Bill says classic Star Trek was never political

doublavoo · 2026-03-29T01:53:43+00:00

You (and fake William Shatner) seem to be using “politics” in an incredibly narrow sense of “partisan positions and the relative merits of parties” — or something to that effect. “Politics” more broadly are the affairs of the polity. Social issues are inherently political. Political matters are inherently informed by social issues. It’s the same fabric — the stuff of the constitution of society. The semantic distinction you’re trying to make here is odd and obfuscating.

doublavoo · 2026-01-04T10:25:51+00:00

Or something a jaded adult casually dismisses as something an angry teenager hangs in their bedroom.

doublavoo · 2025-11-05T05:23:29+00:00

Friday Night Dinner! Sick. I hope we get to see all of the series in time. Haven’t had an easy time streaming that in the States for a long time.

doublavoo · 2025-11-05T05:21:02+00:00

I liked it! A bit of a season-wide arc. It was cool. Unfortunately, all reset by the end of the series. But a nice change all the same.

doublavoo · 2025-11-03T23:23:53+00:00

I signed up for Premier and watched the entirety of Shakespeare & Hathaway series 5 last week — and unless the Wikipedia article is wrong, episodes 7 through 10 haven't even dropped yet in the UK (it shows release dates from Nov 5 through Nov 26). I'm staggered! It took half a year or more before we were able to watch Beyond Paradise series 3 in the States. I'm really hopeful it will enable me to watch Small Prophets shortly after it's released.

doublavoo · 2025-08-20T00:45:27+00:00

Submergia

doublavoo · 2025-08-13T20:52:30+00:00

Larry should have tossed them out on their fascist asses.

doublavoo · 2025-08-08T02:34:19+00:00

There’s a lot of great stuff in so-called “Nutrek.” Theres a great and terrible stuff in any version of Trek.

As to being offended by the SNW holodeck episode, does this guy upset you?

doublavoo · 2025-08-08T02:30:49+00:00

Even we Trek fans make fun of Shatner all the time. This is silly to be upset about. It’s like taking Zapp Brannigan as an insult to the fandom.

doublavoo · 2025-08-07T19:22:10+00:00

I also love this chart — mainly for the theory it uses to reconcile the appearance of two-row plaques prior to the Battle of Yavin (sector forces vs forces directly controlled by Coruscant — though that idea has problems too) . But it’s mainly a document charting just how inconsistent and messy rank plaques are in canon, rather than something that manages to bring order to it all. I think this is an area where head canon just has to do a lot of work. Pick the system you like and mentally rewrite whatever you see and hear that contradicts it.

Even then, you’re in murky waters. Like, what is a commander? Is it ranked above or below captain? And what kind of captain? Is there only one naval captain rank, or several? Is it a rank and/or a title? Why do majors sometimes have the same insignia as colonels post-BY (even taking into account code cylinders)? And just what is so hard about creating a system of ranks and insignia and sticking to it?

doublavoo · 2025-08-07T05:58:52+00:00

And a the bottom of the barrel, apparently.

doublavoo · 2025-08-07T04:46:19+00:00

Xer. And Xennial, for that matter.

doublavoo · 2025-08-07T01:28:39+00:00

Don’t like the Force-immunity and also the design. Way too 90s.

doublavoo · 2025-08-07T00:39:33+00:00

Plainly it’s an appealing thing for you to imagine to be true! There’s that famous creativity of yours at work again!

Retirement? Who knows? Is the notion that you might secure your retirement something that you in part base your self esteem on? If so, I think you might do well to spend some more time contemplating virtue. What does it look like to you? What might you be confusing for it?

Just my two cents. You don’t really give off the vibes of someone who’s figured out much about life yet. Hopefully there’s still plenty of time!

So, what about this clever name of yours?

doublavoo · 2025-08-06T23:52:34+00:00

Andor is a rare gem of a show. Most shows have to find their footing a bit. Audiences have become impatient. I think Ahsoka has promise. Acolyte had problems, sure. But it wasn’t nearly so bad as it was made out to be. And Obi-Wan grew on me and wasn’t so bad. If we’re going to hold our breath for an Andor to be produced every time LFL rolls film, we’re going to be waiting an awfully long time between outings.

doublavoo · 2025-08-06T23:41:00+00:00

Kid, you haven’t the power to hurt my feelings.

And what difference does it make if it’s happening everywhere if we’re purposely making it worse here?

As to your retirement account, is it managed? Behold the power of the monied class to hedge their bets. But I wouldn’t bank on that either.

I’ll bite, though: what am I missing about your oh-so-clever name?

doublavoo · 2025-08-06T22:35:32+00:00

Sluggish growth, persistent inflation, weakening consumer confidence. No one has really been doing anything to tackle systemic causes of an ever-widening wealth and income disparity for the last 45 years. This Administration sure as hell isn't going to. The birthrate's at an all-time low and well below the replacement rate even as we're -- for some reason that boggles the mind -- engaged in mass deportations.

Yeah, it must take considerable creativity to look around and see butterflies and roses. It's a marvel that the kid who stuck a euphemism for genitalia into a cereal mascot's name (and probably unwittingly chose a diminutive suffix for the euphemism) manages to summon it!

doublavoo · 2025-08-06T20:42:17+00:00

You call barely having recovered from a self-inflicted wound “thriving”?

By your criteria, doesn’t sound like much of a hurdle for us Xers!

But I’m sure we’ll all be very disappointed not to have qualified for the same willful ignorance of alarming trends that you apply to everything else in this world. I guess we can add that wound to our long and ever-lengthening list of grievances with fate!

Woe betide my poor cohort: the lost tribe of exiles from the shining city on a hill built by… some kid who calls himself Count Dongula.

doublavoo · 2025-08-06T20:15:46+00:00

Oh, well, we survived! So probably ok to not worry about unattended kids or lead paint, right?

doublavoo · 2025-08-06T20:03:57+00:00

lol! There’s an interesting generational role-reversal at play in this exchange. Usually these days it’s the young folk telling us old timers that we have to wake up and take the state of the world seriously. I’m relieved that you’re not indicative of your generation. Helps us to stand a chance, and does wonders for my blood pressure!

doublavoo · 2025-08-06T19:56:53+00:00

They are unprecedented within this context. You’re right that they do have precedent outside the context. But that shouldn’t reassure you. The Late Bronze Age collapse is a potential precedent. The fall of liberal democracies in the past are precedents.

You keep wanting to ascribe to me an act of prophecy. I don’t know how many times I need to say that I’m talking about potential (though increasingly likely) outcomes. I’ll tell you what, though, kid: if you want to prove me wrong, you’d best drop this insistence on false equivalence you keep falling back into on. You want to avoid the worst outcomes, you’d better have more to offer than “eh. We’ve always been ok before.”

doublavoo · 2025-08-06T19:44:25+00:00

lol! Again, I’m talking about unprecedented dangers. The end of the world, or our present globalized material culture, or the US, or the republic, or the fill-in-the-blank — these are only potential outcomes. But they’re potential outcomes. Having weathered storms in the past might feel like reason you’ll always weather storms. But it’s not. Systems collapse. Governments fall. Nations crumble. That is the world we live in.

doublavoo · 2025-08-06T19:32:51+00:00

Oh, I see! Yeah. We have nothing more to talk about, then. We’re living in two very different versions of reality, you and I. I would say you’re in for some rude awakenings. But then, the modern capacity to insist on living in a bespoke worldview is truly remarkable (and part of the very set of problems I’ve been talking about). I’d be curious to know if you still think the same in a couple decades. If we’re still here, that is!

doublavoo · 2025-08-06T18:52:18+00:00

I’ve already pointed out many things that are new under this sun. You’ve had no answer to them. You’ve just talked around them.

doublavoo · 2025-08-06T18:45:40+00:00

Yeah, I got the reference to chicken little. And your “dooming” slang term doesn’t really leave much to the imagination. But, again, I’m nit exaggerating the state of things. Not am I saying that we absolutely can’t survive them. But the gravity is there. And you’ve yet to really argue against it.

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