williams_482 @ williams_482 @startrek.website Posts 48Comments 120Joined 2 yr. ago
There's a couple things here. The most obvious explanation is that there just weren't very many Constitution class ships in service, and their attrition rate was brutal.
As for why there were so few in the first place, and why more were not built to replace the losses, the conventional wisdom prior to Discovery coming out (and perhaps it still holds) was that the Connie was actually substantially less automated, and less well designed to facilitate automation, than it's rough contemporaries and immediate successors. The Connie refit gives some support to this assertion in that an extremely extensive rebuild was apparently necessary to get the ship to modern standards only 20ish years after their original commissioning. Such an extensive refit process could very well have still fallen short of what a brand new ship designed from the ground up to use the latest tech was capable of, meaning that it was more cost effective to crank out Excelsiors where frontline ships were needed, and far more cost effective to build Mirandas and Oberths to do lightweight tasks in safe areas.
In other words, the Constitution class was an awkward, inflexible, and inefficient design which happened to be in the right place, at the right time, and just good enough to have a staring role in a key period of Federation history. It carved it's niche and made it's mark, but was rightly supplanted by better ships as Federation technological and industrial capacity progressed into the late 23rd century.
I don't think I would agree with the claim that "natural, biological systems are actually often perfect models for ... efficiency." Natural, biological systems tend to get the job done (natural selection at work), but often do so in bizare, highly inefficient ways.
For example, most of us have eyes. Our eyes generally do an extraordinarily good job absorbing reflected light and allow us to perceive an enormous amount of visual information regarding our surroundings. So far, so good.
Look a little deeper, though, and the structure of our eyeballs quickly shows the vestiges of it's bogosort design process: vertibrate eyes all have a blind spot where the optic nerve blocks some incoming light from reaching our photoreceptor cells. We generally don't notice this because we have two eyes, and our brains are pretty good at merging the images we get from each one to cover for whatever the other missed (including constructing some outright fabrications where needed). Essentially, the human eye is a camera with the power cord routed across the lens: an obviously idiotic design decision that persists because it wasn't quite bad enough to be completely debilitating and could be mostly compensated for. Cephalopod eyeballs, which evolved independently of ours, do not have this particular weakness (although they do have their own suboptimal quirks).
It's not hard to look at the bevy of ingenious yet plainly stupid constructs that evolution has created and decide that they fall well short of any idealized standard of "perfection." Why should the Borg accept a visual sensor with such a glaring flaw, when they know they can do it better?
PS - I’m not really sure on what the policy is on linking topics from the subreddit but I’m trying not to post on Reddit so.i guess this is my way of transitioning. Remove if not ok, I guess?
We haven't worked out any formal cross-posting policy between cDaystrom and rDaystrom, but what you have done here is definitely acceptable. We do not and never did have any intention of disrupting the standard goings on in rDaystrom (definitely check with the rDaystrom mod team before trying to crosspost anything from Lemmy to Reddit), but of course we're more than happy to host offshoot discussions that started with a Reddit post here on Lemmy.
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Congratulations, we've officially made it big.
On a more serious note, though, I'm genuinely heartened that in just 27 minutes this spam comment was reported by 10(!!!) different people, allowing us to quickly see it clean it up. Keep up the good work y'all!
My personal bet is that until the bechdel pass rate goes up into ~90%, your point won’t really fly and the reverse will be passed all of the time … still interesting to find out.
In the era of "just asking questions", I certainly understand any implicit assumptions that I'm oh-so-cleverly concealing some ill-conceived "point" about feminism. Certainly a case can be raised that by presenting a possible chink in the supporting evidence of your post is an inherently disruptive and destructive act; clearly your broader point about closet bigotry affecting fan biases is both correct and worth emphasizing. I'd far rather strengthen your argument than tear it down. I hope that's ultimately what I'm doing here.
Given the numbers and the low bar of the Bechdel, some quick sampling could probably be done to get a picture. Select 10 episodes that pass the Bechdel test and 10 that fail, maybe some from TNG ans some from voyager, and we here collectively try to see if they pass/fail the reverse bechdel test in a group effort?
I don't think I would trust the results of this, unfortunately, as there's probably a reverse correlation between the Bechdel and reverse Bechdel tests; in a sample this small that would pollute the results. For example, take any episode where two characters of the same sex are stuck together in some sort of trouble. That episode will surely pass one of the tests (Bechdel for two women, reverse for two men) but has an increased chance of failing the other because much of the dialogue for the rest of the characters is likely to revolve around the plight of the imperiled pair.
...which isn't to say that what you suggest isn't worth the attempt. Certainly raising an issue and then shooting down a proposed solution to it isn't very helpful. Episode transcripts are out there; maybe there's a software solution here? Automatic identification of conversations between two characters would be imperfect but manageable, running that dialogue up against a list of names of male/female characters and then manually checking up on the episodes that missed to avoid false negatives would probably be the most technically efficient way about this?
Circling back on your actual point, though... You are absolutely and unambiguously correct that TOS did a horrible job with gender representation, much worse than TNG did (or could have been expected to by fans when it was about to air). It's also clear that Voyager did much better than it's contemporaries, and ENT was a pretty harsh step backwards. You don't need to know the base rate to establish if one number is bigger than the other, only to draw more nebulous, general conclusions about how well shows are doing with gender representation.
For level setting, I would like to see the results of the "reverse Bechdel" test: a scene where two named male characters talk about something other than a woman.
The numbers will surely be higher than for the standard Bechdel, but I doubt they are 100%: for example, any episode primarily about heterosexual romance will risk failing both tests. TOS seems like it should hit that mark pretty reliably, but the prevalence of episodes where Kirk gets stuck on an alien world and spends most of his time chatting up a lady cut into the odds. (Likewise if we were to take literally Kirk's absurd characterization of the Enterprise as a woman, but... no). DS9 and TNG will run into problems with their volume of mixed-gender conversations, and for TNG especially the prevalence of significant female guest stars who male characters are likely to be discussing will cause some failures. Etc, etc.
To be clear, we know damn well that Star Trek has had problems with sexism, with instances both subtle and gross (Qpid and clay pots, anyone?). The Bechdel test also seems to be accepted as both a ludicrously low bar and an unreliable measure, but I have yet to see it put in appropriate context against the reverse test. What does it tell us if 98% of Trek episodes pass the reverse Bechdel? or if "only" 75% do? Does Voyager's 86.9% standard score exceed or fall flat relative to their reverse Bechdel? Etc, etc. I would posit that the relationship between the Bechdel and reverse Bechdel should tell a pretty strong story about the level of subtle sexism in how the show is written, while an aggregation of the two scores is mostly just a measure of how (in)frequently the characters are chatting about their coworkers.
(Removing the mod hat here)
That is a good point about the power of the FCA, although I wonder how much of an influence they actually have on the most well off of Ferengi society. Certainly they talk a big game, and Quark is terrified when a liquidator shows up, but chances are the guy running the bar down the street from wherever you live would be pretty unnerved if the IRS (or equivalent) sent an agent to their door under similar circumstances. Would Gaila at the peak of his financial powers have found Brunt to be equally terrifying?
There's also the matter of what the FCA actually enforces. They come down pretty hard on concealing financial records, but mostly we see them show up to make sure that Quark is living up to the Ferengi ideals of being as cruel and exploitative to his customers and employees as possible. That is not an area where the most efficiently sociopathic paragons of Ferengi society are likely to run into any problems, so even if they could be prosecuted for such infractions, in practice there's nothing there to worry them.
As constructed this reads as just a joke, but there's a hint of an actual argument here. Daystrom Institute requires that all posters explain their reasoning. Could you elaborate?
It's not the figure that's the problem, but the fact that Americans have been forced to accept this sort of casual deception in how the price of a standard good is advertised. Why is it okay that getting gas for "$3.50" per gallon (to quote the most visible price, which everyone will mention in conversation and mentally reference for comparison) is actually very slightly less than $3.51 per gallon? Just post the correct bloody price, in a clear and unambiguous manner, without faffing around with extra decimals that everyone mentally filters out anyway. It's stupid.
Same deal with American businesses consistently citing pre-tax (and where relevant, pre-tup) prices. Just tell people what the fuck they are actually going to pay, instead of agreeing that literally everyone has to make their pricing an exercise in consumer deception or be beaten out by everyone else's smaller-looking-but-actually-identical prices.
This whole thing is just another tiny window into why unregulated markets suck.
Au contrarie; sports are a fantastic way to get socioeconomic issues (like labor rights) front and center on the minds of people who wouldn't necessarily be thinking of them the same way. And they create opportunities for people to educate themselves in other areas as well. Not every sports fan is the willfully ignorant meathead you describe, nor do willfully ignorant meatheads exist because of sports.
MLB is not only a state sponsored monopoly, but like every other American sports league a blatant cartel which is constantly squabbling with its own employees over revenue shares (at the expense of the on-field product) and lying about how much money they actually make. Same thing as most other business owners, but people are a lot more willing to listen to the perspective of, say, Shoehi Ohtani than a random McDonald's employee. I can tell you that I am personally much more clued in on these sorts of societal problems as a result of sportswriters discussing labor issues, on top of being far more statistically savvy and generally more sceptical of oversimplified narratives than I would be if I had never gained an interest in baseball. Nor would I have anywhere near my current understanding of global politics without global football (soccer) creating both a mechanism and incentive for learning about them.
But that's not even the point: sports are not a "scam". Sports exist first and foremost because for many people, watching elite athletes play a game is fun. That is the intrinsic value of professional sports, and nothing about that is inherently scammy. Full stop.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is definitely not a "bottle episode". Bottle episodes are episodes which require minimal or no additional budget for SFX, sets, etc beyond what is already available from previous/upcoming episodes. They exist as a money saving device which was necessary for shows to run 26 episode seasons and shell out for expensive productions while remaining within their budget. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow wouldn't have been the most expensive episode to film, but there's still a lot of exterior scenes, VFX, etc which make it quite a bit pricier than an episode almost entirely confined to a handful of existing sets.
It is a happy accident (whether by chance, or because the format forces an emphasis on the stories Trek has been best at telling) that Trek bottle episodes tend to include some of the best writing and character moments of the various series. This naturally leads to some confusion about what a "bottle episode" actually means.
Strange New Worlds has not had any true "bottle episodes" to date, although they certainly have been able to work in a lot of high quality character moments.
I could tell that Chapel and Spock's songs had some significant structural similarities (I am largely ignorant of the technical aspects of music, so I couldn't say what exactly). Is that typically a part of the "rebuke and reprise" sequence (which is also totally new to me)?
Setlik III is never actually said to be one of the disputed territories, or to have been folded into the neutral zone. In fact there is some evidence that it never was: Setlik III was a relatively small outpost which the Cardassians wrongly believed to be the staging point for an invasion force, and which was in practice both full of civilians and inadequately defended. Staging for a surprise invasion within a disputed area during a hot war (where enemy attacks and accidental discovery both are much more likely) would have been an odd choice, as would neglecting the defense of that world. Further, no reference is made to the Cardassians attempting to reclaim it as a world they felt they should rightfully have owned, and Glinn Daro describes the attack as "a terrible mistake."
I think the implication here was and is that the Cardassians had snuck pretty deep into Federation territory, attacking an outpost which was thought far enough back to be safe but which could reasonably have been a staging ground for a large Federation fleet.
Touching on the actual character moments for a bit here: the events of this episode do not reflect well on Chapel.
She'd been hitting on Spock literally since the beginning of the show, and openly pining after him for most of that time. Four episodes ago, she winds up breaking down in tears explaining to an alien telephone receptionist how much she cares about him. Two episodes ago she is extremely distraught when Boimler accidentally lets slip that Spock is famous in the future, and her relationship with him almost certainly will not last. And now, she gets into a three month fellowship that she didn't think she had much of a chance at, doesn't say a word to Spock until she has no other choice, and then busts out a (involuntary, but reflective of genuine emotion) musical number about how "free" she feels. What the hell.
We already know Chapel has some problems with commitment, but this is a whole 'nother level. Throwing away a relationship she spent most of this show obsessively wishing for, without any apparent consideration for Spock's feelings or non-breakup solutions to spending a couple months apart, is just wild. I'm sure the finale will touch on this with a little more nuance than a musical number was likely to give, but whatever else is said this is not a good look.
Isn’t K’tinga the later type of Klingon ship?
The three Klingon vessels that got rekt by V'Ger at the beginning of TMP were K'Tinga class ships. That was less than 20 years after this episode was set. However, the K'Tingas did remain in service well into the 24th century, likely for the same in- and out-of-universe reasons that the Excelsior class did.
I was not optimistic; musicals are definitely not my favorite genre. I was pleasantly surprised.
This is such an incredibly well done show.
I think the easiest explanation is that it was extremely rare, the sol system just happened to have a useable deposit somewhere (probably an asteroid or two), and it was used up in the construction of the NX class ships (and perhaps their immediate successors).
Note that nobody is worried that the NX-01 component on the Enterprise might have been mysteriously de-horoniumed. They just knew they weren't going to find a fresh source anywhere.
Pike was an extremely well regarded captain (DIS Choose Your Pain) in a crucial period of Federation expansion and solidification, many years before he suffered a horrific fate saving a group of cadets. Plus whatever events of significance he may be involved in during SNW's run. I suspect the accident, heroics, and gruesome injuries beyond the capabilities of Federation medicine made for a pretty big story, elevating Pike's fame in the eyes of civilians not already familiar with his very impressive service record. Making his birthday a holiday is a believable honor for someone now widely regarded as a hero who essentially made the ultimate sacrifice, but is technically still around to appreciate the gesture.
> Could someone explain the food replicator? I thought they weren’t invented yet? Or were they showing an early beta version that can’t get anything right?
That was a "food synthesizer", a precursor to the TNG era replicator which is more limited in capabilities.
M'Benga has compiled a hell of a list of justifications for getting demoted already, and (obviously) none of them have actually got him in trouble just yet. Secretly keeping his daughter in the transporter buffer, carrying super soldier serum about his person at all times, killing a Klingon ambassador... suffice to say he's a bit of a wildcard.