I’ve never been a huge fan of “adult animation”, or really animation in general. So I had to get over that hill of bias. But once I did, I found I enjoyed this show. Those Old Scientists on Strange New Worlds is actually what made me go back and give Lower Decks a second try.
Anyway, I’m excited to see where season 5 goes. I also kinda want another live-action crossover.
Edit for others: Looks like I fell for your troll ragebait account.
(Or rather, it looks like your type of account has followed its propaganda marching orders from reddit and other places to make Lemmy shitty too.)
(For those unaware, pop fandom spaces are infiltrated by people stirring shit to keep a cultural miasma of misery going on, even for people who disconnect from overtly political/news subs as an attempt to try to avoid it.)
Still, I think what I said is useful, so I’ll leave it up for lurkers.
I’ve seen mindsets like yours coming into book fandom more and more as the years have gone on.
I’m going to say some things from a meta perspective that you might not like. And while I’m making assumptions, and they might even be wrong about you in particular, I think there’s still worth in trying to see my perspective, and trying to understand WHY I am saying what I am saying, and why I’m saying it in response to your post at this particular point in time, even if I’m wildly off base with you as an individual. You’ll probably learn more from doing that than by trying to get into a one-on-one argument with me over details. Like, even if I’m wrong with you–WHY did I choose to say this right now in response to your post? What details in your post made me react in this way?
So, as far as I can tell, looking in from the outside, it looks like takes like yours arise when someone is raised in a religious context, following a holy book of some sort (Bible, Book of Mormon, the Koran–any writing really that is supposed to be your highest moral guide), and then either has not left that religion, but is trying to understand other people’s moralities through the same lens because everyone they personally know forms their morality from the bible or another holy book (so surely everyone else must too? And maybe other people use Star Trek?), or comes from someone who HAS left but hasn’t yet examined old habits left over from that upbringing, and and thus brings them into new spaces, as you seem to be doing here with Star Trek.
Like, I see religious folks, or recently ex-religious folks who have not yet examined their inner drives to get over-involved with the media they consume. They interact with their show the same way they would interact with their church, or with the Bible or another holy book. Even if they claim they are no longer religious, they were still raised in a religious environment which has an effect on habits and thinking esp. re: the topic of morality, and emotionally fandom spaces and fandom drama can feel a lot like church from a socializing and discussion standpoint, so old habits of churchy stuff sometimes seep into fandom.
But not all people interact with stories in this way. In fact, when you look at how people actually interact with media, people often take bits and pieces here and there. They agree with some stuff, disagree or just ignore others, and transform things too. You can truth-check this by looking at your peers in school. How many times did a teacher say something, and someone next to you said it was bullshit? People take in, reject, and transform information all the time. Words are not a total telepathic mind-control, people have agency.
I’m a writer, and it’s fairly common to see a reader interact with what I said and take a totally different insight from what I said, because all of their life experiences are getting tangled up with whatever story I was trying to tell, and that MIXTURE is showing them something new that I might never have realized or thought of. And this is normal–this is how humans interact with fiction.
The idea that a work of fiction has to demonstrate moral things perfectly or else be doomed as irredeemably flawed is really in my opinion more of a religious-brain thing. And no, maybe you didn’t say that directly, but I question the drive behind why you posted this post, listing the things you did. I question your motivations and assumptions. Approaching Trek asking the questions you do doesn’t align with how people actually interact with media in my experience, but it does align with how I’ve seen people utilize religion, and holy books in particular.
I’d encourage you to look up a community college and see if there’s any ethics classes you can take. I had to take an ethics class for the degree I was working on. I didn’t actually want to, as I’m in my 40s and comfortable with my sense of morality–but it ended up being shockingly useful, because it laid out different frameworks in which people can evaluate the morality of something, and the pros and cons of each. It kind of started with the “gut feeling” a lot of people use when they feel more than think, then progressed through religious frameworks, then a few philosophers, and then storytelling frameworks, and basically gave me a lot of different and new tools to evaluate things I hadn’t explicitly had before. It was very useful, much to my own surprise, and I’d recommend the experience to everyone if they go to college.
For a new watcher, especially a young one, Strange New Worlds is probably the best start. It has a lot of the classic “Trek” philosophy going on, but paired with modern production and special effects, and also paired with more modern treatment of female characters.
I love The Next Generation, that’s “my Trek”, but certain things haven’t aged well.
I’ve been watching Babylon 5 for the first time (didn’t see it when it was actively airing), and while it’s not Trek, it was produced in the same era as TNG, Voyager, etc. and I find myself jarred by certain ways they portray characters, esp. female ones, and that same sort of stuff is present in older Trek too. Like, Crusher and Troi got absolutely cheated when it came to great arcs and such. Strange New Worlds handles its female characters much, much, MUCH better.
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Personally, I really hope that Saru makes the transition to Starfleet Academy. I love him to bits and Doug Jones could do a ton more with his character if given the chance. I also suspect, due to the way Picard ended, that Brent Spiner’s Data in some form or another might show up as an instructor, maybe as a guest star. I’d actually really like to see a Lore-influenced-Data bringing the snark in a classroom. Data’s earnestness and Lore’s sense of humor are especially charming when combined together, and we only saw a bit of it at the end of Picard. And I’d love to see Saru and Data interacting.
Pelia is also long-lived enough to show up, and she was an instructor prior to becoming the Enterprise’s Engineer. They’ve already set her up to be replaced by Scotty, so I could see the actress moving to Starfleet Academy, since we already know her time on the Enterprise is limited.
Unrelated to Starfleet Academy, I do notice there’s no word on a post-Picard series starring Seven of Nine–I hope that’s mostly because the strikes disrupted early planning or something.
But they set Picard up perfectly to spawn a new series from that and I’d absolutely LOVE to see Seven of Nine as Captain of her own Starfleet ship, and Jack would make an interesting foil to Wesley as the cocky ensign. I think with the topic of AI being a thing now, and all the loose ends with the Borg and with Data’s offspring (and Data himself), we could actually really use right now a series that talks a lot about AI. I imagine interaction with Jurati-Borg could be an ongoing arc. And Soji could appear and we could get some interaction with Data to tie off that storyline.
It worked. I’m seeing it on lemmy.world using Firefox. I’m not using any of the special front-ends.
Well, in the context of a world where stories are being told, Spock always being perfect even when young and figuring this stuff out wouldn’t lead to any interesting stories.
Personally, I’ve seen his story with T’pring as a variation on the very common struggle people who grow up in strict cultures go through. Some of those individuals break away from their cultures, some come to terms with it personally.
Spock’s been interesting in that he chooses his Vulcan side ultimately. I think most character stories go the other way–the uptight, rules-following individual breaking away from the rigid culture that nurtured them. Spock in contrast finds a balance.
Yeah, cultivating a growth mindset is really, really important. And it really is cultivating…you’ll have a hundred reasons why you “can’t” knocking on your door, and you’ll have to be persistent to slay each one.
But once a “growth mindset” is habit, it gets easier.
Maybe if you take LSD while watching it, the multi-fingered, multi-limbed speech will start to make some sort of divine sense…
So what I’m hearing is that computer code will eventually drift closer to DNA where “noncoding” sequences actually perform regulatory functions but in a way that’s super-arcane, and all you know is if you get rid of the noncoding bits the proteins change expression for some bizarre reason…
I don’t even like Asimov’s work (his characters are awful) and what I watched of the first season of Foundation was pretty bad. I can’t imagine what fans of his books must’ve thought.
I was hoping an adaption that shored up his weaknesses in characterization while finally showing me what all the fuss was about, and I didn’t get that at all.
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I wasn’t shocked. I dropped Enterprise in my late teens because even though I wasn’t yet running into the discourse that’d pop up later re gender roles, the show was just creepy with T’Pol, and the male cast was not nearly as interesting or charming as the male cast of any of the other Treks.
I basically noped out before it was done airing due to the sexism. It was that obvious to me even before I had any education on the subject.
Man, if they opened up script submissions, they’d probably be able to reap a LOT of fanfic-grown talent out there. Yeah, the slush pile would SUCK because it’s much easier to submit online than in the days of snail mail and paper, but we’ve had about 20 years of really explosive writing growth with the advent of fanfic online and as far as I know nobody’s really “mentoring” those people in this day and age.
I know people laugh and snort at fanfic, but writing is writing is writing . You’d do as well to laugh at painters who sketch bowls of fruit or sketch nudes from live subjects (as if people haven’t drawn those things for literal centuries!). It doesn’t really matter WHERE you practice and learn so long as you do it, and if fanfic/fanart/whatever gets you going, that’s how you’re going to grow your talent, by practicing over and over.
And some people get really damn good at it. If Trek opened up script submissions again, it’d open the doors to a new generation of writers kicking their careers off.
This.
What made it hilarious was that I was sitting there, nodding and going, “Yes, yes I can see why this is without honor.”
The location they filmed the town at is the same one used in the Wednesday TV series, which was a bit distracting for me, although I suppose if anyone wants to do a crossover Wednesday/Star Trek fanfic, it’ll be super-easy, lol.
I’ve had good experiences with Namecheap for domains. Some of their support people are also in Ukraine, so if you’re of a mind to support them, giving them your business will do that at least a little.
One word of advice–it can be smart to have the domain name with one provider, and the hosting with a different one. That way if your hosting situation goes bad for whatever reason, you still have control of your domain and can point it at a new host as quickly as you can buy space and they can provision it (with time for DNS to propagate of course).
Basically, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. When I did webhost support, I saw WAY too many small business owners get into pickles because they had hosting AND domain with the same provider, and when something went wrong with that provider, it was just such a huge PITA to get control of the domain.
No recs for hosting, I don’t currently have a webpage up (just email) and my knowledge is way out of date, from like 2008 when I worked for a webhost as support.
I suspect she’ll die in this season finale. I just get those vibes.
Personally, I want to see Pike and Una happen. They’re already mom and dad to the rest of the crew (which skews really young).
I want to call out to everyone the BRILLIANT usage of the medical transporter incoming warning during the war scenes of the episode.
I don’t have PTSD, but I do have cPTSD which is close enough, and the way the sound designers utilized that medical transporter incoming warning seemed VERY clearly an attempt to demonstrate to viewers how PTSD triggers are formed.
Like–so many shows focus on explosions and stuff as a PTSD trigger. Because usually you talk about the soldiers as the vets, not the support personnel.
But with the MEDICS–that sound, going off again and again and again, when they were already overwhelmed and didn’t have the staff or equipment to deal with the incoming wounded…
It’s so clear to me that that sound alone, telling them they’re about to get more dumped on their head when they can’t even deal with the ones they already have, is meant to be fixated in the viewer’s memory to sort of demonstrate how it’d get lodged as a trigger in the medic’s memories.
It was just a fantastic use of sound design to help tell the story. They did it with such a deft hand that it didn’t come off as poor sound design (as it could have), but was still CONSTANTLY THERE, putting everyone on edge.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we hear that sound in a later episode and either Chapel or M’Benga (or both) completely hit the roof.
Edit: Unrelated to the sound, I also like how they had M’Benga and Chapel fix up the young man, even resorting to “medieval” medicine by manually pumping his heart–only for him to go out and then COME BACK dead.
It just gives a feeling of hopelessness. They spent so much time fixing him up–and he died anyhow after he was sent back into the meat grinder.
Then you put googly eyes and a little rhinestone pantsuit on it and stick a video up on…well, I guess YouTube wouldn’t take it.
Pornhub, maybe?
Fred’s absolutely a setup to have Brent Spiner appear as SOMEONE in some episode.
And given Season 3 of Picard, it might even be Data, with his new hybrid with-bits-of-Lore personality.
But it could be a human Soong too, or another Soong-type android (I absolutely hate they call them “synths”, all I hear is Fallout references.)
Edit: It just really stood out to me there was a line referencing that Fred might have “a family”.