Comment Stream

Re: DSC S3: Su'Kal

There's a fairly simple social rule:

Don't use slurs for minorities or subordinated groups to which you do not belong. Even if you think your intentions are good.

Spaces that allow the breaking of this rule inherently create a hostile environment for the groups targeted. They also become hostile to other groups who know they could be targeted next.

The appropriate people for enforcing that rule are the owners or managers of the space. Leaving the response to those targeted, along with condoning an environment where alerting the appropriate person is labeled as "immature," "childish," or "crying to the mod," is functionally nearly identical to saying that slurs are allowed.

Booming was told that the term was a slur and responded by rebuffing requests not to use it or slurs in general.

When he sees this conversation, Jammer is going to have some decisions, probably to his aggravation, about what kind of ship he is running here.

Re: DSC S3: Su'Kal

@Jammer

Booming has doubled down on his decision to use slurs in this forum.

This is not a conversation for me or other visitors to have with him further, but for the owner of the forum to act on appropriately.

I know that managing this site, especially when you added comments, is a lot of work for you. Thank you for doing it!

Re: DSC S3: Su'Kal

@Booming

I did see the context in which you used the slur.

Do you believe that White people may mock racist attitudes of other Whites by referring to their distress at the n-word on DS9?

If you are as supportive of the trans community as you claim, don't use slurs, even when your intentions are good.

Re: DSC S3: Su'Kal

@Jammer:

Above, Booming used a slur for transgender people. The "t___ in Star Trek." I hope you will respond as you would with use of a slur for other groups.

Re: DSC S3: Die Trying

"Should I embrace a TV industry that routinely, deliberately and blatantly exclude characters on the basis of gender and race politics? Well, I don't know, Drea. Maybe you can tell me: Should I?"

Pardon, are you implying that the TV industry routinely, deliberately and blatantly excludes straight White cis men?

Buh-whuh... fuh... nuh...

Ha ha ha ha!

That deserves laughter, and nothing more.

Pardon, I generally prefer more constructive dialogue. However, it's clear that certain quarters here are simply going to double down and dig themselves an ever-deeper hole.

A decrease in your hegemony does not mean that you are now oppressed.

Re: DSC S3: Die Trying

@SlackerInc

So you want the show to include a sympathetic and significant straight White cis male role.

Does the show contain sympathetic and significant trans Latina lesbian?

Does the show contain a sympathetic and significant Australian Aboriginal gay cis man?

Does the show contain a sympathetic and significant asexual Chinese agender person?

The show contains a sympathetic White cis man. Most of the cast is straight. Most of the cast is cis. A lot is White. Each of these traits that you share belong to characters with positive representation.

That you think that any given show ought to contain a positive representation not simply of people with traits you share, which Discovery does, but of your specific combination of them is mired in the way you've gotten this for the entire history of film and have been able to take it for granted.

For people who do not share that privilege, it has been historic to see characters with even one of their traits receiving positive representation.

Every single Star Trek series other than this one has delivered someone just like you--multiple someones. Most people are not getting someone just like them. Many never have. It's just that, for the first time, a cast is diverse enough that you also aren't.

Re: DSC S3: Forget Me Not

@Booming asked some good questions about how Utopian sci fi would deal with trans representation, given that trans people often simply want to go about their lives without their transness becoming an issue.

The best answer, I think, would be just to have a trans actor playing a trans character. Somewhere after we've known the character a while, it comes up in passing, then we barely ever hear about it again.

If Adira turns out to be non-binary but closeted, this can make sense because they come from an Earth that's now post-Federation and not Utopian. It didn't come across as if Earth had regressed quite that badly, but it works.

I'll be annoyed if they're non-binary as a result of their Trill past lives though. Jadzia and Ezri were women prior to and after their acquiring the memories of men, and there's no reason that the (possible) first non-binary human on the show should only become that way due to an alien symbiont.

Re: DSC S3: That Hope Is You, Part 1

Passable.

The first hour set up the premise of rebuilding a lost interstellar utopia less effectively than the Andromeda premiere, which was only so-so to begin with.

First, the decision to make the cause of Federation's fall a mystery dilutes the show's ability to deal with social or political themes. Instead of reunifying a galaxy's political divisions, we're faced with dilithium exploding. Uninteresting.

Second, we don't have good enough cause to believe that the galaxy is that much worse off. This was a problem in Andromeda too. We learn that endangered species aren't protected anymore, but we've never had any indication that most of the galaxy did this anyway. What is in the Federation's place? How much of it is worse?

Third, why one earth did we initiate this mission around Michael, a random last sentry, and Book, who's not a believer? Why would we introduce this future without the crew, and not show them reaching the decision that the Federation could and should be rebuilt?

Fourth, a dull action story about an alien marketplace that could have existed in any Trek era does a poor job of introducing anything at all about this future.

Who knows? Maybe it will be good after all. Lower Decks certainly surprised me.

Re: PIC S1: Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2

@msw188
Data sang this song at Riker and Troi's wedding in Star Trek Nemesis, the last time the crew gathered before Data's death. B4 sang a line of it at the end of the movie, which gave Picard hope that some part of his friend lived on. That's why it echoes through Picard's dreams of Data.

Data would also remember the song as the last thing he performed for the crew, since these memories went into B4. Picard would know this and inform Soji.

It's not a meta point at all. It's dramatically extremely poignant. But the show doesn't connect the dots for the audience. Then again, maybe it would be pretty laborious to explain all that if you're not an avid Trek fan with the whole series and movies memorized. If you're in on it, it means something, and if you're not, it's just a pretty song.

Re: PIC S1: Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2

Soji sang her father to sleep.

Isa Briones sang that cover of "Blue Skies." Soji's gathered along with Jurati and Soong when Picard euthanizes Data. Data starts this specific record playing before he lies down: the music is diegetic. And it's Soji's voice.

Soji recorded it for her father to hear in his death.

That gorgeous detail gets the show forgiven for not showing us, the viewers, a dialogue between Data and Soji. It also implies that Data's existed in a place where others can't visit him directly, and where Picard only could briefly because of the unprecedented circumstance of a mind transferred into the simulation for the short term. Messages can go in, but not out, or else Data would have requested euthanasia earlier. It's a bit underwritten, but it's the interpretation that's most consistent with the rest of the story.

But think of it: this gentle being who had wanted to parent, who lost his only child and did not want to risk having another if she would die the same way, gets to hear his daughter sing him to peace.

It's really, genuinely lovely.

Re: PIC S1: Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2

Well, that was fun! Not classic, but fun, and it sets us up for Star Trek: Firefly.

Where even are they setting course to in the end? Second star to the right, and straight on till morning? This crew deciding to stay together feels underwritten. Who's funding them now?

We get a true TNG ending, but not before some of the bad guys have crept in. Truthfully, I hope the writers forget about them and maybe spend one episode resolving them at most. I'm much more interested in the Romulan refugee crisis or other political or moral questions than in evil AI eels from another dimension.

It's weird that the so-called uber-synths need our side to hold the door open, but whatever.

It's weird that Jurati et al didn't tell Picard's friends that he's actually fine, but whatever.

It's weird that... look, a lot of things are weird here. And most of them amount to "meh" because the basic premises of the story hold together even if some details need smoothing. This far outstrips Discovery's first season and slightly beats its second.

I cried at the scenes at the end with Data. TNG, and not Picard, earned most of that, but after the failure to treat Data's death with emotional impact in Nemesis, it's good to see it given the weight it deserves here.

Three stars for the finale, and three stars for the season. Both barely--but if I think about whether I'd tell my Trek-fan friends to watch the show, the answer is definitely yes, and that feels like the metric for a three-star rating for me.

Re: PIC S1: Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1

@ William Wehrs
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pCoBVhnUaNE

"Do you see the storm?"

Bahahahaha love this.

In-universe, we can suppose that they built a weathernet between Soji's construction and now. That's definitely cleaning up after the writers though, who clearly should've devoted at least a line to how much the place has changed from Soji's memory.

Re: PIC S1: Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1

Regarding twins!

Within this narrative, giving both Soji and Sutra a lost twin sets them up to want a connection with each other, and for their fundamental difference and inability to keep that connection ultimately to be more painful.

I'm still not a fan of killing Dahj off in the first episode and think the series would've been better served without that choice, but making Soji at least believe her sister is gone does more than just set Picard up with a twist. She'd be less vulnerable to Sutra's emotional pull were Dahj alive, or even if Dahj had never existed.

It's clear that the twinning theme plays off Data and Lore. In TNG, Lore came first, but nothing says that they couldn't have been created simultaneously, and Lore activated first. It's a retcon, but a minor one, to claim that the creation process must involve two identical positronic brains, and that if you make one alone, it either cannot achieve sophistication, like B4, or dies, like Lal.

I wish it were more possible to have a provocative conversation on this board. Instead it's all silly sniping back and forth on the ridiculous question of "is this Star Trek."

Re: PIC S1: Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1

On the bright side, we have the most TNG throwback yet. On the downside, it comes across as mediocre TNG. Not bad, certainly, but middling. The android costumes, camerawork, and on-the-nose themes feel amusingly Roddenberry. This is cute, but the hour suffers from some unearned emotional beats.

Where the episode delivers some interest is the logic of sacrifice. Most characters have deployed this logic in some way: the Zhat Vash and Jurati to prevent the apocalypse, Seven to spare exBs, Picard for synths by bringing Elnor onto his team, Elnor in a series of violent choices against the Zhat Vash, and now the synths led by Sutra to save themselves.

Narek probably did *not* kill that android--Sutra did. She did it in sacrifice, in killing the one to save her people.

Whether it goes to organic or synth, this message is poison. It drives destruction and hate where it may not otherwise have been.

Why assume that these android gods, their message millennia old, still exist, or that their intentions remain the same? I'm not sure that a conclusion based simply around the decision not to summon them is all that interesting. The writers need to do something other than the obvious to stick this landing.

Re: PIC S1: Broken Pieces

Hot take: Narissa inadvertently saved Seven's life, or at least individuality, by spacing the drones.

With hundreds (thousands?) of additional drones who had never been reclaimed, Seven would have been overwhelmed by the Collective and unable to sever herself from it.

Also: is there any reason any exB couldn't have done what Seven did at any prior time?

Re: PIC S1: Nepenthe

Fun detail - why did Kestra know so many fine points about Data?

Because she saw androids vilified on the news as a little kid and asked, "Mommy, Daddy, are there any androids here? Will they hurt us?"

No, sweetie, that news isn't telling you the truth we know. One of our closest friends and colleagues was an android.

And then she had a million questions.

I find it highly likely that the writers would corroborate this story.

Re: PIC S1: Nepenthe

This episode works on all fronts. The Borg cube and La Sirena remain tense, and Picard and Soji have a story that's genuinely moving.

The A plot isn't about any sort of sci-fi action; it's about a young woman emerging from betrayal and manipulation figuring out whether she can or could trust anyone around her, when the person trying to help her is also a flawed man with blind spots of his own. Her trauma rightly leaves her seeing expressions of care as possible threats. At the same time, she wrestles with being something different from the people around her: I won't soon forget the nuance she delivers with "real is better." Isa Briones is shaping up to be one of the more sophisticated actors in the Trek canon.

Fortunately, Picard has allies in proving his worth. Our first reunification of the Enterprise crew rings true and strikes deep. The most moving moment of recognition wasn't Troi's ability to read Picard, but Riker's recognition of Data in Soji. These are people who care for each other and know each other extremely well despite the ways they've changed. Kestra managed to make herself both likeable and distinctive within minutes, enough that she could pull off that sincere conversation with Soji at the end.

The series would've been better served by playing out Jurati's conflicting emotions from the start rather than pull her murder of Maddox as a twist in Stardust City Rag. However, we're given those experiences now, and it looks as if whatever she saw via mind meld would indeed be enough to turn around someone's lifelong motivations. Ultimately, she can't continue betraying good people, and good writing and acting for Raffi and Rios take her believably to the point where she would eliminate herself as a threat to them while also causing herself harm. Maybe she could've removed the probe with less harm with her crew's help--but that would've entailed confession, and she felt too ashamed for that. Possibly to the point where self-harm was a feature rather than a bug.

Narissa, now that she's a ruthless baddie claiming to protect the entire galaxy instead of leaving teeth marks on the scenery with Narek, is fun to watch, and I enjoy that she and Elnor come from Romulan factions with a long-standing rivalry. Elnor's swordplay somehow besting a room full of disruptors stretches credulity, so that I headcanon that he relies on some sort of tech, but it does look cool.

With Hugh, we have our first death of a significant character. Yes, we lost Icheb before, but he lacks Hugh's significance within the franchise, the fandom, and this series in particular. His death, though sudden, is neither careless nor gratuitous. It's the most logical outcome of his choosing to help Picard and Soji escape and choosing to fight back after the slaughter of his kin. It still surprised me because Trek historically has so rarely killed characters. Narratively, it's also about more than just motivating Elnor. Something terrible will happen when Elnor follows Hugh's plan to activate the slumbering power of the Borg cube. Were Hugh around, he could direct or control it. But he won't be. Something tells me that Narissa has just helped to set in motion exactly what her organization has been trying to prevent.

I'm pretty amazed that people can still be negative on the show after this episode, and for those who are, you may want to do what I did halfway through season 1 of Orville: throw up your hands and declare yourself done, and then actually stay done. I was happier that way. If the show does something new or different, you'll hear about it.

Four stars. I thought about whether I should stick with 3.5, but on reflection, no... four.

Re: PIC S1: The Impossible Box

@Rahul
If relationship decisions were rational ones, you'd be predicting Soji's choices correctly.

Yes, as a woman, it's statistically more probable that I have been on the receiving end of a coercive relationship, so that winky face is a little misplaced.

The show--I think by intention of the writers, and if not then thanks to Briones--is evincing awareness of how it feels to be in that position. It's not sexy to see, and I'm glad that the sense of romance or sincerity from the "Borg ritual" scene is now absent.

Re: PIC S1: The Impossible Box

@Rahul
"[Soji]'s very suspicious of [Narek] so it doesn't make much sense to me why she'd sleep with him."
Manipulation. You can see the change in Soji's demeanor to someone who's aware her partner is manipulating her, staying with him because of that manipulation, and aware of it but also not accepting the full reality of that means. It's subtle, complex, painful to watch, and has me sold on Briones as an actor, if I wasn't already. In the prior episode, Narek straight up uses access to knowledge that matters deeply to her to keep her around. It'd be nice if people broke things off when they became aware of a partner's coercive tactics--but they don't, because that's how relationships driven by deception and coercion work.

@Mal
"I’m not a fan of the whole Dr. Aggie/Rios hook up, but I have to admit that it rings true. Who here hasn’t hooked up in a moment of grief or existential dread?"
The people posting on this board who don't understand her motivations, I guess! I agree that it rings true. It's somewhere between distracting herself and acting in complete self-loathing. For those questioning why Rios would do it, hooking up with a vulnerable person isn't the noblest action, but she's announcing self-awareness about what she's doing (at least as far as Rios knows)--so he's thinking that he'll enjoy it and it at least won't hurt her.

I'm not so into people asking how someone who is capable of having a substance abuse problem could also be capable of becoming a Starfleet officer. People who can develop addictions can do everything else you can.

Especially when we get to people who find Picard's PTSD implausible, I'm finding that some prominent criticisms of this episode depend on lack of empathy or understanding for trauma, relationship abuse, addiction, or just plain poor life decisions. Obviously, not all critiques fall in this bucket--some people found the pacing or whatnot ineffective, in which case I merely disagree. But where it does apply, I wonder what STP should or could do to achieve empathy from people with little or no familiarity with these issues.

Re: PIC S1: The Impossible Box

Unemphasized point: Soji is "human" enough that a Romulan meditation technique for self-examination will work on her. The same might not be true of Data, but would probably have become true of Lal, had she lived.

It shouldn't come as a surprise, since emotional manipulation tactics work on her also. But the very test that Narek uses to prove she is "not real" by recovering memories of her construction proves that she is entirely "real" in terms of sharing cognitive and emotional processes with evolved primates.

Re: PIC S1: The Impossible Box

Wow. This was riveting.

These people are an absolute mess. And they just did their first right thing. That's why we get the Trek music cue for drunken Raffi pulling in a favor: her upward trajectory starts here, helping this rescue when she's accepted she's not getting her family back--and Rios taking her bottle.

We're in this for the long game. This show isn't writing its characters for one season. Narek, Jurati, and the rest won't redeem themselves by season's end. Maybe they never will, or can.

But Jurati in her self-loathing sought out someone decent at his core. She'll come clean. Narek's set on an arc to change loyalties. Elnor has purpose. Hugh sacrifices his safety to help Soji. Soji confronts painful truths about herself--and our other characters' struggles to do the same underscore how courageous that is.

And Picard? Picard is finally meeting old friends. Hugh, and next Riker. He needs them to be the man he can be. We're watching people who have slipped from ideals claw toward the light.

Rizzo had her first not-bad scene. I don't mean her dialogue about the puzzle box; that could be cut like everything else prior. If we introduce the character during the meditation scene, and pretend the rest doesn't exist, she's... fine.

Our story has moved forward in a significant way. This is some of the best Trek has ever been in a first season.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@OmicronThetaDeltaPhi

"Picard is a joyless, morally bankrupt, depressing show. It shows us a grim world that (a) I would not like to live in and (b) I've seen the likes of in a dozen other sci fi universes. ...the show seems to be indicating that he is wrong and "the world" is right. Picard is depicted as a delusional idealist, which is just awful."

I think we have common ideas of what Trek is, and the big division between our enjoyment of the show is what we see it as depicting.

As I see it, our real world is grimmer than this, and the show exhorts us to do better. ST:P is absolutely about the inspiration to become a better person, which means more if we start with people who feel as if they were promised that possibility and now have lost it--much as many of us who grew up with TNG feel today. None of the characters currently are role models or heroes. We'll watch them become that. We'll watch a new idealism grown, wiser than the old one.

If the show ultimately sides with the cynicism of several characters in their current states, if it concludes that Picard really is just delusional, then I will eat crow and concede that it's exactly as bad as you and other detractors say.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@Booming
"Let's just hope that an old humiliated white guy assembles a team to save the United Federation of States. Is Al Gore still alive??!"

I really agree with you on this criticism of the show. I have enough investment in Picard that I enjoy him as the lead, but I would have opted for a well-written original character who's not an old White guy. It's problematic to suggest that the problems of a failing democracy can be addressed by a little squad having adventures, doubly so a little squad following our father figure from the 80s.

Will this show motivate questioning and action? Or will it only be wish fulfillment?

Oh, and it looks like about 100% of us dislike the gore. I looked away from the screen entirely as soon as it started, which may affect how I then reacted to the entire episode.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

@Guiding Light
"[Seven] is the moral center of this episode while Picard still is a nostalgic old fool who has to learn that he and his speeches are part of the problem, not of the solution."

What an interesting take! I agree with many of the steps that lead you there but not with this conclusion.

"shows like TNG, with their disregard for the views and interests of minority communities, with their baseless techno-utopianism are what made Trump and Brexit and all the other things possible that happen today. These shows never demanded that the viewers question their priors, they always just re-affirmed them."

I think you underestimate how much TNG made people question prejudices or assumptions when it aired. "The Outcast" was the first sympathetic LGBT representation I ever saw on television. This was huge for me. Growing up in the South, Star Trek is where I first encountered liberal principles.

However, TNG doesn't deconstruct the colonial paternalism of liberalism. I'm right on board with your analysis of how TNG offered utopia without cost and gave lip service to inclusion while often normalizing Whiteness.

Like DS9, PIC rebukes the idea that you can save the galaxy with a pretty speech and then fly off--but that's not the same as agreeing with Seven that there's no room for mercy. Is her violence the least-bad option against an organ trafficker in a lawless territory? Maybe so. But I don't for a moment think that this series will ultimately come down on Picard's idealism being wrong and her cynicism being right.

We're watching a show about flawed people who have become broken, cynical, or hopeless move toward hope and action. We're still in the first act of that story. Picard, Raffi, Rios, Seven, and perhaps also Jurati and Narek will all become the people they wish they were by this journey's end.

This doesn't mean everyone lining up behind Picard, but it doesn't mean that Picard's ideals and speeches will be useless, either. Seven may be a "grimdark" character when we meet her, but we're not watching a grimdark show. This is hopepunk.

Small note: it's weird that you talk about Seven choosing what she'll be called and then refer to her as Annika. Only the villain uses her birth-assigned name. She's chosen to go by Seven.

Re: PIC S1: Stardust City Rag

This exclamation shows the gulf between Picard's morality and the state of politics today:

"what kind of thinking is this. What? should the West get planes to Afghanistan and Syria and fly these people in? What's the argument here. The syrian refugees who live in Turkey or Europe are alive. The Romulans are all dead. I live in a country that took in more than 1.5 million syrian refugees and they all get a place to live, money and medical care. Also free education and language courses. The horror! "

Wow, I wish I were a refugee! It sounds great! It’s a good thing there aren’t hundreds of thousands dead from the Syrian civil war or millions displaced without resettlement or resettled to a place that isn’t so friendly, and that no one resents them and elects far-right parties into power in response.

Refugees who make it out are, obviously, alive. Those who don't, not so much. They're not refugees; they're casualties. If we scale up from the population of one country on our planet to the population of one world within a galaxy, the scale of Romulan dead is clearly intended to be proportionately comparable to the scale of people dead in say, Syria. To say nothing of other areas torn by war or catastrophe.

So yes, Picard's proposal to the Federation was nothing less than the equivalent of building massive boats to bring over every person in Syria who wanted to leave.

Star Trek, while reaching a global audience, is ultimately a very American show. The refugee situation in Europe is difficult enough, but the United States has treated refugees, drug addicts, and other vulnerable populations with staggering brutality. The equivalent would be the Federation turning planetary defense guns on refugee ships seeking safe harbor. Many of us feel outraged that our leadership enables this violence. Our attempts to stop it have had little effect, so that we’re exhausted and bitter like Raffi.

We’re getting to the point where, compared to the United States, the free education, medical care, and housing of the best social safety nets in Europe seem utopian. The Federation is still a future where all of Earth, and worlds upon worlds beyond that, receive all of this or better. Where the moral standard that Picard demands of us is higher than what people from countries more merciful than mine would even consider.