StillPaisleyCat

I avoid it as much as possible, and don’t even really lurk much at this point.

I just wish that some of the Twitter users who set up Mastodon accounts last fall would keep them up as actively as they do Twitter.

Twitter through a browser no longer sorts by most recent. It’s almost impossible to find anything without a login.

The actors are giving days of their lives to come to the cons and need to be compensated for it.

While I would find it creepy to pay for the time, I also see it as a sign of respect on fans’ part and as a way to make sure that the whole process is run safely and respectfully. But then, even in the old, old days of Trek conventions before paid availability, I felt uncomfortable to approach the actors and other panelists in the very limited time that they were out on the floor.

If not for the paid signings and photo ops, there would be fewer stars at these events. The old 80s and 90s cons had at most one or two actors and a producer, designer or writer. The price for admissions would be higher and there likely would be less availability for photos and autographs, and it would be poorly managed.

I’ve been to both political conventions and amateur sports events with photo ops and signings. In one case, the politician had a photographer who literally followed up with an ‘opportunity’ to buy the photo. (I’d rather use my own camera.) The sports star was mobbed and just took and signed pieces of paper and handed them back without interacting. Neither was a good experience for me.

Pelia says Scotty was one of her best students who received some of her worst grades. I wonder why…

This seems to be a pattern with Pelia. It’s established that Una was an excellent student who got a ‘C’ from Pelia. Pelia even reminded Una of it again, in the finale. Pelia said that if she’d come up with the innovative solution as she did in the finale (hurling the saucer at the distortion generator) when she was her student, Pelia would have given her a better mark.

Una got a ‘C’ because she was too methodical in following algorithms in a maintenance course, and could miss a major problem that her inspections might trigger.

One suspects Scott was the a brilliant student with the reverse problem to Una. He’s the out-of-the-box thinker, miracle worker, rather than the no nonsense by-the-numbers type that Una represents.

I’m wondering if this has been a season long set up not only to have Pelia work with Scotty, but also to have Number One and Scott facing off against one another and balancing each other’s strengths and weaknesses as engineers.

Let’s wait until part two.

I think we may already have enough to figure out what happened but the technological explanation is yet to come. Much of the plot mechanics related to the Gorn so far rely on issues around what can be detected or transmitted and differences in solutions.

The writers’ challenge for the saucer subplot was that they wanted Spock to be surprised by both the adult Gorn in the environment suit and by Christine Chapel.

Their arrivals behind Spock on the exterior of the saucer were both unexpected, and were key elements of the suspense. His surprise and ours was necessary.

We would have expected however Spock to have done some kind of local tricorder scan of the wreckage when he arrived. It’s possible that a tricorder scan was done, was negative, but we didn’t hear any report because there were no vocal coms back to the Enterprise. Uhura gave a play by play based on telemetry, we didn’t hear Spock report directly.

In that case, we’re owed an explanation about why the new tricorder technology failed. As long as we get it in the second part, I’d be fine.

Given the established interference field technology of the Gorn, I would be perfectly comfortable if the follow up episode acknowledged that the Gorn environmental suits put out some kind of localized disruptive stealth.

The new Starfleet tricorder technology is designed for unsuited Gorn. It’s designed to solve the problem of Gorn biology but not Gorn technology.

Gorn technology is different, they are driven by different species biological imperatives (as in the coronal flares), and that’s an extra hurdle for Starfleet.

We have already seen however that Scott designed a system to both spoof human life signs to Starfleet tricorders and Gorn as well as hide human life signs for hundreds of people. To do this, he used some of the specialized technology from the scientific research array that was studying the nearby sun.

Spock would naturally follow up on his surprise encounter on the saucer. Scott would be the natural collaborator to figure out how it was that the Gorn came up behind him undetected by his tricorder.

So then, what about Chapel in the saucer? If she was the sole human life form, and he completed the scan, why didn’t his technology detect her?

A couple of possibilities exist.

-- Chapel’s suit has some local stealth technology. She got into her suit as soon as she saw Spock pass by. Given it was in her quarters it’s a personal suit not a generic one, and she’s established as being a war veteran who had to fight despite being medical corps, and/or

-- the distortion field or stealth technology put out by the Gorn’s environmental suit was large enough to hide her as well.

TMDB is even less representative than IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes (which already skew older, male and are very American in representation).

It’s fine if you subscribe to a group that aligns with your own views, but don’t take the self-selected non statistically valid outcome as anything but a reflection of the subgroup that subscribes.

Paramount+ on the other hand needs to draw in a large and demographically diverse audience to maintain a subscription base. The episode wasn’t a hit with your niche, but other ones will be. It definitely was a hit in our household.

@GoodAaron@mastodon.social has provided a quote from the preview about the ship, and a few gifs. See https://mastodon.social/@GoodAaron/110872460926331834.

No highlighting is necessary. No need to be a fan to instantly associate the rubber suit Gorn of Arena with the franchise.

The meme of Kirk in a ripped tunic fighting the rubber-suited Gorn with the Vasquez Rocks behind is one of the most recognizable images in pop culture.

Goldsman and Myers have my respect for their attempt to salvage it.

YMMV, glad you tried it.

I am sceptical of your assertion that this episode has a very negative score though. I don’t see a rating for this episode that low on any aggregator.

IMDb currently has the episode rated audience reviews at 7.0. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 100% fresh for pro reviews.

The score is lower on IMDb than other for episodes because there are folks brigading against it. A distribution that is clustered at 8, 9, and 10 then flat though the middle and spiked with a high number of 1s is fairly good evidence of a campaign to gatekeep against certain kinds of things.

IDIC, let others enjoy what they enjoy, not every episode need to be made for your preferences.

Right out of the mouth of their head of streaming scheduling early in 2022.

Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, Sylvester Stallone in the Sheridan shows cover off familiar faces too.

Kurtzman’s making shows for a streamer that says its strategy since the merger has become is “franchises, familiar faces and fandoms.”

I do suspect the needle has moved towards more legacy characters. It seems only the shows targeted at a younger audience get mainly new crews. Starfleet Academy and the 32nd century seem our best hope of seeing new characters and settings.

I believe we’ve seen the same analysis.

The old cable model made Comcast the arbiter of an ecosystem, with streamers competing against one another, the model fell apart. It’s interesting that smaller players like Paramount and others are collaborating in some markets (e.g., SkyShowtime).