data1701d
@data1701d@startrek.website
“Life forms. You precious little lifeforms. You tiny little lifeforms. Where are you?”
- Lt. Cmdr Data, Star Trek: Generations
- Comment on Shut up and take my money: A working (bluetooth) TNG Combadge 1 day ago:
I wish there was a Lower Decks and VOY/DS9 version of this. However, I would cry a little having to design any PCB for that space, even if it’s as simple as registering a button or blinking an LED with a microcontroller.
Honestly, I’d be tempted to just do analog FM instead of Bluetooth and basically just make walkie-talkies. You could enable greater functionality, perhaps including Bluetooth support and being able to make voice commands, by having a “ship’s computer” that would just be a Raspberry Pi server or something with an FM receiver that could process the voice commands and route signals. You might have to hide it in a probe like a tricorder or a phaser while at cons, but if you’re just handing out Halloween candy or something like that, you shouldn’t have to worry.
- Comment on Shut up and take my money: A working (bluetooth) TNG Combadge 1 day ago:
Part of me wonders if you could cheat a bit and put the speaker in say, a tricorder prop.
Looking at the size of the iPhone 15’s speakers, I think it might actually be possible to fit it in. You might have to fudge the dimensions a little bit, but I think that could fit in a roughly combadge-sized space. The big question is getting the rest of the electronics to fit.
Sounds like a fun project for self-torture in KiCad.
- Comment on New ‘Star Trek’ Movie In The Works At Paramount From Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley 5 days ago:
I enjoyed the D & D movie, so maybe they can pull off something good. Maybe they could just do something set in, say, 2467.
However, I’m extremely sad that it probably won’t be Crisis Point 3.
- Comment on The Strange New Worlds Season 3 Soundtrack has been released 1 week ago:
I just want a Lower Decks Vol 1 vinyl reissue and a Vol 2.
- Comment on LEGO Star Trek Enterprise REVIEW 1 week ago:
Heck, if you want the stickers, you can easily print them on a good inkjet.
- Comment on Creation Entertainment have announced ENT cast members for STLV 2026 2 weeks ago:
I think the biggest issue with ENT is probably the sexualization of T’Pol, the culmination of a nasty habit in Berman Trek.
I could tune out 7’s catsuit because she was otherwise well-written and the good plotlines outnumbered the bad, but it feels like at least 75% of all T’Pol stories were of the horny Berman type, to the detriment of her character.
- Comment on STAR TREK 4 Has Finally Been Scrapped As Paramount "Moves On" From Chris Pine-Led Franchise 2 weeks ago:
While we’re at it, let’s just pull in Chris Pine (multiverse crap) and William Shatner (Nexus crap) and have one of those nutty SNW episodes that sounds like a horrible idea but is surprisingly one of the better episodes that season:
- Comment on Fanhome Line Of XL Model Re-Releases Includes 10 Enterprises, K’Tinga, DS9 + More Iconic Star Trek Ships 5 weeks ago:
I don’t know why, but I feel cheated that we don’t get an Enterprise J model - what else am I going to use as my weirdly-shaped dinner plate?
- Comment on Legendary Star Trek Designer Inspired To Sketch President Archer’s Starship For ‘United’ Pitch 1 month ago:
Actually looking at it, my impression has softened a bit. I think I just was struggling with the perspective.
I like the proportions of the earlier concept better - I like big nacelles.
- Comment on Legendary Star Trek Designer Inspired To Sketch President Archer’s Starship For ‘United’ Pitch 1 month ago:
That… is kind of ugly. It’s unimaginative - feels too much like an airplane or a cheap-as-heck shuttle model. It brings up the worst of late-90s/early 2000s blobject design.
It would definitely feel more at home as background ship, but this is not the design of a hero ship. It doesn’t even have to be the traditional Roddenberry-type design; something looking more like the Dove from Lower Decks would be better than this.
- Comment on In this dire time ... 1 month ago:
You’re forgetting Ad Homicide: Just because you killed someone doesn’t mean you’re right.
(And of course, its vice versa, just because you (or someone with your views) got killed doesn’t mean you’re right, which admittedly is less common in history, but nonetheless something to be aware of to evaluate arguments critically.)
- Comment on Trekmovie.com: Scott Bakula-Led ‘Star Trek: United’ Pitch Explores Archer’s Family, Romulan War Aftermath 1 month ago:
I mean, that’s fair.
I feel that somewhat by accident, Lower Decks does better capture some aspects of classic Trek than other series, namely being mostly episodic and bringing a sense of humor back to Trek, and it sometimes even attains a level of dramatic skill comparable to the best of classic Trek (namely above all else the exchange between Mariner and Ma’ah in the S4 finale). Also, I’m honestly really impressed that Lower Decks managed to get me attached to its characters and make it feel like they’ve evolved so much in a total runtime less than that of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
That said, Lower Decks does lack the mellow charm and the long(er)-form storytelling of classic Trek. However, considering the Trekiness they otherwise pulled off, I kind of wonder how the Lower Decks writers would do if they were given the opportunity to do a 50 minute “standard” Trek series; I think they might be able to do pretty well.
Similarly, with SNW, while it has some of the strongest writing of social interaction, the sci-fi aspect is often weaker than it should be. For instance, “Four-and-a-Half Vulcans” is almost a brain-dead premise in terms of science fiction, but executed so well in terms of the social dynamics and character writing.
In other words, I can see your desire for a no-compromises, no catches Trek.
- Comment on Trekmovie.com: Scott Bakula-Led ‘Star Trek: United’ Pitch Explores Archer’s Family, Romulan War Aftermath 1 month ago:
When you put it that way, I agree.
TNG made a point to avoid doing this as much as possible, and it ultimately worked and arguably usurped the original.
I guess that’s also part of the strength of Lower Decks and somewhat Prodigy; both shows are the only ones of this wave to be mostly focused on original characters. Lower Decks does bring in legacy characters frequently, and Prodigy does have Hologram Janeway and later starts to heavily feature legacy characters as part of the storyline, but both have an original cast as the core of the show that isn’t anyone we know’s brother or cousin. I superficially thought about this, but didn’t think about it in comparison to the other newer Treks before.
- Submitted 1 month ago to startrek@startrek.website | 2 comments
- Comment on Trekmovie.com: Scott Bakula-Led ‘Star Trek: United’ Pitch Explores Archer’s Family, Romulan War Aftermath 1 month ago:
I mean, if they struck a balance, it could be enjoyable enough.
It’s not a dynamic we’ve fully explored in Trek. We kind of got it with adult Jake and Captain Sisko in the later seasons of DS9, but we haven’t really fully seen the experience of a Starfleet empty nester.
Still, drama after drama is rather annoying.
After being disgusted by the horribly-done pre-school show, I’d much rather see a Star Trek done in the spirit of Craig of the Creek and Bluey that’s about a friend group of kids running around a star base and getting into fun and trouble and low-stakes ethical dilemmas, preferably while their parents (the crew and civilian residents) deal with DS9 levels of heavy stuff. After saying this to my younger sibling, they have a more developed pitch, having sketched up some concept art for fun.
- Comment on Trekmovie.com: Scott Bakula-Led ‘Star Trek: United’ Pitch Explores Archer’s Family, Romulan War Aftermath 1 month ago:
I would certainly not reject a well-written Lower Decks season 6, so I don’t agree on the animated comedy front.
- Comment on Is Star Trek Discovery that bad? 1 month ago:
It has its weaknesses, but I think you should watch it if just to form your opinion.
I’ve only watched through the middle of season 4, where I got a bit tired of it, though I might pick it back up.
Season 1 is interesting, season 2 is weird, and season 3 has its flaws but keeps you on the edge of your seat.
Season 4 I feel like squanders the new setting introduced in season 3; the plot they introduce feels so artificial to me, which is very upsetting because it feels like the new setting has so many stories that would practically write themselves even if you do decide to lean on “Big Bad Villain/Problem” storytelling.
- Comment on Yes, That Great-Looking 'Star Trek: Voyager' Game Will Let You Spare Tuvix 1 month ago:
Actually, they were stored across the entire station’s computer systems; only part of them was in Quark’s holosuite. It basically took every bit of storage on DS9 to store them.
- Comment on Yes, That Great-Looking 'Star Trek: Voyager' Game Will Let You Spare Tuvix 1 month ago:
From what I can tell, their patterns are only on file during the transport, after which they are discarded. They imply it takes a lot of power and data storage to transport, meaning that they can’t just store everyone’s patterns.
There is an instance in beta canon, but just knowing that transporters and the title are related might spoil the entire plot. Thus, I am using nested spoilers so that people can check if it might be something they’re going to read without knowing exactly which thing it is.
Spoiler for IDW Trek comics
::: spoiler IDW Lower Decks comics/graphic novels spoiler ::: spoiler Warp Your Own Way Spoiler Someone does overcome the power and storage problem and figures out how to make unlimited copies of a person, using this to repeatedly clone Captain Freeman and then Mariner to get secrets out of them. However, this was with years of research, and it was all destroyed within the comic plot to maintain continuity with the screen.
However, you could probably try replicating the two containment beams thing that happened to Riker and Boimler, though, duplicating Tuvix and splitting one.
- Submitted 1 month ago to startrek@startrek.website | 4 comments
- Comment on Podcast Discussion | Star Trek: Khan | 1x01 "Paradise" 2 months ago:
That was a fun listen. We’ll see where this goes.
- Comment on Star Trek: Scouts ☄️🖖🪐 | Official Trailer | Nick Jr. 2 months ago:
My sister called this an abomination… and she’s the one who sees redeeming qualities in DISCO (I do too, but I think she likes Disco more than me).
From what I’ve read, I agree. This seems to be purely oriented towards iPad babies, which is horrid; these kinds of shows let their child viewers be dumber than they actually are.
I’d much rather have a Craig of the Creek-esque show about a group of kids having fun and going about their lives on a starbase while their parents deal with big Starfleet stuff in the background, hinting at something bigger going on as a mystery for parents and smart kids to solve. The kids never save the entire Federation or something hokey like that; at most, we have something like a Picard stuck in the turbolift with three children and a broken leg during red alert situation every once in a while.
- Comment on What do these 3 /(?:United Earth|Star) Fleet/ Officers have in common? 2 months ago:
Most aliens have forehead ridges; some, like Tandarand, have giant cheeks. But the humans, they have… pronounced philtrums!
- Comment on What are your favorite Star Trek books? 2 months ago:
I was actually going through the audiobook of this trying to gather and classify enough data to fine tune a Piper TTS voice of the Star Trek computer.
Haven’t finished it yet, but maybe one day. While I normally would have ethical qualms about commanding the likenesses of the dead, they actually did try to collect voice data before Majel Barrett died; unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to actually pull it off, but the attempt feels as close to consent for this sort of thing as one can get.
- Comment on What are your favorite Star Trek books? 2 months ago:
I don’t know. There’s something about the description of the ENT novels that rubs me the wrong way.
spoiler
I just find it really weird to make Tucker Section 31 and add a whole convoluted thing about how he originally faked his death in 2155, but changed it to 2161 for some reason.
- Comment on What do these 3 /(?:United Earth|Star) Fleet/ Officers have in common? 2 months ago:
Painfully true.
- Submitted 2 months ago to startrek@startrek.website | 12 comments
- Comment on What are your favorite Star Trek books? 2 months ago:
This is more a comic/graphic novel than a proper Trek novel, but I think Lower Decks: Warp Your Own Way is possibly the best Star Trek comic I’ve ever read.
It stays true to the source material, and unlike a lot of IDW stuff I’ve read, doesn’t completely shark jump from the source material in an attempt to be mysterious, cool, or interesting just for the heck of it.
Probably the only other piece of IDW Trek I enjoyed this much was the TNG Mirror Universe, which did really well to achieve a “keep me on the edge of my seat” feeling.
I still need to read some other Trek comics, though, especially the TNG/Doctor Who crossover, which a local library branch of mine has. I also have a ton of PDFs from the recent Humble Bundle to burn through.
- Comment on Jonathan Frakes Surprised ‘Strange New Worlds’ Star Trek Spoof Was Controversial; Talks Directing ‘Academy’ And More 2 months ago:
Are we counting S1 “The Elysian Kingdom”? I know it’s not technically a holodeck episode, but…
- Comment on Jonathan Frakes Surprised ‘Strange New Worlds’ Star Trek Spoof Was Controversial; Talks Directing ‘Academy’ And More 2 months ago:
