TNG - Galaxy's Child

[MerelyAFan]

https://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/t190.php

Ah Galaxy's Child, where Geordi's attitude towards Leah makes the episode's ideas age just enough to be both relevant to talk about and cringy to experience. Honestly the romance angle of La Forge towards Brahms simply wasn't necessary.

They could have easily played off the idea of him knowing that she was married while still genuinely wanting to be friends with her and get the chance to bond over the Enterprise D. She could still be cold and clearly resistant to even that, with a subtle resentment about how his changes to the engine greatly differ from the research and especially when explains that they came from experience in the field .

He could eventually get upset at this and accuse her of being unable to get past his alterations and see his attempts at being friendly while she in turn could find out about his studies of her biography (no holodeck program reveal) and say he's just angry that she doesn't measure up to his idealized idea and fully embrace what he's done.

And then after the blowup there can be an acknowledgement of their respective issues, with him admitting he invested a lot in the fantasy of Leah as a friend with shared interests and that she admits she's really upset that the changed Enterprise really is a better functioning vessel which stings given how much she invested in the ship as one of her crowing achievements.

Its no masterpiece but it would make for an easier watch.

[A_Really_Big_Cat]

This whole episode just makes me uncomfortable. The part where Geordi says "I've tried to be so accommodating and trying to meet you part way and you're being so unreasonable" is just disgusting when you remember that by "being accommodating" he means inappropriately trying to turn a professional meeting to discuss work into a romantic date. The fact that the episode tries to make his behaviour look justified by writing Leah as an arrogant bitch makes me want to strangle the writer.

[Thebestoftherest]

I just love when Chuck said, he not stalking you, he doesn't need to.

[clearspira]

This is an interesting follow-up to the Reg Barclay arc: what happens when someone who isn't actually your mate discovers that you were shagging a holographic duplicate of them? Sounds fantastical, but lets be honest, this is a pretty accurate vision of the future of VR. And if Troi ended up covering herself up for Reg forevermore after learning that, then a complete stranger... yeah.

I have a feeling that in real life there will be some SERIOUS copyright on using the images of real people in such a way. The sort of copyright that carries jail time. And it probably will end up being very easy to copy someone's image too. If the last 20 years have taught us anything then the inevitability of technological progress is that eventually everything ends up sophisticated enough to be turned into a one-touch ap for your phone.

It may not even be as complicated as that either. Anyone here remember The Fappening? Y'know, where all of those female celebrities had their phones hacked? Why take the images yourself when you can just hack someone's cloud?

[CrypticMirror]

Oh yeah, 2020 had murder hornets. I forgot about those. Man, what a year.

[TGLS]

Anyone here remember The Fappening? Y'know, where all of those female celebrities had their phones hacked? Why take the images yourself when you can just hack someone's cloud?

Let's be perfectly honest, with the advent of deepfakes, it's unnecessary to even hack the celebrity's cloud. (Unless you're so obsessive you need to see their blemishes near the naughty bits). Average Joes still might be safe as long as they keep their privacy settings high.

--

With regard to the "You can't stalk them, but we can!", here's the Snopes link: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/design-flaw-2/

[Mabus]

Yeah, I hate it when the writers are trying to make a woman character tough by acting like a bitch. What's worse is that Leah was supposed to be a career woman with experience, who would have to work with people on her level, below and above, in both experience and skill, so she would have to be more polite, especially with someone that she never met in her life. Yet in her introductory scene she comes across as an entitled high school bitch while Geordi looks like the nerdy kid that was rejected by her. And then the rest of the episode almost becomes that with Geordi somehow not learning that she was't married and totally not hitting on her, even though if he looked at her file it should be mentioned there, then he's totally not in love with her except for the awkward dinner scene and finally complete with a holographic recreation of her. I think I've seen the latter in many dumb scifi teen comedies.

[Makeitstop]

I think it would have been easy to resolve the contradiction between "they're sending someone to copy your amazing engine upgrades" and "so you're the one sabotaging my perfect engines" by making their exchanges a balanced point / counterpoint about the trade offs in his modifications.

Yes, he got more performance out of the engines, but at what cost? He's essentially overclocking it, voiding the warranty and tuning it in ways that it wasn't designed for. Even if it doesn't explode and kill them all, is it going to be more wear and tear? Is it going to increase the chances of a serious engine problem, making it go from statistically insignificant to just unlikely?

After all, someone basing it on their experience is inherently going to suffer from a survivorship bias. Someone playing single player Russian roulette and basing their judgment only on their personal experience is going to conclude that the game is safe, and probably boring. It's hard to factor in small percentage chances into lived experience, because most things either happened (thus 100%) or didn't (thus 0%), we usually don't experience something that is .02% there.

When he says he based his assessment on experience, she should point out that his experience is with engines that were designed to be safe, to work the way they were intended, within operating parameters that don't allow for him to experience the possible consequences. He only thinks it is safe because the system didn't allow for him to experience real danger. Which ties in neatly with the holo-Brahms / real-Brahms situation, where Geordi has made a serious misjudgment of reality based on his experiences in a safe and controlled simulation, and now he is going to suffer because of it.

[MerelyAFan]

I think it would have been easy to resolve the contradiction between "they're sending someone to copy your amazing engine upgrades" and "so you're the one sabotaging my perfect engines" by making their exchanges a balanced point / counterpoint about the trade offs in his modifications.

Yes, he got more performance out of the engines, but at what cost? He's essentially overclocking it, voiding the warranty and tuning it in ways that it wasn't designed for. Even if it doesn't explode and kill them all, is it going to be more wear and tear? Is it going to increase the chances of a serious engine problem, making it go from statistically insignificant to just unlikely?

After all, someone basing it on their experience is inherently going to suffer from a survivorship bias. Someone playing single player Russian roulette and basing their judgment only on their personal experience is going to conclude that the game is safe, and probably boring. It's hard to factor in small percentage chances into lived experience, because most things either happened (thus 100%) or didn't (thus 0%), we usually don't experience something that is .02% there.

When he says he based his assessment on experience, she should point out that his experience is with engines that were designed to be safe, to work the way they were intended, within operating parameters that don't allow for him to experience the possible consequences. He only thinks it is safe because the system didn't allow for him to experience real danger. Which ties in neatly with the holo-Brahms / real-Brahms situation, where Geordi has made a serious misjudgment of reality based on his experiences in a safe and controlled simulation, and now he is going to suffer because of it.

And the effective thing about that is La Forge could counter that Brahms herself has not had to face the dangers that are out there; that the nature of being on the flagship that deals with outside context scenarios such as spatial/temporal anomalies and enemies like the Borg means some times taking things beyond the parameters if the situation calls for it. Both would be correct given their connections and view of the Enterprise.

[clearspira]

BTW, I do miss 99 Luftballoons. Its been the TNG soundtrack for a decade. I do understand though, copyright nowadays is a bitch.