Star Trek: Lower Decks

I always figured the main characters were roughly the same age as the actors playing them, and that given the longer lifespans in the future it wouldn't be weird in the for people in their thirties to be in entry level jobs. Rutherford, Boimler, and Tendi all have colourful pasts (raisins are serious business) they put behind them when they joined the Cerritos, so I was fine with them being a bit older.

One of the TNG relaunch novels had a brief scene where a brand new ensign writes some algorithm that immensely speeds up a mission, and when Picard goes to praise her in person he finds out she's a little old lady/retired librarian that signed up for Starfleet to see the universe. There should be more Starfleet officers like that.

That's what the ship we've been seeing all season was? Trinar that didn't actually belong to him?

That's the one I'm wondering about, because when he was giving mariner the tour he spoke of it as if it were his property and design.

I assume he built the ship we were seeing all season since Freeman saw the plans for it in his ground base, but it turned out the ship wasn't actually doing much other than tractor beaming the other ships once their lower deckers disabled everything.

Hey, you of all people should know that black don't crack!

Modern sensibilities are written into modern tv shows and movies. Kids these days are not … “embracing” responsibility as young as we (boomers, gen Xers) were taught to. I’ve told both my boys to have fun in your 20s. Responsibility will be there waiting for you. You probably won’t live to retire, so have fun now.

If that trend continues, then I can see lower decks crews being in their late 20s/early 30s and Mariner could still be relatable to them in her later 30s.

I know I am not caught up with all of it, but isn't Mariner's age and mystery one of the running gags we are supposed to be discussing? I just flow with it because the writers have had so much time and ability to expose it given we know here mom and dad, and they do expose some of her past when needed, that this is a running gag?

Plus it makes sense Mariner ends up with the younger crew being she actively tries to avoid the bridge for lower decks. If she didn't maintain hjer youthful mystery federation kiss ups would have gotten on her case for not advancing like they always did with Riker always staying on the enterprise under pickard despite that being an awesome position for his personality.

Just from my own rubbings with military people, they do not seem to respect the person who does not have ambition to move upward in rank. Ity is one area I connect with Mariner being the recruiters back in high school actually avoided me because the NJROTC labelled me as bad for the military because I had no aspirations to move up in command. I get her position about liking her place on the lower decks and her problems with people being promoted out of her life. By my second year of NJROTC I dropped it because I already had my connections with friends, and they were all off to greater military things while I wanted to do my own special missions.

It is why I ended up doing much better in the more mercenary areas of paintball where I actually had ambition working within my team of people underneath out chosen commander. I never wanted to be the commander but loved doing the work and making things happen with the "Lower Decks." Years later I met up with some of the people who went to the military and most of them were surprised I did so much in life because I was the slacker type. Oddly, I ended up working with more officers as a training contractor earlier than they became officers.

The onlyu person who recognized this was the Major from the marine corps who was second fiddle running the NJROTC program. He couldn't ever promote me above the tryhards, but he did talk to me and never gave me slack about slacking because when I did things for the unit I made sure they got done. It is why I got a parking permit from the NJROTC pool as a junior without being enrolled because I picked up all my old friends for school so they could get in early for practice. I may have cut school after that, but I always ended up making sure they got in.

So I have finished with season 3 and will quickly assimilate season 4.

The show is awesome so far. I mean perfectly done for what it is. It is a joy to watch and every direction they go just makes trek so much cooler. Season 3 was epic. They made the fucking Packleds the big enemy. That is awesome. OMG I miss my old trek buddies from high school and paintball roleplaying because of this series. This is new and nostalgic greatness.

Ronald D. Moore was one of the writers of The First Duty where Locarno was introduced. I highly doubt he would have sued, considering he had just cowritten Generations and was balls deep in DS9 show running.

Voyager was a little fucked in that regard because part of what they filmed for season 1 was turned into the start of season 2. Also there were episodes like Tuvix that took place over the span of almost a month.

For a certain @Shirogayne who seems to be horribly confused.

This is a Kyubey. This is so much worse than a moopsey.



https://madoka.fandom.com/wiki/Kyubey

You should probably run away from both, but the Kyubey is supergenius level sentient with a perverse manipulative personality that is willing to sacrifice little girls by giving them wishes in order to harvest their energy when they have a psychotic break because humans are so fucked and the girls probably used their wishes on a human that will psychotically scar them. The Kyubey does this all for energy to combat the entropy of the universe because the psychotic emotional pain of human girls is somehow a fountain of free energy that their race has learned to cultivate.

Moopsey is bad. Kyubey is fucking bad ass on a whole different scale. Especially considering their power has the ability to rewrite the known universe if a human girl makes a wish so powerful that must happen by contract. A few bones being drank is in no way a comparison to the terrifying manipulation of the Kyubey.

Please keep the hentai discussion out of the animated Star Trek discussion.

TLDR version of every Terurune anime post.

"Anime is better than western animation!!! ".

My answer.
It was a general rule of thumb in the 90's, yes.
Now? You can't rely on it to be so, no.

Western animation has caught up, and there's been mounds and mounds of trash anime.
I'd say it's about balanced now.

That's literally all you needed to say.

I never watched Mounds and Mounds of Trash, but I heard the manga was better.

I thought that one was a hentai.

Or so I heard.

Anime is always better, but there is a reality that a generally cute thing that drink's bones is a little less terrifying and dangerous than an interdimensionalQ level god that powers it's existence off of psychotically torturing humans so thaty it can cause teenage girls to snap and turn into demons to harvest their psychic pain because it is the sweetest in all of existence is a bit more sinister than something you could put in a zoo cage.

Not to mention Mariner is good at fighting, but I am pretty sure that she would be generally killed pretty fast in a witches lair, or in a gunfight involving mami or momoka since both of them have time stop and speed abilities along with pussies of holding which can store thousands of guns of various sizes. Mariner is also greedy and thinks little about the consequences of her actions which means she would probably make a really quick wish that would result in some terrible consequences and weak magical girl powers. It would depenmd on who is writing the episode.

Besides, Kyubey just eats it's own dead carcass leaving little for the moopsey to consume in a direct competition.

Anime always wins. It ios the borg of the animation world. If you come up with something, anime simply assimilates it and makes it better through combining it with their own cultural awesomeness. Of course there is more shit anime because there is just simply more anime in general because anime animators are all slaves who work far longer and on more projects at a time than disney animators. Even the slaves of disneycorp would die in a day if asked to work the same hours and quality of a Japanese animator;. Studio ghibli doesn't let death be an escape for their animators like Disney does. Seriously, the whole spirited away universe was actually the prison where they keep the spirits of the dead to force them to work forever due to a billion year contract that LRH would consider over the top.

The Borg are terifying, but they are just based off of Sanrio. Hello Kitty doies not alolow you to have time to process you assimilation into her army. We just simply do it. Your misery will end when she comes for you, or we will just turn you into hello kitty brand human flavored cat treats. What do you think Aggretsuko is actually about? That is what the company does.

Yes, lower decks is very good for american animation, and it was an awesome parody series for Trek. However, this is not even close to good on the anime scale. Actually, it is a poor and shallow copy of good parody animne series.

In the 90s there was an anim,e manga and series called Martian Successor Nadesiko. There is evidence that lower decks is a more shallow rip off of that series. Clearly modern american animation is influenced to step it up by anime series which have much more adult appeal. However, there are elements of MSD that were done before.

The main character: The main character of MSD was a guy who only wanted to be a cook and was thrust into the whole pilot thing because of elements of his past. A large portion of the plot is the lower decks maintenance people of the Nadesiko who are quirky and keep the ship going throughout the series.

The whole series of the nadesico is a parody of mech series where the humor is much more funny if you know of other mech series like you need to know trek to get a lot oif the references. The only difference is MSD doesn't just use one popular franchise and skewers multiple franchises with nerdy references including a progression of tech that imitates the timeline of tech progression in multiple series as MSD progresses.

As for being more advanced, the nadesiko flashback episode created a in series anime to have the crew addicted to and they reversed that whole manga to watching the Nadesiko crew for the recap episode.

I also must say I was dissapointed they didn't have the courage to stay dead shaxs like the Nadesiko did Guy. In the third episode the Nadesiko took Guy out and instead of bringing him back got use out of the death for the rest of the series.

I could go down this to a much deeper thing, but this is just one 1990's series that did things like this. The parody level of anime is far beyond this, and this is your generic parody level of multiple series that come out quarterly in anime today. Every single season there is a good parody series in anime. Yes, there is a ton of crap that comes out because every season there are over 20 animated series being done. Imagine if all netflix did was animated series, and you would have the anime world. There is a reason why it took me four fucking seasons to even start on lower decks. There is also a reason I dropped being a full on trak nerd ion the 90s.

In the end this series was extremely enjoyable and very well produced. It was not just a decent parody series but it also had a great dramatic ploty and tons of good references. That is just a day ending in y in the anime world. As for tentacle rape being just a hentai thing, nope it is in one of their moste beloved children's series along with collectable dildos, gay lovers, lesbian stalkers, and some pretty interesting incest angles. This is what their kids wade through. America has to worry about mothers for liberty sterilizing everything. Maybe if we stepped the fuck up and removed our christian overlords we could catch the fuck up with japan. Just saying, the have a fucking penis festival over here and we can't deal with some fucking teachers mentioning drag queens. Don't blame me because we lose at animation when we have republicans banning books because they were written by a person with the word gay in their name.

Back onto topic because I was wondering if my eye was correct and anyone else noticed this.

In the episode where Boimler got his first command and was depowering the bunker on the planet while Freeman was trying to fix the planetary computer management system. Was that bunker meant to be designed a lot like the power bunker from Endor in RotJ? It just seemed like some of the desighn of that bunker was straight out of the original 3 star wars.

Also, weren't there some alien designs taken out of SW? I am thinking about one of the aliens that seemed to be a recreation of the pig nosed guy at the bar on Tatoine from A New hope?

Pardon me if this has been hashed out before, I admittedly am catching up and have not had time to wade through 80+ pages of already happened convo.

Yep, those Star Wars references are deliberate.

As for all you wannabe geeks there is one series america has made that actually competes with anime on sci fi drama and parody levels. It might even be the best. That is Futurama. It has multiple comedy levels from dumbass toi supergenius. It has a dramatic and love plot that rivals serious series. It can do multiple animation styles. It goes for so many seasons and is still going.

I am saddened I have to argue with myself because none of you mentioned the obvious powerhouse of american greatness.

Yeah, tou toally lose nerd points for forgetting about futurama when it was clearly the obvious heavyweight. The Leela Fry Romance alone is probably number one. The fucking mathmatic easter eggs, and it's grasp of every genre out there. I am pretty sure anime copies Futurama. There are probably Japanese people copsplaying ziodberg at anime cons.

You of all fucking people missed that. I am going to go off to my solitary nerd refuge where I will die alone because no one understands me.

BTW this is not me being angry, this is me nerding the fuck out on two awesome genre changing series with awesome backstory and creators that every geek should see. One of the reasons I am promoting Puella magical modka like this is because it is great and a genre defining anime that you can catch up on with the three movies and do not need to see the episodes. It goes down some adult multiverse areas and has some amazing artwork and I recommend it for anyone interested in sci fi. It is not a billion episode and the movie form covers all the awesome in 7 hours so a binge watch is easy.

Anyway, just to get this straight Modoka is to the anime magical girl genre what TOS was to the sci fi genre. Yup, thaty important of a shift. Kyubey is the Q of TNG to the modoka series. Up until Modoka the magical girl mascot, the adorable pokemon that gifts the girl powers and escorts her through her adventures, was pretty much made to be a good part of the magical girl experience, and had only been in small conflict with the magical girl as a joke in parody. Kyubey changed everything. Kyubey's level of manipulation and uncaring exploitation of humans and magical girls was so insane it corrupted the entire genre of magical girls by showing there could be a darkside of murder and insanity to explore.

Kyubey was so horrible the race fucked up the creators of magical girl anime, and probably a few outside the genre too.

@Shirogayne is a fan of both anime and Trek, and nereds to see the modoka series now. It is that important and good that she has to drop everything and see it. This is also some great Yuri shit as there are no male imprtant characters in Modoka. This is the top level anime of ship for girls out there. The only male characters that are in there are the love interest of one of the magical girls that is just there to fuck her up, and modoka's dad and brother who seem to be there just to say she isn't orphaned.

Too all people, Moopsey is awesome and will soon become a part of my plush collection to which I will attack others with at conventions to suck their bones. However, there is a super nerd level conversation around PMM because Kyubey and the whole series is that defining and revolutionary. You would never say Moopsey is anything but a fun alien joke that might come back later, but it is not defining of Trek at all. Kyubey is genre changing.

So if you are wondfering why my inner nerd has to argue with this, it is not because anime is better than american animation. It is because the comparison was way the fuck off and nerds should pop over to watch Puella Magical Modoka as a series of important awesome that is right up their alley on relevance and quality. This is not some trash anime you can just throw out. This is right under bebop and akira for importance.

Good to know my nerd discussion shutdown cannons still work.

This is not a WF thing. It is a skill I have mastered since the dark times before the internet. I used to stop OG Kirk vs Pickard discussions at trek cons in NYC.

Having lived a life of excessive high functioning nerd activity I have developed certain mental conditions you little brains would have no concept of. That includes multiple personalities and the ability to converse with myself. It also includes amusing myself with jokes only I get and long expositional pontificating on topics like star trek where everyone goes the fuck away.

If you are wondering what the fuck I am talking about you really only had a referential laugh at the humor in this series rather than truly understanding and identifying with a few of the main lower decks characters. Please do go back to your big bang theory and star wars discussion where you fucking belong Mr. Peter Griffon of WF.

I already watched Madoka Magica back in 2015

In fact, I made the Kyubey/Moopsy comparison about five pages ago and tagged you in it @Tererune

In the caste system of nerdom, anime geeks are definitely the Dalits.

I misread that as Daleks... and you will be exterminated! EXTERMINATE! Exterminate!