There's another character with connection to the Borg Queen, too, particularly if it's going to be in flashbacks.
The trailer, such as it is, is giving me a very House of M vibe. I suspect Q will be doing some pretty substantial screwing with reality for whatever his esoteric purposes are this time.
Hevach on
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Given that very nearly everyone assimilated seems to find it traumatic and actually being in the connective horrifying something like the Queen *must* exist, otherwise the Collective would rapidly come to the conclusion that they should stop eating civilizations.
Except the collective itself is an artificial construct which utilizes the minds of individuals, it is not directed by them any more than, say, the individual cells of your skin being unhappy with the sun being hot. It's a macro-organism with a decentralized nervous system, not a high-speed perfect democracy.
The Collective was never directed by its "membership", it just eats their knowledge and uses their experience to execute the goals of the Collective. Once you've been assimilated, you aren't even "conscious" in the way you were before because your mind is now part of the Collective.
There's a reason it's hard to remove people from the Collective, and it's not just the surgery. People like not being alone and going back to being an individual is very difficult for them after having the entire Collective to support them.
I think the Collective is a collective. It is the minds of all the people in it. It's just that individuality is subsumed for the will of the collective. It's basically the idea of a society that completely eliminates the idea of personal freedom. There is only the will of the people as a whole.
Except everything we've ever seen for the Borg shows that any and all thought is completely prohibited save for that which helps the Collective assimilate. The average individual person still thinks about the things they think; a trillion-fold mind is going to do that exponentially more, unless it's outright stopped by hardware and software changes. So even within the Collective, there should be shitloads of internal debate and argument except for the fact that the machine side says "nope, everybody think the same things".
The purpose of the Collective is explicitly an artificial one, given by whatever process started it. There is no people or their will to push in a direction, only the Collective and its narrow goals. Otherwise, there's no way they'd fly around by the trillions chopping up and absorbing people via horrific surgery, because the Collective would be filled with people's minds going "oh shit, that was horrible". But they don't get a say, because the overarching construct of the Collective says "eat more people". There's no collective vote, just obey.
And no way at all can a single mind direct at all that, so a Borg Queen just makes what is a great idea for a scifi organism and turns it into a rather stupid cyborg slave situation.
Given that very nearly everyone assimilated seems to find it traumatic and actually being in the connective horrifying something like the Queen *must* exist, otherwise the Collective would rapidly come to the conclusion that they should stop eating civilizations.
Except the collective itself is an artificial construct which utilizes the minds of individuals, it is not directed by them any more than, say, the individual cells of your skin being unhappy with the sun being hot. It's a macro-organism with a decentralized nervous system, not a high-speed perfect democracy.
The Collective was never directed by its "membership", it just eats their knowledge and uses their experience to execute the goals of the Collective. Once you've been assimilated, you aren't even "conscious" in the way you were before because your mind is now part of the Collective.
There's a reason it's hard to remove people from the Collective, and it's not just the surgery. People like not being alone and going back to being an individual is very difficult for them after having the entire Collective to support them.
I think the Collective is a collective. It is the minds of all the people in it. It's just that individuality is subsumed for the will of the collective. It's basically the idea of a society that completely eliminates the idea of personal freedom. There is only the will of the people as a whole.
Except everything we've ever seen for the Borg shows that any and all thought is completely prohibited save for that which helps the Collective assimilate. The average individual person still thinks about the things they think; a trillion-fold mind is going to do that exponentially more, unless it's outright stopped by hardware and software changes. So even within the Collective, there should be shitloads of internal debate and argument except for the fact that the machine side says "nope, everybody think the same things".
The purpose of the Collective is explicitly an artificial one, given by whatever process started it. There is no people or their will to push in a direction, only the Collective and its narrow goals. Otherwise, there's no way they'd fly around by the trillions chopping up and absorbing people via horrific surgery, because the Collective would be filled with people's minds going "oh shit, that was horrible". But they don't get a say, because the overarching construct of the Collective says "eat more people". There's no collective vote, just obey.
And no way at all can a single mind direct at all that, so a Borg Queen just makes what is a great idea for a scifi organism and turns it into a rather stupid cyborg slave situation.
Yes, the individual is subsumed by the collective will but that is still made by the collective itself. There is no debate because everyone agrees. But the way it's described, everyone is still there communicating in some way with each other. They are all there in some sense. It's just a community where the desires of the collective are all that matter and the idea of the individual as being apart from that don't exist. It's collectivism taken to the sci-fi extreme.
There's a reason it's hard to remove people from the Collective, and it's not just the surgery. People like not being alone and going back to being an individual is very difficult for them after having the entire Collective to support them.
Come along.
You belong.
Feel the fizz.
that you gave me a chip n dale rescue ranger quote is something i will hold dear for a long time.
There's a reason it's hard to remove people from the Collective, and it's not just the surgery. People like not being alone and going back to being an individual is very difficult for them after having the entire Collective to support them.
Come along.
You belong.
Feel the fizz.
that you gave me a chip n dale rescue ranger quote is something i will hold dear for a long time.
it's a fascinating story, really.
at first glance it's simply "lol, the mice made a (cargo) cult out of a soda jingle."
and then you step back and you realize, "holy crap, this is a marketing campaign using explicit cult messaging to sell soda."
buy the product, sing the song, make the brand identity part of your identity.
My personal explanation would be it turning out that there's another H. Kim in Starfleet, and due to a isolinear chip that someone plugged in upside down, he's been getting all the promotions Harry's been earning. Harvey Kim's an admiral now!
I mean, the reason Harry never got a promotion is because of Janeway, right? While isolated in the Delta quadrant, she'd be the one who'd control that.
Dude probably got a promotion after they got back to the Alpha quadrant.
Warlord - A body swapping tyrant takes over Kes and returns home to stage a coup. Was cool to see Kes going all tyrannical in the same way it was Tilly in Disco.
The Q And The Grey - Q returns and propositions Janeway. Civil war in the continuum. JdL hamming it the hell up, and Janeway slapping him down is always going to be worth 40 minutes of time.
Macrocosm - A virus that manifests as large critters infests Voyager. Really couldn't get into this one, because the premise was so clearly ludicrous. Both the macroism, but also the whole "this infected the crew, but few, if any people are actually going to die". Could have done it much differently, like had everyone seal themselves up in escape pods, or stasis fields, or something. Only entertaining part of this episode was the Tak Tak, and body language being the most important aspect of their communication.
Fair Trade - Neelix gets roped into drug trafficking by an old acquaintance. Fairly rote story, Neelix misinterprets his value, does something minor, is blackmailed into something more, finally comes clean, realizes he's more valued than he thought. It wasn't a bad episode, but it felt like it was a B-plot stretched out into a full episode.
Alter Ego - Harry falls in love with a hologram, Tuvok tries to help and doesn't, hologram takes over parts of the ship. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, holodecks are too dangerous. Granted, this isn't a rampant AI, it's an alien near a nebula. The nebula argument was weak, First, she's there voluntarily. Second, she's there not because the nebula is dangerous, but because tweaking it entertains he planet. Change either of those, and there's some empathy for the character. But as it is, you're lonely? Go home!
Coda - Janeway dies, or so she thinks. Her father tries to get her to go towards the light. Turns out it's just another psychic alien parasite messing with her so it can eat her conciousness, and I'm kinda done with that story.
Blood Fever - A Vulcan ensign starts Pon Farr, and infects B'Elanna. On an away mission, she goes into "heat". The B-plot with the Vulcan is a bit over the top, but whatever. Sets up Tom/B'Elanna in the future. The side mission with the natives is fine, with the epilogue reveal of Borg as a future threat.
Unity - Chakotay and a yellowshirt crash on a planet and find a ragtag group, Turns out they're desimilated Borg. And there's a cube. Hey, that didn't take long. Chakotay escapes the planet, is brainjacked to enable some Borg comms tech, and we're off to the races on the Borg now being a potential threat (yes, I know they do).
Darkling - The Doctor grafts on parts of the personalities of several historical holodeck characters and becomes evil. This episode was crap. If it was anyone but Picardo hamming it up as the evil one, I'd probably have turned it off. That the holodeck designs would incorporate the pathos within those characters, is again #HolodecksAreTooDangerous. I can understand people wanting to study it a bit more in an academic setting, but there's no need for the characters on starship holodeck to be that detailed. It's like giving a college astronomy textbook to a pre-teen. Sure, they can appreciate the pretty pictures, but the text is going to be beyond nearly all of them.
In STO, as of 2410-ish, he's made Captain. Somehow.
Yeah, but then his ship joins your admiralty task force and I send him to scan comets constantly. Oh, look, a major Borg incursion near Ferenginar and the Rhode Island's special lines up perfectly with its modifiers. VSS Citadel>Ferenginar USS Rhode Island>comets.
Each campaign is 3 weeks (15 total), 2 each (10 total) will get the rewards. So if you start on campaign 3 and hit all 21 days you'll have 9 weeks done, should need 7 buyout days.
I mean, the reason Harry never got a promotion is because of Janeway, right? While isolated in the Delta quadrant, she'd be the one who'd control that.
Dude probably got a promotion after they got back to the Alpha quadrant.
There is probably a pretty strong argument for not promoting most of the crew during their time in Delta, barring deaths/etc. That being said, there is also a VERY strong argument for a lot more cross training. Kim should have spent time at the helm, and Tactical, etc. They were in a position where replacements were incredibly difficult to come by (though evidently not impossible), so having someone be able to take over another dept would be a LOT more important.
I get the argument to not promote anyone on the basis that they're all stuck where they are anyway, but Tuvok getting a promotion blows that argument out of the water.
Ergo, they just thought it was funny that Harry never got promoted.
I mean, the reason Harry never got a promotion is because of Janeway, right? While isolated in the Delta quadrant, she'd be the one who'd control that.
Dude probably got a promotion after they got back to the Alpha quadrant.
There is probably a pretty strong argument for not promoting most of the crew during their time in Delta, barring deaths/etc. That being said, there is also a VERY strong argument for a lot more cross training. Kim should have spent time at the helm, and Tactical, etc. They were in a position where replacements were incredibly difficult to come by (though evidently not impossible), so having someone be able to take over another dept would be a LOT more important.
Could've set Voyager apart from TNG if everyone but Janeway/Chakotay shifted bridge positions every once in awhile.
Honestly, what do Ferengi buy with latinum that they can't replicate? There's rare minerals like dilithium and I guess services like prostitutes. I just wonder how much differently an 'opulent' Ferengi lives compared to the average mook. What are the actual status signifiers other than latinum count?
I get the argument to not promote anyone on the basis that they're all stuck where they are anyway, but Tuvok getting a promotion blows that argument out of the water.
Ergo, they just thought it was funny that Harry never got promoted.
Paris getting demoted and then restored, too. And it was a ship with a gutted command structure, there were absolutely opportunities for advancement - Harry Kim was an ensign, but also ended up in a department head position and actually took the bridge on the night shift. This is the same position Data held in TNG. We know Voyager had a lieutenant position open for Harry Kim because he was already doing it.
Honestly, what do Ferengi buy with latinum that they can't replicate? There's rare minerals like dilithium and I guess services like prostitutes. I just wonder how much differently an 'opulent' Ferengi lives compared to the average mook. What are the actual status signifiers other than latinum count?
Honestly, what do Ferengi buy with latinum that they can't replicate? There's rare minerals like dilithium and I guess services like prostitutes. I just wonder how much differently an 'opulent' Ferengi lives compared to the average mook. What are the actual status signifiers other than latinum count?
Post scarcity is about policy, not just availability. Cardassians had replicators, too, but also had children starving in the street. Having functionally infinite resources doesn't matter if policy confines them. Quark sold food for latinum that he replicated for free because the Federation didn't actually collect on his tab.
The Ferengi enshrine monopolies in law so that infinitely producible products can still be sold for maximum prices. You can get a replicator, but despite being produced out of a slightly larger replicator costs several bricks of latinum. And then you need power, which despite being produced by the petawatt hour is still metered by the kilowatt hour at a markup that would make a Snap On salesman say, "Woah."
And now the thing has better DRM than the Enterprise so you can't just download stuff, you need to buy patterns out of the asset store. It comes preprogrammed with warm water and Nutritionally "Complete" Nutrient Paste no. 1 (artificially nothing flavored).
You know how the world produces enough food for everyone to just gorge themselves into morbid life threatening obesity, but inequitable distribution leaves whole continents worrying about breakfast? Expand that to the level of a global religion and you have Ferenginar.
I mean, the reason Harry never got a promotion is because of Janeway, right? While isolated in the Delta quadrant, she'd be the one who'd control that.
Dude probably got a promotion after they got back to the Alpha quadrant.
There is probably a pretty strong argument for not promoting most of the crew during their time in Delta, barring deaths/etc. That being said, there is also a VERY strong argument for a lot more cross training. Kim should have spent time at the helm, and Tactical, etc. They were in a position where replacements were incredibly difficult to come by (though evidently not impossible), so having someone be able to take over another dept would be a LOT more important.
Could've set Voyager apart from TNG if everyone but Janeway/Chakotay shifted bridge positions every once in awhile.
Which is probably why they didn't do it.
Ironically, this is exactly what Neelix is doing in the mid half of S3 (where I'm up to).
He's learning engineering from B'Elanna, wants to learn security from Tuvok, rudimentary healthcare from the Doctor, wants to learn bridge functions.
Only one who seems to be interested in expanding their horizons on a professional level.
I mean, the reason Harry never got a promotion is because of Janeway, right? While isolated in the Delta quadrant, she'd be the one who'd control that.
Dude probably got a promotion after they got back to the Alpha quadrant.
There is probably a pretty strong argument for not promoting most of the crew during their time in Delta, barring deaths/etc. That being said, there is also a VERY strong argument for a lot more cross training. Kim should have spent time at the helm, and Tactical, etc. They were in a position where replacements were incredibly difficult to come by (though evidently not impossible), so having someone be able to take over another dept would be a LOT more important.
Could've set Voyager apart from TNG if everyone but Janeway/Chakotay shifted bridge positions every once in awhile.
Which is probably why they didn't do it.
Ironically, this is exactly what Neelix is doing in the mid half of S3 (where I'm up to).
He's learning engineering from B'Elanna, wants to learn security from Tuvok, rudimentary healthcare from the Doctor, wants to learn bridge functions.
Only one who seems to be interested in expanding their horizons on a professional level.
and/or trying to make himself, if not indispensable, then less likely to be kicked off or "accidentally" left behind.
I get the argument to not promote anyone on the basis that they're all stuck where they are anyway, but Tuvok getting a promotion blows that argument out of the water.
Ergo, they just thought it was funny that Harry never got promoted.
Paris getting demoted and then restored, too. And it was a ship with a gutted command structure, there were absolutely opportunities for advancement - Harry Kim was an ensign, but also ended up in a department head position and actually took the bridge on the night shift. This is the same position Data held in TNG. We know Voyager had a lieutenant position open for Harry Kim because he was already doing it.
Post scarcity is about policy, not just availability. Cardassians had replicators, too, but also had children starving in the street. Having functionally infinite resources doesn't matter if policy confines them. Quark sold food for latinum that he replicated for free because the Federation didn't actually collect on his tab.
The Ferengi enshrine monopolies in law so that infinitely producible products can still be sold for maximum prices. You can get a replicator, but despite being produced out of a slightly larger replicator costs several bricks of latinum. And then you need power, which despite being produced by the petawatt hour is still metered by the kilowatt hour at a markup that would make a Snap On salesman say, "Woah."
And now the thing has better DRM than the Enterprise so you can't just download stuff, you need to buy patterns out of the asset store. It comes preprogrammed with warm water and Nutritionally "Complete" Nutrient Paste no. 1 (artificially nothing flavored).
You know how the world produces enough food for everyone to just gorge themselves into morbid life threatening obesity, but inequitable distribution leaves whole continents worrying about breakfast? Expand that to the level of a global religion and you have Ferenginar.
Honestly now you're just making me wonder about life in the Federation itself, with full post-scarcity in play. The idea is everyone more or less wants to work towards a better tomorrow but it's not like everyone joins Starfleet. What about those who only live for more carnal, less lofty pursuits? Even among people who still decide to hold regular jobs in service of society, how many of them come home to a fully holodecked apartment with perfectly realistic holo-servants and food replicators installed so they can enjoy any sort of lifestyle and furnishings they desire? You can have your holo-servants tirelessly massaging your shoulders and feet and serving your favorite drinks and meals in a perfect facsimile of a tropical island bungalow or luxury studio apartment or moving Oriental Express cabin or Ewok treehouse. And at the end of the day, you can have all the excess fat, carbs and cholesterol you gained transported directly out of your body or hyposprayed away.
I just wonder about the societal implications. Barclay showed holodeck fantasy addictions were a real potentially issue, especially among the socially awkward. How many people in the Federation can and would just choose to forego a social life completely and live among more agreeable AI friends and family?
Post scarcity is about policy, not just availability. Cardassians had replicators, too, but also had children starving in the street. Having functionally infinite resources doesn't matter if policy confines them. Quark sold food for latinum that he replicated for free because the Federation didn't actually collect on his tab.
The Ferengi enshrine monopolies in law so that infinitely producible products can still be sold for maximum prices. You can get a replicator, but despite being produced out of a slightly larger replicator costs several bricks of latinum. And then you need power, which despite being produced by the petawatt hour is still metered by the kilowatt hour at a markup that would make a Snap On salesman say, "Woah."
And now the thing has better DRM than the Enterprise so you can't just download stuff, you need to buy patterns out of the asset store. It comes preprogrammed with warm water and Nutritionally "Complete" Nutrient Paste no. 1 (artificially nothing flavored).
You know how the world produces enough food for everyone to just gorge themselves into morbid life threatening obesity, but inequitable distribution leaves whole continents worrying about breakfast? Expand that to the level of a global religion and you have Ferenginar.
Honestly now you're just making me wonder about life in the Federation itself, with full post-scarcity in play. The idea is everyone more or less wants to work towards a better tomorrow but it's not like everyone joins Starfleet. What about those who only live for more carnal, less lofty pursuits? Even among people who still decide to hold regular jobs in service of society, how many of them come home to a fully holodecked apartment with perfectly realistic holo-servants and food replicators installed so they can enjoy any sort of lifestyle and furnishings they desire? You can have your holo-servants tirelessly massaging your shoulders and feet and serving your favorite drinks and meals in a perfect facsimile of a tropical island bungalow or luxury studio apartment or moving Oriental Express cabin or Ewok treehouse. And at the end of the day, you can have all the excess fat, carbs and cholesterol you gained transported directly out of your body or hyposprayed away.
I just wonder about the societal implications. Barclay showed holodeck fantasy addictions were a real potentially issue, especially among the socially awkward. How many people in the Federation can and would just choose to forego a social life completely and live among more agreeable AI friends and family?
Just from watching the first few seasons of TNG, it's worth remembering that holodecks are new tech then, and presumably restricted in supply. I'd be surprised if they got too far out into GenPop, given their propensity to try and murder the user.
Honestly, what do Ferengi buy with latinum that they can't replicate? There's rare minerals like dilithium and I guess services like prostitutes. I just wonder how much differently an 'opulent' Ferengi lives compared to the average mook. What are the actual status signifiers other than latinum count?
Honestly, what do Ferengi buy with latinum that they can't replicate? There's rare minerals like dilithium and I guess services like prostitutes. I just wonder how much differently an 'opulent' Ferengi lives compared to the average mook. What are the actual status signifiers other than latinum count?
Post scarcity is about policy, not just availability. Cardassians had replicators, too, but also had children starving in the street. Having functionally infinite resources doesn't matter if policy confines them. Quark sold food for latinum that he replicated for free because the Federation didn't actually collect on his tab.
The Ferengi enshrine monopolies in law so that infinitely producible products can still be sold for maximum prices. You can get a replicator, but despite being produced out of a slightly larger replicator costs several bricks of latinum. And then you need power, which despite being produced by the petawatt hour is still metered by the kilowatt hour at a markup that would make a Snap On salesman say, "Woah."
And now the thing has better DRM than the Enterprise so you can't just download stuff, you need to buy patterns out of the asset store. It comes preprogrammed with warm water and Nutritionally "Complete" Nutrient Paste no. 1 (artificially nothing flavored).
You know how the world produces enough food for everyone to just gorge themselves into morbid life threatening obesity, but inequitable distribution leaves whole continents worrying about breakfast? Expand that to the level of a global religion and you have Ferenginar.
My impression is that the current state of Ferenginar comes from two factors:
Progress, as we all know, is slow. Specially since after the glow of the Dominion War is over, a conservative opposition was 100% likely to be formed to obstruct it as much as possible.
Ferenginar just....hasn't been as much of a priority to the Federation. Between the Borg, the delicate situation between Bajorians and Cardassians and then, again, the Dominion War, Ferenginar is one of many worlds where upkeep was relegated to the wayside.
Post scarcity is about policy, not just availability. Cardassians had replicators, too, but also had children starving in the street. Having functionally infinite resources doesn't matter if policy confines them. Quark sold food for latinum that he replicated for free because the Federation didn't actually collect on his tab.
The Ferengi enshrine monopolies in law so that infinitely producible products can still be sold for maximum prices. You can get a replicator, but despite being produced out of a slightly larger replicator costs several bricks of latinum. And then you need power, which despite being produced by the petawatt hour is still metered by the kilowatt hour at a markup that would make a Snap On salesman say, "Woah."
And now the thing has better DRM than the Enterprise so you can't just download stuff, you need to buy patterns out of the asset store. It comes preprogrammed with warm water and Nutritionally "Complete" Nutrient Paste no. 1 (artificially nothing flavored).
You know how the world produces enough food for everyone to just gorge themselves into morbid life threatening obesity, but inequitable distribution leaves whole continents worrying about breakfast? Expand that to the level of a global religion and you have Ferenginar.
Honestly now you're just making me wonder about life in the Federation itself, with full post-scarcity in play. The idea is everyone more or less wants to work towards a better tomorrow but it's not like everyone joins Starfleet. What about those who only live for more carnal, less lofty pursuits? Even among people who still decide to hold regular jobs in service of society, how many of them come home to a fully holodecked apartment with perfectly realistic holo-servants and food replicators installed so they can enjoy any sort of lifestyle and furnishings they desire? You can have your holo-servants tirelessly massaging your shoulders and feet and serving your favorite drinks and meals in a perfect facsimile of a tropical island bungalow or luxury studio apartment or moving Oriental Express cabin or Ewok treehouse. And at the end of the day, you can have all the excess fat, carbs and cholesterol you gained transported directly out of your body or hyposprayed away.
I just wonder about the societal implications. Barclay showed holodeck fantasy addictions were a real potentially issue, especially among the socially awkward. How many people in the Federation can and would just choose to forego a social life completely and live among more agreeable AI friends and family?
Just from watching the first few seasons of TNG, it's worth remembering that holodecks are new tech then, and presumably restricted in supply. I'd be surprised if they got too far out into GenPop, given their propensity to try and murder the user.
Right but what I mean is the cat's out of the bag now. The door is open for the tech to only get more streamlined and miniaturized with every iteration. It's really only matter of time before it becomes widely available for civilian use and I just wonder what that means for an entire civilization. Sure you could seek a career in Starfleet, gradually working your way up the ranks through years of hard work and determination while facing tedious, risky and sometimes life-threatening situations... or you could just LARP as a decorated admiral on the most advanced ship in the fleet doing only the exciting missions like planetary infiltration or flying around engaging alien warships in a fully immersive simulation.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Videogame addiction is a thing now, but the number of people who suffer it is a lot lower than the number of people who play videogames. There's no reason holodeck addiction couldn't be the same. Also, this would all be happening in the context of greater knowledge of psychiatry and psychology (and actual telepathy).
From a technical perspective, we know that holodeck NPCs aren't inherently convincing. (One of the little touches I really like about TNG was that, long before CRPGs, they wrote the holodeck characters kind of like Skyrim villagers, acting out scripts and not really able to improvise.) The fact that Minuet could be convincing enough to fascinate Riker was explicitly because of the Bynars, and it's fair to guess that similarly convincing or at least sophisticated holodeck personalities are pretty rare on installations that don't have the computing power of the Enterprise and haven't been periodically upgraded by various mysterious alien races or God-like beings like genius Barclay. So being a badass hero in what's essentially a video game may not be fully satisfying enough for most people to check out of real life, especially when you notice the simulation running up against the edges of the curated content and NPCs start reusing lines, you kind of recognize the arms or feet of the newest weird alien as being a reskin of one you saw a week ago, etc.
Also, and the shows don't really get into this much, but if holodecks work the way the technical manuals say they do, where it's all done with light and forcefields and invisible treadmills, there are certain sensations and experience the holodeck just...can't simulate at a level enough to fool you. You can "jump" off a "cliff" but your inner ear isn't going to be fooled, your gut isn't going to climb into your throat the way it would if you were actually suddenly accelerating downward. There are probably lots of times where a simulated object or environment doesn't have the right weight or mass or texture. And if you have extra-human senses, like a superhuman sense of smell, you can probably tell that even though your friends have "split up" in the simulation to explore the planet and are supposedly miles apart, Jeff's cologne is coming from six feet away. And if you're a telepath, the whole thing would just be a weird puppet theater, like watching a 3D movie or animatronic robots.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Now all that said, it's kind of funny in retrospect that "don't get addicted to videogames" was basically the moral of The Cage, years before videogames existed.
The point about video games is true enough but then we've never had games anywhere near as immersive as what holodeck technology suggests. No VR headsets or controllers needed, you just step into a room and interact with things and that look, sound and feel real, with almost no limit to how you can interact with it compared to things in the real world. And while it's true it may never give a fully visceral experience, I do wonder how it felt for Wesley or Worf or Beverly when they were literally floating and thrashing and getting their hair soaked in holographic water (however that's supposed to work).
As for the level of self-awareness among the holodeck NPCs, that's again just a limit that can be overcome as easily as telling the computer to make it so, like when Geordi told the computer to devise a character that could beat Data. VOY and DS9 also showed how holographic programs could become sapient with shocking ease. Janeway even fell in love with a holodeck character. But then they've always played fast and loose with the AI rules. The first time we see the holodeck in TNG, it ends with a character asking Picard what happens to him and his family when the program shuts off.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
edited September 2021
Youtube recommended this to me today, a scene from Star Trek II: The Search for Spock that is the uploaders favorite scene from that film and mine too!
I think this scene (and a little further into it, where Kirk says he'll recommend them all for a promotion "In whatever fleet we end up serving") is the reason I never understood when people said that III was one of the bad ones. I wonder if people sometimes forget that the original Star Trek is one part morality hero speeches to one part fun adventures among a tightly-knit crew. This may be why I look at Picard with more fondness than others do - it gets the funny action-adventure down a lot of the times, and it has Picard morality speeches. It just needs a little work to get more cohesive and maybe now that the Reaper threat is contained it can be less dark, too.
Edit: This comment from Youtube is also top notch:
When I fly, I put on "Stealing The Enterprise" as the plane races down the runway, and I time it just right as the plane takes off. Been doing that for almost 30 years. Never gets old.
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
We need a secret, special ops insertion team to infiltrate and destroy an enemy base behind enemy lines.
I know! Lets get the late middle aged captain of the flagship, a middle aged doctor, and Worf (he makes sense) have them jog a lot to get ready, and send them in with Federation ninja costumes instead of, you know, soldiers.
That'll go swell.
For a late season 2-parter, I forgot how absurd the premise was.
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Or him still having nightmares about his time as Locutus, including appearances by her.
The trailer, such as it is, is giving me a very House of M vibe. I suspect Q will be doing some pretty substantial screwing with reality for whatever his esoteric purposes are this time.
Except everything we've ever seen for the Borg shows that any and all thought is completely prohibited save for that which helps the Collective assimilate. The average individual person still thinks about the things they think; a trillion-fold mind is going to do that exponentially more, unless it's outright stopped by hardware and software changes. So even within the Collective, there should be shitloads of internal debate and argument except for the fact that the machine side says "nope, everybody think the same things".
The purpose of the Collective is explicitly an artificial one, given by whatever process started it. There is no people or their will to push in a direction, only the Collective and its narrow goals. Otherwise, there's no way they'd fly around by the trillions chopping up and absorbing people via horrific surgery, because the Collective would be filled with people's minds going "oh shit, that was horrible". But they don't get a say, because the overarching construct of the Collective says "eat more people". There's no collective vote, just obey.
And no way at all can a single mind direct at all that, so a Borg Queen just makes what is a great idea for a scifi organism and turns it into a rather stupid cyborg slave situation.
Yes, the individual is subsumed by the collective will but that is still made by the collective itself. There is no debate because everyone agrees. But the way it's described, everyone is still there communicating in some way with each other. They are all there in some sense. It's just a community where the desires of the collective are all that matter and the idea of the individual as being apart from that don't exist. It's collectivism taken to the sci-fi extreme.
that you gave me a chip n dale rescue ranger quote is something i will hold dear for a long time.
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it's a fascinating story, really.
at first glance it's simply "lol, the mice made a (cargo) cult out of a soda jingle."
and then you step back and you realize, "holy crap, this is a marketing campaign using explicit cult messaging to sell soda."
buy the product, sing the song, make the brand identity part of your identity.
Talking to a person who served on DS9 at the time!
There are people who you get thrown in the brig for assaulting, and then there's guys like that who aren't worth your time
I'd like to see him and Boimler face off:
"I've been trying to get a promotion for a year!"
"A whole year, huh. Wow."
Better yet—we see the main cast get slowly promoted over the course of the seasons, but remain on the bottom end of the totem pole.
In season 5 they're all full Lieutenants. Kim shows up and he's been demoted to the hitherto-theoretical rank of "Ensign, Junior Grade."
No.
Harry Must Suffer.
Dude probably got a promotion after they got back to the Alpha quadrant.
Warlord - A body swapping tyrant takes over Kes and returns home to stage a coup. Was cool to see Kes going all tyrannical in the same way it was Tilly in Disco.
The Q And The Grey - Q returns and propositions Janeway. Civil war in the continuum. JdL hamming it the hell up, and Janeway slapping him down is always going to be worth 40 minutes of time.
Macrocosm - A virus that manifests as large critters infests Voyager. Really couldn't get into this one, because the premise was so clearly ludicrous. Both the macroism, but also the whole "this infected the crew, but few, if any people are actually going to die". Could have done it much differently, like had everyone seal themselves up in escape pods, or stasis fields, or something. Only entertaining part of this episode was the Tak Tak, and body language being the most important aspect of their communication.
Fair Trade - Neelix gets roped into drug trafficking by an old acquaintance. Fairly rote story, Neelix misinterprets his value, does something minor, is blackmailed into something more, finally comes clean, realizes he's more valued than he thought. It wasn't a bad episode, but it felt like it was a B-plot stretched out into a full episode.
Alter Ego - Harry falls in love with a hologram, Tuvok tries to help and doesn't, hologram takes over parts of the ship. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, holodecks are too dangerous. Granted, this isn't a rampant AI, it's an alien near a nebula. The nebula argument was weak, First, she's there voluntarily. Second, she's there not because the nebula is dangerous, but because tweaking it entertains he planet. Change either of those, and there's some empathy for the character. But as it is, you're lonely? Go home!
Coda - Janeway dies, or so she thinks. Her father tries to get her to go towards the light. Turns out it's just another psychic alien parasite messing with her so it can eat her conciousness, and I'm kinda done with that story.
Blood Fever - A Vulcan ensign starts Pon Farr, and infects B'Elanna. On an away mission, she goes into "heat". The B-plot with the Vulcan is a bit over the top, but whatever. Sets up Tom/B'Elanna in the future. The side mission with the natives is fine, with the epilogue reveal of Borg as a future threat.
Unity - Chakotay and a yellowshirt crash on a planet and find a ragtag group, Turns out they're desimilated Borg. And there's a cube. Hey, that didn't take long. Chakotay escapes the planet, is brainjacked to enable some Borg comms tech, and we're off to the races on the Borg now being a potential threat (yes, I know they do).
Darkling - The Doctor grafts on parts of the personalities of several historical holodeck characters and becomes evil. This episode was crap. If it was anyone but Picardo hamming it up as the evil one, I'd probably have turned it off. That the holodeck designs would incorporate the pathos within those characters, is again #HolodecksAreTooDangerous. I can understand people wanting to study it a bit more in an academic setting, but there's no need for the characters on starship holodeck to be that detailed. It's like giving a college astronomy textbook to a pre-teen. Sure, they can appreciate the pretty pictures, but the text is going to be beyond nearly all of them.
Yeah, but then his ship joins your admiralty task force and I send him to scan comets constantly. Oh, look, a major Borg incursion near Ferenginar and the Rhode Island's special lines up perfectly with its modifiers. VSS Citadel>Ferenginar USS Rhode Island>comets.
Also maybe gonna get the Mrs to play as a ToS Temporal Agent? Let’s see!
ETA: This was meant to go in the STO thread, but eh
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There is probably a pretty strong argument for not promoting most of the crew during their time in Delta, barring deaths/etc. That being said, there is also a VERY strong argument for a lot more cross training. Kim should have spent time at the helm, and Tactical, etc. They were in a position where replacements were incredibly difficult to come by (though evidently not impossible), so having someone be able to take over another dept would be a LOT more important.
Ergo, they just thought it was funny that Harry never got promoted.
Could've set Voyager apart from TNG if everyone but Janeway/Chakotay shifted bridge positions every once in awhile.
Which is probably why they didn't do it.
Paris getting demoted and then restored, too. And it was a ship with a gutted command structure, there were absolutely opportunities for advancement - Harry Kim was an ensign, but also ended up in a department head position and actually took the bridge on the night shift. This is the same position Data held in TNG. We know Voyager had a lieutenant position open for Harry Kim because he was already doing it.
Post scarcity is about policy, not just availability. Cardassians had replicators, too, but also had children starving in the street. Having functionally infinite resources doesn't matter if policy confines them. Quark sold food for latinum that he replicated for free because the Federation didn't actually collect on his tab.
The Ferengi enshrine monopolies in law so that infinitely producible products can still be sold for maximum prices. You can get a replicator, but despite being produced out of a slightly larger replicator costs several bricks of latinum. And then you need power, which despite being produced by the petawatt hour is still metered by the kilowatt hour at a markup that would make a Snap On salesman say, "Woah."
And now the thing has better DRM than the Enterprise so you can't just download stuff, you need to buy patterns out of the asset store. It comes preprogrammed with warm water and Nutritionally "Complete" Nutrient Paste no. 1 (artificially nothing flavored).
You know how the world produces enough food for everyone to just gorge themselves into morbid life threatening obesity, but inequitable distribution leaves whole continents worrying about breakfast? Expand that to the level of a global religion and you have Ferenginar.
Ironically, this is exactly what Neelix is doing in the mid half of S3 (where I'm up to).
He's learning engineering from B'Elanna, wants to learn security from Tuvok, rudimentary healthcare from the Doctor, wants to learn bridge functions.
Only one who seems to be interested in expanding their horizons on a professional level.
and/or trying to make himself, if not indispensable, then less likely to be kicked off or "accidentally" left behind.
Oh sure, I just said there was logic for it.
Honestly now you're just making me wonder about life in the Federation itself, with full post-scarcity in play. The idea is everyone more or less wants to work towards a better tomorrow but it's not like everyone joins Starfleet. What about those who only live for more carnal, less lofty pursuits? Even among people who still decide to hold regular jobs in service of society, how many of them come home to a fully holodecked apartment with perfectly realistic holo-servants and food replicators installed so they can enjoy any sort of lifestyle and furnishings they desire? You can have your holo-servants tirelessly massaging your shoulders and feet and serving your favorite drinks and meals in a perfect facsimile of a tropical island bungalow or luxury studio apartment or moving Oriental Express cabin or Ewok treehouse. And at the end of the day, you can have all the excess fat, carbs and cholesterol you gained transported directly out of your body or hyposprayed away.
I just wonder about the societal implications. Barclay showed holodeck fantasy addictions were a real potentially issue, especially among the socially awkward. How many people in the Federation can and would just choose to forego a social life completely and live among more agreeable AI friends and family?
Just from watching the first few seasons of TNG, it's worth remembering that holodecks are new tech then, and presumably restricted in supply. I'd be surprised if they got too far out into GenPop, given their propensity to try and murder the user.
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On Ferenginar, to be positive, things have gotten better. A reformist was elected head of the government, and several of the most appalling practices were outlawed.
My impression is that the current state of Ferenginar comes from two factors:
Right but what I mean is the cat's out of the bag now. The door is open for the tech to only get more streamlined and miniaturized with every iteration. It's really only matter of time before it becomes widely available for civilian use and I just wonder what that means for an entire civilization. Sure you could seek a career in Starfleet, gradually working your way up the ranks through years of hard work and determination while facing tedious, risky and sometimes life-threatening situations... or you could just LARP as a decorated admiral on the most advanced ship in the fleet doing only the exciting missions like planetary infiltration or flying around engaging alien warships in a fully immersive simulation.
From a technical perspective, we know that holodeck NPCs aren't inherently convincing. (One of the little touches I really like about TNG was that, long before CRPGs, they wrote the holodeck characters kind of like Skyrim villagers, acting out scripts and not really able to improvise.) The fact that Minuet could be convincing enough to fascinate Riker was explicitly because of the Bynars, and it's fair to guess that similarly convincing or at least sophisticated holodeck personalities are pretty rare on installations that don't have the computing power of the Enterprise and haven't been periodically upgraded by various mysterious alien races or God-like beings like genius Barclay. So being a badass hero in what's essentially a video game may not be fully satisfying enough for most people to check out of real life, especially when you notice the simulation running up against the edges of the curated content and NPCs start reusing lines, you kind of recognize the arms or feet of the newest weird alien as being a reskin of one you saw a week ago, etc.
Also, and the shows don't really get into this much, but if holodecks work the way the technical manuals say they do, where it's all done with light and forcefields and invisible treadmills, there are certain sensations and experience the holodeck just...can't simulate at a level enough to fool you. You can "jump" off a "cliff" but your inner ear isn't going to be fooled, your gut isn't going to climb into your throat the way it would if you were actually suddenly accelerating downward. There are probably lots of times where a simulated object or environment doesn't have the right weight or mass or texture. And if you have extra-human senses, like a superhuman sense of smell, you can probably tell that even though your friends have "split up" in the simulation to explore the planet and are supposedly miles apart, Jeff's cologne is coming from six feet away. And if you're a telepath, the whole thing would just be a weird puppet theater, like watching a 3D movie or animatronic robots.
As for the level of self-awareness among the holodeck NPCs, that's again just a limit that can be overcome as easily as telling the computer to make it so, like when Geordi told the computer to devise a character that could beat Data. VOY and DS9 also showed how holographic programs could become sapient with shocking ease. Janeway even fell in love with a holodeck character. But then they've always played fast and loose with the AI rules. The first time we see the holodeck in TNG, it ends with a character asking Picard what happens to him and his family when the program shuts off.
I think this scene (and a little further into it, where Kirk says he'll recommend them all for a promotion "In whatever fleet we end up serving") is the reason I never understood when people said that III was one of the bad ones. I wonder if people sometimes forget that the original Star Trek is one part morality hero speeches to one part fun adventures among a tightly-knit crew. This may be why I look at Picard with more fondness than others do - it gets the funny action-adventure down a lot of the times, and it has Picard morality speeches. It just needs a little work to get more cohesive and maybe now that the Reaper threat is contained it can be less dark, too.
Edit: This comment from Youtube is also top notch:
We need a secret, special ops insertion team to infiltrate and destroy an enemy base behind enemy lines.
I know! Lets get the late middle aged captain of the flagship, a middle aged doctor, and Worf (he makes sense) have them jog a lot to get ready, and send them in with Federation ninja costumes instead of, you know, soldiers.
That'll go swell.
For a late season 2-parter, I forgot how absurd the premise was.
EDIT: Props on Irenicus, though.