• WarmSoda@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    When he uses the employee bathroom and over hears someone in the stall say “make it so” and then a loud plop

  • BallShapedMan@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The creativity of you and this whole sub is simply amazing.

    Side note if anyone hasn’t read Red Shirts yet, do it. Totally fits with this! The audio version is read by Will Wheaton and he kills it.

    • Sigh_Bafanada@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Never watched Star Trek, but thankfully it’s a big enough part of the cultural zeitgeist that I understand most of these memes and love risa

          • BallShapedMan@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Mind sharing why? Not that I’m a super fan or anything, just most people are meh or excited about him. First time I’ve seen someone not be a fan.

            • NYPariah @reddthat.com
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              1 year ago

              You ever just meet someone and you just don’t like them? There’s a few actors that ruin movies and TV shows for me. I just get the feeling if I was in a room with him, I just wouldn’t get along, he seems snooty. Nothing he did, just a personality clash I guess. More meh towards him than hate, but enough to avoid him.

              • merc@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                I can understand that impression from watching him as an actor, and watching him as himself doing guest appearances, or talk shows, or stuff like Critical Role. He has a vibe that he’s trying too hard sometimes. Where other people are (or seem) relaxed and naturally charming, it seems like it’s an effort for him.

                On the other hand, I’ve read some of the books he has written, and I get a very different vibe from that. He’s a really good writer who is really honest about his life so far He doesn’t seem at all snooty or stuck-up in his writing. He seems humble and someone who has had some really great breaks in life, but also had to deal with some pretty awful shit. He also has a great sense of humour in his writing.

                It’s entirely possible you (or I) wouldn’t get along with him in person. But, maybe that trying-too-hard thing wears off after he gets to know someone better. But, from reading his books I think he’s a good guy and I hope he has success in his life.

              • BallShapedMan@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Fair enough. I was that way Mandy Moore. Then she did tangled and that TV show that made me cry all the time and I like her now.

                Nothing she did, just decided I didn’t like her.

                • NYPariah @reddthat.com
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                  1 year ago

                  Pretty willing to continue this discussion if you are. It’s strange, I think the older you get, the more particular you are to the irritations that others make, just get to you more. Call it old man syndrome I guess. I’m 50 now. I loved Robin Williams when he was in Mork and Mindy. But as I aged, and he was in more and more things, I really developed a dislike for his style of humor. Props to his creativity, but I just stopped laughing. And then he got annoying. Horribly annoying. So yeah, I guess we all have favorites and I tend to go with the flow with society, but a handful just rub me the wrong way and I can’t help but feel like Homer’s dad that yells at clouds. Guess I need some type of AI audiobook reader where I could change the voice actor at will. That would be cool.

  • merc@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    This makes me wish even more for a Star Trek spinoff about the lowest-ranked people on a starship.

    Even aside from its cartoonish style and stories, the characters in Lower Decks are too high ranking and too involved. They’re ensigns, and they often interact with the captain. They’re almost never in the dark about what’s happening, and often they’re instigating things.

    What I want to see are the non-commissioned people, like Chief O’Brien in his TNG days. It would be really interesting to see things from the PoV of a character who had no say in what was happening, who didn’t really know what was happening except in rumours, and the only time they heard from the top-ranking officers was in ship-wide announcements and so-on.

    I’d especially like to see a security team of literal red-shirts beaming down to a hostile planet. Not as part of a standard away team involving the highest ranking officers on the ship. I want a squad of NCOs who are expendable to go down to secure a site so that it’s safe enough that the first officer and doctor can beam down. So many of Star Trek’s episodes are about politics, espionage, secret deals, etc. I’d love to see things from the PoV of a red-shirt security NCO who isn’t cleared to know any of that, but is just told to beam down and secure the landing zone / beam-in zone. Or, better yet, is part of a team that’s sent out in a shuttlecraft weeks ahead, and has to set up a stealthy observation post and camp out, waiting for the Enterprise to arrive. I want NCOs in dirty work gear, not clean uniforms, camping out on a lonely planet not because they’re stranded, just because they have orders to set up the site and wait for the ship.

    • the_sisko@startrek.website
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      1 year ago

      This is exactly what the TNG episode “Lower Decks” was about. It was actually super powerful as a representation of how the decisions made by the captain and bridge officers had a profound impact on the lives of the ensigns (NCOs didn’t seem to be mentioned), without them knowing what’s going on.

      The show lower decks was obviously inspired by that specific episode, but definitely lost that serious tone and lack of visibility into the politics/big picture that the captain dealt with.

      And honestly I think star trek forgot that NCOs existed and just kept remembering it each time Chief O’Brien had a major episode and his rank came up.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        This is exactly what the TNG episode “Lower Decks” was about

        Yeah, but there isn’t much they can do in one episode. The fact that they created a whole series based on that one episode shows they understand the potential. That episode was great in that it showed that the lower-ranked people didn’t know what was going on, and they shared rumours. But, what I’d like to see is that concept in a 8-10 episode series. Maybe go longer if it turns out people like it.

        Like, I’ve always been annoyed by the idea that, even back to TOS episodes, it’s the ship’s highest ranking officers who beam down to every dangerous situation. They could either do a serious retcon and say “well actually, redshirts are always sent down first to secure the beam-in site, we just never see them”. Or, due to some disaster with an away mission, it could be a new directive that redshirts are sent in first before the higher-ranking officers are allowed to beam in.

        And honestly I think star trek forgot that NCOs existed

        For a show that’s 100% based on a military-like crew, they’re really bad with ranks. In the actual military, the non-commissioned members completely outnumber the commissioned ones. In addition, the non-commissioned officers, like Petty Officer, Chief Petty Officer (O’Brien), etc. are all very experienced. While a second lieutenant outranks even the highest ranked NCOs, only an idiot 2LT disregards what the senior NCOs say. Senior NCOs have been in the military for decades and have been in leadership positions for years. 2LTs have virtually no experience, especially leadership experience.

        The one thing they got right with Chief O’Brien is that he was fairly old on TNG. Colm Meaney was in his 30s on TNG, which would be young for a chief, but possible. But, to have a rank like “chief” you’d expect someone to spend some time as a rank lower than chief, and they basically never mention anybody lower ranked than that, let alone show a young Star Fleet member who isn’t a young officer.

        In reality, some of the Star Trek bridge crew should be enlisted members. The helmsman should be a low-ranked non-commissioned member who steers the “boat” and follows orders. There’s no need to waste an officer-ranked person on that role. The head of security should be a petty officer / chief / master chief. And the red-shirt security goons should definitely be non-commissioned members.

        Now, there could be some kind of fantasy that by the time of Star Trek a lot of the menial work that non-commissioned members used to do has been automated away. You could also say that with the Utopian society, everybody can get educated for free without issue, so it makes sense that virtually everyone who joins Star Fleet joins as an officer, and there are very few non-commissioned members. You could even pretend that non-commissioned members go up ranks in training, and that by the time you’re out of the Star Fleet non-commissioned boot camp, you’re already ranked Chief. It seems weird to have an non-commissioned core where “Chief” is the lowest rank, but whatever. Maybe Chief is for people who hate school and don’t want to go through multiple years of school, and just want to get into Star Fleet right away.

        On the other hand, you could pretend that there are all kinds of non-commissioned members in Star Trek, but we just never see them. You could open up a whole new universe of content focused on those non-commissioned members. The stories from Star Trek TOS were often likened to cowboy stories, where a small band of people goes around solving problems. That’s the more common format even for military shows. Military shows often focus on elite units (SEAL teams, CIA groups) or doctors (MASH, Combat Hospital, 68 Whiskey). In those shows the unit gets an order, knows why they’re doing it, and is fully responsible for planning and executing. But, you could also do something more like Band of Brothers where the focus is on people at the bottom of the rank structure following orders, sometimes dumb orders or orders they don’t understand.

        I think there’s a lot of potential for a Star Trek show that has more of a Band of Brothers style – people in awful situations bonding through it, following orders they don’t like. Star Trek’s universe comes with the perfect kinds of tensions for that. The Prime Directive is often ignored or bent, but imagine a group of people suffering because they’re trying very hard to survive while not interfering. Or Star Trek’s utopian ideals vs. the reality on the ground.

        Some of the best episodes of Strange New Worlds were when Nurse Chapel and Doctor M’Benga were fighting either in flashback-land or in the present. I’d love to see a series set in one of the many wars that are mentioned in passing.

        Anyhow, I think there’s potential. It’s a big enough universe that there’s room for a series without any captains or high-ranking officers.

      • EssentialCoffee@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        Even aside from its cartoonish style and stories, the characters in Lower Decks are too high ranking and too involved. They’re ensigns, and they often interact with the captain. They’re almost never in the dark about what’s happening, and often they’re instigating things.

  • GreenMario@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    “John Luck Pickard”: why are you not at your station? Weren’t you supposed to be doing maintenance?

    Lower decks guy: Man, ain’t nobody checking up on us, Pickard you gotta relax. Look me and the boys are about to play a game of Elite Force on the Holodeck, you in or not?

    Panel4.jpg

    • ramble81@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yes. That was from the episode where Picard gets a second chance at life from Q and he sees what the result is if he “played it safe”.