Persistent, Niggling Questions

[Nate the Great]

PNQ: If you could take any five side characters from TOS or TNG and promote them to regulars in other (imaginary) spinoffs like O'Brien, which ones?

Note One: No DS9 because all of the characters got the exposure they needed, there really weren't any who were so shortchanged that there were tons of unexplored possible storylines.
Note Two: No VOY because there really aren't any such candidates. Half of the main characters were shortchanged, so what's left? Samantha Wildman, Carey, and Hogan?
Note Three: No ENT because I don't know enough about the subtleties of the characters as written to speculate. The only one that even vaguely springs to mind is that MACO that had tension with Trip, who I had to look up-->Amanda Cole.

My list:
1. Ro Laren: Even putting aside the Kira role drama, she had the backstory and personality to carry a show week to week. Especially if you built in a long-term romantic subplot (and I mean way longer than Torres and Paris) and a position where she had to be a leader and teacher. While Security Chief seems like an obvious position, Command would be a bigger challenge. Could you mold her to be a good first officer?
2. Kevin Riley: His conduct under polywater intoxication shouldn't be held against him. Certainly he couldn't be the captain, but he could provide a new spin on a Tom Paris-like character, as Security Chief or something.
3. Peter Kirk: What would life be like as the nephew of a living legend? What if he chose to avoid Starfleet, joining a crew as a civilian advisor?
4. James Moriarty: Now that Voyager has returned and the specs for the mobile emitter are available, he and the Countess Regina can be retrieved from their holocube. What if there was a newly-encountered species that was much like Victorian Europe, where a specialist would be necessary to understand them? How would he interact with the Ferengi?
5. Sela: A series based around a joint Romulan/Federation mission in deep space. Perhaps there's a newly-discovered area in Romulan space that only a Federation starship can reach, and Sela believes that she can manipulate said starship into finding new resources and subjects for the Empire. She comes into conflict with the Starfleet crew who seek friendship with new species.

[Nate the Great]

Wandering around TVTropes again...

"Plenty of people who have never watched Star Trek still assume the ship's name is the Star Trek. Casual fans who only watched the original series or perhaps TNG believe that the Defiant (from Deep Space Nine) and Voyager are called Enterprise. After all, aren't all the ships on Star Trek called that?"

PNQ: Have you ever known anyone to make either of these mistakes?

[Nate the Great]

PNQ1: Would anyone be interested in a "Nate watches Babylon 5 for the first time in 20 years, seeing if it's really as good as everyone says" thread?

I would set a strict limit on the amount of complaining that I can do, but I would be allowed to ask questions to see how long it takes for them to be answered.

Yes, this is inspired by SFDebris' reviews of the show. He does his best, but it still seems like "the viewer is held responsible for every word said in every episode since the beginning." I want to be proven wrong, I really do.

PNQ2: How do the B5 fans out there feel about the essential episode lists on this page?

There's the minimum list of two movies and 60 episodes, with 17 more recommended. Should I do 60+2M, 77+2M, or just give up and do all 110+6M? I don't care about Crusade in the slightest.

[Nate the Great]

Every so often I do a Gotham Girls marathon. (If you watch the playlist, take note that Season 2, Episode 1 is out of order).

The reactions seem to fall along generational lines. Older people toward the top, younger people toward the bottom:

1. Oh, this is so great, I remember when they were made fifteen years ago!
2. I love the DCAU voices, but the animation could be better.
3. Ugh! Ugly Flash animation! How can anyone enjoy this?

PNQ: Why do some people apply modern technological standards to older products that didn't have said technology available?

You know what I mean. Silent movies gave way to sound, some people thought that all silent movies were worthless and boring. Black and white gave way to color, some people thought all black and white movies were worthless and boring. SD gives way to HD, some people thought all SD movies were worthless and boring. It'll happen again when glasses-free 3D is perfected, count on it.

Gotham Girls was made in 2000-2002, of course the animation looks bad. It was the age of dialup, anything better would've taken forever to download. Heck, one of the first episodes had to be split into two files because it committed the unforgivable sin of being more than three minutes long!

This is the abridged version of the lecture that I had typed up. I was clearly veering off into "young whippersnappers these days" territory.

[Flying Gremlin]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

PNQ: Have you ever known anyone to make either of these mistakes?

Oh yes. I mostly pity those people that make mistakes of that calibre.

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

PNQ1: Would anyone be interested in a "Nate watches Babylon 5 for the first time in 20 years, seeing if it's really as good as everyone says" thread?

I would, on one condition: relinquish one of the other review things for someone else to do. I would gladly take on TOS or TNG if you wanted to.

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

PNQ2: How do the B5 fans out there feel about the essential episode lists on this page?

The avalanche has already started; it is too late for the pebbles to vote.

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

PNQ: Why do some people apply modern technological standards to older products that didn't have said technology available?

There is always that general group that says "newer is better", with varying rates of truth to the matter.

When I was interviewing for one place to be a network admin, one of the things the interviewer told me was that there was this particular person whom thought all backups should be done on CDs or DVDs because they were newer than all other backup media at the time. If you know anything about server data storage, you'll know how false this is: tape backups are still the way to go in any data center environment, as they can withstand a lot more punishment than any other media plus have the advantage of using less room for more storage and being rewriteable.

[Nate the Great]

Technically I never called dibs on the TOS episodes, it's just that no one else seemed like they were going to do them on the anniversary dates. No one even said "Nate, give me half a day to do it first." If you want to cover a TOS or TNG episode, be my guest.

I take it you're of the mindset that I should just do all B5 episodes.

[Flying Gremlin]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

I take it you're of the mindset that I should just do all B5 episodes.

As I seem to be the only one responding, my statement was more pointing out that you seem to have made up your mind on the subject and it seems to be too late to give us (or me in this case, unless people are feeding you opinions in another way) the choice in the matter.

A Kosh quote that actually works for the context in which it was intended. What are the odds.

[Nate the Great]

I'm not sure where the miscommunication was. 110 episodes and six movies is quite the commitment. If enough people think that all of them are essential, so be it, but the shorter lists were made for a reason.

I specifically looked up a list of what people thought were the essential episodes. A lot of shows, even the continuity-heavy ones, have episodes that are essentially meaningless when it comes to the overarching plot. For example, "Move Along Home" might be a bit of fun, but it hardly ties into any of DS9's big plots (Dominion, Cardassia, Bajor, etc.) It could be skipped and not be missed since nothing from it will be referenced later.

So I really am asking for opinions vis-a-vis the three possible lists.

[Flying Gremlin]

All right, then. IMHO, all or nothing, for three reasons - two personal, one more logical.

First, I'm a little bit of a completionist, which is actually part of the reason why I asked Zeke for a VOY episode to Five first. If you're going to do something, might as well get it all in, right?

Second, B5 is a second love of mine; I preferred B5 more than DS9 when it first aired in the 90s, and I would love to see if it stands up to the test of time. It's not on any streaming service in Canada that I have access to right now, so this would be the second best thing for me.

Third, I know B5 has a list of "essential episodes", but ignoring those "non-essential episodes" is ignoring character development. In those, you see great moral dilemmas, inner workings of the station proper, and character development. Using the first season as an example, the Doctor Franklin vehicle "Believers" comes to light, as that doesn't really contribute to the arc, but is an incredibly good episode... that now that I think of it, was ripped off wholly by one of my favorite Trek novel writers. DAMN YOU PETER DAVID!

[Nate the Great]

So I'm thinking about Voyager's variable geometry pylons again...

PNQ: What's the purpose of these things again?

I mean, it's not like the angle gradually increases or decreases as warp speed increases (angle X for Warp 1, angle Y for Warp 2, etc.), it's just zero degrees for impulse speeds (i.e. no warp field present) and thirty degrees or so for warp speeds (i.e. a warp field is present).

Furthermore, why is there a specific angle for impulse speeds anyway? It's not like you really need to worry about the coefficient of drag in space after all.

And while we're at it, supposedly these things were in response to the events of "Force of Nature" and the subsequent warp speed limit. My response to the response is...so what? We are consistently shown that the Delta Quadrant is sparser in terms of populated planets, interplanetary governments, and warp-capable ships in general than the Alpha Quadrant. Less warp traffic means Voyager will hardly be the domino that sets off a chain reaction of rifts and destroy subspace.

[Flying Gremlin]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

PNQ: What's the purpose of these things again?

I mean, it's not like the angle gradually increases or decreases as warp speed increases (angle X for Warp 1, angle Y for Warp 2, etc.), it's just zero degrees for impulse speeds (i.e. no warp field present) and thirty degrees or so for warp speeds (i.e. a warp field is present).

Furthermore, why is there a specific angle for impulse speeds anyway? It's not like you really need to worry about the coefficient of drag in space after all.

And while we're at it, supposedly these things were in response to the events of "Force of Nature" and the subsequent warp speed limit. My response to the response is...so what? We are consistently shown that the Delta Quadrant is sparser in terms of populated planets, interplanetary governments, and warp-capable ships in general than the Alpha Quadrant. Less warp traffic means Voyager will hardly be the domino that sets off a chain reaction of rifts and destroy subspace.

The treknobabble argument is that a combination of re-engineered warp coils and an elongated Z-axis either reduced or completely eliminated the environmental damage that was taking place. The Intrepid class' variable geometry is the design's way of achieving this as one of the first classes that had this fix implemented in this small of a package. Also, the impulse engines are on the nacelle pylons, so returning them to the 0 degree angle is most likely for efficient impulse flight and maneuverability. This is also why you see only elongated saucer sections from Starfleet from that point forward, none of that round business on-screen from newer ship designs. (At least, I think that's how the thing worked. Been a while since I was immersed in Trek-engineering.)

The real reason is probably Rule of Cool.

[Nate the Great]

I never did understand the impulse engines on the pylons. At sublight speeds standard Newtonian physics apply, right? Therefore you want the engines as close to the center of mass of the ship (or rather, the horizontal plane running through said center of mass) as possible, right? That's what the Enterprise-D did.

But Voyager? If you want the impulse engines to be centrally located, you'd want the pylons up at an angle!

Furthermore, when the impulse engines are on the pylons all of the stresses from the engines are going through the hinges!

[Nate the Great]

So I'm in the "Han Shot First" camp, or more precisely, the "Han Was the Only One Who Shot" camp.

PNQ: Opinions?

What annoys me is George Lucas' recent assertion that...

The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn't. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down.

How is Solo shooting Greedo a cold-blooded kill? He says that he has the money that he owes Jabba. Greedo says that he doesn't care; he'd rather kill Han. I call that a death threat, therefore even if he's the only one who shot this is still self-defense.

The Legal Geeks weigh in on the matter.

[NAHTMMM]

"a little wider shot" = Greedo shot originally, too, honest, you just didn't see it.

We have ears, George. We can tell the difference between one blaster shot and two.

[NAHTMMM]

I seem to have missed this one:

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

PNQ: If you could take any five side characters from TOS or TNG and promote them to regulars in other (imaginary) spinoffs like O'Brien, which ones?

1. Harry Mudd
2. Sela
3. A tribble is a tribble, of course, of course . . .
4. Amanda (probably a prequel of her adapting to Vulcan society)
5. Pike (prequels ahoy)

[Nate the Great]

Over at the Straight Dope forum the following question is being debated quite fiercely:

PNQ: Are Reese's Peanut Butter Cups a candy bar?

Full disclosure, I love just about anything with "Reese's" on it.

Wikipedia doesn't use the term "candy bar" anywhere in the article to refer to the original cups. Futhermore their article on candy bars specifies a bar shape.

Me? No, it's not. "Bar" has a quite specific definition in this case: a roughly prismatic piece of candy in a wrapper. Usually covered in chocolate, not always. Just because things like peanut butter cups, Starburst, Rolos, Necca Wafers, and such are sold in wrappers next to the candy bars doesn't make them candy bars, just another sort of candy.

[Flying Gremlin]

I don't care, peanut butter is gross.

(I am the one person on this planet that cannot stand the taste of peanuts.)

[Nate the Great]

Get out the giant scales and a duck!

[Nate the Great]

So MovieBob made a video recently where he poked fun at all of the different pronounciations Mr. Mxyzptlk has gotten over the years...

PNQ: How do you pronounce it? (YouTube compilation of various versions here)

I tend toward the shorter "mix-il-plik", even though I know that's not canon unless you're talking Superfriends (and I never even watched that show until I was an adult!). It's just easier for me to say. Alternatives like "mix-il-pittle-ik", "mix-is-pittle-ik", "mix-yes-pit-lick", "mix-yes-pittle-ik", "mix-yez-spit-lick", "mix-yell-pit-lick", and so forth get tiring even when you're not getting stuck in the tongue-twister.

[Nate the Great]

PNQ: Can anyone recommend a good starter RPG?

Criteria:

1. Free and single-player.
2. My Windows 10 computer is fairly up to date, but I don't want or need anything too resources-intensive.
3. Preferably compatible with a simple USB controller (this one, to be precise), but at minimum primarily controlled by mouse with keyboard only for healing item hotkeys (closer to King's Quest Mask of Eternity than Dragon Age, please).
4. Simple plot, simple language. I'm here to play a game, not watch Lord of the Rings. And as Yahtzee put it, I shouldn't have to learn a second language to play a game.

I'll probably think of more later, but lets get the ball rolling. Thanks in advance.