beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

I was reading something from college about disappointment and women. It was all about how disappointment cuts you off from even dreaming of a better future and then cuts you off from your past because the person that had that past was clearly sadly mired in illusion.

So then I was depressed.

Now I'm watching Next Gen. Specifically I'm watching Counsellor Troi eat chocolate. Er, possibly watching repeatedly. I'm finding it more interesting than stories with actual kissing. She's really sincerely into that chocolate.


I'm watching season 5. I just watched Disaster, where Picard is stuck in a turbolift with children and Worf has to deliver a baby. Whoever thought that one up was having fun.
*looks it up*
Teleplay By
Ronald D. Moore
Story By
Ron Jarvis & Philip A. Scorza
http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Disaster_%28episode%29#Background_information
... and yeah, the first thing the writer says is "I thought let's just have fun with it." It totally shows.

I really like this one. Everyone has their tense little problem to solve, everyone is cut off from the usual massive resources of the ship, there's difficult decisions, and a whole lot of emotional awkward to cut through to get practical stuff done. And everyone shows they can get stuff done, which really is not always the case. Staying in character and still giving them new things to do is a challenge by season 5, and this one really manages it. I particularly like Troi making the hard decisions. It works double by showing she's an officer too and by showing how difficult it is when Picard et al do it.

I do not so much like watching the bits with the kids. I can see how they're good story, I just kind of *facepalm* and stay that way.

I liked the bit with the baby though. Of all the people to help with a birth... :-)



I now have 24 hours and 50 minutes before I have to get up for college. But I only have to stay awake at college until about 1300, if I get the bus back right after lessons. So my plan for today is to stay awake until this afternoon and hope that will work out, since the whole 'sleep at night' thing is apparently not working out at all.
So, lots more Star Trek today then.

I have started watching the film Star Trek Generations, the one that hands over from original to next gen characters. It got to the bit where Data decides to put the emotion chip in and I got all grouchy with it.

( Read more... )
*glares at story*

Neurodiversity! Keep perfectly worky brain! Be yourself!

But no, we get the other sort with the 'cure' idea. The one where he concludes he's deficient and needs the missing piece to fix him. Given the iconography of autism awareness lately it's just a bit much.

I know it's going to work in to the themes in different ways as the story grows but it's really making me grumpy just sitting there.

This was a good one. Family, knock on consequences of Worf and Picard's choices, and basic rights and freedoms.

"You know, there are some words I've known since I was a schoolboy: ' With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.' Those words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie as wisdom and warning. The first time any man's freedom is trodden on we’re all damaged. I fear that today..."


It would be less depressing if this sort of warning wasn't needed so continuously.

I really like this one. Welcome to Aspie world. With themes of misinterpretation and emotion and rather ample demonstration of how Data does so have feelings just not in the same boxes as humans. And someone told him the wrong labels. And he's never sure enough of himself about feelings so he'll take their word for it when he shouldn't ought to.

Is a good story.

I liked the bit about dancing. I have a better answer for Data about what kinds of dancing go where though: Dancing is a very very social very very cultural form. There's dancing that is about moving your body in space. Bodies can do fun things. Is good. I can do that sort. But then there's dancing with more than one person involved, and then it's a conversation, only without the clearly defined words language uses. And when you think about all the room for misinterpretation even language leaves, dance is complicated. There are dances with fixed forms, but they're more like sonnets than sentences - same form but so many variations of meaning possible. Still, I'm better at those sorts, everyone does the same things in the same patterns, one can at least learn the patterns. But then there's dancing-with, and that has to respond to other people and be interactive and involves entire signal systems I can't barely read, let alone read in real time in the dark under disco lights. So on micro level, I don't exactly speak the language, but I like the sounds of it. On macro level, there's interesting to be found in what forms prevail in which societies or social sub groups. There's vast differences to experience and message in the kind of dancing where there's a huge mass of people all bouncing up and down but in their own individual ways compared to where there's pairs or squares or octets doing something complicated and fiddly and set in stone generations ago. And there's dances people made up in living memory, and dances they learned as kids, and different inflections on dances. So saying to someone 'I'd like to learn to dance' is kind of like saying 'I'd like to learn to speak', only in a different form, with fuzzier edges, and more hormones involved.

Wheelchair dancing is dancing, dancing with a stick is dancing, dancing with one of your arms stuck in a v shape is dancing, all the kinds of bodies+devices and all the dances are still dancing, but once they hit the 'social' level I think the translations go a bit wonk sometimes, and I no more understand why than I understand how they're even speaking in the first place. It's like body language poetry. With music and twirly bits.

... I think about dance quite a bit. It is at one and the same time plenty good fun and a bundled set of all the things I'm no good at. With flashy lights and colors and sparkles. Except for when it's not the sort of dancing with sparkles. Honestly, I don't so much see the point of dancing with no sparkles, but each to their own.

I like convention dances with silly gestures and everyone in a circle or in lines, or the ones where someone is in a chair in the middle, because as far as I can see all they're saying is 'we are at a science fiction convention doing science fiction convention things' and I can say that with confidence.
... until someone crunches into me and my feets get stomped, but that's a whole separate problem.



Okay, there was also a lot of the episode that wasn't about dancing, but the not understanding about dancing is like the crystalisation of how Data misses half the signal systems and interactions, and I have eventually noticed that, so it's a clever bit.

Also there was lots of funny, of the funny faces and feet getting stomped variety, which I always appreciate.
... complex verbal wit has its place, but there's also room for pie in the face.

I like K'Ehleyr. Or possibly I'd like to like her. Fierce and determined to make her own path despite tradition.
I do not like what the story does with her.
Or Alexander at this point.
I like that they complicate Worf's political situation, there's lots of good mileage out of that, but bringing in a woman and a child just to make Worf more angsty and having it be a one off episode is just... not cool. And no story really needs more dead women.
Fridge gets full.

I'd like to know more about K'Ehleyr's mother. Sounds like an interesting life, with all that history and politics going on around then.

I thought this episode has little to no rewatch value because once you know what is going on it all gets a bit boring. But then I found some useful and interesting in the character stuff. ( Read more... )

This is a beautiful bit of writing. It's like thematic origami, all the pieces fold together and make connections with each other. It's about fathers and sons, and parents and children, and brothers, and the path laid down before you, and the road not taken. And it goes exactly and precisely at this point in the series, pulling together threads, bringing out emotional reactions the show usually wouldn't make time for. But it has the science fiction thread real strong in it too, with debates about synthehol vs alcohol, old school cooking vs replicators, hand made vs technology, and how some think there's a vs in there and others think they're all of a piece, plus a bit about raising a whole extra continent, which leaves you wondering why humans think they need it, and would be an awesome technical achievement. And at the heart of everything, Starfleet. You get more of a sense of how Starfleet fits into the lives of not-Starfleet humans from this episode than from, well, probably the series to date. You get a sense of continuity and conflict in human culture that was frankly missing from the cosy 'we all agree here' 'humans think this' version that seems to exist on the ship. Science fiction at its understated best.

There's Worf and his parents, with mention from O'Brien about his dad. There's a constellation of Picards, Jean-Luc and his brother and his nephew and his sister-in-law and the invisible but ever present late father. And there's the Crusher family, with Beverley retrieving tangible reminders of the late Jack, and making him visible in the message to Wesley. All the interactions layer up, all have Starfleet in there somewhere, and career, and rank, and responsibility. You can keep unfolding this episode for a good long while. I love it.

There was only one note that was a bit disappointing. You spend the episode with the Crusher sub plot with the message, you find it exists, you see it handed over, you want to see what it says and how Wes will react. And, well, you see what it says. That bit about 'sorry for all the mistakes I'm going to make' wraps in to all the story threads, as does saying he can see everyone he loves in him and they'll always be connected. But Wes? I kept waiting for a reaction, and after a while I kind of wanted to poke him to try and find the 'on' button. It's just sad.
... I'd feel bad about saying that but I'm far, far less critical than Wil Wheaton is of himself. Harsh.

You can start with the arrogant couldn't give a damn teenager and get a lot out of that scene though. You'd have to get the actor to do it, but I mean Wes being all excessively 18 about it is a pretty good place to start. ( Read more... )

In rewatching Next Gen there's a lot of thins about me that have changed, and so I'm seeing different stories a lot. One thing is I've now seen and read a lot more Shakespeare, some texts in a lot of different performances. When I was studying Shakespeare I kept getting brain-hyperlinked back to Trek, among a bazillion other things, because often the time I'd seen those words with the most emotional resonance outside their source text was when I was watching Next Gen. Now I'm rewatching and it's all the other way. And not just direct quotes. I watch Picard in Sarek and think of it as his King Lear speech, because mad and old connects up. Sometimes such links enrich, sometimes they distract. Nobody watches quite the same text, got too many other texts in their head to look through.

There's some really solid character stuff and good acting bits in this season. I know I started season 1 wondering why I ever liked it, but by Measure of a Man they were up to the good stuff, and now in season 3 I'm not writing about things cause I'm busy watching the next one.

I think I like the themes in Sarek, the idea that age wears on everyone, that anyone can get mental illness, however highly placed they are, and that telling the truth is better because then they can make good choices to manage it. He was all making a mess when he thought he was well but he could get stable once he knew he was ill, even if it was only short term. That works better. The reactions of his nearest and dearest are probably realistic, but they wanted to hide the truth and hide him away from people in case they notice and they think it will take away his respect and honor, which is all rubbish stuff. Luckily the story agrees with me and Picard makes speeches about it, about how he did all that good stuff and that can't be taken away. I can't remember though what happens next - does Sarek retire into obscurity? Do we see how it works out? I want to know.

See, I'm up to caring what happens to the imaginary people in the little box. It's working.

I have watched ten minutes of this episode and have to stop and be annoyed.

They've just created Lal, and what's its first lesson in how to be a person?

LAL: Gender female.
TROI: That's right, Lal. Just like me.
LAL: Gender male.
DATA: Correct.
LAL: I am gender neuter. Inadequate.
DATA: That is why you must choose a gender, Lal, to complete your appearance.

How many assumptions packed in to there?
They take Lal to the holodeck and choose between several thousand different appearances, from multiple species, but what is not an option? Being an android shaped neuter being. Cannot just exist, must imitate, within a binary structure where the first most important thing is gender.

And then that gender is for life?

Why?

It's terrible science fiction and deeply annoying on the level of unexamined assumptions. They have the technology to change every aspect of their appearance as often as they wish, Lal more than anyone, but they start Lal off by saying to pick one fixed appearance for life, off a set menu. Gah!



First time I watched it none of this even vaguely occurred to me. I grew up with the same 'of course' sets. It's just wrong.

I have discovered an episode of Next Gen that I had not previously watched before. ( Read more... )

I still rather wish they'd not gone here. I think I liked Star Trek better without this episode in it. The Ireland line especially and in particular.

The one where Troi meets another part Betazoid part human and then there is sex.

I was all ready to really not like this one. ( Read more... )

So there's an actual spaceship plot, and the 'romance' plot, and they necessarily connect with nothing pasted on, and I rather like it.



In other random observations: I keep flicking between the little and wide views because obviously it was filmed for the little screen but I've got a widescreen now. I have decided I like people's shapes better when they're widescreen stretched. Yeah, it makes them go funny shapes from some angles, but mostly it just means people aren't so super skinny. I likes it.

Also it makes many of Riker's habitual poses really LOL. Like when he puts his foot up on something and leans on his knee. I know it's mostly because he's super tall relative to most the others and that way he fits in the shot more, but he just spreads out to take up half the screen, all legs everywhere. Is amusing.
... if you're me.


Also also I keep seeing moments I've mostly seen in the past few years as macros. Sometimes with silly hats. It rather bounces one out of the story.

I'm in the middle of this episode. I was thinking it's a weird shape for an end of season, but then I realise it's a clips show, ie Watch The Reruns Pls. So it makes sense, but is going to be boring.

Also, I realise by now I'm supposed to be all worried about Riker, especially since it's the end of the season and they could kill him off if they want (yeah, right) and they killed Tasha that one time and you never know. But you know what would really help? Stuff actually making sense.

Like, they get him to sick bay, and she says there's an infection in his leg that will kill him if it gets to his brain. So, okay, chop off his leg. This being the future, treat it and stick it back on again later, or replace it with something shiny. This is what amputation is for. Or, since she says she can kill the infection along with the nerve, do that, and grow a new nerve, or replace it cybernetically. You can do human-machine interface in the VISOR, you can do it for legs. Get in there and slice the danger out!

But nooooo.

She's doing shiny poking things with his brain so we get clips instead.

I'm sitting here yelling at the screen to get some actual medicine up in here.



Yeah, I watch the wrong genre for that.

... I miss science. Granted I haven't paid much attention for half my life, but I miss the idea that SCIENCE fiction could actually on occasion try to use science.

It's another Prime Directive one, so it's another time for me to get very annoyed at the smug gits of the federation.
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