porthos

@porthos@startrek.website

If I abruptly disappear, it isn’t because I don’t love you rather it’s because some jerk used me in his transporter experiment and now I’m stuc… transporter sound

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porthos, (edited )

Literally one of the biggest plot lines in Discovery is struggling with a lovecraftian horror that annihilates entire planets and having the heroes save the day by sticking to a philosophy of diplomacy, logic and understanding even when most people are clamoring to just nuke the shit out of it?

Also, Picard can be silly but nowhere in its DNA does it abandon the heart of Star Trek for the pew pews? At the end of the second season the only thing that saves the day is characters coming to an understanding and trust with one another? Picard doesn’t have a big fist fight on a cliff or something. The only thing that works to resolve the conflict is establishing trust with a character who has the power to unleash a massive enemy?

…did you watch the same shows I did?

Yeah they have flaws, lots of em, but I don’t think your read on those shows is fair.

porthos, (edited )

On the flip side a lot of times the only reason characters survive encounters with entities far more powerful than them is a laser like focus on understanding what an unknown entities motivations are.

I love it when a Star Trek captain phones up some evil looking spaceship that is blowing shit the fuck up and is like “what is it precisely that you want?”. The alien picking up inside the ship usually doesn’t want to talk and it takes the captain cutting through several layers of bullshit until they discover why and the why usually drastically changes the situation.

At the same time, this strategy isn’t portrayed in a naive way that encourages aliens to walk all over starfleet, when you understand the motivations of romulans you understand you better blow them the fuck up if they start testing you or they will see it culturally as a weakness and invade…

Further, there are entities that are just an order of magnitude more powerful that can’t be stopped with any degree of force like Q and the characters just have to deal with it which I like because it keeps Star Trek from becoming a power fantasy about super heroes.

Unfortunately, the Goran'Agar Rehabilitation Clinic actually has a very low success rate (i.postimg.cc)

[Image transcription: A “Doctor’s hate him” style meme titled “The Founders HATE Him” about Goran’Agar. The side text reads “He beat his ketracel-white addiction in less than 35 days using this simple trick. FIND OUT HOW”]

porthos,

Maybe hot take: This was the episode that confirmed my feeling that Miles O’Brien isn’t necessarily a good person, there are definitely aspects to him that are good, he does do a lot of good, but he is chock full of a lot of prejudices he just often doesn’t seem interested in overcoming and everyone around him seems ok with just letting him be that way.

porthos,

False

porthos, (edited )

It’s a good thing Riker is pretty.

Imagine an episode where Riker goes around acting like his normal pretty self and charming the shit out of people… but he is the first of the crew to be affected by a virus that subdues the human capacity to be authentically charming and all of a sudden all the normal ridiculous shit he gets away with because he is so charming starts back firing on him. At the worst part of the episode for Riker he would go to sit down with a fellow shipmate who was upset at him because he messed up a delivery of a joke and offended them but as he is in the middle of the Riker manuever he just plows the chair over clumsily.

porthos,

It would make way more sense for Stargate cosplayers to be at a renfaire since every single planet they went to on that series seemed to have villagers at about the renaissance level of technology (gotta wonder, did they have access to a bunch of medieval/renaissance sets for cheap lol?).

Of course, if you went as Stargate cosplayers you would have to basically dress up as para military wannabe chuds who’s personalities revolve around owning useless guns (like sword person who is obsessed with swords but way less fun) and being a bigot. People might not even recognize you are in costume and just assume you are a bunch of losers who express their freedom by going to renfaires carrying around murder weapons and dressing in tactical gear.

sigh

…better to go as the Star Trek cosplayers lol.

porthos,

Yeah but in Star Trek’s future they have headlamps… but for your handshttps://startrek.website/pictrs/image/8fac47d4-94c9-4404-9528-bb263c36b87e.png

porthos,

Well I haven’t gotten that particular conspiracy theory off the ground yet, still trying to get people in on that one.

I think it is everything you could want from a conspiracy theory though, you just steal all the same talking points from flat earthers but apply the conspiracy in so much more of a petty and meaningless direction that I think it has real potential.

porthos,

Pretty much the lamest conspiracy theory. There are better ones like Rhode Island is actually the third largest state in the US but the other states are trying to keep it down.

porthos,

It’s called going to warp, impulse is when you have to manually chop.

porthos,

I won’t tolerate the lincoln town car being used as the butt end of a joke. The previous generation lincoln town cars from 1990-1997 are some of the nicest sedans ever made. Super comfortable, good gas mileage (better than the newest generation that we all think of when we hear licoln towncar), extremely easy to replace and maintain mechanics (panther platform) and overall an absurdly comfortable car.

It is probably one of the most genuinely good American cars ever made and they are hilariously cheap (you can get them for <5 grand in good condition) because nobody really remembers them except old people.

American car companies broke the automotive unions and the quality went to shit, but the 1990-1997 run of town cars definitely represent a high water mark of American cars built by people that were truly proud of what they made (because they had some degree of decency ensured by the presence of unions). You can find one on craigslist and chances are everything except the air ride suspension (probs replaced by now with traditional spring suspension) probably still works even though it is a 30 year old vehicle selling for dirt cheap.

Fun fact, the tech bro who jadzia in DS9 convinces to help her in the episode that sisko becomes Bell of the Bell riots rode around in a jet black lincoln town car of this generation.

Awesome car, I almost bought one but went for a toyota sienna instead because minivans are the ultimate power form.

porthos,

Stargate: like Star Trek except without any of the interesting ideas, there is a cool scene where the U.S. military bros hold up a sub machine gun and say how it is so cool compared to a lame alien staff weapon. Best moment in sci-fi to some people apparently. It’s fine, but it is an action hero show about war and it rarely even remotely approaches the thoughtfulness of the better Star Trek episodes. I like the characters, I have had fun watching it but Stargate can fade away into obscurity and shrug meh.

Battlestar Galactica: yawnnnnn sorry what oh yeah I fell asleep to the monotonous drone of grimdark, military space war scifi. I am sure it is good but again Star Trek is on a whole different level because of its broadness of vision, ideas, and focus on humanity.

Babylon 5: haven’t seen this one in ages, isn’t it another space war scifi?

Star Trek is great because somehow it managed to escape the fly trap that all sci-fi shows/books seem to go to of grimdark space war scifi where everyone is a miserable f^%k. I’m fine with grimdark space wars, I don’t want 100% of my sci-fi to be about grimdark space wars because then you have idiots like Elon Musk who grow up injecting this stuff directly into their veins and they develop an absolutely shockingly tiny worldview. If they had just read some damn fiction that actually challenged their perception of reality like Virginia Woolf or something…. well they probably still be a&$holes but maybe a tiny bit less?

I have heard Red Dwarf is pretty good.

porthos,

A bunch of people create the most OP way of travelling and barely use it, and don’t tell me that the ship is unique and Stamets is the only person in the universe in the following centuries to be able to use it, because that just doesn’t make any sense, it’s a cheap trick to justify why such an incredible technology has never been mentioned after, not even by a super villain that gives no crap about genetic augmentation.

That wasn’t really the reason, the reason wasn’t nobody else could figure it out or that nobody wanted to do it because it required genetic modification, the reason was that jumping on the mycelial network was actively killing it unless I am misremembering things which is in line with the rest of star trek’s ethos (how about the DS9 episode where they help the dominion destroy a trans warp gate for example? There are other technologies that are abandoned and hidden for the greater safety of the universe all over Star Trek, it can be really silly I agree but I don’t think discovery is unique here.

porthos,

I love when actors do this out of a genuine love for the potential of a character, star trek would be so much worse if it wasn’t for so many actors challenging the ethical and visionary failings of the script both through their acting and directly speaking up. It matters less that the script never ships bashir and garak (I thinkkk I haven’t finished though… hahaha) because the acting makes it true no matter what the narrative says on paper or what dialog happens between them.

It is always about what is implied by what we are being shown isn’t it? Especially if you don’t quitteeee take the words the actors are literally saying at face value as the only dimension of truth.

Nothing is more fitting for garak in a way, though that is more sad than anything because the show would have been richer with an openly queer garak.

Where Are All The Bicycles?? (startrek.website)

I have an issue in general with scifi totally ignoring the existence of bicycles, but star trek is particularly fun to think about since in so many situations beaming down in an away team with electric mountain bicycles would be incredibly useful in a basic utilitarian sense. Like shuttles, bicycles could be treated as...

porthos,

It would be a matter of public health policy that people had some kind of access to a short, physical commute to whatever place they worked/spent their day at, right? That is at least how I rationalize why they just don’t teleport people everywhere. They COULD technically teleport everywhere all the time… but the mental and physical health consequences to not getting some kind of mild daily exercise like bicycling are too intense (also having some kind of short, stress free commute helps one get into the mindset of work anyways).

porthos,

They could just take bmx bikes and beam down right into the action though, maybe even in the middle of a sweet handlebar spin. Are you going to tell me you don’t want to see bmx star trek action?

porthos,

It will definitely be a meme in the future that post apocalyptic US movies from the late 20th and early 21st century always have a protagonist driving around some kind of badass exotic car (?!?) that probably gets horrendous gas mileage even if you could get the gas… There is no food, medicine, water or even much oil but everybody is still driving the coolest car they can.

Meanwhile, if you raided a run of the mill bike store you could outfit probably a hundred or more people with easy to repair transportation that could transport them 40 miles in a day if need be.

Idk, I hope those future memes make fun of us good at least.

(I give the newest mad max a pass on this though since the cars are purposefully over the top and lots of people have dirt bikes at least)

porthos,

I mean once you have flight/hovering vehicles than practically the only transportation that doesn’t make obsolete is a bicycle for transporting someone a mile or two daily from their spaceship to a residence or wherever.

How is using a bicycle clumsy? I mean I get if people don’t like bicycles but honestly a bicycle is just fun to cruise around on, they are the opposite of clumsy.

porthos,

Bicycles don’t necessarily need flat terrain, especially with electric bikes that have futuristic insanely efficient batteries.

Yes bicycles do best on trails but anywhere that has humanoids is going to have trails. Anywhere that has any kind of large animal is going to probably have some degree of path system as well. I don’t think it’s that big of an issue compared to any other kind of ground vehicle.

porthos,

I am so tired of sci-fi futuristic cities that just replicate a highway in the sky complete with crazy stressful traffic and all. It is kind of embarrassing how big of a flaw this is for sci-fi art when a fundamental aspect of the genre is the attempt to gaze far into real and unreal futures.

porthos,

I was doing some D&D world building a while back and wanted to really dive into transportation of people/goods and found the same problem. Tenser’s Floating Disk is a very low level wizard spell that basically does away with all but the heaviest ships and carts. It’s the same for the trek universe. They have personal transportation methods that mean there’s literally zero need for a bicycle for anything other than recreation.

I mean, its all just “magic” at a certain point, they could do everything with a transporter… but they dont so presumably there are reasons not to (even though the real reason is it is a tv show). I have never seen hovercarts used prominently in the live action shows, especially not as a vehicle.

porthos, (edited )

I didn’t hate the Kelvin movies, aesthetically though they were trash in that they took a scifi franchise known for inspiring good UI design and expanded upon it with absolutely horrendous UI. Seriously the computers and interiors of those ships are so ugly it hurts.

Also, starfleet felt WAYYYYYYY too much like a military for me in those movies, there was no attempt to differentiate starfleet from a direct analog to the U.S. military and that just gives me that “kind of want to throw up” feeling every time I see it in star trek.

porthos, (edited )

Can a trombone player please demonstrate and record “confused trombone noises”? Maybe it would be best for a non-trombone player to do so actually…

I am desperately interested in a 10 second sound clip of a confused trombone.

porthos,

I don’t watch much other tv than Star Trek, so I don’t really care if it’s a meme to do this on a tv show but I loved it. I usually hate musicals because the songs feel like they hit pause on the story but this episode was hilarious while also being meaningful.

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