Aha! I just noticed that the lead writer on this episode is Kathryn Lyn, who also wrote the best episode of Lower Decks to date: the incredible “wej Duj”.
No wonder I thought that Ortegas’ line about “Notice how I move my eyebrow but no other muscles in my face,” sounded like something Mariner would say.
Nice catch. Also, T’Lyn was introduced in “wej Duj” and was named of writer Kathryn Lyn. Seems like Lyn has a knack for Vulcans. According to Memory Alpha, she’s a big Star Trek fan and cosplayed at conventions.
When I knew it was Mike McMahan who ran the TNG S8 Twitter account, I had total faith. He’s a true fan, he wrote the show with reverence for the material despite it being jocular in tone, which is impressive and what made me fall in love with the show.
@easydnesto@canis_majoris Mike is a superb brilliantly innovative interpreter of Star Trek ... Lower Decks is a beautiful and rich addition to the Star Trek canon.
It looked like some Rick and Morty inspired cash grab from Paramount+ to fill out their streaming line up, so it was immediately passed over by me and some friends. When it got a 3rd season I realized it was probably going to last and started watching it when I can.
I wanted to get Paramount+ for it but their other Trek stuff is hot garbage for this TNG fan and it feels like paying for just one show would encourage them to continue fucking up Trek like they have. At least I have good friends who don’t mind subsidizing Rick Berman’s flavor of boomer space action.
The ONLY reason we have Paramount+ is because my wife wanted to watch some soaps on it (IDK even which ones, I couldn’t be less interested). But I WAS like “Now I can watch Lower Decks! Sweet.”
I get what they were going for with the song, but it’s a swing and a miss for me. I think the opening credits montage fits perfectly with the show, but not the song. When I watch ENT, the only time I don’t mute the sound during the opening credits is for “In a Mirror, Darkly, Parts 1 and 2.”
" … another ‘space theme for nerds,’ so to speak … "
Not so to speak. Exactly that. Give me the orchestral story telling. Give me that epic space theme.
There were Star Trek fans at the time screaming from the rooftops about how TNG would ruin Star Trek. Before TNG even aired. But, there were also Star Trek fans who, while disappointed to not have the TOS crew back, were curious about what TNG was going to bring to the table. And, really happy to have a Star Trek series again. But, “Curious Trekkies Wait to See What’s What with TNG” wasn’t going to sell as many papers and stir up as much drama.
1985, TNG was definitely my introduction, really even Voyager and then got into TNG from there. I haven’t seen more than a couple TOS episodes but have seen everything else (except the animated ones, and many of the old movies barely watched once)
I’ve seen maybe a quarter of the episodes. Seen every other trek episode multiple times. I know it’s blasphemy but trek got a lot better post Roddenberry
A lot, I think. At the time of TNG’s initial broadcast, TOS was omnipresent in syndication. And outside of TAS, the only Star Trek series at the time. Star Trek fans watched the heck out of TOS. Then, the Star Trek movies with the TOS cast. The first four films were released before TNG first aired.
Yeah. The TOS cast did movies, but there’s a difference between doing a film and doing a weekly series. TOS was comfort viewing, and fans were going to fan in wanting more of the same.
Our Modern times in star trek are more like the Roman empire, slowly crumbling and about to collapse, which then leads to the actual dark age (I.e., WW3, eugenics wars)
HOLY CRAP, I AM SO GLAD I WENT INTO THIS SPOILER FREE!!!1!
Someone posted earlier this week that it looked like Captain Batel was having a really bad day, and yup, she definitely was. My heart sank when she revealed the Gorn egg infestation. My money’s on her being the sole “main” character casualty from the events of this episode.
I didn’t know Scotty was going to show up so that was a total surprise. Finding out he was Pelia’s perfect student who somehow flunked made all the sense in the world, ignoring the obvious small universe complaints.
I LOVED all the effects shots of the Cuyuga’s debris field. I initially thought crashing the remains of the saucer section into the Gorn jammer was complete overkill, like throwing a dinner plate at a toothpick, but then realized the jammer must have been absolutely massive and far away from the settlement. It looked like it was relatively nearby upon initial viewing which didn’t appear to be the case considering the explosion from when the saucer section hit it.
That cliffhanger, wow. I pray that they have the second half already written and aren’t going to do like TNG and wait to write the conclusion. It was mentioned in the TNG Companion that the writers only wrote the first part of their season ending cliffhangers and waited until closer to filming to write and finalize the second part which doesn’t seem like the best way to develop a strong resolution.
I love SNW so much. It’s going to be an agonizing wait until the new season, probably 2025 at this point? Argh.
EDIT: I swear I didn’t read any posts in this thread before posting my thoughts. I’m glad and amused to see we Trek fans had many of the same reactions!
I think we can excuse the fact that apparently everyone and their transporter clone had Pelia as their engineering professor. She’s been at the academy for so long, I wouldn’t be surprised if she dated Boothby on and off again or at least got him into gardening.
There’s a long tradition in star trek where characters talk about one particular professor or class at the Academy and the other character always knows who the professor is.
The TNG writers held off on writing BOBW2 at least partially because Patrick Stewart was renegotiating his contract and they needed to know if he was staying on. I doubt that’s a concern with SNW. The writers strike could be a problem, though.
Season 3 was originally scheduled to start production May 2nd, just before the start of the strike. It’s only the impending strike date that caused them to stand down on that.
This tells us that the script for the season premiere has been locked for some time.
Fuck dangerous hobbies, I’d be able to do whatever I wanted with my career since I wouldn’t rely on heavily subsidized corporate health plans in order to keep my partner alive.
Assuming, of course, that in such a post-scarcity society we wouldn’t still find a way to stratify society and allow only the elite to have access to such things.
I think access to holodecks is a huge factor for that vs. doing a pastime in the real world. Because of what you said about being accessible to all vs. only to certain elites. Also because I wonder about the availability of holodecks for those not on starships or in Starfleet. I don’t remember if that’s mentioned in the various series and movies since they are typically centered around being on a starship. Transport tech is shown as being publicly used on Earth. I’d imagine that there would be holodecks available on Earth (maybe other planets), or at least holosuites like in Quark’s. Access to pastimes in the real world, without using holosuites, might be commonplace. Maybe trying something new in a holodeck/suite where serious injury is less likely before trying it in the real world.
Well, I have to give the OP credit for outrageous audacity.
Coming to the main community on the dedicated Star Trek instance to argue that users should subscribe elsewhere is inherently a criticism. It says a lot about the tolerance of the mods and admins here that it’s been left to stand.
I myself appreciate a well moderated community because I believe it enables more discussion not less.
99% of the time, if a show set in the future travels back to the present day, it’s a budget thing, a “we’re fucking over this shit” thing, or both. Sometimes you still get a good script out of it, but it’s pretty much always a compromise.
I fully agree. In this vein, I also think that Romulans and Vulcans should prefer green-tinted lipstick rather than red. In a few episodes in DS9 they actually did this, but most of the time they just default to red and it really doesn’t feel right.
A common beauty hack is to match your lipstick colour to the colour of your nipple, so yeah.
That’s extremely cultural, and doesn’t even stand up to the a historical test. I doubt it would carry over across planets. (Works great for TV audience though)
I feel like a lot of it is “translated” to match human emotions. That person wouldn’t actually be considered attractive, but the movie makes them attractive in a weird way so humans can relate. Green lipstick on a Vulcan would be EXTREMELY off putting to a human, in literal stark contrast. To make a Vulcan “attractive” it would be on human terms with our sexy red lipstick or… it may have the wrong effect and not tune emotions in properly to the scene. It’s a huge reason why I hated watching Star Trek with a particular individual I know. “THOSE TWO SPECIES COULDN’T BE BREEDING! THE HORMONES ARE ALL WRONG AND THEY DIDN’T DEVELOP IN THE SAME…” and on and on.
The blushing thing absolutely should be green, but I get why it wasn’t characterized as such. Friggin apes.
Anthropology major I think part of the argument was that since all primates share a common ancestor, when does it stop being functional for reproductive purposes? Is Tuvok sterile like a mule?
Seriously this is why I stopped watching these things with this person. It’s like watching a war movie with a veteran.
The explanation I’ve always had- I think this was from some official source but I could have just made it up.
Starfleet ships use EPS (Electro-Plasma System) to route power around the ship in the form of electro-plasma (a highly energized form of plasma). The warp core generates a lot of this plasma, which is piped through conduits to various devices around the ship. The EPS system and its related systems generate a lot of treknobabble about ‘scrubbing plasma conduits’ (apparently done from the outside using a field generator tool, but still boring), ‘replacing plasma relays’ (the valves that route plasma around, apparently they go bad frequently); problems like ruptured plasma conduits are dangerous and require immediate repair, etc.
Because this all works in a grid system, whenever the ship takes damage (especially energetic damage like weapons fire) the EPS conduits can carry energy spikes all over the ship. That’s why as the ship takes damage you see random small explosions and sparks all over the place- something hits or spikes the EPS grid and the shockwave ends up, well, wherever in the grid it ends up.
Of course many EPS conduits go to bridge terminals, especially as those terminals may have direct connections to the ship systems in question.
Of course in reality this would be seen as a horrible safety risk, and a bridge terminal that could probably run on a car battery shouldn’t have explosive plasma running through it especially when it can explode and harm the operator. In fact one could argue a safe starship should keep all EPS stuff as far away from any essential human-inhabited areas of the ship as possible (especially the bridge).
One counter to that might be that perhaps the consoles actually play some role in EPS switching, but that seems a bad tradeoff to me.
Easy. Electroplasma is very hot and very energetic. When it ruptures out of the conduit, The hot energetic plasma not only mechanically fractures the materials around it, but the plasma itself is a form of matter that will, when it’s energy is released and it cools, return to whatever state it would normally be at room temperature.
Surface ships use deuterium and anti-deuterium as fuel, deuterium is liquid at room temperature. Assuming the combined plasma is also deuterium, that would mean it is eventually condensing to liquid. So I imagine the interaction between the plasma and some other material would turn the other material into a sort of spongy texture, which is probably dark due to being scorched. Thus, I don’t think that’s rock at all. It is scorched material from around the plasma conduit, that has been melted and integrated with the plasma which then returned to a lower energy state, namely deuterium steam or liquid.
I think you are confusing Deuterium with heavy-water. Deuterium is a heavy isotope of Hydrogen, and so is gas at room temperature. Heavy water is water where the Hydrogen atoms of the water molecule are of the Deuterium isotope, and is liquid at room temperature.
You’re absolutely right. But that actually makes even more sense. Squirt superheated plasma into a solid mass, it basically all melts together into a slurry, then the deuterium cools into gas and is released, the resulting material which is solid at room temperature ends up looking like scorched foam
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