Jump to content

Seto Kaiba

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    13446

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Seto Kaiba

  1. Seto Kaiba
    That presumes there is something up there to reach. I think the writing in this last episode demonstrates rather succinctly that they're groping about in a void. It's easy to get swept up in cheap nostalgia - like the characters themselves are doing - but it's a fast-fading high that's quickly replaced with the realization that we're still watching a version of Star Trek so senselessly bleak that even the characters themselves are indulging in escapist reminiscing about the "better days" when they were younger. (Never mind that the writers had to bend over backwards and engage in more moon logic than any previous Star Trek story for these characters to be in any way relevant to galactic goings-on.) That actually gets a pass. It was established way back in the TNG Season 1 writers materials that the Enterprise-D was so heavily computerized and so advanced that it's theoretically possible for one person to operate the entire ship in at least a basic capacity. This premise was used in a few different episodes including TNG "11001001" and VOY "Message in a Bottle", as well as a Star Trek board game. Living crew can just do the job with greater flexibility and precision than a wholly-automated starship, and the crew are needed for things like maintenance and repair. There are a bunch of other problems with the whole idea of dusting off the Enterprise-D: The Enterprise-D isn't even the best option available in the Fleet Museum. They have access to a newer, smaller, faster, more defensible, dedicated anti-Borg warship which can operate far more flexibly with far fewer crew in the USS Defiant. That Worf never points this out is honestly a bit odd, since she was HIS command for several years. Geordi is the curator of the Fleet Museum. Who in the nine hells received a requisition for photon (and possibly quantum or even transphasic) torpedoes from a non-combat, non-fleet posting and was just like "Yeah, that sounds legit." Come to that, who approved the Fleet Museum's requisitions for enough deuterium and antideuterium to power a Galaxy-class ship? Why is any ship in the Fleet Museum outfitted with live weaponry? These are DISPLAY pieces. You'd think they'd at least have disconnected the phaser arrays and stripped any classified technology before putting the ships on display. The Enterprise-D really isn't any less networked than the ships that the Borg took over. All any of the assimilated ships has to do is run her prefix codes and seize control of her computers remotely and it's game over. I've got a feeling the writers copout for that is going to be that only the area immediately around Earth was affected, and that Starfleet in the other ~150+ systems and innumerable space stations and planetside installations were unaffected. If that were the case, they've maybe lost a few hundred senior officers... not decimation of the ranks but still problematic with the fleet around Earth losing a lot of experienced officers. There's a much bigger problem in that thousands and thousands of junior officers will have had to endure the trauma that comes with assimilation, not just mentally but very likely physically too by the time the old farts get back to save the day.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    By Jove! Truly my roguish mischief knows no restraint or penalty! The only reason it came to mind at all is that that's one of the few details that just keeps coming back. Almost every time cloning has come up as a topic (for sentient beings), there is mention of a gene sequence degradation that is a product of the cloning process that can easily out someone as a clone and that keeps someone from being cloned over and over again forever. I have the same question. Jurati merged with an alternate timeline's Borg Queen after that timeline's Borg Collective was wiped out and came back to her original universe where the Borg Queen was dead and took over that Borg Collective to ally with the Federation as a new, benevolent Borg. What sofa cushion was the original Borg Queen hiding under all this time? Especially one deep enough to fool the other version of herself in the alternate universe who had multi-dimensional awareness. Yeah, all in all changing antagonists with just two episodes to go is... problematic... for the writing. Especially since the new antagonist they chose was largely declawed by Star Trek: Voyager and has had no prior involvement with the antagonist they went with for the first eight episodes.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    At this point, I don't think there's any non-bullshit way for the writers to salvage this one. The is a literal museum piece that is at least 30 years out of date compared to the rest of Starfleet. As it was intended for display and nothing more, it would be quite odd for the ship to be fueled, never mind equipped with live weaponry like photon torpedoes. It lacks the advanced weapons and defensive systems developed to fight the Borg that manifested in the ships of the Dominion War era and beyond. It's designed for a crew of a thousand, and it's being operated by seven senior citizens and a middle aged ex-Borg drone. For their part, I can't see a way out of this that doesn't involve some never-before-seen bullshit or an incredibly weak attempt to sweep this all under the rug.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    And there it is... the lurching, cadaverous wretch called Star Trek: Picard violently crap itself and died. Next week, emergency services arrives to tag 'em and bag 'em. We're not just back to the same trash-tier writing that has been Picard's stock in trade for almost its entire run, the writers were apparently so desperate for some way to put a bow on this turd and hope we wouldn't notice the stench that they forgot the existence of the entire previous season. Mind you, the entire previous season was pretty forgettable even by the standards of NuTrek, but still... this is 1/3 of the total runtime of the Picard series they apparently forgot about! This turdburger of a series literally cannot be retconned out fast enough for my taste. What a goddamn mess. This might actually be worse than Discovery's first season. As per their usual idiom, this season has amassed quite the body count. The series as a whole has killed off more legacy characters than any other by an enormous margin: The entire Romulan Star Empire Hugh Bruce Maddox Data's recovered consciousness Jean-Luc Picard The Borg Queen of the Confederacy timeline All Borg Queens everywhere in the multiverse (via destiny) Agnes Jurati Cristobel Rios (via time travel) Q Ro Laren Alton Soong Data's recovered consciousness (again) Lore's recovered consciousness Lal's recovered consciousness Alton Soong's recovered consciousness and now... I'd be OK with that explanation had Star Trek not established on multiple prior occasions that repeatedly cloning the same individual leads to fatal genetic degradation in a lot shorter timeframe than what we've seen for the identical Soong family history.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    That's fair. One could argue that Data was probably the only member of the extended and occasionally artificial Soong family to actually attend an Ethics class. The majority of the members of the Soong family we've seen in Star Trek to date are kinda... either insane, murderous, or murderously insane.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    That was his position 20 years ago after Star Trek: Nemesis. The reason he gave at the time for agreeing to the writers killing off Data in Star Trek: Nemesis was that he'd visibly aged enough that he felt it was implausible for him to continue to play a physically-unaging android character like Data. His return to the franchise as Data coincided with the (inexpert) use of digital deaging technology to make him look closer to his TNG appearance, but they seem to have stunned him into agreeing to return with large amounts of money for Picard's third season and the TNG cast's last hurrah. That said, I think Picard's first season created an even bigger problem for Data returning. Data made it clear to Picard, and through him to Soong, that he wanted to die. Picard went and disconnected Data's program from the simulation it was running on to grant that wish. Apparently Data's final wish to meet death with dignity and to rest in peace didn't matter much to Dr. Soong, who effectively exhumed the corpse of Data's consciousness and resuscitated it in a golem with a bunch of other dead androids so they were all trapped inside a single body fighting for control. That is, as they say, a dick move. So does large amounts of money. Paramount+ is burning something to the tune of $8M an episode filming Discovery and Picard.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    It wouldn't. All in all, I think that's one of those ideas that sounds good as long as you don't actually think it through. Kind of like how some fans were excited for the proposed Section 31 series until they remembered that Section 31 is basically War Crimes Inc., that the show's would-be protagonist is one of the most unrepentantly evil people to ever appear in Star Trek, and that the writing would be similar to Discovery's cringeworthy second season. A show built around Liam Shaw and Seven of Nine sounds like a fine idea in the context of Picard's third and final season because they're the only two functioning adults on a ship overrun with incontinent senior citizens. On its own merits, though... it's a point of pride for Shaw that the USS Titan didn't get up to any high-concept sci-fi bullsh*t during his multi-year tenure as its captain and Seven's nearly as stiff and no-nonsense as he is. It'd be Lower Decks without any of the comedy, unless they decided to have Seven revisit her short-lived, ill-considered cowboy cop phase. That is an incredibly safe bet.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    That'd be the Neo-Zentran movement/party, yes. Though based on the setting materials I've received the movement/party is named the way it is in order to emphasize that, while it's a Zentradi political movement, it represents a new generation of Zentradi raised with Earth's culture who understand both the value of military force and of peace and culture. They're a reform party that's looking at rearmament not because of any warrior ethos, but as a tool to address the fleet's economic and foreign policy problems. Having its own NUNS forces and defense industry wouldn't just create jobs and stimulate the economy, it'd reduce Macross 29's dependency on its neighbors and its neighbors ability to force unfavorable terms on Macross 29 during trade negotiations.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    More or less... from what I've been read and been told it comes up partly because Macross 29's head of state is the brother of the Frontier fleet's deceased president Howard Glass. Macross the Musiculture's Macross 29 fleet was in pretty rough shape in 2062. It doesn't seem to have been bankrolled by a megacorporation like the Frontier and Galaxy fleets, and its government's decision to adopt a policy of unarmed total pacifism eliminated two of any fleet's largest employers AND ruined its economy by making it an extreme doormat during its trade negotiations with other fleets. The resulting economic downturn led to demonstrations that turned into riots and then eventually evolved into a legitimate political movement in the fleet that was pursuing rearmament. It's kind of a polar opposite of the Macross Frontier fleet, which is wealthy thanks to the backing of Bilra Transport, several major tech companies, a robust defense industry developing original weapons for the fleet and for export sale, and cultural exports and tourism.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Not really... all five of Xaos's "Siegfried" custom VF-31's have the same specs and equipment barring the different monitor turrets. On paper, they allegedly have different operational roles but nothing in their specs or equipment actually bear out those differences except in Chuck's case. Arad's VF-31S is said to be (as expected) a Command machine tuned to the limits of its performance. Messer's VF-31F is said to be a space superiority model optimized for atmospheric combat... which is kind of paradoxical if you think about it. Chuck's VF-31E is set up as an ELINT/AWACS aircraft. Mirage's VF-31C is said to be a "tactical support fighter" whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. It's said that it has command unit capabilities too, though technically that's just software that could be installed anywhere. Hayate's VF-31J is said to be a "space superority support" model, with no real indication given as to what THAT means either. In practice, all of them except Chuck's are used as dogfighters with no real sense of unit organization or different operational roles. In the comparison to the VF-25's used by SMS in Macross Frontier, it's worth remembering that the VF-25's we see are all production-intent variants from the VF-25's trial production lot. None of them have been customized. The VF-31's used by Xaos, however... the VF-31A type is production-intent, and because it has the ordnance container system it's meant to be a "one variant fits all" approach to mission equipment. The same single variant should sufice to fill any role by swapping out the modular container. Xaos customized five of the VF-31A's they were given to make the Siegfried type, and in so doing gave them cosmetic differences... but in practice it's still a jack-of-all-trades unit.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    It's really more a return to the show's baseline level. Up to the final episode, Part I was a disjointed mess that never established any kind of consistent narrative. It just jackknifed from one crisis to the next at breakneck pace with each being treated like it was the end of the world for two episodes before being either easily resolved by some never-before-mentioned bullsh*t or simply forgotten. We're just back to that... with the Part I climax ending up as the easily-resolved and almost forgotten event.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Well, The Witch from Mercury has drunkenly stumbled back onto the broadcast schedule and vomited up another messy, poorly-written excuse for an episode that can't seem to make up its mind if it wants to pick up where Part I left off or not. All in all, the episode is disjointed to the point that it feels like a clipshow from three or four different episodes running in parallel. I'm not sure what's more off-putting... the writing's inability to maintain anything like a consistent tone or reasonable pacing, or the way everyone is just SUPER cool about Suletta having straight-up killed a dude in the most grusome manner possible two weeks ago.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Picard's whole thing with these rogue Founders doesn't really make a ton of sense if you think about it. That Founders were captured during the Dominion War and subjected to study is, on its own, pretty reasonable and even Section 31's involvement in it makes sense since they'd have had to experiment on someone to prove out their nasty little anti-Changeling doomsday virus. That the experimentation somehow made them better shapeshifters doesn't make all that much sense since their supposed new capabilities are things they were already capable of back in Deep Space Nine. Odo was pretty clear from the outset that the Founders are better (or more experienced/proficient) shapeshifters than him and that their shapeshifting ability was good enough to fool even Starfleet sensors. Likewise, the Martok Changeling was able to pass multiple blood screenings without issue prior to being outed and gunned down on Ty'gokor. Section 31's experimentation allegedly made Vadic and her ilk better shapeshifters, but they never address how and the only appreciable differences from the Founders as they were during Deep Space Nine are all negatives: They need to periodically return to their liquid state to regenerate, and if they don't they'll gradually lose control over their shape anyway with visible physical deterioration. This limitation was previously unique to Odo. They can be stabbed with injurious or even incapacitating effect. They can be vaporized with a single phaser discharge, when they were previously shown tanking dozens of disruptor blasts. (Barring Mirror Odo, who exploded when struck with a kill shot from a Bajoran hand phaser, presumably also on Odo's inexperience as a shapeshifter.) The most coherent explanation we can assume is that they discovered, during that experimentation, that simulating the full internal anatomy of a living being instead of just doing the outer appearance and lifeform readings let them evade detection by anti-Changeling countermeasures at the cost of being way more draining to carry off. That'd make it not so much an improvement in their abilities as a dangerous forbidden technique.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Possibly - and I would be endlessly amused if it were the case - a dig at Star Trek: Picard's own merchandising. The Star Trek wine collection. The novelty bottles modeled on various noteworthy liquor bottles from Star Trek shows make rather nice collectibles but the actual wine therein is unmistakably the cheap stuff. Some of it was passable, but a lot of it wasn't. It reviewed poorly, even in publicity puff pieces with Picard cast members involved. Like the wine tasting and review with John de Lancie, where the "Cardassian Kanar" red wine blend was described as something that could be mistaken for tapwater with wine essence added. That is pretty close to murder with malice when it comes to a wine review. I'm no wine snob and certainly no vintner, but AFAIK there are a large number of factors contributing to that including the type and quality of fruit used, the acidity, the alcohol content, how long it aged, the balance of flavors, the quality and consistency of the barrels, etc. (I have an aunt who makes wine, I only narrowly staved off a multi-hour lecture.) The Star Trek wine collection compared unfavorably (IMO) to the products of my local winery, and my home state isn't exactly well-known for its wine.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Dunno what to tell you there, but almost all of the discussion of Rey that I saw when the movies were coming out was negative. Filthy casual that I am, a lot of that was filtered through friends who are more avid consumers of Star Wars media so maybe? I've gotten reamed a few times in discussions for suggesting Rey was a missed opportunity to defy the usual "Chosen Hero of Ultimate Destiny" malarkey and have her just be the "nobody from nowhere" that she claimed to be while still saving the day. Y'know, saving the day because she's got principles and chose to stand against tyranny instead of being railroaded into it by Destiny. But yeah my key takeway from all that was definitely that fans hated her... and I'm seeing a LOT of that on social media right now, which is why I mentioned it. That was pretty ****ed up. It's one thing for audiences to have a negative reaction to an actor because they played a villain so well that audiences can't help it (like the guys who played Draco Malfoy and Joffrey), it's quite another for a character to be in a subplot so obnoxious and unnecessary that audiences can't separate their dislike of it from their dislike of the actor.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    This feels like an appropriate response: All things considered, I'm surprised that The Powers That Be at Disney want to do another Star Wars movie with Rey. For a while there, I'd have sworn that she was competing with Jar-Jar Binks to be the single most hated character in Disney's Star Wars franchise. The 51.86% plummet in the box office take across her trilogy doesn't augur well for yet another outing with a character who has (not entirely unreasonably) been accused of being a Mary Sue. Disney can occasionally do a great job with Star Wars, but what I've seen has been far more miss than hit and far more dependent on fanservice than quality storytelling. Rogue One and Andor stand head and shoulders above the rest. Then again, I'm also a filthy casual and think the Jedi are far and away the most boring part of Star Wars. To me, there are few characters less relatable than bland ascentic space monks and evil-for-evil's sake space cultists wheeled helplessly from set piece to set piece on their way to a destined encounter with a preordained outcome because The Force Says So. A setup like that kind of denies that your protagonist or antagonist have free will or agency within the context of the story, and a boolean choice between objective good and objective evil leaves little to develop a character around. I'd rather see them put more effort into telling stories about the normal people of the galaxy who aren't simply puppets of The Force.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Oh Star Trek: Picard, it truly is impossible to underestimate you. "Surrender" has a fitting title, because this is clearly where Picard's showrunners and writers simply gave up and stopped even pretending they were trying. There's barely enough story here to fill the back of a cereal box, never mind ten episodes of a television series. It's just depressing.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    I know the ones you mean... those have a Beware of Blast markings as if they were engine nozzles.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Poorly? I think that much was inevitable. This is less a narrative and more a string of poorly thought-out references and in-jokes driven by moon logic and garnished with a plethora of plot holes. A few moments of almost quality writing were unlikely to ever change this show's course away from the ending being another disappointing arse pull.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    It's been a while since I examined my DX VF-25s up close, but I'm fairly certain the two sets of six nozzles seen in the line art are actually present in the toy. They're hard to see due to being small, but those nozzles on the underside of the backplate are very much there.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    It is, at least, acknowledged from a relatively early point in the franchise that the Zentradi's nature as a designer species based on the ancient Protoculture's own DNA resulted in some of them possessing unusual genetic traits as a legacy of the biotechnology engineered into them. It strikes me as unlikely... because the reason that giant Zentradi are not often seen in emigrant fleets and the reason giant Zentradi were banned on Earth are different. Giant Zentradi were banned on Earth because of the armed revolt in the late 2020s. The scarcity of giant Zentradi in emigrant fleets is presented as more of a resource problem, with the giants consuming exponentially more resources and space than a miclone on ships were space and resources are at a premium. Based on Sheryl's reaction, that the Frontier fleet emigrant ship Macross Frontier maintains a bioplant artificial ecosystem for resource recycling and has enough space and resources that it can spare enough of both for a permanent and luxurious giant Zentradi settlement is a highly conspicuous display of the Frontier fleet's incredible wealth.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Brings to mind an unanswered question from VOY "Author, Author". Do personality rights apply to holosuite/holodeck programs? As in, if someone makes a holoprogram and uses the likenesses of real people without their consent or potentially in an objectionable or defamatory manner, can the person depicted seek some kind of redress from the Federation or foreign court systems? The first two times we see this happen are in private use on TNG and the people depicted are offended but the offender receives no real consequences. On Voyager, it was done for commercial purposes with the Doctor's holo-novel that used the likenesses of the entire Voyager crew and it just kind of gets forgotten about in the brouhaha over the publisher denying the Doctor is legally the work's author. Picard is nothing if not defamatory in its relentless character assassination of Jean-Luc Picard and other former Enterprise crew...
  23. Seto Kaiba
    They don't even stand out in that regard, considering the number of Humans in Macross with unusual hair colors like blue, purple, and pink. How much of that is simply anime doing what anime does and how much is people taking medication to change their hair color as Sheryl is indicated to do in Macross Frontier is not clear, but it seems skewed heavily towards the former since nobody seems to find the amazing technicolor hairstyles on display unusual or noteworthy. I can't quite see someone so straight-laced as Gamlin Kizaki dying his hair that interesting shade of lavender for aesthetics. Max had it in the original series, but for the sake of a terrible pun.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Zentradi and part-Zentradi are actually fairly common in postwar society... it's just that, as in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross, many Zentradi and part-Zentradi miclones are all but indistinguishable from Humans even up close. It's even harder to pick them out of a crowd by the time of Plus and beyond since many of them are "peace children" who'd been born and raised after the First Space War, and have few or none of the culture-otaku tells that the First Space War veterans so often display. There's often little to no way to tell that someone's part-Zentradi without being told, or them having a conspicuously Zentradi surname like Elmo Kridanik. The First Space War-era veterans... well... they often give the game away with their unapologetic Earth culture-otaku behavior and tendency to do things like take Human names.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    That would probably be wise, yes. I have no idea what goes on on that Fandom Wiki, but a lot of people seem to just put completely unsubstantiated fan theories there as if they were fact. This seems to happen a lot when characters have an unconventional appearance somehow, despite all evidence to the contrary. The closest Gamlin got to "raised by Zentradi" is having been a favored student of Milia's in the military academy.
×
×
  • Create New...