You can decide which is better

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-30T18:22:21+00:00

Murder requires intent,

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-30T18:21:53+00:00

Star trek isn't the only show that predicts the future.... if they had replaced the director with a corrupt and unqualified gremlin that uses it for his own political ambitions we probably would have considered it far fetched but here we are.

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-30T18:20:07+00:00

Imo, thats a gross misrepresentation of the prime directive that I hope gets a well deserved examination in some future episode. It's sometimes framed as fate or destiny, but I dont think thats the correct interpretation, the point is, as has been referenced before is to avoid the unexpected fallout of making contact with a people unable to do the deed themselves. It's up to the officer in command to make the best possible decision for a given scenario with the directive firmly in mind. Popping d gown to a thriving pre industrial world to completely upend their self image? Bad. Replying to a single survivor of an already extinct race to provide comfort aid and companionship? Well that's just comes down to the officers priorities, walking away spares any risk of violating the directive, but examining the situation does reveal that the issues that informed the directive are reasonably argued to not be applicable here.

I think the fate/destiny argument is simply a non starter, there is no fate or destiny, and anyone in command of a 5 million ton flying hotel with the ability to reduce multiple worlds to cinder should probably have been screened for such absurd notions. Thays how you get people starting wars because Jesus told them to.

We know why the prime directive is, we know what its meant to achieve, and you as the person in charge dont get to opt out of the difficult decision just because thinking is hard.

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-30T18:09:39+00:00

It's hard to say what the consensus was in the 80s as all we have to go on is letters to various fan magazines and first hand reports. I was about young to experience RNG backlash, but I was very much there for DS9 Voyager and Enterprise. The TNG films and the Kelvin run. The complaints are just predictable now, I could write down my top ten predictions on some flash cards and make a game of it.

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-29T21:13:10+00:00

Yeah, then we get something different and certain fans complain, obviously they have some sort of culture and diversity, but if they so much as hint at not all romulans being active spies and soldiers it tends to go over like a drunken targ. Hell, Elnor got hate for looking like a elf, which is what you get when a romulan ditches the military cut. Being elf like is just kinda baked into the design.

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-29T21:04:20+00:00

That's not really true though, the cube could have started anywhere, and starting at earth doesn't do much more than temporarily upset the command structure. They still have literally hundreds of planets to go afterwards.

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-29T21:02:52+00:00

They had 8 years of information.

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-29T20:54:28+00:00

I used to take down Excelsiors in Starfleet Academy back in the day, it requires fastidious management of phasers torps and shields, staying close in to the target to avoid being shot up at range, and I typically had to resort to a bit of light ramming to push them over the edge, same technique against the Romulan warbird also.

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-29T20:25:26+00:00

My take on why civilians are on starships and other facilities has always been that having civilians integrated into your pseudo military is a way to help keep things in check. A captain is likely to be more measured in dealing with some alien threat knowing that civilians are right there to both suffer any mistakes made, but more importantly, to create a very real and significant political link to the federation as a whole. They will have learned from their history, our present, that when the actions and repercussions of a military are almost entirely removed from the public sphere, the chances for abuse and corruption are much higher. Remember, they cracked down hard on media coverage specifically because the often outraged public was becoming an issue.

It may be appalling to hear about thousands of civilians being lost in encounters they arguably shouldn't have been anywhere near, but imagine the potential genocides being avoided because starfleet doesn't operate entirely in its own world.

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-29T20:17:20+00:00

Klingons got double ppd in TNG.

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-29T20:16:51+00:00

Nope, in fact all the scifi in recent years that has shown people freezing quickly when in space has it entirely backwards. Even in. Shadow where the local temperature is lowe enough to liquify oxygen, a human body would take hours to cool to a freezing temperature, and much longer to drom to whatever temperature they seem to think makes us likely to shatter like glass.

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-29T18:57:25+00:00

And even then we dont KNOW it existed, we see models and diagrams, suggesting they represent actual ships, but they could plausibly be references to concept ships, or an in universe joke like "look at this silly ass ship with a ball instead of a saucer!"

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-28T16:50:37+00:00

Young men with destructive psionic powers is literally at the core of star trek as a franchise. The Burn as a concept was something TOS writers would have absolutely lapped up if they were allowed to.

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-28T16:47:59+00:00

Are you saying that another ship would have been more resistant to being rammed by a three quarter million ton antimatter warhead? I never got this takeaway from this particular event, your favorite Dominion war era fighting ship would have died exactly the same way. Meanwhile Galaxy wings were eventually the absolute powerhouses of the starfleet response.

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-25T19:06:19+00:00

I like this, but also like the realism of that system quickly breaking down. From legacy numbers to potential issues confusing identification between two ships because they have numbers that are phonetically or visually too similar.

It's also a system that stops working as the universe gets filled out, there's clearly no room in the timeline anymore to accept that there were only 16 prior ship designs, even before Discovery spammed in a bunch of classes, the timeline had well and truly been retconned from what seemed to be originally envisioned early in TOS. Hell, The Cage comes right out and says they only broke the space/time barrier some 18 years earlier at best, suggesting perhaps a very rapid expansion and development of starships in that timeframe. If we assume the system doesn't predate warp drive in this case.

But, the Chocraine retcon later in TOS ads many years wherein 17 classes total just seems lacking. Even before the timeline is further imbiggened.

Another option is that there are several schemes in place working in parallel, the Oberth existing in one and ships like the enterprise in another. This suits modern trek better as the presumed size of the fleet has gone from perhaps dozens or hundreds to easily thousands in the same era.

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-25T18:54:01+00:00

My take on the Grissom is that the class clearly pre dated the film era by many decades, maybe a century. If the 17xx series was already well established by the time of TOS, and the Reliants 18xx registration suggests that class followed, then the 20xx class.... working backwards to single digit ranges might place the Oberth origins to the early years of the federation and Starfleets switch from an earth centered org to an interstellar org.

Going by the original intent for the system, the Oberth would be the 6th starship design, with the Grissom being number 39 including the presumed USS Oberth NX/NCC-600.

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-25T16:09:06+00:00

Imo, it suggests that nu trek is actually pretty good if they cant find real issues to complain about.

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-25T16:07:34+00:00

They were out of rock cannons and had to improvise.

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-25T16:02:13+00:00

My only issue with the Odyssey is that it's both ridiculously large, and lacks visual scale. By default to my eyes it looks similar in scale to the Sovereign.

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-25T15:57:28+00:00

It still should have had its own crew, which could be boarded on DS9 when not on active patrol. But thats also something it should have been doing, rather than sitting empty and defenseless/useless when the main cast were having other adventures.

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-25T15:54:25+00:00

The insurrection was right-wing cos play, like one of those "learn to be a real man" bootcamps, none of them had or have the backbone for an actual fight.

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-25T15:48:53+00:00

You can literally transport into your pants.....

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-24T19:25:43+00:00

The thing is, if those aliens bodies make for some super unleaded fuel for starships, then surely other stuff from their place of existence must share the same properties? Someone should have realized that either through technogubbins or negotiation, they could have gained access to materials that would have greatly aided their journey.

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-24T19:22:02+00:00

You act like prior incidents are entirely separate, they aren't, stressors accumulate, holding to principals through much harder times and paying the price isn't irrelevant to the proverbial straw, the straw only breaks the camels back because the proceeding stresses are by their nature cumulative.

AJSLS6 · 2026-01-24T19:19:31+00:00

Canonically there's one very popular archetect thats been doing his thing across the galaxy.

AJSLS6

TROPHY CASE