Hearing Jack Quaid’s distinctive Boimler scream gives me life.
However, between work and my social life, there is not much time left to write these posts without losing sleep, so while getting an extra episode is cool, it also feels as much like a personal attack as the season one stardates.
I will attempt to have “Those Old Scientists” done by Saturday morning, and this week’s episode by Monday.
I very much enjoyed that in season one, each Klingon house had their own uniform, and customs. In the TNG era there is a uniformity to the Klingons, which flattens them to monoculture. Even the simple touches of having House Mo’Kai engage in facial scarification, or House Kor wear war paint implies an expansion to their culture that makes me far more interested in them.
Also, I’ve always enjoyed the scheming Klingons, like the ones we see in TOS, or the Duras Sisters, so Kol really appealed to me as an antagonist.
The new prosthetic seemed like a natural progression of what we saw from TOS, to TMP, to “The Search for Spock” and TNG. I do think the decision to make them all bald in season one was a miss, but it’s otherwise a good design that effectively communicates the ferocity the species is supposed to have.
I wonder if they wanted them to all be bald if it wouldn’t have made more sense to have T’Kuvma’s followers be bald, and the others that arrive after he lights the beacon engage in tonsure once T’Kuvma becomes a martyr.
Oh, and the elongated craniums on the women was also an odd choice that I’m glad was walked back for season two.
I do have a couple vegan pins, and until it sadly fell off, I did have a COVID-19 Vaccinated pin designed to look like the Ninja Turtles logo. Those are the most political things I generally wear.
Obviously people can say whatever they want, but I personally don’t see any value in dragging something down when instead I could be lifting the thing I do like up. Like, imagine going in to the job at the end of the week and saying, “Hell yeah, I love Fridays!” and some sad sack co-worker is all, “Yeah, but don’t you just hate Mondays?” Buddy, why? What would be the point in being so negative, when instead you could be positive?
Or, let’s give another example: I personally think “Picard” was a bad television series, which started out kind of a mess, and got worse with every season. I know other people really enjoyed season three, but I think it is the single worse season of Trek, and it’s not even a contest. Now, imagine if every time someone made a post praising, some other series or new episode, I jumped in with, “Yeah, at least this one was better than season three of PIC.” What am I actually contributing to the conversation?
Furthermore, I don’t consider, “This doesn’t feel like [X],” to actually be criticism. Critique is detailed analysis. “I don’t like this because it’s not what I want it to be,” is just whining. Critique is an important aspect of art, but too many people confuse their hot takes as valid criticism. You brought up Shives, and while he and I disagree on a lot of things – and agree on others – regarding Trek, I would never say that he is not detailed in his videos. Biased, sure, but we all are. I can’t speak to the specific example you gave, but I know that at least in his scripted videos he generally isn’t dropping hot takes like that. Sometimes they make their way into his more off the cuff unscripted videos, but I would be staggered if he’s ever released something that was solely focused on saying one show is good because it isn’t as bad as another show he dislikes.
I was actually saying this is the way the ships function on each series based on the analogies given previously.
Okay, well that’s patently ridiculous. How is Kirk’s Enterprise a monarchy in TOS, but an anarchy in TAS? How does the Discovery crew function as a dystopian society, especially in seasons two and three? Where is your evidence that the NX-01 is a military dictatorship? How is the crew of Deep Space 9 a communist society, but Voyager’s crew are capitalistic?
Where is your supporting evidence for any of this?
I’m not sure I follow the central thesis of what you’re trying to articulate here.
Are you saying that the way the ships function is similar to the government model you’ve assigned them? Or that most of the cultures the ships encounter follow those models?
Are you able to give some actual examples from the shows demonstrating that the comparison holds true over the multiple seasons each iteration of Trek had, or anything at all to support your claim?
When I decided to sign up a new account on reddit to talk about Trek, I asked myself what thing I could think of that people would want to see, and the answer was a Starfleet operated Tex-Mex food truck. So far the username has served me well.
Buddy, are you trying to make me pull an extra-ocular muscle from how hard my eyes just rolled?
If you like one aspect of the franchise you don’t need to whine about another not being to your taste to express that. I don’t shit on ENT every time I want to talk about DS9.
No. We find out in “Bar Association” that the station doesn’t charge Quark rent, and hasn’t since the Federation took over administration duties on behalf of the Bajoran Provisional government, however in season two’s “Armageddon Game”, when it is believed that Doctor Bashir and O’Brien are dead, Quark toasts them by saying, “We may have had our differences, but I’ll say this for them, and it’s no higher tribute I can think of: they were good customers. They always paid their bar bills on time.”
Notably he specifies that Bashir and O’Brien paid their bills, not the Federation or Starfleet paid on their behalf. Now, maybe Starfleet officers serving on DS9 or other places where the civilization still use a form of currency have access to an account that Starfleet is takes care of everything, but based on the language Quark uses it does seem like Bashir and O’Brien were the ones making sure the money got put into Quark’s hands.