The opening word, “perhaps,” instills ambiguity in whatever hypothesis follows it.
The next clause, “something occurred” is objectively true. The weapon was dematerialized, deactivated, and then rematerialized. That sequence of events is accurately describable as “something occurred,” regardless of whether or not Data deliberately activated the firing mechanism of the weapon, or malfunction during transit, or something else happened to cause the gun to discharge.
“During transport” cannot be false, since we do not see any weapon discharge before or during Data’s dematerialization.
Taken altogether, this sentence is true and therefore Data would be same to say it without lying.
Truth is a funny thing, and carefully selecting weird can allow someone to be deceptive or evasive by starting an absolute truth. And that’s not even factoring in the subjectivity of truth, or any faults in the memory - synthetic, organic, or otherwise - of the individual. Objectivity can be frustratingly difficult to pin down.
Oh thank god. Skydance is utter, utter shit. They would just destroy Star Trek. Sony might actually help it, because they’re pretty good about pushing franchises, but if that’s dead, it’s dead.
The worst case scenario is pretty bad though, namely Paramount implodes and licensing nonsense means Trek has to be pulled from distribution platforms, with literally no legal way to watch.
EDIT: I’m less worried about this for Trek than Avatar though. I know it has a rough history with being put on ice, but it’s still a big, provably profitable IP.
I had a hard time buying Jean-Luc Picard as a hard boiled PI, but I suppose that’s the point of a holodeck program- you get to fantasize about being something you aren’t if you want to.
Picard being a fan of the Dixon Hill novels, on the other hand… that seems out of character.
Eh, I have to admit, I have a hard time buying it, too. This is a guy who reads Shakespeare in his spare time, not trashy, pulp detective novels from the early-mid 20th century. He even thought taking a trip on The Orient Express would be too indulgent. Picard liking Dixon Hill novels makes no sense. Just like off-roading in an ATV.
I know a guy who is a literature snob and is probably the last person I would have expected to really get into Raymond Chandler novels. Anyway, he was raving about those books so I read a few. It turns out that Chandler was a phenomenally weird wordsmith. Inventive, funny, and unexpected. If you're looking at midcentury American writers, Chandler is hugely underrated. Maybe in a few centuries he'll get his due.
Sure, it's detective pulp. But it's detective pulp that's been given a strong hallucinogen and whacked over the head a few times before waking up in the desert.
I haven’t been paying any attention to anyone else, but I’ve been enjoying this season.
It continues the abandoned Progenitor storyline from TNG. And it does a decent job at explaining why we didn’t see any more about it until 800 years later.
Even the interpersonal stuff isn’t terrible this season. We get to see more alternative captain/crew interaction and how those directly compare with Disco’s crew.
Yeah the storyline from “The Chase”. After that episode it was never touched again in any of the series until this season of Disco.
Bombshell revelation that all humanoid life in the galaxy was seeded by a Progenitor race? Never discussed again. Obviously Starfleet wouldn’t have abandoned that research thread. This season continues that story, and gives an in universe explanation to why we never saw it mentioned again.
Funny, for me I was happy for that to go nowhere after the episode. It’s so big and deep a revelation that it’d just be its own show in the end to pursue it further … which I liked … it felt like something so big that even in the Star Trek era it was going to take time and effort to just digest it … which was cool.
Plus in a way the point of the episode wasn’t the sci-fi but the ending dialogue between Picard and the romulan colander about the struggle to find common ground and peace.
Even the interpersonal stuff isn’t terrible this season.
I’m sorry, but fucking what? Heavy spoilers for Episode 1 below but…
Burnham just put herself above her duty and mission again. She did the exact same fucking thing she did in the first episode of the whole show except instead of physically assaulting her superior officer in a misguided attempt to try and prevent a war she threatened to let extremely dangerous criminals escape with information vital to Federation security unless she was read into a mission.
I’m sorry but the first episode immediately and categorically proved that Burnham is unfit for Starfleet in every capacity. Every single season she has flouted her duty and I’ve stuck with it because it’s been sorta different and she’s been growing but now? She is regressing. She went full manipulative psychopath and said “Read me in or I will let you stumble in the dark.” Note that this is after she fucked up two different times on this mission already and thereby let the bad guys escape. First at the opening of the episode and then again on the planet. She knows that this mission needed to be done and was a psychotic level of important because of the whole ‘Red Directive’ shit (that was never fucking explained in the first episode). Kovich outright said to her that he doesn’t care who is on the ship or what happens to them because it is that important. She is told she needs to get this done because it’s above everything else. What does she do? Repeatedly put the needs of the few above the needs of the many.
She should have been court martialed on the fucking spot.
Note also that I’m not some Disco hater. I’m a mod and the one with an account named after a DSC character and who has been defending DSC on here for months.
I haven’t seen past the first episode. If you can promise me it gets better than that, sure, but Burnham is fucking dead in my books. Every major decision that she’s “done” in the show was never done by her to begin with, it had to be done by someone else forcing her to do it. Now she’s in charge and making decisions that are going to get someone fucking killed.
We-ell, it inspired me to respect Star Wars more. Hard to take seriously people laughing about midichlorians and space wizards, and at the same time being serious about transporters and creating matter from nothing and all that “post-scarcity” stuff.
Also Star Trek: Bridge Commander is an awesome game, simpler than something like Battlecruiser Millennium, but still cool. It’s the Star Wars game I’d like to see minus Star Wars.
To your first point, that’s fair but Trek and Wars are just different things and the same thing at the same time. The only time Star Wars tried to add hard science to it, it was mocked relentlessly (midichlorians) because that sort of hard science fiction didn’t make sense or fit in the world of Star Wars. Star Wars is science fantasy, not fiction, and introducing explanations start stripping the world of its mystery and awe. It also just didn’t jive with the vibe already established. It was basically someone just saying “Um actually, it’s not mystical. It’s just science.” Star Trek on the other hand actively tries to explain everything all the time anyway.
Star Trek is fantasy masquerading as sci-fi while Star Wars is sci-fi masquerading as fantasy. Both fandoms get really upset when the mask starts to slip on either.
Star Trek is a fantasy in the same vein as the Odyssey. Go somewhere on a ship, encounter magical creatures, get into a problem that’s resolved with a moral lesson. The magic of the creatures is never really explained in the Odyssey beyond the magic just being inherent in those creature. Same goes for the magic of various aliens in Star Trek. Vulcans can do mind melds because that’s a magic only Vulcans possess. Can it be studied and reproduced by others? Nope. It’s magic inherent to being a Vulcan.
It also should be noted the resemblance between Star Trek races and classic Tokien races. Vulcans are Elves, Klingons are Orcs, Romulans are Dark Elves.
In Star Wars people have magical abilities like telepathy, telekinesis, and prescience. These abilities are present in Star Trek. But in Star Wars, these abilities aren’t inherent in being a certain species. And the ramifications are explored. People might build religions around those who have these abilities. Maintaining a galaxy wide civilization would be difficult on its own, but you add in an X factor like certain people having the ability to control people’s minds that have holy wars against each other, it’s likely there would be a constant cycle of collapse, rebuilding, then collapsing again. So you’d expect some feudal power structures to form on some planets during the dark ages of a galaxy like this. So it makes sense that princesses, knights, wizards, pirates, gangsters would all exist in a galaxy that has holy wars between groups that have mind powers.
But people like Star Wars to be a fantasy with mysteries about how it came about. It is set in another Galaxy and started in the middle of an ongoing story. So many people aren’t going to like over-explanations, at least not in canon, because it takes away the mystery and makes it too obvious that Star Wars is actually sci-fi.
Star Trek is fantasy, Star Wars is sci-fi. Just nobody wants to admit it.
I cannot disagree with this enough. Especially the part about Vulcans and mind melds. They have literally explained it and extrapolated on it multiple times. They’ve made artificial mind meld tech to enhance it even. I see where you’re coming from but fantasy inherently does not explain anything. It’s waved away as magic. Star Trek goes out of its way, to the point of creating the term technobabble, to give an explanation as to why a thing is happening. Huge sections of episodes and movies are dedicated to simply understanding the HOW before they ever discuss the WHY.
You also say the classic Tolkein races. Not sure why. Fantasy races existed well before him which is why the estate was not able to prevent DnD from using so many (not that they didn’t try, and succeed, on some of them). Those races in fantasy themselves just stem from us. Orcs are the “savage barbarians”. Elves are politicians and aristocrats or those who think of themselves higher than others, Dark Elves are the schemers and people who do bad things for seemingly no reason. It’s not a gotcha situation to compare those two. It’s just how good fiction works. You take parts of humanity, of all of us, and distill it into its most pure (or impure) forms.
Also that description you made of SW is literally fantasy. A world where no rules exist, where logic is thrown out the window, where princess and pirates hang out at the same time, where magic exists with no rhyme or reason, where things are in endless strife, where no progress is made and where things cycle infinitely. It doesn’t “make sense” that all these people exist together in the same pocket by any stretch of the imagination. It just… Happens. Everything is by pure blind luck. The princess doesn’t choose to chill with anyone, she’s rescued by a teenager and a drug smuggler with his talking dog, a group that already does not make a single ounce of sense to be together. They’ve got flying machines and can go to space but are using swords. There’s pure good and pure evil but no shades of grey until elaborated on in side content. Just black and white morality. That is exactly what fantasy is. Also George Lucas uses the term “science fantasy” when talking about Star Wars, not science fiction.
Star Trek goes out of its way, to the point of creating the term technobabble
What’s the difference between technobabble and a magical incantation from the perspective of story telling. Geordi Laforge casts +1 technobabble and it’s super effective.
You also say the classic Tolkein races. Not sure why.
Really? Put a photo of an Tolkien Elf next to a Star Trek Vulcan. You don’t see any resemblance there? None at all? Besides that Elves are an elder race that are at times disconnected from the affairs of humans. Despite this, there’s an alliance formed between Humans and Elves. It’s not all that different from the relationship between Humans and Vulcans in Star Trek is it? In story terms Vulcans serve the same role as Elves and Klingons are a violent adversary to the Human and Vulcan alliance, aka the Federation. How did that war end again? Wasn’t there magic sorcerers involved in ending the war between the Federation and the Klingons? Oh beings of pure energy (nothing at all like a sorcerer) that they basically never talked about later. Did someone even try to contact the Organians to get them to help sort out the Dominion war? I guess that was a one time thing. There’s literally Gods that can force adversaries to end a war in Star Trek, but only that one time because the existence of such beings didn’t have any long term consequences for how diplomacy was conducted in that Galaxy.
Sorry, but in story terms, it’s just plain magic. Science is repeatable and studied. Star Trek just substitutes “a wizard did it” with “an alien did it” but there’s no meaningful difference.
There’s nothing in Star Wars that doesn’t exist in Star Trek. Telekinesis, telepathy, mind control, prescience, all appear in Star Trek with the only explanation being “because aliens.” And in Star Wars with midichlorians, the explanation is “because microscopic aliens.” Nobody really likes that in Star Wars because technobabble explanations are silly.
The princess doesn’t choose to chill with anyone, she’s rescued by a teenager and a drug smuggler with his talking dog, a group that already does not make a single ounce of sense to be together.
Of all the things in Star Wars that’s poorly explained you chose an example that actually was explained. Teenager found a distress message from the princess, and the smuggler was there because money.
They’ve got flying machines and can go to space but are using swords.
If you have prescient abilities you’re able to see were a blaster will be fired before it’s fired and be able to move the sword to exactly where it needs to be beforehand to deflect it. Something that makes sense if you consider the relationship between the abilities and technology. Also traditions are a big thing in a lot of religions.
Also George Lucas uses the term “science fantasy” when talking about Star Wars, not science fiction.
Of course there’s no doubt a lot of fantasy elements in Star Wars. But not nearly as many fantasy elements as in Star Trek. If you were to say both Star Trek and Star Wars are fantasy, then sure. But saying Star Trek is sci-fi while Star Wars is fantasy is just ignoring how much fantasy Star Trek has going on. There’s no real definition of what makes something fantasy and what makes something sci-fi, but where ever you choose to draw that arbitrary line Star Trek is going to be on the fantasy side of that line if Star Trek is, because there’s way more fantasy going on in Star Trek than in Star Wars. Just Star Wars doesn’t do as much meaningless technobabble and doesn’t hand wave away the significance of some people having telekinesis, telepathy, prescience, etc.
You are ignoring so much of Star Trek to try and fit your narrative that I am not even going to bother engaging further with this. I don’t have the time to write out entire episodes and seasons.
You are ignoring so much of Star Trek to try and fit your narrative that I am not even going to bother engaging further with this. I don’t have the time to write out entire episodes and seasons.
I’m sorry, but he could have said this too about your arguments. SW EU is vast.
It really isn’t. Legacy? Sure. But not current canon. He also could not have said it as I was primarily focusing on Trek. Moreover it was the Trek stuff they screwed up on
Then nothing about it matters. The extended universe was dismissed en masse because majority of it is little better than fan fiction. George had no idea what he was doing so he let others who had no idea at it. Disney was then left with a contradictory mess of garbage and plots that made no sense so it was decanonized. If it isn’t canon then it isn’t part of the world. If it’s not part of the world then it has no part of this conversation.
I was bored of this conversation already with the other one because it was disingenuous. This one is as bad and I’m over it. Goodbye.
Well yeah there’s so much more. Transporters are magical devices that either work or not work depending on the needs of the plot. Nobody even considers whether it’s actually them on the other side of that transporter beam. They can cure diseases with it except when they can’t. They can create copies of people with a transporter but for some reason bad guys like the Dominion never explore this despite being willing to clone soldiers. Why does anyone bother boarding a ship instead of beaming everyone on the ship into their brig (or into space if they’re bad guys? Because transporters are just magic that work according whatever is needed by the story. The consequences of this technology is never really explored which is what science fiction normally does.
Q is straight up a sorcerer, in the episode where he loses his power it’s straight up stated the Q have the ability to alter the constants that govern science at will. Literally magic. Geordi doesn’t respond with “this fundamentally changes how we need to think about physics” as a scientist would when given an indication that scientific theories are incomplete. Nope it’s just “we can’t do that because we aren’t Q” and everyone moves on. It’s just commonly accepted that aliens have magic because they are aliens and it’s rarely questioned.
Star Trek II is often regarded as the best Trek movies and it’s about a villain with a planet destroying weapon. Ah but wallpaper over the planet destroying weapon with the fact that it can be used to instantly terraform planets that sounds sciencey enough so no one will notice the actual story is just a villain with super weapon.
The list goes on and on. Star Wars actually does more to explore the consequences of technology and people having special abilities than Star Trek does. Exploring consequences is what science fiction is about not sounding sciency.
Now to be clear, I like Star Trek, and have watched a lot of it. I’m just not under an illusion about what it is. It’s great at exploring social issues and ethics and uses it’s fantastical setting to allow the audience to see issues from a different perspective. And that’s great. And occasionally there are a few ethical issues that is actually science fiction, like “Measure of a Man.” But those episodes are more the exception than the rule. The bulk of Star Trek is creating scenarios to discuss morals and ethics where the “science” is actually just magic.
I also like Star Wars. And the whole pretentious thing about Star Trek being sci-fi while Star Wars is fantasy is annoying and false. Star Trek is more fantasy that Star Wars, it’s just that Star Trek has more technobabble to make it sound vaguely sciencey. But it’s mostly just the Odyssey + technobabble.
To your first point, that’s fair but Trek and Wars are just different things and the same thing at the same time.
It’s like Catholicism and Lutheranism, don’t know which is which in this analogy.
Star Wars has fairy tales, magic, great crusades and ancient empires, all not very openly or loudly being based on pretty rational laws, actually reminiscent of the Foundation books.
Star Trek has some ideal world, where everything is kinda futuristic and rational, but the balance doesn’t even up, and its philosophy is less rational.
That’s subjective and not to insult anybody. I think SW is much wiser than ST, and it’s clear most people here think the opposite and I’m not insulted by that.
The only time Star Wars tried to add hard science to it,
Eh, Star Wars actually has it in more places than one. It’s just very high-level about describing it, not getting into details too much, but the high-level part makes sense. I’m talking about the way hyperdrives work in Star Wars, and the computers there, and shields, and weapons, and many stuff. “Sith magic” included, yes.
Star Wars is science fantasy, not fiction, and introducing explanations start stripping the world of its mystery and awe. It also just didn’t jive with the vibe already established. It was basically someone just saying “Um actually, it’s not mystical. It’s just science.”
I actually agree with the guy answering you. Star Wars’ problems with being SF are less fundamental than those of ST.
And Obi-Wan says that in essence it’s still “just science” in the very beginning, with it being quite a bit religious and mystical, yes.
Which is what Star Wars is, a world of fairy-tale magic somewhere low and in philosophy not being really magic. It didn’t spoil the thing for most people actually familiar with the Expanded Universe, only for those who wanted to pretend to be “old fans” TBF.
It’s actually the spirit of it.
Star Trek on the other hand actively tries to explain everything all the time anyway.
Well, folk medicine does that too, but at the same time ST is less hard on fundamental laws of the universe than SW.
A modern version of Bridge Commander that was voice-activated would be cool. I know there have been one or two similar games, but I’d like a Star Trek-themed one.
Bridge Crew was pretty close to that but way more streamlined. After a year or so the voice commands were turned off though because that makes sense. Apparently they were fed through IBMs Watson and the contract ran out.
Well, for me voice commands are not as important as the simulation of commanding a ship.
Maybe I still want a SW-themed Battlecruiser Millennium with more intuitive controls. So that you could sit in a fighter cockpit and command your wingmen, or sit on the bridge and give orders to officers in their roles, in general take any role on that ship. And with some personnel management like in Silent Hunter.
And with some ship selection, of course. Nebulon-B is different from a CR70, and commanding an ISD-II, eh, I guess without the ability to command that the game won’t be popular among SW fans.
Well, maybe still without taking any role. Like Sea Dogs in space.
Picard S3 all but birthed it, it felt like a meaningful set-up and passing of the baton, after bringing seven back into the federation fold and now as a captain (news delivered by Tuvoc). The writers and such were also wanting it to be a thing
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