scanning for life-signs

Yeah, and I’ve never figured out the security feature that makes scanning for life-signs more effective when you sign a little song to the computer. But sometimes I guess it’s just more urgent to know, little life signs, where are you?

That’s pretty much exactly how it seems to me. I guess I understand how American fans who were born after 9/11 and Facebook might have a different perspective, because privacy means something different now–but it’s cognitive empathy, which means I understand their feelings, not the sympathetic empathy of someone who shares it.

Ironically, I learned these cognitive empathy skills from Captain Picard, and still consider TNG possibly the best way to expose young people to the skill. :-)

Section 31 were created as the bad guys! Genocidal maniacs who Sisko and crew fought against every step of the way.

And I don’t use the phrase “genocidal maniacs” lightly, but they were literally xenocidal and Sloane was, as a spy, less of an Ian Fleming James Bond type and more of a John le Carré type—an actual maniac in the piece of human wreckage who’s been turned violent and crazy by the stress of war.

(I really wish his end had come at Sisko’s hands, and involved contrasting Sisko’s actions in Pale Moonlight with Sloan and 31’s degeneration in to xenophobic crimes of extermination, and how both shared the same origin but ended up in very different places.

Isn’t there a version of Superman where he lands in Siberia instead of Saskatchewan and ends up a good Soviet citizen?

I don’t know what the most similar novel to The Neverending Sacrifice might be, but I think the exact opposite is probably the 1970s novels satirizing the British Raj called The Flashman Papers. They are incredibly funny, highly offensive, beautiful assaults on the landed gentry, set during one of the most incompetent, badly failed military expeditions to Afghanistan in the history of badly failed military expeditions to Afghanistan–the British one.

No, not the American one with British help–the actual British one, from way back in the seventeenth century.

If the Leif Ericson class didn’t exist, how could it be in the handbook??!

“Robbie McDunc”? Really? ¹

Billups as the masked pilot surprised me. I expected it to be Locarno.

I thought that was a well-executed fake-out, and enjoyed the heck out of it. I thought it really made the B-plot work–Freeman is very rarely at her best when around Mariner, which means we see her screw up a lot, so I was very happy to get a reminder that she’s the sort of officer Starfleet would give a command to.

“Robbie McDunc”? Really? ²

1: see 2.

2: it's a question worth repeating.

Lower Decks has as much (more even) blatant fan service as Picard season 3, although because it is a comedy I find it more forgivable and less grating than I did in the other show.

Agree with your agreement here. If I unloaded my feelings about all the fanboy moments in Terry’s Picard, it would actually be unpleasant to read…so I won’t. How about I just say that you’re super right about Sito Jaxa, too. I thought the connection to that episode was very sweet, and really enjoyed hearing Mariner talk about how much the Dominion War sucked, too. It made sense to me that she’d be more comfortable getting that out with a stranger than her friends, at least when I think about the guys I was in the Navy with.

Oh, man, I totally missed this when I watched the episode…I remember bumping a little when I heard the line “I was betrayed by my crew,” but just being confused instead of grasping the implications. The whole thing makes way more sense now. Thank you for spelling it out for me!

I’m so glad StarTrek.website is here for this kind of thing–it made my life better today!

The Bynar lower decks are a fun place–the animators did a great job communicating some casual insults on a foundation of deep affection with just a few facial expressions. I bet the Cerritos could face the bad guys from Buffy’s Hush easily enough.

Well, that’s a decision you’ll have to make for yourself. I happen to have grown up on DS9, and in my heart there’s not much room for Worf’s Wacky Adventures on Risa; people a couple years older than me tend to have performed some personal, private retconning of at least one episode of TNG’s first season–if not more. And I have just finished the novel “Spock’s World,” and realized I wish I’d read it years ago and some of the thing’s Diane Carey wrote in that exceptional book are better than the contradictory idea’s Paramount officially introduced in later media.

What season 2 of Picard means to the producers is far less important than what it means to you–and if it inspires you to go back and watch TNG, you may want to jump straight to Season 2 of that show, as well.

I have been working under the assumption that the unknown vessel is Peanut Hamper. Because that seems like a comedic call back. But Lower Decks has a history of surprising me!

Not to mention my favorite work of Tellerite cinema.

Err, wrong IP there, @beefcat. “The Historical Documents” isn’t from Star Trek, it’s from BSG.

(I also have a soft spot for parts of Picard season 1)

I actually like that this is a favorite episode thread, because season one of Picard has “Nepenthe,” which I come back to again and again. I love how Troi is the central character of that episode and the primary mover of the whole plot. It’s the crowning moment for any non-titular TNG character in all of Picard, and superior to anything in S3!

I spent over a decade addicted to meth, and in my experience, that green slime ain’t meth.