Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier

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One silly gremlin man dropping straight facts, undermining the whole self-righteousness of the Federation; how...? Just watch the free video ->

https://youtube.com/watch?v=W5J_qn93Nkc
Armin Shimerman himself said something along the lines that DS9 was able to show "the undesirables" as someone who is still worthy of respect, despite having annoying/disgusting (to us) traits. This is the kind of healthy (in my opinion) tolerance Federation and Starfleet are trying to preach: you can be whoever you like, behave however you like (off duty), as long as you can follow the rules and be actually useful without bitching about stuff.

Kind of an odd message here if you ask me. TOS had a sort of admiration for humanity and its achievements, unlike TNG, which seemed to be more ashamed of our past, probably due to the different times they were produced. The first episode had "God" telling us we deserve to die, basically.

And this clip, which isn't necessarily incorrect, is saying that our morality is what has made us commit atrocities and genocide, while this wouldn't have happened if we had been just greedy capitalists.

Hey, I have no problem with that, but coming from Hollywood, it's curious.
 
We are living with the consequences of showing a bit too much deference to the "outcasts", "undesirables" - the "Quarks" of the world.
But that's what attracted me to Trek in the first place.


Take that away, and it's Star Trek but without Star Trek's voice. One-dimensional killing machines vs. deus ex machina plot conveniences.
 
Kind of an odd message here if you ask me.
The fact Ferengi keep their women barefoot and pregnant undermines this scene. Which is too bad, since Armin was proud of it.

In theory, capitalism is colorblind. Why would a Ferengi merchant pass up profit based on a customer's race? This often leads Quark to reach conclusions that Starfleet wouldn't, since they lack an understanding of the marketplace. He even managed to convince a Vulcan that his logic was sound.

...Which SFDebris seized on with the glee of Ricky Gervais sniffing out a snowflake who was triggered by his attack helicopter jokes. But really, this is DS9 doing what it normally does.

For instance, Garak is precisely the man you want on your side during a war: someone who will do whatever it takes to get the job done and leave his personal feelings at the door. He is exactly the wrong person you want on your side during peacetime, though, which is why Odo tells him to stand down in the finale.
 
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this wouldn't have happened if we had been just greedy capitalists
I think Quark is trying to say that while both Ferengi and hew-mans were greedy in the past (and Ferengi still are), his people weren't so barbaric and haven't lost the basic value of another being's life. Quark is probably delusional to some extent about his civilisation, but so is humanity.
 
I think Quark is trying to say that while both Ferengi and hew-mans were greedy in the past (and Ferengi still are), his people weren't so barbaric and haven't lost the basic value of another being's life. Quark is probably delusional to some extent about his civilisation, but so is humanity.
Basically this. Ferengi have never comitted a genocide or waged intersyellar war. There's no profit in it. And Ferengi society doesn't allow direct slavery. Indentured servitude, yes, but not true slavery. It's antithetical to their belief that "A Ferengi without profit is no Ferengi at all". Employers may pay their employees shitty wages, but they still have to pay them.

But this does kinda show how far their misogyny goes. They barely consider their females Ferengi until Quark, posing as a woman, points out that the females end up being a collosal waste of potential manpower and resources just sitting around doing nothing more productive than meal prep and cleaning, both if which are accomplished more easily and quickly by machines.
Yet at the same time Ferengi men can be fiercely protective of their mothers to the point where they made a whole rule of acquisition forbidding insulting another Ferengi's mother.
 
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Point of reference for anyone interested; a standard TOS torpedo is armed with one kilogram of slush hydrogen and one kilogram of slush hydrogen antimatter which equals to a nuclear yield bit over 62 megatons.

Not to be dick but math tells me that 1kg of anti-matter at 100% conversion would only be about 1.8×10 to the 17th joules. That's only about 43 megatons if you convert it to Americano.

Just to be precise.


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Take that away, and it's Star Trek but without Star Trek's voice. One-dimensional killing machines vs. deus ex machina plot conveniences.

"One day" has always been the spirit of Star Trek, tbh. For the common fan, it's a sense of "one day, we can become this". When you're older, you realise that even the characters - like in this episode - still dream with a "one day", because that's the real human spirit, to keep moving on.

...Which SFDebris seized on with the glee of Ricky Gervais sniffing out a snowflake who was triggered by his attack helicopter jokes. But really, this is DS9 doing what it normally does. For instance, Garak is precisely the man you want on your side during a war: someone who will do whatever it takes to get the job done and leave his personal feelings at the door. (He is exactly the wrong person you want on your side during peacetime, though, which is why Odo told him to stand down in the finale.)
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HE DID NOTHING WRONG.
 
Not to be dick but math tells me that 1kg of anti-matter at 100% conversion would only be about 1.8×10 to the 17th joules. That's only about 43 megatons if you convert it to Americano.
The math was done back when Star Trek was in preproduction with what was known at the time on antimatter. 40 to 60 plus megatons is Tsar Bomb territory
 
Jellico was a probably the right captain for the mission, but he was also a shitty leader.

You don't just transfer onto the carnival cruise line and expect them to turn into a well oiled war machine overnight.

With that said, Riker was a smarmy bitch for most of that episode.
 
Jellico was a probably the right captain for the mission, but he was also a shitty leader.
Jellico was a good Captain, just of a different command style, but Nechayev was dismissive of everyone. including Sisko. She refused to accept anything that didn't conform to her stupid reality. She signed away Federation worlds and demanded forced relocation of some citizens.
 
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I wouldn't go that far. It does draw a distinction between exploration vessels and those used for war.
Exploration ships generally were warships during the Age of Sail as they were exploring the unknown. Hence Enterprise D being heavily armed to "explore" beyond Federation boundaries and known space.
 
I wouldn't go that far. It does draw a distinction between exploration vessels and those used for war.

Jellico was a good Captain, just of a different command style, but Nechayev was dismissive of everyone. including Sisko. She refused to accept anything that didn't conform to her stupid really. She signed away Federation worlds and demanded forced relocation of some citizens.
In Journey's End, she said that it was the Council that told the Navajo to leave and she was relaying those orders. Which is why I suspect so many 24th century admirals went rogue. Being a good admiral just isn't worth it in Star Trek.
 
Whether or not Enterprise D was armed like a warship, it wasn't run like one under Picard.

Nothing Jellico ordered was particularly out of line by itself, but he was still expecting a bunch of fucking science nerds change gears and become battle-hardened hardasses like he was overnight, no explanation given, and he wasn't even giving them the manpower to make the (significant and maybe even a bit arbitrary) changes he was asking for.

This is one of the few times Deanna actually did her job competently, and he completely shut her down for it. (I'm not talking about telling her to wear a proper uniform, I think most people agree, that was a good call.)

Also, the dude was also so petty that one of his first orders was telling someone to get the fish out of the ready room. Say what you will about how presumptive he was for thinking he'd be keeping command of the Enterprise. (He believed Picard was going on a suicide mission, he might have been right.) You've already shorted the staff to the point that they're stressing out over it, and *redecorating* is your number one priority? That just makes all the other random shit you're ordering look all the more petty.
 
bloody hell, now you made me miss the chakotay/neelix buddy cop & survival thriller episodes we never got.
I wouldn't have minded a detective Troi and Data episode. Team them up to solve a mystery. The show throws those two together sometimes when something needs to be investigated, but I don't think there was ever an entire episode focused on it. It'd have been fun, they compliment each other pretty well.
 
I wouldn't have minded a detective Troi and Data episode. Team them up to solve a mystery. The show throws those two together sometimes when something needs to be investigated, but I don't think there was ever an entire episode focused on it. It'd have been fun, they compliment each other pretty well.
Does this count?
 
All you had to do was change the fucking shift rotation, Riker. That's something even a supervisor at Pizza Hut can manage. It was all downhill from there.
I think it eventually became canon that Riker is a bumbling doofus. It didn't start that way. Sure a ship of actual retards outwitted him and kidnapped his chief engineer, sure he passed up a promotion to captain, but that was all covered by willing suspension of disbelief. Worf is supposed to be a brilliant fighter and security officer even though he gets beaten up constantly and his ship is hijacked every other week. Troi is supposed to have a vital place on the bridge even though she contributes nothing but psychic headaches. The Enterprise is supposed to be a brilliantly-designed ship even though the control panels are stuffed with dynamite. Janeway is supposed to be sane. We could go on. These are necessary conceits for the plot to work and the viewer has to roll with it.

Similarly, in spite of him officially being this amazing leader who was always just a hair away from making captain, Riker didn't get a lot of chances to look good. He never got promoted because neither Frakes nor Stewart wanted to quit. Picard got kidnapped a couple times a season, and it always put the ship at some kind of dire risk, so Picard would usually have to save himself and then come back and save the ship just in the nick of time. They vaguely strung along the Riker/Troi thing forever so he could bang the alien girl of the week. And he tended to be written as a hothead and bit slow-witted to act as a foil to Picard's reasonableness and Data's intellect. The upshot of all this is that Riker comes across like an indecisive guy with wasted potential who's hiding in Picard's shadow, and the whole crew is in mortal danger any time he's in command, and he's almost never right.

Eventually the writers seemed to lean into it a bit and say yeah, he's kinda actually like that. Thomas Riker pretty much called him out. And Jellico, they may have written him a little too well: he makes Riker look like a petulant bitch.
 
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