I’ll take DS9’s first two seasons over TNG’s first two any time. Yes, even Move Along Home. TNG also peaked around season 5, and was somewhat more mixed after that (but never going quite so low, either).
There’s a lot of fighting between DS9 and B5. The story goes that B5 series creator J. Michael Straczynski had shopped the series bible around, including to Paramount. They weren’t interested, but when they heard it got picked up by WB, they rushed their own space station based Star Trek series forward. With people coming over from TNG, they get a pilot ready faster than JMS can create a series from scratch.
Since they had the B5 series bible, there’s long been allegations that DS9 is a ripoff of B5. Indeed, there do seem to be some elements stolen out of it. For example, the pilot of B5 has a “changeling net” technology that lets people impersonate each other, which had apparently evolved out of an early draft of a changeling species, which DS9 copies outright.
What Paramount studio execs did was definitely underhanded. They were deliberately pushing out a show to make sure B5 wouldn’t get to the same level of popularity as Star Trek. They probably did steal elements from the B5 bible and pushed Berman and Piller to use them.
However, fans make more of the similarities than are really there. Berman and Piller were almost certainly unaware of why the studio was pushing certain ideas and where they got them from (and JMS said as much at the time). Most of the stolen elements are ultimately superficial. The way the central conflict unfolds is very different, the characters are very different, and the technology is all different. B5 doesn’t center around a planet coming out of a long term colonial authoritarian government, and DS9 doesn’t have humanity crawling out of a war that nearly destroyed it and which ended for mysterious reasons. B5 doesn’t have an excellent father-son relationship, and DS9 doesn’t have a wisecracking ambassador who’s very likeable despite doing some incredibly fucked up things.
They are both excellent shows, and well worth your time.
I agree on Pulaski. She could have been a great character if she had more than one season.
I don’t think there’s a truly great episode in TNG’s first two seasons, though. They range from “utter garbage” to “fine” . Season three is massive improvement. Watching it back to back, it’s almost jarring how much better it gets. Barely seems like the same show.
DS9 ranges from “I’ll watch it, I guess” to “holy shit this is amazing”. Kai Winn is a fantastic villain straight away, and would be the most talked about villain in any other show. The only reason she isn’t is because there are so many great villains in DS9 that she gets lost.
Yes. The advantage is that you can make the surface area of the air cooling part much, much larger. I had a water cooled system that could do web browsing and other basic tasks with zero fan speed (though it was better to leave it on very low speed to avoid hunting behavior).
Also, there’s some benefits to thermal mass. Short term spikes can be absorbed by the water without increasing fan speed.
I wouldn’t cite LTT for much, but IIRC, that was only true to a point. The NHD-15 is great, but a lot of cases can’t fit one. Same with many other high end air coolers. It might also cool to the same temperature, but is also running the fans harder to get there.
It’s a fun thing to do. I like my setup (O11 dynamic XL, two 360mm rads, dual pumps, both CPU and GPU blocks), but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to anyone. It’s a lot of effort and expense for a little gain. But it’s a hobby on top of a hobby, and that’s fine if you want to go for it.
It has more points of failure, and that failure can be more catastrophic. If your air cooler falls off somehow or the fan dies, CPUs these days are pretty good about shutting themselves off before they melt. If your fittings leak, it can destroy everything.
Big air coolers don’t fit because there isn’t enough height off the CPU inside the case. An O11 Dynamic (regular size) doesn’t fit an NH-D15, for example, but it fits water cooling with at least one regular thickness 360mm rad on top just fine. (And also one on the bottom, and a thin one on the side).
DSC Season 5, LD Season 5, SNW Season 3.... GIVE IT TO ME NOW (startrek.website)
Air cooling is just better (usenet.lol)
Air is better than water