Fair but depressing take. I’d say one of the critical parts of diversity in Star Trek is showing how different personalities and backgrounds working together can accomplish more. I just wish it sometimes worked against the Federation as well.
The lack of racial diversity for the empires outside of the Federation makes it feel like somehow only the Federation ever figured out how to work with others. Even problematic caste style situations do not come up enough, let alone just simple variations of races.
The most “diverse” other empire is somehow the Dominion. We know the other empires have other races in them as well. It’s such a Federation centric view of the universe and I feel that it reinforced my America centric mindset because the parallels seem so direct to me. We are diverse, everyone else is easily groupable into divided others. Only we are Free. Only we are willing to work together.
The fact that they have made terrible business choices doesn’t mean it is impossible to make good one.
The subscription model is not for driving positive revenue it is to smooth out investor concerns. You have steady revenue streams to reassure that your market is stable so you don’t suffer as hard when you drop a Redfall.
The big issue is massive failure of handling day 1 releases. They made it TOO good of a deal. It probably is a corporate structure issue where the division owning game pass was able to sacrifice a neighboring divisions revenue so they could get good metrics.
Microsoft GamePass was serious competition and they ruined it, for now. They had managed to build a system where there was no reason for folks not to buy in, people got nearly unlimited games and then often paid for DLC and cash shop items for games they didn’t even own. It was converting the average gaming market to an a la cart style cash shop which as much as 2010 me would consider this offensive, today it is often better for gamers without money.
The only other thing that would seriously compete with Steam would be a marketplace that had tradeable games but I think the game makers don’t want this so no developer would sign up for it.
Itch.io exists and it does a fantastic niche gaming distribution job so I don’t see how a new competitor can do better than what is already out there.
Hulu is the only one I wish they would keep because logging in to Disney to watch Alien and ESPN still seems really wrong to me. I would prefer the Disney app be 100% kid friendly and Hulu be for everything else.
This is a tale older than AI. Most of the AI productivity pushes I struggle to get adopted fail not because of AI bad or its too hard to do. They fail because of a broken CI/CD pipeline. They fail because some team thinks their process is sacred and unique.
YuzuKey flavored verification cans can keep you authenticated for 2 to 8 hours.
Are you recommending folks buy something from one of the companies that didn’t hire back the people? Or one of the fictional companies that did not use AI as an excuse for layoffs.
It was significantly harder as a writer to research a subject before the 2000s than it is today. This is before Wikipedia and Google where researching a topic like this could take months and misinformation was harder to refute. Look at how they did poor Chakotay.
Writers used personal experience, cliches and stereotypes to inform their characters. I find the Institute characters to be extreme representations of kids that grew up with parents that would go too far to make their kids the smartest.
I think Bashir is “lucky” not because the surgery didn’t have extreme side effects. He is lucky because his parents pushing him resulted in him being the type of person that society could accept. His trauma made him a people pleaser rather than a recluse or a hedonist or neurotic.
Commander Abe Sapien’s dialog early on is pretty rough. His character is entirely ruined by the forced tension with Michael.
I wish there was like a Season 0 where I could learn to care about the characters before the events of Season 1. I feel like it is taking me on a journey the characters havent earned.
My biggest issue is I just dont like any of the characters and I wouldn’t want to be on that ship. That to me is the biggest flaw of Discovery.
Every other Star Trek I can imagine it being so cool to get to be there. Discovery would be awful. Being around that crew sounds awful and exhausting.
I tried watching it and got to what I was told was a peak episode in S1E7 and it was still awful and seemed like it would be awful. No charm. I compare it to other episodes in sci fi like it and it has nearly 0 fun and the fun it had was dark and creepy.
Movie Star Trek is different from TV Star Trek. Except for Insurrection which is just a 2 part episode in a movie trench coat. And probably Section 31 but I don’t plan to watch that and find out.
SNW S1E2 - Children of the Comet. This is a tricky one because of potential predestination and the end result being an accidental major break of the prime directive. A warp capable civilization is certain that a comet must destroy a pre warp civilization and refuse to let that change. The issue is that the ship/comet wants the Federation to interfere and does not intend to hit the planet. This is all in Federation space.
Another in Federation space that is also a loose fit is LD S5E7 - Fully Dialated where the crew must recover Data’s head from an alternate reality that has fallen on a pre warp world. The loose fit here is that the only reason they count as external is that it is Purple Data who is not technically a a member of this realities Federation and thus an outsider.
Lastly a decent fit but outside Federation space is Prodigy S1E7 - First Con-Tact. The crew first breaks the prime directive by making first contact with a pre warp civilization but then defends it by stopping a Ferengi from influence the civilization negatively. This is outside Federation space though.
Specifically for a new viewer who wants 3 shows that would be different and enjoyable:
TNG:
The Inner Light, Cause and Effect, Lower Decks
DS9:
Duet, The Visitor, Trials and Tribbleations
Prodigy has holoemitters on every deck and is able to reconfigure the bridge using them. It is possible but they just need a reason.
We have like three entirely reasonable shows all setup that they keep not even touching. All of them episodic, all of them able to both speak to new generations and old.
Upper Decks: Live action show with the characters from Lower Decks. Primary focus is the main characters coming to terms with the fact that they are good enough to be senior members of a crew. Continue the idea that they are the little ship that could and their missions focus around support rather than flagship or the biggest of the bads.
Prodigy 2.0: Again live action, with Ella Purnell as a captain who is super in demand and capable and would be fantastic in the role. Focus here is again episodic, when the rest of the Federation has abandoned exploration due to all the BS at the start of Picard, they are the only crew left with the charter to seek out new life and new civilizations. You have an incredibly young but capable cast and easily could bring in some heavy hitters to support them.
Legacy: This idea has floated around a ton since Picard S3, honestly its the least developed of the ideas and I’d rather see a way to roll it into one of the much better and more fleshed out ideas above. I feel like the final scene in Picard was an afterthought while both Lower Decks and Progidy it was a true capstone.
The new 20 episode season is a 10 episode season with 5 webisodes and a cheaper side project like a cartoon or anthology.
Honestly this is better to me because it enables the good plots of the smaller episodes to get all the focus without forcing some awful secondary plot to fill run time.
I think this looks great. I’m not going to run a 20 foot USB cable accross my living room so wireless is pretty much a must. I think the only concern I have is if it discharges if I store it and if so what the bringup time would be.
Normal for a person, but not normal for him. We see him as a very passionate person before he gets his implant who treats the dulling of his emotions as a boon.
I’d be shocked if the person influencing this writing of his character had never dealt with SSRIs or a similar medication.
You can only boot from the C Drive these days because a modern BIOS AI has such a small model it can only read at a first grade level. The first commands it understands are C Drive “the discovery command”, C Drive Run “initial boot”, Run Drive Run “OS handover”.