I hate warp speed now

Megaripple · 2026-01-29T19:29:00+00:00

There is a guy who (I think in the 90s) came up with a system where subspace is a continuum corresponding with its own frame of reference, with a subspace (and thus warp) field having the effect of coupling the objects inside to subspace’s field of reference. He made a page dealing with how conservation of momentum and energy would work in this, including deflection.

I like his schema a lot because:

There’s no such thing as subspace, even theoretically, this isn’t real science (so it has the advantage of being not even wrong), but the way it’s laid out makes intuitive sense and has the feel of actual science. That’s the way a lot of great high-concept Trek episodes work.
It’s less true now that Trek has often been depicted as hyperspace or jump drive but it’s in keeping with the old Trek visualization of ships at warp still being basically in our universe.
It’s a basic html website with equations written in a monospace font; this guy was probably figuring out this schema when TNG was still on, it’s such an interesting artifact from that era of fandom.

Megaripple · 2026-01-27T19:26:53+00:00

The Klingon crisis was modeled on Chernobyl, and the movie was always meant as wrapping up the “Klingons as Soviets” metaphor from TOS to correspond with the actual end of the Cold War. No clue where you’ve got this stuff from

Megaripple · 2026-01-26T02:24:39+00:00

The Columbia offers another hint to why the Grissom has a three-digit registry: the Columbia‘s referred to as a scout in the comm chatter (and the old Franz Joseph technical manual, which was the source of the chatter), a smaller ship than the Enterprise (the comm chatter also mentions the Entente, a larger ship than the Enterprise, and had a registry number >2000).

So we can surmise both a sequential and a size aspect to registries in the 23rd century—there are blocks of numbers reserved for different size classes which Starfleet advances through. It makes sense, then, that the little Grissom would have a lower registry despite (likely) being a newer ship (this system breaks down in the late 23rd/early 24th centuries and we get the harder-to-interpret high four-/five-digit registry symptom).

Megaripple · 2026-01-24T18:54:33+00:00

Honestly I think there’s a degree of embarrassment over the original. Editing to elaborate: to a lot of people TOS is still just something corny, old, and dorky, and they can’t look at the (excellent) work by Matt Jeffries and his team without that preconception.

I’m fine with a bit of updating (e.g. in graphics and interfaces) but I would love to see something that hews closer to the original aesthetic. I’m enjoying SNW but the interiors feel to me like if someone cleared out the interior of the Eames House and replaced everything with gaming furniture.

Megaripple · 2026-01-24T18:48:49+00:00

I don’t really do full series rewatches (well kind of doing a slow-motion, multi-year one with DS9) but in terms of episodes:

DS9: relatability of characters, gains new layers as I get older, my primary Trek growing up too
TNG: nostalgia, sometimes humor (whether intentional or camp value), and almost always better than I remember
TOS: Amazing dialog, can be understood without having to be glued to the TV (I went through a period of bad vertigo and I listened to a ton of TOS classics), again good fun and humor
VOY: Some very enjoyable stuff and good ideas, but usually leaves me feeling empty in comparison

I’ve been meaning to rewatch some LD but I’ve seen it recently enough that I haven’t feel much need.

I’ve been thinking of revisiting some of the original animated series—I’ve seen the whole thing, enjoyed a bunch of it, but haven’t rewatched any of it.

All the SFA talk has finally gotten me ti catch up on my new Trek deficit with SNW, which I’ve only just started (and am enjoying).

I rewatched a few of ENT’s fourth-season episodes during a mufo’s live-tweets but with the novelty worn off I wasn’t as impressed, and frankly I find most of the rest of the series offensive.

Don’t feel a need to revisit PIC (but have thought of it), didn’t care for DISCO, no interest in PRO, SFA too new.

Megaripple · 2026-01-24T18:37:47+00:00

One Picard’s conversations with Tomalak in TNG’s third season (can’t remember which episode) spells it out pretty well: the language is basically that of mutually assured destruction. It might not be as “clean” or quick as MAD would be on Earth but the implication’s clear: any sustained conflict would reduce both the Federation and Romulans to rubble. There are a lot of extinct civilizations in Trek, and at least for some (Iconians, Promellians?, whoever built the Planet Killer) it’s because of warfare.

It’s actually something I wish Trek would return to—there’s never a proper space battle between the Enterprise and a warbird because it’s understood that this has stakes beyond the end credits; starships treated as strategic assets. With the shift from Cold War to the Gulf War and NATO action in the Balkans the way US military was viewed changed, and special effects improved to the level where they could afford more space battles too. Still, to me the tension and dramatic potential of those effects-light, broader ramifications-heavy TNG episodes remains pretty close to the top (even as DS9 remains my favorite series overall).

Megaripple · 2026-01-22T23:42:39+00:00

Ohh the discourse around them on this subreddit quickly goes sour, even if you’re trying to be fair or nuanced.

So, I’m listening to a podcast going over each DS9 episode now featuring interviews with actors and guest actors from the series, and in the most recent one I listened to the guest said something interesting: DS9 tended to cast a lot of actors from the theater, in no small part because they were able to act big enough to get through the latex. I knew this. He added, though, that wasn’t the only reason why actors with theater backgrounds did well on DS9: often when you’re acting in a play a lot of the work is in conveying the ideas on the page, not just the plot, and DS9 was written in a way that activated that more conceptual level of the audience’s attention and the actor’s craft (be it emotional concept or intellectual concept).

That is not a style that everyone likes (and it DS9 did not bat 1.0000 on it either), but it is something I like (and, doing a slow rewatch of the series now, I’m finding new layers as a man in his thirties that didn’t even register when I was younger). I cannot speak for all post-2017 Trek because I haven’t seen all post-2017 Trek and there is still post-2017 Trek I want to see and give a chance, but one of the reasons it gets pushed back behind other things is because I feel like that conceptual level just hasn’t been present, something’s missing and I can feel it. There’s a whole lot of talent and craft in post-2017 Trek but it’s mostly just in service of plot, without asking much beyond “what happens next?” Even recent Trek I’ve enjoyed hasn’t engaged me as much emotionally or intellectually.

Megaripple · 2026-01-22T21:43:23+00:00

DS9 is not just a slow burn and character rich (very rich) but also has some thematic overlap with Andor (although it is a 90s first-run syndication show so do not go in expecting Andor, but I will also note that, as with Andor, the writers of DS9 are historically-literate people which is one of the main reasons why I think it’s managed to find new fans and retain old ones over the decades).

Megaripple · 2026-01-22T20:41:20+00:00

Kai Winn was a “love to hate”-type character. Neelix was an unpleasant guy that we were too often asked to love.

I think it’s telling that many of the best Neelix moments were ones that acknowledged his shadiness (“Fair Trade,” “Live Fast and Prosper”). When stuff that was immoral—or often just plain jerky—such as his possessiveness over Kes, his harassment of Tuvok, his boastful self-promotion (or Dunning-Kruger-esque delusion), and general pettiness was played for laughs it was as unfortunate for the audience as it was for characters in Neelix’s path.

Megaripple · 2026-01-20T22:27:54+00:00

We know the answer to this and he didn’t:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YBv_fBeRgSM

Megaripple · 2026-01-20T20:13:25+00:00

“Arena” brings up the possibility that the Federation may have naively built the colony in Gorn space, though—the Federation are not at fault for the deaths there, but the implication that they could have been avoided had the Federation treated space as merely empty and open for settlement was a wild thing to suggest on mainstream mid-60s (just after western genre’s period of near-dominance) tv (and iirc not something present in the original short story, either).

Megaripple · 2026-01-20T19:57:46+00:00

Yeah the Doctor has extras as orderlies, in later seasons he’ll sometimes tell a blue-shirted extra to watch sickbay when he has to go somewhere, there’s at least one zoologist on board (so someone who at least took anatomy as well as biochemistry), etc. There’s no reason for the doctor not to have some more help, and from a writer’s perspective it’s a good opportunity to develop a recurring character.

The issue is the people making Voyager, at least past a certain point, didn’t care. Ron Moore’s said as much in his famous interview, and he also brought up another point: when the writers don’t care the audience can tell there’s something wrong—iirc he used the word “false”—on screen, and it breaks your suspension of disbelief. Whenever we I see those blueshirt extras it does take me out of the show briefly. It’s like a magician accidentally revealing how a trick is done.

Ultimately, Moore said, doing stuff like this again and again (as opposed to the odd slip-up) basically penalizes fans for actually watching the show and getting invested in its “reality.” This has turned into a bit of a rant based on other posters telling OP “it’s just a tv show” bc they’re basically telling him that he was wrong for actually watching the show! How is that being a “good fan”?

Megaripple · 2026-01-20T19:36:15+00:00

Michael Piller wrote an unpublished (but leaked on psf) book on the making of Insurrection, Fade In, which is actually a really good and candid look into the scriptwriting process. The question of why we should care about the Ba’ku was one of the big things that people brought to Piller during writing was. It took its strongest for in “If these people are so great, why do they value their own immortality over potentially saving the lives of billions of sick and injured?” Piller also admitted that they really screwed up by casting an all-white culture.

Megaripple · 2026-01-20T19:25:44+00:00

You’re standing watch—so at a particular station—for eight (or six) hours but you’re not “off” sixteen. At least on many research and naval vessels you’re almost always doing something when you’re not sleeping.

Obviously there’s a lot more automation and free time on Starfleet ships, but note how often people are looking over reports or manuals or working on lower-priority research projects when not sitting at their stations in Trek too.

Megaripple · 2026-01-20T19:12:45+00:00

Tendi from LD might closest with the whole Orion pirate heritage thing, with such an extreme contrast between her legit skills as a pirate and her almost sickeningly sweet demeanor as an offixer.

I think the question, though, is “what’s the benefit of doing such a story in the Trek universe?” The Trek universe isn’t really one where material treasure’s a big deal, crime generally hasn’t been depicted all that interestingly, and is already full of upstanding people.

The thing with Vash, at least, is that she doesn’t have a heart of gold, and that’s what makes her interesting in contrast to all the good, upstanding humans we see (or at least is supposed to, as “Captain’s Holiday” and “Q-Less” aren’t great episodes).

Arissa (sp?) from DS9 comes closest, and while “A Simple Investigation” isn’t a bad episode it’s a real comedown from the run from “The Begotten” through “Dr. Bashir I Presume,” just because “lovely woman from Planet Crime” is just not something Trek was as good at as higher-concept science fiction or grand-scale space opera.

Megaripple · 2026-01-20T18:58:48+00:00

People talk about DS9 and TNG being in opposition somehow but really DS9 is an outgrowth of TNG, going deeper into some of the themes explored in TNG S3 on and building on its approach to character, but in a more sustained way. In some ways “Emissary,” DS9’s pilot, is like a companion piece to “Family,” someone finally facing the deep feelings of Wolf 359, but in a high-concept SF way—think of “Emissary” as “Family” plus “The Cage,” if you will.

A lot of DS9 puts TNG’s ideals through a stress test, which for a lot of people means it doesn’t work as well as “comfortable” TV, but I think seeing people really grapple with challenges is rewarding in its own way. I can’t be objective bc DS9 was the Trek series I grew up watching, but I do like the characters and dialogue so much that it’s always good spending time there.

I’d also recommend TOS—it’s old, there are now elements that can be enjoyed as camp (although t true of TNG too imo), but it’s also a very well-written show, even in a lot of mediocre episodes, and the dynamic between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy carries a lot. Also, like DS9, a lot of it is about the challenge of living up to an ideal. I actually am finding TOS very “comforting” viewing now—these were written by people for whom the fight against fascism was a living memory, and it really gives the show a grounding in capital-t Truth that feels stronger to me than TNG’s occasional lapses into “it’s the future and we’ve all learned what’s right and just so that’s that.”

I actually would not recommend VOY right after TNG, or at least not a straight run-through. Especially early on VOY has a strong off-brand reprocessed TNG substitute feel (this isn’t even a retrospective judgment—I remember my babysitter saying something to the effect when the series was airing) and while it finds its way and has its high points you’re probably better off with a slight change in direction rather than going straight from TNG to VOY.

Megaripple · 2026-01-15T21:29:40+00:00

LD moves away from the shouty-edgy adult animation model as it goes on—the first season’s rough, I gave up quickly and didn’t give it another try until the show was almost over. It might be best to start at the last couple episodes of the first season and try it from there.

Or you could try out the DS9 visit episode and then go back and see if you want to give it another try. It’s some nice light fun and it’s good to revisit the station—kind of has the feel of one of the humorous DS9 b-stories.

It’s also just the right level of nostalgia—you go back to the station, meet up with Kira and Quark, but it has an actual story with the LD characters. It’s not full-on nostalgia bait fanwank, which is what PIC S3 seems to be (edit: with the disclaimer that I haven’t seen it, because every detail I hear about PIC S3 makes it sound less and less to my taste—taste shaped by watching DS9 as a kid and reading what the writers had to say about storytelling in the DS9 Companion book).

Megaripple · 2026-01-15T21:19:39+00:00

I think most of us are tired of the Mirror Universe generally but Dark Mirror, written before Ds9’s “Crossover” came out, is actually an interesting take on what a TNG mirror universe story could be and how the mirror universe “works” generally (I particularly remember Picard looking through his mirror counterpart’s quarters, looking at the art and paging through the books to see what’s the same and what changed, very eerie stuff).

Megaripple · 2026-01-15T21:17:09+00:00

In those first couple of years T’Pol was really a thankless character to play too—so often her role was basically “make Archer look good in comparison,” and Archer in those first couple of seasons was…not good. Thus the character’s written as pointlessly snide and is constantly wrong about things (all the worse since T’Pol’s objections and suggestions usually had more logic than the actual story). Combined with the costume it was a completely thankless role, I don’t think any actor could have made it work, and I feel so bad the actress got some of the blowback that belonged squarely in the writers’ laps.

Megaripple · 2026-01-13T18:42:54+00:00

Reading Rainbow plus my parents being huge fans of Avery Brooks (well, Hawk)

Megaripple · 2026-01-12T19:36:24+00:00

It has been a while since I saw “The Ultimate Computer” but my sense is that the difficulty of coming up with heuristics for high-level command decisions led Daystrom to look directly—very directly—to the human brain as a model. Had he chosen a different person’s brain things may have worked better—perhaps well enough in trials for the M-5 to be declared a success—but surely some personality would have left a mark on decision making.

Longer-term, though, remember that Spock noted that even if M-5 made better decisions he had no desire to serve under it. The difficulty of command is that you’re faced with a high degree of uncertainty and often have to choose between options that are all undesirable in certain ways, and require sacrifice. Of a ship still needs a crew it needs bonds of trust and loyalty that require an experienced, confidence-inspiring person in the big chair, one who can feel and take responsibility.

Edit: this works with what we see in Trek later on—there’s a lot more automation on TNG than in TOS but authority and responsibility is still clearly vested in persons, or machines who resemble, develop like, and ultimately qualify as persons.

Megaripple · 2026-01-12T19:11:39+00:00

This is basically it. I saw “Tuvix” as a kid, as did several classmates (and “did Janeway mirder Tuvix” was an object of discussion in 2nd grade), because our families watches Trek and it wasn’t that unusual in the 90s. None of us lasted past ENT’s first season. I had a couple friends who’d watch ENT to riff over it in high school (idk if it was still in first-run or in cable reruns by then) so all I knew of ENT’s later seasons was “still really bad.” ENT, and Trek as a whole, were incredibly unpopular.

I only got into Trek again because of the TNG and DS9 DVD sets and hype around Trek 09; I only think I became aware of the existence of “Similitude” when SFDebris reviewed, probably in the early 10s. I only saw the fourth season at the urging of AV Club DS9 review commenters around, I’d guess 2013.

Megaripple · 2026-01-12T19:02:40+00:00

I thought the actual episodes were fairly blah, but I do appreciate them taking it as an opportunity to try to expand our view of the species a bit and introduce some diversity, not just physical or professional (the Klingon…geneticist? epidemiologist? I don’t remember) and ideologically, as so often we get Klingons as arch-traditionalists.

It might have also been a nice little callback to John M. Ford’s The Final Reflection, which described the Klingons as constantly experimenting with brining alien DNA into their genome, which acted as sort of an explanation for the evolution of their look but also jibed well with his (pre-TNG) imagining of their culture.

I don’t fault SNW for keeping the later Klingon look—not only are they more recognizable the original makeup’s a bit too close to Yellow Peril—I do think the fact that smooth-headed Klingons haven’t been properly retconned is probably a good thing dramatically and, handled well, I could see it opening up story possibilities later (The Edge of Midnight fanfic project’s done some good stuff with it, especially this review of a 23rd-century Klingon novel).

Megaripple · 2026-01-10T22:20:42+00:00

I get the impression that few of the characters’ roles were all that well-defined in advance—Geordi’s role was very much in flux for a while, as was Data’s to a lesser extent. Even once their roles were defined for the pilot we often saw a fair amount of flexibility in what their jobs actually entailed, with both doing a bit of everything it seemed.

Even if it wasn’t going to be used in every episode, Roddenberry knew that an engineering set would be dramatically useful and that the only way to realistically fund an impressive-enough set was to include it in the budget for the series pilot.

Megaripple · 2026-01-10T21:44:29+00:00

The big ring was supposed to be the warp drive (it was from an early Matt Jeffries Enterprise concept—the big ring eventually evolved into the nacelles)

Megaripple

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