I’m glad you asked about Star Trek (ʘ‿ʘ✿)

remember when Picard was “playing the flute” but definitely using someone else’s hands?

here are some other versions of that scene:

Imagine Garak inviting Julian into his private holo program after seeing that Julian’s fantasy is being a spy in Our Man Bashir and then it’s just Garak fantasizing about being a super doctor.

Garak roleplays House, MD. Julian’s like, “That’s now how anything works,” Garak says, “It’s about the fantasy, dear.”

I only know about House through fandom osmosis, but that sounds about right, lol! I also think Garak has to “give cpr to” (make out with) an improbable number of patients in the holoprogram, to give Julian a bit of a taste of his own medicine ^_^ <3

Julian gets to be his adorable nurse assistant, who gets to fawn over him and tell him what a clever physician he is, and also provide fanservice~~ Julian is Displeased with the Role

screeeeeeeam

Steve Oster [producer of DS9] - about 4.06 - Rejoined

Reblog. This. Every. Damned. Time.

HA! Good.

This is why “family values” is usually such a load of bs. 

Shit like this is what keeps me up at night.

Every time I report and block a porn bot:

Today marks 30 years of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine! Here's an appreciation post featuring some more episode artwork I've made over the past few years.

this poster but with Julian and Garak

Say no more

I hate you

You have done a service to all humankind.

Image description

Ravis and Hoshi from Star Trek Enterprise in a restaurant on Risa. Ravis says "It's incredible how fast you learned my species' language"

Hoshi responds "I'm extremely motivated. Lives depend on my success at translation."

Last panel is the characters sitting in silence while the duolingo owl watches in the background

Source

You'd think maybe starfleet would invest in some seatbelts

The funny thing is, I think the Kobayashi Maru is a very odd test, psychologically, depending on what it’s actually trying to determine. It changes over time.

Particularly after it’s been around for a while, you know it’s unwinnable going into it. Not only does that promote a sense of fatalism, but it paradoxically absolves the participant of any responsibility. If you can’t win, then you can rest secure that it wasn’t your fault, your choices didn’t matter, and the system was rigged against you. It’s not an especially good lesson to teach, though I suppose it does get you ready for evil Starfleet admirals and bureaucracy.

In a way, what Kirk did was more than change the conditions of the test for himself; by opening up the possibility of winning, he changed the psychological value of the test for everyone who came after him.

This raises the question: what is the Kobayashi Maru test really trying to measure, and what kind of captain is Starfleet really looking for? Someone who will accept an unwinnable situation with grace, or someone who knows the situation can’t be won, but fights anyway?

…or, possibly, someone who can change the parameters of a situation before it even happens?

I always took it as a kind of institutional hazing, though the way they dress it up in ST:III is that it’s less about what you do and more about experiencing a failure scenario. They of course confound this meaning by also talking about “passing” or “failing” the scenario which seems to be nonsense.

Kirk believed he was being tested on how he “accepts” the scenario, and so he reprogrammed it to show that he doesn’t believe in such a scenario, or at least doesn’t believe in accepting it, or that he can think in a larger context.

But in that, at least, he’s actually missing the point... whether that makes him a great captain or not is debatable.

These are both very good points, but I guess my question remains: is it really a failure scenario or lesson if you are put into an artificially-created situation where nothing you do matters, and you know that going into it? That you could be replaced by a stuffed animal, whose decisions would have equal impact on the outcome? If we completely divorce cause from effect, what lesson is that teaching? I realize that, sometimes, what we do doesn’t matter. I suppose one aspect of the test is to see if the participant truly believes it’s unbeatable or not, which will shape their behaviour and participation going in.

Hazing seems a likely option. Maybe the real value of the Kobayashi Maru is the philosophical discussions we can have about its construction and usefulness afterward.

Well, it's not that you could be replaced by an inanimate object, really... you can affect things, it's just that you always fail and die in the end. Do you try to save the innocents? Do you try to fight? How do you respond to each thing in turn? I think there is some official secrecy about the nature of the exercise, but I think it's also an open secret among cadets. Not that I care about Star Trek 2009, but it does seem to indicate that the cadets aren't supposed to know it's unwinnable a priori, but that they all know through the grapevine that it is. I think, it's been a long time since I've seen it. Saavik in ST:III also seems surprised that it's fully unwinnable, not just practically but fully. It seems to take her much of the movie to grasp the meaning of the scenario, leading to her asking Kirk about his solution. But I think in the moment, you're meant to know that you're facing fearful odds, unwinnable ones in fact... you're a command-level cadet, your situational awareness and training should tell you that in the moment. And like all the scenarios in astronaut training where very intelligent simulator technicians killed the astronauts in all sorts of unexpected ways... it's useful to look down the barrel of failure, I guess, and at least not freeze up. Maybe they say it's graded so that you take it seriously, idk.

You can affect things, but it’s an illusion of an effect, because the ultimate result is the same. If you know that, the test or lesson, I think, becomes a different one than the one that was originally intended, similar to a test where you are forced to walk into a room to be greeted by people yelling, “Surprise! You failed!” If it’s such an open secret, my main question is whether Starfleet believes it’s teaching the same lesson as it was before people knew it was unwinnable, or whether the philosophy behind it has been adapted to take this additional factor into consideration.

Since Starfleet is so full of Badmirals and upper-level corruption, I suppose the lesson might be, partially, not to trust institutions blindly, including your own. I don’t know if that’s what they really intended.

In a way, Kirk really did Starfleet a favour by “beating” the test and reintroducing the element of hope for a solution into it. No wonder they gave him a commendation!

X

star trek heritage post (June 11th, 2021)

ds9 missed the chance to do an episode of the daily lives of the promenade merchants. quark and garak get into a disagreement when quark puts up an obnoxious new sign in front of the bar. garak declares it an eyesore that’s ruining business for everyone. the entire ep is them quipping at each other and seeing who can get their petition signed first. cut to crazy shenanigans of them making their case to a wide range of merchants with increasingly hilarious results. the number of signatures remains a tie until the klingon chef is all that remains. he sides with garak after garak says something that could either be a threat or a proposition for sex. the episode ends with quark taking down the sign, and he and garak commiserate over their shared businessman woes.

and idk maybe the b-plot is sisko and lwaxana switching bodies

quark learns about early 21st century mobile games and starts adding pop up ads and micro transactions to the holosuite programs to maximize profits but since hes one of the only capitalist establishments on the station all the ads are just come to quarks quarks is fun come to quarks dont walk run but theyre already at quarks

"middle aged women shouldn't participate in fandom" and you think it's teenagers that are writing those brilliant, incisive 100k fics of your favourite characters

Louder.

Okay but more than that. Especially for Star Trek fandom.

In the 60s when TOS came out it was middle aged women who literally invented fanzines to share their fanwork with the fandom. If I recall correctly, you would subscribe to it and it would came with mail. Or you would borrow it. Back then, Star Trek wasn’t considered as serious sci-fi and was considered as only for women, housewives to be exact. And they fucking owned it!

They were the ones who organised house gatherings to discuss the show and sometimes even actors would pay a visit. I am talking about actual golden age of the fandom. They shaped the fandom culture we now have and treasure.

It was middle aged women who kept records, archives for fan work to not disappear with time. We owe them so much for the vintage fan work that is still around. They are always there, writing for us, illustrating for us and keeping archives for generations to come.

Here are some photos from those gatherings and late Grandma Dee’s caption ( @spockslash ). May this be an occasion to remember her as well, who was a witness of those days and was kind enough to tell us about them! She was active in the fandom in her late age and helped keeping the memory of the fandom alive.

“These are Joanie Winston’s photos, I believe. That’s Joanie on the far left in the second row (first photo) and in the blue on the right, sitting on the couch with George (second photo). That last photo, of Leonard and Nichelle goofing around, is typical of the organizer’s room antics in the early seventies, when the cast were not “celebrities” we gazed at from afar. They hung out and could be just as silly as any of us.”

Middle aged women of fandoms fucking rock and I am ready to fistfight anyone who suggests otherwise.

Everyone else needs to get on Andrew Robinson’s level

season two episode one baybee patreon.com/sidetrek

gumroad.com/sidetrek

happy birthday to fuck or die!