CharlesPhipps wrote:For me, I think it fits with my stereotype of the Federation that they're kind of bland and theme park-ish in TNG until Deep Space Nine shakes them out of their apathy as well as hubris.
The idea everyone drinks diet soda in the future until they realize its crap just amuses me.
It's not just that everyone drinks soda, it's worse, and more hilarious:
Everyone drinks soda and everyone is completely smug and convinced that they're the best in the room for drinking soda in the future of Star Trek, until DS9. ;D
Which really does explain why Dr. Bashir has to create and serum to keep everyone from getting drunk instantly when the DS9 characters have to disguise themselves as Klingons at a Klingon party, and chug Bloodwine all night.
They've mostly gone without alcohol so long in Starfleet that they have NO tolerance for alcohol.
Much like what Chuck said in the video, I have game characters that I cherish; but I also have ways of rescuing them from cybernetic oblivion without putting my fellow humans in mortal peril (back up your game files, anyone?). So if the people of Fair Haven are so beloved, why no offline back up of the program just in case something goes screwy with the holodeck? If the Voyager crew had as much common sense as the average present-day video gamer, the problem would've been resolved in, at most, 5 minutes; and the remainder of the episode would consist of Nelix dancing a jig in a leprechaun costume.
PapaPalpatine wrote:So if the people of Fair Haven are so beloved, why no offline back up of the program just in case something goes screwy with the holodeck?
They can't even back up their doctor. The only one on board.
So I think you ask an excellent question, as I would expect Voyager to prioritize solving their entertainment technology challenges over their health in a heartbeat.
PapaPalpatine wrote:So if the people of Fair Haven are so beloved, why no offline back up of the program just in case something goes screwy with the holodeck?
They can't even back up their doctor. The only one on board.
So I think you ask an excellent question, as I would expect Voyager to prioritize solving their entertainment technology challenges over their health in a heartbeat.
To be fair, the Doctor is a much more complex program than the average holodeck character. The only external hardware he can reliably download himself into is his mobile emitter; i.e., a device centuries ahead of any other piece of tech on the ship. The people of Fair Haven, on the other hand, are so one dimensional you could probably back them up on whatever equivalent of a thumb drive the 24th century has, and still have room for all those Captain Proton adventures Tom pirated while they were still docked at DS9.
Like I said, if the Voyager crew had as much common sense as the average present-day gamer, the situation would've been resolved before anyone was in any real danger.
Last edited by PapaPalpatine on Thu Jan 11, 2018 1:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
I agree. I just couldn't resist poking at the Voyager. I'm sure if pressed they would have just said that the Holodeck operates on a different kind of storage, too, preventing them from saving backups.
On the subject of Tom turning Maggie into a cow to screw with Harry:
1) Why didn't Harry just pull out a pad of his own and change her back? Or call for the arch and do it from there?
2) While you can hardly blame Shamus and his friend Milo for thinking Tom is a malevolent spirit in this scenario, did they not see Harry's shocked reaction to Maggie turning into a cow? Or him chewing Tom out for it afterward? Because if they did, that should've counted for something, even with a stereotypical town full of superstitious bumpkins.
3) Remind me again why Harry considers Tom his "friend"? Friends making each other the butt of jokes on occasion is one thing, but this level of dickery goes beyond the pale.
Last edited by PapaPalpatine on Fri Jan 12, 2018 5:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
PapaPalpatine wrote:On the subject of Tom turning Maggie into a cow to screw with Harry:
3) Remind me again why Harry considers Tom his "friend"? Friends making each other the butt of jokes on occasion is one thing, but this level of dickery goes beyond the pale.
UST
"Believe me, there’s nothing so terrible that someone won’t support it."
— Un Lun Dun, China Mieville
I don't really get Chuck's complaint about the Fair Haven church not having any actual religious symbols or messages in it. The most likely explanation is that that, when designing Fair Haven, they felt like there needed to be a church there for the sake of authenticity, but were uncomfortable with the idea of the crew using a real religious ceremony as part of a meaningless game, so left specifics out of the town's religious rituals to avoid causing offense and/or blasphemy.
This works when applied to the writers of the episode and when applied to the characters within the show who designed the Fair Haven program.
