We also have zero accountability here, no satisfying outcome to the moral quandry, unlike say the Pegasus incident where court martials take place. The audience is aware of the problems with the Federation having that cloak, and Starfleet ultimately does the moral thing, and deals with bad apples like Pressman.
We (the audience) were NEVER SHOWN that any court martials took place. It was implied that they would but Pressmen's last words to Picard as he was being taken away was:
PRESSMAN: "I have a lot of friends at Starfleet Command, Captain."
So, yes, we know he was arrested by Picard and Co. and delivered back to Star Fleet Command. We do not know IF he was actually court martialed or what the actual response from, or if any further diplomatic negotiations between the Feds and Romulan Empire took place. It was never mentioned as a prologue , or in any subsequent episode.
STP has one episode left (And I haven't had a chance to see Ep. 9) yet; so we MAY or may not see Commodore Oh 'pay' for that Black Flag order. Captain Vandermir DID pay in that he was so distraught over the situation, he committed suicide to atone.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Episode 9 shows us Commadore Oh on the bridge of the ROMULAN command ship so I suspect after this.. there's no going back. even if she survives she's going to be exposed. which suggests to me that the Zhat Vash belive, accurately or not, that they've done all they need to do and this is the "big step" which means when they, inevitably lose, it'll be a big loss for them.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
And to the previous point about General Order 7, it states that no one should ever vist there again, but the recommendation was that no HUMAN should ever visit it again, big difference. And if you read the Order, it says nothing about any sort of death penalty.
That's an awful lot of Romulan Ships for a race that underwent such a catastrophe just 14 years before.
Since Discovery Season 2 ended with an epic space battle, we'll be getting one here as well. Probably with the Federation DS12 Task Force showing up. Throw in some Orchids, add a Borg Cube and voila.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
the cube is smashed into billions of various size pieces on the surface of the synth homeworld...no amount of regeneration is going to make that thing fly again
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
100% - unless they do more with control first; or they do both at the same time since both control and this skynet empire have the same goal - extermination of organic life
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
So we now have telepathic androids. It seems like they took a bit of the Asimov novels with the telepathic android and from one of the Shatnerverse novels if I remember correctly with a non-Vulcan performing a mind meld. It has been over 15 years since I have read a Shatnerverse novel.
It will be interesting to see if that Synthetic Federation still exists after hundreds of thousands of years ago.
why wouldn't it? they said in the episode it was 'beyond time and space', so it couldn't have been wiped out by any outside force, and destruction by in-fighting is unlikely...because what do they have to fight about? they're robots
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Disappointed that, by all accounts, it appears Starfleet won't be involved in any of this.
Wasn't a key component of the show that Starfleet will not play a prominent part?
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
> @angrytarg said:
> (Quote)
>
> Wasn't a key component of the show that Starfleet will not play a prominent part?
Yeah - but find it hard to believe they'd be no-where to be seen when a galaxy-spanning threat has presented itself.
To be fair, Paramount put the heroes and the the ship on a pedestal in TMP and it has been getting more "epic hero" style ever since. In the sloppy current plotting state all that matters is the main cast and the current villains, everything else is irrelevant because it is written in a sort of plot vacuum.
starfleet as a fleet arriving to deal with threats was never all that common, useally it was just one ship dealing with a problem.
as it was we know Clancy was sending a Squadron, that would have been tops, a dozen ships. they'd not really be eneugh to manage agaisnt the 200 some odd romulan ships, so a military solution IMHO isn't going to be the solution to this crisis.
Hay I just saw Part 1 of the Season final for Star Trek Picard and holy TRIBBLE Baskets It is Really Good and it got me thinking about V'ger that's right V'ger. Why you ask there could be a Star Trek Motion Picture connection well here is why! In the movie we Captain Kirk Will Daker McCoy and Spock enter V'ger's Chamber and Discover it is Voyager 6 and they realized Voyager 6 may have fallen through a Worm Hole or in this case a Borg Trans Warp Conduit and fallen Millions of Light years to a Machine world Covered with Synthetics the Same Synths that Dr Soong's Synths are gonna Call to help with the Romulan problem. Also these could be the same Synths that made Voyagers vessel and sent it on its away home with there information. and Their Way of thinking; and they also could be the same alliance of Synthetics that Destroyed the once Iconan Empire since its in the same time frame. What you think.
Yes but it is every officer's duty to question their orders if they think something is fishy about them. Orders instructing a captain to murder a woman and a child for no apparent reason, who are no apparent threat should have every Starfleet captain's spidey sense going off.
By contrasts, your examples show us something different. Scotty knows his captain and others are being held hostage in one example. And Kirk has to contend with the obvious threat of dangerous parasites in the other example. Picard knew how dangerous the Borg were and instead treated them like any other civilization that just needed a nudge to change rather than the existential threat they were, and its fair to say he regrets that decision when First Contact comes around.
Yes, Starfleet at large doesn't know the Romulans did it. They don't know anyone did it. They know only that some androids went haywire and now they are banned. They don't have a reason to murder other Non-Federation androids if they even knew they were androids.
If I'm not mistaken, the Captain DID question it and was told if he disobeyed, the ship would be destroyed with all hands. <-- And that's EXEACTLY like the Talos IV situation from TOS S1 - "The Menagerie" that I quoted:
KIRK: What every ship Captain knows. General Order 7, no vessel under any condition, emergency or otherwise, is to visit Talos Four.
MENDEZ: And to do so is the only death penalty left on our books. Only Fleet Command knows why. Not even this file explains that. (unlocks the magnetic strip) But it does name the only Earth ship that ever visited the planet.
So, yes, the order was given, Captain Vandermir questioned why, and was told if he didn't carry it out his entire ship and crew along withe the two 'Ambassadors' would be destroyed. So, yeah, sorry, Star Fleet in STP isn't any different back then than it is now in STP - there are orders given and the reason is: "Because we believe it's something so dangerous, we can't allow further contact, or word of said contact to get out."
And yes, obviously it weighed heavily enough on Captain Vandermir that, in the end (and Rios feels maybe he too did something by pressing the Captain on the fact Vandermir carried out the directive); the Captain committed suicide. That said, I believe there are many Captains who wouldn't have a problem at all, and would carry out the order. Examples include TNG era Captain Edward Jellico; and Admiral Pressman (if a situation occurred back when he was a Captain - and hell, Ensign Riker may still have gone along with it at the time too. ).
But in the end, Star Fleet as depicted in STP is really no different than Star Fleet as depicted in TOS or during the TNG era. Directives like this have always existed, been questioned, and ultimately been carried out, one way or another.
I disagree that Talos 4 is remotely the same as murdering innocents. One is prohibition on taking an action vs. being demanded to take an action.
We also have zero accountability here, no satisfying outcome to the moral quandry, unlike say the Pegasus incident where court martials take place. The audience is aware of the problems with the Federation having that cloak, and Starfleet ultimately does the moral thing, and deals with bad apples like Pressman.
The Pegasus incident was only an issue once the Romulans found out. Even Picard was willing to keep quiet about it while he thought the ship had been destroyed.
I've lost all ability to follow this ridiculous plot. Was Maddox ever important to the story? Does anyone actually care that he was murdered yet?
Why is Soji/Daj/clone 13522 the destroyer in the Romulan Prophecy? Why do they even see them and Data in this "prophecy" now that we know it was a message put there by artificial life long long ago?
If the super robots are time travelers (plausible) and know they need a Soji clone, why do they need to send a message to robots to have the robots message them back so they can come and exterminate all life in the galaxy? Why wouldn't they do this in the first place or just come back when they detect the Soji clone? Why do they even care about other artificial life when as robots themselves they can infinitely recreate themselves? Why is it a mega evil big bad universe destroying threat that (presumably) can only be stopped by an elderly man, his pet robot, ninja sidekick, junkie coworker, a vomiting murderer, and a man with beard holograms?
How do androids get psychic powers and self-teach themselves to mind meld? What is even the point of the robot colony? They make weird space flowers, what else? Do they have families? Do they do advanced research? Do they surf or golf?
How in the world does Oh manage to run Starfleet (based on what we've seen, given the android ban and control over lone ships and captains to compel them to murder innocents) and run the ZV at the same time?
Why did the Romulans ever need Starfleet to rescue them from supernovas if they have a useful fleet of ships, and aren't actually limited to refugee status? If the Romulan government were really that evil that it would let people die and not help its own people relocate, why would it ever pretend to let the Federation help?
What was the point of the cube anyway? It seems to have completely shifted from being apparently a large project with many external people to reclaim the drones, to being empty of anyone but ZV, XB and drones.
Why can't we explore things that are actually interesting in this show instead of splattering them across the wall in the few moments of something interesting between talking sequences with awful lighting and camera choices? The goofy space flowers, the warlord Seven shows up to fight, the android rebellion, the original things going on in the cube, these things could make for good episodes in their own right if they actually delved into them. Instead they are just thrown at us as something to get our attention before running past.
"Why is Soji/Daj/clone 13522 the destroyer in the Romulan Prophecy? Why do they even see them and Data in this "prophecy" now that we know it was a message put there by artificial life long long ago?"
she doesn't. you saw the ENTIRE message. there's no prophecy about Sojhi in particular we don't see her or data. what we do see is advanced sentient androids heralding the destruction of organic civilization.
"If the super robots are time travelers (plausible) and know they need a Soji clone, why do they need to send a message to robots to have the robots message them back so they can come and exterminate all life in the galaxy? Why wouldn't they do this in the first place or just come back when they detect the Soji clone? Why do they even care about other artificial life when as robots themselves they can infinitely recreate themselves? Why is it a mega evil big bad universe destroying threat that (presumably) can only be stopped by an elderly man, his pet robot, ninja sidekick, junkie coworker, a vomiting murderer, and a man with beard holograms?"
Because they aren't time travelers and don't need a Sojhi, not sure where you got the idea Sojhi herself is important.
as for why they're the only ones who can stop it, well because it's be a pretty TRIBBLE series if the people we where following for the past 9 episodes just shrugged and said "guess someone else can handle this"
"How do androids get psychic powers and self-teach themselves to mind meld? What is even the point of the robot colony? They make weird space flowers, what else? Do they have families? Do they do advanced research? Do they surf or golf?"
Presumablyt the robot colony was started by Maddox and Soong to perfect the research of Dr Noohnign Soong. over time it slowly developed into a small community of it's own. Yes they have families in a sense (they all have twins)
but the goal here is to tell a story, not to endlessly bore us with the day to days of android life.
"How in the world does Oh manage to run Starfleet (based on what we've seen, given the android ban and control over lone ships and captains to compel them to murder innocents) and run the ZV at the same time?"
Because she doesn't run starfleet. She runs starfleet security. a single division of starfleet. which includes starfleet intelligence, she's also proably not running the Zhad Vash, and is simply a senior field agent. we see her running the fleet at the end but given Picard reported to Clancy I suspect Oh's cover just got burned. and even if she was running the Zhad Vash, it's doable. she'd have talented subordinates helping her and a lot of her work with Security could dovetail into the Zhad Vash.
"Why did the Romulans ever need Starfleet to rescue them from supernovas if they have a useful fleet of ships, and aren't actually limited to refugee status? If the Romulan government were really that evil that it would let people die and not help its own people relocate, why would it ever pretend to let the Federation help?"
If a car only has 4 seats it's hard to take ten people somewhere. Romulus would have a population likely numbering in the BILLIONS. Star Trek Star Charts puts the population of Romulus at 18 billion, even if we assume that's a typo and it's supposed to be 1.8 billion that would take a TON of ships to evacuate. to the point where yeah starfleet's help may have been needed. that aside it's also possiable the ships we see in this episode are NEW ships. we've never seen this design before after all.
"What was the point of the cube anyway? It seems to have completely shifted from being apparently a large project with many external people to reclaim the drones, to being empty of anyone but ZV, XB and drones."
thats proably because the romulans killed or evacuated but the XB who survived and then abandoned it.
"Why can't we explore things that are actually interesting in this show instead of splattering them across the wall in the few moments of something interesting between talking sequences with awful lighting and camera choices? The goofy space flowers, the warlord Seven shows up to fight, the android rebellion, the original things going on in the cube, these things could make for good episodes in their own right if they actually delved into them. Instead they are just thrown at us as something to get our attention before running past."
so... you think they should spend even MORE time on useless exposition? they're telling a story not just building a world.
The reason we cannot explore things is that it is all written in a single threaded version of the empty magic box style and if they look too closely the viewers will see that there is really nothing there. Think of the end of Blazing Saddles when the camera pulls back and it turns out the whole town is nothing but facades propped up by two by fours, but instead of shooting sets those facades are plot/world elements that have never been fleshed out and just used to set up SFX/action movie gags or to try and use random nonsense to camouflage the Chekov's Gun effect that serials have so much trouble with.
The art of using the magic box is to make people think there is really something inside of it, and CBS Trek has fallen short of that, probably because they underestimate the viewers. And the corollary to that is that the box can never truly be empty, it contains a promise, and if the writer does it right it also contains the barest seed of the story that fulfills that promise so it can be opened later. Not all viewers are as gullible as Charlie Brown when Lucy sets up the ball yet again.
In all likelihood, the writers have no idea why the cube is there beyond the fact that it is Borg and the production executives wanted Jeri Ryan to make an appearance in the series and do the two-rifle mojo thing. They may not have even considered WHY Soji/Daj/clone 13522 is The Destroyer (dun, dun, DUUUUN!), they my just have wanted one in the show because it is a "cool" old standby trope. And the flowers could be some attempt at simile or it could just have been a random herring they threw in because they needed something there and didn't bother to get clever (or it could be the deus ex machina muguffin).
Likewise they did not think through the politico-economic as astrographic aspects of the plot and jammed a city-state style plot element on top of a huge star empire (and yes it is not exactly new, TNG did the same thing all too often, mostly in throwaway dialog, but they did not make a whole season or two revolve around it either).
We know the Romulans are one of the three main players in the Alpha/Beta quadrant so they have to be at least close to the size of the Federation and the Klingon Empire, and the Federation has at least 250 major worlds, and their colonies, along with associates and protectorates under the UFP umbrella. Since the Federation does not totally dwarf the other two that means the overall RSE population would not be in the billions, that is probably the population of just the capital star system alone, it would have to be in the trillions at least.
starfleet as a fleet arriving to deal with threats was never all that common, useally it was just one ship dealing with a problem.
as it was we know Clancy was sending a Squadron, that would have been tops, a dozen ships. they'd not really be eneugh to manage agaisnt the 200 some odd romulan ships, so a military solution IMHO isn't going to be the solution to this crisis.
I have a feeling that while Picard’s message to Star fleet didn’t make it off world...Seven picked it up on the Borg Cube and may have transmitted it using Borg tech. I think we are gonna see the Fleet in the next episode
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
How do androids get psychic powers and self-teach themselves to mind meld?
Their actual bodies are living tissue. not sure what race though...
Mind Melds might not be limited to Vulcans. Sutra looks like an earlier generation of Android with her yellow eyes and her skin color. She looks far more like Data compared to Dahj and Soji. It is possible that any race can learn the mind meld by learning Vulcan techniques not just Vulcans or Vulcan hybrids.
How do androids get psychic powers and self-teach themselves to mind meld?
Their actual bodies are living tissue. not sure what race though...
Mind Melds might not be limited to Vulcans. Sutra looks like an earlier generation of Android with her yellow eyes and her skin color. She looks far more like Data compared to Dahj and Soji. It is possible that any race can learn the mind meld by learning Vulcan techniques not just Vulcans or Vulcan hybrids.
yeah I think an andoird being able to mind meld is a bit odd but it's not the strangest thing trek's done.
The reason we cannot explore things is that it is all written in a single threaded version of the empty magic box style and if they look too closely the viewers will see that there is really nothing there. Think of the end of Blazing Saddles when the camera pulls back and it turns out the whole town is nothing but facades propped up by two by fours, but instead of shooting sets those facades are plot/world elements that have never been fleshed out and just used to set up SFX/action movie gags or to try and use random nonsense to camouflage the Chekov's Gun effect that serials have so much trouble with.
The art of using the magic box is to make people think there is really something inside of it, and CBS Trek has fallen short of that, probably because they underestimate the viewers. And the corollary to that is that the box can never truly be empty, it contains a promise, and if the writer does it right it also contains the barest seed of the story that fulfills that promise so it can be opened later. Not all viewers are as gullible as Charlie Brown when Lucy sets up the ball yet again.
In all likelihood, the writers have no idea why the cube is there beyond the fact that it is Borg and the production executives wanted Jeri Ryan to make an appearance in the series and do the two-rifle mojo thing. They may not have even considered WHY Soji/Daj/clone 13522 is The Destroyer (dun, dun, DUUUUN!), they my just have wanted one in the show because it is a "cool" old standby trope. And the flowers could be some attempt at simile or it could just have been a random herring they threw in because they needed something there and didn't bother to get clever (or it could be the deus ex machina muguffin).
Likewise they did not think through the politico-economic as astrographic aspects of the plot and jammed a city-state style plot element on top of a huge star empire (and yes it is not exactly new, TNG did the same thing all too often, mostly in throwaway dialog, but they did not make a whole season or two revolve around it either).
We know the Romulans are one of the three main players in the Alpha/Beta quadrant so they have to be at least close to the size of the Federation and the Klingon Empire, and the Federation has at least 250 major worlds, and their colonies, along with associates and protectorates under the UFP umbrella. Since the Federation does not totally dwarf the other two that means the overall RSE population would not be in the billions, that is probably the population of just the capital star system alone, it would have to be in the trillions at least.
you keep expecting them to flesh everything in, but... thats not how movies and TV work.
How do androids get psychic powers and self-teach themselves to mind meld?
Their actual bodies are living tissue. not sure what race though...
Mind Melds might not be limited to Vulcans. Sutra looks like an earlier generation of Android with her yellow eyes and her skin color. She looks far more like Data compared to Dahj and Soji. It is possible that any race can learn the mind meld by learning Vulcan techniques not just Vulcans or Vulcan hybrids.
Some of Spock's comments suggested that he could theoretically teach a Betazoid the technique. It's apparently more of a mental discipline than a physical ability.
Wait... TNG DID have an ep where something very similar was done. Dark Page! A Cairn guy named Maques mind links Deanna and Lwaxana. It's kinda like a 3-way mind meld, but not necessarily the same thing. Yes, Maques is a Cairn and the Cairn are apparently quite good at using telepathic techniques that are the equivalent of HDTV, but this technique lets Deanna have a conversation with Lwaxana about Kestra while walking around inside Lwaxana's mind.
i think ANY race - or individual in a race that otherwise doesn't really lend itself to such things - that has psionic potential should be able to do a mind meld
races other than vulcans can do nerve pinches, so i don't see why mind melds would be any different as long as the requisite requirements (a certain level of mental fortitude/psionic potential) are met
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
"Why is Soji/Daj/clone 13522 the destroyer in the Romulan Prophecy? Why do they even see them and Data in this "prophecy" now that we know it was a message put there by artificial life long long ago?"
she doesn't. you saw the ENTIRE message. there's no prophecy about Sojhi in particular we don't see her or data. what we do see is advanced sentient androids heralding the destruction of organic civilization.
I think you're forgetting that crazy Romulan ZV XB was calling Soji the destroyer on the cube in an earlier episode. It is the entire reason they seem to be after Soji/daj in the first place. That info only came from the thing we now know is the garbled message, and also showed Data or a Soong android of some kind in one of them.
"If the super robots are time travelers (plausible) and know they need a Soji clone, why do they need to send a message to robots to have the robots message them back so they can come and exterminate all life in the galaxy? Why wouldn't they do this in the first place or just come back when they detect the Soji clone? Why do they even care about other artificial life when as robots themselves they can infinitely recreate themselves? Why is it a mega evil big bad universe destroying threat that (presumably) can only be stopped by an elderly man, his pet robot, ninja sidekick, junkie coworker, a vomiting murderer, and a man with beard holograms?"
Because they aren't time travelers and don't need a Sojhi, not sure where you got the idea Sojhi herself is important.
as for why they're the only ones who can stop it, well because it's be a pretty TRIBBLE series if the people we where following for the past 9 episodes just shrugged and said "guess someone else can handle this"
See above for why Soji is supposed to be important.
And you miss my point about the crew. They are misfits and not particularly good at anything, yet they are apparently going to save the galaxy from a hyper mega evil big bad. How powerful can it be to be stopped by misfits? Now I doubt the big bad evil will actually get involved, but to have its plans to destroy the galaxy and rescue AI thwarted by a bunch of misfits is absurd. Worse, its still out there and not actually being dealt with, of course there's no reason it even had to be introduced.
"How do androids get psychic powers and self-teach themselves to mind meld? What is even the point of the robot colony? They make weird space flowers, what else? Do they have families? Do they do advanced research? Do they surf or golf?"
Presumablyt the robot colony was started by Maddox and Soong to perfect the research of Dr Noohnign Soong. over time it slowly developed into a small community of it's own. Yes they have families in a sense (they all have twins)
but the goal here is to tell a story, not to endlessly bore us with the day to days of android life.
They aren't telling a story, its so disjointed at this point that it makes no sense any more, if it ever did. That we have to presume critically important things like, what is this colony about is terrible storytelling. If it were a human colony on some planet, we can assume what humans do in a colony. They farm, they eek out a living, they are driven by human curiosity to do some science, etc.
These androids are not humans, though. The whole point of Star Trek used to be exploring ideas and cultures in ways that we can find some allegory or curiosity in the way they exist. What is your favorite STO species for your captain? Why? Those traits or visuals or whatever you like about them have an actual backstory in Star Trek somewhere. So what do these androids do? What is this android society about? Yes I'm sure there is some research for Soong, but given that the premise of this show is to try and suggest androids should be treated better than tools, they have to be doing something else to make that premise seem reasonable.
"How in the world does Oh manage to run Starfleet (based on what we've seen, given the android ban and control over lone ships and captains to compel them to murder innocents) and run the ZV at the same time?"
Because she doesn't run starfleet. She runs starfleet security. a single division of starfleet. which includes starfleet intelligence, she's also proably not running the Zhad Vash, and is simply a senior field agent. we see her running the fleet at the end but given Picard reported to Clancy I suspect Oh's cover just got burned. and even if she was running the Zhad Vash, it's doable. she'd have talented subordinates helping her and a lot of her work with Security could dovetail into the Zhad Vash.
Sure she runs Starfleet. If someone can't bypass her and question her orders to murder innocents or has enough power to push for banning the robots, she's definitely the de facto person in charge. What subordinates? We see most of her only subordinates kill themselves leaving the few alive that we know are working with her. The secrecy and coordination necessary is way beyond anything we've seen demonstrated in the show.
"Why did the Romulans ever need Starfleet to rescue them from supernovas if they have a useful fleet of ships, and aren't actually limited to refugee status? If the Romulan government were really that evil that it would let people die and not help its own people relocate, why would it ever pretend to let the Federation help?"
If a car only has 4 seats it's hard to take ten people somewhere. Romulus would have a population likely numbering in the BILLIONS. Star Trek Star Charts puts the population of Romulus at 18 billion, even if we assume that's a typo and it's supposed to be 1.8 billion that would take a TON of ships to evacuate. to the point where yeah starfleet's help may have been needed. that aside it's also possiable the ships we see in this episode are NEW ships. we've never seen this design before after all.
A 4 seat car can really pack in some extra people, no not comfortably or safely, but in an emergency? 10 people is possible. If Starfleet had time to build a new fleet to evacuate Romulus, then the existing fleet had time to work on evacuation. I think the Starfleet ships were only going to rescue about 1 billion and they were destroyed. That means Romulans could have been packed in like sardines as their own fleet rescues them.
The other problem with this is that the Romulan Imperial government is an authoritarian one. They would not want their people left to think their government failed them, because that means they don't have any loyalty to it. To let the ep 4 refugees blame Starfleet would be great propaganda, except it also means they don't trust their own government to save them. Further, the big one that lost his head was a former senator as I recall, so why is he outside the government now when the Romulans clearly have significant power and the ability to project it?
"What was the point of the cube anyway? It seems to have completely shifted from being apparently a large project with many external people to reclaim the drones, to being empty of anyone but ZV, XB and drones."
thats proably because the romulans killed or evacuated but the XB who survived and then abandoned it.
When? A throwaway line would have been fine, but something like that should have been stated, but because it wasn't, the question needs to be asked, which is a writing problem.
"Why can't we explore things that are actually interesting in this show instead of splattering them across the wall in the few moments of something interesting between talking sequences with awful lighting and camera choices? The goofy space flowers, the warlord Seven shows up to fight, the android rebellion, the original things going on in the cube, these things could make for good episodes in their own right if they actually delved into them. Instead they are just thrown at us as something to get our attention before running past."
so... you think they should spend even MORE time on useless exposition? they're telling a story not just building a world.
Useless exposition? Well its no wonder you don't have any problems with the awful storytelling and world building. I'll grant you the exposition in this show is terribly done, just plain dialogue rather than actually showing us stuff, in many cases. However, exploring space and its oddities is what Star Trek was about. Now its just a slapdash story and sloppy world building to get to some action, apparently.
How do androids get psychic powers and self-teach themselves to mind meld?
Their actual bodies are living tissue. not sure what race though...
I still don't buy that. We've seen how superpowered Daj was, and you can't get there with living tissue. However that doesn't help us with the mind meld problem, as that should be a mental issue and a positronic brain is fundamentally completely different than a human/vulcan/whatever mind. I don't have a problem with other species learning to mind meld, if they already have psychic powers, that makes perfect sense, but androids whose minds work fundamentally completely different? That makes no sense.
Comments
We (the audience) were NEVER SHOWN that any court martials took place. It was implied that they would but Pressmen's last words to Picard as he was being taken away was:
PRESSMAN: "I have a lot of friends at Starfleet Command, Captain."
So, yes, we know he was arrested by Picard and Co. and delivered back to Star Fleet Command. We do not know IF he was actually court martialed or what the actual response from, or if any further diplomatic negotiations between the Feds and Romulan Empire took place. It was never mentioned as a prologue , or in any subsequent episode.
STP has one episode left (And I haven't had a chance to see Ep. 9) yet; so we MAY or may not see Commodore Oh 'pay' for that Black Flag order. Captain Vandermir DID pay in that he was so distraught over the situation, he committed suicide to atone.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
That's an awful lot of Romulan Ships for a race that underwent such a catastrophe just 14 years before.
Since Discovery Season 2 ended with an epic space battle, we'll be getting one here as well. Probably with the Federation DS12 Task Force showing up. Throw in some Orchids, add a Borg Cube and voila.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
It will be interesting to see if that Synthetic Federation still exists after hundreds of thousands of years ago.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Wasn't a key component of the show that Starfleet will not play a prominent part?
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To be fair, Paramount put the heroes and the the ship on a pedestal in TMP and it has been getting more "epic hero" style ever since. In the sloppy current plotting state all that matters is the main cast and the current villains, everything else is irrelevant because it is written in a sort of plot vacuum.
as it was we know Clancy was sending a Squadron, that would have been tops, a dozen ships. they'd not really be eneugh to manage agaisnt the 200 some odd romulan ships, so a military solution IMHO isn't going to be the solution to this crisis.
My character Tsin'xing
Why is Soji/Daj/clone 13522 the destroyer in the Romulan Prophecy? Why do they even see them and Data in this "prophecy" now that we know it was a message put there by artificial life long long ago?
If the super robots are time travelers (plausible) and know they need a Soji clone, why do they need to send a message to robots to have the robots message them back so they can come and exterminate all life in the galaxy? Why wouldn't they do this in the first place or just come back when they detect the Soji clone? Why do they even care about other artificial life when as robots themselves they can infinitely recreate themselves? Why is it a mega evil big bad universe destroying threat that (presumably) can only be stopped by an elderly man, his pet robot, ninja sidekick, junkie coworker, a vomiting murderer, and a man with beard holograms?
How do androids get psychic powers and self-teach themselves to mind meld? What is even the point of the robot colony? They make weird space flowers, what else? Do they have families? Do they do advanced research? Do they surf or golf?
How in the world does Oh manage to run Starfleet (based on what we've seen, given the android ban and control over lone ships and captains to compel them to murder innocents) and run the ZV at the same time?
Why did the Romulans ever need Starfleet to rescue them from supernovas if they have a useful fleet of ships, and aren't actually limited to refugee status? If the Romulan government were really that evil that it would let people die and not help its own people relocate, why would it ever pretend to let the Federation help?
What was the point of the cube anyway? It seems to have completely shifted from being apparently a large project with many external people to reclaim the drones, to being empty of anyone but ZV, XB and drones.
Why can't we explore things that are actually interesting in this show instead of splattering them across the wall in the few moments of something interesting between talking sequences with awful lighting and camera choices? The goofy space flowers, the warlord Seven shows up to fight, the android rebellion, the original things going on in the cube, these things could make for good episodes in their own right if they actually delved into them. Instead they are just thrown at us as something to get our attention before running past.
"Why is Soji/Daj/clone 13522 the destroyer in the Romulan Prophecy? Why do they even see them and Data in this "prophecy" now that we know it was a message put there by artificial life long long ago?"
she doesn't. you saw the ENTIRE message. there's no prophecy about Sojhi in particular we don't see her or data. what we do see is advanced sentient androids heralding the destruction of organic civilization.
"If the super robots are time travelers (plausible) and know they need a Soji clone, why do they need to send a message to robots to have the robots message them back so they can come and exterminate all life in the galaxy? Why wouldn't they do this in the first place or just come back when they detect the Soji clone? Why do they even care about other artificial life when as robots themselves they can infinitely recreate themselves? Why is it a mega evil big bad universe destroying threat that (presumably) can only be stopped by an elderly man, his pet robot, ninja sidekick, junkie coworker, a vomiting murderer, and a man with beard holograms?"
Because they aren't time travelers and don't need a Sojhi, not sure where you got the idea Sojhi herself is important.
as for why they're the only ones who can stop it, well because it's be a pretty TRIBBLE series if the people we where following for the past 9 episodes just shrugged and said "guess someone else can handle this"
"How do androids get psychic powers and self-teach themselves to mind meld? What is even the point of the robot colony? They make weird space flowers, what else? Do they have families? Do they do advanced research? Do they surf or golf?"
Presumablyt the robot colony was started by Maddox and Soong to perfect the research of Dr Noohnign Soong. over time it slowly developed into a small community of it's own. Yes they have families in a sense (they all have twins)
but the goal here is to tell a story, not to endlessly bore us with the day to days of android life.
"How in the world does Oh manage to run Starfleet (based on what we've seen, given the android ban and control over lone ships and captains to compel them to murder innocents) and run the ZV at the same time?"
Because she doesn't run starfleet. She runs starfleet security. a single division of starfleet. which includes starfleet intelligence, she's also proably not running the Zhad Vash, and is simply a senior field agent. we see her running the fleet at the end but given Picard reported to Clancy I suspect Oh's cover just got burned. and even if she was running the Zhad Vash, it's doable. she'd have talented subordinates helping her and a lot of her work with Security could dovetail into the Zhad Vash.
"Why did the Romulans ever need Starfleet to rescue them from supernovas if they have a useful fleet of ships, and aren't actually limited to refugee status? If the Romulan government were really that evil that it would let people die and not help its own people relocate, why would it ever pretend to let the Federation help?"
If a car only has 4 seats it's hard to take ten people somewhere. Romulus would have a population likely numbering in the BILLIONS. Star Trek Star Charts puts the population of Romulus at 18 billion, even if we assume that's a typo and it's supposed to be 1.8 billion that would take a TON of ships to evacuate. to the point where yeah starfleet's help may have been needed. that aside it's also possiable the ships we see in this episode are NEW ships. we've never seen this design before after all.
"What was the point of the cube anyway? It seems to have completely shifted from being apparently a large project with many external people to reclaim the drones, to being empty of anyone but ZV, XB and drones."
thats proably because the romulans killed or evacuated but the XB who survived and then abandoned it.
"Why can't we explore things that are actually interesting in this show instead of splattering them across the wall in the few moments of something interesting between talking sequences with awful lighting and camera choices? The goofy space flowers, the warlord Seven shows up to fight, the android rebellion, the original things going on in the cube, these things could make for good episodes in their own right if they actually delved into them. Instead they are just thrown at us as something to get our attention before running past."
so... you think they should spend even MORE time on useless exposition? they're telling a story not just building a world.
My character Tsin'xing
The art of using the magic box is to make people think there is really something inside of it, and CBS Trek has fallen short of that, probably because they underestimate the viewers. And the corollary to that is that the box can never truly be empty, it contains a promise, and if the writer does it right it also contains the barest seed of the story that fulfills that promise so it can be opened later. Not all viewers are as gullible as Charlie Brown when Lucy sets up the ball yet again.
In all likelihood, the writers have no idea why the cube is there beyond the fact that it is Borg and the production executives wanted Jeri Ryan to make an appearance in the series and do the two-rifle mojo thing. They may not have even considered WHY Soji/Daj/clone 13522 is The Destroyer (dun, dun, DUUUUN!), they my just have wanted one in the show because it is a "cool" old standby trope. And the flowers could be some attempt at simile or it could just have been a random herring they threw in because they needed something there and didn't bother to get clever (or it could be the deus ex machina muguffin).
Likewise they did not think through the politico-economic as astrographic aspects of the plot and jammed a city-state style plot element on top of a huge star empire (and yes it is not exactly new, TNG did the same thing all too often, mostly in throwaway dialog, but they did not make a whole season or two revolve around it either).
We know the Romulans are one of the three main players in the Alpha/Beta quadrant so they have to be at least close to the size of the Federation and the Klingon Empire, and the Federation has at least 250 major worlds, and their colonies, along with associates and protectorates under the UFP umbrella. Since the Federation does not totally dwarf the other two that means the overall RSE population would not be in the billions, that is probably the population of just the capital star system alone, it would have to be in the trillions at least.
I have a feeling that while Picard’s message to Star fleet didn’t make it off world...Seven picked it up on the Borg Cube and may have transmitted it using Borg tech. I think we are gonna see the Fleet in the next episode
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
Mind Melds might not be limited to Vulcans. Sutra looks like an earlier generation of Android with her yellow eyes and her skin color. She looks far more like Data compared to Dahj and Soji. It is possible that any race can learn the mind meld by learning Vulcan techniques not just Vulcans or Vulcan hybrids.
yeah I think an andoird being able to mind meld is a bit odd but it's not the strangest thing trek's done.
you keep expecting them to flesh everything in, but... thats not how movies and TV work.
Wait... TNG DID have an ep where something very similar was done. Dark Page! A Cairn guy named Maques mind links Deanna and Lwaxana. It's kinda like a 3-way mind meld, but not necessarily the same thing. Yes, Maques is a Cairn and the Cairn are apparently quite good at using telepathic techniques that are the equivalent of HDTV, but this technique lets Deanna have a conversation with Lwaxana about Kestra while walking around inside Lwaxana's mind.
My character Tsin'xing
races other than vulcans can do nerve pinches, so i don't see why mind melds would be any different as long as the requisite requirements (a certain level of mental fortitude/psionic potential) are met
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
I think you're forgetting that crazy Romulan ZV XB was calling Soji the destroyer on the cube in an earlier episode. It is the entire reason they seem to be after Soji/daj in the first place. That info only came from the thing we now know is the garbled message, and also showed Data or a Soong android of some kind in one of them.
See above for why Soji is supposed to be important.
And you miss my point about the crew. They are misfits and not particularly good at anything, yet they are apparently going to save the galaxy from a hyper mega evil big bad. How powerful can it be to be stopped by misfits? Now I doubt the big bad evil will actually get involved, but to have its plans to destroy the galaxy and rescue AI thwarted by a bunch of misfits is absurd. Worse, its still out there and not actually being dealt with, of course there's no reason it even had to be introduced.
They aren't telling a story, its so disjointed at this point that it makes no sense any more, if it ever did. That we have to presume critically important things like, what is this colony about is terrible storytelling. If it were a human colony on some planet, we can assume what humans do in a colony. They farm, they eek out a living, they are driven by human curiosity to do some science, etc.
These androids are not humans, though. The whole point of Star Trek used to be exploring ideas and cultures in ways that we can find some allegory or curiosity in the way they exist. What is your favorite STO species for your captain? Why? Those traits or visuals or whatever you like about them have an actual backstory in Star Trek somewhere. So what do these androids do? What is this android society about? Yes I'm sure there is some research for Soong, but given that the premise of this show is to try and suggest androids should be treated better than tools, they have to be doing something else to make that premise seem reasonable.
Sure she runs Starfleet. If someone can't bypass her and question her orders to murder innocents or has enough power to push for banning the robots, she's definitely the de facto person in charge. What subordinates? We see most of her only subordinates kill themselves leaving the few alive that we know are working with her. The secrecy and coordination necessary is way beyond anything we've seen demonstrated in the show.
A 4 seat car can really pack in some extra people, no not comfortably or safely, but in an emergency? 10 people is possible. If Starfleet had time to build a new fleet to evacuate Romulus, then the existing fleet had time to work on evacuation. I think the Starfleet ships were only going to rescue about 1 billion and they were destroyed. That means Romulans could have been packed in like sardines as their own fleet rescues them.
The other problem with this is that the Romulan Imperial government is an authoritarian one. They would not want their people left to think their government failed them, because that means they don't have any loyalty to it. To let the ep 4 refugees blame Starfleet would be great propaganda, except it also means they don't trust their own government to save them. Further, the big one that lost his head was a former senator as I recall, so why is he outside the government now when the Romulans clearly have significant power and the ability to project it?
When? A throwaway line would have been fine, but something like that should have been stated, but because it wasn't, the question needs to be asked, which is a writing problem.
Useless exposition? Well its no wonder you don't have any problems with the awful storytelling and world building. I'll grant you the exposition in this show is terribly done, just plain dialogue rather than actually showing us stuff, in many cases. However, exploring space and its oddities is what Star Trek was about. Now its just a slapdash story and sloppy world building to get to some action, apparently.
I still don't buy that. We've seen how superpowered Daj was, and you can't get there with living tissue. However that doesn't help us with the mind meld problem, as that should be a mental issue and a positronic brain is fundamentally completely different than a human/vulcan/whatever mind. I don't have a problem with other species learning to mind meld, if they already have psychic powers, that makes perfect sense, but androids whose minds work fundamentally completely different? That makes no sense.