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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Melmi@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoRisa@startrek.websiteTrek Club
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    1 year ago

    The show is also about a space navy that has near total autonomy on the frontier, securing the interests of the Federation while inducting new worlds into its ranks, with our heroes being the Good Guys who are high ranking officers in the military who give orders and investigate conspiracies and hold life and death in their hands as they fly around their heavily-armed “totally not a warship” exploration vessels.

    It’s very Space America, and at times almost libertarian in its politics and non-interference. It’s not even explicitly socialist, all we know is that they don’t use money, except when they do. The writing is sort of fuzzy on the matter, which results (regardless of the intention) in an economy that doesn’t actually seem that different to our modern day in practice. There’s no money, but people still own businesses and talk about buying stuff, which allows for the economic system to fade into a sort of forgettable background space.

    Besides, Star Trek isn’t necessarily about a socialist future. It’s about a post-scarcity future. I think that’s a key difference. I’ve spoken to many conservative fans who say that they believe that capitalism is the only way that we can achieve a post-scarcity future, i.e. invent replicators. Because Trek isn’t about a worker’s revolution, it’s about the slow progression of technology, followed by a nuclear war, and then at some point they just sort of got rid of money because it was obsolete. All we even know about it is from one-off lines.

    There’s a bunch of info on the economy of the Federation in this article on Ex Astris Scientia.

    It makes me think of the Culture series, another sci-fi universe I’m fond of. It’s even more leftist-coded than Star Trek, yet somehow Elon Musk is a fan of it and names his rockets after ships from the books. Apparently Jeff Bezos is a fan too. Ugh. And as a result, a lot of people’s first introductions to the series is through these awful people, since it’s a lot more niche than Trek.


  • Melmi@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoRisa@startrek.websiteIdentifying Cat
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    1 year ago

    They even show up in Star Trek Into Darkness as furless cat girls that the writer claims are the same species even though they’re clearly not. Memory Alpha dutifully lists them on the Unnamed Caitian page, but amusingly doesn’t actually call them Caitians explicitly.

    To be fair, the text never refers to them as Caitians, it’s just the writer saying it in an interview.


  • You can buy alcohol cheap from a store in real life, along with all the ingredients to make drinks, yet people still go to bars where cocktails cost more than a meal. They’re not going just because of superior bartending skills, they’re going as part of the experience of drinking with other people. Because on DS9, your other option is basically to drink in your quarters, which is no fun.

    There are more options for food on DS9, but people still go to Quark’s for the atmosphere. It’s lively and fun, which is probably hard to come by otherwise on a remote space station. I doubt people are coming to Quark’s in droves for the food though, it’s more just something you get if you’re already there.


  • Melmi@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoRisa@startrek.websiteRansomware
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    1 year ago

    Well, the question still remains of “symbiotizing what”? Fungi on earth range from saprophages, which decompose dead matter into nutrients, to mycorrhizae, which form symbiotic relationships with plants which produce nutrients. In either case, they’re feeding off of things, it’s just the source that varies. All living things need to gain energy somehow.

    The mycelial network is spooky and probably feeds off something more abstract, since sci-fi and all that. That said, maybe it’s in some sort of symbiotic relationship with the multiverse itself? There’s so much energy in a galaxy, let alone a multiverse worth of galaxies, that it’s not hard to imagine a fungal network feeding off just a tiny fraction of that energy. And interstellar space has relatively low energy, so it makes sense the network wouldn’t build hyphae there.

    You’re right that they never said it only works in the Milky Way, I had just assumed that since it peters out at the border of the galaxy that it ends there. And if it resumes in another galaxy, it seems like it would be discontinuous and thus a separate organism. But I suppose if you imagine it as a wholly separate subspace realm, with hyphae that connect out wherever there is sufficient “energy” of whatever sort it feeds off of, it makes sense. And jumping to another galaxy could be a cool twist indeed!

    I would give anything to be an astromycologist


  • Melmi@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoRisa@startrek.websiteRansomware
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    1 year ago

    That’s true, it spans the entire multiverse but only within one galaxy. It’s odd, but it’s cool that the network is so deeply tied to the Milky Way, just in every reality.

    It makes me wonder what the network is actually feeding off of. Life? Some sort of nebulous “energy”?

    Not something that they need to (or should) answer, but it’s just so cool to think about the mystery of it. I love fungi, and I love the mycelial network as this truly cosmic-scale organism living in subspace, holding the multiverse together. It’s beautiful.



  • Marco has so much charisma. A huge part of his insidiousness is just how charming he is. There are points you almost wonder if he’s really the bad guy.

    On the other hand, Winn isn’t as charming, she’s not particularly sympathetic for most of the series. She’s kinda just hubristic and antagonistic, and isn’t very good at pretending to care about anything other than her own power grabs.

    Plus she’s way less hot.




  • Melmi@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoStar Trek@startrek.websiteDo you agree?
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    1 year ago

    True enough; it’s a very different framing, but there’s still love there, still passion.

    I think a big difference is that Starfleet folks tend to be more intrinsically driven. Space isn’t something that needs to be “made bearable” (unless you’re McCoy I guess)—space is cool in its own right, tons of things to see and people to meet. But on top of that, the Federation has such a high tech level and quality of life that living on a starship is pretty luxurious.


  • Melmi@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoStar Trek@startrek.websiteDo you agree?
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    1 year ago

    No. It fits Captain Angel’s perspective as an edgy pirate pining after their lover, but Starfleet is full of hopeful, enthusiastic scientists who are in space because they want to be. They love exploration for exploration’s sake, and are on a ship full of people who likely have similar interests.

    Angel’s perspective is warped by their passion; I mean, they’re literally in the middle of hijacking a Starfleet ship to get their lover back. They think their dependency on love is universal, when in reality most people are more emotionally stable than them. Although it probably helps when you’re in Starfleet and have an incredibly supportive working environment and not, you know, a pirate crew.





  • It’s a shame you didn’t like The Elysian Kingdom, I thought that was a great episode. But then I’m a sucker for episodes where the actors get to act out of character for a while, and a LARP episode was silly fun. I suppose it’s just a preference thing.

    I can’t believe you compared it in the same breath as Code of Honor, though—lots of Trek is boring at times, but Code of Honor is straight up offensive, a true failure for Trek. If anything, Elysian Kingdom is more similar to Threshold in the “low quality” sense than to Code of Honor, which is actually an awful episode that shouldn’t have been made.