StillPaisleyCat @ StillPaisleyCat @startrek.website

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2 yr. ago

Here’s a substack take from Janet Nance ‘Subspace Chatter’

I do like the idea of her being some kind of traveler better than being sacrificed as a fixed point guardian.

But then that commitment to be frozen as a perpetual guardian what makes her sacrifice meaningful.

My problem is that the episode was written from Pike’s perspective rather than Batel’s so that we heard her telling Pike what she was going to to and why rather than seeing that process of acceptance and noble sacrifice from her side.

Relative to the abysmal corporate communications Star Trek has received as a franchise since the ViacomCBS merger (while at the same time largely shutting down more informal social media outreach from anyone but the showrunners), this shows some promise.

It’s hard to imagine that the Skydance merged firm would be yet worse than Paramount for corporate managed communications.

I find that I need to do some other activity while listening to podcasts. Often it’s a puzzle game or other phone activity that doesn’t require unbroken concentration.

But the quality of the sound and voiceovers or voice acting is really crucial to holding my attention.

In this case, it’s really unfortunate that Sonja Cassidy was cast as Dr. Lear. Or, perhaps it’s just unfortunate that she was asked to use an American accent. While some actors can maintain the quality of their performances in another accent, there are British actors who end up with muddy enunciation or less credible performances even if the accent is fine.

Cassidy’s performance as Dr. Lear sounds more like reading than acting for much of the opening minutes. Alternately, her expression, when it does happen, seems artificial. The unpolished performance is all the more noticeable in contrast to the excellent performances by George Takei as Sulu, Tim Russ as Tuvok and Wrenn Schmidt as Marla McGiver, and even the brief interjections of chair of the review committee are more compelling.

Given how many lines she’s given in the opening minutes as the framing story sets the stage, it’s truly unfortunate.

Perhaps all Flint needed was to surround himself with a lot of genuine Earth artifacts (not replicated) to ensure that he had the necessary isotopes or quantum signatures or whatever that Lanthanites need to retain their longevity.

My headcanon is that this is an in-universe show that the kids on the Enterprise D enjoyed.

Boimler grew up with it and has ALL the nostalgic merch. Mariner also has the merch hidden in the ceiling panels but would never admit to it.

Will there be an episode by episode discussion thread?

I think you’re thinking about the 1979 novel Enemy Mine, and 1985 movie. Which itself was building off any number of shipwreck and wartime survival tales.

Enemy Mine has been repeatedly adapted to Trek shows from TNG’s early episode where Geordi and a Romulan survive together.

Using this trope again with a ‘curious demigods running experiments’ twist is novel enough. In fact, it’s harder to believe that Arena was the first time the Metrons put humanity and Gorn into one-on-one engagement.

As for the Martian, book or movie, they’re both pretty weak, derivative, middle school stuff. They’re overhyped and couldn’t hold the attention of the hard scientists in our household. If the middle school (sanitized) version of the book hadn’t been so hyped for our kids, we wouldn’t have made the effort to slog through it before they read it.

Glad that you’re getting to read Destiny.

The thing is that, being an avid TrekLit reader, I’d previously just thought your alias was a deep cut rather than your own creation. Either is very cool.

Most of the shows with ‘teenagers’ have casts in their late twenties or thirties.

I have a similar basket weave pattern that I like to use for baby or crib blankets.

I make slightly larger blocks and rely on stitch markers but as OP says it’s something one can knit without having to give it one’s full attention.

It’s also a nice clean pattern that doesn’t have the risk of catching on things. It also washes and wears well.

It seems the Metron scene was necessary for the very vocal contingent of fans who have relentlessly expressed their outrage about the Gorn storyline not fitting in their headcanon about Arena.

“People know” comments, such as the one in this article are increasingly annoying. Mainly, because they are simply wrong.

No, we don’t know that Ortegas and La’an aren’t on the ship in the first year of Kirk’s command.

Sulu was a xenobiologist at the beginning of TOS, and Kirk had already been captain for some time. There was a bit of a rotation of pilots in the initial episodes.

TOS didn’t even have a regular security officer.

Building on that VS, DNA was barely discovered by Watson and Crick when TOS fan, so we should be able to work the implications of the growing body of knowledge of genetics into what we have done before.

We don’t hold Star Trek back from incorporating advances in real life scientific and technological knowledge.

For example, growing understanding in nanotechnology informed many elements of 1990s Trek. We didn’t say that nanotechnology shouldn’t be referenced just because it wasn’t referenced in TOS.

In fact, Roddenberry insisted that Star Trek always be a possible future for the viewers and insisted on changes and corrections to address changes in knowledge.

In the case of what we saw in this episode, knowledge of epigenetics, an entire domain of understanding that has developed in this century, informed the situation.

Epigenetics can be defined as “The study of the processes involved in the genetic development of an organism, especially the activation and deactivation of genes.”

We were told by Una that, because the Karkovian serum was derived from Spock’s DNA it reflected Spock’s experience. This means certain Vulcan genetic traits were already ‘switched on’ by environmental factors, that could include experiences like meditation, that would lead to ‘switching on’ the genes that enable functioning of the specific Vulcan brain structures noted in Voyager.

This headline is a quote out of context that is being used to imply an admission.

I don’t mind the inference that the movie wasn’t what Yeoh had hoped it might be, but the headline is a misrepresentation of what she said.

What Yeoh actually said is:

Every time I finish a movie or something, I always think, ‘I could have done better,’ so it’s nothing new. That’s how you always have to think to improve yourself and to hopefully be better the next time.

My partner and I seem to be among the relatively few longtime fans who found the S31 film a blast. I still have to wonder though what we might have got if Kim and Lippoldt had been able to run the show that they originally conceived before Paramount added a male non-Asian action flick show runner ‘for experience’. The episode they wrote for Georgiou in S3 of Discovery was excellent and they have been successful writing on Sweet Tooth for seasons 2&3 since they moved on from Trek..

That’s an annualized rate that assumes that the rest of the year with see a contraction and ignores the growth in Q1.

UBC has a program at the undergraduate level.

https://environmental.engineering.ubc.ca/

It’s a biblical metaphor that’s made it into English usage.

But given how much the Borg love the Omega particle in Voyager, it’s fitting.

Yes. The Destiny trilogy is described as the Alpha to Omega story of the Borg.

La’an didn’t become Romulan.

That was just the inference that she and Pike made as they both had awareness that Romulans existed.

In fact, it was a misdirection and further evidence that Vulcans can be blind in their prejudices.

The two of them locked onto the explanation that they knew and never considered that La’an’s heritage of altered DNA might lead to manipulative and territorially conquering behaviour like her ancestor Khan.

It was turning off the impact of the balancing unaltered human DNA and augmenting her brain function that let the Khan-like behaviour dominate.

I thought it was a fairly deft look at the risks of emphasizing different elements of brain function through intervention.