Watching ST all the way through (on DS9 Season 5)

[Madner Kami]

But it's the change in technology that means large numbers of people end up like that.

It really isn't. Even today, it's not the richest and most high tech countries that have the highest rate of obesity. It's countries like Jordan, Saudi-Arabia, Samoa, Egypt, Turkey, fucking Lybia, South-Africa and Urugay and somehow all the pacific island nations lead the list by quite a margin. While on the other end, you've got nations like Japan and South Korea at the bottom of the list, with North Korea having a higher obesity rate than South Korea to really underline how utterly inconsequential technology and industrial development is to people being fat or lazy.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

The "Starfleet is not military" line comes up now and again but has been proven inaccurate often enough, since we see plenty of military action from it. It's probably more accurate to say that it's not exclusively military, that military action is just one of its roles. And it may well be possible to be that without having as much of a military ethos as we have nowadays in that job.

Really you have to pay attention to the overall effects from Wolf 359 and the Dominion War to address the subject the subject adequately. Starfleet ships are warlike during the era of TOS, but Enterprise establishes well that Earth is primarily about exploration, and the original series does well enough to honor that endeavor in the first place.

[McAvoy]

The "Starfleet is not military" line comes up now and again but has been proven inaccurate often enough, since we see plenty of military action from it. It's probably more accurate to say that it's not exclusively military, that military action is just one of its roles. And it may well be possible to be that without having as much of a military ethos as we have nowadays in that job.

Really you have to pay attention to the overall effects from Wolf 359 and the Dominion War to address the subject the subject adequately. Starfleet ships are warlike during the era of TOS, but Enterprise establishes well that Earth is primarily about exploration, and the original series does well enough to honor that endeavor in the first place.

This actually could be its own post. But yeah, beginning of TNG started off like the fleet could handle anything because they more or less knew about it. Introduce the Borg and Wolf 359, then you start seeing a more militarized Starfleet.

It's as if season 1 TNG Starfleet was sleepy and Wolf 359 woke them up. And then the Dominion got them out of bed.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Alright so I'm at season 5 of DS9 and I'm going to have to splice in the First Contact movie to do this right. It works nicely because I have a separate schedule for watching shows and movies, and tis the season for what everybody might agree upon as being the best compromise between a monster of the week episode movie and a thematic cinema experience as Scorsese himself would put it.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Okay, so I watched First Contact during my rowing workout a couple hours after watching Blazes of Glory during my calisthenics workout.

I felt like Worf's scenes in the midst of drama stood out in comparison to the other crew on the ship (aside from Data of course). His welcoming on board the Enterprise, being asked if he knows how to fire phases, is good. But his confrontation with Picard could have been done better. There had been plenty a moment in the series. between Picard and Worf to show an understanding and expectation by Picard's part upon Worf, and the companion DS9 episode (preceding the movie) has Sisko courting Nog on how to socialize with Klingons. So it's almost a fitting role reversal of that here with Worf calling Picard out. Only problem is Alfre Woodard is the one that gives him any thematically relevant speech. The weird thing is I can't think of why Worf would feel honor in destroying the Enterprise, but I could be wrong on that.

[clearspira]

Okay, so I watched First Contact during my rowing workout a couple hours after watching Blazes of Glory during my calisthenics workout.

I felt like Worf's scenes in the midst of drama stood out in comparison to the other crew on the ship (aside from Data of course). His welcoming on board the Enterprise, being asked if he knows how to fire phases, is good. But his confrontation with Picard could have been done better. There had been plenty a moment in the series. between Picard and Worf to show an understanding and expectation by Picard's part upon Worf, and the companion DS9 episode (preceding the movie) has Sisko courting Nog on how to socialize with Klingons. So it's almost a fitting role reversal of that here with Worf calling Picard out. Only problem is Alfre Woodard is the one that gives him any thematically relevant speech. The weird thing is I can't think of why Worf would feel honor in destroying the Enterprise, but I could be wrong on that.

A suicide that takes out an enemy is considered to be an honorable death by the Klingons. In a way, given how anthromorphised Star Trek ships tend to be by their crews, the Enterprise is in a way doing exactly that.

As an aside, the biggest unsung hero of this entire film? The unnamed Starfleet psychologist who looked at Picard and went, "fuck me, that guy is absolutely going to crack if we let him face another cube. Let's send the Enterprise to the Neutral Zone for a few hours." And he was absolutely right!

The flaw here was Admiral Lardarse not telling Picard to abandon ship and getting someone else to command the ship into battle but details.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

As an aside, the biggest unsung hero of this entire film? The unnamed Starfleet psychologist who looked at Picard and went, "fuck me, that guy is absolutely going to crack if we let him face another cube. Let's send the Enterprise to the Neutral Zone for a few hours." And he was absolutely right!

The flaw here was Admiral Lardarse not telling Picard to abandon ship and getting someone else to command the ship into battle but details.

I think the in universe meme of Picard is that everybody blames him for Wolf 359. How that would amount to the Enterprise being out of commission is a good question. I guess engineer teams were only willing to put up with duty shift rotations with 3 watches instead of 4, as the Enterprise E hadn't yet been fitted with the right power distribution through the main line.