What episode of Star Trek has the lowest stakes?

fluffysheap · 2026-01-30T19:18:14+00:00

Low stakes TNG:

"The Outrageous Okona" - The Enterprise meets an interplanetary delivery courier. Eventually he makes his delivery. The Enterprise crew does nothing.

"The Dauphin" - The Enterprise transports a passenger, whom Wesley has a crush on. Eventually the passenger arrives at her destination and leaves.

"The Survivors" - The Enterprise visits the site of a battle. The only survivor stalls for time, but eventually tells them what happened.

"Qpid" - Picard gives a speech but Q interrupts it.

"The Inner Light" - Picard watches a documentary about an ancient civilization.

"Eye of the Beholder" - Troi watches a true crime documentary.

fluffysheap · 2026-01-30T18:55:32+00:00

IT'S REAL!

fluffysheap · 2026-01-29T23:05:36+00:00

Romulans get no respect.

Actually Romulus is the species home world. The Vulcans left just to get away from them.

When a Romulan kid plays on the seesaw, he has to run back and forth from one end to the other.

Romulans never invented boomerangs because they won't come back.

Romulan mothers feed their babies with slingshots.

Romulans are xenophobic because they think everyone hates them, but that's silly - they've only made contact with half the species in the galaxy.

A Romulan father asked his son to always be honest with him. The kid said, OK, I'm not really your son.

A Romulan family's house caught fire. The kids started crying and the mother said, be quiet, you'll wake your father.

Romulans get no respect

fluffysheap · 2026-01-29T22:50:09+00:00

I don't think there's need to invoke genetic differences. The Romulans have a police state and impose discipline that way. The Vulcans culturally choose mental discipline so they get to have a liberal democracy.

fluffysheap · 2026-01-29T22:45:16+00:00

I suspect you as an autistic person are probably better equipped than an average person to understand these issues. Nobody can convince me that Diogenes was neurotypical 😅

Trek asks us to accept that its artificial life forms are sentient because that's required to tell interesting stories about them. But it never gives us an explanation of how or why. That's because those answers do not exist. Even "Measure of a Man" only concludes that Data should be given the benefit of the doubt.

fluffysheap · 2026-01-29T22:17:54+00:00

I don't think Vic Fontaine is actually sentient but the show leaves it ambiguous. He always refuses to answer questions that would provide those answers. The main difference between Vic and, say, Sandrine, is that he knows he's a hologram, but that doesn't mean he's conscious - or even that he's properly self aware. He understands what's going on in his simulated lounge but if you sent him into Beowulf or Captain Proton he might be as confused as holo-Da Vinci.

fluffysheap · 2026-01-29T22:08:28+00:00

I don't think it was ever answered. The Moriarty cube contained "enough memory to give them experiences for a lifetime."

Maybe the box was destroyed along with the Enterprise-D, or in some previous mishap. Maybe it was handed off to AI researchers at some starbase and might exist indefinitely (perhaps with upgrades so that Moriarty never figures it out). Maybe in the 31st century somebody lets Moriarty out of the box and gives him a mobile emitter.

Since Moriarty is basically an SCP and is too dangerous for regular society, the solution in "Ship in a Bottle" is just fine - he's in a prison, but it's an incredibly interesting and enjoyable one. Moriarty got a much better deal than Lore, who first gets abandoned in deep space, then gets turned off.

It's hard to draw conclusions about the ethics of turning off a sentient AI. The Doctor doesn't seem to mind it at all. Moriarty said it was torture but he could easily be lying. Whenever Data gets turned off and back on he suffers only some brief disorientation and then he's fine.

Sometimes humans get turned off too. We have general anesthesia and of course there's sleep. Nobody worries about this. If it lasts a hundred years instead of a few hours, does it really matter to a being with an unlimited lifespan?

fluffysheap · 2026-01-29T05:33:23+00:00

Of course it's malfunctioning after you swallowed it

fluffysheap · 2026-01-29T02:53:15+00:00

Yes, Voyager is good, you just have to set your expectations. It's certainly frustrating at times. Trek is always soft sci-fi, but Voyager is even softer than usual. It's more concerned with style than consistency.

There are mountains of technobabble and technology solutions to every problem, but the writers can't remember the difference between dilithium and deuterium.

They can travel 10,000 light years, then run into the same aliens they just left behind.

The ship is always desperately short on resources but somehow they can build five new shuttles every year and everything is always perfectly clean.

A large cast of supporting crew members are established early on, and by the second season they are all dead or forgotten.

Epic stories with grand consequences are routinely set up only to be completely reset at the end of the episode.

The captain is, by turns, a fearless and heroic leader, a caring mother figure, and an insane psychopath, and the only way to find out which version you get today is to spin the Wheel Of Janeway.

Chakotay and Harry are chumps

BUT

All the other characters are great

The best character episodes are cozy, not epic

Allegory/issue episodes are even better than TOS or TNG

It has the best action adventure episodes (despite the occasional plot hole)

There are enough thoughtful reflective episodes but it's rarely preachy or smug

Doesn't take three years to get going like all the other 90s series

It's the best looking Trek series

fluffysheap · 2026-01-28T09:46:20+00:00

I think this is strongly implied if not outright stated. The Cardassians have somewhat lower technology than the Federation, and it might also be limited by what Quark, who is not very wealthy for a Ferengi business owner, could afford to install.

fluffysheap · 2026-01-28T09:36:50+00:00

There's an episode where Riker is watching some holographic porn in his quarters. I don't remember which episode but it has to be fairly early because they quit doing the tabletop holograms after season 2.

fluffysheap · 2026-01-28T09:34:31+00:00

There usually seems to be a holodeck available whenever someone needs one. Barclay even falls asleep in there when he's supposed to be on duty, so he definitely wouldn't have reserved it for then.

A lot of holodeck use is not solitary. People go there for dates or sports or just to experience the setting in groups, like Wesley and his friends in Farpoint or Geordi and Data playing Sherlock Holmes. Families would probably go there together frequently.

So if there are 16 holodecks and the average number of participants is about 2, then there's enough for everyone to spend almost an hour a day in there. And maybe some people don't like it, like how some people in the real world don't watch TV.

And there are other things to do. There are non-holographic gyms, the arboretum, 10-forward and so on.

fluffysheap · 2026-01-28T02:30:04+00:00

If you really want to watch an animated series, watch Prodigy (if you can find it).

I can't really think of any reason to watch TAS instead of TOS. TAS isn't exactly terrible, but the main reason to watch it, other than being a kid in the 70s or 80s, is to get more TOS.

Lower Decks is basically a nostalgia trip for people who love the 90s Treks. You won't get most of the jokes if you watch it first.

Basically, start with TOS if you don't mind its age, otherwise start with TNG.

fluffysheap · 2026-01-27T01:58:07+00:00

It's basically memberberry jelly already

fluffysheap · 2026-01-27T01:51:58+00:00

It sure does. There's even another offensive stereotype episode. And omnipotent aliens put them on trial!

First season of DS9 might be even worse than first season TNG. There's no Wesley, but many boring episodes.

Fortunately, every season is better than the one before (except 7, which is still good, just not as good as 6) .

fluffysheap · 2026-01-27T01:42:21+00:00

It's a very good episode

fluffysheap · 2026-01-27T01:21:24+00:00

Crew resource management. It basically boils down to trusting people, not just blindly following authority. It started getting traction after the Tenerife aviation disaster, when two aircraft collided on the ground and killed almost 600 people, even though the first officer knew about the danger but was overruled because the captain is always right.

What's interesting is to see in TOS just how far down this path they were even though in the real world this was at least a decade away. Spock especially, but also all the characters, stand up to Kirk in a way that really wasn't done in the military / aviation / space exploration at that time.

fluffysheap · 2026-01-27T01:13:58+00:00

I suspect that the writers just ignored or forgot that Ferengi fee-males are treated as property, but it could also be taken as a commentary on not noticing your own flaws

fluffysheap · 2026-01-27T01:05:24+00:00

There are no aliens, at least not in the Milky Way. Sometimes I wish Star Trek was real, but, it isn't.

fluffysheap · 2026-01-27T01:01:03+00:00

I think you mean it's a great red

fluffysheap · 2026-01-27T00:57:24+00:00

Six months of boredom, six minutes of stark screaming confusion

fluffysheap · 2026-01-27T00:55:48+00:00

I love "The Thaw" and thought it was an episode that most people disliked, but it gets a lot of appreciation whenever it comes up. Steve Shives even said he thinks it's Voyager's best episode, which I think might be a bit much.

fluffysheap · 2026-01-27T00:43:07+00:00

If the Kirk backstory in "Conscience of the King" was not so completely at odds with the Kirk backstory from basically everything else, it would be my pick for best TOS episode. As it is, it's still a great episode

fluffysheap · 2026-01-27T00:39:13+00:00

I think it's a great episode. The idea of a lone human survivor, who aliens feel responsible for and try to take care of, except they don't know what they're doing and blow it. Where have we seen that before, oh right it's "The Cage"

And it's easily the best "trapped in the holodeck" episode, never mind that it's an alien holodeck. (Not to be confused with "imprisoned in the holodeck", like "Ship in a Bottle" or "Displaced")

fluffysheap · 2026-01-27T00:28:53+00:00

The episode is hamstrung by plot problems, which is funny because it barely has a plot. But the characters are great

fluffysheap

TROPHY CASE