StillPaisleyCat
@StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website
- Comment on It's sad that people completely misunderstand what Star Trek is about. 4 hours ago:
It’s a silver lining to see Shatner using his platform for the greater good.
- Comment on Star Trek Discovery Kind of Forgot There Were No Replicators in the 23rd Century 1 day ago:
I just realized there’s even a fried egg in there.
- Comment on Star Trek Discovery Kind of Forgot There Were No Replicators in the 23rd Century 1 day ago:
It’s available as a BlueRay screencap from TrekCore…
Might be best to download directly from there:
- Comment on Star Trek Discovery Kind of Forgot There Were No Replicators in the 23rd Century 1 day ago:
Definitely replicators, and ones that are presumably more sophisticated than the 24th century ones on Voyager given the general use of programmable matter by Starfleet in the 32nd century.
What’s challenging in the 32nd century setting is that more advanced technology exists but it’s availability is very uneven.
- Comment on Star Trek Discovery Kind of Forgot There Were No Replicators in the 23rd Century 1 day ago:
In Discovery, in the 32nd century, Admiral Vance makes the point that all the food at Federation headquarters is made from reconstituted waste.
- Comment on Star Trek Discovery Kind of Forgot There Were No Replicators in the 23rd Century 1 day ago:
TAS and Discovery both showed the Enterprise has food synthesizers rather than replicators.
How significant is the difference? — it’s never made clear but picking up a meal from a food synthesizer is implied in TOS when Kirk gets a simple meal from a wall.
Also, it does seem that SNW’s food synthesizer is much more sophisticated than the one in TAS and Discovery, fabricating better quality basic materials.
Here’s compilation I made a while ago, of Scotty’s distain for the mayhem caused when the ship’s main computer gets hit by a ‘spatial anomaly’ and interacts with the ‘Rec Room’ 3D holographic simulator in TAS ‘The Practical Joker.’
- Comment on Pluto TV Celebrates William Shatner’s Birthday With Star Trek Takeover Including All The Movies Streaming Free 3 days ago:
This doesn’t seem to be offered in Canada.
The ‘Pluto Spotlight’ still seems to be on Academy Award Winners.
I see the regular TOS all day channel offered, but the movies aren’t featured in the movie channels.
In the ‘On Demand’ offerings, there’s a ‘60 years of Star Trek’ that offers TOS, TNG & Voyager as well as some documentaries as usual.
In fact, it seems that none of the movies aren’t available on PlutoTV in Canada.
- Comment on What's your favorite ship or class of ship? 3 days ago:
I really just want the Aventine Vesta-class.
- Comment on London Science Museum: Star Trek Lates 3 days ago:
Very cool.
I wonder if there will be any kind of installation in Canada this time. I don’t see anything listed in the upcoming events.
For the 50th anniversary, the Canadia Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa had a special exhibition that ran the whole summer. We were able to take our kids. There were a lot of costumes and props but also some interactive activities including a Kobayashi Maru test.
- Comment on Star Trek: Legacy Series Fans Want Most Is “Never Gonna Happen,” Says TNG’s Marina Sirtis 5 days ago:
I believe that there was mention of some Legacy locations and species to visit too.
Sigh…
- Comment on Star Trek: Legacy Series Fans Want Most Is “Never Gonna Happen,” Says TNG’s Marina Sirtis 5 days ago:
I’m perhaps at the extreme of negativity about the Legacy premise, but what Matalas seemed to be pitching was almost an anthology of legacy characters being visited by the Titanprise with the bridge full of offspring.
So, yes, Sirtis would not be wrong to think the focus of the pitch was the older cast with the younger characters and the visiting Titanprise as more or less the framing.
I have a theory that someone in senior management of the streamer under the old ownership had a strong belief that ‘children of legacy characters’ were a necessary bridge between old and new audiences. There seems to have been no awareness at all of his antithetical nepotism would be to the meritocratic principles of Starfleet.
We have La’an Noonien-Singh for no particular reason in SNW - she’s not even the bridge officer with augmented abilities.
Also, the more I hear about the pitch for Unity the more it sounds like a family saga with all the great things Archer’s offspring are up to as young adults (since the creators were told that they could have them at the Academy as they’d originally pitched).
- Comment on March Star Trek Merch Roundup: Klingon Weapons, Starfleet Academy Pins, New EXO-6 Figures, and More! 1 week ago:
Glad the Fansets SFA combadges are coming out right away with both pins and magnets.
I still have vivid memories of trawling through the vendors at a 2019 local Comic Con, with our youngest and 45 k other attendees, looking for a Disco S2 combadge with magnet that didn’t actually exist.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Starfleet Academy | 1x10 "Rubincon" 1 week ago:
This era of Star Trek has quite a few A-listers actually.
Starfleet Academy is helmed by Oscar winner for best actress Holly Hunter (in The Piano), has two time nominee Paul Giamatti (one each nominations for best and best supporting actor) as well as Tig Notaro who is nominated this year for her documentary and has also been nominated twice for Emmys.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Starfleet Academy | 1x10 "Rubincon" 1 week ago:
We will never see 26 episode seasons again.
It currently takes more than one week to shoot a 42 minute episode.
Also, actors are not willing to lock into shows that leave them unavailable for movies or other television shows.
Star Trek and other streaming series are able to cast A-listers not just because they are willing to pay high pay rates and list them as executive producers but also because the A-listers are able to lock in multi season contracts with Star Trek while still being available to do other things.
- Comment on ‘Strange New Worlds’ EP Talks S4 Release Date, S5 Characters, And A Return To “Classic” Star Trek 1 week ago:
Sound like a decision was made on high that the 60th anniversary would not take place without a Star Trek show under weekly release.
- Comment on Alex Kurtzman On Starting Discussions With Paramount Skydance Over The Future Of Star Trek TV 1 week ago:
I’m going to say that I saw some of the problems to come in BSG season three, but I still bought the physical media up to that point.
I don’t think you can blame it all on the writers strike, any more than you can blame Picard season two or Discovery season four’s weaknesses on the pandemic.
Other shows managed better. It’s the test of a good senior production executive to manage through those situations.
I was deeply disappointed in where For All Mankind took its women characters. I was hoping that having Naren Shankar join after he finished with The Expanse would redeem it, but it just kept getting worse in its treatment of women.
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! a driven engineer who becomes the head in Houston only to fall into a honey-trap and feed the Soviets information!<
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! an astronaut who played up her physical beauty and whose top-gun husband became a despondent alcoholic when she leaves him responsible for the kids!<
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! an astronaut who hides her sexual preference through a fake marriage !<
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! the neglected wife of an astronaut who is stalked and manipulated into a one time sexual encounter with a young man she once looked after as a child, then carries the burden of responsibility for the impact of his obsession.!<
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- Comment on Alex Kurtzman On Starting Discussions With Paramount Skydance Over The Future Of Star Trek TV 1 week ago:
We’re going to need to differ on Ronald D. Moore.
I wish Trek fans would stop calling for him to helm the franchise when we have not seen adequate evidence that he can carry through to make the kind of Trek that represents IDIC for future.
What I am seeing from him is a pattern of starting great new shows but not having as great ideas about following through long multi season arcs.
The Battlestar Galactica reboot was riveting for the first two seasons and then spiralled to a disappointing conclusion.
For All Mankind spun out in seasons two and three with an Oedipal storyline about a kid who becomes obsessed with his foster mother and wreaks havoc. Not to mention that all the heroic women characters in from season one had to be shown to deeply flawed by season three in a very male-perspective way.
For All Mankind isn’t as bad in terms of having a cisgender-male viewpoint writing women leads as say the Sheridan show Lioness, but it’s not succeeding as a show women see themselves in.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Starfleet Academy | 1x10 "Rubincon" 1 week ago:
I’m not sure I can agree. This show has come a long way from the JJ Abrams directorial tricks embraced by Discovery and other shows of this production era.
I actually thought that Producing Director Osunsamni was restraining himself noticeably in his use of whipping cameras as compared to his directing style in previous shows.
Kurtzman set a directorial mandate for the show in the opening episodes with longer pans and more close ups on the characters. He even commissioned special amorphic lenses that enable close ups within the large sets. Jonathan Frakes mentioned that the directional norms for SFA are quite different and that he enjoyed the opportunity on his episode to rely more on shots where he closed in on the characters.
For this episode, the choice of using a shifting drone view for a remote news audience made sense in the context of an otherwise static scene of Nus’ theatrical show trial.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Starfleet Academy | 1x10 "Rubincon" 1 week ago:
I always thought that the insistence on every Paramount+ show having 10 episode seasons — which was mandated by the executives in charge of streaming when the ViacomCBS merger happened — was weird.
Other streamers are not that rigid and vary season structures depending on what the show is. While 12 episode seasons are rare, I can’t see the streamer that merges HBO Max and Paramount+ being quite so rigid.
The newly merged conglomerate has a myriad of practical decisions to make in merging Paramount and WBDiscovery. It will take time for all of the parameters of their streaming model to be fully established and implemented but we can expect some significant rethinking.
- Comment on Interview: ‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ Showrunners Talk Season Finale Messages; Tease Season 2 Villain 1 week ago:
One of the things that stands out - pun intended - about Starfleet Academy, is that the directors and production crew aren’t trying to hide the differences in height.
Holly Hunter isn’t afraid to let it be seen that she doesn’t even come up to Sandro’s shoulder.
Unlike Patrick Stewart who seemed to want more orange boxes deployed to minimize his height difference in Picard than has even been necessary in the constraints of old standard definition in TNG, the actors are comfortable being different in height and the directing style is working with it.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Starfleet Academy | 1x10 "Rubincon" 1 week ago:
I’m hoping we’ll get more later.
The Imzadi bond between Tarima and Caleb is an order of magnitude stronger than Troi and Riker’s. Likely more.
I’m willing to go with a head cannon for now that Caleb has to have some native psychic abilities, if latent, that sparked the attraction and connection even with Tarima’s inhibitor in place.
- Comment on ‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ Bosses Explain Finale Ending 1 week ago:
“Lanthanites are a fun ride” says co-showrunner Noga Landau.
Of course, Nahla Ake has extended family even if she told Nus that she didn’t know her Lanthanite father well.
Will we see Pelia? Other Lanthanites?
Do we have a Lwaxana Troi type character incoming in season two?
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Starfleet Academy | 1x10 "Rubincon" 1 week ago:
I’m feeling the same way.
This is the most coherently plotted live action Trek of the current era. The showrunners and writers room knew what they wanted and laid down all the pieces to get there.
I’m going to say that while Anisha’s punch of Brakka’s (as they say in comics) most punchable face seemed logical and a necessary catharsis, I don’t like that Ake stooped to that herself, however understandable the motivation.
I still feel, based on how much difference an extra two episodes per season makes to a low budget show like The Ark, that SFA would be stronger and better able to serve its large cast with 12 episode seasons.
I hope we get more on SAM’s development and integration of her two memories in season two.
Likewise, there definitely feels that there’s unfinished business between Anisha and Ake. I am going with Anisha being resigned to accept who her son has become but unsure of her own future.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Starfleet Academy | 1x10 "Rubincon" 1 week ago:
Time passed. It wasn’t instant.
I assumed that the Starfleet ships were prepositioned near the barrier/wall ready to cross. We were shown in the previous episode that there were old remnants of Borg Transwarp conduits in the region.
Reno could have messaged Vance even if full holographic communications weren’t available.
The episode makes clear that hours had passed while the Reno and the cadets on Athena were repairing the ship and working out the solution, then another 30 minutes to get to the star system at a limping warp speed and more to find Brakka.
- Comment on Alex Kurtzman On Starting Discussions With Paramount Skydance Over The Future Of Star Trek TV 1 week ago:
I’m trying to find a way to reconcile some of Rod Roddenberry’s recent social media statements with the positives in interviews with from Kurtzman and Osunsamni.
Rod Roddenberry has not critiqued Secret Hideout but has talked about how there is potential for more positive Star Trek that fulfills his father’s concept of modeling a utopian society.
So, clearly Roddenberry Entertainment is pressing for some strategic influence in future shows.
That said, it makes one wonder how much strategic direction for darker peak television may have come from the highest levels at CBS and Paramount…
- Comment on Alex Kurtzman On Starting Discussions With Paramount Skydance Over The Future Of Star Trek TV 1 week ago:
Even many of the perpetual doomsayers on other platforms are bending to acknowledge that SFA is tenaciously sticking at a rank of #1 or 2 on Amazon Channels.
It’s sinking in that SFA is pulling viewers but not Paramount+’s existing demographic — which means that it’s achieving what it was designed to do.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Starfleet Academy | 1x09 "300th Night" 1 week ago:
We’ll have to see how the finale lands, but it may be the most successfully constructed live action season arc of this era.
- Comment on Exclusive Update On The ‘Star Trek: Year One’ Series Pitch And Status Of The ‘Strange New Worlds’ Sets 1 week ago:
I recall that feeling!
I also recall that there were many TOS fans my age for whom the Kirk-Spock-McCoy triumvirate defined Star Trek.
I never thought that way myself but it’s been a dividing line in the franchise from the start.
I love SNW for what it is but I have to say that I was disappointed that Akiva Goldsman — who said he was himself disappointed when he joined Discovery’s writers room in season one to find out that they originally had no intention to include Pike — turned out to be more focused in telling the pre-TOS backstory of the TOS main characters than in telling the story of the Enterprise under Pike’s command.
- Comment on Which faction you expect to be antagonist in some next Star Trek story? 1 week ago:
This is another thought experiment that Kirsten Beyer took on in her Voyager Full Circle sequence in the Relaunch Treklit novelverse.
There were a lot of questions about whether their ethics were in fact shared or parallel with that of the Federation as well as whether they really were who they claimed to be on the surface.
Another Relaunch Treklit exploration involved a very different Breen society than Discovered unveiled. Instead of a single species, Breen turned out to be a multiplicity of species with different environmental requirements who all spent all their lives in environmental suits other than in their own homes. In the Relaunch universe, the Breen achieved species, race and gender equality by completely hiding their physiology and masking their voices.
- Comment on Interview: ‘Starfleet Academy’ EP/Director Talks What’s New For Season 2, Why He’s Optimistic About Season 3 1 week ago:
And his S31 movie was terrific too (based on his comments in other promotional campaigns).
My partner and I are among the seemingly very few longtime Trek fans who really found S31 fun, and have even rewatched it.
That said, however evidently capable Osunsamni is as the executive in charge of managing production in Toronto, S31 exemplifies a personal preference for flash over substance. One therefore has to wonder whether he’s got good situational awareness about where the context is now.
