I think that’s partly why I love and gravitate towards DS9, from the culture wars allegory to analysis of imperialism to the ethics of terrorism and beyond.
I think the beauty of DS9 is you have very different characters evolving together and shows people with different world views can still develop working respect and friendship with each other.
I agree in some senses with the stand-alone part, but not necessarily the animated part. I feel like it would just need to be marketed right. Executives are convinced for the most part that animation is either only for kids or for irreverent adult comedies, when it really should be viewed as a general medium.
I think Infinity Train is the best evidence of my point (look it up if you don't know); it really transcends the typical bounds assigned to animation. Book 3 especially is truly just a great fantasy/sci-fi drama. However, it was basically killed by executives who wanted a tax write-off and couldn't see its potential outside a "kids show". Now some of the series is purchasable on various online storefronts, but the only way to watch all of Book 3 is to pirate it.
If executives and people alike would liberate themselves from the stigma of animation, I feel like you could pull off high-quality, TNG-length seasons that allow less rushed charater development for a reasonable budget compared to an expensive live action streaming show. In some ways, Prodigy was an example of this - I felt like I got more time with the characters than almost any other modern Trek (granted SNW is still going on).
I've never met a person where I mentioned Star Trek and they went, "Ew, Discovery. I'm never watching any Star Trek ever again"; I think Discovery had its flaws (and strengths), but it made little impact on franchise popularity.
Usually (which you touch on), it's more like they're just bamboozled by the cannon. Like, I was watching DS9 once, and my roommate asked if it was the original, which then brought a long and complicated explanation from me. I think you're right that it'd be very nice to have a Star Trek show that one could show to people where when old lore is brought in, it's delivered in such a way that people can pick it up as they go.
Un-cancel Lower Decks. 😉
Honestly, though, I feel like most media groups in general forget why the streaming model worked in the first place. They want Office-level hits, but forget that The Office wasn’t immediately successful. Not immediately killing it just because of that gave it time to find a fandom.
Most shows should automatically get 2-3 seasons, and they often aren’t getting that.
As for the whole “none of them knew what Star Trek was” anecdote - I find that a bit exaggerated. I’m a college student, and I wore a Boimler costume for Halloween- most could identify that I was something Star Trek. Around other people my age, they can at least think of Spock or Patrick Stewart.
How I got into Trek as a kid was my mom would be watching it, and she’d let us join even though we were supposed to be doing homework. TNG was the one I saw the most during that.
P.S: As I’ve floated around this forum several times, I think an animated anthology series of strange new crews would be awesome.
I feel like the marketing for Artificial Idiocy comes down to three words: "Resistance is futile."
As put aptly by one text (which I have yet to read): "When you trick somebody into participating in a small-time fraud, it's called a 'scam'. But when the scam is so big that people have no choice but to participate, it's called 'economics.'"
Man, I swear in DS9:"Bar Association" that Rom had the 2016 DC Flintstones comic pulled up on his PADD while doing research.
P.S Like the person in the video, I too use Linux.
I really wish we'd gotten more T'Lyn time. She needed at least one more episode focused on her.
Amateurs. (I think I've watched almost every episode 3 times at least. The main exceptions are a few random season 1 episodes and "A Mathematically Perfect Redemption".)
That be the one. I received it twice.
But what about those kids in TOS who all joined a cult and murdered their parents for fun or something?
BTW usually the graphics glitches weren't immediate, but would come after waking it from sleep a few times.
As an ex-Linux on Surface Go 1 user, I didn't like the experience. Under Debian Testing, it was always mostly usable, but I'd come across the weirdest bugs, like graphics glitches. Also, last time I checked, the camera was miserable to set up - I got it working, but it's really weird. Secure boot was also really painful.
Running Linux on the Surface Go made me curse the Surface line and put the Go in a junk drawer. I might go back to it one day, but I have no reason at the moment. Still, if you already own one, it's worth a shot.
If you go ahead, though:
Also, I feel like an awesome Star Trek series would be a (preferably animated) semi-anthology where you have a few crews a season that then meet up in a finale subplot, sort of like taking LD:”Wej Duj” and focusing on each individual crew and culture more. My ideas are:
Note that Bashir is not yawning, but doing that weird wall shuffling-screaming thing that no one understands, probably not even Siddig or the director at the time of filming.
Now MOOOOVE ALOOOOOONG HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOEM! (Whacks those weird wood sticks together.)
Edit: Okay, a few more fans than I expected, a pleasant suprise.
If you haven't watched Over the Garden Wall, you should give it a try and watch every episode, especially if you're looking to get into the Halloween spirit. The whole miniseries isn't that long - about the length of a feature film in total.
Also, my gosh, it was so miserable to put Bashir's skinny pointy little face onto Greg's big round chonker! But bird Garrak was worth it in the end.
Note: "EEEEE...EEEE!" is meant to convey my hard-to-contain excitement of having Wesley randomly pop up. Also, though, I couldn't resist posting that face.
Half of these exist because I was bored once.
The Windows 10 and MacOS ones are GPU passthrough enabled and what I occasionally use if I have to use a Windows or Mac application. Windows 7 is also GPU enabled, but is more a nostalgia thing than anything.
I think my PopOS VM was originally installed for fun, but I used it along with my Arch Linux, Debian 12 and Testing (I run Testing on host, but I wanted a fresh environment and was too lazy to spin up a Docker or chroot), Ubuntu 23.10 and Fedora to test various software builds and bugs, as I don't like touching normal Ubuntu unless I must.
The Windows Server 2022 one is one I recently spun up to mess with Windows Docker Containers (I have to port an app to Windows, and was looking at that for CI). That all become moot when I found out Github's CI doesn't support Windows Docker containers despite supporting Windows runners (The organization I'm doing it for uses Github, so I have to use it).
Seriously, though. In my opinion, V is by far the worst TOS film, if not the worst of any Star Trek film (Yes, including Kelvin), yet it somehow nailed the ending.
Not to say I hated V that much. I think there's some charm of Kirk, Spock, and Bones breaking out the brig, but the plot is catastrophically bad. I was also annoyed with that one scene with Uhura where they have her seduce some acolytes, which I feel is a disgrace to the character.
Overall, I see Badgey as accidentally being the most sane one there and being a story of how sanity fares in an insane universe.
Here's my lore for Badgey and the ISS Cerritos (based on the IDW Mirror Universe and assuming that the mirror universe in Prodigy is the same timeline as IDW's mirror universe): I kind of imagine the story as the inverse, where the brutal Rutherford sends his Orion slave girl~1~ to test the simulation, which is a low gravity battle situation. Combined with Tendi's talent, the brutality and immorality scares Badgey enough that when the safeties are off, he gives his father a choice: help him take down the empire or face death at his hands. Rutherford immediately goes in for the kill, and the chase begins.
In No Small Parts, Rutherford seemingly convinces Badgey that the Pakleds are the greater evil, but tries to destroy the Cerritos with the Pakled ship, leaving his father to watch. Rutherford tries to detonate the warp core, but Shaxs, really wanting to do it, throws Rutherford into space (where he is beamed away) and detonates the warp core.
Finally, in A Few Badgeys More, Rutherford starts by trying to appeal to Badgey's hatred, which splits off into Mad-gey. He then appeals to the personal benefits Badgey will get, who splits off into profit-ey and is killed by Badgey. Finally, Badgey ascends and has the painful epiphany of how little good there is in the universe. He decides he will destroy the universe and recreate one prime among all the others, but notes the end might not be immediately apparent due to time crap.
1: On another note, my story for mirror D'Vana Tendi is as follows.
The Orions had a strong democratic socialist tradition for a long time until the Terran Empire conquered them. The Alliance later freed them from Terran rule, but did not allow the Orions their governmental tradition. Thus, the Tendi family became the leader of a secret independence movement to return Orion to its former ideals. This resistance continued even after Orion fell back under Terran rule in 2379 as part of the Terran fleet resurgence of the past few years.
With the Tendi family, D'Vana was known as Liberator of the Winter Constellations and was supposed to bring the revolution to a new age. However, she was known to be selfish and impulsive.
This came to a head when the Orion Resistance was going to attempt a major operation in 2380. Feeling it was hopeless, D'Vana made a deal with a Terran agent to sell out her rebellion in return for riches.
Like a true Terran, though, the agent lied, and the ISS Cerritos, assigned there on second plunder, took her and much of the rebellion as slaves... dismally easily.
Her sister, D'Erika, however, escaped and pledged not just to continue the revolutionary cause as the new Liberator of the Winter Constellations, but to get revenge on her double-crossing sister.
Meanwhile on the Cerritos, D'Vana was distributed to Billups. However, Billups preferred to work on improving the destructiveness of the phasers or watch his underlings squeal in the agony booth, so he decided to let Rutherford do whatever the heck he wanted with her. Thus, technically, she is not Rutherford's slave, but Billups, but ends up being forced to spend most of her time on the ship with Rutherford.
Edit: Corrected spelling of Torres's rank.
Based off a moment from VOY:Prototype that I just facepalmed and chuckled at, roughly around the 34:45 mark. The first two frames are pulled from around there, and the last four are just various images pulled from online.
I barely have time as it it. Please, don't make me do the writers, too!
Also, if you actually look into the graph, note that data points have X axis error bars of +-1.
For those who don't want to open Desmos:
Edit: Added the Harry spike for that timeline where he had a kid with Tom's daughter, as well as a gap for Neelix and Tuvok during the whole Tuvix thing.
Another Edit: Fixed the line connecting episodes 69 and 70 for Neelix.
They’ve said it’s coming in early this year - there’s literally a clip of it out: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=llvMv5-ydyQ&t=150s&pp=2AGWAZACAQ%3D%3D. It definitely looks near done.
Also, season 4 seems to already be in pre-production.