"Sure, The Borg have been a bit of a problem. Their tendency toward mass assimilation and the stripping of individuality and personal freedom doesn’t exactly jibe with our idea of what makes a great leader. But let’s be honest. Kathryn Janeway hasn’t been perfect."

I quit as the top mod of /r/StarTrek in 2021 in protest against Reddit's platforming of vaccine disinformation subreddits. Then in 2023 during the API protest, myself and several of the remaining mods (including mods from /r/Risa and /r/DaystromInstitute) started StarTrek.website.

The consensus I've seen on Lemmy has been largely "we don't need to spread the word about our open platforms because Reddit will do something stupid again and there will be another protest and Lemmy will be promoted there". So I hope we can take this as a lesson that we can't rely on platforms being shitty in order to switch society over to open standards. We need to do our best to make Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed good as well as known.

For most of this episode I thought it was a good (if a bit on-the-nose) commentary about our societal distraction sickness and everyone living literally in a bubble. The hero was someone who literally able to walk on his own two legs, etc. But once they went underground everything kind of went loopy?

Where did the slug monsters come from? The idea that they came from "outside the (city's) bubble" kind of reinforced the idea that it's dangerous to hide from what's scary. But then we see the homeworld was also eaten destroyed by the same slug-monsters? If the slugs are controlled or created by the dots, are we meant to understand that the people of the home world are similarly walking around in bubbles? If so, then why does Finetime exist? The whole premise of an off-world "perfect" colony seemed to imply they were providing some service to the home-worlders beyond their 2 hours of "work". Why would a society of people living in bubbles send their youth to a faraway planet?

Then we see that the dots are capable of quickly killing the inhabitants. So where did the slug monsters come from? Why did the dots not just kill zippoty zop? Were the slugs obeying the dots alphabetical order parameters? Were they created by the dots?

At this point I was like "whatever it's Doctor Who, the plots are never as consistent as the vibes!" But then the vibes changed completely when it's revealed everyone is racist?!

My best guess is that this is some bungled way of comparing the people of Finetime to our modern social problem with radicalization on social media, like "look beyond yourself man" but that feels a bit of a stretch. I feel like I'm missing something big here!

!@ValueSubtracted@mstdn.ca

Until Disco S3, "Living witness" was the furthest future we had seen in Star Trek. But Academy takes place after Discovery. At the end of "Living Witness" the Doctor is described as heading towards Earth.

Assuming the burn didn't get them, it's entirely possible two EMHs are surviving in Discovery's time. I think it would be a fun twist if it wasn't the EMH we expect!

This was mentioned elsewhere but I thought it was cool enough to deserve it's own post. The artist is Dusty Abell and they are selling copies on their website here: https://www.dustyabell.com/products/star-trek-doctor-who-friendship-is-universal-print