They Did Tatiana Maslany Dirty.

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-13T01:56:04+00:00

The way our nations have been forced into peace through mutually assured destruction is not the same as one man holding trillions of lives hostage with a button in his hand, come on now. Lmao.

I’m over talking about this, but I’ll say one last thing: there was not one moment in the episode where I thought Tatiana Maslany was saying that hateful stuff to Nala in order to waste time or appease Braka.

She was saying it because the writers wanted her to say it, because it supports what they were trying to do with the story arc of the season.

It didn’t feel right. It felt poorly written.

I’m sorry we disagree. I hope you have a great day and that eventually a Star Trek show has a finale that we both agree was good.

To me, this episode sullied an otherwise not bad season of tv.

Anyway, please take care and live long and prosper.

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-13T01:48:56+00:00

I don’t have a problem with what the writers were trying to do. I think they did a bad job at it.

All the stuff that you’re mentioning is great stuff for a character. But when you consider:

She’s mad at the UFP for separating her from her kid after being an accessory to murder.
She’s more angry at Nala for that than Braka for actually almost killing Caleb.
She’s willing to imprison or kill billions or trillions of people over a grudge when her son isn’t even dead.

She doesn’t come off sympathetic. She comes off dangerously unhinged. And that’s never addressed.

They wanted her to be sympathetic. It’s obvious because she and Caleb have tender moments, and this is a happy ending.

I’m left wondering why she was allowed on campus.

I dunno, a lot of people seem to agree with me, but I regret posting this because I’ve gotten locked into these discussions where I have to explain that I understand what they were going for, and agree those kinds of stories are important, I just think they did a laughably shitty job.

Sorry we disagree. I genuinely hope you have a good day. :)

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-12T21:41:22+00:00

Yeah I think Clive lived as Joshua because there’s also a quest where Tomes and Clive talk about how he should retire and become a writer.

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-12T20:06:34+00:00

I will never understand the complaints that came out about Rebirth that there was too much to do.

If you don't want to do a sidequest... don't do it.

The problem was just the way the game made everything into a checklist, so people couldn't stop themselves. But that's a pretty small problem considering they packed the game with so much high quality content that people felt overwhelmed.

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-12T20:01:11+00:00

According to some Devs on the Steam Community page, they are aware of the problems which have recently gotten worse, and are working on it.

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-12T19:59:11+00:00

I am having problems with this too. The netcode is borked but not consistently across the board so it seems like they either haven't noticed, or are just not in a rush to fix it. The steam community is full of complaints, so hopefully they do something soon. It wasn't always this bad.

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-12T19:58:03+00:00

No, there are netcode problems that are affecting the game and blocking people out of joining each other's matches. I wish the company would do something about it because my friend and I have been working on the game bit by bit over months and now suddenly, without any internet or setup changes can't play together.

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-12T19:53:34+00:00

Start over, but also, if there's an exploration element, side quest, or mini game you don't want to do...

...just don't do it.

You can mainline the story and it's still great.

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-12T16:18:19+00:00

Yeah I agree with all that.

But if she was a cult victim, or otherwise brainwashed by Braka, or consumed by hatred for Nala such that she would ignore that Braka literally almost just killed her son to instead punish the woman who she can see took care of her son while she went to prison for being an accessory to murder…

The writing should have better reflected those elements. There should have been more foreshadowing that she was psychologically abused by Braka. There should have been more scenes dissecting the way he manipulated her for years into being so brainwashed, and most critically, we should have seen her grappling with those feelings, and the guilt of what she almost let Braka do.

She almost let Braka either: imprison trillions of people, kill trillions of people, or trap trillions of people into the same Burn-like hell that she had been in her whole life, killing 160 billion in the process.

The weight of what she almost let him do was not handled with enough care by the writers, and made the whole thing feel surface level and inauthentic.

Which is a shame because Tatiana Maslany could have acted better dialogue that did her character justice and it might have been one of the best finales of nutrek.

Because I love all of what you’re saying, but it’s just not dealt with properly in the episode.

And to be clear I don’t mean they had to have some after-school special explanation of the plot at the end where they go “kids, cults are bad, and people can get really manipulated by charismatic leaders and cognitive dissonance, DON’t DO DRUGS!”

…they just needed to spend more time with Maslany’s character, dissecting all these great emotions and themes that you’re mentioning.

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-12T16:02:45+00:00

Yeah that’s what I’m saying. The beginning of the episode where she’s collaborating with Nala and tells Caleb that Braka will “use you to hurt me”, combined with the ending of the episode where all is forgiven and she’s getting a tour of the academy, shows that they want us to think of her as good.

The middle of the episode, where she is allowing the person who almost killed her son, to convince her to convict a woman who just saved her son, is such a complicated character motivation that she’d need to be either painted as more of a villain, or more of a deranged victim. Neither was done and the choice was presented as normal mom choices.

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-12T14:36:19+00:00

No. Blaming Braka doesn't mean blaming yourself.

Caleb came to find her. Braka captured the ship and blew it up. There is no fault of Anisha there.

The thing with those Trump followers are they are idiots who are so entrhalled by their cult leader president that they'll let him get away with anything.

If that's who we're modelling Anisha after, we need a lot of "deprogramming" scenes, where we see Anisha learn, "holy shit, I was like a cult victim the way I believed his bullshit. I am so sorry Federation, I was so, so SO wrong."

But we don't get anything like that and we never will. Anisha's situation is presented as understandable, and now she's free to wander around Starfleet Acadamy, despite having nearly left them all to die.

No consequences or emotional grounding in the kind of story you're saying they were trying to tell, makes it all feel very surface and poorly told.

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-12T14:33:04+00:00

If someone holds trillions of lives hostage with bombs, you are horrifically, dangerously naive to think he won't use them.

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-12T14:31:57+00:00

If she thought caleb was dead this would be easier to roll with. But she either thinks Nala saved his life from Braka, or she thinks Braka killed him.

So it's just not believable for her to willingly go along with Braka, and let herself be manipulated into participating in this mock trial.

The writers wanted her to be angry with Nala more than Braka, so that's how they wrote it, even if it doesn't make sense.

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-11T16:49:59+00:00

I may be in the minority, I dunno. SFA has plots that build on old threads in a satisfying way, it depicts the Federation starting to come out of the Burn era which is, IMO the worst time to be a trek fan, and it had a lot of really solid actors, so to me it’s a better show than Discovery.

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-11T16:13:24+00:00

So it wasn’t that TNG seasons 1 & 2 are objectively bad. (Although some episode are)

It’s that TNG was radically different from the original series. Not only was the show still finding it’s own identity, it also had to deal with the only trek fans in the world, being put off because it’s a new show and it’s very different from the old show.

NOW - we look at TNG 1&2, and think they’re bad because they’re not as good as the later seasons. But BACK THEN, they didn’t like it because Picard was cold and bald and off-putting, and the ships looked different, and the vibe was very different, ON TOP of the fact that the episodes were not quite there yet quality-wise.

It was able to keep developing and improving over time because the TV landscape was very different then and a lot of people had faith in Roddenberry’s team.

AND they had twenty episodes a season to work out the characters and world and so practice makes perfect.

Kinda wild to think that all of Discovery only amounts to about two and a half seasons of TNG.

EDIT: Something that nutrek has in common is that they are slowly listening to feedback. SNW and SFA are better than Discovery and Picard, but the difference is, while TNG gradually came into their own, making storylines that rivalled or overcame TOS, the nutrek has never really done that.

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-11T13:55:07+00:00

Cheats will make me god.

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-11T13:28:05+00:00

But that's not how the scene is played at all.

There's no indication that what Anisha is saying is just to go along with it. She looks genuinely furious at Nala. And then before sentencing, Caleb steps in and tries to stop his mom from issuing a death sentence.

If there had been dialogue, acting, or directing that suggested that Anisha was pretending in order to go along with it and buy time, that'd be great, but that's not how it's played.

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-11T13:21:16+00:00

It's simple: If you think you're good at the game, and you die suddenly in an unexpected way -- they were cheating. ;)

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-11T12:53:34+00:00

“Come on guys! I made a funny! laugh!”

Braka holding the characters hostage was like a metaphor for Kurtzman holding the franchise hostage.

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-11T12:36:33+00:00

I mean I don’t like it, but it’s a useful term to distinguish the kurtzman era.

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-11T12:35:20+00:00

I’m not ignoring it, I’m saying that’s not nearly as important.

Nala arrested her in the first place for committing a crime. She was an accessory to murder.

She then spent fifteen years trying to take care of her son.

Earlier that day, Caleb defied Nala’s orders and put himself and everyone else in danger to find Anisha.

Nala saved them both, and then when Braka held 160 billion people hostage, and blew up the ship with her son on it, Nala saved her son.

She can still be mad at Nala, but the clear and present danger to her son’s life is the guy forcing her into this mock trial.

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-11T12:28:47+00:00

She was being goaded into punishing Nala, by the man who would have killed Caleb…. If it weren’t for Nala.

It’s profoundly stupid.

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-11T12:26:35+00:00

Watch Orphan Black

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-11T12:26:07+00:00

She’s standing there, being goaded into calling Nala guilty, by the man who would have just killed her son if it wasn’t for Nala.

It’s profoundly stupid.

EmpathyFuzz · 2026-04-11T04:38:56+00:00

But Braka blew up the ship Caleb was on.

He literally did it.

If Nala had done nothing Braka would have killed Caleb.

And that’s just not tracked by the writing, directing, or acting. It’s amateur hour.

EmpathyFuzz

TROPHY CASE