Persistent, Niggling Questions

[Flying Gremlin]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

PNQ: Favorite Asner role?

Easily Carl from Up.

[Nate the Great]

I only watched Up once. They were trying too much for a kids movie (I've noticed that Pixar tends to do that, with varying levels of success). And like everyone else, I would've rather have had the whole movie be the "Married Life" stuff. That scene still tugs at the heartstrings.

[NAHTMMM]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

PNQ: What's the first major world event you remember as a child?

Watching the 1992 presidential election returns on TV.

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

PNQ: Do you think they'll eventually do a Kelvin-style reboot of TNG?

I think Hollywood will eventually do a reboot of everything that smells like they can make even a shred of money off of it.

[Nate the Great]

Regarding Colonel Kira being made a Commander in Starfleet...




PNQ: Shouldn't she be a Captain?



As an aside I decided to look up a chart comparing Army (i.e. Bajoran Militia) and Navy (i.e. Starfleet) ranks. Major is equivalent to Lieutenant Commander, which is odd is retrospect. I think Kira was in charge of the entire Militia within the Bajoran system (besides Bajor, of course).



Perhaps she was really a Lieutenant Colonel, which is equivalent to Commander. A full Colonel is equivalent to Captain. Memory Alpha confirms the Colonel/Captain thing and brings up Colonel West.



Then again, Colonel West wore uniform decoration above the level of a Captain (and again, insert Nate's theory that army-ranked people were really members of UESPA integrated into Starfleet).



Of course, I suddenly wonder why Bajor would use Earth rank titles anyway.



And while we're on this rank kick, I found myself wondering why the Romulan Commander would equal a Starfleet Captain and where the term "Sub-commander" came from.



Apparently for Sub-commander T'Pol it was declared that the rank was somewhere between Commander and Captain.



Memory Beta has a chart comparing Vulcan and Romulan ranks. Which is odd, you'd think they'd be the same. And don't forget, the Vulcans have their own fleet separate from Starfleet.


The Trek BBS forum has a nice conversation comparing Vulcan and Starfleet ranks.

[Nate the Great]

Inspired by a YouTube video...


PNQ: What does it mean to "prepare" to go to warp?


Sometimes the command is given, sometimes not. What does this entail?


It stands to reason that there are some systems that need to be switched on to activate warp drive, but how many need ten seconds to "warm up"?


Do the warp engines have a proverbial clutch? Does warp plasma not enter the nacelles until you actually go to warp?



If the warp core wasn't actually needed for anything except warp drive you could imagine "prepare to go to warp" meaning "activate the warp core using the slower and safer matter/antimatter injection process rather than the faster and more damaging one". And while I could see that in TOS, I'm pretty sure that in the TNG era you need an active warp core for most systems like the main deflector dish.

[Nate the Great]

So I'm binging Friends clips on YouTube, and a commenter compared David the Scientist Guy to Leonard from Big Bang Theory...


PNQ: Really?



It always offends me when people think that there's only one kind of nerd. There's not. And while the awkward may classify themselves like this, to the world in general there are only two camps, nerd and geek.



David is more socially awkward than Leonard, Leonard is more insecure than David. David is definitely closer to "nerd" and Leonard to "geek", but the complete picture is way more nuanced.

[Nate the Great]

I have Amazon Prime, so I get to stream things that I've never heard of. The shocking discovery for me is how much I enjoy Chinese historical romance dramas.



PNQ: What's a genre like that for you, where you quickly go from finding out about something to really liking it?


On the whole I don't even enjoy subs. It has to be something special for me to enjoy that sort of thing. I think my first real enjoyment at the sub experience was the uncut Cardcaptor Sakura. As for historical romance dramas, probably my earliest experiences were the works of Miyazaki.

[DrWho42]

okay, but what happened to the Avenues 1-4 in the television series Avenue 5?

[Nate the Great]

So someone beat the OOT demo within Smash Brothers Brawl in under five minutes, and someone on Twitter complained that speedrunners don't know how to have fun.



PNQ: Isn't this sort of thinking rather short-sighted?


I find it amazing how blind some people can be about other people's hobbies. People are different, and their hobbies are different. Just because I wouldn't find fantasy football fun doesn't mean that I bash people who enjoy that. I obsess about the minutiae of Treknology, but I don't bash people who don't.



Besides, when it comes to speedruns the fun doesn't just come from the final video, it's knowing HOW that final video happened. Where did this or that glitch come from? How can we apply it to this or that route? Could we combine it with a strategy that was eclipsed years ago, giving it new life?

[Nate the Great]

I found myself pondering Scotty's statement in The Voyage Home that the time travel "drained" the Klingon dilithium crystals.


PNQ: Opinions?


In TOS they were all over the map regarding what dilithium actually was or did in the engines. I don't think the modern concept of matter/antimatter reaction transformed by dilithium into warp plasma existed in final form until TNG.



It's true that in STIV the crystals weren't explicitly called "dilithium", but for the sake of argument let's say that they are, as all Alpha/Beta quadrant powers other than the Romulans operate on the traditional matter/antimatter technology.


Spock speaks of recrystallization. Scotty was concerned about fracture in the E-D crystals.



As an aside, the novel How Much For Just The Planet (which I highly recommend) goes into a bit of depth about how dilithium works. Dilithium crystals extend past the standard three dimensions into the higher realms, which is essential for matter/antimatter reaction. Presumably the portion of crystals lying in the higher dimensions can't interact with matter OR antimatter and in fact deflects the streams away from the portion in standard space. Thus if matter is "twisted" in one way and antimatter in another, perhaps regulated matter/antimatter collisions are even more powerful than the ordinary kind because they've been focused. Like how ordinary crystals disperse a light-beam into a full spectrum or condense a spectrum into a single white light beam.



Furthermore, let's consider how in TOS they're always looking for dilithium. The tech isn't good enough for a full match on the focused streams, you end up with a lot of excess energy that must be contained and then expelled as "exhaust". Furthermore, it could be that the extra unfocused energy is the part that decrystallizes the dilithium.



Think of it like a filter that gets gunked up. In TOS the gunk eventually makes the crystals unusable. In TNG we know how to prefilter the fuel AND create "backwash" to remove the gunk.



Furthermore, suppose that Klingon crystal tech is less advanced than the Federation. They need raw dilithium even more than our heroes because the gunk builds up faster. Furthermore, suppose that their supply is smaller than ours, so they have to build their ships to handle lower-quality dilithium. Plus, y'now, you have to imagine that they run their engines hotter than our heroes because of the need to be battle-ready 24/7 (or whatever the Klingon version of that expression is).

[DrWho42]

when will MST3K riff Plan 9 from Outer Space?

[Nate the Great]

A boy's mother has very strict rules about acceptable books for her son.


1. No princes or princesses.
2. No knights.
3. No dragons or other fantasy animals.
4. No talking animals.
5. No men that have to save women.


PNQ: How many books can you think of that meet these criteria?


One thing that springs to mind immediately about these criteria is the assumption of fantasy only. There are children's book genres other than fantasy, lady!


Let's get real, the big sticking point here is Point 5.



And since it's the Christmas season, I have to be reminded of Miracle on 34th Street here. Poor Doris...

[Nate the Great]

Today's Star Trek entry for Ashens' Advent Calendar is a set of coasters with TOS-style computer graphics (pre-LCARS) on them.


PNQ: What era of computer graphics do you like the best?


The TOS-style of computer interface never got a name. Since the later movies used TNG sets you'll see a bit of LCARS in them, but we'll chalk that up to real-world events, not proof that LCARS existed in the 23rd century.



The Amazing Thing I Learned Today is that Wikipedia has an article on LCARS. Weird.


Of course the Kelvinverse totally ignores canon and includes touchscreen tech called PCAP-SYS. Abrams himself felt that they should be full-blown holograms.


The 29th century timeships used TCARS instead of LCARS. Temporal computer instead of library computer. I do wonder what a "temporal computer is".

[Nate the Great]

Actually there's a Department of Temporal Investigations short story that says that they have the ability to make PADDs whose stored data will not be altered by changes to the timeline. Hence agents can see that an alteration has been made and a hint of what was changed and when. One wonders if they use TCARS.

[DrWho42]

what happened to the xindi in the 24th/25th centuries?

[NAHTMMM]

Originally Posted by DrWho42

when will MST3K riff Plan 9 from Outer Space?

Didn't RiffTrax already get it?

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

A boy's mother has very strict rules about acceptable books for her son.


1. No princes or princesses.
2. No knights.
3. No dragons or other fantasy animals.
4. No talking animals.
5. No men that have to save women.


PNQ: How many books can you think of that meet these criteria?


One thing that springs to mind immediately about these criteria is the assumption of fantasy only. There are children's book genres other than fantasy, lady!

Yeah, there's quite a few. Within fantasy, and suitable for children, I don't know. The animals are the sticking point for most of what I've read. And if there's danger then sometimes the men might have to save the women and the women might have to save the men without it being remotely sexist at all.

[Nate the Great]

PNQ: Why does everyone hate Pulaski?


When it comes to Trek characters far too many people latch onto the writing alone as a reason to hate them, with no thought to the actual performance. Neelix comes to mind immediately.



Pulaski's Spock/McCoy dynamic with Data was poorly written and it took the writers way too long to put an end to it. But that's not the fault of Diana Muldaur. In fact I think she did a worse job performing her TOS roles.



Neelix was written poorly, but Ethan Phillips gave it his all. Janeway was written poorly, but Mulgrew acted it well.



Oh boy, now I have to talk about Enterprise. That's a show where I'm not sure how much blame I have to place on the writer, how much on the director, and how much on the actors. At least I have another ten years to think about it before the ENT recap (I might move that one up five years, but we'll see).

[Nate the Great]

In my research, this quote from Ronald Moore came up...


"Replicators are the worst thing ever. Destroys storytelling all the time. They mean there's no value to anything. Nothing has value in the universe if you can just replicate everything, so all that goes away. Nothing is unique; if you break something, you can just make another one. If something breaks on the ship, it's "Oh, no big deal, Geordi can just go down to engineering and make another doozywhatsit." Or they go to a planet and that planet needed something: "Oh, hey, let's make them what they need!" We just hated it and tried to forget about it as much as possible."


PNQ: Opinions?


I think that Moore is overreacting. The writers did a good job explaining why certain spare parts can't be replicated ("Empok Nor" comes to mind immediately). Sure, almost every food ever discovered can be replicated with a margin of imperfection (insert rant about how much I hate Eddington here), but that doesn't extend to spare parts or more complex medications. Furthermore, remember that food is reconstructed from a base material specifically designed to be turned into food. Spare parts have to come from pure energy, a much more resource-intensive process. It gets worse when you think about the more exotic base materials that have to be transmuted from the more common stuff.



Even so, I never like "Planet A needs a medicine that can't be replicated, but a plant over on Planet B can be turned into the medicine" plotlines.



Plus gold-pressed latinum is specifically nonreplicatable (although I wonder how anything that can be transported can't be replicatable even if it's not economical).

[Nate the Great]

PNQ: Three favorite Christmas movies?

1. Had a theatrical release.
2. Feature length (90 minutes or more).

Miracle on 34th Street (the original), White Christmas, Muppet Christmas Carol.

[Nate the Great]

Someone on Reddit makes a good point: after DS9 Kira had to replace half of the senior staff...


PNQ: Would this really be her job? Wouldn't Starfleet send replacement crew?
PNQ2: Until Bajor officially joins the Federation, wouldn't Starfleet still want a Starfleet officer in charge?
PNQ3: Now that the war's over, does the station still need a Strategic Operations Officer?
PNQ4: Was Odo grooming a replacement? What with the time he spent in Cardassian space and the virus, wouldn't somebody already be doing his job?

PNQ5: Who's commanding the Defiant now? Even if Starfleet is willing to have Kira pinch-hit unofficially, the ship would need a full-time Starfleet captain, wouldn't it?