Honestly, the transporter is the main reason why I think the Federation could (possible by a landslide) win a war against the Empire from Star Wars; the Empire likely doesn’t have the defenses to stop a Starfleet vessel beaming photon torpedoes, neurocene gas, etcetera directly onto star destroyers. All it takes is a few ships getting past the tie fighters.

To be fair, it’s a BB gun, which are tiny metal pellets that, while possibly painful, usually aren’t super lethal and are not a useful instrument in a “good ol’ traditional” American mass shooting. They’re more often used on tin cans than flesh. A few sociopathic kids might use them to torture birds, though.

Maybe they contribute to our dangerous gun culture by getting kids involved early, but getting an older kid a BB gun isn’t as weird or comically American as it sounds in and of itself.

Eh. I mean Christmas Story’s kind of fun, but fair warning, it has a scene that’s rather racist to Chinese people.

The main thing that personally drives me nuts about DRM is as a Linux user, many streaming services will only give you 480p or even 360p video even though you’re paying for more. With that bullcrap, combined with buggy streaming services, the high seas is sometimes literally a better experience than streaming. Then the hippy moral stuff gets involved:

Although of course, if I can buy it used on Blu-Ray at a local business (Zia and Bookmans are probably the two best places to do it in my area), I’ll do that instead, and just rip the Blu-Rays; it funds places I like while still being (more) legal (than just straight up pirating).

(Granted, I’m a bit of a hypocrite, as I don’t pirate that much. I’m still on Paramount+ for now because my parents still pay for it, but we’re so focused on Star Trek that my idea to just get the Blu-Rays and DVDs is tempting them to get off.)

I’m usually not big on ebooks, as I tend to read in the evening and haven’t had a good e-reader for a long time, and I just don’t enjoy blue light at night.

However, I got a bunch of Star Trek comic eBooks in a Humble Bundle recently, and I need a good way to read those; I’m thinking I’ll pick up one of the Kobo Colors. I’ve seen their limitations, and while it’s enough to annoy a lot of comic readers, I’m personally fine so long as I can distinguish the division colors and think it would still be a good purchase for my use case. It might also be nice for my many Star Trek Adventures RPG PDFs; it’d be one less window on my laptop when I (occasionally) GM.

I’ve also been jumping into the novelverse recently; my grandfather had a friend who was trying to offload his late wife’s Trek collection, and I ended up the recipient.

I started with the second Department of Temporal Investigations book, then used this chart to decide where to properly begin. Even though I heard some grievances about it, I chose the DS9: Avatar books; it all made fun enough reading for before bed.

Unfortunately, my collection has a bunch of weird gaps, so now that I’ve finished those, I have to look for the next book, Section 31: Abyss (Little relation to the now-infamous film), at a used book store in my area.

“Is this really necessary? The wormhole aliens already put me through this kind of crap.”

I wouldn’t take any chances either… I’d put the bullet through his heart before he causes any more suffering for anyone else, personal consequences be darned.

With that said, if you were forced to choose between them, who would you live under?

On one hand, under the Borg you at least wouldn’t be aware of your loss of civil rights and wouldn’t suffer being hit by chemical weapons or something, but on the other hand… my goodness what is the Borg queen doing with Data?! You know what, I live to serve the Founders now.

No. The Dominion is from Gamma.

“Order to chaos”? Aren’t you forgetting someone?

All I’m saying is age is weird in space. I mean, don’t do anything stupid, but the Neelix thing isn’t that weird.

Now if you want REALLY MESSED UP stuff, try that one timeline where Harry Kim married Tom Paris and Kes’s daughter.

The only thing I can say for this show is while the suit and bowtie is very un-Vulcan, it’s more Vulcan than whatever TAS had going on here:

All of this guy’s Trek videos are Christmas classics in my heart.

I usually hate it when studios wipe something off the face of the earth for a bunch of tax BS or whatever, but please do this to Star Trek: Scouts.

What pains me is it is certainly possible to make a good Star Trek kids show that isn’t just iPad baby slop. Like, just have a show about a bunch of kids having fun around Starbase 170 or something, with hints of what the often-exhausted Starfleet and civilian parents are going through.

But no, most of the brainless executives have long since decided kids (and almost everyone, honestly) don’t need quality of any sort.

There’s a whole playlist of them by this guy - one for every series, and then some more.

And don’t forget this classic for another person: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oiSn2JuDQSc&t=7s&pp=2AEHkAIB

That reminds me…:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A7s7X9LdNDs

Heck, if random Ensign Jo is at the helm and waits for the right moment, they could probably warp the ship into a star before anyone can realize what’s going on.

Though I think one probably one of the most potentially deadly characters in the franchise by sheer skill might be D’Vana Tendi, considering how she went through all those Romulan guards in Veritas, her ability to take over a ship, her ability to switch between an completely unintimidating and absolutely terrifying demeanor, etcetera.

Of course, it was really just Santa pulling some Jason Vigo-type bullcrap, doing anything he could to offload him to someone else.