Heck, if you want the stickers, you can easily print them on a good inkjet.

I think the biggest issue with ENT is probably the sexualization of T’Pol, the culmination of a nasty habit in Berman Trek.

I could tune out 7’s catsuit because she was otherwise well-written and the good plotlines outnumbered the bad, but it feels like at least 75% of all T’Pol stories were of the horny Berman type, to the detriment of her character.

While we’re at it, let’s just pull in Chris Pine (multiverse crap) and William Shatner (Nexus crap) and have one of those nutty SNW episodes that sounds like a horrible idea but is surprisingly one of the better episodes that season:

I don’t know why, but I feel cheated that we don’t get an Enterprise J model - what else am I going to use as my weirdly-shaped dinner plate?

Actually looking at it, my impression has softened a bit. I think I just was struggling with the perspective.

I like the proportions of the earlier concept better - I like big nacelles.

That… is kind of ugly. It’s unimaginative - feels too much like an airplane or a cheap-as-heck shuttle model. It brings up the worst of late-90s/early 2000s blobject design.

It would definitely feel more at home as background ship, but this is not the design of a hero ship. It doesn’t even have to be the traditional Roddenberry-type design; something looking more like the Dove from Lower Decks would be better than this.

Yeh, I feel that. As much as I try to be hippy here, I can’t disagree with that.

I agree with all your points. I don’t deny or absolve them of their wrong; they should very much be aware they’re hurting people.

My definition of “demon” is Hitler/Stalin/Mao/Pinoche level, and despite the evil they do and the fact that they collectively enable “demons”, I don’t think they themselves rise to that level of evil. There are shades of gray.

When I say, “It is difficult to think of how they could coexist”, I mean if they refuse to be kind and coexist with others, meaning that they’ve truly refused to coexist and thus renounced that right.

I agree there need to be consequences for being horrid, I just think human rights need to be considered in those consequences as not to become horrid.

Also, I sort of view human civilization as a whole through the lens of Kohlberg’s theory of moral development. In many ways, we’re still in the pre-conventional stage where we still behave based on punishment and reward, and for humanity to survive long term (if we can), we need to strive as a society towards the post-conventional stage where we are largely beyond pain and punishment. We will likely never attain the post-conventional stage much like a circle can never be perfectly round, but we must approach it the best we can.

Yes and no. I think some people are intolerant out of true hatred and will choose to always act in bad faith. It is difficult to think of how they could coexist.

But also, a lot of people are just intolerant because they don’t actually know the people they’re hurting, only what they’ve been told. If they actually got to know the people their vote affects, they might have second thoughts - maybe not change their votes, but at the least be more prepared to live in a tolerant society. Automatically taking away this sector of the intolerant’s “right to coexist” (assuming this is an accurate interpretation of your point - I don’t intend to sealion, so correct me if I’m wrong) denies them the opportunity to learn and evolve as people and turns us into the intolerant in a sense.

This does not absolve them of their wrong, this does not mean we don’t take concrete action against intolerance in society (and unfortunately, sometimes it does mean taking away people’s “right to coexist” if they refuse to coexist, although we should avoid it as much possible), and this does not mean these people shouldn’t face the consequences of their actions.

Honestly, I often very angry about the intolerant, and part of me wants to feel they’ve renounced their humanity (the good part, anyway) in some sense, but at the end of the day I have to remind myself such thoughts are not conducive to building a good society (that is, assuming we still have a chance for one, which is not a given).

Reminds me of Mariner jettisoning herself out the holographic airlock saying, “Fail me, fail me, fail me.”

You’re forgetting Ad Homicide: Just because you killed someone doesn’t mean you’re right.

(And of course, its vice versa, just because you (or someone with your views) got killed doesn’t mean you’re right, which admittedly is less common in history, but nonetheless something to be aware of to evaluate arguments critically.)

I mean, that’s fair.

I feel that somewhat by accident, Lower Decks does better capture some aspects of classic Trek than other series, namely being mostly episodic and bringing a sense of humor back to Trek, and it sometimes even attains a level of dramatic skill comparable to the best of classic Trek (namely above all else the exchange between Mariner and Ma’ah in the S4 finale). Also, I’m honestly really impressed that Lower Decks managed to get me attached to its characters and make it feel like they’ve evolved so much in a total runtime less than that of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

That said, Lower Decks does lack the mellow charm and the long(er)-form storytelling of classic Trek. However, considering the Trekiness they otherwise pulled off, I kind of wonder how the Lower Decks writers would do if they were given the opportunity to do a 50 minute “standard” Trek series; I think they might be able to do pretty well.

Similarly, with SNW, while it has some of the strongest writing of social interaction, the sci-fi aspect is often weaker than it should be. For instance, “Four-and-a-Half Vulcans” is almost a brain-dead premise in terms of science fiction, but executed so well in terms of the social dynamics and character writing.

In other words, I can see your desire for a no-compromises, no catches Trek.

When you put it that way, I agree.

TNG made a point to avoid doing this as much as possible, and it ultimately worked and arguably usurped the original.

I guess that’s also part of the strength of Lower Decks and somewhat Prodigy; both shows are the only ones of this wave to be mostly focused on original characters. Lower Decks does bring in legacy characters frequently, and Prodigy does have Hologram Janeway and later starts to heavily feature legacy characters as part of the storyline, but both have an original cast as the core of the show that isn’t anyone we know’s brother or cousin. I superficially thought about this, but didn’t think about it in comparison to the other newer Treks before.

I mean, if they struck a balance, it could be enjoyable enough.

It’s not a dynamic we’ve fully explored in Trek. We kind of got it with adult Jake and Captain Sisko in the later seasons of DS9, but we haven’t really fully seen the experience of a Starfleet empty nester.

Still, drama after drama is rather annoying.

After being disgusted by the horribly-done pre-school show, I’d much rather see a Star Trek done in the spirit of Craig of the Creek and Bluey that’s about a friend group of kids running around a star base and getting into fun and trouble and low-stakes ethical dilemmas, preferably while their parents (the crew and civilian residents) deal with DS9 levels of heavy stuff. After saying this to my younger sibling, they have a more developed pitch, having sketched up some concept art for fun.

I would certainly not reject a well-written Lower Decks season 6, so I don’t agree on the animated comedy front.

How do we know the whole Star Trek franchise isn’t some Romulan plot to erase the Federation from the timeline via butterfly effect?

It has its weaknesses, but I think you should watch it if just to form your own opinion.

I’ve only watched through the middle of season 4, where I got a bit tired of it, though I might pick it back up.

Season 1 is interesting, season 2 is weird, and season 3 has its flaws but keeps you on the edge of your seat.

Season 4 I feel like squanders the new setting introduced in season 3; the plot they introduce feels so artificial to me, which is very upsetting because it feels like the new setting has so many stories that would practically write themselves even if you do decide to lean on “Big Bad Villain/Problem” storytelling.

Actually, they were stored across the entire station’s computer systems; only part of them was in Quark’s holosuite. It basically took every bit of storage on DS9 to store them.

From what I can tell, their patterns are only on file during the transport, after which they are discarded. They imply it takes a lot of power and data storage to transport, meaning that they can’t just store everyone’s patterns.

There is an instance in beta canon, but just knowing that transporters and the title are related might spoil the entire plot. Thus, I am using nested spoilers so that people can check if it might be something they’re going to read without knowing exactly which thing it is.

However, you could probably try replicating the two containment beams thing that happened to Riker and Boimler, though, duplicating Tuvix and splitting one.