eva_sieve @ eva_sieve @startrek.website Posts 0Comments 84Joined 2 yr. ago
As far as I'm aware they never explain the rules of Stratagema. I feel pretty comfortable saying it seems like a terrible esport to spectate. You've got
- Incredibly quick games (Data's first game with Kolrami ends in less than thirty seconds), so there's little to no time to appreciate whatever finer strategies are going on
- crap graphics-- style is very bland and more importantly user unfriendly--as far as I can tell there are four colors, navy/blank, some sort of territorial highlighting colors (blue and yellow), and a red that appears to be units/agents of both players, which are not visually distinct except for small markers (seriously, why?).
- probably crap controls-- I get you have to move multiple things simultaneously, but you'd think they'd make something more intuitive for whatever 3-D controls this game needs. With the benefit of modern video game hindsight I think something like a mini keyboard in one hand would be a lot more believable for whatever quick selection and movements are needed by this game.
Basically, take a minimalist strategy game like Go and an RTS game and stick them together in a way that uses the strengths of neither. That's Stratagema. Don't play this game, it's dumb.
(Minor edit, after thinking this over a little it's possible the red pieces are neutral objectives. I don't think that correlates as well with the finger movements, but whatever. That'd just make Stratagema 3d Liquid War with mario kart powerups tacked on)
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"You reckon it should just be called a human name, instead then? Something silly like 'Carl'?"
Pizza is temporary, Discovery is until at least the 41st century.
Star Trek does this thing where formal rank isn't actually as important as being in the captain's in-group. Can you name anything important that provisional Lt. JG Ayala did on the USS Voyager? I sure as hell can't, but it was less important than Harry "eternal ensign" Kim.
As much as the Lower Decks gang would like to think of themselves as unimportant, they're very much confidants of the Cerritos' senior staff so it's illogical, but consistent for Boimler to be at the top of the list for acting captain when stuff's going down.
Out of universe it's obviously a narrative/screen time thing, I'd say you've just got to accept it and move on.
"Orange, really?"
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u/Stamets likes his Star Trek hot folks to be fully clothed, damnit! Like Captain Pike! or Doctor Culber! or Captain Pike!
Man, the years were far kinder to Tom Paris than Locarno. Guess being a Starfleet burnout is a pretty stressful existence.
Don't sell short the levels of destructive capability Federation has access to if it really cared about such things. Off the top of my head, there are some messed up "off-label" uses for stuff we've seen the Federation has access to by the 2380s:
- Red Matter is featured in Star Trek '09, though it originates from the prime timeline. Obvious application for making black holes on demand. Y'know, I'm not actually sure why the Vulcan Science Academy made so much of it, but we see even in small amounts it can be used as a planet killing weapon.
- The Protostar Class from Prodigy is potentially the Federation's most terrifying weapon. The contained protostar at the heart of the ship explodes (canonically, though unrealistically) into a supernova if containment fails, and with full holo-emitter coverage it could be run by a holographic crew. Lock down the ETH's personality matrix and you've got a fully automated transwarp supernova bomb.
Rutherford hanging out with Freeman is presumably setup for the finale, giving us three perspectives without compromising the focus on the main gang. He did feel a little tacked on though.
"Should we put Captain Lorca's warp phrase on the image?"
"Nah, fuck that mirror universe asshole. Just add another Pike and call it a day."
Dunno why they didn't bother promoting this episode, it was great. I was initially skeptical that it was just going to be a "Mariner is angsty" episode without much of a payoff, but they finally revealed everything. And they gave Ma'ah screen time doing it!
The confirmation of how the Dominion War scarred Mariner wasn't much of a surprise, but the tie back to the Lower Decks of old was. What an absolutely crushing reason to lose the optimism in what Starfleet can be. Props to Tawny Newsome for some good voice acting for an emotionally vulnerable moment.
Minor complaint/discontinuity: in this episode Mariner seemed surprised that T'Lyn was present at the fight against the Pakleds and the Klingon BoP in Wej Duj, although I seem to recall T'Lyn explicitly referencing that incident to her in Empathological Fallacies.
Speculation about next week: I'd hazard a guess that Locarno is a thematic version of what Mariner could become if she isn't careful. He's a Starfleet ace gone bad, and also Sito's former friend, so he's presumably got a lot to sell her on the troublemaker's life.
God, I typed a lot and didn't even get to Freeman's misdirection this episode. It was good, watch it!
I mean if you look at Burnham and Sarek's relationship in Discovery he did a pretty dang good job beating the human emotion out of her.
Sure, this kinda fucked her up emotionally in a way the series tragically didn't look into nearly enough after season 1, but you can't say that his methods never worked.
Tendi's bit was wholesome, but this was a weaker episode overall IMO. I get what they were going for, the jokes just didn't really land for me.
Has Janeway basically become Risa's version of Bully McGuire? Not objecting, just trying to figure out what the proper name to use for her should be.
left to right:
- Phlox, USS Enterprise NX-01 (ENT)
- Leonard "Bones" McCoy, USS Enterprise NCC-1701/-A (TOS)
- Beverly Crusher, USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D/-E (TNG)
- T'Ana, USS Cerritos NCC 75567 (LD)
- Emergency Medical Hologram Mk. I, while there are many instantiations this one's presumably "the Doctor," USS Voyager NCC-74656/(-A) VOY/(+PRO, eventually)
- Hugh Culber, USS Discovery NCC-1031/-A (DISCO)
A bit worried it'll have a heavy tonal overlap with Lower Decks and thematic overlap with LD/Prodigy.
That said, I really want Star Trek to move to literally anything other than the TOS/TNG eras, so let's see where this goes.
A bit of a weird episode in that the protagonists didn't solve much, the two problems just sort of fizzled out for their own reasons.
Kind of surprised that Peanut Hamper was up for parole-- Memory Alpha doesn't list a specific stardate for A Mathematically Perfect Redemption but judging by the adjacent years and the stardate AGIMUS listed she's been in Daystrom for less than two years.
IMO this episode confirms that what we saw last week wasn't an anomaly, Rutherford's got it bad for Tendi. It's kind of weird to have him focusing on her encouragement to the exclusion of Mariner (who was in his immediate vicinity!) otherwise.
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Disco stands out at the Star Trek series that really commits to queer representation rather than shoving it in the background and/or discarding it (looking at you, Picard and to a lesser extent LD). At the end of season 3 I was floored when Stamets described Adira as his child because I could definitely see the found family trope progressing and was mentally joking he should adopt them, I just didn't expect it to pop up from subtext to text. It definitely feels like a more modern discussion of queerness than past series did.
...not sure how I feel about them destroy the subtlety of Trill as trans metaphors though. It's cool, it just feels very heavy-handed.
No T'Lyn in these shots, here's hoping we still see her through the rest of the season.
Absolutely looking forward to the triumphant return of AGIMUS!
it's entirely possible; I personally don't remember and I can't find a hard reference in Memory Alpha on any relevant pages (industrial replicator, vehicle replicator, Intrepid class, uss voyager). Most of the memory alpha references are in DS9.