Star Trek: Attack of Shatner's Toupee Tribble

[Ran]

JAG is widely used in the Anglo-American militaries, and former British colonies too. Similar terms and approaches are used in other militaries besides, like Israel and Denmark.

Given that English is the language of the Federation and Starfleet, no great surprise that the institutions aren't dissimilar. MIght as well complain about the lowest rank being Ensign, instead of Sub-lieutenant or Alférez or Podporucznik marynarki

[Corvinus85]

34 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Obviously I was joking there to a point. What I loathe is, frankly, American legal talk and, yes, also American-style legal practice in an allegedly inclusive international and interplanetary organization. That just sucks hard. It is unimaginative and lazy.

I do not wish to see Trek judges wearing wigs. 

Jokes aside, I understand your perspective.

[Lord Varys]

13 hours ago, Werthead said:

This is something that Babylon 5 rightly got mocked for when it turned out that MedLab charged for patients and the Earth Alliance governmental structure was based almost entirely on the USA's. It's highly improbable that the rest of the human race would even remotely tolerate America's dysfunctional systems being imposed on them. It's more likely that healthcare would be free (at least to EA citizens, with some sort of direct charge or inter-governmental charge for aliens) and the EA government structure would draw on systems that worked more efficiently. Star Trek, to be fair, has deliberately stayed away from the innermost delvings of how the Federation works. Ron Moore indicated that they spent some time in Homefront/Paradise Lost exploring the relationship between the Federation and Earth as a member and how regions on Earth were administered, but it got too complicated and too much of a tangent so they rowed back hard on it.

Would actually give B5 a pass there to a point, as I can buy that Earth got ever more Americanized with the US and the Anglosphere pushing through their agenda, especially insofar as Capitalism is concerned. The notion that the Earth Alliance would actually adopt the dysfunctional American political system - or base its more elaborate system on that one - is indeed pretty silly in context. Especially in regard to the silly presidential prerogatives and powers that make a coup very easy.

The simple fact that the (former) nation states/regions would still want control and representation would indicate the head of the Alliance would be more a figurehead, with there being a committee government of co-chancellors, say.

What is also silly in B5 in the Capitalist context is the notion that people can get stranded there and there is no system in place to stop the station from getting overcrowded and/or assign living space to people. The treaty would basically include provisions stipulating that (1) the planetary governments remove stranded citizens from the station, and (2) the station itself helps planet-less or stateless people to find new homes.

Also, B5 really great in depicting (Americanized) unions and labor struggles. Last time that happened in American television like never, I imagine - and on the big screen in the 1950s (and then twisted around to the formula of unions = the mob).

Didn't mean ship diversity but species diversity. Una gives the impression the Starfleet folks on her planet were all diverse, many species working together in unison, etc. inspiring her ... and then we see a court room full of fucking humans (and they are then mostly from the Anglosphere, too, not representing human regional diversity). Yeah, okay, there were two Vulcans and some other alien, but the camera focused on the humans there, and we know from all Trek shows that Starfleet as depicted is very much human-only.

I think DS9 first really established it that there are like Vulcan-only crews within Starfleet with Sisko's old Vulcan rival from Academy days. But that doesn't fit with Una's picture.

Edited June 24, 2023 by Lord Varys

[Lord Varys]

10 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

I do not wish to see Trek judges wearing wigs. 

Jokes aside, I understand your perspective.

Thing with the court practice is like this appeal to emotion, kind of weird take on the written law (evil Vulcan is right in his approach, of course, even though the law as such sucks which is, as I laid out, in my opinion the real problem with the episode). I do enjoy American legal drama in principle ... but I don't think it has a place in an utopian future.

And they went full on JAG there (the show, you know), with the silly defender and persecutor/best friend of the defendant are friends/fuck buddies in private, and the defendant actually turning herself in to prove some larger morality/justice point.

By the way - you guys know that many proper non-American courts of law and justice systems don't have silly plea deals, right? That is a ridiculous concept - the law is the law, an offense is an offense, and a crime is a crime - and a proper legal system treats them as such. They do not look the other way, twist things around, or pretend something that happened didn't happen. In many legal systems this would be a perversion of justice.

10 hours ago, Ran said:

JAG is widely used in the Anglo-American militaries, and former British colonies too. Similar terms and approaches are used in other militaries besides, like Israel and Denmark.

Starfleet ain't a military last time I looked. It is a military-like, military-style institution but it was founded and is used decidedly not as a military. So the entire court martial thing from TOS has to be kind of maintained, to a point (although technically it could be ignored at the whim of the writers like they do in other cases) but turning it effectively into a military with military courts, etc. was a conscious decision by the writers and a wrong decision in my opinion.

In fact, the notion that our ST utopian society would kind of deal with this issue in this clandestine manner behind closed doors, etc. feels weird, too. Pike should have made this a 'sentient beings (not human) rights case' the Federation Council and the public had to deal with. Not some military lawers showing big law books to each other and making emotional pleas when the law books got to heavy.

Not sure English is the language of the Federation. These people do have universal translators, do they not? The language it is presented to us (if we are not going with a dubbed version - in German 'Ensign' is 'Fähnrich') is English, but this doesn't mean they all talk English. I'm fine with them doing it ... but the blatant assumption there feels wrong as these people have the means to speak a lot of different languages while still perfectly understanding each other.

The use of the language, however, does not necessitate the use of particular titles, offices, or legal systems, etc. So I'm honestly not seeing your point there. The US and the UK, etc. clearly and distinctly did not survive 'World War III' in a meaningful way, and Starfleet was created by a united Earth about 100 years after the first contact with the Vulcans took place. Why would they base their institutions on those of failed nation states?

Thinking a bit more about the problematic setting:

Did you guys realize that the entire message - likely very much unintentional - behind the anti-augment law is very much a human supremacy, human-centrist take? Earth had its Eugenics Wars, the other founding members of the Federation didn't - else the judges should have referenced like the Andorian or Vulcan 'eugenic war'. Nor did, to our knowledge, any later planets who joined the Federation.

By having this law, which is based on human trauma and human inability or incapacity to do eugenics or be properly augmented, extend to all Federation membership worlds and all species wanting to serve in Starfleet or even live within Federation space they have one species' bigotry rule and determine the biology and scientific abilities of everybody else.

That is conceptually complete nonsense and utterly unworthy for a society we are supposed to view as utopian and progressive. In fact, it seems the writers really didn't think this issue through.

As I keep saying - the Federation deciding not to do eugenics is okay. We have to deal with that thanks to DS9. But extending it to outsiders and view the results of eugenics and augmentation as 'bad' or 'defective' by default feels like something no enlightened or progressive society could or would do. Hell, I'm not sure how this is supposed to work if CRISPR/CAS makes it already pretty much impossible to detect genetic manipulation. How the hell can the Federation tell individual A: 'Your genes have been tampered with!!!'? Especially if we talk about an individual from a non-Federation species.

Vice versa, the ban on (human) augmentation within the Federation also only makes sense if there is a scientific basis for this - like current scientific studies making it clear that current Federation technology cannot do eugenics in a way that greatly decreases the risk of a Khan-like disaster. If they don't have this, it would actually be blatant superstition and irrational bigotry forced through by people who actually should and would check their science before making such laws. The Federation is decidedly not the current US.

We have to keep in mind that according to Trek lore the Eugenic Wars took place in the 1990s, over 150 years before the founding of the Federation! Not only makes it no sense that much 'legal tradition' survived 'World War III' and whatever dystopian societes where a thing between the Eugenics Wars and World War III - but that the people would continue to be obsessed with a ban of eugenics when they had a lot of other problems to deal with makes no sense. And the idea that like Jonathan Archer ended to give the first Federation Council a mad diatribe, ranting about like two hours about the evil of eugenics, how dreadful that Khan fellow was he read about in history book for children back in school, thus somehow convincing the founders of the Federation to ban eugenics in the entire Federation just because the pinkies felt it was a good idea (not that the pinkies are actually the pinkies, Andorian prick).

We can, perhaps, assume something like an anti-augment, anti-eugenics law would be maintained if we can assume legal continuity from the 1990s to the Federation - but that is obviously not the case. Tradition can enshrine such things - and that is what the writers clearly were going for. But the Federation is to 1990s Trek Earth like what the HRE is to the Federal Republic of Germany or the European Union - there is no legal continuity whatsoever.

Edited June 24, 2023 by Lord Varys

[SpaceChampion]

Prodigy dumped by Parmount+ unfortunately, reversing the decision for the season 2 pick up and shopping it elsewhere.

Quote

Star Trek: Prodigy was renewed for season two in November 2021 and was a key push by franchise captain Alex Kurtzman to introduce the property to a younger generation. The series will complete post-production on season two of Prodigy and producers CBS Studios will shop both seasons to a new buyer. Paramount+ remains the home for the sprawling franchise with recently announced orders for a Star Trek: Section 31 movie and young-adult skewingshow Star Trek: Starfleet Academy joining a slate that also includes Strange New Worlds, animated Lower Decks and the final season of the flagship, Discovery.

 

Edited June 23, 2023 by SpaceChampion

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Is there any word on Lower Decks Season 4?  I would have thought we’d have a trailer by now (is the WGA strike impacting that)?

[RumHam]

Prodigy spoilers:

Spoiler

The real victim here is Chakotay, doomed to live out the rest of his life trapped in a now alternate future. 

I hope they pick up the Voyager threads somehow in another show. How far after Lower Decks was it set again? 

 

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, RumHam said:

Prodigy spoilers:

  Hide contents

The real victim here is Chakotay, doomed to live out the rest of his life trapped in a now alternate future. 

I hope they pick up the Voyager threads somehow in another show. How far after Lower Decks was it set again? 

 

The wording is misleading. Season 2 has been filmed, it's in the can, and they're finishing off post on it now. It just won't air on Paramount+.

Word is that Netflix is angling to buy Paramount outright and it is already apparently deep in negotiations with Warner Discovery for numerous Max and possibly some HBO "proper" originals. So the smart money is that both seasons of Prodigy will land on Netflix.

[Lord Varys]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Word is that Netflix is angling to buy Paramount outright and it is already apparently deep in negotiations with Warner Discovery for numerous Max and possibly some HBO "proper" originals. So the smart money is that both seasons of Prodigy will land on Netflix.

They should not just stream it but continue it. It is the best Trek show out there right now.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

20 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

They should not just stream it but continue it. It is the best Trek show out there right now.

Lower Decks!

[Maia]

I have finally caught up with "The Strange New Worlds" and it is fun. I wouldn't say that it doesn't have bad episodes - that one with the pirates in season one was painful, IMHO, and it does have it's issues from my PoV, but it is definitively enjoyable. Of course, I also mostly liked the 3 seasons of  Disco that I saw, unlike the majority here and have no intention of watching Picard ever, given what I have read and heard about it. My favourite Star Treks are DS9 and the usual OG movies. Though I loved the first season of Lower Decks as well.

Anyway, I wish that SNW would more often remember that they are supposed to have a complement of hundreds and not just the bridge crew. Yes, all installments are guilty of that, but here it seems to be particularly blatant. I know, Covid, budget cuts, etc. Still... Also I feel

 

Spoiler

that young Kirk was completely miscast - where is the swagger? I hated Hemmer's exit too - suddenly the Gorn are face-huggers and their saliva is "eggs"? Which can hatch within hours? Even from juveniles? And they somehow didn't yet overrun the galaxy? What?! I also want my aliens in SF! And yes, his replacement is an "alien", but one who conveniently looks 100% human. How boring. As is Una, I guess? I thought that Illyrians were a human subculture, but apparently not? I may also be in the minority there, but I find the fixation on Spock's romantic life and generally constantly forcing Vulcans to behave emotionally to be tedious and annoying. Why even have them if it's all that occurs to you to do with them? Again, SNW is certainly not the first offender there, but can't they come up with something less overdone?

 

That's not to say that the first season wasn't pretty good or didn't stick the landing. I thought that the first episode of season 2 had a fairly silly plot, but was still fun. Episode 2 was good, but

Spoiler

Una outing herself without a plan and not realising that Pike and the bridge crew would also be implicated was weird. I guess that in the alternative future of the season 1 finale Pike failed to convince the attorney? And therefore now knew that he absolutely had to. Also why did his girlfriend have to be a prosecutor? Doesn't she command a ship of her own rather than being in JAG? Oh, and La-an is in the same situation as Una, but somehow Starfleet Medical failed to detect the augmentations in either of them?

@Lord Varys:

I am pretty sure that Star Trek had JAG since TOS and certainly since TNG. So, it's nothing new.

 

 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

Guys i urge you to watch The Orville instead, especially season 3 ,which is better than any alex kurtzman produced star trek show... better than them all infact since Voyager. 

[sifth]

3 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Guys i urge you to watch The Orville instead, especially season 3 ,which is better than any alex kurtzman produced star trek show... better than them all infact since Voyager. 

I agree, The Orville season 3 was amazing. Nearly every episode made me cry.

[Jaxom 1974]

Oddly enough, I have more than enough room in my heart for Trek and The Orville...

[Denvek]

48 minutes ago, sifth said:

I agree, The Orville season 3 was amazing. Nearly every episode made me cry.

For a series that started as comedic as season 1 was, you wouldn't expect something like Twice in a Lifetime to come along and give a top-tier moral dilemma on the level of Tuvix or In The Pale Moonlight

[IheartIheartTesla]

I give Ep2 of S2 SNW a solid 6 gavels out of 9 (to continue the US centric judicial analogies).

Seriously, does Starfleet/the Federation even consider as part of its philosophies anything that isnt human and more narrowly, from ancient Rome (sometime Greece)

[Lady Anna]

I really enjoyed S1 of SNW, like all the episodes, but I didn't particularly like both episodes of the new season. The first one completely lost me with that slo-mo super-strength scene in the Klingon ship. Also, both the writing and the actors felt off and the plot was forced. The second episode was better compared to it (shout out to Yetide Badaki's guest role, she was great) but I wasn't a fan of this Ellyrian subplot and how it was handled.

[Wouter]

On 6/24/2023 at 1:26 AM, Werthead said:

The wording is misleading. Season 2 has been filmed, it's in the can, and they're finishing off post on it now. It just won't air on Paramount+.

Word is that Netflix is angling to buy Paramount outright and it is already apparently deep in negotiations with Warner Discovery for numerous Max and possibly some HBO "proper" originals. So the smart money is that both seasons of Prodigy will land on Netflix.

I sincerely hope so. It would be very cruel (to crew and public) to bury this series for a tax break, Zaslav-style. Netlfix already has the old Star Trek series (internationally) and it also has shows like Trollhunters (from the same showrunners and with a similar feeling), so it would be a natural match for their line-up.

The Prodigy blu-ray box for season 1A has sold out (it only came out in the US, sadly). People are suddenly seeing worth in those shiny discs again, at least P+ can't come to your house and take them away.

On 6/24/2023 at 4:11 AM, Lord Varys said:

They should not just stream it but continue it. It is the best Trek show out there right now.

Word, brother. I like Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds, but out of the three I prefer Prodigy.

[Ran]

Started rewatching S1 with Linda, who missed it the first time around (she had grown quite sour over how Discovery had turned out) but liked S2 well enough. S1 is definitely a stronger starter than S2 is, but I hope it's sophmore jitters and they'll work it out.

[Rippounet]

Really enjoyed the second SNW episode. In fact, it moved me (got misty-eyed), which is kinda odd since I don't particularly care about Una.

First, I believe courtroom episodes to promote social justice is as Star Trek-y as it gets. The setting immediately evoked the excellent The Measure of a Man. Of course, I didn't expect SNW to get as goot as TNG on that side, but at least they were trying.
Then, the pace of the episode was incredible. I'm easily bored and tend to dwell on flaws and plotholes, but this episode didn't leave me time for that. It alternated emotional/tense moments with lighter ones very adroitly, slowly building up to the predictable, and yet powerful outcome.
Funnily enough, it was always clear that the episode wasn't actually about Una, or even about Star Trek. Badaki was stunning as Neera, and her choice obviously underlined the fact that this was about putting prejudice itself on trial. This made it easier to overlook the flaws in the episode (yes, the possibility of asylum could/should have been mentioned much earlier).
Still, considering the fact the episode had to be respectful of lots of Trek canon and had a predictable outcome, I'm amazed by the quality of the writing here, all the more surprising perhaps after a first episode that was really quite mediocre imho.