StillPaisleyCat

I’m going with Vulcans using APL*. Why create a language that makes you do more than just write the equations?

Are you sure? They might have learned something then. Or did they get stuck with a turtle-logic compiler instead?

There was a reference in Discovery season one or two to SQL, as if it was cool. Sigh.

I find these kind of articles that validate Rotten Tomatoes (RT) audience scores as a quotable source are a problem, objectionable. Especially for Star Trek fans who embrace IDIC values.

Why? Because the RT audience ‘stats’ give a false credibility to a very biased and unscientific sample.

Many folks here on the fediverse are very cautious and savvy about how bias in AI training data leads to bias in the AI, but still quite RT stats as though they are somehow credible or scientific.

Rotten Tomatoes base of users has been established to be even more male, white American and older than even Reddit (that itself is 2/3 male). (The critic score is biased to American sources but some major ones from other countries do make it in there.)

When we look to RT’s audience score as some kind of authority, and share that, we’re giving weight to the voices of that specific demographic group over the rest of the audience.

DeCandido’s ‘A Singlular Destiny’ follows directly from Mack’s Destiny Trilogy. Then, the main Relauch novelverse moves through the Typhon Pact books.

Ezri Dax starts evolving as she integrates Dax’s former hosts and wrangles them in some earlier DS9 books. But she really takes off as one of the 4 hero captains of Destiny.

For those who want to start the Relaunch books from some of the deep political turning points, Mack’s two books in the ‘Time to…’ series are the key ones. They take place between the TNG movies Insurrection and Nemesis, putting dynamics in play that run right up to the end of the Relaunch novelverse in Coda.

(And yes I’m still grieving the end of the Relauch alternate timeline.)

Understood. I suspect that Roddenberry was just trying to find a role for another woman after having such pushback on a Lieutenant Commander.

Yes, you really should. :)

And please don’t forget The Animated Series (TAS).

It’s tricky to know because technology has changed the nature of these jobs significantly, and Star Trek has tended to map to roles as they are, despite projecting further technology.

In the 60s, 70s & 80s, a Yeoman would have held the encryption keys and would have been responsible for interactions with command. (The Comms officer would have had communications engineering and codes, but not necessarily access to the highest command codes.)

Likewise, responsibility for personnel assessment and promotion recommendations among ratings was a senior NCO responsibility that interlinked with the responsibilities of the XO.

It’s easy to portray a lot of these jobs as ‘merely clerical’ and it can be a kind of erasure of the people of colour and women who were in these ratings.

It brings to mind the work of the WW2 Wrens who did all the naval gaming in the UK and in Halifax, modeling, innovating and teaching tactics to UK and allied navies, but who got no credit. Or the women ‘computers’ and code breakers at Bletchley. Their commanding officers got all the credit and they were erased.

DC Fontana was asking science fiction writers with no prior animated series credits to write an episode of TAS to take advantage of an exceptional provision in the writers contract.

There was a writers strike at the time, and at that time the animated writers were in the same union as live-action. The provision existed to enable writers to move media, and Fontana took full advantage as many TOS writers and science fiction writers had never written for animation.

I haven’t seen specifically that Fontana asked Niven to adapt that specific story, but she and Roddenberry clearly were comfortable with his doing so.

This analysis brings to mind the Liaden of Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s Korval (TM) books.

Liaden society has a profession called quendra that are a mix of accountants, lawyers and commercial adjudicators. It’s also a society based on ‘balance’ counting-coup where everyone, all their lives, is keeping score in everyone else. Even Ferengi might be horrified.

Well, in bringing the Kzinti into Star Trek, Niven has enabled other writers ‘to play with his toys.’

Many novel writers aren’t really comfortable doing this, even if they get downstream royalties/residuals when their creations are used again. Niven by contrast seems to be fine.

The level would be relative to the officer they are supporting. On a ship with a captain who was a full captain, they would be a senior NCO.

Not to mention that the ranks in the 1960s were a bit different.