Comment on Cope

• hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I don’t know the number off the top of my head.

  The plot revolves around a wargames scenario. There is for some reason an alien race that is really good at war strategies. There is an advisor from that race on the enterprise.

  The advisor is a massive dick. However he’s also somewhat legit. He beats data at some strategy game.

  The enterprise is set to fight a decommissioned federation ship. Half the crew comes over there. It’s led by Riker. Wesely is also over there. He snuck his dilithium science project aboard. He tells Riker about it. Riker is happy, because it’s enough dilithium to give him like a second of warp. He thinks he can use it in a surprise attack.

  The science project itself isn’t super complex. LaForge was mildly impressed when Wesely told him about it, in a way that made it feel like he’s smart for his age. He started the entire project like two weeks ago.

  Anyway in the middle of this the ferengi show up. This is one of the times they aren’t complete jokes. They start attacking Riker’s ship because they think it’s valuable or something. The enterprise can’t easily stop them because they are carrying dummy rounds. Riker ends up using the Dilithium is some sort of bluff to beat the ferengis.

  The episode ends with Data and the alien strategist playing the game again. The strategist gets upset and rage quits. It’s revealed that Data realized that last time he was playing to win, so this time he was playing to not lose. He basically got the alien into a stalemate.

  There are also a million other reasons why the Burn doesn’t make that much sense. The Klingons use Trilithium. The Romulans used a contained singularity. In Voyager we saw a number of potential non-dilithium alternatives. One of them was a glorified slingshot.

  There’s also just the thematic implications. Star Trek has always been portrayed as this big diverse galaxy. There are a ton of alien races running around doing weird things that we only grasp the surface of. There are even more alien races we’ll never meet. There are races that have technology beyond our comprehension, and races that are effectively Gods.

  I think the writers handwaved the entire thing away so that the Burn technically doesn’t break canon. Just like La’Rell winning the chancellorship is canon. However it feels almost antithetical to what we know about the setting.

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  • ValueSubtracted@startrek.website ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The plot revolves around a wargames scenario. There is for some reason an alien race that is really good at war strategies. There is an advisor from that race on the enterprise.

    Ah, that would be “Peak Performance”, in which Wesley has an experiment that has something to do with high-energy plasma reaction with antimatter, and nothing whatsoever to do with growing dilithium. Swing and a miss.

    The Klingons use Trilithium.

    Strike two - trilithium is an unstable explosive that is used in the engines of exactly no one. The Klingons do use tritium as an intermix, but as you are aware, that simply replaced the role that deuterium plays in Starfleet designs - it has nothing to do with dilithium.

    The Romulans used a contained singularity.

    This is the closest you’ve come to having something. Of course, there’s exactly zero information on how those drives operate or are manufactured, along with the pesky fact that the Romulans have enslaved an entire race to mine dilithium for them, which is…not something you typically do to obtain a substance that you don’t need. We’ll call it a foul ball.

    In Voyager we saw a number of potential non-dilithium alternatives. One of them was a glorified slingshot.

    What did we learn about how these alternatives are powered, particularly considering that several of them were plugged into Voyager’s warp core without too much trouble? You get bonus points if you can identify the one that was specifically described as “not antimatter,” which is most likely (but not guaranteed) to exclude dilithium.

    So far we’ve got two strikes and two fouls. You’re still at bat.

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    • hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Look you’ve clearly made up your mind. I don’t think there’s anything anyone could do to convince you. You’re talking to me in a way that’s condescending and disrespectful, so I certainly don’t want to be the one to try.

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      • ValueSubtracted@startrek.website ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I have made up my mind about your factual errors, yeah. You’re not going to convince me of things that aren’t true.

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