I started a rewatch of DS9 a couple of months ago and I’m a third done with S7. I saw Oceans 11 on DS9 earlier today. Didn’t even skip all the bad Ferengi episodes in the rewatch.

I suppose it was hard for the makers of Disco to square the circle of telling Star Trek stories in a post breaking bad streaming era. In TNG S1 they use the phaser as a visual effect maybe a dozen times, most of those in Conspiracy, because it cost too much. Now they can do whatever for a dime so they overlooked that we liked the character stuff they wrote to fill the hour so they wouldn’t blow most of the budget on SFX. I hope that in a future fourth wave Trek they fill the hollowness we feel.

Yeah, I have been looking at the veritable content drought we’ll be entering since there is nothing in production any more. And in streaming TV stuff takes ages to get off the ground or even renewed. I read on the grapevine that letting all existing contracts expire is a way to kick Kurtzman out and after that there is a chance for a fresh start under new leadership. But that will take time until after Academy S2 goes online. So considering all this stuff going on behind the scenes, I’m okay with Muppets and Casablanca in space. Whatever! Better than nothing.

A prequel! What a novel idea.

This should be an org chart at the Star Trek office today when they look at show ideas: is it another prequel? Yes - don’t pursue this idea. No - Allamarain! Move along home.

Granted, they got lucky (initially) with SNW. But that needed a backdoor pilot through Disco to get launched.

It’s a Tuvix level decision I’m glad I didn’t have to make. I think reuniting a child with their biological parent is a general, understandable guideline. And if you look at this clusterfuck in sequence, the first crime in this case - the illegal invasion of Bajor notwithstanding - is Rugal’s abduction by Dukat’s aide and his subsequent depositing in an orphanage. If it hadn’t been for that, Rugal would not have had Bajoran foster parents. Who were understandably not very nuanced about the Cardassians. (There must have been a way to raise him not hating his “kind” unconditionally as he does. So they carry a small dose of guilt for this mess in my opinion.) Which led to Rugal biting Garak.

The biological dad makes a convincing case that he was fucked over. Rugal is fucked no matter what. Sisko went back to where this train was sent on the wrong track and corrected that. I can kind of see the logic of that decision. He had to weigh different factors and decided to give less weight to Rugal’s wishes over the crimes that preceded him ever being in a position to express them this way.

Tough call but he (somehow, there doesn’t appear to be a legal system with a metal sphere gavel and the social worker from Mrs Doubtfire presiding just yet) had to make one. And there probably isn’t a right decision.

… and I already forgot. My mistake. I did come across a YT short earlier of a task that hadn’t been aired and I jumped to conclusions.

I have a feeling somebody in the social media team is having a bad weekend. From my experience, they don’t release this stuff before the episode went out. And I came across another S22 video earlier of a task we haven’t officially seen yet.

Ah well. People would’ve complained about that design as well. Probably also if they had just continued with the Worf-like looking ones. They look the same as before? No innovation? Yawn.

We’re hard to please. Remain Klingon!

K’LawRence would have been interesting. Who’s the best actor to play a Klingon that hasn’t been cast before?

As I said before: I don’t want to be the guy who defends PIC … Jurati being justifiably imprisoned or at least institutionalised may have also spared us S2. Who am I to argue with that?

I’m thinking of Quark who burgled, sabotaged, schemed, snuggled, bought more than one child from the GQuad, and engaged in weapons trade and remained for the most part a comedic diversion character 7 series long. No consequences and maybe the thinnest veneer of looking at any of his decisions from an ethical POV. That’s another reason why I don’t perceive the difference you describe.

We could probably go back and forth a couple of more times here but maybe we leave it at that? Just tell me in no more than a paragraph: Tuvix. Janeway yay or Janeway nay? I’m just curious.

I hear you. You think crossing the line mattered in 80s+ Trek but it doesn’t now. I don’t think that’s true. Sisko poisoning a planet is one of the examples where it clearly didn’t. But should have. So nostalgia is the only thing I could come up with to explain why you like the older and dislike the new stuff.

I don’t want to be in a position where I have to defend Picard, the show. Half of S1 is okay and then it goes off the rails. There are moments in it that are good. Overall, it’s a mess. One aspect that they did well is that they show a hero aging. Kurt Corbain will always be an icon because he ended his life early. So we were spared his ideas on COVID, Q Anon, or pick another hot button issue later in life or albums continually deteriorating in quality. With Picard they wanted to show consequences and chisel away at the icon a bit. The trauma of being borgified. His being sidelined for his unwillingness to bend to his superiors’ will. Why they had to bring his parents into it will be the writers’ secret. But they show consequences of lines being crossed. One of them is him standing rightly on his professional principles. It sounds to me this is exactly the stuff you’re missing and they built the whole S1 premise on it.

Burnham getting to be captain is about as realistic as chubby Kirk being demoted back to Captain.

On a slightly unrelated note:

What’s up with double-spacing every sentence?

It’s really

annoying to read

if you ask me.

I think you are partially trapped in nostalgia. Star Trek has never been this philosophically pure. Picard broke the Prime Directive in S1 by having contact with the Edo. And then regrettably prevented them from executing Wesley for trespassing a flower bed. Either should’ve cost him his command.

When Data has an inappropriate chat with a girl on a dying planet, JLP jokes with Riker about the level the shit is up to for them. And there are no palpable consequences for any of this behaviour.

Picard doesn’t feel like he should plant the Borg bug in Hugh. Admiral Valarian Canapés wholeheartedly disagrees. And while I like Picard’s reasoning, from a ten thousand foot perspective I agree with her. With the benefit of hindsight, it would have prevented the best TNG movie from existing but perhaps we would have also been spared Picard S2-3.

Late TNG and early DS9 with the introduction of Starfleet Al Qaeda, i.e. the Marquis, is a turning point for me. We get more stories that are more grey. Star Trek went from Kirk coming to a planet, telling the inhabitants their culture was stupid, to more contemporarily thoughtful treatments of ethical and moral conundrums in a utopian world, to seeing where utopia rubs up against the rest of the galaxy that isn’t there yet. Starfleet and the Federation are no longer exclusively the good guys. Sisko poisons an atmosphere just to catch one traitor and gets away with it. WTF?

Janeway gets a pass from me for most of her bad decisions because she tried and had to figure stuff out by herself. Tuvix be damned!

Enterprise also exists.

Third wave Trek is more grey than Marquis era Trek. It’s more CGI and action oriented because they can. That saves a couple of pages of dialogue otherwise spent on ethics. It’s different just like TNG was different from TOS. But it isn’t a radical change if you ask me.

Early TNG isn’t great until they stabilised the writers room. And then there is a continuation of development through DS9 and even into ENT. (Unfortunately including grade A assholes.) “Chaos on the bridge” is the default for Disco and Picard. And that’s why they often tell weird stories that don’t match up with what came before. They try to do Trek in the now passé golden age of television. And failed a lot imo.

Of all the third wave Trek, I’m most fond of Lower Decks. Because it doesn’t take itself too seriously and is littered with easter eggs. Disco S2 is good. Most of SNW S1-3. Picard had moments in it but that’s it. My heart’s not in it any more. I watch it because I see we are entering another content drought. I even enjoy SNW S4, not because I think it’s good Star Trek but because it’s a middle finger to Paramount for no longer financing any new projects.

Call me cynical but I do think an outlet called oil price dot com may not be entirely impartial when they report on this. That is not to say what they wrote here is wrong; I wouldn’t know. It just has a touch of pot and kettle about it.

Since the power networks are linked and European countries import and export electricity, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that next to renewables power from gas stepped in to fill the nuclear gap. And the price for natural gas is often linked to a certain other commodity price.

As far as I’m concerned, that and PIC S2 NEVER HAPPENED!

Ro’s decision is understandable if you consider her life experiences.

The Maquis are not created in universe to be good or bad. They are not black or white, they are gray all the way. Because that’s how all freedom fighters/terrorists are in their time. They get their marks from history. Some upstart colonists in the 1770s tend to get a more favorable score from history. For the communists in Cuba it depends who you ask.

Reality is a clusterfuck and politics is the art of what’s possible. No one designed the situation to place colonists on these planets, to have a war in the neighborhood, and then have to come up with a compromise to end the killing. It happened and now they have to deal with it. I’d like to see the SWOT analysis of each colonized planet, just to see if they considered risking setting off the stereotypical fascist race in the neighborhood by their presence. That is to say the colonists may not be entirely blameless either. But regardless, the federation made an agreement to end the killing in a big war. They drew a line on a map and that’s never not caused other problems in history. In the middle east, in Korea, in Europe, etc. It’s often the best solution to end or prevent the fighting but it’s still a shit solution that doesn’t solve all problems. Indeed, one might argue it may only be a temporary reprieve. So the Maquis are borne out of gray, they do things that are gray, often more on the darker spectrum, and then the authorities come in and also react in dark gray when they poison an entire planet’s atmosphere. The writers even threw in some native American tribes having to relocate or accept Cardassian rule to perfect the clusterfuck.

The way some of the Maquis stories are told in late TNG and then DS9 is not the best Trek has to offer. But if you zoom out, the overall situation they’ve created is realistic and believable. The Maquis are ambiguous, the role of the federation is ambiguous. It’s all just gray. And while I don’t think it’s super unrealistic that they just get wiped out by the Ketracel White addicts, I thought it’s a lazy writers’ end to a great scenario they had created.

I am conflicted here. On the one hand, I agree that subtitles would have been nice. On the other hand, I think folks with hearing disabilities get shut out of other content so much that I don’t think this somewhat solitary case makes it good mildly infuriating material. It’s most likely just an oversight. Much less likely a clever scheme to highlight ableism.

Reverses the order of play when 3 or more people play or behaves like a skip when only 2 are left.

My kids brought home from kindergarten the house rule that you can discard all cards you hold with the same number at the same time when it is your turn so long as the bottom card matches the suit being played. Very chaotic but they love it.

Given the high degree of McGuffinness of the portable emitter, you’re probably right. I’d still think it would be difficult though. Your guts are never quite in the same place when you move so the emitter would still need to adjust for our humanoid stretchiness. And if Voyager’s big gel-packed computer core couldn’t do the calculations, I’d have trouble imagining this tiny gadget could do it while also being the power supply. Even while factoring in that it is future tech brought backwards in time. But that’s more of a feeling on my part than a scientific argument.

I was rooting for the Vidiians in S1.

I should have added /s.

Voting is better than not voting in my opinion. That being said, this is a topic I would not throw to the internet to help you decide. The way you have written your post you’re opening yourself up to a lot of partisan replies from the good people of both sides that will probably not aid massively in your decision making process.

Since there is a power imbalance, I would not put much stock in praise like that. People not wanting to leave, not calling in sick a lot, not going to HR to complain are probably some better indicators, with the caveat that every job is different and those are not universally applicable criteria.

I don’t disagree with your thought per se. I’m looking at your train reservation example and think that soon you won’t be talking with a real person but two ChatGPTs in a trenchcoat. So corpos aversion to privacy tools drives you to corpo’s desire to cut overhead. And I’m sure there are plenty of examples where the phone in option simply does not exist. Or where it cannot exist because they can’t find people to staff it or a model to fake it effectively.

I see a future where you sadly have to feed one of these agenetic models, when proven much safer to use than today, with the minimum of information necessary to get your train tickets or whatever, and then let it fight with the other side while you do something else.