GuyFleegman

GuyFleegman , 2 days ago

The hell could O'Brien have done to get such a reaction?

Nothing. Tom just wanted to scare O’Brien off. Tom was worried O’Brien knew Will well enough that an extended conversation would blow his cover.

GuyFleegman , 2 days ago

It is, but I’ve seen this question asked earnestly so many times I just can’t tell anymore…

GuyFleegman , 5 days ago

Based and friendpilled

GuyFleegman , 9 days ago

Fleegman with the finger guns

GuyFleegman , 14 days ago

/c/startrek@lemmy.world

GuyFleegman , 14 days ago (edited 14 days ago)

I agree it would be nice if people would post there more, which is why I’m suggesting it

GuyFleegman , 13 days ago

No one on your instance has subscribed to it, so it's not federating content in. If you subscribe, it will populate.

GuyFleegman , 19 days ago

Let’s concede the point: humans are inherently greedy and selfish.

But greed and selfishness are bad, right? We want less greed and selfishness in the world.

Given these two assumptions—humans are greedy, greed is bad—shouldn’t we architect society to explicitly disincentivize greed?

GuyFleegman , 18 days ago

You’re preaching to the choir. “Concede the point” is a figure of speech which means the speaker is going explore an assumption despite not believing it themselves.

My point is that the whole “capitalism is the best economic system we know about because humans are greedy” argument is sophistry. It doesn't even make sense in the context of its own flawed premise.

GuyFleegman , 26 days ago

what the hecc

GuyFleegman Mod , 27 days ago

The instances hosting active Star Trek communities didn’t exist during the previous season of Discovery, so Lemmy isn’t a great way to gauge relative interest.

On Reddit, the /r/startrek discussion thread for 4x02 has 1.1k comments and 4x03 has 600 comments while the thread for 5x03 only has about 400 comments. This seems to support your hypothesis.

GuyFleegman Mod , 1 month ago

I have long held that Season 5, Episode 2 of The Next Generation is the best episode to "test" if you'll like Star Trek or not. It is a generally well-liked and well-reviewed episode, but more than that, from both a story and a character standpoint it is representative of what your average Star Trek episode is generally about.

So, my recommendation is to watch that one episode and report back.

GuyFleegman OP Mod , 1 month ago

After four seasons, Discovery still can’t figure out how to pace a full season arc. The A-plot was a miniature Humanity on Trial story which Trek has done to death, and the rest was filler.

Jinaal was a fun character and Wilson Cruz did a great job with him. “This guy really works out” made me laugh. Beyond that, sheesh, what a snooze.

GuyFleegman OP , 1 month ago

Thank you for looking into it!

GuyFleegman , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

That’s easy: unlimited SMS was common on most mobile plans in the US as early as the mid-2000s. Unlike the rest of the world, Americans had no financial incentive to use WhatsApp.

GuyFleegman , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

In the US you either had unlimited SMS or no SMS plan at all, in which case you got charged for every single message, sent or received. But I remember having unlimited SMS as early as 2003.

If you had no SMS at all then you certainly didn't have a data plan, which ruled out WhatsApp entirely.

GuyFleegman OP Mod , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Well, that was certainly an episode of Star Trek: Discovery. Actually, it might be one of Discovery’s most representative episodes.

Discovery at its worst: geez that warp chase scene was awful. It wasn’t a great use of How We Got Here because there wasn’t enough time between the flashback and the redux to make the flashback seem justified—the bulk of the episode happened after the redux anyways. It wasn’t a great use of Once More With Clarity, either. I guess they were going for some sort of dramatic Rayner reveal? But, the “revelation” that the Antares was shadowing Burnham that whole time wasn’t particularly interesting. Nothing was gained by temporally displacing that scene other than frontloading the action, which makes it seem like Discovery is scared to lead with a character moment or a story beat, as if their mentality is “we gotta get to the pew pew ASAP because that’s why the audience is here.”

It felt unearned, and was just another instance of Discovery borrowing things from better shows without adding anything or seemingly even understanding why what they borrowed worked in a different context. And of course, this teed up one of Discovery’s most obnoxious long-running tropes: Burnham knows she’s right and spends a few minutes exasperatedly explaining to an unwelcome guest with equivalent or higher authority than her to no avail. The thing that’s always weird about these scenes is the way Burnham keeps going even after it’s become very clear that the person she’s trying to convince isn’t having it. At that point, focus on getting into the ship, don’t continue the argument! These scenes always feel like Burnham is trying to make sure that the viewer knows she’s right rather than the other character.

I know she’s right. She’s always right.

Discovery at its best: The scene where Discovery and Antares save the settlement on Q’mau. This had all the bits and pieces of a classic Trek triumph: the heroes put the mission, their ships, and themselves at risk to save innocent lives because it’s the right thing to do and ultimately save the day thanks to quick thinking, creativity, and Starfleet's engineering prowess. This was actually the only sequence in the episode where the Burnham-Rayner interaction worked: Rayner’s calculated risk paid off but introduced a new complication, but Rayner was also pretty quick to concede that “ok yeah, to hell with this ‘Red Directive’ nonsense, innocent lives are at stake” and ceded authority to Burnham.

Visually, seeing Discovery and Antares literally shield the settlement was fantastic. The detail on the shields stopping the rockslide was great fun to watch. These have always been my favorite Discovery moments: classic Trek formula with modern effects and pacing.

Why I'm worried: Rayner. One of Discovery's quirks has always been what I call "the interloper," an external authority figured foisted onto the cast to either foil or assist Burnham depending on which direction the story needs to turn. Lorca and Pike were more pronounced instances of this quirk than Vance and Rilliak were, but all four seasons have done it.

Our season 5 interloper looks to be Rayner, and it looks like Rayner is going to be as prominent as Lorca and Pike were. And boy, I didn't find Rayner to be interesting or compelling at all. I've worked with far too many "I'm allowed to be a jerk because I'm right" types to be entertained by them, particularly when played straight. I really hope they do something more novel with Rayner, and quickly.

GuyFleegman , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

It depends on whether you are approaching the question from a narrative perspective or an empirical perspective.

Narrative: The Federation wins because the Federation are The Good Guys™ and the Empire are The Bad Guys™. The Federation starts out on the back foot and it looks pretty grim in the middle, but ultimately they eke out a win. If this is a TNG two-parter it plays out the way "The Best of Both Worlds" did: engineering prowess combined with timely application of the human factor wins the day. If this is a DS9 arc or Discovery season, then Section 31 does what needs to be done.

Empirical: The Empire crushes the Federation like a bug. The Imperial industrial base is enormous and their power generation capabilities vastly surpass anything the 24th century Federation can muster:

• The Death Star could violently destroy an entire planet, reducing it to asteroids. In "The Die Is Cast," a combined Romulan-Cardassian fleet requires multiple volleys to simply glass the surface of a planet.
• The Millennium Falcon—a ship a little larger than a runabout—could cross the known galaxy (Tatooine on the rim, Alderaan in the core) in a day. Voyager estimated a similar journey would take 70 years at maximum cruising speed.
• In the 2360's the Federation built six Galaxy-class ships and maybe a few dozen more throughout the course of the Dominion war. These are among the largest, most powerful, most advanced ships the Federation can build, yet they are dwarfed by an Imperial II-class Star Destroyer and the Empire built hundreds of these in the mere two decades it existed.

 

It you could somehow snap these two spacefaring nations into existence and pit them against each other, it would be like late-WWII United States facing off against Napoleonic France. It's a blowout.

GuyFleegman , 1 month ago

The Empire can shield an entire planet. Those big spheres on top of a Star Destroyer's command tower are shield generators.

GuyFleegman , 1 month ago

Fleegman with the finger guns

GuyFleegman , 1 month ago

Transporters block shields regardless of modulation. You can modulate weapons to penetrate shields, but transporters are trickier. "We can't get the away team back because shields are up!" would be a non-issue if the shields could be modulated to block weapon fire but allow transporters.

GuyFleegman , 1 month ago

You're very right... and yet I gleefully wade into it every time...

GuyFleegman , 1 month ago

Soran's device was essentially an anti-bomb, based on how Worf described it:

Trilithium is a nuclear inhibitor. In theory, it could stop all fusion within a star.

If you shot it at a Star Destroyer I think you'd just give a handful of unlucky stormtroopers trilithium poisoning.

GuyFleegman , 1 month ago

Most of the time they're "blasters," sometimes they're "turbolasers" or "lasers." Star Wars canon is a hot mess but they are most commonly defined as charged particle beam weapons, i.e. they're phasers by a different name.

GuyFleegman , 1 month ago

Well now we've just arrived at MAD, in space. Both sides deploy their Star Killers and both galaxies are rendered uninhabitable.

GuyFleegman , 1 month ago

Screaming

GuyFleegman , 1 month ago

Thank you. It’s not a proper Trek vs. Wars thread until someone busts out the canon card. I can’t believe it took 5 hours!

GuyFleegman , 1 month ago

Yes, shields normally let transporters pass right through and definitely need to be specifically configured to block transporter beams. That’s why no away team has ever been stranded because their ship had to raise shields.

GuyFleegman , 1 month ago

Yeah, exactly. I find criticism of Apple products from people who are deeply familiar with their products to be quite entertaining, but that's not even close to what's happening here. Most of the comments in this community are one step above "DAE Macs can't right click??"

GuyFleegman Mod , 2 months ago

This is one of my favorites, despite the fact that most of my losses are in fact due to the mistakes I committed.

GuyFleegman OP Mod , 2 months ago

Yes, that's it! Thank you!

GuyFleegman , 2 months ago

I dunno about favorite, but my go-tos are an Old Fashioned in the fall and winter, and a Tom Collins in spring and summer.

Those become a Manhattan or an Aviation if I’m feeling fancy or just want to mix it up.