sinanju

I'm mainlining TRAVELERS on Netflix right now. I'm halfway through the second season. I really hope it gets picked up for a third season.

Time travelers from a horrible, apocalyptic future are downloaded into the minds of people in the (our) present--hundreds of years before their time--who were about to die. They take over their bodies and lives and work as teams to perform various missions that they hope will allow them to prevent the awful future, or at least improve it. It's a one-time, one-way trip. The nature of time travel generally prevents "do-overs" so if a mission fails, it fails. There's lots I could say about this series, but SPOILERS.

I really like this show.

3 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

Whatever. I can't jump on board the "let's militarize stuff" bandwagon because, as much as I like a good space battle, this series wasn't about soldiers on a warship. Any kind of fighting was secondary to all other concerns. Matter of fact, I can't even begin to recall all the moments Picard and co. went out of their way to preserve life plus interspecies relations in instances where a real-life military would've just blown or vaporized crap up.

That's the thing. Nobody is "militarizing" Star Trek. It was always that way.

On the other hand, I agree that Kirk (and Picard even more so) often bent over backward to try to avoid the use of force if it was at all possible. They much preferred peaceful solutions when possible, and preferred exploration and diplomacy--and not having any sort of conflict at all--even more. My argument is simply that while, yes, Starfleet was engaged in exploration and scientific discovery, they were *also* the Federation's military arm.

22 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

Uh huh. So, aside from the flagship of the Federation (as of TNG's era, anyhow) being explicitly referred to as a vessel primarily tasked with exploration and diplomacy, there are two other things to consider.

 

1. The Enterprise-D clearly had families aboard it. Unlike a military base, this starship is quite mobile. There were instances when Picard was called upon to take his Enterprise into enemy territory. Note "instances". As in, on occasion...not primarily. I cannot for the life of me think of any real life armed force that has their Navy/Air Force (whichever you prefer to compare Starfleet to for the purposes of this debate) knowingly take the families of soldiers into combat zones.

2. Individuals whose occupation isn't command or warfare lead the Enterprise in a time of crises. Remember that incident when the bridge was staffed by only five people because of unusual circumstances and one person died, leaving four behind to handle a budding catastrophe? Best as I can recall, there was an extra wearing Operations gold, Deanna Troi, Ro Laren and Miles O'Brien. Counselor Troi, at that point, had no real experience in a leadership position and certainly wasn't a space marine. Yet, because of the system of ranking, she was in charge of the other three members of the Enterprise. You'd think that, if Starfleet or at least their flagship was explicitly military, a counselor/psychiatrist/psychologist wouldn't be managing manpower at that moment. Why not have a system in place that makes either Laren or O'Brien responsible for leading the remainder?

I never said Starfleet was a *coherent* military organization, or well run. Putting civilian family members aboard a warship is the height of stupdity, in my opinion. But claims that Starfleet isn't military are just willful blindness.

7 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

I always found it odd that Data's trial was conducted by Starfleet and not handled by a civilian court (he ISN'T Starfleet property). That said, i'll not deny that there were some oddities early on in regards to continuity/consistency regarding Starfleet's status as an organization. However... the overall framework laid out across TOS/TNG/VOY and less-so DS9 tends towards a "civilian organization with legacy military ranking". After all, our Attorney General isn't literally a General in the traditional sense of the word and the Surgeon General, while uniformed, isn't overseeing troops going into battle.

 

P.S. Sinanju? It is outright stated in TNG that the Enterprise-D is not a vessel of war. That's canon, whether you agree with it in the context of its role in the series or not.

And that statement in TNG is a load of crap. It's propaganda, nothing more. I'll believe what they actually showed us through their behavior rather than what they claimed. They can lie to themselves all they like, but the Klingons, Romulans, Ferengi, Cardassians, the Borg and every other neighboring power all knew that if war came, it was Starfleet that would be fighting for the Federation. Starfleet is the Federation's military. Heck, the Borg snatched Picard to assimilate *because* as Captain of the Enterprise, the Federation's military flagship, he was privy to all the military plans for defending the Federation.

2 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

I can't help but wonder if later entries in the Star Trek franchise (from Deep Space 9 onward) including the J.J. Abrams films - what with their increasingly obvious emphasis on razzle-dazzle action -  colored outside perception to the point where people mentally re-wrote Starfleet into a military organization.

The Enterprise sure as **** is a military vessel. They have a military system of ranks and chain of command. They operate under military discipline. They are tried, when necessary, in a court *martial*, not a civilian court. The ship is heavily armed, and provides military defense for the area of space in which it operates. The Captain is vested with the power, on his own authority, to wage WAR on other powers. That is a military vessel, no matter how much they may pretend otherwise. And none of this a "rewriting" of Starfleet--this is all straight out TOS.

9 hours ago, Christopher said:

Because not telling your Troops the whole plan because there might be a traitor or other leak among them never happened in the history of any military ever. No, such a thing only ever happens in fiction. /<quote>

"Not telling your troops the whole plan..."? She didn't even tell them she HAD a plan other than jog away from the oncoming fleet til they ran out of gas. Part of being a good leader is giving your troops reason to trust you even when they don't know your plans. She failed miserably at that.

9 hours ago, Christopher said:

 

Getting there:

He was not able to join them in a X-Wing. Otherwise he would have done that, dying the same thing that Obi-Wan once did and "becomming one with the force". When there was a chance to hitch a ride on the falcon, he was still moping. It needed Yoda killing the books to get him out of that. And by that time the Falcon was lightyears away. Oh, and he had no communicator to place a call./<quote>

He didn't NEED a communicator. He could have APPEARED TO REY (or anyone apparently, as everyone within range could see him as if he were really there) anywhere in the galaxy (apparently) and said, "I changed my mind. Send someone to get me."

9 hours ago, Christopher said:

 

Dying:

His position was very likely known to the enemy. Part of his hiding was shutting himself off from the froce, something he had already undone. If he had not died, the Order would have come for him. One interperation of Obi-Wan just vanishing on the Deathstar was because he knew Luke would not let him behind, and he could not escape Vader.

With his death Luke also made certain Rey and Leia made no rescue attempt, possibly loosing contact with the rebellion. Or that Kylo went there, possibly going after the natives when trying to find him.

The moment he went in front of that door I fully expected him to go out of that appereance as a force ghost. It was never a question if, only how. And that one was answered awesomely./<quote>

The order had no idea where he was and, apart from Kylo, no other Force sensitives we know about, now that Snoke is dead. (Speaking of which, is he DEAD dead, or only MOSTLY dead like Luke and Yoda and Obi-Wan and Vader?) So they'd have had no way to find him. Why on earth would Leia or Rey "lose contact with the rebellion" if they went to visit Luke? Rey didn't. She had a magic maguffin that allowed her to find Leia (or whoever held the other magic maguffin) anywhere in the galaxy. (And why wasn't Leai being baked alive by the sheer wattage of whatever broadcast that thing was generating to be detectable at galactic distances?)

9 hours ago, Christopher said:

 

Teaching Rey:

Yoda outright said "the books of the Jedi have nothing to teach that Rey does not already know". What Luke said in the trailers holds true: The Jedi are dead. The old Jedi, that is. The ones that caused the fall of the Republic.

Rey is a totally new Jedi, untainted by all the mistakes the old Jedi Order made. Mistakes that resulted in Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, Count Doku, Ventress. And the failure of Lukes followup Academy. The failures chronicled by the Prequell Trillogy and Clone Wars.

And as you said yourself, he could still do that between this and the next Episode./<quote>

You're assuming the books were destroyed. We don't know that. Rey might have taken them. Yoda may have "destroyed" them with lightning so Luke wouldn't discover that they're gone. Just because the "wisdom" of the Jedi was lacking (which I agree with), doesn't mean that she can't learn from their history--and I'm assuming at least some of those books are histories/logs/diaries/etc.

9 hours ago, Christopher said:

 

Because deciding not to kill someone in the ideal moment never happened in Star Wars.

*cough* Anakin and Obi-wan on Mustafa *cough* Luke and Vader in Bespin

Or in any disney story period *cough* Malificient *cough* too many to count.

 

Or how about that time Kylo was compeltely helpess with several weapons in the Room and Rey choose to flee rather then finishing him off?

That seems way more contrived then Luke making a panic decision to kill Ben after having seen teh Darkness grown within for YEARS, but not being able to go through with it.

We're not talking about Rey. We're talking about Luke Skywalker, who saw the potential for redemption in a man whose crimes were literally legendary. A man who'd destroyed the Jedi, murdered countless people, and...well, all of it. He confronted THAT man with no intention of ever killing him. He confronted him ready to die in the attempt to redeem him. And THAT man, THAT Luke Skywalker, would never have tried--even for a nanosecond--to murder a sleeping boy because he feared with that boy MIGHT do.

7 hours ago, zslane said:

For most of our species' history, detailed communication (i.e., anything more sophisticated than basic signal passing) was as slow as physical travel. This was true whether the mechanism of travel was feet, horses, boats, or trains. It wasn't until the telegraph (and then radio) came along that this changed. Suddenly you had a technology that allowed detailed communication to occur far faster than travel. This remains true today even though the technologies of both have evolved (aircraft, space shuttles, satellite-based mobile data networks). The average RPGer will expect this basic relationship to remain true into the future, no matter what the exact technologies/mechanisms are for either communication or travel. Regardless of whether or not you agree with this expectation, I believe it will still be there, and for GMs who don't want to have to fight upstream against some very basic player expectations, I feel this is something worth thinking about.

And you're stating this as if it were self-evidently true. It's not. It's your opinion.

Plenty of gamers are perfectly capable of accepting that things will be (gasp!) different in the future!

12 hours ago, zslane said:

 

I'm not assuming anything of the sort. I am saying that the average RPGer will be confused if your far future feels less advanced than today. Today is merely the baseline. How is this so hard to grasp?

 

If the baseline is "communications on a single planet will remain effectively instantaneous" then you're right. But nobody is suggesting that. 

What you're saying is that if FTL travel outstrips *lightspeed* communication, then that's some how "less advanced" than what we have today. Which is absurd. What we have today (lightspeed communication ON A SINGLE PLANET) + FTL travel (which we DON'T have now) = something more advanced that today. How is THAT so hard to grasp?

18 hours ago, Bazza said:

 

Yes this has been mentioned upthread. 

If it was, I missed it. This is the first I've heard of that. But using them to disguise Puffins on the island is pretty clever.

1 hour ago, zslane said:

 

What I should have said was: communication that is not only faster than physical travel, but effectively instantaneous (i.e., with an unnoticeably short delay) is merely where you start because that's where we are in the relatively primitive 21st century; to make a setting feel like the far future you have to push forward even further and, for instance, make physical travel as fast (i.e., nearly instantaneous) as communications. Traveller does not meet this criterion because neither element is nearly instantaneous. However, as mrinku points out, this can be "solved" by removing any significant delay in travel time over vast distances. I just don't think 4500AD feels (to me) like 4500AD otherwise. Instead, it feels like the 19th century merely transplanted into space.

And you're doing *exactly* what you accuse the creator of Traveller of doing--assuming that how things are today (effectively instantaneous communication, much slower physical travel) is how it MUST be in the future. I already posted about two possible methods of FTL travel, neither of which would be useful for FTL communication. Lightspeed communication works great for effectively instantaneous communication on a single planet. Pulling even the moon into that web would involve perceptible lags. Communication between planets takes even longer. Realtime conversations are no longer possible. They're even less possible across interstellar distances.

Your assumption that if/when FTL travel is invented it will *necessarily* also include even faster (effectively instantaneous) communication is just that. An assumption. "Communication today is faster than travel, therefore, any increase in travel speed in the future MUST also be accompanied by an EVEN GREATER increase in communication speed." You're free to make whatever assumptions you like, as are we all, but to claim that yours is the only correct (or even plausible) one is foolish.

2 hours ago, zslane said:

The impracticality of quantum entanglement is somewhat irrelevant. The rubber science of space opera isn't governed by 20th/21st century technology, it is merely informed by it. We take the essential trajectory of the scientific and technological advancements that we have experienced as a species and extrapolate it, using our imaginations to fill in the gaps where real physics stops and leaves us with nowhere to go (given our current understanding of the universe).

 

Therefore, if the jump drive can exploit an imaginary phenomenon in space-time to yield FTL travel, then the ansible can certainly exploit an imaginary phenomenon in space-time to yield near-instantaneous communication. I say "near" instantaneous because, in order to appease those whose willingness to adopt rubber science doesn't extend to perfect simultaneity, it would be no big deal to say that the ansible suffers from a ~3 nanosecond delay between sending and receiving, regardless of distance. You still have a delay in order to preserve causality, but it becomes inconsequential in practice.

 

Traveller doesn't have to have the ansible, as I've said before. Eliminating it is a valid (if somewhat dubious) campaign setting choice made to impose a particular feel on the game, and that's fine. But attempts to justify its absence on "realism" grounds is kinda pointless. I feel there is a better, more plausible case to be made for using realism to open up exotic, far-future possibilities rather than to shut them down.

I beg to differ. If, say, the "warp" drive theory proposed recently (the ship that uses the circular rings as part of the drive) were to pan out...that would allow FTL travel, but it wouldn't do *anything* for FTL communication. You can't wrap a warpfield around a radio wave. And that's just one approach.

If you posit "jump points" of the kind used by Niven & Pournelle in The Mote In God's Eye, or in David Weber's Honor Harrington series, again--you can move ships instantaneously between systems. But you can't send any kind of messages that way, short of sending a ship (which could then radio someone in that system).

So, yes, it's plausible that a breakthru in FTL travel doesn't *necessarily* mean you'll have the ansible as well. Your insistence that the two go hand in hand is just as arbitrary as any other set-up, and not grounded in realism any more than the other approaches.

On 12/18/2017 at 3:45 AM, Ninja-Bear said:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but during our flight to the moon, there was a time delay of information between earth and the Lunar party? Also a time delay between earth and Mars rover today?

Light takes a second and a fraction to get from Earth to the Moon. Long enough for a perceptible delay, and would make conversations difficult unless (as NASA did) each party tells the other when they've stopped talking so they can reply.

Depending on their relative positions, lightspeed time from Earth to Mars is about 3 minutes (at closest approach) to about 22 minutes (when they're on opposite sides of the sun).

5 hours ago, DasBroot said:

I would have liked to know more about the Brights in general - they seem to be rare but not unknown: there are more elves than the other races, but humans have Brights too.  Do they all have magic wands? if so, what makes this one special? If not what can they do without one?  When Ward was laid up in the hospital when the Feds came in they had 20 guys with body armor and rifles even though he didn't have the wand.  Why?

That's a good question. I noticed that as well. The movie doesn't tell us, but if I were to guess, I'd say that just as the only way to know if you're a Bright is to touch a magic wand--and not explode--that's also the only way to activate whatever magical potential you have. So, having handled a wand without dying, and discovered that he's a Bright, Ward now has the *potential* to be extremely powerful and dangerous, even if he doesn't know it. (Maybe, being a Bright, he could *create* a magic wand for himself...if he knew how.)

That would keep the Magic Cops up at night, I think.

3 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

The magic was so minimized and reduced that it barely felt like a fantasy story at all.  The fantasy races could have just as easily been a strange alien invasion, which seems like a missed opportunity, but I suspect it was more that a lot of key story elements ended up on the cutting room floor to make room for Will Smith scenes.

I didn't feel like the magic was minimized. Yes, there may be minor magics that were glossed over, but the whole story was a chase for a super-powerful magical maguffin. "It's like a nuclear weapon THAT GRANTS WISHES!" as Jakoby says at one point. Everybody wanted it, even if only to keep it out of the hands of everyone else. And even with the deadly cost of trying to wield it, there were plenty of people willing to take that risk.

I just watched it tonight. I enjoyed it. Yeah, definitely Shadowrun with the serial numbers filed off, though also yes--it was pretty much contemporary, so no cyberware. I got a strong "Alien Nation" vibe from the movie, except instead of newcomers it appears that the elves, orcs and whatnot have been here all along.

I also liked the "So, you think you have what it takes to wield Phenomenal Cosmic Power(tm)? Yeah? Willing to bet your life on it?" plot point.

18 hours ago, Greywind said:

 

Star Fleet wasn't military. They were scientists and explorers foremost.

Keep telling yourself that. Ignore the existence of General Order 24, by which Kirk threatened to "sterilize the planet" in one episode, or the fact that the Enterprise had the firepower to do it. Never mind the canonical fact--which I mentioned--that Enterprise D was the linchpin of the Federation's defense plans, and all the rest of it. Star Fleet *is* military. A slidshod, half-assed military most of the time. But still the military.

I always thought it was ludicrous that they had civilians (especially dependents) aboard a military vessel in the first place. (And the Enterprise was canonically THE ship to spearhead the defense of the Federation, so arguments that it's not a warship will fall on deaf ears. That said, here are some possibilities.

1. There's nothing to prove definitively that they're carting around the SAME civilians all the time. The Enterprise (and other Federation vessels) might well routinely transport scientists and other specialists from one world to another as and when they have the space to do.

2. Perhaps a lot of the scientists doing research on the Enterprise are civilians, not Star Fleet. Perhaps they book time aboard a starship that will be in the area they want to investigate. They book time to use the sensor arrays, probes, and whatnot, the same way various organizations or individuals will compete for time in observatories or on research ships today.

21 hours ago, Christopher said:

You asume that the dreadnought was not using it's ventral thrusters to keep altitude, but relying entirely on centrifugal force. That is one of those things primitve pre-FTL civilisations and stationary sattelites have to do. This was a 8 Kilometer Orbit/Ground Siege Dreadnought capable of FTL in the middle of a combat. Being fuel efficient was the last thing on their mind.

 

So we have:

 - a military ship propably active fighting gravity by pushing itself upwards

 - the bombs got their initial impulse from the gravity field in the bomber that allows the crew to walk

 - the gravitational pull of the target ship.

 

That this was AIrcombat in space was pretty obvbious. I alrady mentioned that those T-Wings (was that the name?) were basically B-17 in Space.

Actually the shape of the gun turret gave it away. It screamed "old Warmovie" to me the moment I saw it. The way the bombs were arrayed simply confirmed it more.

 

They have full 3D Hologramms.

OLED screens? How primitive!

 

Of course on the mine planet they were going "oldschool", because that was simply the only gear around.

There's absolutely no evidence for the notion that the dreadnought was actively "hovering" rather than operating in orbit, nor that any other vessels were doing so.

This battle was just as non-sensical as every other space battle in Star Wars. (I mean, seriously--bombers? That can only drop their payloads at knife-fighting range? Maybe if they'd used missiles, or even just flung the bombs from a distance, they might not have had the whole bomber force wiped out.

4 hours ago, zslane said:

 

Ah, that's a good point. The bombs could be getting pulled towards the planet, with the Dreadnought simply caught in between.

 

That's a nice try at an explanation, but it doesn't wash. While the pull of gravity at orbital distances isn't much less than it is on the surface...it feels like microgravity due to the centripetal force of your orbital speed trying to force you outward (well, actually, trying to keep you moving in a straight line instead of the curving path you're on). The bombs are moving at that same orbital speed, so planetary gravity would not pull them down.

This is just another artifact of seeing WWII planetary air combat played out in space. It doesn't make any sense, and the film makers don't care.

I don't hate the movie. I enjoyed much of it, but it was (in my opinion) much too long. I almost walked out at one point because I was bored by the endless set-piece battle scenes.

Part of it, I suspect is based on the saying that, "The Golden Age of Science Fiction is fifteen." I was 18 (not 15) when Star Wars came out--but close enough. From the moment I saw the first trailer--spaceships, space battles, LIGHTSABERS, aliens--I was hooked. All the space opera I'd read all my life was about to become a movie! I saw that film eleven times that summer, and god knows how many times since on VHS, DVD, cable.... 

Fast-forward forty years and I'm not that kid anymore. I've read a hell of a lot more SF, and seen many, many, many more SF movies. I expect--well, no, I WANT--more from a story these days than I did then. And even then, I could nitpick all kinds of things.

It is what it is. A lot of the plot holes go away if you remember that it's not SF, it's fantasy with SF trappings, plus WW II-era combat tactics and strategy played out on a galactic scale. It doesn't make much sense, but that's never been the goal. Spectacle, and exciting visuals are the goal. I'm just less interested in what it is than I once was. And that's okay.

Rey's parentage--I think Kylo was telling the truth. I hope he was. I want Rey to be a mutt. No pedigree, no famous family, nothing. Stir the DNA of a galaxy full of humans and humanoids, and *somebody* has to wind up with a potent connection to the Force. It just happens to be Rey. I don't want the whole history of the Jedi (and conflict between rebels and empire) to be a simple Skywalker clan feud.

As for the ship wars (Finn/Poe, Finn/Rose, Finn/Rey, Poe/Rey, Rey/Kylo, Poe/Finn/Rey, etc.) --that's the glory of fanfic. EVERYONE WINS. There's fic about every one of those combos, and plenty more besides.

11 minutes ago, Starlord said:

-  Duration can still be a weakpoint, when you 'feel' that length.  For example, I knew the LOTR movies were going to be long but I just wanted more when they ended.  Aliens was almost the exact same length and it flew by.  Also, like B vs S, it had a double ending IMO (Snoke dead, lightsaber broken, Phasma dies, dreadnaught destroyed...wait, then another 40 mins on Salt Planet X!), which also gives the feeling that the movie is going on too long.

 

General thoughts....

 

-  Yeah, Snoke was just starting to impress me as that dangerous villain these movies need, then...ZAP!  So who was he and where did he come from?

-  I can't get a handle on how I feel about Kylo Ren...he is complicated and more than just a straight bad guy...but he still comes off like an angry child.  However, he might be starting to grow on me.  I did like his light side tease.

-  I still don't feel like I know Rey's character.  Also, she did seem to believe Kylo's revelation about her origins and her reaction makes it seem like she always knew.

-  Wait, so Luke dies from a little over-exertion???  He's in his 50's right?

-  Wow, Dreadnaught's are really easy to destroy.

-  A little anti-Capitalism, anti-wealth message?  From Disney?  Now?  Ok.

-  Whether Parsec was originally just a mistake, they definitely seem to pushing it as unit of distance in this universe.

-  Why couldn't anyone just tell Poe the plan?  Was that so hard?

-  I liked the comedy in this movie.

-  Wow, Mark Hamill is a really good actor...his performance was Oscar-worthy.

-  The way Kylo kills Snoke...coolest thing he has done.

-  Now, what are they gonna do with Leia?

-  Blasters bounce off Phasma's armor?  Wow, I bet the other Stormtroopers are really jealous....A.  because their armor protects them from nothing  B.  because they have to wear armor that protects them from nothing.

-  I still like all the main characters though, especially Rose and Finn.

 

More later probably....

 

I wasn't impressed by Snoke. He was just more of the same we saw in Palpatine.

I saw Luke's snuffing it as more of "I'm done here" moment. Besides, since when does "dying" stop a Jedi Master from meddling in the affairs of the galaxy?

Also, who knew a ship's artificial gravity extend so far above the ship that you can *drop* bombs on it from overhead? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!

Well, Phasma's armor is reflective. Of course it's better at deflecting blaster bolts. Maybe "matte white" isn't the best color for stormtrooper armor.

As for Leia...it would have been better if she'd been the one to Kamikazi the cruiser into the enemy battlewagon. If they'd known....

Dislikes:

Agreed--General Haldo took way too long to react to the attack on the transports. WAY too long.

So...the Rebellion spent years fighting to overthrow the Empire and succeeded...only to get their asses kicked, and get nearly wiped out, by The Order only a few years later. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. I guess the idea is that the rebels always have to be the underdogs, but it's getting really old. Plus, I don't care who they have on their side, a group that could fit comfortably in my living room is very unlikely to succeed at liberating a city, much less a galaxy. At least they didn't drag out another Deathstar-like superweapon (the battering-ram beam doesn't count).

The endless, endless, endless battle scenes. I almost left the theater at the two-thirds mark because I was bored by them. As far as I was concerned, the battle scenes were like videogame cutscenes. Nothing of consequence to our heroes was going to happen in those battles, so I don't really care about them. I stuck it out, and was glad I did because I got to see some other interesting stuff, but my personal fan-edit of the movie would drastically cut the battle scenes in favor of the more personal stuff.

Likes:

Snoke is dead. These obnoxious, arrogant, physically-deformed Evil Emperors are getting old. Kylo is at least normal looking.

"I want every gun we have trained on that man!" "Do you think you got him?"

I like Rose.

Miscellaneous:

Was what Kylo told Rey about her parents true? I think it was, in essence if not in detail. She was clearly abandoned (no matter how desperately she wanted to believe otherwise), and she has no pedigree worth mentioning.

I thought it was funny how attached Luke was to the Jedi manuscripts given his history. I've seen it commented on elsewhere (tumblr, mostly) that Luke was successful as a hero mostly because he *ignored* the well-meant training of Obi-Way and Yoda when it went against his sense of right and wrong...whereas Anakin became Darth Vader because he tried so hard to be the perfect Jedi. I did like Luke's comment that the history of the Jedi was one of failure and hubris. Yes. Yes, it was.

I am rewatching Archer, S1-7 on Netflix.

I've watched the first episode of Godless, and I intend to watch more.

And I'm working my way through Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur on Youtube TV. He's got lots and lots of episodes covering a range of topics, but I'm mostly watching the episodes on getting into and around in space, and space colonization, habitable worlds and the like as fodder for a possible Traveller universe. (He sticks to known science, but it's still got background information even if the existence of artificial gravity, reactionless drives and jump drives in Traveller makes a lot of this obsolete. It still gives me ideas for lower-tech worlds that don't have access to those things.)

10 minutes ago, Hermit said:

Yeah, I feel Yaphet has a legit gripe here.

I agree. He had the seniority in Engineering, and they install this newbie as Chief Engineer? I'd be pissed too if that happened to me. Okay, yeah, he's a brainiac. So what? Does he have all the necessary engineering classes--to say nothing of practical experience--under his belt? (I *think* they said he had great scores in Engineering, to be honest, but if so it just hits another hot button of mine--which is that in most tv SF, "science" of any sort is indistinguishable from "science" of any other sort. You're a botanist? Well, naturally, you understand temporal mechanics and artificial intelligence systems as well....)

I wasn't too keen on Yaphet at first. He seemed like too much of a "this would be funny" character. But episodes like New Dimension (where he gets pissed off by the juvenile prank played on him AND he gets righteously angry about being passed over for promotion in favor of a newbie) have made him more of a real character, and I like it.

3 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Wild Cards never worked for me because its too much an intentional deconstruction of Superheroes rather than telling stories of people with powers.  They're deliberately trying to overturn standard tropes and themes instead of simply telling a good tale.

Tastes vary. I like the Wild Cards universe very much because it is more grounded in reality--very few characters put on costumes go out to "fight crime" just because they've got Ace powers. And those that do, generally do it for specific reasons (the anti-Ace laws of the 50s and 60s led to some keeping their identities secrets, or the Great & Powerful Turtle, who only ever appears in public in his armored flying shell because that's how his power works). I also like the fact that death in the Wild Cards universe is for keeps; unless your power specifically has to do with surviving death (Demise, for instance), if you get killed, you're dead.