended to attract (and still do) an upper middle class to upper class demographic (Somehow, Bezos can call himself Trekkie 🤦‍♂️) with more disposable income to spend on collecting.

These would have made the plates commercially viable, meaning to both inside and outside observers, plates became a stereotype of the fandoms.

Anyhow, what are your thoughts?

P.S. Wow, this is starting to feel like a meta version of Daystrom.

 

Let's say we have a certain Trill symbiont with a host. What would happen if the symbiont was duplicated under the condition that:

  • The host and symbiont were transporter cloned. (2 Jadzia Daxs)
  • A person from an alternate timeline with the same symbiont ends up permanently marooned in the prime timeline. (Larry Dax from a timeline where Curzon didn't reinstate Jadzia coexisting with prime Jadzia)
  • A past host comes back from the dead with a version of the symbiont a la Spock or Shaxs, or even something similar to Doctor Who's concept of an extraction chamber (Jadzia got bored in Sto'Vo'Kor and decided to climb the Black Mountain, meaning her and Ezri exist simultaneously)

I imagine in all of them, the commission would at least let the duplicate live for the rest of the lifespan of the original host, much like the Federation at large treats transporter clones.

However, what happens when it comes time for the symbiont to be transferred? I can't imagine the commission's ideology would smile upon duplicate experiences under much of the same rationale against re-association: there would be a duplication of experiences rather than the acquiring of new ones.

I think in the first case at least, it is reasonable to assume that they'd begrudgingly transfer both symbionts, as both have the equally valid claim to being the original and randomly killing one is straight-up murder, which I imagine the rest of the Federation would dislike.

They might also do so in the second case, as at least our Larry boy has some different experiences even if some are duplicate with prime Dax.

The third one is where it gets very muddy. The nature of souls in general is a muddy subject - twofold when there are two beings involved. For the sake of argument, we'll say the Jadzia in Ezri's symbiont accessible by Zhian'tara is a "backup" of Jadzia up to her death and that a separate Jadzia Dax went to Sto'Vo'Kor^1^. What then?

1: I make this assumption because a) Ezri doesn't have Jadzia's memories of Sto'Vo'Kor and b) it was the combination of Dax and Jadzia that engaged in Klingon ritual and "just" Jadzia would not be the person that participated. Of course, this starts getting into the more mystical parts of the franchise, and it's probably good they keep it vague even through it makes canon discussion like this a nightmare... a FUN nightmare.

 

Okay, the title may be a bit of comedic overstatement. What I really mean is I love the Lower Decks soundtrack and think Westlake may have been meant for Star Trek. I don't know what it is, but it truly evokes TNG era background music but on steroids.

I can't wait for the second volume. RIP Lower Decks - may the next few years prove to be the "Search for Lower Decks" (minus the butchering of a good Vulcan character, the pointless death... okay, maybe that wasn't the most apt comparison).

 
 

In other words, is that dog technically an augment dog? How is Tendi not dismissed from Starfleet and sent to a penal colony?

15
Merp Naming (startrek.website)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by data1701d@startrek.website to c/daystrominstitute@startrek.website
 

I have an odd question that will probably never be answered now unless they decide to bring this species to other Trek shows: why are members of Merp’s species called “Big Merp”, “Sleepy Merp”, or just “Merp”?

Obviously out of universe, they’re likely just a parody of the Smurfs.

My personal favorite theory that would be that Merpkind (or whatever they are called) doesn’t actually have a native concept of individual names. However, they’ve got to put something on the Federation paperwork, so they typically just do whatever and stick with it.

Alternatively, fitting more with the Smurf thing, Merp communities identify each other via adjectives or roles much like the Smurfs.

What’s your ten cents?

EDIT: Thinking on it, it could be a combination. No one has a set name - some might call their spouse “Mate Merp”, while that spouse might be referred to by a boss as “Strong Employee Merp.” When doing Federation paperwork, Merps typically choose which descriptor they’re more fond of. For instance, Sleepy Merp may have been referred to as that by a parent.

62
Lower Decks Eulogizing (startrek.website)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by data1701d@startrek.website to c/startrek@startrek.website
 

What’s your eulogy for Lower Decks?

Here’s mine: I wasn’t sure about Lower Decks for a well - I’d never been into the adult animation genre, and when I first heard of it, I had initially seen it as the wrong direction for Star Trek.

Finally, in late 2023, I watched it for the first time and was surprised to enjoy it.

Then came the crazy month of March 2024. I got rejected from all my dream schools, putting me in a sullen mood. I returned to the show and suddenly started resonating with Boimler as someone who had ambitions - some naive, some not - that weren’t always fulfilled, while I found the Cerritos to be kind of an analogue to the state school I would end up at.

Then, at the end of that month, a close family member shared their advanced pancreatic cancer diagnosis, and they passed a month after. That was when my attachment to Lower Decks solidified - I turned to it as a comfort show and really started to appreciate it. I think I’ve rewatched it twice since then - one randomly in the summer, and one to refresh my memory for the final season that began while I was doing the (mediocre) paint job for a 3D-printed combadge for a costume:

Overall, it’s probably my second favorite show in the franchise at this point, only behind DS9. I’m sure I’ll rewatch it plenty times more, though maybe a bit more sparingly - just one more this year to cope with the emptiness of no more new episodes. 🤭

Lower Decks! Lower Decks!

 

I know it’s mostly Hearst doing the backing track, but man does it feel straight off State Songs.

 

I knew it was Data the moment I noticed the head looked nothing like Data

 

What’s your preferred version of “Another First Kiss”?

Honestly, I feel like there is no real competition with Severe Tire Damage version - the Mink Car one is kind of weak. Still, thought I’d ask.

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