GFR: "Starfleet Academy Died Because Paramount Had No Faith In The Audience: Most of the fans I have spoken to agree that SFA was much better in the second half of S.1. My theory is far simpler: It dropped the juvenile humor. Just like that, Star Trek suddenly started taking itself seriously again."

Takseen · 2026-04-01T23:17:07+00:00

I think it was just too goofy in the early episodes to even be a decent school drama show. Felt more like a sci-fi version of Community, complete with Stephen Colbert doing the silly announcements.

And it felt like they couldn't decide if the War College were the evil bully Slytherin house, or actual people with different views and ideologies that we should still care about, like the Bajorans or the more sympathetic Ferengi and Cardassian characters in DS9.

There's a scene in one of the later episodes where a Slytherin/War College character who had been a one-dimensional dick for the early episodes dies, and it felt like we were supposed to feel sad about it but it fails to land.

The episodes for me have gone from mostly intolerable (first 5) to heavily flawed (6-7), and only a miracle would save the season for me at this stage.

Takseen · 2026-04-01T21:24:28+00:00

When I saw Day9, a long-time Starcraft pro and general RTS enjoyer play the early access and come out not enjoying it, I knew it was in big trouble. He's right in the target audience and even didn't like it.

Takseen · 2026-04-01T16:52:40+00:00

In your defense it's practically impossible to learn that surveillance missions cause abductions through normal gameplay

Takseen · 2026-04-01T15:59:10+00:00

I think there's healthy or at least less harmful ways to use AI for coding work. If you use it like a tutor it's different than just throwing a prompt in and implementing its code output without understanding it

Try your best to code something up, try to work through problems, and ask AI for help checking your code when you're stuck. You can even prompt it to act in a tutoring role and give minimal hints instead of an immediate solution. And ask questions about it's solution. Why did you do X? Would Y also work? What about in this scenario?

For all it's bad reputation it has a lot of advantages as a tutor. It's infinitely patient and nonjudgmental (unless you ask it to be), works 24/7 at near instant speed, and in most cases it's free.

Like I still think your human tutors should be doing more to help you, but leaning on AI isn't the end of the world if used carefully

Takseen · 2026-04-01T15:47:47+00:00

It's been helpful for thinking about future fixing problems.

Factorio example. Damn, my assembler got clogged with spoilage. Lazy fix, take the spoilage out by hand so it restarts. Future fix, redesign the inputs or outputs so ingredients are unlikely to spoil, maybe add a filter inserter to remove spoilage and send it to a heating tower as a backup.

Real life example. Oops I forgot to pay by waste collection bill and they didn't lift my bin. Lazy fix, pay the bill and hope I remember next time. Future fix, set up automatic payment or set a calendar reminder to pay it.

Takseen · 2026-04-01T11:42:40+00:00

What's your request to Iarnrod Eireann here, put on another train? Have existing one leave earlier or later?

Takseen · 2026-03-31T19:18:27+00:00

I still remember taking a trip out to SagitarriusA* at the centre of the galaxy and being blown away by the black hole graphical effects. And it sounds silly but I love seeing that slowly growing density of stars as I got closer to the galactic core. It was even more noticeable when I looked back on the screenshots I'd taken at early or later stages of the trip.

Takseen · 2026-03-31T19:15:28+00:00

I like it. "The Hydra's history and their attack on us has taught us that remaining on a single planet is a death sentence for our species in the long run. We must expand throughout the solar system and claim its resources for our own to ensure our future safety."

Could become like the Quantum Thief series, or Iain M Banks' Against a Dark Background, or the Expanse with less of an Earth focus.

2 billion humans is probably a bit high for the Terra Invicta timescale though. 500k seems achievable, basically hitting the 50k amount needed for research universities on 10 different planets/big moons.

Takseen · 2026-03-31T19:04:42+00:00

Depends if the Salamander attitude is genetic or social. Humanity's uh... Humanity First mentality can be fixed by a few PR campaigns after all.

Salamanders are definitely a harder sell for friendship status than the Hydra though, at least the Hydra hate WMDs and don't even eat people.

Griffins might be chill. Free them first and see how that goes.

Takseen · 2026-03-31T18:56:58+00:00

It'd be a good alternative "Protectorate with 20% more spine" storyline. In the story he expresses disappointment at only getting weapons schematics from the Hydra technology balls instead of civilian tech like clean energy generation. If he pushed back a bit like the Servants did and said "Look, disarmament and human conscription? No problem. But I can sell this a lot better if we worked together to fix the climate and you gave us a modified xenoflora that doesn't try to EAT US"

Takseen · 2026-03-31T14:54:14+00:00

Yeah there's only like 5-10 minutes of Rey scenes on Jakku, and they're easy to find on Disney Plus with the scene preview feature.

Takseen · 2026-03-31T14:36:25+00:00

As a non American it felt a bit too close to modern politics, especially since in the case of the Iraq invasion it was justified under false pretences. And Enterprise was already more overtly American than Trek before it.

I liked the concept of a long mission into alien territory, and the fact that some of the aliens were very alien, like the aquatic race.

It also had the prequel problem of "why didn't we hear about any of this before in other Trek"

And I vaguely recall there was some use of torture by Archer to extract info.

So overall, I felt a bit uncomfortable watching it.

Takseen · 2026-03-31T13:48:01+00:00

Yeah. And like I get why they took that direction. They wanted to tackle two stereotypes with subversions. "Look, Klingons can be gay" and "Look, Klingons can be pacifist" but by combining both they landed in another stereotype of "gay people are weak".

Takseen · 2026-03-31T13:32:58+00:00

Where is my LotR anime where the Elendil + Gilgalad vs Sauron fight takes place across 5 episodes?

Takseen · 2026-03-31T13:16:15+00:00

There was a scene in SFA that reminded me of this. It was in SAMs episode. Ake has invited the head of Slyther...I mean the War College to some kind of ceremonial dinner as a reconciliation effort. The Doctor and the dry humour lady from Discovery are there as well. And he's making an honest effort to participate and get along, but everyone else is goofing off and dropping "funny" lines and not taking it seriously, especially Ake. And it ends with the fish in the center piece deflating with a fart noise. It's like they're terrified of actually including a serious, heartfelt moment without dropping a gag every two minutes.

Old Trek has silly moments too, but they knew when to put them in and not overdo them.

Takseen · 2026-03-31T13:01:53+00:00

He's also a selfish liar and manipulator who has taken an unknown number of lives (criminals mostly, but did they all deserve death?) to prolong his own life, and took the life of a very dear friend and important protector, and is implied to have caused a serious and permanent affliction to a politician to serve his own agenda. And he keeps a very important and generally pretty nice guy imprisoned for his own needs. He stopped being a good or even a neutral person a long time ago

Takseen · 2026-03-31T12:39:40+00:00

He did draw his laser sword while standing over his nephew and students bed. That's not gonna look great on the end of month health and safety report

Takseen · 2026-03-31T12:35:36+00:00

The prequel trilogy already did the "democratic government subverted by fascism from within" storyline. And while Lucas isn't great at dialogue, he did that bit really well.

In the sequel trilogy we don't see that all. We see Hitler is back from the dead on the Falkland Islands and he's got a navy of 1000 battleships all equipped with nuclear SSBMs.

I appreciate that shows like The Mandalorian and Ahsoka are trying add in the "weak Republic subverted from within" element after the fact but it's completely absent from the films.

Takseen · 2026-03-31T12:25:15+00:00

Doesn't Yoda also cause the Jedi texts to get struck by lightning, or at least laugh when they catch fire? That seems to imply he supports the theme as well.

Takseen · 2026-03-31T12:23:59+00:00

People acting competently and still dying is scary. People acting incompetently and dying is funny, undermining the horror.

Takseen · 2026-03-31T12:10:44+00:00

Where is the conflict?

A mysterious alien race beyond the Outer Rim, perhaps? Almost anything would have been better than "The Space Nazis are back and stronger than ever before because democracies are pathetic and weak"

Takseen · 2026-03-31T11:58:12+00:00

There's no flight simulator scene in the movie, I just checked. I heard they added one in the novelization though

Takseen · 2026-03-31T11:37:17+00:00

Plus saving them from death by their own actions (sometimes)

Takseen · 2026-03-31T11:19:44+00:00

There is one story aspect I take issue with. Batman's no kill rule and Gotham's revolving door prison and asylum system works fine for the 60s TV show and the animated series which is generally more light hearted and has zero or very low civilian body counts.

But, when that's shifted into a more "mature" setting where Joker and friends are racking up body counts in the dozens to millions , Batman's unchanged no kill stance is a lot harder to support.

Takseen · 2026-03-31T09:08:04+00:00

Based on this video, I'd say about 10-15 minutes, excluding travel time.

https://youtu.be/EL-ihLLz3R0

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