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This is why you don’t have your scifi shows praise people who are still alive irl…
Seriously David Tennant’s doctor praising JK aged horribly… espcially since Tennant is a trans ally who absolutely hates her guts.
I forgot about the JK praise. The second you mentioned it all I could hear was “Good Ol’ JK!”
Yeah, that is a good episode, but holy shit that aged like milk. The only thing that really saves it for me is the fact that David Tennant is a trans Ally and has publicly spoken against JK Rowling, one of the few United Kingdom based celebrities to do so.
Likely because Jowling Kowling Rowling has a history of sending legal threats to people in the UK who speak out about her bigotry, and most celebrities don’t want to get into a lawyer money pissing match with an unhinged ideologue. In the UK the people criticizing her are much more likely to lose a court case if it came to that; in the US, by comparison, it’s very difficult for public figures to have any speech about them removed or punished unless they can prove it is both false and was knowingly said with malice (very hard to prove).
That is some relief, because from the perspective of the outside looking in, it honestly seems like most of the UK actually agrees with Queen TERF.
They absolutely don’t and from the inside I rarely ever see anything but negative comments about her from other famous Brits. The rare exception is when it’s someone I already think is absolutely awful. Might be there’s a bit of a bias in the British figures that are being it in front of you. Certainly I find there are media platforms within the UK where everyone is absolutely awful and would support her.
It did work out when Star Trek had Stephen Hawking appear though.
Stephen Hawking is the only person to have played himself in the entirety of Star Trek as well.
Wasn’t there an episode where Kirk met Shatner or something? After finding an alternate reality where it was all a show
No no… remembered as I was typing…
I was thinking of when Dave Lister met Craig Charles
It’s a risky idea but it’s a common formula to help ground a sci-fi series.
- Name a relevant historical figure fans should know.
- Name a relevant living figure fans may know.
- Name a relevant fictional figure fans should know.
who are still alive irl
You think the already deceased are safe? Don’t you remember the controversy when they named the space telescope after James Webb?
NASA not naming future buildings and projects after people is a great result.
Oh no what did James Webb do?
40s federal government was stuck in the 40s, and Webb did not actively rebel against them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_E._Webb#Controversy_about_telescope_name
Historian David K. Johnson, author of 2004 book The Lavender Scare,[37] has stated that there is no evidence Webb led or instigated any persecution, nor played “any sort of leadership role in the lavender scare”.[33] According to astrophysicist Hakeem Oluseyi, the initial accusations that Webb was part of the lavender scare were based on a quote from John Peurifoy (who, like Webb, had the rank of “Undersecretary of State”) which was wrongly attributed to Webb.[38][35]
TIL
And yep played neutral during a time where if you acted like an Ally “what are you ghey?!” Would be the response and career ender. If I read that correctly.
I’ve watched all episodes of Doctor Who, but I don’t remember who’s JK?
JK Rowling, author of Harry Potter.
The fact that there are two references to Musk in Discovery is a bit disheartening. There’s this one from Lorca but another when Tilly says she went to a school named after Musk.
I choose to believe that in this alternate universe he kept his mouth shut.
Think of all the shitty historical figures that are celebrated today because a century later no one remembers what they were actually like
Or people do remember but it’s “not polite” to bring it up. How many schools are named after Colombus? Or Edison?
Edison might be a pretty apt analogy, come to think of it.
Edison
A little bit out of the loop here, what did Edison do?
More like what didn’t he do. He had a long list of underhanded and ruthless activities and stole most of his “inventions”.
Come to think of it, I feel like there would be a strong Ven diagram of Musk and Edison. Just a feeling.
Specifically, he’s the reason Hollywood is where it is. After his company invented movie cameras, he attempted to collect royalties on any movie created by an Edison camera, even having people harass and ruin movie sets and studios if they didn’t (as most movies were being produced in and around New York). So a lot of studios said “fuck you, you wanna collect, you’re gonna have to work for it” and moved across the country to California.
Fair enough
Look up “Topsy the elephant” (among other things).
Yikes
No where near as much bad stuff as the internet thinks, likewise Tesla didn’t do anywhere near as much good stuff as people say - he’s didn’t even invent AC.
The elephant thing gets hugely overblown too, it was going to be killed regardless, he just suggested a quicker and less cruel method (they had intended to hang it)
They were gonna hang an elephant?!
Apparently yeah, I can’t remember it’s crime but I think it killed the owner that mistreated it
At least Henry Ford was a successful businessman while he moonlighted as a fascist. I bet SpaceX is his only company that will survive, and he doesn’t run it.
Tesla is doing great because he isn’t running it. Same with SpaceX.
It’s my estimation that every man ever got a statue made of him was one kind of sommbitch or another. Ain’t about you, Jayne. It’s about what they need.
-Malcon Reynolds
Whedon would know, wouldn’t he?
Unexpected firefly (still hurts).
That’s very true. However those people weren’t shouting their horrific views to the world through an internationally used service. They also weren’t reported on by worldwide media and memed to high heaven. There’s a pretty solid record at this point of Elon being a cuntwaffle. Hard to forget that.
Anyone who respects Churchill.
Doesn’t even have to bei a century. Plenty of people thinking Bill Gates is a cool dude, despite the shady and outright illegal shit Microsoft pulled off to make him rich.
People who think positively about Gates do so largely because of the genuinely positive charitable work he’s done since leaving Microsoft. I don’t think many people are defending Microsoft’s anticompetitive practices.
@Stamets I choose to believe thre was someone else by this name who wasn’t an idiot. They mean the 22nd Century Elon Musk.
I would love it if they actually did that.
Elaan musc
Ah yes, from the TOS episode “
ElaanElon of Troyius”.E’luhn Ma’asq, famous Vulcan scientist
Elian Müsc
I mean, Musk IRL became famous in the late 1990s through to 2020s. What do we know about that time period in the Star Trek universe?
I think it’s pretty safe to say that even if their Musk is the same “person”, his upbringing and circumstances would be so different that it’s not hard to believe that even if he was the same narcissistic arsehole, he did end up using that in a direction that genuinely furthered humanity’s technical progress, if only as a convenient byproduct.
An alternative timeline in which Elon isn’t a huge piece of shit. Hard to fathom, but it’s the only way I can see that working.
It’s near impossible to not be a piece of shit if your a billionaire. The only way to get that much money is to use people’s necks as ladder rungs the whole way up, then destroy the ladder after you got to the top.
Honestly though. That or he listened to Public Relations people and decided not to be his whole damn self.
Maybe he learned to not be an asshole during the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s.
We all know which side of the war Elon would be in the non-mirror universe. Not the side that won.
Like Wernher von Braun?
I’ve not seen the newer star trek shows yet, but given the whole global war stuff that happens in the star trek universe between now and the time the stories are usually set in, perhaps crucial details about who Musk was were lost to history, and he’s just remembered for something spaceX did at some point, or he’s had a pr campaign that was successful at getting history books of the future to portray him in a more flattering light?
This line was foreshadowing Lorca’s origin. You see, mirror Musk was actually competent, making him the precise inverse of real Musk.
I don’t care that the timing is suspect and there’s another Musk reference in Discovery, I’ll die on this hill.
Nah, Mirror Musk was exactly the same as he is now.
It is just that lying, bribing and being narcissistic are admiral traits in the Mirror Universe
It is just that lying, bribing and being narcissistic are admiral traits in the Mirror Universe
Lying, bribing, and being narcissistic are considered admirable traits among specific social circles in our universe, too, especially the ones that babble about “Dark Triad theory” as a good thing to be emulated.
TIL I live in the mirror mirror universe.
Tilly says she went to a school named after Musk.
I firmly believe that someone had to talk the writer responsible out of making Tilly a graduate of Bit Connect High School.
It wasn’t so long ago that everyone was singing his praises. I haven’t seen a reputation squandered so quickly since Game of Thrones.
I am still glad my natural distrust of billionaires who praise private enterprise as the ultimate expression of progress and freedom paid off… as per usual.
That there is a good instinct
Nah.
People outside of tech maybe and that’s because non-tech media treat venture capitalists like they want to be treated. Which is that they’re “tech geniuses”.
Really they’re just the money that pays workers and take all the credit for their oversized egos.
If he’d have stuck to buying startups like lottery tickets and kept his mouth shut, 100 years from now people would talk about like how Edison gets talked about to school kids today: no problems mentioned and gets credit for everything
I’m not a techie but it was clear from the start he’s just an edgy 14 yr old but with money.
I wouldn’t have a problem with that if he’d just own up to it but he keeps acting like some morally superior being.
I worked in avionics for more than a decade starting in the mid-00s. It was well-known that SpaceX lured young, naïve aeronautics engineering grads with the promise of working at the next NASA, worked them 80+ hours a week for less than market compensation for 3-5 years, then fired them as they inevitably burned out.
This was real dialogue in the show? Ewwww!
The first picture shows real dialogue from the show. It can be somewhat explained by >!the character who said it eventually turning out to be from the mirror universe!< but it’s still a terrible writing decision.
Wasn’t there a throwaway line about Tilly going to Musk high school or something too, though? Ick.
Oh god, I forgot about that! Season 1 of this show just really needs to be chucked into a memory hole. I don’t understand how people defend it as “the only decent season of DSC.” It’s absolutely wretched by every measure, but even more so when measured against the tone and optimism that’s vital to Trek. Subsequent seasons are fumbling messes, sure, but the first is a special kind of awful.
Lorca was the only good part of S1, and even then, the best episode is Harry Mudd killing him dozens of times.
Elmo buying up schools in order to have his name on the front kind of fits his MO though.
It would have been great if he outed himself by acting like Musk was someone worthy of praise.
Another reason to hate Discovery
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More reason to shame the show and the studio for it then.
That scene is from 2017. Back then he was still revered as “the real life Iron Man”.
By idiots maybe. I imagine he may have paid money for this mention. Like he did with iron man.
That’s pretty revisionist. He’s an asshat now but wasn’t always seen that way.
In 2017, Musk was still pretty popular with liberals. He advocated for a carbon taxes, a universal basic income, and AI regulation. Tesla was still leading the game in EV production. SpaceX was re-supplying the ISS and set to free the US from Soyuz. He supported Hillary in 2016 and quit Trump’s advisory council because he withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords.
It was only around and after COVID he took a hard turn and became particularly unpopular with the left. When this episode came out it made sense, and also fit well with Star Trek’s typical formula of “past historical figure, current notable figure, future fictional figure.”
15th July 2018, 7:10am.
That’s when normal people saw Musk for what he was. The day of the dreaded “pedo guy” tweet, when it turned out a massive rigid submarine was absolutely useless in a cave rescue.
That’s why I think Orwell was wrong. You don’t need a big government agency to rewrite history. People will do it just fine on their own.
I guess I’ve seen liberals as gullible for years.
I hated him since before the iron man appearance. Whenever that was.
Uh, huh. So 2009…?
Any reason beyond he was a billionaire and you’re apparently Very Smart?
I can’t imagine the Muskrat paying for anything.
Also
spoiler
In this scene Gabriel Lorca actually was from the mirror universe where everything is opposite and evil. So it kind of makes sense that Elon would be revered as a hero in there.
Remember when Elon got a cameo in Iron Man 2 in exchange for letting them shoot some scenes at the SpaceX factory? Not sure if that’d happen anymore.
“Elon, how’s it going? Those Merlin engines are amazing.”
“Thank you. I’ve got an idea for an electric jet.”
“You do?”
“Yeah.”
“Then we’ll make it work.”
I recently rewatched that movie and had completely forgotten he had that cameo, my eyes rolled so hard I almost couldn’t finish the movie.
Larry Ellison from Oracle had a cameo too. It was gross.
That’s the same method Trump used to get movies to give him cameo roles. Wanna use the building? Give the egomaniac a pointless cameo.
I mean, its probably a better deal for the studio if tge egimaniac in question only depands a cameo
You’d think a big smart genius like Musk would know that the idea of an electric jet is dumb even for a movie line.
The principle of using exhaust to generate thrust requires exhaust. Electric motors don’t make any exhaust.
Yeah, that line aged terribly
It rules that the Mirror Universe guy was a Musk fan. Possibly not an intentional dig, but it’s pitch-perfect in retrospect. I love Lorca. What a fun character.
Mirror universe Musk was actually a great guy who selflessly tried to improve humanity, and mirror-Lorca calls him a great man because that’s who good people in the mirror universe would praise.
Bahaha, in the mirror universe, Elon Musk died a pauper while trying to prevent the eugenics wars.
Mirror Musk is our Gabriel Bell.
Mirror universe Musk was a proletarian hero who organized a mining industry revolution.
It totally wasn’t an intentional dig, but damn if the reference didn’t age like a fine wine.
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I feel like they had a really good opportunity to foreshadow Lorca being from where he is by making him say Von Braun instead of Musk.
It’d be one of those “of course this guy thought an SS officer was a good guy!” Moments
I feel like they had a really good opportunity to foreshadow Lorca being from where he is by making him say Von Braun instead of Musk.
Is there really that much difference between an Operation Paperclip nazi and an Apartheid emerald prince?
As much as I think Musk is dumb and shitty, von Braun was personally aware that concentration camp slave labor was being used to make his rockets and continued anyway. According to some prisoners, he also ordered corporal punishment of slave workers and had a hand in selecting who was fit to work and who would be sent to an extermination camp. However, we can’t say for sure because of lack of documentation.
Even if we assume that the prisoner allegations are mistaken identity or whatever, I think directly being in contact with and benefiting from the Nazi death machine is quite a lot worse than Elon.
von Braun didn’t give a shit where his labor was coming from as long as it allowed him to do his research. He knew who he was working for, and he knew what they were doing.
Von Braun was good at rockets
also Elon was not actually involved in use of slave labour or bombing campaigns
Lol. This was Season 1, Episode 4.
The problems with their shitty-ass script certainly weren’t budgetary.
Maybe budget allocation. Gotta have a big CGI space battle, right?
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I’ve never been that big of a Trek fan and just started doing a chronological binge of the shows starting with Enterprise. My reaction to the Elon references when I got to Discovery was “well that aged like milk”. That doofus really ruined his reputation to simp for Nazis and dictators and became just another subject for Behind the Bastards to laugh at.
Chronological order has to be the worst way to get into Star Trek lol
Enterprise is not popular (though I personally didn’t mind it), and Discovery is terrible. Then you go from the absolutely amazing Strange New Worlds, to the hokiest Original Series. You must be getting whiplash
Heavy foreshadowing
*every brazillian crying in rage about Santos Dumont*
I lived with a Brazilian dude many years ago. He had just moved to Canada, where I’m from, and was going to university. Santos-Dumont got brought up at some point and I never forgot about him. It would be pretty damn cool to have Star Trek recognize it where most people don’t.
His plane was built in Paris, so maybe the French also have some feelings regarding that matter
It’s sad they chose his name over Henry Coanda, Sikorsky, Frank Whittle or even Wernher von Braun.
Fuck Wernher von Braun though.
Yeah, I think I’m officially tired of seeing this one line retreaded over and over again.
We don’t have to constantly obsess over that dumbass in here too, do we? Can we please have an indefinite moratorium on this one particular meme?
Has it been posted to this instance before? I’m unaware of that. If so then I apologize. However you are the only person on this thread who has voiced such concerns.
Either way I don’t plan on reposting memes myself. I just have a large collection and I’m trying to make people laugh. I’m sorry I was unsuccessful with you. I hope others I post don’t have the same effect. I do hope you have a great rest of your day though. And I know that tone is hard to convey via text, but I’m genuinely trying to be friendly.
It is funny…I bet some of the show makers regret putting in that line
Good reminder sci-fi writers should avoid references to current figures. You never know how their legacy will end up…
I mean… Successfully privatizing reusable rocketry and making domestic launches possible in the states again is amazing even if you hate him.
Not his accomplishments though, they’re accomplishments of engineers he profits from and takes credit from
