[-] williams_482@startrek.website 2 points 5 days ago

Transporter clones appear to be vanishingly rare. We're aware of two (Thomas Riker and William Boimler), and the circumstances around Thomas Riker's existence were clearly unheard of to any of the people investigating. Clearly this is not a thing that transporters normally do, or are even capable of outside of extremely unusual circumstances.

It also seems pretty dystopian to require the insertion of artificial genetic markers to make a person more easily recognizable. Would we expect "normal" identical twins to be treated similarly? Or actual clones?

I think the larger lesson on this incident from Starfleet's perspective is that they need to beef up their internal security practices. Big shocker, that. Thomas Riker is neither the first nor last person to successfully impersonate a starfleet officer and cause major troubles in doing so, and most threat vectors can't be solved by preemptively identifying likely perpetrators (such as this likely very offended transporter clone) and modifying them specifically to make infiltration more difficult.

11

This is the Daystrom Institute Episode Analysis thread for Lower Decks 5x03 The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel.

Now that we’ve had a few days to digest the content of the latest episode, this thread is a place to dig a little deeper.

20

This is the Daystrom Institute Episode Analysis thread for Lower Decks 5x01 Dos Cerritos and 5x02 Shades of Green.

Now that we’ve had a few days to digest the content of the latest episode, this thread is a place to dig a little deeper.

10
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by williams_482@startrek.website to c/daystrominstitute@startrek.website

It's easy for us to understand that The Doctor is a sapient being.

After all, he acts like one! He's got a slew of odd personality quirks, balances irritating behavior with kindness and sympathy, behaves in a similarly slightly erratic manner as most of us flesh and blood creatures, and responds to difficulties with every appearance of genuine emotion. It's extremely easy for human audiences to look at the early seasons Voyager crew as bigoted for their slow acceptance of him as a "real" member of the crew, and react very harshly to later challenges to his personhood from people outside of the crew. It's not uncommon to see that behavior referenced as proof that 24th century people are no more "enlightened" than the obviously flawed people of today. And maybe they aren't; that's not my topic for today.

But the element I think that argument is missing is something these 24th century people have been exposed to all their lives, and we in 2024 have only begun to encounter: soulless, unconscious entities capable of impressive imitations of a real person.

24th century holograms appear as perfect copies of physical humans, with perfectly recognizable voices, normal human mannerisms, and convincingly human speech that responds naturally and automatically to nearly any expected or unexpected input. Any of us unknowingly tossed onto a 24th century holodeck would be totally convinced that these people projected around us and interacting with us are as real as anybody we meet today: nothing they do will clue us in to the fact that we're interacting with philosophical zombies.

Most of us first encountered something like this when ChatGPT and it's ilk suddenly got really good and easily accessible just a couple years ago. Suddenly a computer could create text that read like a human had written it, responding to context and occasionally interjecting very human behaviors (like making up answers to stuff it didn't know, and attempting to gaslight anyone who called it out for being wrong). A shocking number of modern people seem to genuinely believe that these bots show real consciousness (even some who really ought to know better). And it's not hard to understand why, when these bots can spoof every text-based indication of humanity that most of us look for.

People of the 24th century have spent their entire lives interacting with bots that smash the Turing Test even more thoroughly, and on every level imaginable. They can walk onto a holodeck and spin up a person from scratch who looks, smells, feels, and sounds completely real, who talks coherently and shows perfectly ordinary physical mannerisms. And they also know, with ironclad certainty, that these creations are no more human and no more alive than a tricorder or a hyperspanner. Just about all they have to definitively prove if someone is real or not lies in if they can exist outside the holodeck.

Enter The Doctor. He's very definitively a hologram. When first activated he's no more real than any other holographic creation, and only slowly grows in unanticipated ways which slowly convince his crew that he's become something more than that. This process is slow, but it's actually a bit of a surprise that it happens at all. Excepting Kes and Neelix, everyone on Voyager is quite accustomed to holographically generated people who act human but are purely a facade. That this very reasonable prejudice could be overcome at all should be seen as a triumph of empathy. It's not at all surprising that the people back home on Earth aren't buying it, and can't even be persuaded beyond a bare minimum threshold of plausible uncertainty.

I theorize that people who are growing up right now in an environment of very convincing AI chatbots will find it easier than we did to recognize holographic beings in Star Trek shows as sophisticated extensions of those internet bots, and will mirror the slow acceptance by Voyager's crew that The Doctor is something more than that.

So what does that mean for us? What do we do as more of our instinctive indicators of another person's humanity are effortlessly aped by machines? This is a difficulty which Star Trek shows had only begun to grapple with, but it's fertile ground for future episodes and undeniably a relevant question for our day.

34

Darwin Station was an explicitly Federation genetic research facility which was creating human children with telepathic and telekinetic powers, rapid physical maturation, and immensely powerful active immune systems (the last of which unwittingly killed the crew of a transport ship). This seems like precisely the sort of genetic engineering which has been banned in the Federation since it's conception, in regulations which are repeatedly referenced in TNG, DS9, and VOY. And yet, nobody even hints at there being an ethical, legal, or regulatory issue with what these researchers are doing. Dr. Pulaski even says of one augment child, without any apparent concern, "We could be looking at the future of humanity."

One would think that if one has a broad reaching policy against genetic augmentation principally motivated by the genetic wars, and by subsequent reinforcement of the idea that arbitrarily enhanced people are likely to be dangerously unstable, this sort of genetic program is exactly what that policy exists to prevent. And yet, there is it.

So, what happened here? Was this the product of a brief lull in Federation policy regarding genetic augmentation? A Federation research team going way off the rails, meeting an Enterprise crew feeling unusually liassez-faire about Federation law? Or something else?

1

Brentford's defense held up alright, but they really struggled to move the ball through midfield or spring any really dangerous looking counters against a team that has had shown some real defensive frailty this season. Of course it's hardly a shock that a squad missing Norgaard and Jensen was lacking in midfield technical ability, or that Saman Ghoddos might be imperfect defensively while moonlighting at left back.

All things considered, this could have gone much worse.

1

Domination.

1
Frank explains Hickey absence (www.brentfordfc.com)

The injuries just keep on coming, don't they?

Hickey is out with a hamstring injury until 2024, leaving the team with midfielder Vitaly Janelt as seemingly the only remaining option on the roster to play left back. I imagine his primary backup would be Ghoddos, or possibly Ben Mee? Mbeumo has been frequently deployed in that spot when chasing games, but surely he won't be used there under normal circumstances.

Hopefully Flekken's "dead leg" is a strictly temporary issue and he'll be back out there against Liverpool on Sunday. He hasn't exactly impressed this season, but Strakosha's only start of the season was disastrous and he was barely challenged in goal on Saturday (although his distribution was pretty good).

1
16

This is the Daystrom Institute Episode Analysis thread for Lower Decks 4x10 Old Friends, New Planets.

Now that we’ve had a few days to digest the content of the latest episode, this thread is a place to dig a little deeper.

1

Lucky to be a full 2-0 for sure, but Brentford were the better side.

[-] williams_482@startrek.website 22 points 1 year ago

This was an excellent finale (as all four of them have been, not at all a given with modern Trek or frankly modern television in general), and fully justifies the somewhat weaker setup episode before it.

"A paywall on a bomb?" might be the best joke this show has delivered in it's whole run. I don't often crack up while watching these episodes, but this one really got me. At the very least it's up there with "It's a bomb! You can only use it once!" from Wej Duj. I'm sensing a pattern.

In more typical lower key Lower Decks humor, Boimler and Rutherford arguing about if Locarno looks like Tom Paris was excellent.

I do wonder what the plan is with Tendi. We've seen supposed major shakeups like this dropped into previous finales, of course, with Boimler leaving the Cerritos for the Titan at the end of season one and Freeman getting arrested at the end of Season 2, which were quickly reverted in the first few episodes of the subsequent season. Odds are that's the play here. I hope so, because losing Tendi would suck. She's a delight.

Why was Boimler the acting captain when the command staff took off on the captain's yacht? There was a full Lieutenant right behind him on the bridge, and surely tens of others on the ship who are more senior and more qualified. A little bit of a main character boost there.

1

Archive.org link

It's great to see the club doing stuff like this.

1

A proper thrashing, and this time with points to match.

[-] williams_482@startrek.website 21 points 1 year ago

We see people enslaved in mines for lying about being a couple to get a discount at a restaurant!

I do wonder if that was actually an arranged bit of entertainment, with the (alleged) punishment trumped up for the sake of it. Ferengi do like to put on a show.

[-] williams_482@startrek.website 32 points 1 year ago

I feel compelled to note that being promoted from Ensign (O1) to Lieutenant Commander (O4) would be a triple promotion, skipping both Lieutenant Jr. Grade and Lieutenant.

[-] williams_482@startrek.website 24 points 1 year ago

There are relatively few direct references to Discovery in Lower Decks. More importantly, you'll enjoy Lower Decks even if you don't notice or "get" a handful of references.

Lower Decks isn't good because it references older shows, it's good because it's funny and you care about the characters. There are people out there watching it and loving it with minimal or no prior Trek knowledge.

[-] williams_482@startrek.website 46 points 1 year ago

Of course Kurn is victimized by bad kerning.

[-] williams_482@startrek.website 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Touching on the actual character moments for a bit here: the events of this episode do not reflect well on Chapel.

She'd been hitting on Spock literally since the beginning of the show, and openly pining after him for most of that time. Four episodes ago, she winds up breaking down in tears explaining to an alien telephone receptionist how much she cares about him. Two episodes ago she is extremely distraught when Boimler accidentally lets slip that Spock is famous in the future, and her relationship with him almost certainly will not last. And now, she gets into a three month fellowship that she didn't think she had much of a chance at, doesn't say a word to Spock until she has no other choice, and then busts out a (involuntary, but reflective of genuine emotion) musical number about how "free" she feels. What the hell.

We already know Chapel has some problems with commitment, but this is a whole 'nother level. Throwing away a relationship she spent most of this show obsessively wishing for, without any apparent consideration for Spock's feelings or non-breakup solutions to spending a couple months apart, is just wild. I'm sure the finale will touch on this with a little more nuance than a musical number was likely to give, but whatever else is said this is not a good look.

[-] williams_482@startrek.website 26 points 1 year ago

Well, the previously inexplicable "inject a bunch of drugs to fight Klingons" scene in the season opener has suddenly paid off.

I have little to say now except that this episode was a seriously heavy hitter. Just... wow. And ouch.

[-] williams_482@startrek.website 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I remain amazed that many people insist that T'Kuvma and company are irreconcilably different from the TNG era portrayals. These are big, carnivorous-looking aliens with prominent forehead ridges and significant individual variation in appearance. They're different in some small details, like the extra nostrils, but outside of the most extreme visually literalist stance, is it really that hard to square these guys against Chang, Martok, and Worf? Replace the shine and detail with a classic rubber mask, silicon makeup, and matte brown body paint in exactly the same head and body shape, stick them at a side table in Quarks circa S6 of DS9, and I challenge you to notice anything amiss.

What this rework did do was make them feel so much more alien, and so much more dangerous. They outright eat people, which was occasionally hinted at but is noted far more literally in Discovery, and very, very easy to believe looking at these guys. I wish they hadn't backpedalled so hard with a return to the 1980s makeup in SNW 2x01, because I would have loved to see these monsters chumming it up with Spock: that scene would immediately have been slightly more unsettling, bringing the audience closer to what Spock and his crew are likely feeling about their momentary drinking buddies, instead of the much more casual feel we got from Klingons who look just like our old friends from DS9. These guys are still dangerous aliens whose friendliness is tenuous and temporary; they would literally eat Spock if circumstances were slightly different. We shouldn't forget that.

[-] williams_482@startrek.website 52 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Poor Christine Chapel! Now she knows what the audience has always known: her relationship with Spock is ultimately doomed. Plus a delightful mix of guilt and fear that she could unwittingly cause Spock to never measure up to the vague but crucial future that Boimler mentioned to her in the turbolift, simply by trying to make the two of them happy.

That suuuuuucks.

[-] williams_482@startrek.website 28 points 1 year ago

You realize that ChatGPT has no concept of "true", right? It produces output which looks coherent and reasonable and tends to stumble into truthful statements on accident, by virtue of drawing from a dataset of people saying mostly true things. Of course, the bot is equally capable of spouting off outright lies in an equally convincing manner.

This is a very unreliable way to verify a surprising fact. I strongly recommend against it.

[-] williams_482@startrek.website 29 points 1 year ago

Much to my own surprise, I'm a complete sucker for this budding Spock/Chapel romance. I just want these two beautiful people to be happy together, damn it! We all know it's doomed, unfortunately, and I hope that whatever inevitably destroys it doesn't turn out to be too painful for the characters involved. Spock and Chapel are obviously not engaged in a romantic relationship in TOS, most obviously in Amok Time when such a pairing would have rendered the entire story trivial.

Someone mentioned in a previous thread that Spock's Pon Farr (seven years before Amok Time) is closing in. I was skeptical in that thread that they would choose to touch on it then, but the events of this episode do make that seem quite a bit more likely, if (again) increasingly difficult to square with Amok Time.

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