williams_482 @ williams_482 @startrek.website

Posts

52

Comments

182

Joined

2 yr. ago

Moderating

---

This is one of the many things that Strange New Worlds (and Lower Decks as well) have got right. Space battles in SNW are beautifully animated, but they aren't overwhelmed with excess visual spectacles and they tend to be fundamentally simple: you shoot at us, we shoot back or try to find some helpful obstruction to hide behind, etc.

Even Prodigy's big space battle in their finale manages the task to some degree, despite it's scale. I remember watching it felt oddly sluggish, as the ratio of ships on screen to weapons being fired was surprisingly low, but it definitely made it easier to keep track of whatever specific event the camera was focussed on.

The grandparents effect did occur to me, but I'm not sure what exactly these few Gorn who reach adulthood are doing to make their descendants (who they implanted in a host long before they themselves grew to maturity) more likely to survive. Even assuming these adults are in position to assist their offspring, the kids are quite capable hunters and don't seem to need protection against anything except eachother.

Do they? In the wild, the babies burst out of a host and are immediately capable of running around and spitting on things, which become infected and eventually babies burst out, onwards and onwards.

The Gorn practice of having separate breeding spaces is clearly an artificial construct designed (presumably by the Gorn themselves) to make it possible to have a functional civilization of adult beings. In the wild, anywhere that has viable hosts is a viable breeding area, and these creatures could not possibly have evolved this life cycle without viable hosts commonly available to them.

This is Daystrom Institute, so although we both accept and encourage Doylist answers, "it's bad writing" is never a sufficiently substantive response.

So we know Gorn capture other species, pit them against the Gorn and each other ala the strongest M&M copypasta, and then send the strongest M&M back to M&M Mars space. La’an was the strongest M&M, for example.

I tried to touch on this in my OP, but the problem with this is that unless Gorn generations are very spread out (unlikely, given the rapid gestation period and rather ad-hoc method of implanting eggs), the odds of a "superior" elder beating out all of it's slightly younger competition remains quite slim. This is a brawl, not a neatly organized bracket, and random chance will invariably play a big role in who wins and who loses. The top Gorn from generation A suddenly finds itself as merely a slightly advantaged individual in a whole new field of competitors the overwhelming likelihood is that one of them will prove the ultimate winner, and then suffer the same fate. If the "strongest M&M" were thrown into a fresh bracket instead of being mailed to the parent company, it's almost certain to be toppled. You wind up with a species whose "true" lifespan and adult form is irrelevant, because every individual dies long before they come anywhere near adulthood.

More importantly from an evolutionary perspective, though, the success or lack thereof of an individual Gorn has almost no effect on their ability to reproduce. All the Gorn need, apparently, is to survive long enough to spit on a viable host. Anything that happens after they do that is irrelevant, and thus won't be selected for evolutionarily. And it strikes me as highly improbable that growing to much greater size and having enormous strength (never mind developing sapience) are unlikely to emerge by pure chance without evolutionary pressures making those traits more likely to be passed on.

The "Strongest M&M" problem is probably mitigated by lower density of baby Gorn in the wild than what we've seen on screen so far. If a brood typically manages to winnow itself down to a single individual before any of them can spit on a host, and the hist typically has enough time to travel somewhere else before the next generation hatches, then you have a situation where the strongest of the babies will generally reproduce and then generally have the chance to continue growing into "true" adulthood. Unfortunately that still doesn't answer my second question of how that adult form evolved at all when it's very existence has no clear benefit to the animal's ability to reproduce.

The voice of an individual in the collective is roughly equivalent to a vote in a democracy: it's real and it's there, but there are so many other votes/minds involved that the chances of yours having any influence at are are negligible.

I value democracy and community, but I'm not willing to put every single action I take,however small, up to a public vote.

Assimilated drones immediately lose all autonomy, and can never regain it without outside influence (which they will likely be compelled to resist). It's functionally suicide, except that your body and mind continue to be used for whatever purpose by an entity you have effectively no control over.

I understand joking about the benefits relative to the frequently unpleasant world we live in now, but I have serious concerns about anyone who would rather be a Borg drone than an ordinary 24th century Federation citizen.

Of course Kurn is victimized by bad kerning.

Umm, yes sir. My pleasure, sir.

Admiral, this ship is scheduled to take 4,000 people to Delta Vega by stardate 52743.5. Are you seriously asking me to detour all the way to Deep Space Nine?

The Borg may believe in perfection, but I think they are on a fools errand.

@T156@lemmy.world touched on this, but the whole point of the Borg's search for perfection is that it's an impossible task which will occupy them forever: a perpetual salve against boredom, for an entity which can (or at least thinks they can) trivially accomplish virtually any concrete task they attempt. I believe Seven even refers to this explicitly, although I am unable to find a quote.

From this perspective, stumbling into the Omega molecule was actually an unfortunate accident. Instead of the slow, inexorable march of incremental progress towards their nebulous goal, the Borg found something so "perfect" that they felt they actually could achieve "perfection" by harnessing it, and will pay virtually any price to get there. The is dangerous both because it risks leaving them without a purpose if they "succeed", but also at great risk from the more conventional disasters that Omega particles are so prone to.

I don't think I would agree with the claim that "natural, biological systems are actually often perfect models for ... efficiency." Natural, biological systems tend to get the job done (natural selection at work), but often do so in bizare, highly inefficient ways.

For example, most of us have eyes. Our eyes generally do an extraordinarily good job absorbing reflected light and allow us to perceive an enormous amount of visual information regarding our surroundings. So far, so good.

Look a little deeper, though, and the structure of our eyeballs quickly shows the vestiges of it's bogosort design process: vertibrate eyes all have a blind spot where the optic nerve blocks some incoming light from reaching our photoreceptor cells. We generally don't notice this because we have two eyes, and our brains are pretty good at merging the images we get from each one to cover for whatever the other missed (including constructing some outright fabrications where needed). Essentially, the human eye is a camera with the power cord routed across the lens: an obviously idiotic design decision that persists because it wasn't quite bad enough to be completely debilitating and could be mostly compensated for. Cephalopod eyeballs, which evolved independently of ours, do not have this particular weakness (although they do have their own suboptimal quirks).

It's not hard to look at the bevy of ingenious yet plainly stupid constructs that evolution has created and decide that they fall well short of any idealized standard of "perfection." Why should the Borg accept a visual sensor with such a glaring flaw, when they know they can do it better?

PS - I’m not really sure on what the policy is on linking topics from the subreddit but I’m trying not to post on Reddit so.i guess this is my way of transitioning. Remove if not ok, I guess?

We haven't worked out any formal cross-posting policy between cDaystrom and rDaystrom, but what you have done here is definitely acceptable. We do not and never did have any intention of disrupting the standard goings on in rDaystrom (definitely check with the rDaystrom mod team before trying to crosspost anything from Lemmy to Reddit), but of course we're more than happy to host offshoot discussions that started with a Reddit post here on Lemmy.

Congratulations, we've officially made it big.

On a more serious note, though, I'm genuinely heartened that in just 27 minutes this spam comment was reported by 10(!!!) different people, allowing us to quickly see it clean it up. Keep up the good work y'all!

My personal bet is that until the bechdel pass rate goes up into ~90%, your point won’t really fly and the reverse will be passed all of the time … still interesting to find out.

In the era of "just asking questions", I certainly understand any implicit assumptions that I'm oh-so-cleverly concealing some ill-conceived "point" about feminism. Certainly a case can be raised that by presenting a possible chink in the supporting evidence of your post is an inherently disruptive and destructive act; clearly your broader point about closet bigotry affecting fan biases is both correct and worth emphasizing. I'd far rather strengthen your argument than tear it down. I hope that's ultimately what I'm doing here.

Given the numbers and the low bar of the Bechdel, some quick sampling could probably be done to get a picture. Select 10 episodes that pass the Bechdel test and 10 that fail, maybe some from TNG ans some from voyager, and we here collectively try to see if they pass/fail the reverse bechdel test in a group effort?

I don't think I would trust the results of this, unfortunately, as there's probably a reverse correlation between the Bechdel and reverse Bechdel tests; in a sample this small that would pollute the results. For example, take any episode where two characters of the same sex are stuck together in some sort of trouble. That episode will surely pass one of the tests (Bechdel for two women, reverse for two men) but has an increased chance of failing the other because much of the dialogue for the rest of the characters is likely to revolve around the plight of the imperiled pair.

...which isn't to say that what you suggest isn't worth the attempt. Certainly raising an issue and then shooting down a proposed solution to it isn't very helpful. Episode transcripts are out there; maybe there's a software solution here? Automatic identification of conversations between two characters would be imperfect but manageable, running that dialogue up against a list of names of male/female characters and then manually checking up on the episodes that missed to avoid false negatives would probably be the most technically efficient way about this?

Circling back on your actual point, though... You are absolutely and unambiguously correct that TOS did a horrible job with gender representation, much worse than TNG did (or could have been expected to by fans when it was about to air). It's also clear that Voyager did much better than it's contemporaries, and ENT was a pretty harsh step backwards. You don't need to know the base rate to establish if one number is bigger than the other, only to draw more nebulous, general conclusions about how well shows are doing with gender representation.

For level setting, I would like to see the results of the "reverse Bechdel" test: a scene where two named male characters talk about something other than a woman.

The numbers will surely be higher than for the standard Bechdel, but I doubt they are 100%: for example, any episode primarily about heterosexual romance will risk failing both tests. TOS seems like it should hit that mark pretty reliably, but the prevalence of episodes where Kirk gets stuck on an alien world and spends most of his time chatting up a lady cut into the odds. (Likewise if we were to take literally Kirk's absurd characterization of the Enterprise as a woman, but... no). DS9 and TNG will run into problems with their volume of mixed-gender conversations, and for TNG especially the prevalence of significant female guest stars who male characters are likely to be discussing will cause some failures. Etc, etc.

To be clear, we know damn well that Star Trek has had problems with sexism, with instances both subtle and gross (Qpid and clay pots, anyone?). The Bechdel test also seems to be accepted as both a ludicrously low bar and an unreliable measure, but I have yet to see it put in appropriate context against the reverse test. What does it tell us if 98% of Trek episodes pass the reverse Bechdel? or if "only" 75% do? Does Voyager's 86.9% standard score exceed or fall flat relative to their reverse Bechdel? Etc, etc. I would posit that the relationship between the Bechdel and reverse Bechdel should tell a pretty strong story about the level of subtle sexism in how the show is written, while an aggregation of the two scores is mostly just a measure of how (in)frequently the characters are chatting about their coworkers.

It's not the figure that's the problem, but the fact that Americans have been forced to accept this sort of casual deception in how the price of a standard good is advertised. Why is it okay that getting gas for "$3.50" per gallon (to quote the most visible price, which everyone will mention in conversation and mentally reference for comparison) is actually very slightly less than $3.51 per gallon? Just post the correct bloody price, in a clear and unambiguous manner, without faffing around with extra decimals that everyone mentally filters out anyway. It's stupid.

Same deal with American businesses consistently citing pre-tax (and where relevant, pre-tup) prices. Just tell people what the fuck they are actually going to pay, instead of agreeing that literally everyone has to make their pricing an exercise in consumer deception or be beaten out by everyone else's smaller-looking-but-actually-identical prices.

This whole thing is just another tiny window into why unregulated markets suck.

Au contrarie; sports are a fantastic way to get socioeconomic issues (like labor rights) front and center on the minds of people who wouldn't necessarily be thinking of them the same way. And they create opportunities for people to educate themselves in other areas as well. Not every sports fan is the willfully ignorant meathead you describe, nor do willfully ignorant meatheads exist because of sports.

MLB is not only a state sponsored monopoly, but like every other American sports league a blatant cartel which is constantly squabbling with its own employees over revenue shares (at the expense of the on-field product) and lying about how much money they actually make. Same thing as most other business owners, but people are a lot more willing to listen to the perspective of, say, Shoehi Ohtani than a random McDonald's employee. I can tell you that I am personally much more clued in on these sorts of societal problems as a result of sportswriters discussing labor issues, on top of being far more statistically savvy and generally more sceptical of oversimplified narratives than I would be if I had never gained an interest in baseball. Nor would I have anywhere near my current understanding of global politics without global football (soccer) creating both a mechanism and incentive for learning about them.

But that's not even the point: sports are not a "scam". Sports exist first and foremost because for many people, watching elite athletes play a game is fun. That is the intrinsic value of professional sports, and nothing about that is inherently scammy. Full stop.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is definitely not a "bottle episode". Bottle episodes are episodes which require minimal or no additional budget for SFX, sets, etc beyond what is already available from previous/upcoming episodes. They exist as a money saving device which was necessary for shows to run 26 episode seasons and shell out for expensive productions while remaining within their budget. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow wouldn't have been the most expensive episode to film, but there's still a lot of exterior scenes, VFX, etc which make it quite a bit pricier than an episode almost entirely confined to a handful of existing sets.

It is a happy accident (whether by chance, or because the format forces an emphasis on the stories Trek has been best at telling) that Trek bottle episodes tend to include some of the best writing and character moments of the various series. This naturally leads to some confusion about what a "bottle episode" actually means.

Strange New Worlds has not had any true "bottle episodes" to date, although they certainly have been able to work in a lot of high quality character moments.

I could tell that Chapel and Spock's songs had some significant structural similarities (I am largely ignorant of the technical aspects of music, so I couldn't say what exactly). Is that typically a part of the "rebuke and reprise" sequence (which is also totally new to me)?