EnsignRedshirt [he/him]

Picard suffered from the same thing for sure. Too much time telling too little story. Somehow it felt both rushed and drawn out. I still enjoyed Picard for all the fan service and old characters, but it was definitely in spite of the overall structure of the show.

I’ve been slogging through the latest season of Discovery, mostly just so I get the references. I’m just finished 5x05 and I’m not really enjoying it.

It suffers from a lot of the problems with the prestige-ification of TV. Everything feels too serialized and too cinematic. The episodes don’t seem to have a unique identity, and the serialization means that you have to enjoy the commitment to that one serialized plotline (which I admit is not grabbing me). I prefer Star Trek when it’s episodic or has shorter story arcs within a larger season. The story itself is also very fast-paced, in that it’s a race against time/the enemy, which sucks because everything then has to happen inside of this very tight window of time. That’s fine for a movie, but I don’t know why it’s a good idea for a full season of a TV show (unless it’s something like 24 where that’s the whole gimmick). Star Trek is famous for using ticking clocks to keep the action moving, but they resolve at the end of the episode, and the next episode might not have a ticking clock, or the clock is caused by a fundamentally different thing with different stakes. In this season it’s like they’re doing laps around a racetrack. “Okay, we’re ahead now, let’s keep up our lead while we do basically the same thing next episode.” And we have to keep up the idea that it is a race despite having a ship that travels anywhere instantly. Incredibly boring.

Mostly I just hate Alex Kurtzman. I hope his next Trek show flops hard enough that they decide not to renew his deal and they go find someone who doesn’t have obvious contempt for the audience.

Apologies for the ranting. Short answer: DSC season 5, not great

nations supplying weapons to Kyiv have the right to limit their use

What a pathetic statement. “We’re going to encourage Ukraine to start WW3 and then hand the responsibility to the individual states.”

This is the best answer. Billups is torn between his loyalty and affection for his home, and his desire to be a Starfleet engineer. His internal conflict is manifesting as his own insistence that these customs and traditions are binding, despite the fact that this is all very silly and no one seems to be taking it that seriously.

If you think you’re struggling for enthusiasm now, just wait until you start watching it.

Whatever, put cameras in and have them bluetooth to my Apple toothbrush and save it to the iCloud, fine, but “replace” the mirrors? As in rely entirely on cameras? Why? Leave the mirrors there. There’s no reason not to have mirrors on the car. Extremely cheap and reliable feedback system that never malfunctions. Putting new tech in cars is all well and good right up to the point where they start creating unnecessary failure points by getting rid of solutions that already work.

It’s like when they started getting rid of aux inputs in favor of USB and/or bluetooth. Why? An aux input is such a trivial thing that would cost nothing to implement, takes up almost no space on the dashboard, and always works. Granted, most current devices don’t use aux cables (which I also think is a mistake for the same reasons), but that’s only been the case very recently, and car companies started getting rid of them years ago when plenty of devices still had them. Plus, they’re still useful if you just want to plug an audio source into a car quickly and easily with zero chance of failure, even if you’d have to use an adapter. It’s nice to have the option to use USB or bluetooth, but getting rid of the aux altogether is nonsense. Getting rid of mirrors? Nonsense and potentially dangerous.

This is grounds for a class action suit

Getting older and more mature has definitely helped with this. For example, I completely cut out the part where I promise myself I’m going to change the pattern.