ponnfarrtrek

[ponnfarrtrek]

klingon news channel where they have a weather report every hour but it's just a blood soaked wall and a woman with a boob window standing in front saying "today is a good day to... die/hang out your washing/chill out in the park"

#star trek

[ponnfarrtrek]

As much as I could bitch about Discovery's plots until the cows come home, there are still various ways in which the show was Done Wrong which will forever annoy me. I think it largely carries the can for *everything* that legacy fans don't like about new Trek, and it certainly didn't have much help in getting new viewers with a cast that didn't settle until season 3, an abrupt change of network and streaming service four seasons in and a show name that is terrible for search engine optimisation. Picard's arrival didn't do it any favours either, even though Disco was probably the better show.

They could and should have done better. Fingers crossed for a dignified send-off.

#discovery #star trek discovery #st disco

[ponnfarrtrek]

Using "Where My Heart Will Take Me" as the Enterprise opening theme was a terrible idea in 2001. That style of music was so out of fashion at the time that people were genuinely amazed by it. The radio is playing The Strokes and Britney Spears and System of a Down, and Star Trek is using a cover of a Rod Stewart song from the "Patch Adams" soundtrack. It is the most middling of all middle-of-the-road songs, performed by a guy who almost exclusively sells records to be used as Christmas gifts for grandmothers. It's hard to imagine what made anyone think it was a good choice for an action/sci-fi show.

But using "Where My Heart Will Take Me" as the Enterprise opening theme has retroactively become an amazing decision because Enterprise ended a long time ago, nobody expects the show to be good anymore and it makes total sense that the opening theme tune is a cheesy singalong with overly earnest lyrics that stopped being relevant by the second episode. Because why not? It may as well be as bizarre and out of place as just about everything else in this show. More importantly, it is now an Old Song, which means we don't have to care if it's cool or not which means with retrospective wisdom we can all hear it to be a total banger.

The song has gone on a journey. You could say it's been a long road.

#star trek #enterprise

[ponnfarrtrek]

I think my favourite potential conspiracy theory from the Star Trek universe is "Betazoids are just guessing."

#star trek #tng

[ponnfarrtrek]

#star trek #tng #tos

[ponnfarrtrek]

I've tried to make my peace with Odo being a cop, a collaborator and a fascist and for the most part, I'm okay with it. It helps to remember that he was tortured by a chaotic Bajoran scientist who apparently just poked him and prodded him to see what would happen, which perhaps explains his need for order above all else. It also helps to remember that as a changeling with no knowledge of his origins, Odo is fundamentally an adaptive being and he learned his job while working with the Cardassians, so he would have absorbed a lot of his worldview from that experience.

It also helps that other viewers recognise it, like in this Renegade Cut video.

But it doesn't really clash too much with DS9's reality as a symbol of moral compromise, it doesn't make Odo's interactions with Quark any less funny and it doesn't change the fact that Rene Auberjonois gives a great performance. So as long as I'm not being asked to approve of Odo's behaviour, it's fine.

Except for how it reflects on Kira.

Kira is so bent on justice after the Cardassian occupation that she insists on tracking down any leads on criminals who can be punished or victims who can be helped. She can't forgive her own mother for being a "comfort woman" to Dukat. She still harbours resentment for Bajoran collaborators and doesn't renounce any of her part in the resistance movement, even when she's defenceless in front of a Cardassian who wants to kill her for it.

But she's close to Odo from the very start of the show. She stands next to him and says nothing as he asks a suspect something along the lines of "if you're not guilty, why did you run?" (Ok it was a potential war criminal, but Odo didn't know that and Kira doesn't think anything of it). Kira never voices any objection to Odo acting outside his jurisdiction or without evidence. Even when his role in sentencing innocent Bajorans to death during the occupation is uncovered, Kira is uncomfortable with it but it doesn't disrupt their relationship. Only Odo actually betraying her to the Dominion seems to have an impact, and even when it's resolved with a long talk (off screen). And it's not just that Kira accepts all this, she starts dating him afterwards. Even when Odo leads her to rejoin his people (who led him astray before), she's cool with it.

And it makes it look like either the writers didn't realise these problems with Odo were serious, or else Kira is someone who only has a problem with these behaviours when it's a Cardassian carrying them out. Kind of disappointing that the character with the strongest sense of moral clarity in the show is consistently undermined because someone decided she should be Odo's love interest.

#star trek #ds9 #odo #Kira nerys

[ponnfarrtrek]

Ok, here it is. The incredibly long, incredibly niche presentation on Star Trek: Enterprise and its right-wing political and cultural vibes.

This is one of those ADHD things where I came up with an idea and my brain wouldn't let me finish until I completed it. I am aware of its limited interest to others, to put it lightly, but it had to be done. I tried this in 3 different formats and it's still too long. It probably should have been a video essay but I have no clue how to make that happen, so here you go.

This will be the first of 3 posts and the third one will contain links and a text summary. I haven't tagged content warnings because of the ongoing Apple/tumblr content ban, but racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobic, terrorism, murder, torture, the War on Terror and child death are all referenced.

Here you go.

1/3

[ponnfarrtrek]

posts I lost when i deleted the original version of this blog and desperately want back

1. the long and pointless series of posts on the life cycle of miles o'brien

2. the shitty sisko joke i made about "in the pale moonlight"

3. my list of lwaxana troi episodes they should have made

4. every single time i was salty about voyager

on another note i still have the PowerPoint i used to make the post about enterprise being right-wing, but i don't care enough to transcribe all the text again

[ponnfarrtrek]

YouTube Trekkies: have you considered this thing that 98% of fandom believes might be wrong???

me: yes, but it's not.

#star trek

[ponnfarrtrek]

Data: i fucked up at playing the Space Battleships Game. I am a bad, defective robot.

Picard: Data, in life it is possible to fuck up all the time, still somehow get promoted to captain and then continue to fuck up and yet Starfleet is all "nvm dont worry about it" so long as you make a long speech and look confident about it.

Data: i think i understand sir, is this the emotion humans call "fuck it anyway"

#tng #star trek

[ponnfarrtrek]

Got my problems with nu Trek, but honestly direct comparisons between old and nu Trek often feel unfair.

When people watch old Trek nowadays, they usually watch it on streaming, so it's easier to be philosophical about the terrible episodes or the boring episodes because you can just skip ahead to the next one. And on top of that, those shows are 20 to 55 years old, so even if you don't have the nostalgia of watching them at the time we still make allowances.

This was not the case in the early 90s, when a bad episode of TNG would be all the Trek you were getting that week and there was no inclination to be generous to the show based on its overall legacy.

Any show that you watch once per week is going to be treated more harshly, because your sense of frustration or disappointment is going to last longer. I've seen some really terrible episodes of old Trek met with some "lol Voyager why are you like this?" reactions by people watching for the first time, whereas an equally terrible episode of nu Trek would be eviscerated.

This does not discount any of the significant problems with nu Trek, but people make unfair comparisons sometimes yknow.

#star trek #nu trek #tng #tos #voyager #ds9 #enterprise

[ponnfarrtrek]

if this boils your piss, consider whether you like liberation irl or only when its on a tv show.

#star trek #tng

[ponnfarrtrek]

I miss the Cardassians. They were so damn interesting, so complex, so cartoonishly villainous one moment and devastatingly sympathetic the next. I don't think any other Trek race has ever held up a mirror to reality in such a compelling way.

I'm not sure I totally trust any post-DS9 show to do something meaningful with them, but then maybe being forced to engage with complexity again could the franchise good.

#star trek #ds9 #tng #cardassians

[ponnfarrtrek]

Kiss Me: A Jiles Tribute

[ponnfarrtrek]

It is the year 2023 and people are still making excuses for William Shatner. Unfuckingbelievable.

[ponnfarrtrek]

#ds9

[ponnfarrtrek]

au where eberytjings the same but they have to go to five guyd