StillPaisleyCat

joined 2 years ago

No worries, Dan Jeannotte has it covered.

I’m not attributing anything here. You’re arguably the one clinging to your head canon.

I’m an older person who was around to hear other OG fans complain about this ‘alternate universe/timeline for TNG’ theory in the late 1980s. And to see how the Great Bird himself responded.

Roddenberry went on the record saying that the timeline had to adjust to always keep the show’s future as a possible future for the audience. He defended the shift in the timing of WW3.

Goldsman, who has been a fan longer than almost any of his detractors, would have heard this more than I did. Goldsman organized one of the very first clubs and fanzines as a preteen, and attended the first ever convention in New York City.

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 14 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Roddenberry himself was adamant that Star Trek’s history had to remain a possible history for viewers. So, the dates can slip as long as the major events don’t.

That is why he put WW3 later than implied by TOS, delaying it to the mid 21st century in the TNG pilot ‘Encounter at Farpoint’ even though that led to a contingent of TOS fans insisting that it ‘had to be a separate universe from the one of the original series.’

While writers never explicitly resolved this onscreen during the Berman Era shows, preferring to weasel with offscreen head canon in interviews saying that perhaps the Eugenics Wars were covert and going on unknown in the 90s, the new shows have dealt with this problem head on by acknowledging that temporal incursions do affect the timing of major events without making it a separate timeline.

SNW and Prodigy have been able to make this clear onscreen in canon with the expert help of the franchise’s excellent physicist science advisor Dr. Erin Macdonald. (She did her PhD with the team in Scotland that got the Noble prize just a couple of years later. She’s truly on top of modern theoretical physics.)

McCoy was in Encounter at Farpoint with one meta purpose - to counter the TOS fans that were campaigning hard to say that it ‘wasn’t the same universe.’

McCoy’s presence was a nice Easter Egg, but not much more. But he did the job of saying that it was the new Enterprise in continuity with the legendary ship on which he served.

Fans argued that because Roddenberry insisted on moving WW3 back to the mid 21st century as of Encounter at Farpoint, TNG had to be a different timeline.

TOS fans understood the Eugenics Wars to be the precursor to WW3, so they just didn’t accept WW3 was going to be another half-century away. Roddenberry’s directive was to always keep the Star Trek future in our future so WW3 had to be shifted to later in time and any specific mention of the date of the Eugenics Wars was avoided.

They also hated the carpet and many other things about the ‘luxury hotel in space’ Enterprise.

Yup, that happened and continued to happen until well into TNG season 3. The brigading Berman-era fans who rail unrelentingly against ‘Nu-Trek’ don’t sound any different, they’re just more visible than the 1980s fans that relied on mimeoed fanzines and Usenet. Fans that liked TNG kept quiet at cons until at least 1990, and vendors didn’t bring TNG merchandise.

No need to fuss about calendars. Just need to revisit Dr. Macdonald’s Temporal Mechanics 101.

There have been several temporal incursions since the DS9 crew did theirs - Voyager, Picard, SNW and Prodigy, not to mention the rippling effects of the Temporal Wars established in Enterprise and Discovery.

Dates and details can slip as long as the major events stay more or less the same.

From what I can tell Americans used to use scales for dry measures (in ounces) but somewhere along the line, they switched to volume measures for everything.

As a Canadian, it’s really frustrating because often will get the American versions of UK cookbooks here which are both not metric and not weights.

I enjoy my Australian cookbooks with metric weights.

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 12 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Cook in metric and use a scale!

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

If anything, Lower Decks has intentionally lifted some 7-note sequences from the TAS title theme.

The title theme for Lower Decks almost does a bait and switch riff of the TAS one.

Glad to have you. You should be warned though that this crew has already sucked in meme-lookers into watch the show and becoming fans.

As I was sucked in by the kid across the hall with a colour tv back in 1965, I can attest to the risk of wondering “What’s that pointy-eared guy doing with his hand on that monster?”

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I couldn’t resist. Glad you appreciated it, and that new Neelix image is all the thanks I needed.

By the way, in the meantime, I have done some more research only to discover that there are in fact TWO Earth root vegetables that are already viable as hydroponic crops: red radishes and beets.

The idea that Leola root is a cross between radish and beet is now firmly fixed in my mind.

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

Or, Leola root is the hydroponic equivalent of zucchini.

This video seems like something Neelix would make for his morning show.

What to do with too much zucchini!

 

In an exclusive interview with MovieWeb, Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth identify Prodigy as the best entry point to the franchise. No official comment on the cancellation on Paramount+ and Nickelodeon, but positive energy nevertheless.

"I think we both feel very good about Star Trek: Prodigy being a fantastic entry point because Prodigy came from the standpoint of people who don't know the Star Trek world. The characters themselves are learning as they go what it all means to be Starfleet and be Star Trek. I think from that standpoint, for people who are feeling intimidated by 57 years by the number of shows or episodes, it is a great way to understand what Star Trek is about through the characters learning the same things themselves. I think that was one of the amazing creative decisions the Hagermans (sic) [Brothers] came up with.”

 

An interesting and reasonably balanced piece.

I learned a few new things about the fediverse, including a Canadian angle on the creation of the ActivityPub protocol.

 

Some reflections on the Australian experience and what they might mean for Canada.

After Google’s move on Thursday, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez sent a written statement calling the companies’ moves “deeply irresponsible and out of touch … especially when they make billions of dollars off of Canadian users” with advertising.

Australia’s regulatory experiment – the first of its kind in the world – also got off to a rocky start, but it has since seen tech companies, news publishers and the government reach a middle ground.

 

As Janeway would have it, temporal mechanics can make our heads hurt.

Several of us here are still wrapping our minds around the implications of SNW 2 x 3 Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow for the Prime Universe timeline. The Romulan agent confirmed that key events in history have been resilient to temporal incursions, but their exact dates may change as time heals itself.

While this appears to warrant some deep dives on c/Daystrom Institute once we’ve had a bit of time to process this onscreen confirmation a bit more, I thought to look back to see what astrophysicist and Star Trek science consultant Dr Erin MacDonald has said previously on this point.

At the main link above, there is an episode of MacDonald’s Astrometric Episode Club where she reviews the temporal science of Voyager Relativity and DS9 Children of Time that appears on point.

There’s a few passing references to other time travel incidents along the way. These touch on the resilience of time, not least the causality loop in First Contact where the Borg incursion into the 21st century causes Enterprise to return and get Cochrane into space when needed even though the events weren’t quite as they were originally. The timeline is preserved in this essential key event no matter the details.

There’s also a report on Time Travel on StarTrek.com about an STLV 2019 presentation by Dr Erin MacDonald. (The piece itself was written by a professor of physics and astronomy.)

 

Gizmodo’s James Whitbrook has yet more to vent on Paramount+‘s cancelation and erasure of Prodigy.

I hadn’t considered the cancelation from the perspective of systemic misogyny, which Whitbrook effectively is carating.

However, given that Janeway was surely chosen as the legacy captain for Prodigy because Voyager had proven itself to be an effective gateway for younger and new viewers on Netflix, Whitbrook’s inference Paramount views her less important to the franchise than Picard is biting.

Paramount wouldn’t dare treat what it’s done for Patrick Stewart and Jean-Luc Picard as a tax break. Casting aside everything that Prodigy stood for, and in the process doing the same to Mulgrew and Janeway’s legacy, is a cruel twist on what is already a cruel fate for the show.

 

Despite the impact of the WGA strike on promotional activities, and the lack of the boost of a major sports event trailer release, SNW placed well against other original streaming shows in the week ending June 16th. Opening in sixth place in the top ten with 33.4 times average demand is promising.

Hopefully way Prodigy’s cancelation and removal dominated the media and social media after the second week will not adversely impact SNW’s run too much.

 

My spouse felt commemoratively inspired and asked me to post.

(It’s the Eaglemoss Kelvin D-7. The peony petals just did their own thing.)

 

How are folks using the decidedly beta Mlem doing?

It’s not as fully built as the developer’s demo pages would suggest.

However, it can do more than some have criticized.

It’s definitely idiosyncratic at this point.

So, I’m curious, in the spirit of assisting in getting this community going, to share what people have figured out that works.

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