usernamefactory
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- Comment on Voyager crew incompetence. Has Trek always been like this? 22 hours ago:
I thought you were going to talk about the wild swings in characterization, the ratings-chasing premises, and the continual reset button mashing. The kind of minor plot hole/contrivances used to move the story along that you’re talking about never bothered me all that much. I feel like they’ve always been there to a degree, but you’re probably right, those were probably worse in Voyager, too.
It had some good moments and wonderful character dynamics when the writers managed to stay halfway consistent about it, but the franchise definitely showed a downward trajectory with Voyager and Enterprise.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x07 "Like Chronitons Through The Hourglass" 3 days ago:
Given that this was essentially a sequel to probably the two worst episodes from season 3, its surprising how much I liked it. The comedy really worked for me, and the transition from it to more serious drama was well handled. It can be very effective when a story softens you up with comedy and then goes for the throat. The idea that there was emotional truth behind every contrived soap opera scenario threaded the needle as far as keeping the episode relevant while giving it enough space to be zany. Much better than the puppet “all a dream” ending, and does well to foreshadow Pike’s future with the Talosians.
It’s nice to see Pike’s arc continued, since they really haven’t touched on it since the start of the season. It’s a little awkward that the Hangover story occurred between these two episodes, since that somewhat detracts from the idea that Pike was been deliberately overworking himself all this time.
- Comment on New 'Star Trek' Movie Writers Tease "Dark" Story And New Franchise 1 week ago:
If they wanted to go all in on making Starfleet the bad guy, I’d be all for it. Showing that the Federation’s ideals can overcome and dismantle even the Federation’s largest and most ingrained institutions when they go sour would be about the most hopeful thing the franchise could do right now.
But this just sounds like another badmiral situation, nothing ground breaking.
- Comment on Preview ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Soap Opera Episode With 6 New Photos And Trailer From “Like Chronitons Through The Hourglass” 1 week ago:
I’m really not trying to compare TNG to anything. I just didn’t think your comment matched the teaser, or SNW in general. It’s really not the most action-oriented show around. I don’t think it’s even the most action heavy Trek show we’ve had.
Now, if your complaint was regarding high school level romance subplots, that’s something SNW has definitely overindulged in previously that’s also likely to come up in a soap opera episode. We’ll just have to wait and see.
- Comment on Preview ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Soap Opera Episode With 6 New Photos And Trailer From “Like Chronitons Through The Hourglass” 1 week ago:
Hey, you’re in luck: soap operas aren’t watched by kids, and aren’t exactly known for their high octane action either 😉
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x06 "Off-Hour" 1 week ago:
For me, it’s just a question of whether it’s serving the story. If it’s baked into the premise, like the musical or puppetry episodes, I’m happy to go with it.
But disaster scenarios are more satisfying if the obstacles and especially solutions seem like a natural consequence of the world of the show. Magical particles that both heal and fuel showing up in M’Benga’s case notes feel too convenient, even if it took some effort on Spock and La’an’s part to track them down. I’m not sure if I’d call it a Deus Ex Machina or just a MacGuffin that came into the story too late, but it just doesn’t do it for me.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x06 "Off-Hour" 1 week ago:
Yeah, that’s a fair point. Time was of the essence, and the commanding officer made a call. We wouldn’t normally see anyone question that unless they had a very compelling reason not to.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x06 "Off-Hour" 1 week ago:
I guess I wouldn’t object to some dialogue like that, but I also don’t see it as necessary. I agree that if Una weren’t as tough as Spock, or if she’d just never shared this with him, he would have spoken up. Since he didn’t say anything we can logically conclude that she is, in fact, known to be that tough. Unless there’s some other canon showing that to be untrue, I don’t really see the problem with simply accepting that conclusion.
I feel like this is only coming up because Una looks like a normal human. But we know she isn’t, so there’s no contradiction that I can see.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x06 "Off-Hour" 1 week ago:
I’m less concerned that neutrinos don’t act like this, and more amused that any particle can heal a bisected corpse simply by being aimed at it.
Diverting power from life support makes all the heat from the hallways instantly vanish? Where does it go? Is 23rd century technology somehow effortlessly recapturing the heat and turning it into electricity? Is that what they’ve been doing all these years every time the “diverted power from life support?”
It was cold enough for Chapel’s finger to snap right off, but she’s walking around completing tasks with her face uncovered? It’s great that they let the actress emote, but…
What the episode lacked in believability it made up for in good character work. Loved seeing Scotty’s connection with the Enterprise being born, loved seeing Chapel put to the test (and actually giving her actress something to do for the first time since the second season). I also always appreciate bottle episodes just because of how gorgeous these sets are, and the special effects here were top notch, too.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x06 "Off-Hour" 1 week ago:
Maybe my grasp of the lore isn’t encyclopedic enough, but is a given that an augmented Illyrian would be less suited to extremely high gravity than a Vulcan? As I was watching, I just took it that they both silently agreed that Una was the logical choice and didn’t need to litigate it.
I do think the mind meld solution was valuable, because without it the entire extremely flimsy neutrino plan to save the day would have gone off without any real wrinkles. Aiming the particles at M’Benga and the deuterium worked exactly as expected, so the real friction was in how many roadblocks they ran into getting the data.
- Comment on DAHAHAHAHA 2 weeks ago:
Then where does your cuck chair sit?
- Comment on How IMDB Users Rate Season 4 of SNW 2 weeks ago:
I’d feel better about ep1 if it was presented as a difficult or haunting choice. It’s the hunch aspect that really bothers me.
But on reflection, there were still some very good ideas in there. The small bit with the translation of “alone” was possibly the cleverest thing that’s happened this season, and hard to actually pull off in dialogue as well as they did.
- Comment on How IMDB Users Rate Season 4 of SNW 2 weeks ago:
Funny, I thought the first episode was pretty terrible. Pike’s decision to go along with a planetary genocide on a hunch was indefensible to say the least. And there wasn’t even very much dinosaur action to offset that with stupid fun.
The rest of the season I’ve really enjoyed. A big step up in quality from season 3, though still not hitting the highs that season 2 reached.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x05 "Level-Five Transporter Accident" 2 weeks ago:
Kermit taught me to write my own 😉
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x05 "Level-Five Transporter Accident" 2 weeks ago:
Highly enjoyable episode. I laughed. My partner face-palmed. We both especially appreciated Pelia’s puppet design.
The character development on T’Pring was top notch. I love that she’s embraced chaos so much that, by the end, she’s pranking Spock by making him believe he dreamed the whole incident. A nice quirk that long term fans know will escalate to the truly epic prank she’ll eventually play on him in TOS Amok Time.
I just worry the writers were too subtle about this. I’m already noticing some more gullible viewers think that the bulk of the episode was actually meant to be a dream. True fans know that SNW’s writers are brave enough not to pull that, though!
- Comment on Preview ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Puppet Episode With 13 New Photos From “Level-Five Transporter Accident” 3 weeks ago:
Ratings are irrelevant, they’re already cancelled. Not sure exactly when they learned that, but definitely by season 5 we’ll be seeing what happens when they have nothing to lose.
- Comment on Preview ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Puppet Episode With 13 New Photos From “Level-Five Transporter Accident” 3 weeks ago:
I like muppets, but the musical will be hard to beat. I’ll be happy if it’s as good as the fairy tale episode.
- Comment on Annotations for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 4x04: “A Case of Chiaroscuro” 3 weeks ago:
Honestly don’t know why they bothered with an “explanation” at all. It’s a filming style that suited their story. No more need to explain it here than there is in Spider Noir.
- Comment on If you want to be successful this is the question you have to ask yourself everyday 4 weeks ago:
Oh no, we don’t want you dead! You’d better start drinking right away so that doesn’t happen.
- Comment on Supergirl 2026 storyline 4 weeks ago:
Comic lore need not apply to films. I think it’s fair for Kara to assume that dead is dead.
- Comment on Annotations for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 4x03: “Human Best Friend” 4 weeks ago:
I feel like Spock’s interest in plants in this episode is both a call back to The Cage (the way Spock grips the office plant before melding with it felt very similar to the way he gripped the signing plants in that episode) and possibly a call forward to TAS The Infinite Vulcan, where we learn that Spock’s ultimate fate is to live among a planet of sentient plants in a giant cloned body.
(It’s interesting to consider that a copy of his consciousness was returned to his original, diminutive body at the end of that episode. I wonder what adventures that small version of Spock might have had? We may never know…)
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 4x02 "Griffin Incident" 5 weeks ago:
I knew I’d have a good time with this one. I’d heard we were getting a horror themed episode directed by someone who worked on The Haunting of Hill House, which is one of my favourite horror projects from the past decade. (Checking Google now, and I see it was actually Bly Manor. Close enough.)
You can certainly see the same approach at play, and I thought it was very fun to see in Trek. I also loved the nods to other sci-fi horror, including that one scene in TNG Night Terrors that really hit hard when I was 7.
I feel like a bit more backstory on the Griffen might have been nice. She was the last ship built in the Pyris shipyards, which mined its ore from an ancient alien graveyard, and all ships built there met a bad end. Or something better than that. But I see those in this thread unhappy that it wasn’t all explained with the sci-fi equivalent of a gas leak, so maybe the simple mystery approach is a good compromise.
Apart from the horror of it all, some nice character work, with Kirk being the stand out. Nice to see his early relationship with Carol. Or lack thereof. I wonder if they’ll ever have occasion to cast her or if she’ll be forever offscreen.
- Comment on Annotations for *Star Trek: Strange New Worlds* 4x01: “Valles Marineris” 1 month ago:
The Martians have a bit of a Vulcan look to them, and it’s referenced that their genetics can be found in a number of races known to the Federation. Is this a hint that Spock might in fact be descended from Martians, in reference to his original conception as a Martian science officer?
Might be supported by Spock’s mention in TOS Return to Tomorrow that being descended from an alien race is consistent with some Vulcan prehistory.
Or I’m reading too much into a basic makeup choice.
- Comment on Old but gud 1 month ago:
Throw a utility belt on top, it’ll still look great.
- Comment on Sounds beautiful 1 month ago:
But it’s worth it for the quality of
fishstory. - Comment on ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Cast Talks Season 4, Improvising On Set, and Checking All The Boxes 2 months ago:
Of those, I was only around for Enterprise’s cancellation and, given I had pretty low esteem for it and for Nemesis, that one hurt a lot less. It felt like death by natural causes, the sad result of a gradual decline. This time around it doesn’t feel natural at all, particularly right on the heels of SFA’s very strong first season. Extremely frustrating.
- Comment on Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home Returning To [UK] Cinemas For 40th Anniversary – New Poster 2 months ago:
Not gay enough. We need to go back to this.
- Comment on The best answer to "when did Star Trek get woke?" 2 months ago:
Trek is known for allegory, but routinely abandons it for time travel stories. Star Trek IV and Deep Space Nine’s “Past Tense” and “Far Beyond the Stars” all examples that tackle societal issues very directly, and they’re all highly thought of.
To be clear, I think Picard features possibly the worst writing in modern Trek, so I’m not setting out to defend it on all fronts. But the idea that addressing societal issues head on isn’t a valid approach for Star Trek doesn’t add up for me.
- Comment on How to calculate stardate? How is measured? 2 months ago:
Oops, thanks for the fix
- Comment on How to calculate stardate? How is measured? 2 months ago:
I’ve shared this here before. It’s the most extensive analysis of stardates I’ve encountered: atavachron.wikidot.com
