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?

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

I would certainly not reject a well-written Lower Decks season 6, so I don’t agree on the animated comedy front.

It has its weaknesses, but I think you should watch it if just to form your own 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.

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.

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.

However, you could probably try replicating the two containment beams thing that happened to Riker and Boimler, though, duplicating Tuvix and splitting one.

Probably would work well on OpenTTD for similar reasons.

Honestly, there’s a bit of an “if I had a nickel” meme for open source reverse engineered clones of Chris Sawyer tycoon games, although it would be 3 nickels rather than the traditional 2 due to OpenLocomotion.

At least animated WEBP is kind of good; APNGs have huge file sizes and are not widely supported.

Still, this meme made me laugh.

Lossless webp actually has slightly better compression than PNG.

Most browsers support it, but most web apps, including some Google Suite stuff ironically, don’t support uploading a webp.

That was a fun listen. We’ll see where this goes.

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.

Most aliens have forehead ridges; some, like Tandarand, have giant cheeks. But the humans, they have… pronounced philtrums!

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.

I don’t know. There’s something about the description of the ENT novels that rubs me the wrong way.