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HandsomeRob Leader of the Holey Brotherhood from The land of broken records Since: Jan, 2015
Leader of the Holey Brotherhood
#12651: Jun 29th 2025 at 9:30:31 AM

I believe it did.

Before that, they used hand held communicators.

One Strip! One Strip!
EmeraldSource Since: Jan, 2021
#12652: Jun 29th 2025 at 10:45:15 AM

TPM had wrist mounted communicators. It stands to reason Starfleet is also experimenting with new ergonomic designs, and the combadge became popular because it served its function without being obtrusive on the belt or wrist.

Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.
Zendervai Since: Oct, 2009
#12653: Jun 29th 2025 at 11:43:13 AM

I think the other element of like...a comm-shirt vs a combadge is that a combadge can just be mass produced. You go to the replicator, ask for a combadge and you get one. Maybe you might need to customize it a little if the environment it'll be used in is particularly extreme.

For a shirt, you need to address different sizes before anything else. That's easy for replicated stuff, but it's a level of complexity that's not needed at all.

Ookamikun This is going to be so much fun. (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
This is going to be so much fun.
#12654: Jun 30th 2025 at 4:31:38 PM

Man the season 1 uniforms in TNG were odd. Like why did it have those weird hard shoulder pads (?) but no collar? And it was a whole single piece uniform too, which sounds uncomfortable.

EmeraldSource Since: Jan, 2021
#12655: Jun 30th 2025 at 5:01:23 PM

There was some peculiar ideas surrounding what clothes of the future were supposed to look like, which included sleek one-piece outfits with all buttons and zippers hidden away. It's probably no coincidence after TOS Roddenberry had the most impact on TMP and the first two seasons of TNG, where this was most prevalent.

It also took me much longer than I'm proud of to realize the asymmetric color on the lower torso was supposed to make it resemble the lower half of the Starfleet delta.

Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.
Ghilz Perpetually Confused from Yeeted at Relativistic Velocities Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Barbecuing
Perpetually Confused
#12656: Jun 30th 2025 at 11:39:09 PM

[up][up]They were. In fact TNG Era uniforms were apparently behind the scene kind of a recurring nightmare of being uncomfortable, awkwardly fitted and often very warm (which isn't great under studio lights). It's why the show went through to many iterations of the costumes. And how we got stuff like Picard having to constantly adjust just uniform who is clearly not tailored to allow him to both sit and stand. Of these the season 1/2 were the worst

Levar Burton is quoted as saying

"We hated our space suits. There were no pockets in them. As much as they call it a stretch fabric, spandex in that configuration doesn't give all that much. It hid nothing."

Edited by Ghilz on Jun 30th 2025 at 2:43:57 PM

merklyn Since: Feb, 2011
#12657: Jul 2nd 2025 at 9:17:30 AM

A number of the cast ended up having back problems from wearing the early uniforms, Frakes had an existing injury which is why he sits the way he does, so that can't have been great.

dcutter2 Since: Sep, 2013
#12658: Jul 17th 2025 at 1:09:52 PM

SNW s3 starts today! i'll have to get parampunt plus.

somehow I thought the 17th was tomorrow and wandered, confused, onto the recap pages.

HandsomeRob Leader of the Holey Brotherhood from The land of broken records Since: Jan, 2015
Leader of the Holey Brotherhood
#12659: Jul 18th 2025 at 5:45:38 PM

So nothing about those two episodes from yesterday?

a surprise Q appearance, and some apparent confirmation that Trelaine is a Q as well. Though it's odd that Spock never mentioned him to Kirk when he popped up again.....but that's what happened when the prequel is made years later.

Also, Ortegas may have some issues. But being nearly gutted will do that to you.

One Strip! One Strip!
generation81 Since: Aug, 2021
#12660: Jul 18th 2025 at 5:55:19 PM

As someone who dislike the monstrous Xenomorph Xerox gorn, I hate Hegemony II.

I loved Wedding Bell Blues, especially Rhys Darby as the villain.

WillKeaton from Alberta, Canada Since: Jun, 2010
#12661: Jul 18th 2025 at 6:16:36 PM

I really didn't like the first episode. Why were only the main characters able to get out of the pods? We didn't see much of the Gorn themselves, and then we learn that they hibernate from one kind of sun activity, but go to sleep from another kind of sun activity, and the Enterprise finds a magic technobable off switch for the entire species. And I'm not even 100% sure how they saved the Captain in the medical B plot. They fed the Gorn hatchlings, but then they didn't grow any from being fed? Also, Ortegas was scratched too, shouldn't she have also had Gorn hatchlings inside her?

Second episode was better. Not sure what they're insinuating at the end. Wouldn't mind a grand unifying thread that connected all the numerous godlike energy beings and also the Q. Like, maybe lots of species just find a way to "evolve" into energy beings or something...

KRider Desire Grand Prix Entry from Origin System Since: Feb, 2021
Desire Grand Prix Entry
#12662: Jul 18th 2025 at 8:22:56 PM

[up]From what I could understand from the technobabble, Chapel and Spock 1st transfused Una's Illyrian blood (which apparently have a Healing Factor) onto Captain Batel which somehow dissolved the Gorn hatchlings over time but as long as there are periodic transfusions and the feeding I think is to prevent them from hatching while the Illyrian blood transfusion works its course. Presumably Ortegas is undergoing the same procedure but she's suffering from PTSD.

Set! Avenge! "Henshin." Black General! Bujin Sword! Ready, Fight!
ECD Since: Nov, 2021
#12663: Jul 20th 2025 at 1:40:49 PM

I'm quite negative on the first episode...but I've found everything with the Gorn or Star Trek politics to be...extremely negative, while the character work is generally quite good (with the exception of Spock choosing to discuss their personal shit while they were in the midst of trying to figure out how to save someone).

And the 'solution' to the Gorn is just...bad. Like, Star Trek parody bad. I continue to be very annoyed by by the tendency of people to jump out of cover with ranged weapons to rush the giant alien monsters. And think it's really weird to take a species who were originally introduced as 'not actually monsters, they just look like it...mostly' and turning them into...I mean, basically Xenomorphs? And I found the entire debate over 'should we go to war because the Gorn are attacking nonmembers—they'll definitely come for us instantly after setting a boundary if we honor it—they come after the Federation...maybe 2 days after setting the boundary, really weird. Also, did I forget something from last season? Why was Spock apologizing to Chapel? Also, was I misremembering? I thought Chapel's new assignment was going to be a LOT longer than 3 months? I mean...long distance relationships are hard, but 3 months is not exactly a massive issue?

dcutter2 Since: Sep, 2013
#12664: Jul 20th 2025 at 1:51:31 PM

Got paramount plus back. Rewatching Hegemony before moving on to s3.

As to Spock/Chapel She ditched him via song in Subspace Rhapsody but i seem to recall Hegemony pulling the same switcheroo in him acting like it was his fault. Don't know if the writers for different episodes just didn't communicate there.

ECD Since: Nov, 2021
#12665: Jul 20th 2025 at 7:20:20 PM

The second episode was significantly better, even if I find the 'all powerful child alien' thing to be fairly dull.

CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#12666: Jul 20th 2025 at 7:42:53 PM

I think the Gorn made the demarcation zone simply as a tactic to delay the Federation from responding.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Zendervai Since: Oct, 2009
#12667: Jul 21st 2025 at 5:26:45 AM

The Gorn have always been kind of an enigma, so there'd need to be some sort of significant expansion, and "they're extremely hard to talk to because their behaviour is dictated by solar activity and the last time they got really active was when a flare happened at an unexpected time" is as good an explanation as any. The execution is kind of off, but it's at least something.

IMO, I think the Tholians would have been a better choice for more than sporadic one-off conflict. They have a history of being extremely aggressive out of nowhere and backing off the instant their goal is met or becomes impossible. We also know they go from being really antsy and aggressive about the Federation to being willing to at least having an ambassador, so an SNW storyline where they get the starts of understanding what the Tholians actually want beyond isolation could feed into that, and it wouldn't cause any issues with TOS, because that was a straightforward accidental border incursion.

One of the problems SNW has is that they can't really introduce any new big bads that pose a really significant long term risk and a lot of the established ones are unusable for various reasons. You're kinda stuck with the Gorn and adding a lot or the Tholians who are kinda hard to work with because we've only ever seen them react to two things. 1) Border incursions, not hard to avoid and 2) temporal meddling which...let's not retreat the Temporal Cold War in SNW.

Although, there is one thing that could make the Tholians an interesting rival to the Federation. The type of planets the Tholians use are ones that are basically useless to the vast majority of the Federation, the environments are way too extreme. What if they show up in SNW and the conflict comes from the fact that the Tholian Assembly and the Federation overlap? So there's no good way to draw a border and that's why they're so antsy about the set borders a decade later?

Edited by Zendervai on Jul 21st 2025 at 8:31:03 AM

CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#12668: Jul 21st 2025 at 2:12:43 PM

I mean the show retconned that the Gorn weren't met in "Arena."

You could also use a throw away race reference like the Tzenkethi.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jul 21st 2025 at 2:13:07 AM

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
dcutter2 Since: Sep, 2013
#12669: Jul 21st 2025 at 2:38:42 PM

So episode 1: Yeah, lots of technobabble and false tension. So regular Stasis doesn't work. Why not try transporter Stasis instead? Batel can still be beamed. There were too many plots for me. And did we really need the classic supposedly deadly radiation that does nothing?

Oh and Chapel ditched Spock because she was leaving for... three months?! Okay yeah, she's an established commit-o-phobe but... what?

Episode 2: Three month time skip, conveniently to bring Chapel back. Her new hair looks weird. I mean sorry to be stereotypical nerd but the romance plant and social awkwardness made the first act really hard to get through. It was moved fine once the hijinks ensue but then the end.... *sigh* Bringing in Trelane/Q/whatever early but conspicuously not mentioning the name for continuity's sake is something Enterprise was rightly raked over the coals for and it's no better here just because De Lancie is a fan favourite.

Once again the short seasons make me sad. As an episode it's fine if it was one of out twenty plus episodes fine. It's one tenth of the season of a romcom and god-alien fanservice. The time could have been better used.

The final scene and implications they are going to do more with Ortegas this season though is welcome.

CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#12670: Jul 21st 2025 at 2:40:42 PM

Boimler killed the Spock/Chapel ship

And I don't think it was 100% stated that Spock and T'Pring broke up.

At least I think she might have justifiable reason to think they were on a break but still engaged.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
WillKeaton from Alberta, Canada Since: Jun, 2010
#12671: Jul 21st 2025 at 2:48:44 PM

Spock and T'Pring can't break off the engagement because they're still engaged at the time of the Original Series. Mind you, the fact that by that point neither party really seemed that into each other suggests lots of problems, but that engagement can't be officially dissolved in this series.

Edited by WillKeaton on Jul 21st 2025 at 3:49:27 AM

dcutter2 Since: Sep, 2013
#12672: Jul 21st 2025 at 2:53:53 PM

Boimler did give her the impression they would last. But she dumped him via song in Subspace Rhapsody. It's still not clear to me what Spock thinks he needed to apologise for.

Spock and T'Pring, she wanted to take things slower after Charades where Spock didn't share that he'd been transformed into a human from here but they are still formally engaged and Spock was basically cheating on her when he was with Chapel.

He owes her an apology if anything because she now looks much less villainous for ditching him. (Though Serene Squall also showed breaking an engagement was super easy.)

But hey maybe Spock can now get plots that aren't Romcom plus scifi shennanigans?

CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#12673: Jul 22nd 2025 at 4:30:22 AM

I just saw the S31 movie for the first time...and it was a movie.

It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be but it is a film that I really am amazed to say it is aggressively not wanting to say anything about anything. Section 31 in the federation, politics as a whole, metaphors, and so on. I actually didn't dislike Into Darkness originally because I thought it was commentary on the Iraq War then I found out it was written by a 9/11 Truther and it reframed my take on it. In the end, I think S31 is just harmlessly...stupid.

Plus I love Rachel Garrett's hair.

But yes, the movie is just sort of stuff happening on screen and that is kind of fascinating that it is a Star Trek property that really goes out of its way to say nothing about anything. Plucky oddballs sent by government to stop Weapon of Mass Destruction and...they do. Its writers either played a huge amount of Mass Effect 2 after watching The Hunger Games or...no, actually I'm just going to say that was it.

If you think I'm making up the "aggressive apoliticalness" of the movie (if I may turn a phrase), I think its summarized by the YA fiction reshaping of Georgiou. Which is very unfair with YA fiction. Not so much Hunger Games as the Uglies The Terran Empire that was, at its worst, defined as a racist colonialist superpower that embodies the opposite of the Federation's power where people mindlessly jockeyed for power over who hates aliens the most or who has the biggest technological edge like a Space Rome now has teenagers compete to who can be the most ruthless. Literally, a contest for who can be the most evil because evil is good. Which is not how anything has ever worked power wise. But you don't have to deal with anyone saying its woke, though, or whatever, because it's not related to any real life ideology. It's not about Georgiou being the head of a racist colonialist superpower, it's about her personal relationship with her childhood bestie (that she murdered the family of).

Georgiou is Azula except that's not really fair to Azula.

Everyone else is kind of there to be Guardians of the Galaxy-style oddballs and they inhabit their quirky Omega/Knowhere-esque station. Rare is the movie that wouldn't be improved by a talking dog but this movie really needed a talking dog.

So much of this movie is also divorced from Star Trek while making little references here and there. Rachel Garrett is there, there's a Chiron, a human frozen from the 20th century like Buck Rogers, and so on and....I would probably love to know every single one of their stories more than the movie actually did. Did the Chiron guy flee before the end of everything?

Section 31 is also treated as defacto there. Which has never been its role. I think the only other time it was used that way was when William Boilmer was working for it with no attention being brought to its illegal conspiracy nature or whatever.

I mean it's a movie.

And Rachel's hair really was cool.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jul 22nd 2025 at 4:53:48 AM

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
KRider Desire Grand Prix Entry from Origin System Since: Feb, 2021
Desire Grand Prix Entry
#12674: Jul 22nd 2025 at 4:34:20 AM

[up]Wait which of the writers was a 9/11 Truther?

Set! Avenge! "Henshin." Black General! Bujin Sword! Ready, Fight!
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#12675: Jul 22nd 2025 at 4:54:31 AM

Roberto Orci was a massive 9/11 truther.

Cracked talks about it.

https://www.cracked.com/article_33816_the-time-star-trek-made-a-911-truther-movie.html

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jul 22nd 2025 at 4:56:38 AM

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

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