Sandman
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Posts posted by Sandman
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1 hour ago, paigow said:
Prime Guideline
Heh.
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23 minutes ago, QuantumMechanic said:
What if some enhancement greatly increases the chances that those augments are violent? Seems like that would be pretty bad especially if those same enhancements give extra strength or intelligence.
I think “Space Seed” at least implied, if it did not state explicitly, that the Eugenics Wars happened in part because Khan and his merry band of flash-frozen Übermenschen united physical enhancement and increased intelligence with ambition and aggression.
I must say I did enjoy Spock’s testimony as to Una’s character in particular; framing it as illogical for Starfleet to punish itself by the loss of Una’s contribution was piece of argument that seemed to me worthy of the OG Spock — at once ingenious and, in its way, kind of sweet (without overt emotional display).
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On 6/24/2023 at 11:32 AM, Affogato said:
The genetic enhancement makes sense if you are afraid that it will take over the basic race and that only the 1 percent who can afford it will live long and prosper in society, so I get the initial issues and the fear that a lot of people would have about disrupting society.
I still don’t understand how something so expensive and physically invasive as genetic modification could be a widespread cultural practice. Is Illyrian society hugely stratified? At first I thought (given Una’s ability to adapt to — or destroy? — the pathogen in the episode “Ghosts of Illyria”) that Illyrians had the ability to mutate spontaneously to respond to environmental or personal threats (… what? I know it doesn’t make any sense, but does it makes any less sense than, say, empathic healing? And Una’s ability to heal seems almost Wolverine-esque anyway.)
Maybe the Illyrians were invited to join the Federation because they have the best universal single-payer health care system in the universe?
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I stand corrected. I was sure I had seen an (old) version of the oath that began with “First, do no harm…” I believe the oath did form part of my brother’s medical training.
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13 minutes ago, Dani said:
The plot introducing Spock and Pike on Discovery and them revisiting Talos IV and recapping what happened in The Cage.
My memory of Discovery is patchy. I’d forgotten this. It makes sense that the prologue to this series would refer to what we knew Pike best for.
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On 6/19/2023 at 11:26 AM, Affogato said:
Why does everyone seem to think doctors and nurses are morally constrained not to kill people?
I guess it depends on how broadly “First, do no harm” functions in a doctor’s life. Sure, that may be a question of individual application, but it seems to be a reasonable base assumption.
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I didn’t find it boring — I was actually tearing up a bit. The emotional speeches really worked on me, I guess. I thought there was genuine risk here. Christina Chong, Mount and Romijn all did really great work in this episode.
I don’t know how much chance there is that we’ll see Yetide Badaki again, but I hope we do.
But I confess I’m a little fuzzy on the timeline: have the events of “The Cage” already happened?
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On 8/6/2022 at 10:26 PM, Ottis said:
The only thing I didn’t like was the casting of Jim Kirk, who was more like Jim Carrey playing Kirk than Shatner. They needed a shorter, beefier guy.
I didn’t think of Jim Carrey — that’s a good call. But I kept wondering why Paul Wesley looked more like Rod Serling than Jim Kirk. (Is there another 60s-era show revival on the way, and Wesley showed up at the wrong casting call?) They needed a fairer-coloured, less pissed-off looking guy. I guess Wesley did an okay job embodying a young James T., but I found the lack of physical resemblance distracting.
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It’s curious to me that Affleck was so widely criticized as a poor choice for Batman, while I found Miller pretty much unwatchable as the Flash. (There are a number of structural and acting problems with Justice League —Batman isn’t really among them.) Bruce carries the scenes in which he and Barry interact, in my opinion. Miller is not at all convincing as the Flash, and is, to me, neither charismatic enough nor strong enough as an actor for the studio to put all its eggs into that particular weird basket. (But what do I know? I liked Henry Cavill just fine as Superman…)
Tl;dr: I’ll skip it. This movie is not going to restore my faith or interest in the DC movie universe. What I’ve seen has, however, solidified my conviction that shooting itself in the foot is what this studio does best.
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On 5/24/2023 at 2:09 AM, Andyourlittledog2 said:
Great. Now I get to spend the whole summer worrying about Tank. And yes, I know it's not real.
On 5/26/2023 at 9:20 AM, Snazzy Daisy said:TANK!!! Fluffy and handsome as always! 💕
I was really glad to see Tank stay like the good boy he is — presumably outside of the blast radius.
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On 5/6/2023 at 7:51 PM, ams1001 said:
(It says The More Nuanced Tour 2037)
That’s pretty funny, considering.
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On 5/19/2023 at 5:18 AM, Snazzy Daisy said:
Mason and Nadia have a child together. SHOCKING! People saw this coming several episodes ago. Duh.
I just came here to say: And how!
As you were.
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On 5/4/2023 at 10:42 AM, ams1001 said:
I liked that 16yo Javi speaks Spanish, and apparently Maggie does not, but she understands what he's saying. I wonder if Tia Inez spoke it with him when he was growing up.
My immediate guess was that she must have. I liked the idea that Maggie understood Javi, even if we never see her speaking Spanish herself. This is apparently a not-uncommon experience for bi-cultural kids or the children of immigrants: the first generation (Javier) struggles to fit into North American culture; the next generation (Gary) is more completely assimilated and can tend to reject “old country” language and culture; the grandchildren (Javi) show greater interest in reclaiming their linguistic and cultural heritage. This is only a broad generalization, of course, and may not fully reflect the experience of Americans with Latin American roots in particular — and is not my experience in any case. But the pattern does exist for many.
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10 hours ago, blackwing said:
Also, the agent Carter in Morocco that Nadia and Mason are going to find... isn't he compromised? I thought one of the Manticore agents or Dahlia said his name, but maybe I wasn't paying attention.
Dahlia told Orlick she had turned Carter Spence, yes.
Sure, the plot holes are there, but it’s so over-the-top fun, I can’t bring myself to care. (I mean, a spy agency loyal to no nation but dedicated to the side of Good? In the fine tradition of CONTROL? Or UNCLE? Or, not to put too fine a point on things, the Avengers — Marvel or ModBrit version, for that matter. Sure, why not? It’s not like realism was ever going to be in the room.)
In short: Pretty people doing dangerous things with dazzling ease, with extra Tucci on the side? Aw, hell, yeah!
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1 hour ago, Katie111 said:
Theo is now probably a stepbrother to Danny
And I think he has another stepsister in Greta's daughter (I think we heard her name as "Lana" in the future birthday party scene). I keep double-checking in my head that there's no way Sophie and Tyrell are related (except possibly by marriage, in the end).
16 minutes ago, TivoFan said:I felt that Gary acted prematurely. Rome mentioned that he wasn’t eating, but he was still mentally sharp, still able to communicate, still able to make jokes, still able to hold his son, and did not *appear* to be in intense pain. ... Maybe the writers just didn’t want to show a realistic, messy death from cancer, and that’s understandable, I suppose.
I think it was fairly clear that talking was painful or exhausting for Gary (and I've known people with end-stage lung cancer who experienced this), but for the most part, I think you're right: I think the writers (including Roday Rodriguez, I'm guessing) deliberately did not show the messiest possibilities -- even if that choice failed to mark the urgency they tried to establish as driving Gary's wish for medical assistance in dying.
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4 hours ago, Brian Cronin said:
Yeah, it clearly didn't make any sense that the buddy group was a 34/35 year old, a 36/37 year old, a 28/29 year old and a...16 year old.
I gave the show a bye on this. It was my impression that Javi would also be forming his own primary group of “friends who become your family,” as well as having the “cousins” established by the Band of Dads who brought them together.
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This show relies on suicide too much, I have to say it. But I couldn’t help but be moved by how everyone responded in a way that seemed true to their characters. I liked Gina’s goodbye in particular. And Danny’s Gary story made me weep — a great callback to the first season and the foundation of the bond Gary had with Dan Dixon.
53 minutes ago, KaveDweller said:It also bugged me that we didn't see Gary hugging baby Javier goodbye before he ended his life. I mean, I feel like that's a thing you would do?
He kind of did, I think, when Maggie was watching the video.
I didn’t realize James Roday Rodriguez co-wrote the episode. I wonder if it was he who came up with the idea to have Gary largely silent. I mostly liked the flash-forward, except for Danny’s dye job, and in spite of the fact that a time-jump epilogue is a bit over-used as a device for series finales — but it worked with the nature of this show.
I thought Alison Miller did a brilliant job with the final goodbye; that scene wrecked me (partly because both of my parents died of cancer) and it seemed like one of the more truthful scenes of this series. And James Roday Rodriguez was the heart of the episode, again. A moving and surprisingly satisfying finale.
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On 4/27/2023 at 3:20 AM, SnazzyDaisy said:
I first started crying when Gary thanked Dr. Stein for helping him making this far. The other scene that hit me hard was the airport scene. I basically wept every time Gary was on screen. Thanks so much JRR!
Yup — that’s where I am, too. At first I resented it; like, “Dammit, show, you haven’t earned the right to make me cry steadily through this episode!” But James Roday Rodriguez pulled it off. I thought Alison Miller did a great job, too. And as I say, I’m a sucker for Gary-Dan Dixon scenes.
On 4/27/2023 at 11:40 PM, Winston Wolfe said:With that being said, I hope Nash understands that he has to commit to this arc. There can't be any miracle remissions or a fake-out where someone else dies in the Finale. It will waste the mostly stellar performances everyone gave last night.
Agreed. If Nash were to try something that cheap, it would be an irrecoverable breach of faith with the audience.
11 hours ago, desertflower said:… Mark Green’s death on ER…I think that is the most I have ever sobbed at a tv show in my life. I’m getting sad just thinking about it!
That episode literally had me on the floor, heaving loud, ugly sobs. ER could be brutal. Agreed about Christina Moses, too.
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On 4/13/2023 at 12:04 AM, txhorns79 said:
Finally, Delilah's flashback bob wig was terrible. It looked like she cut her hair herself, got bored and then stopped before she finished.
Well, this my headcanon now. Delilah’s pretty flaky.
If I hadn't known better, I’d say this episode could have been the finale. I’m glad somehow that Delilah remembered how much she loved Jon. That wasn’t where I was expecting the episode to end up.
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On 4/19/2023 at 10:22 PM, JayDub1987 said:
i wanna be annoyed at Maggie singing, but once again, Allison Miller is so damn cute, and her being on screen is a good thing.
I will co-sign this.
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19 hours ago, Peace 47 said:
The Borg Queen told that disembodied head thing, who told Vadic?
I’m presuming the disembodied face thing was the Borg Queen. Not sure why Vadic’s own gooey substance had to be the means of her communication, but, whatever floats their collectivist boat, I guess.
On 4/13/2023 at 2:19 PM, rtms77 said:For a connected collective, no Borg seem to talk to each other.
Maybe it’s a translator glitch. The word “collective” ought to have been translated as “bureaucracy.”
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On 4/13/2023 at 12:30 PM, Francie said:
*Like her, hate her, or (like me) love to hate her, Shelby was bad ass.
The writers actually had the gall to have Picard say (lampshade once again firmly buckled onto his pointed little head) “The irony of Shelby saying something so [Borg-like]!”
No. It’s not ironic, it’s out of character and stupid. The only thing I can be sure Shelby never said to anyone ever?
“Hey, you know what Starfleet should be? Like, Borg-Lite! I think that would be cool!”
Nothing but genetic retcons and character assassination, as far as the eye can see. Feh.
But I’ll admit, I’m curious: how do space fireworks work?
And, sure, I laughed at Deanna’s “Worf!” when Worf was jonesing for Enterprise-E’s snazzy upgrades, harshing on everybody’s (ahem) collective nostalgia buzz. What am I, made of duranium alloy?
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1 hour ago, Ottis said:
Well if that is true, they could have just sent Worf alone and saved everyone else a lot of bother! Send Raffi, too, may as well.
Star Trek: Worf-Sensei and Raffaella.
I've heard (and watched) worse concepts for a show.
20 hours ago, Ottis said:This was the prior ep, but I don't but that Picard and Crusher would throw away their ethics that way (to shoot the captured Vadic).
Once Vadic was no longer restrained and was actively attacking them, they were arguably acting in self-defense.
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On 4/8/2023 at 8:09 PM, Cthulhudrew said:
And why in the name of heck would they have an emergency evacuation door on the bridge? Dumb.
I was thinking that, given how often the saucer sections of starships get separated, and how often starships seem to crash nowadays (though maybe not in TNG's regular timeline), an escape hatch on the bridge seemed kind of sensible.
But then, I'm still laughing over the idea upthread that the "ancient, weak voice" behind the red door is going to turn out to be Keith Richards.
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S02.E03: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
May I join you? I brought three hotdogs. I think I liked that James Kirk was the Edith Keeler this time around. Though I kind of agree that Wesley seems still to be wrapping his head around Kirk.
The franchise’s reliance on time travel stories is now worrisome, however. (Having “temporal mechanics” as a subject at Starfleet Academy is just silly.)
I did enjoy recognizing the Royal Conservatory building in its cameo as the Noonien-Singh Institute.