I can understand why. The motivations and message are a bit deeper than WoK. But UC wouldn't have happened (in the same way) without WoK first, since I don't think Kirk had the same hatred towards Klingons before. Distrust sure, but not revenge level hate.
UC also has that connection with one of the best TNG episodes, Yesterday's Enterprise.
It's as much Star Trek as the unofficial Trek movie Galaxy Quest. Doesn't matter if the characters and universe are different, it's got the same vibe to fit in.
I do prefer the beard, but later Riker without a beard works well. I think it's because the character and actor have grown into the part at that point and don't present themselves the same as the early season Riker. I was going to call him "gangly" but I don't think that's right, but first season Riker was less sure of things.
Let's not forget the other badass old Riker with the peppered gray beard who said "I'll get the Klingon's attention".
That was a background character, not the one you're thinking about (see other reply). There's a bunch of side characters in that and other movies that don't get credited. One well known one is Tom Morello of RATM.
Correct. Stephanie is the one everyone always refers to for that look she gives Riker in that scene. RIP.
And for what it's worth, although the inference seems to always be sexual, I don't think it needs to be. It can be just as much admiration and "holy shit, captain". Which is totally justified.
I also like the look Riker gives when Geordi tells him he already ejected the core before being ordered.
Models are geared towards seeking the best human response for answers, not necessarily the answers themselves. Its first answer is based on probability of autocompleting from a huge sample of data, and in versions that have a memory adjusts later responses to how well the human is accepting the answers. There is no actual processing of the answers, although that may be in the latest variations being worked on where there are components that cycle through hundreds of attempts of generations of a problem to try to verify and pick the best answers. Basically rather than spit out the first autocomplete answers, it has subprocessing to actually weed out the junk and narrow into a hopefully good result. Still not AGI, but it's more useful than the first LLMs.
I guess there's a bit of selection there as well. If you've managed to not kill yourself for a year or so, you probably know what you're doing. It's not that there weren't deaths, it was just expected that some wouldn't learn the job well enough to continue doing it.
Reminded me for some reason of the description of what "catastrophic damage" is in the board game Starfleet Battles. Not necessarily the level of the nacelles falling off the ship, but a bit more than the captain's chess board slipping off the table.
People back then must have had much better balance. There's always a few in photos standing in places that were certain death.
Plus I do have to wonder, how over or under are the specs for such a thing? It seems to be just "we'll put a bunch of big posts and lots of boards, it'll hold a train."