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[PODCAST] Tribbles in Ecstasy Take 185: Poking holes in the 'Night'
midniteshadow7
Member Posts: 787 Arc User
Tribbles in Ecstasy Take 185: Poking holes in the 'Night' has been published on Holosuite Media, you can download and stream it from: http://bit.ly/1iHttgg
Captain MidNite Shadow leads the crew of the USS Tribble in discussions about all the news from Star Trek Online and Star Trek.
In this week's episode the Tribbles crew discuss:
Please help friend of the show and fellow Star Trek Online player and podcaster Mav with donations to support his recovery with his current health situation here: http://www.gofundme.com/tomsrecovery.
Tell us what you think of the topics we've discussed on this week's show by commenting on this thread.
Captain MidNite Shadow leads the crew of the USS Tribble in discussions about all the news from Star Trek Online and Star Trek.
In this week's episode the Tribbles crew discuss:
- R&D weekend event,
- STO's DDoS attacks
- Updates to the STO Forums
- Cardassian Revamp
- STO Release Notes,
- the new Role Playing Blog,
- The new Featured Episode "Midnight",
- Star Trek: The Exhibition
- Star Trek Renegades
- Star Trek Anthology
- Star Trek Beyond
- Redshirt Diaries
- 5th Passenger
- Jennifer Lien (Kes from Voyager)
- and more!
Please help friend of the show and fellow Star Trek Online player and podcaster Mav with donations to support his recovery with his current health situation here: http://www.gofundme.com/tomsrecovery.
Tell us what you think of the topics we've discussed on this week's show by commenting on this thread.
Post edited by midniteshadow7 on
0
Comments
Tales of the war #22:
Like I mentioned during the show, I don't think this was necessarily great/good klingon writing. I mean, it was definitely comedic klingon writing, don't get me wrong. I was chuckling to myself. Although the subject matter really is no laughing matter at all, but Captain Kagran is so dense in this blog that I just couldn't help it.
But this brings up a question. Why do you put this guy in charge of a multi-factional fleet if he understands so little about the different mentalities? His whole warrior shtick might work for klingons and maybe even andorians, but are betazoids so keen on dieing honorably? Or vulcans? Imagine him giving a pep talk to a couple of bajoran captains. Telling them they would go to Sto'vo'kor tonight.
And considering his track record during the war... he was definitely not put in charge because of his abilities as a tactical mastermind. So what's the deal? Is he married to J'mpok's sister? J'mpok's cousin? Does he have some dirt on J'mpok? And why did Quinn and D'Tan just go with it?
I get that he feels compelled to write these letters but seeing how bad he is at it, why does he not ask Quinn to find someone better suited for this task? His motives are honorable, but how much time does he intend to spend on getting this stuff right? KDF captains really need to go through "diplomacy 101" to develop some semblance of understanding. Ever heard the phrase "know your enemy"? Klingons sure didn't...
Oh and btw. the first try where he mentions that William made it to the escape pod, but some mechanism jammed, causing his probably fiery death... Yeah, sure, because you would definitely tell a klingon family that their son/daughter died because of a technical failure while retreating. Right? RIGHT?
But something I liked... Tom Paris FINALLY acknowledges Guroth's death. Now if only he had some throwaway line during the episode itself...
Basic human decency:
I don't know what happened with Jennifer Lien and I won't speculate. From what you said about the incident one might conclude that there could be some form of problem. If that's the case, I hope she gets (and more importantly accepts...) the help she needs. If it was some weird one-time incident, I hope it does not happen again.
But there will always be these judgmental wastes of oxygen trying to feel better about their own miserable lives by making someone else's life more miserable. (Yes, that was me being judgmental. And yes, they deserve that judgment.) These people are a disgrace to trekkies and humanity as a whole. Same goes for that attention-seeking DDoS person. 'nuff said.
Midnight:
Okay, let me preface this by saying Midnight is probably one of the, if not THE, most "trek" episode we have ingame right now. And just like Butterfly, I really really like this episode. But since I tore Butterfly to shreds and sunseahl asked me to do the same to Midnight... here we go:
So earth is gonna be the next target. And we know that... why? Who told us? Did many bothans die to bring us this information? (What do you mean? Wrong franchise?) Since broken circle I had the suspicion that Kagran might be working for the Iconians, is this finally the proof I need to get him arrested?
The temporal portal... well, it's nice/convenient that the time-weapon-ship is this versatile. I am willing to believe that. Now how exactly did we figure out when the bombardment took place? I mean, 200.000 years ago is a long time and the fact that we arrive there with pinpoint accuracy is nothing short of a small (or probably big) miracle.
Btw. why do we need the timeship? We know about the slingshot effect. We did use it ourselves. We even know the "perfect" system to do that maneuver.
Did the Iconians blow up that particular "perfect" star? Would it cost too much energy to slingshot us that far into the past? Would it be too difficult to calculate how to execute the maneuver to send us precisely where we need to go? Any of those explanations would have been satisfying. Seriously. I would have believed any single one of them...
Captain Kagran tried to be so klingon all the time and now, when Shon talks about whether this is the right/honorable thing to do, Kagran is like: "Better to live to make up for this huge dishonor than to die honorably."
Wait, what? One of the defining characteristics of klingons is that they like to drone on about honor (although every klingon seems to have his own definition of honor...) and wanting to die honorably. Except in this case...
Now, I could kinda see romulans pushing for "victory at all costs" (well, the imperial romulans more than the republican ones, but still), but the federation and the klingons do have some rather well-defined principles. (Yes, there have always been bad apples in between, on the federation side mostly admirals...)
The battle itself: "Kurland here... [static]" Nice throwback. But since we're at the shipyard and we knew (for some reason) that the Iconians were about to strike... was there really no way to get those ships out of the docks earlier? Maybe concentrating the engineering teams on a few ships to get them ready sooner instead of having all these ships as sitting ducks? No? Okay...
Then the Dominion shows up. Okay, I can believe that. Now do I believe that the founders would let Sela command that little squad? No. They would send a Vorta and maybe instruct a couple of Jem'Hadar to keep an eye on (and a few rifles pointed at) Sela at all times. And I do believe that Vorta would have beamed down to Iconia with us. To keep tabs on Sela (and us).
And what I missed was... the Undine. Last time we met them Tuvok mindmelded with that "brainship" to tell them about the Iconians and how they manipulated the Undine into fighting us. And when the Iconians win, the Undine will also be wiped out and together we are stong and the many must survive...
Now remember the Voyager two-parter "Scorpion"? The Undine did not just kill the borg. They made piles out of the borg corpses. They psychically assaulted Kes.
And later on they built that infiltration training facility to take down starfleet. They do not simply go "out of sight, out of mind", they hold grudges.
What I'm trying to say is... the Undine would definitely have shown up somewhere during the Iconian war to kick the Iconians in the face for what they have done to them.
"You six-eyed freaks messed with the wrong tripedal lifeforms! The six-eyed shall perish!"
Now Iconia... Kagran has been there for two weeks. Oh, sorry, he arrived in orbit two weeks ago and after scanning for a while he beamed down later on and his ship just stayed cloaked in orbit. Okay... In these (a little less than) two weeks he turns into a starfleet officer/rediscovers his klingon honor. I believe that. Although my theory that he is an Iconian spy gets more probable by the minute.
Then we get a reference... Remember House Pegh? That iconian base was on Dinasia... II ? Anyways, it was on some planet in the dinasian system. And here we meet a dinasian trader (and find out that the dinasians apparently want some genetic engineering technology from the Iconians). Nice continuity nod. Seriously, I like that.
But let's keep going... I believe it was sunseahl who had a problem with the Iconians immediately trusting us with the world heart and the evacuation efforts. I didn't. We are obviously the first aliens in quite a while to show up without asking for something from the Iconians. That's enough to make us trustworthy. Besides, they don't have a choice, they need help and everybody else is trying to kill them right now. Except for us. (Well, technically we do, too. But they don't know that yet. We are amazing actors...)
Now where Iconia falls apart... The whole mission would not have worked if the oh so advanced Iconians did have any sort of personal communication device on hand. That injured herald would have gotten his help without us. Well, to be honest, there were enough Iconians walking by, just yelling that you need help might have gotten your herald the help he needed.
That security officer could have contacted L'Miren and noticed that L'Miren did not want to talk to her... Btw. why did she have to take that herald with her? Couldn't he have watched that console for the time being?
And since we're on it, the Iconians expected some sort of tension/attack and evacuated most of their population to their colonies. Okay... And they say if need be, they could go to places nobody knows. Now, why did you not send some of your people to these places? Better safe than sorry? I mean, you consider your colonies to be "known". So if someone were to attack you, they might attack those colonies, too. And how is it possible that these colonies got attacked and nobody could use the gateways (at least some colonies should have had their own gateway) to flee? Did nobody notice the proximity alert on their sensors? Oh... I get it. You Iconians have always been complete and utter idiots. I'll get into detail on that when I do my review of the whole story arc...
Now the end of the evacuation. Sela asks where "the others" are. I will let that comment slide. She got the information about "the Other" somewhere. Nothing to see. Kagran mentions that they might be here already. I go: "We are "the Other", aren't we?" Sela, the mastermind of masterminds does not get it. It only really hits her when Kagran tells her to her face after the gateway closes. Mmh... Iconian idiocy is contagious now? Stay away from me, Sela!
And I'm still not done. When Kagran walks in-between Sela and the Iconians... why does Sela not just shoot him to complete "her mission"? Is there anything I should... on second thought, no... I REALLY don't want to know.
But, why do the Iconians only somewhat remember "the Other" (which is the player character) and not the ridgehead that risked his life for them by stopping Sela from getting another clear shot off?
So we go back to our time and hail L'Miren. She wants "Your leaders, our unity. Now!" And for some reason I am the only leader who get's gateway-ed there. Interesting. And for time in a bottle they needed all 12 Iconians for that "briefing" on the Kyana moon, but here we only need L'Miren and T'Ket. Why? I mean, sure, that bridge would have been crammed with 12, oh... scratch that, 11 Iconians and us and Quinn and D'Tan and J'mpok. Or maybe just Kagran and us? But still, 11 Iconians would have taken up too much space. I get that. But they could have gateway-ed themselves and us to the Herald sphere or some other Iconian base. This is so much more important than that stupid talk on the moon, but only you two bother to show up? What is wrong with... oh... I forgot... Iconian idiocy.
Either way, L'Miren asks us if we would return the world heart to them. Yeah... as if we actually had a choice...
Wait, was she serious about that? Did she get infected with Iconian idiocy, too? Anyway, we settle the dispute by giving the world heart back to them and L'Miren is all contemplative and kinda torn because they were wrong and our integrity humbles them, but they held on to their grudges for so long and now they might need quite a while to reconsider who they are. Now, why is L'Miren the leader? I mean, we had the triumvirate, M'Tara, L'Miren and T'Ket. And M'Tara was "first among equals". But when she committed suicide, L'Miren took over. Immediately ordering T'Ket to kill us. Because she can't handwave us out of existence herself. Or something. Was she always second-in-command? With T'Ket staying on the warpath, do her heralds still follow her or do they all follow L'Miren now?
And then we get gateway-ed to starfleet academy, where Sela is having a friendly chat with Captain Kagran and Captain Tom Paris. And nobody is pointing a phaser at her. And there are no security officers flanking her to indicate her being arrested. I get that Cryptic is on really good terms with Denise Crosby and that is wonderful, but don't you dare let Sela off the hook this easily...
And we get fireworks. Wait, what? How did anybody know what just happened? Besides, why the fireworks? We did not win, we barely managed to not lose. And Kagran wants to celebrate? Uhm... Remember the dominion war? After the founder surrendered, Martok wanted to celebrate with some really good bloodwine and Sisko and Admiral Ross spilled their bloodwine because they thought it was inappropriate to celebrate on the ruins (and corpses) of Cardassia. And here we are after a war that was (supposedly) about as costly as (maybe even more costly than) the dominion war and back then we did actually kinda win whereas this time around we just managed to not lose. So... why the celebration? Oh... Kagran just needs an excuse to get hammered, doesn't he? Oh these wacky Klingons...
And I feel dirty now because I still really like this episode. With all its little inconsistencies, it (together with Butterfly) remains my favorite episode to-date.
Iconian war story arc review:
It's still gonna happen. I went through the arc once already, I will need at least another playthrough and then see about the warblogs and how to split this all up. So there will definitely not be anything this week (well, I just steamrolled you with feedback...), but we'll see if I get the first part (not sure how many episodes/warblogs it will include) done for next week.
Beautiful summery of problems with Midnight.
In other news: I now know why I never saw a Vorta.... Apparently my resolution chops off at least a third of cutsceenes. (something Cryptic needs to take into advisement for people not running max resolution >.> ) Watching another person play Midnight(via youtube) showed me exactly what I was missing.... AND somehow the bridge, Sela, Jem'Hadar was lit..... It frustrates me to no end that the further this goes the worse this game is because i just can't keep up graphically....