VOY:Spirit Folk or "PaddyWorld"

[CharlesPhipps]

Synthehol is basically supposed to be alcohol that can't get you drunk. Which strikes me as someone who didn't understand alcohol trying to replicate it.

Ergo, it's something I see as a Vulcan creation.

[Admiral X]

I thought it was alcohol that would get you drunk but without making you sick or the hangover.

[CharlesPhipps]

Well the purposes of it is so starfleet officers can drink it and continue on duty.

But it's possible it gets you some drunk.

[Beastro]

Is it established that it's a Starfleet only thing or is it applied to all alcohol replicated in the Fed?

My gut instinct is it's the latter, if only because it blends in well with human Fed citizens still being human and finding ways around laws to do thing in private, like the stereotypical Rolumlan Ale that's a no go, but one everyone seems to enjoy.

Would be neat if Romulan Ale turned out to be something replicators couldn't reproduce with synthehol and so explained the ban: if you can't have it with fake alcohol, you can't have it.

I assumed synthehol is actually meant to be shit.

Scotty certainly thinks so.

That could be all up in the air in much the same way wine and cheese "experts" are full of crap and the hilarity the comes with having them taste test different kinds not knowing if they were fancy ones or not.

The other problem with that interpretation is the Enterprise doesn't get commanded by an Admiral except briefly in TMP...

That’s one thing, I never understood why Picard wasn’t at least a Commodore (although that could partly be down to the rank of Commodore apparently dissapearing sometime between TOS and TNG). Being a Commodore would have given him seniority over other captains in the fleet (I suppose technically he’d get it by default anyway when the Enterprise engaged in fleet actions unless an Admiral was involved, but it would have been nice to have at least some token of setting him above the regular captains), but without the obstructive beuracrat/‘only captains a desk’ connotations that Admiral carries within Trek fiction.

Based on the fact that Starfleet vaguely follows a US Navy Rank System: Commodore isn't really much of a rank, rather a functional specification for the most part. It designates a senior officer, usually a captain, who commands multiple ships/a flotilla, much like whatever rank an officer is holding, as long as he is the commander of a ship, he's adressed as Captain. The actual rank of Commodore appeared and disappeared from the US Navy several times. As Gene was a part of the army in WWII, he served during a time where Commodore was an actual rank, but it was removed soon after the war. The last time it appeared in the US Navy was in 1980, but it practically vanished overnight and was replaced by "Rear Admiral" as it caused confusion due to the long service of "Commodore" as a "functional" rank.

That should explain why the rank of Commodore vanished from Star Trek as well. By the time TNG came around, the Commodore didn't exist anymore in reality and hasn't been for a long time, while Rear Admirals were a thing for almost a decade, thus likely being very unfamiliar and thus unthought-of term.

The US Navy should never be the template for anything remotely naval, especially in Star Trek when the inspiration of it came from the Age of the Sail.

Royal Navy all the way!

And yes, the modern history of Commodore in the RN is a bit wonky and recent too, all due to the problem of it being in a way neither fish nor fowl, senior to a captain but not a flag officer of colour.

The RN in the Age of Sail had 9 flag ranks, each based upon a colour of the historical squadrons in RN tradition from Blue to White to Red. Someone newly made a flag officer would be Rear Admiral of the Blue, then Vice Admiral of the Blue, then Admiral of the Blue before becoming Rear Admiral of the White until becoming Admiral of the Red if they lived long enough.

This is where the three various colours of Britis naval ensign come from one can see in the colours of the Dominion flags with Australia's and New Zealands and many others being blue while Canada chose red which the merchant marine settled upon as well.

White was chosen as the colour of the RN in the 1800s reforms that ended the old structure due to Nelson dying a Vice Admiral of the White and the shadow he'd cast on the RN ever since then.

[CharlesPhipps]

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.

[PapaPalpatine]

Ah, yet another holodeck malfunction episode. If some company were to build something like that in real life, they'd be drowning in lawsuits after the first time the safeties fail and a bunch of kids get eaten by Barney the Dinosaur.

[Lizuka]

Ah, yet another holodeck malfunction episode. If some company were to build something like that in real life, they'd be drowning in lawsuits after the first time the safeties fail and a bunch of kids get eaten by Barney the Dinosaur.

And now you know the real reason the Federation doesn't have money.

[Sir Will]

Surprised there wasn't a larger rant about there being an actual live cow, given all the fuss kicked up about an 'offscreen juggler'...

Yeah, but they effectively got her at a discount. They already had paid her for co-authoring the script.

Chuck's complaints seem to follow two threads: the AIness of the holograms and the stupidity of the crew. The stupidity was.. well, too common in Voyager. Except for Beltran, I thought the show was acted OK, but the writing... Similarly for Enterprise. And the JJ Abrams films I saw, the first two.

The AI thing was a problem I think only TNG handled OK, IMHO. We don't really know if Vic Fontaine was sentient; he was programmed to imitate humans, after all, and many of us are sentient. Maybe algorithms detected that the crew would value his contributions more if they thought he had sentience and made that a factor in his pre-programmed responses. He seemed sapient, but the 1701D mainframe seems to be able to reason somewhat. But was there a there there?

Beltran could be fine when he gave a shit. But he was so misused or underused he generally just gave up. And when they did use him it was often poorly.

[PapaPalpatine]

Ah, yet another holodeck malfunction episode. If some company were to build something like that in real life, they'd be drowning in lawsuits after the first time the safeties fail and a bunch of kids get eaten by Barney the Dinosaur.

And now you know the real reason the Federation doesn't have money.

Somehow that does not surprise me...

[PapaPalpatine]

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.

There are people in the present day who drink diet soda even though they know it's crap. Denial isn't just a river in Egypt...