SpaceScotsman

@SpaceScotsman@startrek.website

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨StarshipGenerator.com⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago⁩:

  This is a great site. Trying to break it is fun. It’s possible to make a long neck giraffe ship with a giant cowcatcher on the front.

  Aside: This is the first time I’ve ever seen a site ask for cookie consent via a submission box. Annoying. At least in EU if the cookies are purely functional, as seems to be the case here, you don’t need to ask permission and you can just notify when the user is about to save to local storage.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x04 "A Space Adventure Hour"⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago⁩:

  This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot while I’ve been rewatching DS9 while listening to The Delta Flyers.

  They do have the odd one-off “fun” episode in DS9 - this past week was “Our Man Bashir” which is also a fun holdeck episode, and shares a lot with this episode. But the one off fun shows aren’t really needed for DS9 to be funny. What makes DS9 work so well is that they have more episodes to develop character relationships. Once you have that built up, DS9 is able to pack in a lot more humour without even needing one-off comedy episodes, just from the characters riffing off each other.

  When you have a limited episode count, like in SNW, that’s much harder to do. There is a bit of genial poking at spock’s vulcan nature, and some character based humour between the engineering staff, but that’s about the extent of it at the moment.

  And so as nice as these fun episodes are, it does feel like there’s missing opportunities. There is a random line about giving Ortegas the bridge when we know there was character development from the last episode that still needs to be dealt with. And one of the main characters in this episode wasn’t even really there, so that’s a whole lot more time unspent, and whatever development Spock and La’ans relationship has may end up happening offscreen.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x04 "A Space Adventure Hour"⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago⁩:

  I wasn’t expecting another “fun” episode. I enjoyed it. The campy awfulness of the old TV set design and costumes was spot on.

  Spock-La’an works well, I want to see more of it. It’s difficult to find a lot of plot progress in comedy eps, but pushing their relationship forward a bit is nice. I really hope it goes somewhere meaningful, but this being a prequel, I guess just how far it could go is limited, unless they’re willing to diverge off canon.

  Hollywood AR walls don’t hold anything against a holodeck, but we’re getting there. It’s cases like this that make me think I wouldn’t enjoy one for real though, I’d just spend all my time getting paranoid. And did La’an get permission from everyone to use their patterns?

  This earlier holodeck is lacking in any kind of true failsafe and is relying on the simulation program alone to not hurt people. Later on the enterprise, they never really figured that out. Scotty should have wrote his notes on safety much bigger than footnotes.

  The writing staff must have been using this episode to vent their frustrations of the TV industry. When they were writing it, I wonder if they knew yet they had a confirmed 5 seasons, or if this was written during a hiatus.

  I guess the takeaway message from this episode is “you can always rely on those around you”. Except when they’re holographic murder simulations, then all bets are off.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x03 "Shuttle to Kenfori"⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Much of the episode is devoted to zombies, and zombies are boring. Moving on. I thought the directing and/or editing was pretty lifeless (heh) in this one, too - not a lot of tension throughout.

  This could have been a bottle episode and might have been better for it. The plant was a macguffin that could have been anything. A molecule on some random asteroid could have served the same purpose and allowed the plot to continue mostly unchanged.

  Maybe without the zombies that would have given more time for focusing on discussion around what the characters are feeling - More of ortega’s struggle; something better than spock’s mind meld which seems to serve as nothing more than foreshadowing for something that’s going to be said out loud a few minutes later anyway.

  If the writers were going to use zombies in a story, then they should actually use them as part of the plot.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x03 "Shuttle to Kenfori"⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  This was an ok episode. Very character focused rather than sci-fi.

  Everyone should recognise what is happening with ortegas, they really shouldn’t be letting her do anything until its figured out, nevermind chain of command training. There must be something seriously wrong with starfleet’s psych evals if she had one and they didn’t spot this.

  Last week I did wonder if the Gorn DNA was going to cause problems, and here we are going to get a… hybridisation of some sort. I wonder where this is going to go - hopefully not the same way as Paris and Janeway went. We know Pike must suffer, and I wonder if he is going to have to deal with losing Batel altogether on top of everything else. I wonder if she is going to have to deal with heightened violent emotions, as the mind meld suggested, and end up having to be “dealt with” in a permanent way.

  Zombies. M’benga’s “don’t call them that” was hilarious - Zombies in Star Trek just feels kind of wrong. They were alright, but, it’s zombies. The fact that it came from genetic modification with plants reminds me a bit of Cordyceps which has featured in many other zombie stories. Something that did bug me is M’benga is a medical doctor, and the best mask he could bring was some sort of fabric wrap? Do they not have surgical masks or M95 masks in the future? I wondered if the story could have been about saving the infected, maybe a “do I have to make the choice of cutting off this limb to save someone” moral quandry. The closest we got to that was the klingon that got bit and immediately vaporised. Zombies were kind of just set dressing / a mechanic to keep the characters moving forwards.

  A running theme in this episode seems to be the characters falling out of their comfort zones. For all but Scotty, this seems to leave them worse off than when they started. It’s good to see him slowly making progress after being thrown in the deep end.

  Misc notes:

  • The gravity loss shot was very nicely done.
  • For all that I didn’t like the zombies I did like their design. There was one bit where one got stepped on the head and it slowly deflated, like it was made of plant material.
  • With all the AR wall stuff, I liked the actors having some set they could really interact with.
  • The viewscreen has a “rear view mirror” display :) why isn’t that always visible in the corner?
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x01 "Hegemony, Part II" & 3x02 "Wedding Bell Blues"⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This was a good mix to start with - a serious episode and a fun silly one.

  The first acts as a really good introduction for Scotty, giving him a chance to build up his character with some insurmountable engineering problems that, with some coaching, he surmounts. The second is a nice way to round off Spock and Chapel’s relationship, poking fun at the mess that following the canon has left us in, using Trelane as a stand-in for the fans.

  various thoughts on the plot:

  • Ortegas seems to have been left with a bit of trauma, being part digested will do that to you I guess. Hopefully La’an will spot this and help out.
  • Una mentions a “couple of litres” of blood. Did she mean pints, and the writers did a find/replace to make it metric and more futurey? Because “a couple of litres” is a lot.
  • Camera spin continues to be a big part of the visual language. It gives me a headache and I have to close my eyes whenever they do this. There were quite a few instances of roll in the first episode that were a bit too much for me.
  • John de Lancie and Rhys Darby make the perfect duo for these characters.
  • Scotty mentions not drinking, but ends up having to take some when he eats something dodgy at the batchelor party. Previously (later?) Scotty has been shown to be a fan of drink, I guess now it’s canon that had there not been alien interference, he may have always been teetotal.
  • While Chapel is dealing with Batel, the Gorn hatchlings seem to agitate when the ship first goes close to the binary stars. Then, at the end of the episode when the ship has been suspended between the stars for a long time, no real mention is made of this. I guess the blood infusions and operations just kind of negated all that? Feels like Chekov’s gun got loaded and then forgotten about.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨(☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly, “country of origin” will have straight lines drawn on a map that are so far removed from where the people who lived there originally considered their borders even that’s probably not pinning it down well enough.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨purpose⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  OK, but all the ticks can go die in a fire

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Depart, men of education.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Absolutely all foreigners - www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly67j35y99o

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨DR HANKS⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  ahem, that’s PROFESSOR Hanks, thank you very much

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨More than 100,000 homes in England could be built in highest-risk flood zones⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s no need to be concerned because they’re never going to build 100,000 new homes, never mind the 1.5M target. Building enough homes to house people would cause supply to meet demand and make the housing market “crash”. And Labour will never upset those who’ve been tricked into thinking that home property is an investment.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of January 20th⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s honestly not amazing. It’s a third person shooter across multiple different levels of built up environments, offices, corridors. The enemy AI is pretty terrible, and although there are different tactics you can use to “hack” and take over enemies or melee, it’s usually just easier to shoot.

  But the parkour style navigation stood out. You can do wall jumping, which I was not expecting, and there are hidden pickups you can explore and find. And the open environments are nice (the corridors can feel a bit samey after a few levels).

  It feels like one of those tie-ins that, had the dev team had more time to explore, balance, and really make it into its own game, might have been really good.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of January 20th⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve downloaded some old PS2 era games. Some of the gameplay is quite dated, but I really enjoy the retro feel of the environments and graphics. Perfect photorealism isn’t always necessary to enjoy a game. I’ve been playing Burnout and Ghost in the Shell SAC.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨BACK IT UP⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In fairness, cheese from france is probably safer raw because they don’t have as many superfarms that are as prone to spreading diseases like bird flu

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Prisoner's Trolley Problemma⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  looking at the junction points on that diagram only one side of the axle would change track if the switch was pulled resulting in a derailment so you could ignore the possibility of hitting the people in the middle thereby reducing this example to two parallel but unconnected trolley problems

  i choose to kill whoever calls them trolleys and not trams

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They used to be all metal too. Its time for a revolution⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That 2012 one looks like I’ve focused it as a UI component. I need to get out and touch some grass.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨elucidating 🤌🏼⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I misread that as prefix and, honestly, forthwhence doesn’t sound half bad.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's finally up! Please sign it if you're in the UK :) Petition: Require videogame publishers to keep games they have sold in a working state.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  100% online games in the past were perfectly playable even after developers / publishers ended support. Online only games dying is a relatively recent invention. This petition is asking for consumer protection to return to the norm where a purchaser of an online game always has the choice of being able to play it in some fashion.

  A game developer could do this by releasing a server application. They could even do this at the barest minimum by releasing documentation describing how the server ought to work, to allow for reverse engineering.

  The Stop Killing Games campaign as a whole isn’t asking for perpetual server access, just to ensure that games stay in some sort of playable state.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Lower Decks | 4x09 "The Inner Fight"⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Knife Rain? Wasn’t expecting an adventure time reference on star trek, but I’ll take it!

  There’s a lot of references linking back to nova squadron here, but I’ve got no idea how it all fits together. Looking forward to the finale.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘Star Trek: Prodigy’ Finds New Home At Netflix After Paramount+ Cancellation⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  This is a good change. I think we could be in a much better place if companies that owned both production and streaming were more open about licensing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Lower Decks | 4x07 "A Few Badgeys More"⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Tendi just wanting to play in the sand is cute.

  Boimler being completely fed up with the assignment is great - he knew exactly what he was walking into, but did it anyway (I’m glad it actually had payoff at the end).

  Rutherford has finally resolved badgey, and seemingly learnt nothing.

  I didn’t feel like mariner had a whole lot to do in this episode, she just kind of tagged along.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Lower Decks | 4x05 “Empathalogical Fallacies”⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I really liked the facial expression animations in this episode. Its difficult to pull them off in 2D animation, but it really helped in this episode.