#tng in theory

[filmjunky-99]

s t a r t r e k t h e n e x t g e n e r a t i o n created by gene roddenberry [in theory, s4ep25]

'What's wrong with you tonight?' - jenna

'My most recent self-diagnostic revealed no malfunctions. Perhaps there is something wrong with you.' - data

'I've never seen you behave so foolishly. Why are you doing this?' - jenna

'You don't tell me how to behave. You're not my mother.' - data

[coolestpersontoeverexist]

No comment

[dataentryspecialist]

My love, will you peel an orange for me?

Of course. If you wish, I can program the replicator so that it will always provide you with fully peeled orange slices rather than the whole fruit.

(he quickly and easily peels the whole thing while he was talking and hands it back)

Is there anything else you require?

💛💖💜

My king, would you peel this orange for me?

... you're really hopeless, you know that? Give it here.

What would you do without me, angel? Why didn't you just replicate it without the peel? Here.

(he's fully peeled it while teasing you, but pulls it away before you can grab it from his hand)

Not so fast. What will you give me in return?😈

[cissi-sh01]

a (sketchy) Carlos+Jannik+Holger Star Trek AU nobody asked for

[eleftherian]

in data’s defense, I ALSO analyze the complete works of charles dickens when I’m kissing someone so I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing tbh

[dogwithapog]

uhhhh i'm a music major

[data2364]

[adarkroomandawallflower]

So, I just had a thought (& possible realization that could be canon?):

As I'm sure many of us TNG fans are aware, it's never canonically addressed where, how, or when exactly Data got Spot. However, based on the order of the episodes, Spot wasn't shown or mentioned until "Data's Day", & because we were shown Data's quarters several times throughout Seasons 1-3 without any indications of a cat living with him, we can assume that he got Spot somewhere either in the end of Season 3 or the beginning of Season 4 (I know the argument could be made that he could have still had Spot, it just wasn't very clearly established or shown, but for the sake of my theory, let's assume that not showing Spot or evidence of Data having her indicates that he didn't have her yet).

The events of "Brothers" occurs just several episodes before "Data's Day". We saw in "Brothers" that after Dr. Soong died, Data took some of his father's things with him (i.e. the toy dinosaurs that he gave to the two brothers who were also in the episode). I think it's highly unlikely that Data would have only taken those two dinosaurs from his father's place, & I think he almost certainly took a lot more of his father's things with him (i.e. he probably took some of his books, artwork, etc.).

I think it can also be assumed that Dr. Soong didn't like being alone, & always preferred the company of another being (his sons & Juliana, for example). After the Crystalline Entity attacked, Juliana left, Data joined Starfleet, & Dr. Soong was left all by himself on that whole planet, I think he got really lonely, but didn't know or have any other person in his life that he could seek companionship with. Not wanting to go through the intense emotional & physical tolls of creating another android son again, & being unable to find another partner or spouse, I think he would have probably gotten himself a pet as a last-ditch effort to curb his loneliness.

But what would his pet be? Perhaps a cat...?

Long story short, I propose this theory: Spot was originally Dr. Soong's cat, & after he died & Data was looking through his place to determine all the things he wanted to keep, he found Spot, & knew he had to take her with him.

I'd have to rewatch "Brothers" to look for any evidence of Dr. Soong having a cat, as well review the episodes after "Brothers" & before "Data's Day" to see if they showed Data's quarters clearly catless again, to support this theory, but I genuinely think this could be how Data got Spot

[dat4l0re]

[geekygwen]

[kirks-slutty-red-tights]

i think that in the 23rd/24th century we'd still be trying to solve fnaf lore. and i think data would be a fnaf fan.

he'd post a 4 hour long youtube video explaining the fnaf lore and how he's solved it, which would then be reacted to by Oliver Patrick XI in a 30 part series on GTlive

[incorrectly-quoted-queers]

The TNG Episode "In Theory": And so after Jenna left, Data petted his cat and accepted that a measly android like him would never know true companionship because he would never know how to properly love Me, an aromantic: Excuse me wtf

[rocket-sith]

Q GOT TIRED OF MAKING ROBINHOOD LARPS SO HE DECIDED TO OPEN FOUR DIFFERENT CHRONO-TRIGGER SAVE FILES AT THE SAME TIME INSTEAD, but only one needed further progress (non-linear progress of course), two were already complete but were saved in the wrong place and missing a sidequest (lol time being non-linear what?), and the fourth was a big ol' sparkly decoy, a glitched file of nonsensical bits n bites, alluringly named Picard, that nearly crashed the game and took everything with it while you were busy looking for continuity in all the wrong places.

Behold! Season 2 of Picard, AKA Facepalm Theater Presents, AKA "Dude, where's my Tapestry?"

Love it, hate it, WTF it, or some should-be-impossible combination thereof - but somehow, you feel it. Are you in one or both of those last two camps? Yeah, me too. But I think I might have a theory. And no, it's not bunnies. (I rambled a bit about this somewhat in the A/Ns and comment thread of one of my fics a few weeks back, but the proper brain dump belongs here).

Season 2 of Picard is neither episodic, NOR is it one major overarching story with various sub-plots. It's FOUR overarching major stories, well-conceived in theory (mostly), but thrown together as gracelessly and incoherently, with the same abundance of panic and lack of transitions as the night-before-it's-due school essays we're all so painfully familiar with perpetrating. (Admittedly, a lot of us got pretty good at being zero-hour coherent by the time we got to high school, but apparently, this skill does not translate to timetravel via stellar slingshots and demigod trolls.) So that leaves us with - 

Picard Season 2: A Trek in Four Acts Loosely Disjointed and Sloppily Squished Together Parts. Feast your eyes, rub your temples, and buckle up. 

CRIS AND THERESA'S WILD RIDE: (Love story, social commentary, classic Trek shiz focused on the more touching/emotional side of temporal shenanigans.)

RENEE PICARD'S TIME HEIST AND EVEN WILDER RIDE:  (Classic Trek shiz, classic time travel fuckery, focuses on the more action-packed side of temporal shenanigans.)

THE RED HERRING, AKA THE ROCKY HORROR PICARD SHOW:

Supposedly the main plot, but really a completely ridiculous distraction that's the narrative equivalent of dumping sand in the snowglobe and violently shaking it up. Captain Picard takes a wrong turn at Albuquerque and has to go do the Timewarp (again) in some creepy old castle so he can be magically transported back home. Yeah, okay buddy, just don't forget the teddy and the TP rolls to throw around the theater.

Cut this entire arc out, and the season improves substantially in both enjoyability and coherence. (I said what I said.) If any of the four major threads don't belong, don't move the story forward, and only serve to muck things up - it's this one. It's not so much an arc as a collapsible squiggly line that looks like it might go somewhere but never does. Great if you're drunk with a shadow cast and some floorwalkers. Not so great if you're actually trying to figure out WTF is going on. 

TAPESTRY RIDES AGAIN, AKA GRAND THEFT BORG QUEEN LOS ANGELES: And now for the main event, which was literally announced as such in one of the episodes, by two people breaking the fourth wall who were probably the LAST people anyone was expecting to break the fourth wall: Seven and Raffi. So naturally, we viewers took it as a couple of throwaway comments and cute banter to lighten the dark/intense mood of all the other crap. Yeah, oops. We can't say they didn't warn us.

At one point the two of them are joking around, talking about how they're the main event, and all these other side stories are just side stories, but...yeah. Looking back after S3, that was not a joke, and it goes above and beyond the call of foreshadowing. It was a flat-out tell, and with ALL the potential fourth wallbreakers in S2 - Q, the Borg Queen, The Traveller, the Long-Lived Alien Bartender With Multiple Mysterious Powers, The Temporally Flexible Romulan Spy Of Dubious Origin - if somebody's gonna spill some futuristic tea, it's gotta be one of them, right? RIGHT? Nope. Seven and Raffi snuck in the back door.

Basically, the Grand Theft Borg Queen arc was Tapestry, but for Seven (and Raffi and Jurati to an extent). Jurati and Raffi were, IMHO, initially intended to be pieces on the gameboard, not players, but they made themselves into major players. To what extent Jurati's involvement in outsmarting the Borg Queen was meant to be a challenge for her by Q, or part of Seven's trial that Jurati unwittingly assisted in IDK, and ditto Raffi's major role in all the aforementioned drama, but either way - Seven finally accepting herself the way she is, Borg hardware and all, was a direct, not even subtle parallel to the TNG episode Tapestry. 

The most direct link is the scene in Tapestry where Picard realizes he'd rather die as his true self than live as his other-universe self who "corrected" the "mistake" that led to his artifical heart. Seven accepted that she would rather live as her Ex-B true self than die as a fully organic human, and in doing so, passed the test. 

And Jurati and Raffi played no small part in that realization, and passed their own tests in the process - with Raffi embracing Seven (literally and figuratively) while resisting the urge to manipulate Cris out of choosing his own fate, and Jurati outsmarting and merging herself with the damn Borg Queen to protect humanity and her friends. Seven passed the Q Troll test with flying colors, and Raffi and Jurati did too - giving us Elnor and a benevolent Borg Queen in the future as a result. (Q is totally one of those teachers who gives his students rewards for passing the Big Test.)

Fire up S2 of Picard, get your Fast Forward button ready, and follow the Grand Theft Borg Queen: Los Angeles arc and ONLY that arc. Skip over every single thing (other than Q monologing, as that's the one common thread) that doesn't have Seven, Raffi, and/or Jurati. You'll get an entirely different experience. It's Tapestry, but for Seven, and with different tests/opportunities for Jurati and Raffi. (And they all pass). 

Now do it again, but FF anything that ISN'T either part of the Renee Picard Time Heist plotline or part of Cris and Theresa's story. You'll get a classic Back to the Future, MCU, Reset the Timeline, Poke-An-Alternate-Reality's-Doom-Destination-With-A-Stick style story. And they all pass too. Cris and Theresa get their happily ever after and punt the primeline forward through the next generation of temporally paradoxical, adopted and found family members. 

As for the BS at Chateau Picard? It's all a decoy/charade. So come in costume, bring plenty of shit to throw, and chug the wine. You'll need it. 

[elimgarakdemocrat]

The conspiracy theory about Wolf 359 being an inside job is absolutely, 100%, called "Worf 359" colloquially

[thresholdbb]

The Prophets were behind Wolf 359

[glimblshanks]

*grips my copy of Bananas Beaches and Bases by Cynthia Enloe with shaking hands* I will not think too hard about the social and political implications of Risa being a pleasure planet, I will not think too hard about the social and political implications of Risa being a pleasure planet, I will not think too hard about the social and political implications of Risa being a pleasure planet, I will not-