Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier

[The Gagh Whisperer]

Oh your God. I thought you might be exaggerating for a second there...

Exhibit A:

Control

Control was Section 31's threat assessment system. It relied on artificial intelligence and was located in a data center at Section 31 Headquarters. (DIS: "Project Daedalus", "If Memory Serves") After the Battle of the Binary Stars, Section 31 accelerated their threat assessment program to...

memory-alpha.fandom.com

Exhibit B:

Control

Control is a Star Trek: Section 31 novel by author David Mack. The novel is a follow-up to Abyss, A Ceremony of Losses and Disavowed. No law… no conscience… no mercy. Amoral, shrouded in secrecy, and answering to no one, Section 31 is the mysterious covert operations division of Starfleet, a...

memory-beta.fandom.com

Motherboarder! It's nearly identical!

Hang on. I see Lal mentioned there. Let's go check her page...
In an alternate reality, Data's creation of Lal was delayed by several months, due to severe weather on Galtinor Prime and the postponement of a cybernetics conference there. In this reality, Jean-Luc Picard was able to focus on Lal's then-current presence on the Enterprise during his captivity by the Borg, thus allowing their destruction (and Picard's death) at the hands of Will Riker, who then became captain of the Enterprise. Lal survived a near-fatal cascade failure with the assistance of Dr. Noonien Soong, and was taken by Admiral Anthony Haftel to the Daystrom Institute Annex on Galor IV. There, she became the template for the mass-production of androids intended to go into battle against the Borg.

If we're talking about things dug up from shitty Trek novels, let's have a look at Kirsten Beyer's "Afsarah Eden"

Afsarah Eden

BIOGRAPHY Afsarah Eden Species: Human Gender: female Died: 2381 (Absorbed into Omega Continuum) Affiliation: Federation, Starfleet Family Marital Status: divorced Career Occupation: officer Previous Assignment: CO, USS Voyager Final Assignment: fleet commander, Project Full Circle Rank: captain...

memory-beta.fandom.com

A young extremely competent black lady, an angsty orphan with mysterious origins that are linked to her current day story. She eventually discovers her commanding officer isn't who he appears to be but is actually a Species 8472 agent. In the end she sacrifices herself (along with Q's son) by traveling into some rift thing to save everybody. So there's your prototype Michael Burnham and Discovery season 2 arc right there.

I'm hoping Riker jumps back aboard the Titan for the Picard finale, but only because his CMO is a fucking Velociraptor and I want to see them pull that off.

 

[TaimuRadiu]

I’m still waiting for a villain to say “Make the Alpha quadrant Great Again!”

It's been done.

Star Trek: Discovery Clip - Make the Empire Glorious Again (2018) | Rotten Tomatoes

In a mirror universe, Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs) attempts a coup against Emperor Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), while Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-G...

www.youtube.com

As per DS9, Terran Emperor Spock crashed and burned the Empire and turned the Terrans into a slave race lorded over by Klingons and Cardassians.

If the Trek novelists are getting more influence, then we haven't even come close to the bottom of the barrel yet. Thought Discovery and Picard were as bad as Trek could yet? Those motherfuckers are just getting started.

David Gerrold was a good influence on season 1 of ST:TNG (say what you will, it's very close to TOS) and Diane Duane and the Reeves-Stevens duo were going to be influences on ENT Season 5. It doesn't have to be all bad. Then we get to Jeri Taylor...

 

[The Gagh Whisperer]

David Gerrold was a good influence on season 1 of ST:TNG (say what you will, it's very close to TOS) and Diane Duane and the Reeves-Stevens duo were going to be influences on ENT Season 5. It doesn't have to be all bad. Then we get to Jeri Taylor...

I should have been more specific. The pre-"relaunch" Trek books were a mixed bag but there was some genuinely good stories and writers involved. Great stuff from Peter David, Reeves-Stevens, etc. Even the bad ones were fun light diversions. It was always my go-to airplane reading.

None of those writers are being hired any more.

The "relaunch" novels have been taken over by a small clique of fucking terrible writers. It's a shared interconnected universe of crossovers that's impossible to keep track of. The Star Trek "novelverse" they've built is a bleak depressing soap opera, full of death and destruction. The Borg destroyed half the Federation. Everyone is dead, depressed, miserable, or fucked up in some way. It's basically a prelude to nu-trek.

You can even interact with some of the new authors on TrekBBS. They lose their shit and dogpile you if you post a negative review, which can be fun.

 

[Literary Hitler]

“Make the Alpha quadrant Great Again!”

So, we finally gonna get that Reichsfuhrer Janeway cameo?

 

[Tookie]

Mass Effect: Brexit starring Sir Patrick Stewart as himself.

 

[UnKillFill]

So, we finally gonna get that Reichsfuhrer Janeway cameo?

I'm not watching Picard unless it gives me a reason to. Have they said who the president of the Federation is now? It would make a lot of sense how fucked up everything is if it was Janeway.

 

[melty]

Was that meant to be a joke? There's actually about 100-400 billion stars, depending on the number of red dwarfs we can't see.

No, she was totally serious. The smart scientist lady thinks space is "boring"
In retrospect that moment foreshadowed what this series is, because she's just saying what the writers actually think. Space is boring, amirite? Not COOL like ExPlOsIoNs and action scenes and torture. Who likes gay shit like space anyway? Fucking nerds. Space is only cool when there are planets blowing up.

I stopped watching Picard a couple of episodes ago but I read the latest synopsis. Holy hell it sounds like garage. This series has absolutely nothing they promised. Absolutely nothing.

 

[TaimuRadiu]

No, she was totally serious. The smart scientist lady thinks space is "boring"
In retrospect that moment foreshadowed what this series is, because she's just saying what the writers actually think. Space is boring, amirite? Not COOL like ExPlOsIoNs and action scenes and torture. Who likes gay shit like space anyway? Fucking nerds. Space is only cool when there are planets blowing up.

I stopped watching Picard a couple of episodes ago but I read the latest synopsis. Holy hell it sounds like garage. This series has absolutely nothing they promised. Absolutely nothing.

Synopsis for the last episode:

Picard goes wtf when he and weird gynoid beam up aboard the pirate ship. Angry admiral lady says "with all due respect Admiral Picard shut the fuck up," which nearly made me just stop watching right then and there. Promises to have a fleet meet them at Deep Space 12 to try to stop the Romulans from acting exceptional, especially after Romulan spy lady killed Hugh and decided to yeet all the Borg and ex Borg into space. This makes Seven become a Borg Queen while the weeaboo samurai just stands around watching.

There's a long sequence involving weird gynoid trying to see if she has emotions. Apparently she has good enough emotions to fool people into becoming a doctoral candidate to the Daystrom Insitute. (Or her sister, or something. Remember how she's supposed to have a mother? And a sister? Anyone?) Instead of finding out Bruce Maddox built her apparently there's a big civilization of them and First Contact between them caused Rios' old captain to blow his brains out for some reason. They didn't really explain why or anything; the Starfleet has made contact with planets full of androids, but I don't think Jim Kirk's logs were taken that seriously until the TNG era, when it turns out there actually were weird ass gods floating around the Galaxy, time travel is possible but risky, and there are planets full of screeching harpy gynoids.

Meanwhile on the Borg Cube Romulan spy lady blows her way through XBs for... some reason? Then a bunch get linked to the Collective somehow and rape her to death. I would have liked an entire cool episode set here instead of everything jammed into 10 episodes. The B plot (yes, this was the B PLOT) was a lot more interesting than the A plot.

Meanwhile the gynoid hijacks the pirate ship and forces them into a Borg transwarp conduit that opens up near the synth planet. Romulan stealth ship pops out near them because they thought they had shaken them when Agnes nearly killed herself to stop it but that was pointless.

Oh, apparently Commodore Oh forcibly mind melded with Agnes and made her think that the synths were coming to kill us all. Remember how bad forcible mind melds can be? Remember how in TUC Spock forcibly mind melded with Valeris and it was presented as rape? Remember how Sarek forcibly mind melded with a bunch of people in Discovery and he got Bendii Syndrome? Remember how T'its in ENT forcibly mind melded with some people and literally got Vulcan AIDS?

edit: Forgot to post that we found out about Rios' old captain blowing his brains out took like a 15 minute sequence of finding out that Rios had split his memories up between like 5 different holograms of himself. That was the most exceptional part of the episode. How are these not classified as synths?

 

[Miller]

Was that meant to be a joke? There's actually about 100-400 billion stars, depending on the number of red dwarfs we can't see.

At first I thought it was a joke but then it's the same production that put Elon Musk at the same level as the Wright Brothers and Zefram Cochrane, and that a human could handle 9Gs for 11 minutes.

 

[Judge Holden]

Synopsis for the last episode:

Picard goes wtf when he and weird gynoid beam up aboard the pirate ship. Angry admiral lady says "with all due respect Admiral Picard shut the fuck up," which nearly made me just stop watching right then and there. Promises to have a fleet meet them at Deep Space 12 to try to stop the Romulans from acting exceptional, especially after Romulan spy lady killed Hugh and decided to yeet all the Borg and ex Borg into space. This makes Seven become a Borg Queen while the weeaboo samurai just stands around watching.

There's a long sequence involving weird gynoid trying to see if she has emotions. Apparently she has good enough emotions to fool people into becoming a doctoral candidate to the Daystrom Insitute. (Or her sister, or something. Remember how she's supposed to have a mother? And a sister? Anyone?) Instead of finding out Bruce Maddox built her apparently there's a big civilization of them and First Contact between them caused Rios' old captain to blow his brains out for some reason. They didn't really explain why or anything; the Starfleet has made contact with planets full of androids, but I don't think Jim Kirk's logs were taken that seriously until the TNG era, when it turns out there actually were weird ass gods floating around the Galaxy, time travel is possible but risky, and there are planets full of screeching harpy gynoids.

Meanwhile on the Borg Cube Romulan spy lady blows her way through XBs for... some reason? Then a bunch get linked to the Collective somehow and rape her to death. I would have liked an entire cool episode set here instead of everything jammed into 10 episodes. The B plot (yes, this was the B PLOT) was a lot more interesting than the A plot.

Meanwhile the gynoid hijacks the pirate ship and forces them into a Borg transwarp conduit that opens up near the synth planet. Romulan stealth ship pops out near them because they thought they had shaken them when Agnes nearly killed herself to stop it but that was pointless.

Oh, apparently Commodore Oh forcibly mind melded with Agnes and made her think that the synths were coming to kill us all. Remember how bad forcible mind melds can be? Remember how in TUC Spock forcibly mind melded with Valeris and it was presented as rape? Remember how Sarek forcibly mind melded with a bunch of people in Discovery and he got Bendii Syndrome? Remember how T'its in ENT forcibly mind melded with some people and literally got Vulcan AIDS?

So there is now a full on synth planet that predates the federation, contact with whom which causes massive mindfucks, and all this shit has something to do with the Borg and ancient space secrets....

This shit is totally going to be about V'ger isnt it? Thats going to be the big sthuper-shocking cliffhanger at the end of the series

 

[melty]

Here's the "space is boring" segment if anyone wants to see it, they are so proud of it that they made the clip available so people know what the show is about.

https://youtu.be/1cAKcDMDCPQ

 

[Stab You in the Back]

Here's the "space is boring" segment if anyone wants to see it, they are so proud of it that they made the clip available so people know what the show is about.

https://youtu.be/1cAKcDMDCPQ

Did that woman just "well, ackshually" herself?

I guess its a testament to men like Kirk and Picard who made space travel safe enough that retards can turn on autopilot, sit back and whine about how fucking bored they are.

 

[Sexual Chocolate]

Which is terrible. The best explanation is that the Borg are simply a possible direction for a civilization to go in once the requisite technology is invented. It adds an extra layer to the horror: The Borg didn't need some convoluted backstory to come into existence, they are a completely ordinary evolutionary path that could happen anywhere in the universe, all that's needed is technology and time.

The Borg are the natural consequence of Silicon Valley weirdos who sperg about "the Singularity", "post-humanism", and those horrible Google glasses that thankfully died in the marketplace because most people aren't complete dorks who will never know the touch of a woman... yet.

Add AI and social credit to the mix and something like the Borg could exist in our world. Apart from the techno-zombie-goth thing maybe. What if an AI was in charge of social engineering, and we also had the technology to connect people in a more... intimate, technologically-mediated way to solve sexism/racism/whateverism? A true brotherhood of Man. All watched over by machines of loving grace.

Don't call it a hivemind (bad marketing), how about an "enhanced" social network? A consensus, maybe. And if some people have bad thoughts, well... don't we owe it to the little people to "nudge" them in a wiser, more enlightened direction? Thoughts are just electrical impulses in the brain, after all.

I don't know if Star Trek ever fully explored the idea that the Borg Collective is a lot of people's idea of Utopia. There's no poverty or prejudice among the Borg. There's a place for everyone and everyone is in their place, forever. It's the Federation, but through a scanner, darkly.

 

[Oaat]

Here's the "space is boring" segment if anyone wants to see it, they are so proud of it that they made the clip available so people know what the show is about.

https://youtu.be/1cAKcDMDCPQ

So here's a typical reaction to seeing how many stars the galaxy has:

Spoiler

In the scene's defense, space is often described as boring in ED, because after seeing hundreds of procedurally generated systems they start to look the same.

But on the other hand, Star Trek's setting isn't like ED's, where the galaxy is empty of sapient life and alien civilizations because they're too rare and inevitably go extinct millions of years before the next civilization arrives. In Star Trek our own local stellar neighborhood is dense with alien races and weird phenomena.

And since it's a written show and not a procedurally generated game, presumably even if star systems do look similar, inhabited ones would have tons of unique history and culture that aren't feasible to program into a game but could be shown through a story. Also, in ED lore Earth-like planets with non-sapient life aren't that rare, so presumably if you were actually living there instead of stuck in a cockpit you would get to see all sorts of new things as you traveled around.

There's also long travel times to consider, since space is indeed mostly space and travel in Star Trek is canonically slow. But surely the long travel times aren't much different from sailing across a featureless ocean on Earth? Unless autopilot has made things so easy crews don't have to do anything anymore, and holodecks have made it so that you never have to leave behind the comforts of home to explore?

 

[ditto]

I don't know if Star Trek ever fully explored the idea that the Borg Collective is a lot of people's idea of Utopia. There's no poverty or prejudice among the Borg. There's a place for everyone and everyone is in their place, forever. It's the Federation, but through a scanner, darkly.

The idea of the Borg "queen" being a capricious thot kind of undermined that. Maybe there's some official explanation where she's a personification of the collective or some such, but in Voyager she straight-up orders and countermands the collective voice.
Assimilation is just a high-tech gimp suit.

The idea of a mirror federation was done pretty well as the Dominion. There's probably some neo-con/neo-lib types that would view that as a paradise.

 

[Cyril Sneer]

I think the key difference was that DS9 understood that the best way to make an inherently optimistic show darker was by putting Good people in bad situations; not making your "heroes" assholes that are slightly less messed up than the villains.

I don't doubt Sisko is every bit a good person as Picard is, but you could feel that what he did to win the dominion war pushed him to the edge. I think the key difference between the two is that Sisko wouldn't doubt to sacrifice his conscience if it meant saving lives, while Picard would never sacrifice his morals even if that had meant they all would be dominion citizens by now.

There's a very good reason section 31 was so secretive, besides them being very good spies. Kurtzman is trying to push a show for them, and have them as the cool and edgy group which is missing the point. While the Cardassians and the Romulans were proud of the Obsidian Order and the Tal shiar, In DS9 every single good guy in the federation was ashamed of the idea of section 31 even existing.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=DhkfuyBLDlY:227
Hacks like Kurtzman's idea of "darker" is to just make the heroes depressed, drug addict assholes, which is fine for a 15-year old that thinks smoking is cool, but incredibly childish otherwise.

TL;DR the best way to make the federation darker, without compromising Star Trek's whole concept, was putting them in difficult situations not making them outright bad guys for a poor Brexit methaphor.

This is an excellent point. There's much more drama and tension inherent to watching (morally) good characters confronted by difficult moral choices, because assholes are always gonna asshole*, but if you send a normal, decent person to hunt monsters in the abyss, you're never going to know exactly how or when the abyss will look back, or whether our hero will ultimately also become a monster.

*Well, not necessarily: you can easily imagine a story where a hard-bitten veteran soldier on some war-torn, long-forgotten human colony planet (think a cynical, embittered Kyle Reese) breaks down in tears upon experiencing first contact with Starfleet and realizing that there are worlds out there where people aren't subject to fear, want and threat of death every day of their lives, but as has been touched upon, that's not the sort of story that Current Year Trek wants to tell.

It would have been interesting to reveal that the synths were a desperate Dominion war measure to try and shore up Federation numbers.

From there you could have an interesting story, but we know the show can't have any nuance about those being mean to the refugees.

I've always wondered why the Angosian supersoldiers never seemed to get any love, after their introduction in TNG's "The Hunted." Remember these guys?

Enhanced strength, perfect recall, literal killer instincts? Getting shot by phasers on max settings barely slows them down, they're completely invisible to Starfleet-grade sensors and they can somehow physically scatter a transporter beam if it so pleases them. You'd think that, come the Dominion War, there might be a certain amount of interest in producing troops who could basically shake down the Jem'Hadar for their lunch money (or at least recruiting the existing crop of such soldiers), but to the best of knowledge they only ever showed up again once, in an obscure anthology of DS9-themed stories, getting dragooned into a Section 31 black operation to keep the Guardian of Forever out of Changeling "hands," so to speak.

Exactly. The Xenomorphs are truly scary when they have no origin story at all, and are instead just something evolution can shit out at any time in our vast galaxy, answering the Fermi paradox in the most grim way imaginable.

Xenomorphs are scary in the same way that any large animal with a lot of pointy teeth and an aggressive disposition is scary. They're ultimately just big bugs with a self-defeatingly complicated reproductive process.

I'm hoping Riker jumps back aboard the Titan for the Picard finale, but only because his CMO is a fucking Velociraptor and I want to see them pull that off.

On the one hand that sounds hilarious, but on the other, it also kind of sounds like a direct precursor to some of the attitudes behind Current Year Trek, pushing Diversity for the sake of Diversity (the Titan supposedly having the most mixed-species crew compliment of any Starfleet vessel) even where it could be directly detrimental to personnel effectively performing their duty.

I should have been more specific. The pre-"relaunch" Trek books were a mixed bag but there was some genuinely good stories and writers involved. Great stuff from Peter David, Reeves-Stevens, etc.

Until David started writing about that hermaphrodite banging Dr. Selar, anyway...

The idea of a mirror federation was done pretty well as the Dominion. There's probably some neo-con/neo-lib types that would view that as a paradise.

What, a highly-militarized, almost untouchably-powerful empire where everyone worships a race of neurotic, egotistical, paranoid, vengeful shape-shifters? Surely you jest.

 

[Oaat]

Xenomorphs are scary in the same way that any large animal with a lot of pointy teeth and an aggressive disposition is scary. They're ultimately just big bugs with a self-defeatingly complicated reproductive process.

It's not just that, it's fear of the unknown, of the vastness of space that takes decades to cross. A galaxy with a staggering 400 billions stars, yet aside from Earth seems to be dead. What would we encounter out in space, where no one can hear you scream not because of the vacuum of space, but because the speed of light keeps you lifetimes away from any help?

As the crew of the Nostromo discover, the galaxy isn't dead. And this is a worse fate. Instead it's full of genuinely alien creatures that humans never evolved to confront. The Nostromo encounters a spacecraft, but it has been a wreck for millions of years. It's builders are no longer around, nor it seems, is anyone but ourselves. Based on this limited and negative evidence, one can only assume that this is the fate of all creatures like us.

The apex of evolution isn't sapience, it is a creature who can kill and reproduce as efficiently as possible.

The Alien EU or some sequel probably contradicts this impression but I don't give a shit. Less was more.

 

[The Gagh Whisperer]

On the one hand that sounds hilarious, but on the other, it also kind of sounds like a direct precursor to some of the attitudes behind Current Year Trek, pushing Diversity for the sake of Diversity (the Titan supposedly having the most mixed-species crew compliment of any Starfleet vessel) even where it could be directly detrimental to personnel effectively performing their duty.

Titan is definitely an unimaginative diversity shitshow of figuring out to stick various cookie-cutter aliens in Earth atmostphere and gravity in half-assed ways.

But, bear with me, if Picard ends with Riker's pet Velociraptor dual welding disruptors and riding atop a borg cube into battle, is it not worth it?

 

[Cyril Sneer]

It's not just that, it's fear of the unknown, of the vastness of space that takes decades to cross. A galaxy with a staggering 400 billions stars, yet aside from Earth seems to be dead. What would we encounter out in space, where no one can hear you scream not because of the vacuum of space, but because the speed of light keeps you lifetimes away from any help?

I don't know what universe you're talking about, but I can tell you for certain it's not the one inhabited by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation.

As the crew of the Nostromo discover, the galaxy isn't dead. And this is a worse fate. Instead it's full of genuinely alien creatures that humans never evolved to confront.

Humans never "evolved" to travel between planets through the vacuum of outer space, either, and that is a far more challenging problem than dealing with the odd infestation by space bugs.

The Nostromo encounters a spacecraft, but it has been a wreck for millions of years. It's builders are no longer around, nor it seems, is anyone but ourselves. Based on this limited and negative evidence, one can only assume that this is the fate of all creatures like us.

Oh ye of little faith.

The apex of evolution isn't sapience, it is a creature who can kill and reproduce as efficiently as possible.

Not the xenomorph, in other words.

The Alien EU or some sequel probably contradicts this impression but I don't give a shit. Less was more.

Ironically, you're actually invoking the Alien EU and its recurring theme of nihilistic wackjobs worshipping the xenomorph, by your insistence that there's some terrible cosmic significance to the critter, in defiance of the reality, which is that it's basically just a tarantula wasp with a berserk pituary gland.

But, bear with me, if Picard ends with Riker's pet Velociraptor dual welding disruptors and riding atop a borg cube into battle, is it not worth it?

You pose an interesting question, sir...

 

[BIG BILL HELL'S]

But, bear with me, if Picard ends with Riker's pet Velociraptor dual welding disruptors and riding atop a borg cube into battle, is it not worth it?

Uh, sir *points at sign* NO RIDING THE CUBE