data1701d

joined 1 year ago
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[–] data1701d@startrek.website 4 points 1 month ago

Unfortunately, he died after being shot midair by Libyans while falling off a cliff into molten drip.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

You mean Kruge?

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 9 points 1 month ago

Reminds me of this classic:

Star Trek: Jellico. Captain Jellico says, "Back at the Academy, we had a fella who also used lots of controlled substances. He used to use my daily agenda notebook to roll up a joint. He was always high on my list of priorities." Commander Riker sights in crushing despair.

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

I do have to agree. The setting may be the best part of later seasons of DISCO, even if they (in my personal opinion) frequently squandered it.

Like, I felt like they didn’t need to make up the DMA - they had practically seasons worth of material written for them just from the inherent realities of the setting.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I take this with a grain of salt, in part because of this past headline: Robert Picardo Says The Doctor Isn’t Just Comic Relief In ‘Star Trek: Prodigy’ Season 2

Which isn’t to say I hated him in Prodigy. Rather, I wonder if by “deeper”, it means he’ll be absolutely ridiculous, just rambling about opera and holonovels all the time, and the writing won’t be all dark and brooding on this show.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 2 points 1 month ago

I tried to hint at it at the beginning, but I admit mapping Ferengi politics onto human politics is a bit like comparing apples to oranges. I was honestly just trying to use commonly-understood terms, which may be a weak fit.

In terms of social-economic orthogonality, I think that can work for a more general analysis, but doesn't seem the case in Ferengi society - for instance, social left and economic left reform in the late Zek (Ishka behind scenes)/early Rom seemed like a packaged deal. Also, the social restrictions on women extend to their economic right to make profit - many of the issues in Ferengi society are a blur of economic and social issues that are intimately connected.

Also, unrelated to my above thoughts, rewatching "Family Business", I disagree with your assessment of Rom. For one, I think both Quark and Rom were equally bothered, just had different ways of expressing it; Quark let his discomfort out through visible anger, while Rom tried to hide it for a while, letting it seep through into his expression. Also, Rom, while seeming like a product of his society, seemed much more open to listening to Ishka, suggesting that while he had socially and economically conservative values, he didn't hold them as strongly as screaming Quark.

Overall, I agree with your sentiment that political categorization is complex, and I feel no one model perfectly characterizes all ideologies, that there are merely abstractions that might work well in a specific context. Heck, there's a sci-fi story idea I'm "working" on (by which I mean I haven't touched it in ages) where I created a 3D political spectrum for my main factions; I forget what my third axis was, though. In the end, as much as some humans like to nerd out about it, an ideology can't be perfectly reduced to a point on a graph or a line.

Still, there is some undeniable urge to do a deeper dive on Star Trek political mapping, down to sub-charts for characters in the individual societies where we have enough information, although you'd have to figure out how to handle different eras.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 3 points 1 month ago

It took a good minute for me to decode that acronym. Hmm

I guess I usually don't acronym that film and just refer to it as VI or by its full name

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

Glorious use of sarcasm.

In terms of writing, they really captured him well on Prodigy, though he was almost entirely a comic relief character.

Looks-wise, he definitely triggered the uncanny valley and was one of the worse aesthetic adaptations of a legacy character in that show. In general, there are some unintentionally terrifying officers on that show.

I do have to say that was one thing Lower Decks did well - when they brought on a legacy character, they were aesthetically recognizable, but never a caricature.

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

This is probably the strongest counter so far, unless they've somehow found or are working on a way to do it without severely borking the marine biosphere.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 12 points 1 month ago (2 children)

It doesn’t seem unprecedented for crazy Vulcans to be in the Maquis. For instance, we had the Vulcan gun runner Sakonna in DS9.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 3 points 1 month ago

Excuse me. I brought up the episode in Daystrom while going on a tangent about the various TNG era alternate futures, focused on the uniforms but also blabbering about how Klingon relations seem to break down quite quickly in any timeline without the Dominion War (further supported by the fact that VOY:”Endgame” has a timeline with the war where relations seem still amicable).

https://startrek.website/post/21258082/15909713

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 5 points 1 month ago

Yeh. This wasn't meant to be a Wesley hate post by any means.

This was meant to be a based observation that while Wesley had less barriers to an officer position than Nog, both still earned their position.

 

Note that Bashir is not yawning, but doing that weird wall shuffling-screaming thing that no one understands, probably not even Siddig or the director at the time of filming.

Now MOOOOVE ALOOOOOONG HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOEM! (Whacks those weird wood sticks together.)

 

What are your favorite songs off Factory Showroom? I personally enjoy:

  • Spiraling Shape
  • The Bells are Ringing
  • 'Til My Head Falls Off
  • Sing Like a Girl
 

Moral of the story: don't disregard the fire laws.

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submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by data1701d@startrek.website to c/risa@startrek.website
 

Edit: Okay, a few more fans than I expected, a pleasant suprise.

If you haven't watched Over the Garden Wall, you should give it a try and watch every episode, especially if you're looking to get into the Halloween spirit. The whole miniseries isn't that long - about the length of a feature film in total.

Also, my gosh, it was so miserable to put Bashir's skinny pointy little face onto Greg's big round chonker! But bird Garrak was worth it in the end.

 

"Boss of Me" might be my favorite Flans song... besides "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head"... and "Music Jail"... and "Let Me Tell You About My Operation"... and "If Day for Winnipeg". Nevermind. Please don't make me choose a favorite Flans song.

58
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by data1701d@startrek.website to c/risa@startrek.website
 

Note: "EEEEE...EEEE!" is meant to convey my hard-to-contain excitement of having Wesley randomly pop up. Also, though, I couldn't resist posting that face.

 

Half of these exist because I was bored once.

The Windows 10 and MacOS ones are GPU passthrough enabled and what I occasionally use if I have to use a Windows or Mac application. Windows 7 is also GPU enabled, but is more a nostalgia thing than anything.

I think my PopOS VM was originally installed for fun, but I used it along with my Arch Linux, Debian 12 and Testing (I run Testing on host, but I wanted a fresh environment and was too lazy to spin up a Docker or chroot), Ubuntu 23.10 and Fedora to test various software builds and bugs, as I don't like touching normal Ubuntu unless I must.

The Windows Server 2022 one is one I recently spun up to mess with Windows Docker Containers (I have to port an app to Windows, and was looking at that for CI). That all become moot when I found out Github's CI doesn't support Windows Docker containers despite supporting Windows runners (The organization I'm doing it for uses Github, so I have to use it).

 

A challenge for everyone here: come up with one favorite inverted version of a TMBG song or album.

Mine: Short Short Business Week

 

Seriously, though. In my opinion, V is by far the worst TOS film, if not the worst of any Star Trek film (Yes, including Kelvin), yet it somehow nailed the ending.

Not to say I hated V that much. I think there's some charm of Kirk, Spock, and Bones breaking out the brig, but the plot is catastrophically bad. I was also annoyed with that one scene with Uhura where they have her seduce some acolytes, which I feel is a disgrace to the character.

 

I stumbled upon this the other day and was a bit surprised that someone else on this planet both knows what The Prisoner is and is a fan of TMBG.

 

I think the Vau N'Akat seen in Prodigy have a lot of "biological and technological distinctiveness" to be added to the collective's own. My question is whether or not the Borg could take advantage of the Vau N'Akat's abilities, and whether they'd be all that helpful.

For instance, could assimilated Vau N'Akat use their heirloom powers to manipulate materials in order to pump out at least the shells of Borg Cubes like nobody's business?

I think this depends on how heirloom material actually works and is made. Its utility to the Borg probably depends on whether or not it's a limited resource or actually some sort of alloy that could be constructed anywhere in the galaxy.

In truth, we can't know that, as in the current state of canon Vau N'Akat lore, it's basically just space magic to us. If I had to take a wild guess, I have two theories:

  1. Maybe Vau N'Akat have detachable nanobot-esque cells that communicate with the brain over an electromagnatic signal, allowing the quick assembly of structures at a relatively precise level, especially with the one specific material. (Perhaps all that blue dust stuff that happens at death are these cells freaking out as communication ceases and, for lack of orders, devouring the body.)
  2. The Vau N'Akat have organs that essentially very precisely accelerate exchange particles. (This theory makes the above one seem comparatively more plausible.)

Another question is whether or not Vau N'Akat drones could use all that "your will is mine" stuff to aid the assimilation of other Vau N'Akat and/or create one super drone.

Going with theory 1, maybe the "Your will is mine" stuff is actually a weak ability to lend extra cells to the desired person that builds up when a lot of people are doing it, strengthening healing and immune responses as well as any use of that person's detached cells, thus explaining that whole scene.

If this is the mechanic by which it works (and assimilation doesn't somehow bork the mental facilities for this), this could be a very powerful ability for the Borg. It almost sounds too powerful, as those cells could be used as essentially an assimilation virus or a bioweapon, which I think would break the balance of power in the ST universe in a way that I think writers really wouldn't want to.

Overall, as I have said before, just as I find it very fun to try to theorize how the Vau N'Akat work, I also find it very difficult due to both its status as a very new species and their general uniqueness (almost un-Trekiness, not to insult them) as a species. I do think Prodigy does some good things with the Vau N'Akat, and it's nice to have a species that's a bit more than just forehead ridges and a fatal flaw (if they even bother with the forehead ridges - looking at you, Betazoids). However, similar to some of the complaints with Prodigy in general, I can't deny that the space magic aspect feels more Star Wars than I can say I like in Star Trek.

So, what are your thoughts?

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