I think it’s pretty fun. Even knowing the story beats, things go way different than on the show.

In my current (still first) run Tom and B’ellana got sucked into a black hole and died, but B’ellana’s full Klingon half is on phasers, Tuvix runs the mess and the Doctor runs the sick bay in tandem with a Malon. Voyager is armed to the teeth and just stomped the shit out of the Borg. I’m still missing a lot of heroes so I must have missed some opportunities too even though I’ve been hitting almost every mission.

Anyway, I enjoy narrative games and ones like Ixion or Fallout Shelter so this was aimed right at me.

However, I hated the suggested romantic tension between Caleb and Genesis, fortunately it didn’t went further than that.

I think they did that well. Spent one moment of “is this…?” and then moved on. Felt very young adult to me, but I also hope that’s the last of it.

Yeah, I liked the episode, nothing felt out of place in individual scenes, but you’re right it does feel like they were trying to fit too much story into too little time. There’s like four B-plots in there.

I have played the first 4 or 5 sectors now and it does hit a lot of the highlights but not every episode (although there may be some randomness to what shows up). I fucked up and entirely skipped Tuvix though.

Wesley (the boy?!)

True to your username, I heard the clip haha

the director thinking Geordie was an alien

Ugh. How did Stuart Baird end up directing this when you have a huge bullpen of Trek actor/directors that could’ve done so much better? Frakes is right there and did fine on First Contact / Insurrection. LeVar Burton himself, or even Roxann Dawson or Robert Duncan McNeill would have been available by then (although most of their directing credits come later).

I could understand if they went outside for someone that had a track record of decent movies, but Baird had little experience directing before Nemesis and apparently none afterwards.

Hi Karim, big fan of your work in Academy! Jay-Den’s backstory is already an all time great Trek episode.

My hard hitting question is personal: Coffee or tea? More generally, favorite drink?

It’s thoroughly mediocre. I will watch it if I’m watching the TNG movies, but probably not standalone. There is definitely some cool stuff in it, and I also like Tom Hardy and Ron Perlman, but as you note I don’t think it really pulls it all together. And then there are things I hate, like dune buggies, B4, and the fact they fucking killed Data.

It is especially bad as the last TNG movie. The TNG era crew should have got their Undiscovered Country epic last ride but Nemesis isn’t nearly conclusive enough. At least we’ll always have “All Good Things”.

Btrfs has a bunch of features and is one of the contenders for the “next” filesystem. Ext4 is utterly bulletproof though and has good enough perf so it’s still your best bet unless you specifically want to use the advanced btrfs features.

I encourage you to watch it and form your own opinion (just make sure to get past the first ten minutes of the pilot, the tone shifts dramatically).

Captain Ake runs the Academy and commands the Academy ship, the Athena, which is used to do more hands on training but isn’t the flagship by any stretch. She’s more like a principal than a professor. The other main characters are cadets, with some strong supporting characters too.

IMO it’s the first live action Trek show in the new era to come out firing on all cylinders and it’s great to see.

Yes, but in context it’s not a big deal. A lot of it is contrasting her with her peer, the chancellor of the war college, who is uptight. Ultimately, she’s less military commander, or even explorer, and more chancellor of a school full of students and in that capacity it makes more sense to generate a relaxed atmosphere. When the situation calls for it, she can be serious as well.

She just has her own style, but people want to be negative because she’s not Picard-ing hard enough or some dumb shit.

That story made no sense. That guy is a glorified forklift, why would you simulate a body/that much intelligence when the computer could just do its job without being capable of resentment?

Oh, that makes more sense, but then “unsigned” void?

Okay, U8, sure, but a boolean is U0? Surely U1 if you absolutely must…

Note that I said independent of devices that are simulating your life for you, not just independent of devices.

Julian and Miles feels the most real to me.

Kirk and Spock are a close second, but only because we saw that they love each other in their ways, but they didn’t spend a ton of time chilling out together on screen (camping Yosemite was great though)

Harry and Tom third, they really had a good influence on each other and they spent a lot of holodeck time together in Sandrine’s/Hawaii/Captain Proton/Fairhaven.

Julian and Garak was a lot of fun, but I think it’s overshadowed by Miles. Lunches and holodecking is all well and good, but Julian would turn to Miles for real stuff (although when he turned 30 that was Garak…)

Sisko/Dax is good but it relies on Curzon a lot. The on screen time with Jadzia is focused more on how she’s not Curzon, but they obviously still have a lot of love.

Geordi and Data is a little too mentor-y. Like they’re friends, but Data is more relying on Geordi for a humanity check, and Geordi gets advice from elsewhere on women (for obvious reasons) and that undercuts the bromance level I think.

Nog/Jake are great, and I would put them higher except they’re kids for most of the show and I feel like a bromance should probably be reserved for adults (kid friendships are different level). Although they do keep it up until adulthood if The Visitor is still accurate.

I guess Malcolm/Trip then, but honestly they thought they were going to die in a shuttle once but that’s kinda it. Been awhile since I watched ENT. If anything Trip/Archer.

Odo and Quark have mutual respect, but there’s too much antagonism to be a bromance.

And Neelix / Tuvok is non-existent. Tuvok can barely stand Neelix and only comes to grudgingly tolerate his antics after half of his personality is suppressed IIRC. The fact that Tuvok throws Neelix a bone and dances when he leaves is evidence he softened, but not that they were bros.

It’s less that digital things can’t be alive and more that to be alive you need to exist independent of technology that’s simulating your life for you. All biological organisms pass this test. Data passes this test. The Doctor and every other hologram does not.

If you want to call the human body and perception an equivalent, I’ll point out that when you cut yourself something has actually occurred to your physical body, it isn’t just your brain seeing a knife and deciding it hurt you.

But hey, you are welcome to disagree at which point holodecks become extremely unethical. This is, after all, just philosophy.

Don’t even get me started on how transporters don’t make sense, haha.

Yes, Voyager’s writers take this position, but I think it’s nonsense.

Holograms are programs that run on a computer. They have no physical form, they are force fields and light being projected from a piece of hardware bolted to the wall to convince you they have form, but their true “self” is just data in a computer like any other program. Their experiences are database entries. They can be deleted, copied, transmitted, paused and restarted like any other program. They are incapable of doing anything that the computer they’re running on can’t do.

Like the EMH miners that pass along Photons Be Free - total bullshit. Why simulate that much intelligence when you’ve already installed devices all over that are capable of scanning and mining ore without physical form or the capacity for misery? Just let the computer do the work.

Or the Hirogen holograms. They’re simulating pain, and it’s fucked up the Hirogen want it that way, but does that make it unethical to hunt them? After all, when you hurt them, you’re just updating a data structure in a computer that calculated the trajectory of your phaser fire, determined it was a hit and decided to relay that information back to you as simulated damage and pain. It could just as easily make the holograms impervious to all damage.

The Doctor can be special to the crew and they can want to keep him intact and running without pretending he’s more than a simulation - he’s designed to create rapport and they’ve bonded with him. But holograms in general? You might as well be concerned about being nice to a replicator or a navigation array, or an NPC in a videogame.

Either interpretation could be correct, but it needs to be consistent.

To me, the holograms aren’t people. People can’t be reset, copied, or restored from backup. Holograms have no body to damage and no nerves to register that damage. The computer is recognizing that a humanoid would be damaged by whatever action and making its avatar express that in a way intended to be understood by other humanoids. That’s all.

This is different from say, Data, because even though he can be manipulated and is inhuman in some of the same ways he is independent from any other computers and, importantly, his processing of pain is a real condition. He can be harmed, and even though he may say “Ouch!” to mimic humans, the real pain is his physical response to that damage, the reality that he may be less capable than before, and the need he has for repair.

I like the Doctor, I would treat him with respect, but if it was between him and a biological in a life or death situation, I’d choose the biological every time. I can always spin up another EMH mk. I from disk.

I actually just watched those episodes. Don’t think it’s her worst decision. The Hirogen had already taken Voyager and had everyone at their mercy, Janeway had to make a deal or die.

However, I will also say I think Voyager kinda flubbed the whole holograms-are-real-people-too idea. Holograms are just visual representations of what the computer is doing with force fields. When the holograms feel pain, it’s simulated - they have no nervous system and they have not actually been harmed. The more sophisticated the AI the more realistic their reflection of “pain” but it’s not real. OR it is real, and everything you do with a holodeck character is unethical.