Autism has little to do with it - I’m on the spectrum and I have “proprietary” Star Trek wallpapers on all my Linux machines - Ent D and DS9 on desktop, DS9 crew on laptop, Cerritos on that one old Chromebook I installed Bcachefs Debian Testing on for fun once, Borg cube on my Surface…
Now my wallpaper choices and overall Star Trek fandom… you could probably make a reasonable guess on where that comes from. 😉
iPhone, mostly because of family.
I eventually want to jump to Lineage on Pixel, but that’s not an option for me currently.
My Thinkpad has the factory Windows install on its factory-installed drive, but I only booted it once and otherwise never use it. As the laptop has 2 M.2 slots, I just installed a 2 TB SSD in its secondary slot and installed Debian 12 on it right after I opened the box. I nearly always use that install.
I recently had an exam where the spyware test monitoring Chrome extension was mad about me using Linux (I only use Chromium when I have an exam - otherwise I just use Firefox), so I had to use one of the Windows machines in the lab. This was weird, because I’ve taken other tests (including after this incident) that didn’t have a problem.
Back in high school, I had to use a Chromebook and the occasional iMac, though the Chromebook is technically a Linux device.
I need to the h*** give Babylon 5 a try eventually.
I have a few questions on uniforms.
For one, I just find it a bit strange some of them are wearing ENT-era uniforms, especially considering the base was updated in the 2260s. Although the uniforms look slick, chronologically, it almost feels like a run down American naval wessel in the 1970s wearing revolutionary war uniforms. I wonder if this points to the ENT uniforms being used for a really long time (no, my time is not finally here) much like the TOS film uniforms, if at least as a starbase uniform. Thus, it was still perfectly normal to see an ENT uniform in the 2230s and 40s, and not all that uncommon in the early 2260s.
Now what really confuses me, though, is how the base says they don't have combadges, which conflicts with the previous depictions of base officers in LD:"Trusted Sources":
I at first thought that maybe they were just embroidered like TOS uniforms. However, someone on Memory Alpha also caught this frame of one of these same personnel in 5x05:
The badge is gone, which suggests they are removable. This implies two possibilities: they were aesthetic, non-functioning badges, or they were real combadges.
I wonder why they disappeared. One theory might be the station used to be able to support a few, but the system broke and the few combadges in circulation were retired.
Ma’ah’s brother says all the “I can see the original Kahless” stuff at the end of the episode. That means that Kahless II being a clone is common knowledge. I wonder when that happened, though Kor seemed aware of it in DS9:”The Sword of Kahless”.
This beings up an intriguing question of when Kahless being a clone became common knowledge.
We only deal in gold pressed Latinum here.
There’s plenty of other crappy Starbases in the Federation… certain of that.
It’s going to be about the Post-Atomic Horror… Or else! Give me my campy Kangaroo court.
To be fair, I wouldn’t exactly call original Khan good representation either, in the sense that he draws on some negative ethnic stereotypes.
Still a fun villain, though.
I might also add that Ma’ah’s family career is very similar to Boimler’s in some aspects, staying in line with how in Wej Duj he was supposed to be a Klingon analog of Boimler.
In the future, could you cross post your annotations instead of making two posts? Thanks! I had to duplicate the above from the main Star Trek community version of this post.
Note that Bashir is not yawning, but doing that weird wall shuffling-screaming thing that no one understands, probably not even Siddig or the director at the time of filming.
Now MOOOOVE ALOOOOOONG HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOEM! (Whacks those weird wood sticks together.)
Edit: Okay, a few more fans than I expected, a pleasant suprise.
If you haven't watched Over the Garden Wall, you should give it a try and watch every episode, especially if you're looking to get into the Halloween spirit. The whole miniseries isn't that long - about the length of a feature film in total.
Also, my gosh, it was so miserable to put Bashir's skinny pointy little face onto Greg's big round chonker! But bird Garrak was worth it in the end.
Note: "EEEEE...EEEE!" is meant to convey my hard-to-contain excitement of having Wesley randomly pop up. Also, though, I couldn't resist posting that face.
Half of these exist because I was bored once.
The Windows 10 and MacOS ones are GPU passthrough enabled and what I occasionally use if I have to use a Windows or Mac application. Windows 7 is also GPU enabled, but is more a nostalgia thing than anything.
I think my PopOS VM was originally installed for fun, but I used it along with my Arch Linux, Debian 12 and Testing (I run Testing on host, but I wanted a fresh environment and was too lazy to spin up a Docker or chroot), Ubuntu 23.10 and Fedora to test various software builds and bugs, as I don't like touching normal Ubuntu unless I must.
The Windows Server 2022 one is one I recently spun up to mess with Windows Docker Containers (I have to port an app to Windows, and was looking at that for CI). That all become moot when I found out Github's CI doesn't support Windows Docker containers despite supporting Windows runners (The organization I'm doing it for uses Github, so I have to use it).
Seriously, though. In my opinion, V is by far the worst TOS film, if not the worst of any Star Trek film (Yes, including Kelvin), yet it somehow nailed the ending.
Not to say I hated V that much. I think there's some charm of Kirk, Spock, and Bones breaking out the brig, but the plot is catastrophically bad. I was also annoyed with that one scene with Uhura where they have her seduce some acolytes, which I feel is a disgrace to the character.
I think the Vau N'Akat seen in Prodigy have a lot of "biological and technological distinctiveness" to be added to the collective's own. My question is whether or not the Borg could take advantage of the Vau N'Akat's abilities, and whether they'd be all that helpful.
For instance, could assimilated Vau N'Akat use their heirloom powers to manipulate materials in order to pump out at least the shells of Borg Cubes like nobody's business?
I think this depends on how heirloom material actually works and is made. Its utility to the Borg probably depends on whether or not it's a limited resource or actually some sort of alloy that could be constructed anywhere in the galaxy.
In truth, we can't know that, as in the current state of canon Vau N'Akat lore, it's basically just space magic to us. If I had to take a wild guess, I have two theories:
Another question is whether or not Vau N'Akat drones could use all that "your will is mine" stuff to aid the assimilation of other Vau N'Akat and/or create one super drone.
Going with theory 1, maybe the "Your will is mine" stuff is actually a weak ability to lend extra cells to the desired person that builds up when a lot of people are doing it, strengthening healing and immune responses as well as any use of that person's detached cells, thus explaining that whole scene.
If this is the mechanic by which it works (and assimilation doesn't somehow bork the mental facilities for this), this could be a very powerful ability for the Borg. It almost sounds too powerful, as those cells could be used as essentially an assimilation virus or a bioweapon, which I think would break the balance of power in the ST universe in a way that I think writers really wouldn't want to.
Overall, as I have said before, just as I find it very fun to try to theorize how the Vau N'Akat work, I also find it very difficult due to both its status as a very new species and their general uniqueness (almost un-Trekiness, not to insult them) as a species. I do think Prodigy does some good things with the Vau N'Akat, and it's nice to have a species that's a bit more than just forehead ridges and a fatal flaw (if they even bother with the forehead ridges - looking at you, Betazoids). However, similar to some of the complaints with Prodigy in general, I can't deny that the space magic aspect feels more Star Wars than I can say I like in Star Trek.
So, what are your thoughts?
Overall, I see Badgey as accidentally being the most sane one there and being a story of how sanity fares in an insane universe.
Here's my lore for Badgey and the ISS Cerritos (based on the IDW Mirror Universe and assuming that the mirror universe in Prodigy is the same timeline as IDW's mirror universe): I kind of imagine the story as the inverse, where the brutal Rutherford sends his Orion slave girl~1~ to test the simulation, which is a low gravity battle situation. Combined with Tendi's talent, the brutality and immorality scares Badgey enough that when the safeties are off, he gives his father a choice: help him take down the empire or face death at his hands. Rutherford immediately goes in for the kill, and the chase begins.
In No Small Parts, Rutherford seemingly convinces Badgey that the Pakleds are the greater evil, but tries to destroy the Cerritos with the Pakled ship, leaving his father to watch. Rutherford tries to detonate the warp core, but Shaxs, really wanting to do it, throws Rutherford into space (where he is beamed away) and detonates the warp core.
Finally, in A Few Badgeys More, Rutherford starts by trying to appeal to Badgey's hatred, which splits off into Mad-gey. He then appeals to the personal benefits Badgey will get, who splits off into profit-ey and is killed by Badgey. Finally, Badgey ascends and has the painful epiphany of how little good there is in the universe. He decides he will destroy the universe and recreate one prime among all the others, but notes the end might not be immediately apparent due to time crap.
1: On another note, my story for mirror D'Vana Tendi is as follows.
The Orions had a strong democratic socialist tradition for a long time until the Terran Empire conquered them. The Alliance later freed them from Terran rule, but did not allow the Orions their governmental tradition. Thus, the Tendi family became the leader of a secret independence movement to return Orion to its former ideals. This resistance continued even after Orion fell back under Terran rule in 2379 as part of the Terran fleet resurgence of the past few years.
With the Tendi family, D'Vana was known as Liberator of the Winter Constellations and was supposed to bring the revolution to a new age. However, she was known to be selfish and impulsive.
This came to a head when the Orion Resistance was going to attempt a major operation in 2380. Feeling it was hopeless, D'Vana made a deal with a Terran agent to sell out her rebellion in return for riches.
Like a true Terran, though, the agent lied, and the ISS Cerritos, assigned there on second plunder, took her and much of the rebellion as slaves... dismally easily.
Her sister, D'Erika, however, escaped and pledged not just to continue the revolutionary cause as the new Liberator of the Winter Constellations, but to get revenge on her double-crossing sister.
Meanwhile on the Cerritos, D'Vana was distributed to Billups. However, Billups preferred to work on improving the destructiveness of the phasers or watch his underlings squeal in the agony booth, so he decided to let Rutherford do whatever the heck he wanted with her. Thus, technically, she is not Rutherford's slave, but Billups, but ends up being forced to spend most of her time on the ship with Rutherford.
Edit: Corrected spelling of Torres's rank.
Based off a moment from VOY:Prototype that I just facepalmed and chuckled at, roughly around the 34:45 mark. The first two frames are pulled from around there, and the last four are just various images pulled from online.
Every time I work with a Mac, Hackintosh, etcetera, the 5K upscale of XP Bliss is my default as a joke (except I think near the end of one school year, where I set the background to something from OS 9).
It was even my iPhone background for a while, though right now, it’s a random James Webb image.