Voyager’s original CMO was a Lieutenant Commander, which is presumably pretty typical for a ship of Voyager’s size. Bashir was commissioned as a Lieutenant Junior Grade to be the CMO on a backwater space station, so that’s presumably the bare minimum.

I would expect the Doctor’s first official rank (whatever that might be) to stick with him, plus promotion as appropriate. Adjusting it up and down based on posting would be a bizare thing to do for any other crewperson, and I’m sure The Doctor would object vigorously to such a thing.

Unfortunately, there was definitely more going on than that. The genetically modified children were telepaths who could move physical chess pieces with their minds.

I’m very fond of Jack Frost. It’s as corny and delightfully bizare as one could want from a Russian mythology movie made in 1965 USSR, and the riffs are obviously great.

The idea of deliberately creating otherwise illegal augmented people purely for the purpose of making it easier to systemically identify other augmented people is so brazenly unethical, I am at a loss for further comment.

it does explain why Bashir’s father was imprisoned but the Darwin station researchers were not.

Does it?

The Darwin Station researchers are human, as are their augmented subjects. Julian Bashir does not live on Earth at the time his augmentation is discovered. The Bashir family did not get this treatment done on Earth, and given the extreme lengths they went to get Julian treated, alongside Richard’s documented inability to keep a job consistently, it would have been utterly insane not to move to a different world (instead of a different city on Earth, as they actually did) after they got the treatment if this would also free them from any risk of legal repercussions.

Further, Strange New Worlds explicitly refers to this as a Federation law, and the principal reason why Illyrians are not welcome in the Federation.

Ahh yes, Civ IV. From ye olden days, when the dev teams cared about such weird and obsolete ideas as testing the game before release, or creating an interface that tells the player what the fuck is actually happening. Or useable asynchronous multiplayer, or an AI with enough of a clue to play the damn game competently… I could go on.

Some people apparently liked V’s whole “don’t build too many cities, we don’t want to have an actual empire here” deal, which definitely isn’t my thing but does create less micro. But most of the mechanics were reasonable and the UI shared more or less enough info to follow along. They also opened up the code after the final expansion so modders could do some really great things.

IV had a lot of really good ideas, and zero polish. The current version of the game is laden with silly bugs, ride with bizarre balancing choices, and hideously opaque with simple questions like “how much research have I put into this tech”, “how much production overflowed off this completed build”, and “how likely is this unit to kill this other unit, vs simply damaging it.” They haven’t opened up the code to modders, nor have they put any effort into fixing these frankly silly errors themselves.

Civ IV is great because of relatively simple mechanics which allow a lot of interesting choices in how to construct and develop your empire. It accentuates this by getting all the boring stuff right: bugs are few and minor, the interface is communicative, etc. it’s not perfect in either regard, and yet somehow it far exceeds its successors in these simple categories. This is how you make a good turn-based 4X game actually fun, even with 2005 graphics.

And yet, V and VI sold extremely well, and VII seemingly will as well, despite inevitably being a grossly inferior product at release which will be dragged most of the way to a truly finished state over five years of patches and DLC.

I guess this is very “stop having fun meme”, but why the hell are the only games in this genre (of all genres) trading balance, bug fixes, and comprehensible interfaces for fancy graphics? Is it really not profitable to make a game like Civ IV in 2024?

I think you’re probably on the right track here, but I think your takes are on the charitable side. The Ferengi would clearly like to believe their attitude is “If you’ve got the lobes and you’ve got the Latinum, I don’t care what you do,” but in practice they are very committed to some massive societal disparities which are not financially profitable.

In a society so deeply stratified by sex (and far from egalitarian in other regards), MtF trans folks would likely be looked down upon for apparently abandoning a way of life which Ferengi males clearly consider both morally superior and far more pleasant than the lot of a woman. In practice I suspect very few would condemn themselves to the legal status of a Ferengi woman by openly transitioning. They’d seek out secret treatment, and private expression, but publicly continue to appear as men.

Conversely, FtM trans people would be viewed with intense suspicion: a conniving, cynical Ferengi would likely view such a case as a woman attempting to escape from her rightful lower place in society. Frankly, given the horrific situation Ferengi women are placed in, if FtM trans folks were accepted as men even in the minimal legal sense, I’d expect at least a few cis women to attempt to take that avenue out of the societally mandated hellhole they would otherwise be condemned to. Perhaps the Ferengi have reliable tests for gender dysphoria that would doom these efforts, or perhaps not.

As for non-binary folks, I don’t think they’d get it. Either you’re a normal (male) Ferengi, or you’re an inferior and powerless woman. How could someone possibly fall between those two states?

In short, the incredibly pervasive and legally enforced sexism of Ferengi society creates significant complications for trans folks of any kind. It’s a really horrible and frankly depressing setup, which the Ferengi themselves are willfully oblivious to.

Post Rom, I would expect the women’s liberation movement to be a watershed event for trans folks of all sorts, and lead to a fairly rapid normalization of Ferengi publicly being their true selves. It’s still going to be a rough road socially, but clearing the legal barriers will go a long ways.

The only logical argument I can find in all of this, is that choosing a mate based on feeling/preference, instead of logic, might demonstrate that an individual is more emotional and therefore less logical. And I think we all know how Vulcans feel about things that are not logical and/or things that act upon their feelings…

Personally, I don’t see that having a preference in a mate, even one that steps outside the heteronormative, is a flaw in their logic. If you enjoy your time with your mate, and that makes you a better, more productive individual, then I fail to see a problem.

I don’t see any evidence that Vulcans don’t completely agree with your own personal stance here.

Vulcans clearly do act upon personal values, desires, preferences, etc, that we as humans would view as emotional responses. “I want [a cookie/you to live long and prosper/to have galactic peace/to solve this math equation/etc]” is, for a human, a statement inherently rooted in an emotional assessment. The Vulcans themselves, however, clearly do not view these things as emotional expression.

We see partnerships which don’t produce children, and despite Vulcans having no filter whatsoever when it comes to criticizing others for being “illogical”, nobody seems to have anything to say to Sarek for apparently having no children with his last wife Perrin. When Tuvok is separated from his wife, he acknowledges on multiple occasions that he misses her because he wants to be able to spend time with her; he certainly doesn’t bemoan the missed opportunity to fulfill a societal obligation to pop out more babies.

We don’t have explicit counterfactuals here, but we all know that ultimately comes down to Doylist reasons. There’s no reason we should assume that Vulcan society shares Rick Berman’s personal sense of morality in this area.

That (non)response leaves those Vulcans without acknowledgement of what they are and trapped in a society constructed around heteronormalcy. They may find one another and form groups, but still be expected to take heterosexual mates and be part of a “logical” family structure.

Can you cite any evidence of this? 90s Trek presents all societies as relatively heteronormative because it was the 90s and Rick Berman was a homophobe, but I see little evidence that Vulcans society should be considered any more or less heteronormative than Humans, Klingons, etc. Nor can I recall evidence that the Vulcans would consider one man and one woman to be the singular “logical” family structure.

Katra is how Vulcans rationalize the different opinions/desires/preferences each Vulcan has and just lumps them all into what must be one’s “soul”, rather than acknowledge the emotional identity such things emerge from.

Likewise, I’d like to know where this description of Katras as a catchall cause for personal preference is stated.

Reproductive organs are for reproducing and reproducing only. If you have a penis you’re a male of the species, if you have a vagina you’re a female of the species. Anything else is a genetic abnormality that should be fixed.

There’s no room for emotion, no room to feel like you’re in the wrong body or to identify as something other than what you physically present.

I see little grounds for this assessment.

Vulcans not only recognize the immense complexity of the mind, but they also recognize people have a soul (their Katra). Why would it be “ice cold logic” to decide that the physical body, not the mind or soul, determines what a person truly is? Especially in a technological context where elaborate reconstructive surgeries are trivially easy.

Vulcans have preferences, desires, and needs that we would describe as emotionally driven. Vulcans clearly do not consider these to be emotional in nature. Despite practicing arranged marriages, the actions of those Vulcans whose lives we see into (Spock, T’Pring, Sarek, T’Pol, etc) clearly show that they are not strictly beholden to such arrangements, and value forming romantic partnerships with people they are attracted to. Likewise, the need to occupy the correct type of body, and by referred to by the correct name and correct terms, would surely be understood and accepted without difficulty.

I think this is the simplest explanation: there are a number of married officers on board, some of whom have kids with them, but whose partners are deployed to other ships. The Cerritos is a relatively logical ship to have the kids on if you have to pick between two: it’s not a frontline capital ship so it’s missions are relatively low risk, and unlikely to take it especially far from core Federation space.

Irreparable brain damage is something the Federation remains uncomfortable trying to “fix” with advanced tech well into the TNG era, as shown by Bareil’s situation in DS9 Life Support.

Knowing nothing of brain science, I’d extend your theory to posit that Pike also lacks the brain function to do any fine motor controls of his body: he can conceptualize simple things like “go to a place,” but cannot handle anything more precise. As such, the chair and beeper allows him essentially the same freedom of movement and expression that his damaged brain could have got out of a more “conventional” set of cybernetic replacements.

Pikes chair still sticks out as a classic example of old Star Trek having moments of not-so-prescience, but viewing it as a solution to a damaged brain more than a damaged body definitely helps make it less absurd.

From the Washington Post piece:

But the study doesn’t go so far as to say that Russia had no influence on people who voted for President Donald Trump.

• It doesn’t examine other social media, like the much-larger Facebook.
• Nor does it address Russian hack-and-leak operations. Another major study in 2018 by University of Pennsylvania communications professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson suggested those probably played a significant role in the 2016 race’s outcome.
• Lastly, it doesn’t suggest that foreign influence operations aren’t a threat at all.

And

“Despite these consistent findings, it would be a mistake to conclude that simply because the Russian foreign influence campaign on Twitter was not meaningfully related to individual-level attitudes that other aspects of the campaign did not have any impact on the election, or on faith in American electoral integrity,” the report states.

There’s a lot more to successfully finding and maintaining romantic relationships with women (or anyone else) than showing bare minimum levels of respect, and assuming otherwise is both counterproductive and offensive.

This is an excellent post.

Wrong number of wheels too.

I kept expecting William Boimler to show up before the end of the season, guess they’re holding onto that thread for next year

I think it would be pretty funny if they just never picked up that thread again. William Boimler, already presumed dead, joins S31, does ???? because ?????, is never heard from again.

Then again, this show could do a great job riffing off of how counterproductive and ultimately stupid S31 is, in addition to their absurdly twisted and seemingly inconsistent history. So I’d be perfectly happy to see that too.

This was an excellent finale (as all four of them have been, not at all a given with modern Trek or frankly modern television in general), and fully justifies the somewhat weaker setup episode before it.

“A paywall on a bomb?” might be the best joke this show has delivered in it’s whole run. I don’t often crack up while watching these episodes, but this one really got me. At the very least it’s up there with “It’s a bomb! You can only use it once!” from Wej Duj. I’m sensing a pattern.

In more typical lower key Lower Decks humor, Boimler and Rutherford arguing about if Locarno looks like Tom Paris was excellent.

I do wonder what the plan is with Tendi. We’ve seen supposed major shakeups like this dropped into previous finales, of course, with Boimler leaving the Cerritos for the Titan at the end of season one and Freeman getting arrested at the end of Season 2, which were quickly reverted in the first few episodes of the subsequent season. Odds are that’s the play here. I hope so, because losing Tendi would suck. She’s a delight.

Why was Boimler the acting captain when the command staff took off on the captain’s yacht? There was a full Lieutenant right behind him on the bridge, and surely tens of others on the ship who are more senior and more qualified. A little bit of a main character boost there.

This episode was okay, I guess? It feels very strange to be sitting on one half of an obvious two parter from this show, and recent Trek shows have left me with an instinctive suspicion of mystery-related plots. This is a good writing team so I have hopes they’ll carry this rather bizare setup into a satisfying resolution that actually makes sense, but I’m much more nervous than I usually am.

To play it all out: why the heck is Nick Locarno flying around in a little ship capable of disabling the systems on larger warships, transporting(?) the ships and crews to some planet while leaving wreckage behind? If this turns out to be another figurative Kelpian dilithium tantrum I’m not going to be pleased.

I like what they were trying to do with Mariner in this episode, but for whatever reason it didn’t land quite right with me. Her whole pivot into even-more-than-normal overtly reckless behavior three episodes after the supposed precipitating event felt very abrupt, and the scene where she talks it over and appears to resolve her issues with Ma’ah felt rushed, almost forced. The Sito Jaxa makes reasonable sense as a backstory component, but I found it distracting and it does add to the “small universe” syndrome that expanding IPs risk falling into. Further, the “your dead friend wouldn’t want you to have emotional problems” bit is a cliche that rarely lands with me, and this time was no different: these aren’t problems that people can typically resolve simply by recognizing that their emotional reactions are irrational, so being won over with a rational argument isn’t very convincing. It speaks well of Mariner and Rodenberry’s future humans that this worked, I guess, but it does make it less relatable.

Maybe I’ll be sold more easily on rewatch. We’ll see.

The B-plot with Freeman and her deception was decent, although as noted elsewhere Rutherford’s presence feels oddly tacked on. I guess they wanted an engineer around, just in case?

The Jaxa connection does give us a better shot at nailing down Mariner’s actual age, which was presumably somewhere between 17 and 22 (and likely on the later end of that range) at the time of the Nova Squadron incident in 2368. That puts her in her early- to mid-thirties, and lines up well with her service record. We can also confirm that Mariner was not a young child aboard the Enterprise-D, which launched when she was in her mid to late teens.

We saw a CGI model for the first time in the Ferengi episode

Can you explain what you mean by this? Isn’t everything we see in Lower Decks technically CGI?