Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
One thing that the episodic format has in its favor is that you can have random duds or giant ???? episodes but they are easily glossed over in the long-term because everyone just moves on to the next episode. Even the characters themselves are expected to essentially reset in-between episodes unless the next episode explicitly calls back to a particular event (in which case, it's only relevant to that particular episode). In a tight serial format, you don't have that luxury because everything is expected to be relevant, so you can't just toss out random ideas as "cool moments".
Patrick Rothfuss talks about how he uses "beta readers" because he has tons of cool ideas but can't necessarily think of all the downstream consequences to the world he is building. At one point he thought of this great scheme for communication only for one of his beta readers to point out that if you had that magic tech, it would be equivalent to a superpowered telegraph and would enable communication to be instantaneous across vast distances, so he had to chuck it.
I'm of the opinion that this problem is inevitable, as any small deviation from our current reality will inevitably, if enough people think about it for long enough, cause problems like perpetual energy generation or global extinction. Like, John Chu has this short story The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere which posits that whenever someone lies, rain falls on them. It's meant to be an exploration of themes like belief and truth and family values, and all I could think of while reading it was, "Imagine the kind of crazy shit you can manipulate by having people intentionally lie over and over and over again whenever and wherever you wanted. You'd never run out of potable water anywhere. I bet you could get "free" energy, too..."
There's an episode in season 2 of TNG that focuses on Pulaski and the Enterprise trying to solve an aging issue caused by a project to genetically enhance and create superior humans with telekinetic / psychic abilities.
In this episode, not only is the Federation fine with this, but they use the Transporter to solve the issue....but also end up condemning / quarantining the 12 year old genetically modified humans to the planet for life since they were accidentally causing it.
The whole episode had an amazing amount of problematic issues when you think about it.
I am sure nothing can go wrong by letting a bunch of super powered adolescents grow up in environment with no love or support. I, for one, expect them have a lot of memorable prom photos when they get older.
One thing that the episodic format has in its favor is that you can have random duds or giant ???? episodes but they are easily glossed over in the long-term because everyone just moves on to the next episode. Even the characters themselves are expected to essentially reset in-between episodes unless the next episode explicitly calls back to a particular event (in which case, it's only relevant to that particular episode). In a tight serial format, you don't have that luxury because everything is expected to be relevant, so you can't just toss out random ideas as "cool moments".
Patrick Rothfuss talks about how he uses "beta readers" because he has tons of cool ideas but can't necessarily think of all the downstream consequences to the world he is building. At one point he thought of this great scheme for communication only for one of his beta readers to point out that if you had that magic tech, it would be equivalent to a superpowered telegraph and would enable communication to be instantaneous across vast distances, so he had to chuck it.
I'm of the opinion that this problem is inevitable, as any small deviation from our current reality will inevitably, if enough people think about it for long enough, cause problems like perpetual energy generation or global extinction. Like, John Chu has this short story The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere which posits that whenever someone lies, rain falls on them. It's meant to be an exploration of themes like belief and truth and family values, and all I could think of while reading it was, "Imagine the kind of crazy shit you can manipulate by having people intentionally lie over and over and over again whenever and wherever you wanted. You'd never run out of potable water anywhere. I bet you could get "free" energy, too..."
Giant rain farms made of tiles inscribed with "this sentence is false", etc.
And that's just the engineering applications, as it were; what might be learned from examining the apparently extradimensional space the water comes from?
But heck, just an infallible* test for truth would have a huge effect on society. (Though, how is truth determined? What if I make a statement based on something I believe to be true, and don't get wet? I suppose this ties into what you say the story was actually supposed to be about.)
The problem with lie tiles is then people will try to make it true so you don't have rain anymore. Imagine what a profoundly stupid series of escalations the story could have been about instead
And people get mad at the writing in Picard glossing over all the details! (This is a pretty common pattern in Star Trek television though.)
There's an episode in season two where the Enterprise transports a person who is destined to be the leader / unite their planet....back to their planet. Wesley falls in love with her.
The entire planet is full of shapeshifters that can completely change form and size. The DS9 fan in me was screaming.
**
There's another episode in season two that I actually like a lot, called Pen Pals, which is primarily about the Prime Directive. Data breaks the Prime Directive as many times as he can because he's speaking to a very young, non-drug addicted Nikki Cox. Her planet is breaking up due to geological instability. The Enterprise interferes and saves her people.
One of the highlights for me is that Picard gets annoyed / exasperated several times, but the most enraged he gets is when Data brings a child onto the bridge.
Cranky, asshole Picard = best Picard.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
And people get mad at the writing in Picard glossing over all the details! (This is a pretty common pattern in Star Trek television though.)
There's an episode in season two where the Enterprise transports a person who is destined to be the leader / unite their planet....back to their planet. Wesley falls in love with her.
The entire planet is full of shapeshifters that can completely change form and size. The DS9 fan in me was screaming.
I don't know why DS9 went in so hard on ODO IS THE ONLY SHAPESHIFTER EVER AND IT BLOWS EVERYONE'S MINDS when we saw them in TNG, TOS like every other week, and Star Trek VI like one year before. Like if they had said he's the only one of his species that would be one thing but over and over again in the first season they literally say "shapeshifter" and people react to it like it's this wild, unheard-of thing.
Odo was never that big of a deal. The Cardassians wanted to make him a carnival attraction. The Federation didn't care too much about him until they discovered that the Founders were the leaders of the Dominion. They only started freaking out about Changelings when they realized that the Founders were infiltrating the Alpha Quadrant, replacing leaders, and trying to sow chaos and conflict between the various powers.
Odo was never that big of a deal. The Cardassians wanted to make him a carnival attraction. The Federation didn't care too much about him until they discovered that the Founders were the leaders of the Dominion. They only started freaking out about Changelings when they realized that the Founders were infiltrating the Alpha Quadrant, replacing leaders, and trying to sow chaos and conflict between the various powers.
Odo was never that big of a deal. The Cardassians wanted to make him a carnival attraction. The Federation didn't care too much about him until they discovered that the Founders were the leaders of the Dominion. They only started freaking out about Changelings when they realized that the Founders were infiltrating the Alpha Quadrant, replacing leaders, and trying to sow chaos and conflict between the various powers.
plus Odo was a pretty shit shape shifter.
The Rob Liefeld of shapeshifters. "This is what a human looks like, right? I mean, more or less? I mean, it's good enough, right?"
He can't even turn in to a fireball, what a dorkus!
That's from that weird episode in season 7 where that really stuck up changling shows up and spends the entire time rudely dunking on him right? "Oh what's that Odo? You can't relax on the promenade by turning yourself into a super chill fog? sux2bu. Oh by the way your friends are all shit and they will all betray you"
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
It is kind of weird that they defaulted to that muted humanoid face when they could've saved some money and time by just having Changelings appear human (or much closer to human). Like, Vulcans have pointy ears. Changelings have long noses. Big whoop.
No wait, maybe not long noses... That might be taken the wrong way. Uh... Green...eyes?
But the other changelings looked that way because they were just trying to spare Odo's feelings and be relatable to Odo. Having human faces would be mean cos he's shit at it.
The production reason is likely they wanted them to be recognisable and cheap enough. DS9 only flirted with how powerful a shape shifting enemy that can mimic virtually anything could be. Based on that season 7 episode one changeling could probably suffocate a shit ton of people at once or turn into a giant monster and eat everyone or just burn everyone. Until that point they'd only shown them as people and some stuff like plants or surfaces. It's not inconceivable they could have been machinery but they never showed that.
It's entirely possible the dominion could have easily won the war if the changelings weren't so bloody lazy which is probably why the writers made them sick.
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MsAnthropyThe Lady of Pain Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the RhythmThe City of FlowersRegistered Userregular
The Founders can apparently violate the laws of conservation of mass which is tbh a lot more impressive than shapeshifting.
But the other changelings looked that way because they were just trying to spare Odo's feelings and be relatable to Odo. Having human faces would be mean cos he's shit at it.
The production reason is likely they wanted them to be recognisable and cheap enough. DS9 only flirted with how powerful a shape shifting enemy that can mimic virtually anything could be. Based on that season 7 episode one changeling could probably suffocate a shit ton of people at once or turn into a giant monster and eat everyone or just burn everyone. Until that point they'd only shown them as people and some stuff like plants or surfaces. It's not inconceivable they could have been machinery but they never showed that.
It's entirely possible the dominion could have easily won the war if the changelings weren't so bloody lazy which is probably why the writers made them sick.
i don't know about machinery but odo definitely impersonates non-living objects multiple times (things in his room, drinking glass, bag, etc.) Wonder if doing moving parts was just too much for Odo...why did he suck so much? The other guy grew up alone and was pretty baller at it, Odo was just...repressed?
But the other changelings looked that way because they were just trying to spare Odo's feelings and be relatable to Odo. Having human faces would be mean cos he's shit at it.
The production reason is likely they wanted them to be recognisable and cheap enough. DS9 only flirted with how powerful a shape shifting enemy that can mimic virtually anything could be. Based on that season 7 episode one changeling could probably suffocate a shit ton of people at once or turn into a giant monster and eat everyone or just burn everyone. Until that point they'd only shown them as people and some stuff like plants or surfaces. It's not inconceivable they could have been machinery but they never showed that.
It's entirely possible the dominion could have easily won the war if the changelings weren't so bloody lazy which is probably why the writers made them sick.
i don't know about machinery but odo definitely impersonates non-living objects multiple times (things in his room, drinking glass, bag, etc.) Wonder if doing moving parts was just too much for Odo...why did he suck so much? The other guy grew up alone and was pretty baller at it, Odo was just...repressed?
The other guy was also 200+ years old, and disengaged from life amongst non-shapeshifters. Plenty of time to practice that Odo hadn’t put in.
If he grew up in the Federation it might have been different for him but he grew up in the occupation of Bajor surrounded by slaving racist totalitarian facists treating people like shit. He wants to fit in and be accepted not feared or hunted so he maintains solid form and just does what he knows for his job. The other changelings open his eyes into what he can be and while he rejects their world view on solids he starts to open up a bit to what he's capable of. He's never really at peace with being himself even around Kira until the episode with Laas.
Chimera is part of what makes the ending of the series such a gut punch as far as Odo and Kira goes but it's also part of Odo's decision.
Odo still looks at things with a solid's point of view. He spends a lot of time at his job when he doesn't even need a job at all. He doesn't need food, water, or shelter. If he wanted, he can just spend all his time shapeshifting on some random planet. He can easily book passage on any ship he wants with his skills or just stowaway by turning into a random object. When he's advanced enough, he can even shapeshift into a spacefaring creature like Laas. And if he wants, he can learn any skill or hobby he wants since he's immortal so it won't matter if he spends 50 years getting 10 PhD's or becoming the best painter or musician. He has practically unlimited freedom and choice to do whatever he wants.
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MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
Odo still looks at things with a solid's point of view. He spends a lot of time at his job when he doesn't even need a job at all. He doesn't need food, water, or shelter. If he wanted, he can just spend all his time shapeshifting on some random planet. He can easily book passage on any ship he wants with his skills or just stowaway by turning into a random object. When he's advanced enough, he can even shapeshift into a spacefaring creature like Laas. And if he wants, he can learn any skill or hobby he wants since he's immortal so it won't matter if he spends 50 years getting 10 PhD's or becoming the best painter or musician. He has practically unlimited freedom and choice to do whatever he wants.
Most humans can do a lot of that too though. Picard didn't sign up because he needed the GI bill benefits. They might not be quite as mobile but I imagine anyone born on Earth in the 2300s would probably have the opportunity to move or travel pretty much anywhere within Federation space.
People do things because they need jobs but people also do things because they think they're important, and when you take away someone's need for a job you find out what's important to them.
And people get mad at the writing in Picard glossing over all the details! (This is a pretty common pattern in Star Trek television though.)
There's an episode in season two where the Enterprise transports a person who is destined to be the leader / unite their planet....back to their planet. Wesley falls in love with her.
The entire planet is full of shapeshifters that can completely change form and size. The DS9 fan in me was screaming.
I don't know why DS9 went in so hard on ODO IS THE ONLY SHAPESHIFTER EVER AND IT BLOWS EVERYONE'S MINDS when we saw them in TNG, TOS like every other week, and Star Trek VI like one year before. Like if they had said he's the only one of his species that would be one thing but over and over again in the first season they literally say "shapeshifter" and people react to it like it's this wild, unheard-of thing.
Odo was different than most of the other shapeshifters in Star Trek. Most we see are limited to humanoid forms and many of those to specific humanoid forms, a few of the more advanced ones (like Wesley's first girlfriend) weren't fully corporeal in their base form, creating the ambiguity about whether they ever truly had a physical shape.
Odo was a fully corporeal space amoeba-cuttlefish thing with arbitrary shape selection unbound by conservation of mass (though it's explicitly stated he has an upper size limit that was once much lower than his humanoid form, his lower limit if he has one is small enough for him to be small objects like cups and handcuffs).
The interesting thing about Laas is that by all indications, the Founders don't share the extent of their abilities that he's found. Makes sense, really - almost their entire existence is in the Link. They want to control the universe for their own protection, but they don't want to climb out of the orgy pit and actually do the work. War and control are matters for solids, so they created their pet solids to go do it for them.
Odo is chief of security on DS9 because he believes strongly in justice and order, and he has a job because he wants to fit in and contribute
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
I try not to think about Odo's shapeshifting, it's generally just batshit craziness that manages to stand out as crazy when compared to a lot of the utter craziness that is the Star Trek setting. Conservation of mass? Odo can turn into a bird that can fly. We know the physics of that, so either those wings are putting down a crapton of force (which they clearly aren't) or he weighs something around 2kg at that point. Plus he can change into different states of matter. No big deal for liquid and solids, but he can become a gas or a plasma too. And he's not just looking like he's a gas or plasma, he actually is an ionized (or not) gas. Finally there's the bit that he's not just changing form and appearance, by all accounts he actually is what he turns into. When Odo becomes a rock or a fish, every sensor and test registers him as a rock or fish, there's no sensor masking or technobabble to cover for that, heck, the Founders specifically say that changing into a thing means that they become that thing. When they go to the Founder's homeworld for the first time, Odo becomes a rock for a while and gains the viewpoint of what it is to be a rock.
It makes for fun storytelling, but thinking too deeply about any of it is just not good.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Oh yeah, I mean I figure that a good 20-30% of the population of the Federation has ended up traveling through time just because of how easy it seems to be, but Odo's shapeshifting... it's just a bit too much for me sometimes.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
My theory is that the founders are four dimensional beings and that their physical appearance is just the three dimensional projection in to our universe.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
The Greatest Generation guys have a bit where they say, "for some reason Jake" when referencing Jake Sisko in a scene. Maybe it should be "for some reason Mark Twain."
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
My theory is that the founders are four dimensional beings and that their physical appearance is just the three dimensional projection in to our universe.
That's probably the most cogent theory I've heard. Odo's other big problem is that he's a giant whiner, and still blames Dr. Mora for all his problems. Though I suppose Odo is basically a teenager during the course of the show and the reason he stays on the station is because it's the only thing he knows and he's not ready to leave the nest just yet.
Guys, Star Trek has Q who is straight up a space wizard. Odo is a magical creature too, it's fine, who cares.
Star Trek fans like to take it overly seriously and pretend like the show they love is hard scifi ut let's not kid ourselves, this franchise is more Space Fantasy than Star Wars and there's nothing wrong with that.
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Patrick Rothfuss talks about how he uses "beta readers" because he has tons of cool ideas but can't necessarily think of all the downstream consequences to the world he is building. At one point he thought of this great scheme for communication only for one of his beta readers to point out that if you had that magic tech, it would be equivalent to a superpowered telegraph and would enable communication to be instantaneous across vast distances, so he had to chuck it.
I'm of the opinion that this problem is inevitable, as any small deviation from our current reality will inevitably, if enough people think about it for long enough, cause problems like perpetual energy generation or global extinction. Like, John Chu has this short story The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere which posits that whenever someone lies, rain falls on them. It's meant to be an exploration of themes like belief and truth and family values, and all I could think of while reading it was, "Imagine the kind of crazy shit you can manipulate by having people intentionally lie over and over and over again whenever and wherever you wanted. You'd never run out of potable water anywhere. I bet you could get "free" energy, too..."
hmmm... maybe they did make an appearance...
Giant rain farms made of tiles inscribed with "this sentence is false", etc.
And that's just the engineering applications, as it were; what might be learned from examining the apparently extradimensional space the water comes from?
But heck, just an infallible* test for truth would have a huge effect on society. (Though, how is truth determined? What if I make a statement based on something I believe to be true, and don't get wet? I suppose this ties into what you say the story was actually supposed to be about.)
I might have a coffee problem.
There's an episode in season two where the Enterprise transports a person who is destined to be the leader / unite their planet....back to their planet. Wesley falls in love with her.
The entire planet is full of shapeshifters that can completely change form and size. The DS9 fan in me was screaming.
**
There's another episode in season two that I actually like a lot, called Pen Pals, which is primarily about the Prime Directive. Data breaks the Prime Directive as many times as he can because he's speaking to a very young, non-drug addicted Nikki Cox. Her planet is breaking up due to geological instability. The Enterprise interferes and saves her people.
One of the highlights for me is that Picard gets annoyed / exasperated several times, but the most enraged he gets is when Data brings a child onto the bridge.
Cranky, asshole Picard = best Picard.
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
I don't know why DS9 went in so hard on ODO IS THE ONLY SHAPESHIFTER EVER AND IT BLOWS EVERYONE'S MINDS when we saw them in TNG, TOS like every other week, and Star Trek VI like one year before. Like if they had said he's the only one of his species that would be one thing but over and over again in the first season they literally say "shapeshifter" and people react to it like it's this wild, unheard-of thing.
plus Odo was a pretty shit shape shifter.
That's from that weird episode in season 7 where that really stuck up changling shows up and spends the entire time rudely dunking on him right? "Oh what's that Odo? You can't relax on the promenade by turning yourself into a super chill fog? sux2bu. Oh by the way your friends are all shit and they will all betray you"
No wait, maybe not long noses... That might be taken the wrong way. Uh... Green...eyes?
The production reason is likely they wanted them to be recognisable and cheap enough. DS9 only flirted with how powerful a shape shifting enemy that can mimic virtually anything could be. Based on that season 7 episode one changeling could probably suffocate a shit ton of people at once or turn into a giant monster and eat everyone or just burn everyone. Until that point they'd only shown them as people and some stuff like plants or surfaces. It's not inconceivable they could have been machinery but they never showed that.
It's entirely possible the dominion could have easily won the war if the changelings weren't so bloody lazy which is probably why the writers made them sick.
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
The human form could just be a mostly hollow shell.
i don't know about machinery but odo definitely impersonates non-living objects multiple times (things in his room, drinking glass, bag, etc.) Wonder if doing moving parts was just too much for Odo...why did he suck so much? The other guy grew up alone and was pretty baller at it, Odo was just...repressed?
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The other guy was also 200+ years old, and disengaged from life amongst non-shapeshifters. Plenty of time to practice that Odo hadn’t put in.
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
Chimera is part of what makes the ending of the series such a gut punch as far as Odo and Kira goes but it's also part of Odo's decision.
Most humans can do a lot of that too though. Picard didn't sign up because he needed the GI bill benefits. They might not be quite as mobile but I imagine anyone born on Earth in the 2300s would probably have the opportunity to move or travel pretty much anywhere within Federation space.
People do things because they need jobs but people also do things because they think they're important, and when you take away someone's need for a job you find out what's important to them.
Odo was different than most of the other shapeshifters in Star Trek. Most we see are limited to humanoid forms and many of those to specific humanoid forms, a few of the more advanced ones (like Wesley's first girlfriend) weren't fully corporeal in their base form, creating the ambiguity about whether they ever truly had a physical shape.
Odo was a fully corporeal space amoeba-cuttlefish thing with arbitrary shape selection unbound by conservation of mass (though it's explicitly stated he has an upper size limit that was once much lower than his humanoid form, his lower limit if he has one is small enough for him to be small objects like cups and handcuffs).
The interesting thing about Laas is that by all indications, the Founders don't share the extent of their abilities that he's found. Makes sense, really - almost their entire existence is in the Link. They want to control the universe for their own protection, but they don't want to climb out of the orgy pit and actually do the work. War and control are matters for solids, so they created their pet solids to go do it for them.
It makes for fun storytelling, but thinking too deeply about any of it is just not good.
Oh yeah, I mean I figure that a good 20-30% of the population of the Federation has ended up traveling through time just because of how easy it seems to be, but Odo's shapeshifting... it's just a bit too much for me sometimes.
Was that a deliberate Adventures of Mark Twain reference, or just a happy coincidence?
That's probably the most cogent theory I've heard. Odo's other big problem is that he's a giant whiner, and still blames Dr. Mora for all his problems. Though I suppose Odo is basically a teenager during the course of the show and the reason he stays on the station is because it's the only thing he knows and he's not ready to leave the nest just yet.
Star Trek fans like to take it overly seriously and pretend like the show they love is hard scifi ut let's not kid ourselves, this franchise is more Space Fantasy than Star Wars and there's nothing wrong with that.