#Freedom Treks

[roadie1963]

Bike Anywhere in Europe or Asia with Freedom Treks

Image By Samuel Vogl from Pexels.com What place on earth have you maybe thought about doing a cycling trip but didn’t think it was possible or available? What about in Asia? Have you ever wanted to do a fully supported tour through Cambodia, Japan, or Vietnam? Freedom Treks makes that possible. Who is Freedom Treks? Based in the United Kingdom, Freedom Treks is led by Catherine Gray. The…

[pintadorartist]

“A House panel advanced the Kids Online Safety Act bill, also known as KOSA, on Wednesday, pushing forward legislation intended to boost online privacy and safety for children.”

1) sign this petition and share it everywhere on social media @Twitter @Tiktok @Reddit https://www.youthagainstkosa.com/

2) call house leadership (see numbers here). This is a VERY important step. Again, use these call scripts: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IyBUe6frFGF44rJQU3TahZ5zyG3tC7jai_hPneAKlnM/edit

3) Call the House Energy and Commerce Committee Here

There is a very big possibility this passes. We HAVE to put pressure on leadership and these politicians and show them this is a poision bill that WILL HARM children.

[flappielxx123]

This scene will never not make me insane

Amazing gifs by @beverlygifs

[lucy-moderatz]

[lesbiangracehanson]

another day, another j7 scene that makes me feel insane 

[olivrsm]

[spockvarietyhour]

Favourite Kitbash?

All these vessels started off as kitbashes from existing physical models sold commercially. Aside from the Constellation-class Stargazer, all the other TNG ones were barely glimpsed in the aftermath of the Battle of Wolf 359, including the 4-nacelle Melbourne-variant Neula class.

Also the shot I got from defunct Eaglemoss didn't show the baby nacelles so here they are:

The DS9 ones heavily featured the Centaur in one episode, while Curry does a flyby in A Time to Stand. Yeager was usually in stock shots around the station, barely visible.

[alphamecha-mkii]

Star Trek Online - Wolf 359 Ship Destruction by Nick Duguid

[oasisintheworld]

🏔🍑🌿🍃❄️🙃🙂

[ribbittrobbit]

the is a geordi la forge appreciation post

[betterbemeta]

I wish we got more non-humanoid species as regular starfleet crew members. I know that budgetary constraints are real. And I don't want to take away from, or hide the performance of human actors starring on a TV show-- we want to show human diversity and excellence. But I feel I have to suspend my disbelief to trust the Federation welcomes all peaceful sentient life when almost everyone on the bridge is some kind of Hominid Biped.

I want to believe that there are some civilizations that find encountering a Starfleet vessel 'ridiculous':

You break down in space and your distress call is connected by an evolved dolphin. She has somebody place a BLÅVINGAD at the chair every time she remotely covers this station.

The captain comes on screen and he's an 80 year old furry. He is standing slightly to the side because the conn officer's giant Aurelian bird wings get in the way of the forward screen camera.

You explain your situation about your busted engines. The captain nods and asks a dinosaur in a onesie about how much time the crew on duty has available. This is his first officer.

After consulting the lead engineer (a goth), it looks like if 'everybody' wants to attend the rave on board tonight this is a two-day job.

As a compromise and a show of goodwill, the captain invites you to the rave and also throws in free health care. A giant non-anthropomorphic spider beams aboard your ship. She's the chief medical officer.

[somerandomg33k]

Have we loss Freedom of Speech in the USA? Is Star Trek Socialist? Can you make a living off of YouTube? What can we do about a system that forces to vote for who Pro terrible War Crimes? Revolution? Talking to Liberals about voting? All this and more on Social Justice Alchemy. Come and join us for the conversation.

[episodicnostalgia]

Star Trek: The Next Generation, 120 (Apr. 11, 1988) - “The Arsenal of Freedom”

Teleplay by: Richard Manning & Hans Beimler Story by: Maurice Hurley & Robert Lewin Directed by: Les Landau

The Breakdown

The USS Drake has gone missing after being sent to investigate a planet (Minos) whose entire population has ALSO gone missing; so naturally the Enterprise has been sent to figure out why there are so many missing people connected to one planet.  On a probably-unrelated-note, it turns out the Minosians were arms dealers who sold super advanced weaponry, but I’m sure that won’t be relevant to the following 45 minutes.  Anyways, the Enterprise arrives at Minos to find zero signs of life, except for a hailing frequency originating on the planet’s surface.  Obviously Picard accepts the call, but it just turns out to be one of those un-skippable YouTube advertisements for a highly advanced weapons system, and Picard is like “That was weird. We should send some people to the surface to check that out.”

For what must be a first for this ENTIRE crew, Tasha makes a rational security decision in convincing Riker to keep the away team as small as possible, in the interest of general ship safety (since there is absolutely no sign of the missing Drake, which I honestly think is a MUCH bigger red flag than Picard is making it out to be).  Riker agrees (taking only himself, Tasha, and Data), but gets himself caught in a statis field almost immediately, so Picard throws caution to the wind and beams himself AND Dr.  Crusher down to help out… somehow.  Although, credit where credit is due, Picard does have the foresight to leave Geordi in charge of the Enterprise with orders to abandon him and the away team if it means protecting the ship.

Naturally all this leads to a double-jeopardy situation.  Down below, the away team keeps getting attacked by little killer drones that regenerate-and-adapt every time one gets shot down; meanwhile separate drone starts attacking the Enterprise, slowly picking away at the shields (oh, and it can cloak, making it tough to kill).  Geordi finally figures out a way to outsmart his mechanical nemesis by using the displacement of Minos’ upper atmosphere to reveal the drone’s location.  At the same time Picard conveniently falls into a pit that happens to contain a control panel that activates the holographic salesman (from the aforementioned automated message) who prompts him to finalize the purchase of their killer drones, in order to “end the demonstration”; thus completing what has apparently been a VERY high-stakes sales pitch. 

At this point it’s been concluded that the Minosians accidentally created a killing machine that was so effective it accidentally murdered their entire species, in addition to anyone who came poking around.  Since the Enterprise is now safe, and the mystery of the Drake’s disappearance is solved (in that the crew are confirmed to have met a nightmarish end), we can chalk this up to another happy ending!

The Verdict

There’s something to be said for a straightforward adventure story, and ‘arsenal of freedom’ successfully delivers on that front.  I can’t say there’s enough going on here for me to classify this episode as one of “the greats,” but it makes good use what it does have.

The highlight of this episode has to be Geordi’s command of the Enterprise.  It’s nice to see some genuine progression for a character that I’ve often felt gets overlooked, made all the better by the fact that I found his solution to the drone battle refreshingly plausible!  Usually when Star Trek is dealing with cloaked adversaries, it gets resolved with some kind of tachyon-scanner-upgrade-techno babble.  That’s all well-and-good AS LONG the writers also take care not to abuse such genre-conventions (which is another matter entirely), but I still tend to prefer solutions that adhere to the laws of physics.  As for Geordi’s time in command, I also appreciate how this episode builds on his previous experiences, in throwing him a greater challenge to overcome.

The away team’s adventure definitely makes up the weaker half of the episode, but even that is at least cheesily entertaining, avoiding any glaringly cringy moments.  My main criticism would be over how convenient Picard’s discovery of the control panel was, allowing him to call off the drones; but this is far from the most egregious deus ex machina on a Star Trek show, and it certainly won’t be the last.

But yeah, fun stuff.

3 stars (out of 5)

Additional Observations

I’ve gotta say, the skies of Minos are a beautiful shade of bluescreen- I mean blue.

TNG always suffered from a “women character problem”, in that the writers seldom knew what to do with them, so I was pleasantly surprised with this episode.  It’s not so much that writers did anything groundbreaking with the ladies here, but this has been their best overall use of them up to this point, by my reckoning. Tasha is shown to be competent and reliable, Crusher is able to keep her wits about her after she’s injured (even getting some added backstory), and even Deanna’s council to Goerdi isn’t half bad (which is really saying something for these early episodes).  The show still has a tremendous amount of work left to do in this regard, but it’s at least a tiny step in the right direction.

BATTLE BRIDGE:  This is only the second time we’ve been shown the Enterprise’s saucer section separating from the rest of the ship.  It’s a pretty cool feature that will be seldom used, but it’s an effective way to sell the raised stakes of a given situation, and thoughtfully applied here.

[pundus]

Spaceshiptember 2023, Day 22: Refueling - "Gas Stop"

Built as one of the first warp four vessels and now in service to the Federation Starfleet, the USS Marconi uses its bussards to refuel its deuterium reserves in an uncharted nebula near the Gagarin Radiation Belt.

[jesternene]

Parallel: Beverly's Injured

"Arsenal of Freedom" & "The Next Generation"

[void-thegod]

america needs to get over its sexual repression and bigotry.

cure STDs and world hunger/poverty. eat the rich. solar/hopepunk our way out of this. legalize all the drugs and prostitution. stop endless war. no more planned obsolescence.

remove nazis/bigots from power.

it would be a day/night difference. very close to utopian.

get a little closer to Star Trek and actually EVOLVE..