FriendOfDeSoto

I fear there won’t be a solution that doesn’t cost money somewhere. Please don’t buy 3 burner phone numbers at once. I would feel bad if it didn’t work and/or you get suspected of being a criminal.

Check your current phone subscription if you have one. There might be a way to get an additional number for free or very little extra. And it might be a good backup emergency service to have just with your parents maybe even if you go down a different route for the rest.

Anything other than Signal seems unadvisable from a privacy POV. Do you have a way of talking to them live on the phone, at the same time? You can try and register their Signal on a burner phone wherever you are. As they sign up, you sit on the call and give them the phone number and security code when it comes through. Unless having Signal on the phone is itself a reason to get arrested in Russia, which frankly wouldn’t surprise me either.

I don’t know if this will work. I did it on a different service using the number on a dumbphone to register for use on a tablet once.

The simplest answer might be that not all people who reviewed it there liked it as much as you do. I would say it also doesn’t matter. Even fans like different things. You like what you like. The internet will never agree with you 100 per cent. I feel 7/10 is about right for SNW and the plant zombies. But I also don’t completely hate Nemesis so my taste is at least questionable.

I have a feeling if he had always turned into a Tarkasian bear for battle, fans would have complained that he is too much like the Hulk.

I think they landed on this idea and the sufficiently large budget for the CGI too late but the tentacle throwing golden blob is an interesting battle form.

Isn’t it funny how the production technology informs the storytelling? I heard that TNG in the first two seasons had a price tag of something like 5000 dollars per hand phaser beam so they used almost none. In S7 they shoot 100 times willy nilly in Gambit and hit almost nothing, no problem. Odo in S1 morphs in the pilot and then almost never on screen for a long time. And by S6 or 7 they’re like, sure, morph him into fire, fog, or an emu, wgaf!

Maybe it will be for the best that in the future we’ll all create our own holodeck stories. It will rid us of having to separate artists (or co creator/producer) from the work. Reading Berman’s name in the credits is a bit like Weinstein’s in movies. Immediately lessens the enjoyment. Thanks for taking the time to answer.

Thanks for writing that. It’s quite long but I can see your point. I’m relieved that you didn’t just read two headlines and sent him to the digital gallows. Personally, I don’t reach the same conclusion as you. If you’d say in reply my standards were perhaps lower I would not disagree with you. As I wrote before, this is not enough for me. Weir is not a saint. I heard hin trash talk his own follow-up to the Martian in an interview when Hail Mary came out. He knows he’s not Asimov or Dick. Or Shakespeare.

In terms of what science fiction is best at doing, we don’t appear to be that far apart. Allegorical storytelling is great. That’s why I mentioned Picard S2 where there is none of that. They have characters sit in ICE detention or looking at the burning mountains in 2020 and say this is shit (which, of course, it is). Zero allegory, all in our face virtue signaling. Virtues that I find valid but in a sci-fi story told in a very literal (read: shit) way. Politics overrode good story telling. (Then again, it was the pandy, there are extenuating circumstances.)

You don’t have to answer this; I’m just curious. How is your enjoyment of 90s Trek knowing that Rick Berman was involved? I’d argue he’s a far bigger sob than Weir.

He is a huge hypocrite in your opinion. Which I don’t find convincing.

I just read up on the woke comments. What do you find so terrible there? That he writes avoiding an agenda? Or that he criticizes works that plainly have one?

It’s his opinion. I don’t wholly disagree with him. Science fiction often works best when they don’t hang a giant lantern on what the lesson to be learned is. When the politics override good storytelling. Like in Picard S2. ICE is shit and so are climate change denial and the burning mountains around contemporary LA. But to me that came across as preachy, not a great story.

If anything you have to respect the man for not mincing his words at all. That doesn’t mean I agree with him but in this outrage driven world that’s almost a baller move.

I don’t think he has alienated as many people as you suggest. And I haven’t heard enough to be worried. He might be a prick but these two stories are not enough to build a case just yet IMO.

The man has a vested interest to be in the headlines. Media take an interest in him because of the movie. It’s the perfect climate to turn a statement of not much importance into a news headline.

I haven’t listened to the podcast. If anybody has, maybe they can comment on the tone of the conversation. Seeing it just in writing makes him seem a bit petty and adversarial. But the way it happened it could just as well be isolated, throwaway jovial comments where the “fuck them” could be much less pointed and we are left feeling this was a nothing burger.

This is of the same quality journalism as any actor of the fantasy lightsaber universe being asked if they world return to the franchise. Sure, if the script looked promising, said Daisy Ripley. “Ripley to return to Star Wars!” reports niche media site struggling to get eyeballs in front of their ads.

If you like LD I think you’ll find stuff to like in Academy as well. Tawney was in the writers room. I’m glad to hear you’ll give it another shot.

Your loss. What’s your favorite?

Encounter at Farpoint was terrible too. If you got thru that, you can stomach 90210 in space as well.

Savor the Trek that is available for I fear there will be significantly less new stuff in the future.

You’ll never know if you don’t watch it.

I would start by suggesting we look at fewer youtubers and their views on the subject. I’m tired of dumb facial expressions on thumbnails and exaggerated video titles that do not aim for calm, measured critique but to please the algorithm. And the algorithm likes controversy. So this linked video may be the outlier - I wouldn’t know because I refuse to click through. These video links are more often than not efforts to increase views and thus nudge the video up in the ranking.

Is the death of the franchise nigh? Maybe. It wouldn’t be its first. We have had deaths after TOS S3 and ENT S4/Nemesis. There was stuff in print or in games but nothing on screen until Star Wars became a success and the arrival of the binge streaming age/Star Wars again respectively. We may be on the verge of another lull. We are very dedicated fans of a franchise that needs to be bigger to be financially viable long term. But we are a big enough chunk of the market that executives will be tempted to bring it back.

Can Star Trek tell more stories? Sure it can. It depends on the writers. I was personally disappointed with the stories Disco and PIC told. They thought Star Trek storytelling needs to be Breaking Bad’s mixed with Game of Thrones’s and that equalled universe destroying threats that need to be fought every season. For SNW they learned that you can have a season long plot but you want to be more episodic. Academy is like that as well. There is a lot of fan service in them by design and references only a subset of viewers will catch. But I don’t think that makes the shows less good or accessible to new audiences. And Marvel has established the easter-eggification of storytelling in modern franchises so a lot of viewers will want that.

Many scripts that became Star Trek stories were just sci-fi ideas that were then molded around the universe. There are still good sci-fi story ideas out there that can be told.

My fear is that we are at a ENT S3 point in time. It’s a good season but not enough people are watching. Same with SNW or Academy. That’s partially pissed off fans but also people not paying Paramount to watch it for reasons unrelated to the fandom. And the maneuvering around the Warner deal makes me fearful that all new projects will be shelved very soon for lack of funding and projected economic success. If the third lull is upon us, it’s for economic reasons, not the lack of stories to be told.

I heard the clip haha

Best boss I ever had.

I don’t necessarily understand why they chose that director but I kind of get why they wanted to try someone else. IX hadn’t been a great success. They wanted to find new momentum like a sports ball team swapping coaches when the season is going south. Team still got relegated. Life is like that sometimes. It’s easy for me to say Frakes would’ve been better because I have the benefit of hindsight.

I didn’t hate it when I saw it in theaters. Thought it was better than IX and VII but not VIII. It was a hit heavy on wanting to be star wars. The buggy ride, fighter ships, fights on gangways above huge chasms on the ship, the humorous banter while pew pew. Didn’t like the death of Data. Didn’t we learn anything from Spock? I liked the world building for the Roms and the Rems. I liked Hardy in it.

I don’t mind rewatching this movie. I feel it benefits from aging a bit like III doesn’t (but V does for me). And I’d argue it’s definitely better than PIC S2, if not the whole show.

The general vibe around this movie is bad because the box office take wasn’t great and then we learned all these little tidbits from BTS: Wesley (the boy?!) being cut out of the wedding scene or the director thinking Geordie was an alien. I think Frakes in the chair would have done a better job with it.

I think you can change the Klingon makeup as much as you want. Have one guy day Qapla and we’re golden. Recognizable enough. This Cardassian getup was too far from the one we’re used to - definitely what I was used to. Even the Fed president lady in Disco looked more Cardassian and she was only a quarter Cardassian. They went too far with the redesign. Which is sad because the choice of species wasn’t random.

I learned about her Cardassianess on this podcast. There is also a deeper meaning behind it because the Cardassians are great record keepers and that’s why she would be entrusted with keeping Jake’s unpublished book! A lovely touch that completely escaped me because I didn’t recognize her as a Cardassian until I heard Tawny talk about it with the Greatest Trek boys, subscribe today on the Maximum Fun network.

I was, initially, because I’m a fan, mad when it was revealed that Tawny Newsome’s character was supposed to be Dax. I later learned she was also supposed to be Cardassisn, which I totally missed as well. But I was mad in a “here we go again, new writers pulverize the canon of old, Trill synbionts can live a gazillion years now” way. But when I put the phone down before firing off a number of senseless hot take posts, I came to the conclusion that the Burn would have probably necessitated a system of hibernation or cryo storage for symbionts in need of a new host but unable to get back to Trill. In my head canon, the Dax symbiont was on ice for a couple of centuries.

I like the idea of the symbionts having an influence over their life span. And that Dax would cling to life no matter what for the off chance to meet The Sisko again makes sense to me too.

We’ll see which theory holds because I’m sure we’ll see Tawny in makeup again somehow.

Trouble with Tribbles! Worf just says they don’t discuss it with outsiders. ENT does more of the heavy lifting if you ask me.