Semisimian

That’s the part of The Hulk we are all just told to ignore.

Sir, this is a Wendy’s.

DS9 pulled off a political space drama that could rival Dallas or MASH and they got 7 seasons. I’m rewatching it again and I still can’t believe that prime time viewers would sit through these episodes that are just 2 people arguing the nuances of humanity for 45 minutes. It’s nothing like TV is today.

As far as a movie, I think the TNG movies weren’t that Trek. They often took the characters in strange directions, favored more digestible plotlines, and wrote dialogue that you’d expect from AI. I value the television wellspring of Trek in the 90s/early 2000s. It is so cool, and that era is still bearing fruit today.

I would like to see more of the DS9 characters, and like to see what a movie budget would do, but I don’t trust that a DS9 movie would’ve been given the reverence needed to make it right. It has been great to see Picard and the ST world in the later years, but I don’t know if it makes the lore any better. I’m not sure that we are any closer to another golden decade of ST.

Thanks for posting this and helping me get some of my thoughts on DS9 coalesced. Do you have a DS9 movie plot you think would’ve worked? Those ‘golden years’ of Trek were also open to the most fan input, with concepts and entire scripts being submitted. If we had 26 episode seasons to play with, maybe they’d take our call.

Why not 6660 soldiers? Or just one up Revelations and go with 6666 soldiers. The revolution may not be televised, but the end times will.

Pets help us understand our own mortality in ways that continue to surprise me. When I was young, the first pet I lost was a young cat, just a few years old. I raised her from a kitten that was probably too young to ween so we had a close bond. She was indoor/outdoor and was attacked by a neighbor’s dog during the day when I was gone. Holding her and watching her die broke me, like she waited all day to die in my arms. She was mine and I felt like I let her down. Woof, it hurt. Still does.

But while I was holding her, our family dog (Allison) was next to me. She was older than I was, a feisty Lhasa Apso that had lost her ability to hold her bladder. We diapered her: we’d cut a hole in human diapers to pull her tail through to keep the hardwoods from getting ruined. She died a year later, after living a full life.

I buried both of them in the front yard, under a couple of pines that bordered our neighbor’s pet cemetery. Both times, digging those holes gave me the time I needed to be able to return them to the earth and say goodbye. I learned so much from their passing. It is the last gift our pets give us, their final act of love.

Now, older, with kids of my own, we have Sadie, who I am looking at as I write this. She’s a rescue, probably a golden mixed with some border collie, at least 16 years old. Her sister died last year and it was the first close death my kids experienced. Her passing taught my kids the alchemy of aging gracefully, the privilege of old age. Now, they find charm in Sadie’s rickety hips and excuse her incontinence. Getting old is okay; we are lucky to be able to do it. Watching your loved ones get old is a privilege we should cherish.

Edit: I wanted to thank OP for posting this. Reading your observations of your aging cat brought It all forward.

So, we are continuing the ‘is it legitimate that an elite Red Squad exists in egalitarian Starfleet’ argument? All signs point to no. Still, Nog, you go on with your bad self.

So, Bill (after the divorce) buys the ranch as a gift, but the headline circles it back to a unsourced Melinda quote ON YAHOO FINANCE! This is another obfuscating hatchet job to whitewash billionaire behaviour by media owned by said billionaires. Please don’t engage. This is non-news. Down vote this to the sewer where it belongs.

When we talk about time travel in fictional universes, almost all of the narratives follow one of three “truths:”

1. Time is one linear thread. What you do now will have consequence X and if you do something different it will have consequence Y. A simple illustration is the movie Sliding Doors. But the same can be said for Back to the Future or Bill and Ted’s. If you make a change to the prime timeline, it will ripple into the past/future. Your cousins will disappear from the 3x5 photo!

2. Time has branches, a truly infinite number of universes and possibilities. Really, as far as I’m concerned, the best example of this idea is Rick and Morty. That show has the freedom to both cook our brains about the concept and also hold a mirror to its ridiculousness. You also see it more famously in the MCU, with their multitude of Lokis and such, though the TVA is still hell-bent on a prime timeline. But the multiverse is the natural order, with only 80s inspired bureaucracy to keep it in check.

3. Time is a combination of the two, which leads us to Trek. Time is linear, so Jake Sisko can tell his dad to dodge a beam that travels at light speed. But time is also non-linear, so… I dunno… most of Voyager. When Seven came aboard with her temporal node all bets were off as far as what could even be considered a prime timeline.

Moreso, the mirror universe is a parallel to our own, marching along at the same pace and whose characters are developing at the same rate as the prime timeline. So, there is no prime timeline, and no multiverse. Just the clean-shaven and the goatee universes.

And to answer your question: yes, I think Trek trends toward a “prime” timeline. It’s honestly the way our brains work. With all the posturing of the wormhole aliens, we just don’t work in a non-linear fashion. And maybe more importantly, good stories don’t work that way either, Kurt Vonnegut aside. Time travel is wearing plot armor in EVERY movie and show because no one has a handle on it.

Thank you for bringing this up. It’s something I think about too much.

MST3K or RiffTrax. Takes me back to high school.

There are a bajillion, but maybe you are looking for a specific genre that nails it on the head.

As someone mentioned, there are thousands of social drama films that could’ve easily happened. The success of that type of film is selling a “day in the life” plot.

Someone else mentioned Office Space. That film is a satire, but it condenses and delivers refined representations of the banality of cubicle life that we all can easily relate to. The characters truly seem to be facsimiles of people we’ve known in our working lives.

Someone else mentioned Michael Clayton. It’s an excellent thriller with flawed characters with believable motives that yes, it could be real. And maybe something like that has happened?

What genre will help us answer your question?

“Screw 'em, do what you want” shall be the whole of the law.

I think it would take much more energy to grow the food they need than to just replicate it. That said, if I was stuck for 7 years in space, fresh fruits and vegetables would be the cheapest form of therapy.

A US made drone designed to be adopted by law enforcement/military with a hefty price tag is probably relying on robust public funds to procure such drones. Lucky for us n’er-do-wells, those public funds are being DOGEd. Right? …right?

“The funny thing about regret is, that it’s better to regret something you HAVE done, than to regret something you haven’t done. And by the way, if you see your mom this weekend, would you be sure to tell her…”

“How is our young doctor?” …“Young.”

I just started my DS9 rewatch today, having just completed Voyager, Enterprise and SNW in my “COVID then RSV then ENT infection” couch-misery marathon. I saw the Q episode with Vash just hours ago - loved O’Brien’s reaction when he recognized Q.

I think they developed Voyager and DS9 to be two halves of the Star Trek whole. Voyager was flung so far that almost every species was new, so right from the start it highlighted the awkward first handshakes the Federation had to endure. DS9 included (mostly) known species and highlighted the increasingly awkward second handshakes, and third, and on and on: the real work of diplomacy beyond first contact. It’s a political drama, The West Wing in space. Q has no patience for such intricacies, though that is what he often says he values so much in humanity.

That’s great! I think we need to pay close attention to our water supply and I appreciate that you are posting a positive take.

We have good water here, though it is the most expensive municipality in the country. The elevated price comes from our long-ignored sewer infrastructure and the layer-cake of band-aids that we are paying for. That said, we have steady rainfall and plentiful aquifers. Water here is almost taken for granted (except for that sewer bill, which is calculated on water consumption).

Even still, I have whole house paper filters to pull the iron out before it gets to any faucet, then a second stage of carbon filters for drinking water. Cheap to install and easy to maintain and it goes a long way to improving our water quality. I don’t know if you are using any other filters, but you can quickly turn an A- water experience to an A+.

I’m still waiting for SNW to make the Gorn interesting. I know they’re trying to retcon them as intelligent and threatening space explorers, technical marvels, etc. But the writers aren’t selling the leap from xenomorph ripoff to mature Star Trek species.

I love the show and get what they’re doing, playing with every genre of storytelling. The Gorn are obviously the horror genre, but again, how the hell are they a spacefaring species?

And you reveal a cloaked ship that is collecting your effluence for fuel. Ew.