Seto Kaiba

This looks like a trailer for a "Making of" featurette, not a movie.

Since the war with the Machines is over, let's just go all-in on the cyberpunk dystopia and make it a stealth prequel to Blame!.

HG's license is still exclusive WRT the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series (and DYRL? as well, which they picked up the merchandising rights and ONLY the merchandising rights for around 2001).

Oh, he's one of those carbon copy characters that was made for Robotech II: the Sentinels back in the 80's. He was the amoral mad scientist counterpart to good superscientist Dr. Lang (the character Macross fans know as the nameless chief engineer). He wasn't important except in the godawful novels, and his only real appearance of note since the reboot in '01 was getting arrested for high treason. Not a particularly interesting character, he was just your standard amoral mad scientist character.

Wait, you mean to say there are actual human beings posting there? I thought it was just spambots spamming spambots. Maybe Pinhead from Hellraiser would be more appropriate, since he seems to think that this comic is a sight he has to show others.

While there are undeniably less elaborate ways to engage in self-harm, who are we to kink-shame him?

Presumably out of courtesy for any silent psychopaths on these boards that might actually want to read the comics?

Probably best to wait for some kind of official statement from the SDCon organizers.

Well, either that or they used a different set of search terms to compile their data. After a bit more fiddling last night, I'm inclined to suspect a little from Column A, and a little from Column B. I did some experimenting with searches on series acronyms and with vs. without the colon in the title and found that it WAS actually possible to reproduce some of their results. It's slightly more problematic to use Discovery's official acronym since that's shared with all manner of other DSCs, whereas TNG, DS9, and VOY largely have Star Trek as the dominant user of the abbreviation. If you specify that the search term is an American television series, most of Star Trek: Discovery's apparent advantage disappears and its performance is very similar to the other Star Trek shows barring spikes around the premieres of each season of the series in worldwide search performance. (MUCH less pronounced for season two though.) I'm not sure how odd this necessarily is, since these shows are still on the air in reruns around the world. If they weren't, it'd probably be a bad sign for Discovery. Curiously, in the by-region breakdown, search interest in Star Trek: Discovery is mostly localized in Asia and Eastern Europe. Of the 42 regions to be identified in the query in the time window I specified (Nov 1 2015 to today) that covers the lifespan of Star Trek: Discovery's development and production from the first public announcement onwards, there are only 2 western european countries in the top 10 (France and Spain) and the United States is #40 of 42, with only Hungary and Japan showing less non-zero interest. If Doomcock had made the argument that Star Trek: Discovery is far and away the least searched among North American audiences he'd have had an entirely valid point. The US is in the top 10 for searches made on every other Star Trek show save Enterprise... and even Enterprise has a 14 place lead over Discovery at 26. I'm mildly curious if Star Trek: Discovery's damn-near-last-place performance in the US is due to the (richly deserved, IMO) antipathy that many fans in the west seem to have for it, or the show's exclusivity to the CBS All Access platform that so many fans felt was a bridge too far. YouTube pundits like Doomcock, Nerdrotic, and to a lesser extent MechaRandom42 are kind of like the Hunter S. Thompsons of the fandom critical commentary world. They adopt a gonzo journalism-esque style heavily freighted with their own emotional reactions, occasionally make a good point, but are mostly just ranting and raving. Most of the fun watching them is just in how wound-up they get... especially Doomcock, who seemingly understands and appreciates that people watch him for his hamminess far more than his content. They all belong to that weird, seemingly amnestic bunch of pundits who love to rant and rave about how political correctness is supposedly destroying the entertainment industry... having apparently forgotten that the media of yesteryear was often FAR less subtle about the exact same Aesops. (Many of us, I'm sure, remember how often cartoon characters in Saturday morning cartoon shows used to break the fourth wall to make a point about how Drugs Are Bad, Discrimination is Bad, etc.. GI Joe's memetically famous "Knowing is half the battle" hasn't been forgotten by most viewers and they were FAR from the only ones doing it, and Superman and Captain America were both doing it as far back as the 1940's and 1950's.) That's clickbait journalism for ya... as much as they (esp. Nerdrotic) like to rant about the sins of the access media, they're basically just as bad. Star Trek always had the "SJW narrative". TOS was one of the most progressive, envelope-pushing, unsubtle society-critiquing shows on television. Gene Roddenberry's progressive politics just blended near-seamlessly into his vision of an optimistic, utopian future for humanity. Put simply, Star Trek lived and breathed its message. They could get on the pulpit without it feeling like a lecture because that was just how things were in the 23rd century. Star Trek: Discovery's showrunners f*cked it up by turning the 23rd century of their series into a grimdark, hopeless, dystopian future. Instead of blending in as a natural part of that bright future, a progressive message felt like a grating soapbox screed made all the more grating by the showrunners crowing about it. A speech on the rights of man is not out of place coming from a decent, morally upright person like Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, or Archer... but it doesn't feel particularly congruous coming from an obvious psychopath like Lorca or someone whose character-establishing moment was multiple acts of violent bigotry like Burnham.

I'll second that. I'm guessing that was a Japan exclusive? If I'd seen an Enterprise-D kit of THAT level of quality, I'd probably have snapped it up if it was sold in the US. I'm struggling not to make a "wants the D" joke here. I really am.

Did s'more messing around in Google Trends and I still can't reproduce the results Doomcock is crowing about. Star Trek: Discovery definitely wasn't a hot search term after the show started airing and word got around what a turdburger it was, and Star Trek: Picard seems to have worn out its novelty surprisingly quickly, but they definitely trended above TNG for a while.

More like Why is The Matrix 4? The ending of the Matrix trilogy did NOT cry out for further continuation. It had what was, essentially, a happily ever after.

We did get onto a rather odd tangent there because of the surface detailing on the Aoshima Enterprise-D, didn't we? For what it's forth, this kind of attention to detail both on the part of the original designers and the model/toy manufacturer is one of the main factors in whether or not I'll open my wallet for a particular model/toy. I mean, look at that Aoshima Tekering posted. With that level of detail, it looks practically as good as the original shooting model... and that thing was almost the size of a small sedan. (Looking at my Diamond Select Enterprise-A and Enterprise-B, it feels like a weird omission to be missing some of that realistic surface detail.)

Voyager's crew must suffer... that's why Neelix is the cook. Who else could bring an entire starship to a screeching halt with nothing more than a nice sharp cheese? Oh, they are... it's a memory/resolution issue. Transporters deconstruct and reconstruct a person down to the quantum level, which consumes an ENORMOUS amount of memory. The physical patterns of a handful of people were sufficient to consume all available computer core memory on Deep Space Nine's main computer and supporting systems. The rest of the pattern had to be dumped into the capacious standalone buffers of Quark's holosuite arcade, requiring a third set of extremely powerful computers to recomposite their patterns and rematerialize them. Because replicators have to store hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of patterns they only store that pattern data down to the molecular level and they engage in a bit of cheating when it comes to things like texture and consistency of complex structures. That's why (according to Eddington anyway) replicated food is a always a bit off... the shortcuts which the replicators employ the provide a nutritionally complete entree that closely resembles the desired meal mean that what you get will be slightly off in terms of texture, flavor, etc. That lower resolution is also why they can't replicate living tissue except using special experimental replicators with much higher resolution (the genetronic replicator that they used to put together a new spine for Worf).

Dilithium crystals don't generate or store energy, they're porous to light element matter and antimatter at extremely high temperatures and pressures so they're used to moderate the matter-antimatter pair annihilation reaction. The matter and antimatter streams meet inside the dilithium crystal, and the resulting high-energy plasma is used to transfer that energy where it's needed. Star Trek: Voyager's writers made it out to be pretty energy-intensive, which is why Captain Janeway instituted rationing of replicator usage early on and the show maintained it through its conclusion. Not a huge issue for a Starfleet ship operating within easy distance of a deuterium and antideuterium refueling complex, but for a ship 75,000ly from home with no easy way to refuel its all-important reserves of antideuterium, conserving energy would've been important. (The writers proceeded to shoot themselves in the foot by having Voyager's holodecks running more or less constantly, even though replicators are a big part of what makes holodecks work. The excuse that the holodeck's power system wasn't compatible with the rest of the ship made no sense at all. This was made slightly worse by an apparent misconception on a number of different writers part that deuterium was rare. Yeah, it only makes up 0.02% of hydrogen in Earth's oceans, but that's still an awful lot and it's pretty easy to convert regular hydrogen to deuterium with the right equipment... which is the entire point of bussard collectors.)

Replicators were the part of Gene Roddenberry's vision for Star Trek: the Next Generation that Ron Moore and Ira Behr were least happy with. As Ron Moore put it: So, once Gene was out of full control over Star Trek the idea was gradually introduced that replicators were imperfect devices that were very limited in what they could produce. There were all kinds of materials that couldn't be replicated (including a number of essential materials for starship manufacture and maintenance), some objects/devices were too complex to replicate in one piece and had to be replicated one piece/assembly at a time and assembled by hand, and that as a result of the complexity issue and nutrition-focused programming the DS9 and VOY writers favorite hobby horse: that replicated food was often easily distinguishable from the genuine article... occasionally to the extent of being unpalatable. There was probably some material in the photon torpedoes that USS Voyager was issued that couldn't be replicated... besides the antimatter in the warhead, which Voyager wouldn't have been able to replicate but which they would've had plenty of anyway.

Hm... assuming that older officer on the Horizont at the beginning was the commander of Mars Base's 21st Armored Battle Company, 2101 could refer to 1st Lt. Bernard being part of (probably leader of, given his rank) 21st Company's 1st Platoon.

Given where it's placed, my guess would be 162 is his aircraft's modex number. No clue what 2101 might be, I don't recall seeing anything other than Battle Company numbers on Ride Armor line art. 21 would obviously refer to his being a part of the 21st Armored Battle Company, but he wasn't its leader so I'm not sure about the 01.

Yup... ancient graffiti has revealed that "Yo momma" jokes were alive and well during the Roman Republic, and the oldest surviving English language joke is a dick joke. That doesn't mean a new take isn't welcome, or sometimes eminently necessary... as with that godawful Star Trek: Titan story. EDIT: ... can't seem to reproduce his results in Google Trends though.

To be entirely fair, the show the showrunners shot wasn't the show the showrunners had intended to make... they were victims of the network's insistence on Voyager being TNG 2.0.

I hope the convention organizers release a statement soon to clear all this up. Right now there seem to be a fair few people getting incensed on her behalf on Facebook and other social media. I hope it doesn't hurt attendance, since I'm sure the organizers had no intention of making Mari feel slighted or replaced. They're die-hard fans too, so the idea of upsetting Mari is probably as disconcerting to them as it is to the rest of the fandom.

That was kind of a "depending on the writer" thing. Star Trek: the Next Generation was the worst offender, frequently depicting Starfleet (and other) ships as so fragile that a single hit from a phaser array, disruptor, or torpedo was enough to destroy them utterly. The Enterprise-D itself was a victim of several of the more egregious examples, seemingly exploding at the drop of a hat from damage that barely slowed previous Starfleet ships. The USS Reliant, for instance, was barely slowed by the loss of a warp nacelle where the Enterprise-D was totally destroyed by the loss of one in a collision with the USS Bozeman. As the effects technology improved along with the growth of the effects budget, Starfleet (and other) ships got a LOT more robust. USS Voyager in "Year of Hell" was probably the best example, completely riddled stem to stern with battle damage and still not just flyable but combatworthy. Nondestructive external battle damage was hard to model when ships were still being shot using physical models. It was easier and cheaper to just have a ship explode than it was to build a model and do a dedicated effects shot for battle damage the way they had to do in "Best of Both Worlds" for the Borg cutting a chunk out of the saucer section. CG changed the change there, so depicting severe battle damage became a lot easier. You could argue the opposite as well, that the incredible defensive and offensive capabilities of Starfleet ships - which are built as vessels of exploration but which can easily go toe-to-toe with purpose-built warships - is proof in concrete form of the Federation's underlying principle that peaceful coexistence yields far greater benefits than belligerence. Instead of being built with technology from a single species, Starfleet ships are built with the very best provided by all the Federation's members. They can explore the galaxy and bring the Federation's message of peace and goodwill while still having the means to defend themselves should their message fall on deaf ears. (In short, they're mighty because their message is right... whereas the Romulan, Klingon, and Borg attitude is that they're right because they are mighty.) IIRC, the showrunners had expressed a view that the success rate against the Borg was more a matter of tactics. Starfleet met the Borg at Wolf 359 arrayed in orderly lines of battle and fought in formation. Armed with Picard's knowledge, the Borg knew exactly where the weaknesses of those formations and ships were and took them to pieces easily. Presenting the Borg with an orderly array of targets just made their methodical approach to battle that much easier. The Enterprise-D's later success in confusing the Borg enough to rescue Picard was built on defiance of convention and insane troll logic, helped by the fact that the Borg didn't consider one ship to be a threat. Starfleet's later, better result against the Borg were a product of adopting a chaotic, highly disordered battle strategy to make it harder for the Borg to predict their actions (as in First Contact). The comparison to the Galor-class is probably unfair, since the Galor-class was more or less Cardassia's line warship... analogous to what the Excelsior and Miranda-classes were in the Dominion War. It's not surprising at all that the Federation's state of the art flagship class outclassed them. They were a challenge for Picard's USS Stargazer, but not so much the Enterprise-D or another of the Federation's flagship-level classes. That much is pretty much explicitly stated on a number of occasions in multiple shows. The USS Defiant aside, Starfleet ships are built for maximum multirole performance as vessels of exploration and scientific endeavor. It became a bit of a recurring thing for Janeway and other Voyager crew members to have to explain to the aliens of the week that Voyager wasn't a warship despite her amazingly overpowered weapons technology by the standards of the region. I think a part of it is that, after the Khitomer Accords ended the Klingon Cold War, Starfleet stopped focusing so much on combat performance since its ships were no longer heavily pulling duty as border patrol along the Klingon border. The Enterprise-A and the Excelsior had plenty of phaser banks and well upwards of a hundred photon torpedoes apiece. USS Voyager had plenty of phasers, but her torpedo magazine? 40. (Not that that stopped Janeway from firing over 125 of them during the series after indicating there was no way to replace them.) Once the Dominion War was underway, we saw even older ships like the Excelsior-class USS Lakota being upgraded with Starfleet's latest weapons technology including quantum torpedoes and new combat-ready ships coming out of the yards by the dozen (thanks to reused art assets from the recent films). (The novelverse, in cooperation with the old showrunners, explicitly established that Starfleet ships adopted the shape they did with the saucer section, the separate engineering hull, and the outboard warp nacelles, because that design produced the best multi-role performance in the warp drive. It made the warp drive more vulnerable in combat, but it made up for it by providing a more efficient warp field that allowed ships to use less energy to achieve the same warp factors, to achieve higher warp factors more readily, and more readily change warp field geometries on the fly to change course while at warp. Vulcan ships from Enterprise are described as being very fast and efficient in a straight line thanks to their coleopteric warp coil, but have very poor versatility and turning performance. Klingon ships with their centerline nacelles were described as more durable but far less efficient.)

It wouldn't... the UK and EU trademark laws were already pretty well-aligned before the UK joined the EU.

There were a fair few Star Trek fans among Macross's creators... and the Tatsunoko Production staff too. The Star Trek: Titan novelverse series did a plot a lot like this, tying into the aborted arc involving the crystalline entity from TNG's Data/Lore backstory, the space jellyfish from Encounter at Farpoint, and a few other giant space monsters from old Trek. Both were, in Star Trek: Titan, essentially invasive species by dint of having ended up outside their natural habitat. Captain Riker's USS Titan stumbles into their natural habitat well outside Federation space and discovered the jellies being preyed on by a violent humanoid species who turn their corpses into organic starships. Riker being Riker, they interfered immediately and later came to understand the species they'd assumed were cruel, inhumane hunters were more along the lines of the space DNR engaging in a vital ecological management program to keep these organisms alive in their natural habitat while also preventing them from the planet-destroying shenanigans they got up to in the TV shows.

BURN THE HERETIC! (Just kidding. )