Random Star Trek discussion

Did anyone else here ever visit the Trek message board on AOL?

Probably one of my first exposures to the internet. I remember reading spoilers for the upcoming ‘Star Trek: First Contact’

Eventually that lead me to Jammer’s Star Trek reviews and from there to TrekBBS.

The good old days when Voyager fans and DS9 fans clashed and battled over what was the better successor to TNG.

That's where I started out. The old Trek message boards, where the biggest arguments were based around whether Kirk should be resurrected and every other poster had "BBK!" (Bring Back Kirk) in their sig line. Because the disrespectful way they offed Kirk was going to destroy the franchise.
The more things change...

"Unatural Selection" Isn't this just a remix of "The Deadly Years", but with a slightly better concept?

"Unnatural Selection" is more about the dangers of diddling with DNA.
Which always made me wonder; why weren't these assholes screamed at by the Federation in the same way as Bashir's parents?
Why did they get a loophole?

Same with "The Masterpiece Society."

I think the idea was they were breeding superior humans from embryos, rather than editing the existing DNA. But that sounds CLOSER to Khan and the augments and oh no I've gone cross-eyed.

Nope, they explicitly left Earth around the time of Khan and weren't PART of the Federation.

Though why Picard etc didn't inform Hannah Bates and the others who wanted to leave that they would be subject to certain rules in Federation society is another question. Perhaps because despite being "perfect" for their societal roles, none of the colonists seemed to be explicitly superhuman in the way Khan or even Bashir were?

I think I was led to TBBS' by googling "Star Trek humor" and being led to Zeke's Five Minute Voyager site, and then to TrekNation, which hosted his Five Minute Enterprise posts.

As ENT was deficient on anything particularly weighty to get fans debating forever, much of what the nerds fought over was whether T'Pol should be with Tucker or Archer, and the latter group just became bitter trolls after season four definitively answered that question.

I do remember getting got with that prank @$corp and company pulled saying Jolene Blalock was quitting the show and writing a letter to her that I mailed off before logging on to see it was debunked. Great times.

Yep. I started out on a bunch of little places that were wiped out in the Paramount fan website wars of 1997-1999, and then moved on to TrekPlanet, and then TrekBBS in 2001. I miss those days. Everything just kind of feels homogenized and colorless these days.

"The Gift".

Oh yeah; Seven was supposed to outgrow the need for the alcove, but she never did.
On Voyager, anyway. They kept finding plot things to do with the alcove.
She's free of it by Picard though.

Oh yeah, there was a user on Bluesky posting old Trek Usenet threads recently and I think the Viacom/MSN stuff threw her for a loop. Figures they'd be dicks about it all.

Look, they paid hella money for that set and they were gonna damn well use it!

Awfully convenient that Voyager never got around to stripping away the other alcoves so they had a bunch for those Borg kiddos they rescue in season 6 or whenever

5MV was actually the first place I ever chatted or registered an account, after we got DSL and I felt like I could keep up a conversation without AwOL constantly dropping the connection. Met KJ there and went on to TrekBBS and other sites from there.

The colonists in Masterpiece Society were just barely genetically engineered through selective breeding, but not genetically enhanced. More akin to "purebred" dogs than Augments.

Memory Alpha:
It is explained to Commander Riker, CounselorTroi and Lieutenant CommanderLa Forge that this is a genetically-engineered society; their ancestors came from Earth to create a perfect society, believing that through controlled procreation they could create people without flaws and those people would build a paradise.

Janeway wanted to keep Seven subjugated. She's chattel in the cargo hold after all.

For some reason the first place I went to on 9/11 to talk about it was TrekBBS.

Same, though not so much day-of because I was working. A lot of people were concerned about native New Yorker @Lt. Mewa.

Somebody made this and calls it the B-52 Exofortress.

"Vortex".

Odo gets knocked out by a falling rock.
...how?
He doesn't have organs, bones, or a central nervous system.
He's basically an animated ballistic gel dummy.

“Out of Time” Phlox is in this movie.

That, and in "Way of the Warrior" he looks genuinely worried when a Klingon is rushing him with a bat'leth until Bashir "saves" him with a Phaser. So tell me, what exactly was a Klingon going to do to Odo with a sword?
At least they raised how silly that was by Season 7, when Laas just laughed it off before gutting the idiot.

Well, the blood test thing showed that bits of a changeling separated from the main body revert to liquid form - were we ever showed that they could reintegrate them? Odo did that trick where he pretended to be drinking from a glass that was actually part of him (as was the drink) but never let go of it in that scene as far as I recall?

So getting an arm lopped off might cause some temporary issues, even if not fatal (needs to reabsorb sufficient silicate to restore mass?).

As for the knock-out rocks... perhaps heavy impacts just overload a changeling's physical senses if they aren't expecting them? There's no injury, but a systemic shock that stuns them. Of course, he should have reverted to goo in that case.

That's if you want to fanwank it, the real reason of course is that the writers messed up/weren't sure about how superpowered they wanted Odo to be. See also the mirror universe ep where Mirror Odo is exploded by a single phaser shot, but in a later ep the Martok changeling takes 20-30 disruptor hits whilst staying fairly intact (though still dead).

I think if a changeling is fast enough to change their physical structure quickly or to create hybrid modes (like Laas) they'd be closer to invulnerable, but if they're less experienced they're going to be hampered by the limitations of the form they chose. Odo turns himself into a piece of paper, he can be ripped in half if he doesn't react fast enough. Odo turns himself into a humanoid with most of the requisite humanoid parts, those parts are going to be vulnerable to injury so long as he retains that shape.

Oh snap, are those Fivers still around somewhere?

Porque no los dos?

Is there any other way to read him based on the actual text of the episode? I know the advertising at the time was basically "This is the guy Kirk idolized" but everything about him was about him trying to undo the injustice he thought his dad suffered. It seemed to me that TPTB were consciously trying to parallel him and W, another failson.

I want to say that Picard S3 showed that changelings can reintegrate severed parts of themselves, but a) my memory may not be the best on that front and b) I don't know if I would consider that season much of an authority on changelings.

I also think Odo being worried can be chalked up to him kinda sucking at being a changeling and not really knowing much about his skills or limits.

For PIC, anything they days about Changelings can be ignored because they were altered by Section 31.
And yes, there are a lot of ways to explain things like Odo getting knocked out or being afraid of a bat'leth. Finding explanations for plot holes is fun, I think.