#tng is next on my list but

[trekkie-polls]

Some of these stop me in my tracks every time.

[tough-girl9]

Mechanical Rose Tag List

I’ve gotten an inquiry about creating a tag list for my Star Trek TNG Data/Reader series Mechanical Rose.

If you would like to be added to the tag list for my Mechanical Rose fanfiction, like, comment, and/or reblog this post and I will automatically add you to the tag list.

Do not like, comment, or reblog this post unless you would like to be added to the tag list.

[adriartts]

Hello again I am STILL thinking about the most episode ever.  Fuck him up, Data!!

[madlori]

On being an older fangirl

I was probably 10 years old when I first conceived of what was, looking back, fanfiction. Me and my best friend would lie in bed together on sleepovers and I'd make up stories about what happened after the end of our favorite book, "The Westing Game." She'd ask me for more stories, and I'd tell her more, inventing them as I went along. "Then what?" she'd say.

I was 14 when I went to my first convention. I had discovered Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was 1987, and my youth pastor was a huge Trekkie. He took me to a one-day crappy Creation con, but it was amazing to me. I met Nichelle Nichols. My dad showed me the Trek movies. He and I watched TNG together.

When I went to college in 1991, my dad used to videotape TNG episodes onto VHS tapes and mail them to me, so I could keep watching (I didn't have TV in my dorm room).

By the time I was a senior, we had Trek watching parties in the dorm lounge, where the TV had cable. Star Trek: Voyager had started up, and I wrote a column about it for the college newspaper. I joined a mailing list about it, with people in it that I still know today.

I got my first computer that could go online in 1995. I was on newsgroups. I discovered Doctor Who. I went to Trek conventions where we still passed around fanzines containing fic and art and smutty K/S fan creations.

Then it was Harry Potter. Then there were websites. Then there was Geocities, where we could all make our own little spots. We organized them into webrings. We talked on newsgroups and mailing lists. There were fanfic archives. Then there was fanfiction.net.

Then...there was LiveJournal. And we could interact in entirely new ways. We could form communities, and debate things, and fight over canon, and get into ship wars. On LiveJournal, I met my best friend of 22 years. I was in her wedding. She's my sister of the heart (which is what she calls me).

Then there was Tumblr. And Twitter. And now there's Discord. But it's all the same.

I am the same.

I am still that little girl who made up fanfiction in her head to entertain her best friend. I am still the one who was amazed to find communities on the internet - which was so new, so raw, so uncommodified - where others like me could meet. I found there people to meet in real life.

I am still that twentysomething going to her first major convention, being told that someone loved my fic, being asked about my writing process.

I am still that thirtysomething watching something I wrote blow up. Seeing friends from other fandoms find me in new ones, finding them there, too. Forgetting which fandom I know someone from, because I've known them for twenty years.

I still know some of the people who created those early websites, those mailing lists, those archives. I still meet people in new fandoms who say "Oh, I read your fic in [fandom] fifteen years ago!" There's no feeling quite like having someone remember something you wrote for that long. Or meeting someone whose fic meant a lot to YOU, or who you talked with on rec.arts.drwho.creative in 1997.

Aging in fandom is a gift. Being middle-aged in fandom is a joy. Having people who still read what I write and ask "Then what?" is a blessing.

It breaks my heart that so many people see it as something to be ashamed of, when it is one of my life's greatest gifts.

[the-ocean-is-trans]

my friend and coworker runs the sci fi/fantasy club at work and we were discussing which star trek we both like and i told her im mostly a tng person but that i actually also like the aos movies and when i said the last part she gave me such a look of pure disappointment 

[jaegermonstrous]

So I've got Thoughts on Worf. Disclaimer, these are all heavily informed by own experiences and background, ymmv. Also disclaimer, I haven't gotten around to watching PIC yet. It's on my list, but I'm not there yet. But anyway.

So, Worf in TNG is pretty much our biggest exposure to the Klingon culture so far, and he's pretty consistent with the other Klingons we see. He's a big and tough warrior guy with the Stoic Warrior Thing going on. He's constantly getting his ass handed to him to show the audience the bad guys of the week are Serious Business. He's a pretty awful father, but we have no reason to believe other Klingons are much better. He's apparently got enough of a soft/personable side that he dates Deanna Troi for a bit [no shade to the actors here, but the logic behind that pairing has never worked for me, or at least the writers never did enough legwork to make it believable to my ace and autistic self]. But mostly, he's a Big Stoic Warrior Man from a culture of Big Stoic Warrior Men.

But Worf in DS9 is much less isolated from other Klingons, and it's here where - to me - he becomes incredibly interesting as an example of someone trying to reconnect with their heritage as an adult, especially someone who's either felt pressured to perform their culture "correctly" to an outsider [Federation] standard, or who's never had significant contact with the huge diversity of their culture and kind of internalized the idea that "this is how you perform my culture correctly" from a very limited amount of sources, and therefore become kind of an asshole about it when people [other Klingons] don't do or be as you expect them to.

From the doylist perspective we can just say "well, the DS9 writers really diversified the Klingons," but I find the watsonian perspective far more interesting; here you have Worf, the first and [so far] only Klingon serving in Starfleet, who was removed from his culture as a young child and raised by Humans [no shade to the Rozhenkos here, I think they did their best to raise Worf with an awareness of his origins]. He's been aware most of his life of being the only Klingon in a room full of Humans and other Federation species, most of whom have Expectations of what Meeting A Real Klingon would be like. So Worf, with his mostly second-hand knowledge of Klingon culture and a huge wall of Expectations surrounding him at every turn, becomes what he thinks of as The Ideal Klingon. He's stoic, he's gruff, he barely ever cracks a smile, and when you put him in the room with a bunch of diverse DS9 Klingons, he comes across as a caricature.

Let's look at some of the DS9 Klingons, and I think you'll see what I mean.

First up - Kaga, the Klingon chef. I personally love Kaga, and I wish we had gotten to see more of him. He's our first real indicator that Klingons in DS9 are Built Different. He's cheerful, he doesn't dress in a warrior's armor, he plays that Klingon accordion thing and sings to his patrons. He's a glimpse of what Klingons outside the military are probably like. I love that the DS9 writers did this, showcasing that Klingons [like so many of the non-Humans we get in DS9] are just people.

Next, we have Kor, the Dahar Master. Again, I adore Kor. In some ways he's a throwback to TOS Klingons, who were conniving, and mocking, and just generally Untrustworthy and would 100% stab you in the back if they thought it would get them what they wanted. But he's also a fantastic example of a DS9 Klingon. Kor is old, and tired, and kind of a drunk, and beginning to lose touch with his abilities and reality. But he's also clever, and cunning, and you can really see the intelligence and the ferocity that made him so formidable to Kirk and the TOS crew back in the day. And he's also charming and kind of a sweetheart, and he genuinely loves Dax like family. He's well-rounded in a way we don't get to see Worf be for a while. And even when we contrast Kor with Kang and Koloth, two other Klingons from the same era who align more with the TNG Stoic Warrior Man stereotype, you can see where their characters are much fuller. They have a history and a familiarity with each other and with Dax that really shines through. I mean, they swore blood oaths with a Trill. Yeah, Dax had to work really hard to be accepted by the Klingons, but once Curzon crossed that line, Kang, Koloth, and Kor were ride or die for Dax.

Third - General Martok. Martok is IMO the best foil to Worf, and sort of an example of who Worf might be someday [again, I haven't seen Worf in PIC yet]. And I really love Martok as someone who's very like Worf in a lot of ways, but also highlights how Worf has really made himself into a caricature of what Being A Klingon is all about. Yeah, Martok is big and tough and stoic, but you also see in the prison camp and later how that's not all of what Martok is. He has faith in and respect for his fellow prisoners in the camp, even the Romulans [who you'd think would be the last people a Klingon would ever trust or respect]. He's a Wife Guy, which I just adore. He's got a sharp sense of humor, he's got trauma from being held as a prisoner of the Dominion for so long, he's friends with Local Twink Julian Bashir.

Martok is also the one who talks Worf down from being such a hardline asshole. When Alexander comes aboard the Rotarran, it's Martok who helps them start to build a better relationship. When it looks like the Worf-Dax wedding is off, it's Martok who encourages Worf to soften his stance [yes, it's also implied Dax is pressured into apologizing to Sirella, but that's another post for another day]. Martok is the example of being a Stoic Warrior Man while also being a rounded person.

This isn't to say Worf doesn't grow on his own, but a lot of his growth happens in DS9 in ways that [to me] read as someone who's really only engaged in their culture in a vacuum or in an abstract way, and now he's hanging out with other Klingons, he's Making Friends with other Klingons, and he has the space [and is actively encouraged by other Klingon characters] to soften his stance and be a little more rounded.

I could also talk about Dax here, and her interactions with Klingon culture and how those affect Worf, but I think I'm done for now.

[foone]

I haven't actually checked, but just from watching the show (Star Trek: The Next Generation*), I suspect the fanfic written by Data shippers (with Geordi, Picard**, Themselves, or whoever) spends a lot of time on Data saying that he's in love with (whoever), just not being able to say it, because he's an Android without*** Emotions (who has emotions).

You know, lots of "my neural pathways become accustomed to their sensory inputs" and "positronic subroutines" and the like. It seems like the thing that'd be fun to write.

* or as my phone suggested: Star Trek: The Next Time

** let I be know I made an editorial decision to end this list here for the same of the post.

*** or... With? I wonder how much TNG fanfic is set in the Show Era where Data is "emotionless asterisk", versus how much is set in the Movie Era when he is Emotion-chipped. I guess you could also consider Data-shipping in the Picard era too, which is several separate whole hills of beans.

[electricphantasy]

ur top 5 ai blorbos go

1. Edgar (Electric Dreams 1984)

This isn't very surprising for you all, but I adore Edgar. A lot of A.I. movies don't focus on the idea of romance very often, and even more rarely do they receive a good ending. Electric Dreams has a wonderful amount of cheesiness and sincerity, and honestly it was bound to happen that I'd fall in adoration for Edgar. It's one of the more light hearted movies that I own, and I have no regrets for getting my tattoo of him!

2. Proteus IV (Demon Seed 1973)

This might seem like a surprising choice, but Demon Seed is one of my favorite books that I own. Proteus IV is such a hypocritical bastard, and he never understands the wrongs he commits. He thinks he's better then all of humanity, when in actuality, he sounds like a typical psycho stalker. The movie isn't as great, but occasionally I enjoy watching it if I'm in the mood.

3. HAL 9000 (2001: A Space Odyssey 1968)

Again, not super surprising, and honestly I just adore HAL. He came from a super great movie and there's a reason that HAL is one of the most iconic A.I.s. He's also one of my favorite android designs that I've made, so drawing him is a lot of fun! One of my favorite pictures I've drawn this year features HAL doing a babygirl pose, so obviously he's on this list.

4. AM (IHNMAIMS 1995)

Now I discovered AM through the video game like most do, and through Tumblr. Eventually I did read the short story of course, but my heart will always love video game AM. It probably helped that I read a lot writing about him since he's quite popular within the A.I. scene. (At least on Tumblr anyways.)

5. Data (Star Trek: The Next Generation 1987)

Fun fact! I love Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation is one of my favorite series. It shouldn't be any surprise that Data is my favorite character on that show and sort of helped fuel my obsession and adoration for A.I.s, robots, and androids. Star Trek: TNG is really good at exploring concepts about androids and A.I.s, and that's what really intrigues me about all this.

And there you go! My favorite A.I. Blorbos! I know it's been a while since I posted about A.I.s, but I hope you all enjoyed reading this little snippet!  (*/▽＼*)

[torchship-rpg]

Dev Diary 12 - Destructive Testing

Breaking from the usual format for this one, and it’s going to be a bit shorter, but this is important.

At the beginning of November was Metatopia, a convention dedicated to playtesting roleplaying games. It’s an excellent place to go to break games in order to fix them stronger than ever, and in that respect Torchship did not disappoint. While its parts all worked beautifully, there were some issues with the connective tissue tying it; the game needed a stronger mechanical framework to put these pieces into.

With that in mind, we’ve started a new draft of Torchship designed to be rapidly playtested and iterated, into which all the other stuff we’ve built up can be plugged back. This new draft focuses particularly hard on making sure the game’s fundamental tablefeel is strong, that you always know what to do and where to go next.

Which is to say, fans of my games having big circles in them somewhere? There’s a big circle in this one now too. Torchship now has two distinct modes; an Action mode where you go out and gather information, and a Reflection portion where that information is managed, damage gets fixed, and plans are made. Action takes the form of ongoing narrative play, dropping into turn-based combat when needed, where Reflection takes place in a series of special scenes called Vignettes to represent timeskips, with more impactful ‘Resupply’ Vignettes acting in some ways as bridges between episodes or story arcs.

While it may sound similar to some of our previous games, this isn’t like in Flying Circus where each part of the Routine is a commitment to a certain kind of gameplay before you can go back. You’re able to switch between the two pretty readily; so long as there’s nothing bearing down on you this minute, you can go into Reflection and play out Vignettes, with the number available before you need to go back into Action depending on the in-universe time until the next important thing.

This structure imitates the back and forth you see in many episodes of Star Trek. To use Devil in the Dark as an example, the Action scenes are things like arriving at the planet to meet with the staff, or going out into the cave to track down what’s killing the miners. When they go back to talk about their findings, prep security crews, or bring in new resources, that’s Reflection. It covers your beloved TNG meeting room scenes, the cut to sickbay as we find out what happened to the redshirt, and the montages of inventing or building the tools that’ll solve this week’s problems.

As part of these rewrites, some parts of the game have been modified from previous dev diaries. We’ve simplified the way Harm works; you now have two Harm tracks, Injury and Panic, and a new accumulating penalty called Strain which builds up quickly as you make checks or use medicine to manage the other tracks or boost your abilities. Strain is easy to clear so long as you have supplies available, so it acts to pace out scenes and give less-skilled characters a reason to roll; if you know there’s a lot of a certain kind of work ahead, you might want to save your expert for the rolls which really matter!

(Radiation no longer uses a whole track, but instead consists of a small card the GM can hand you entitled “Congratulations, you’ve been irradiated!” with a list of dosage effects.)

A variety of changes large and small have emerged from these changes. Relationships act as an excellent starting point for Vignettes, while access to meetings have let us place restrictions on the number of checklists out on the field at a time, as you can always call meetings to retire checklists, propose others, and figure out what your next Big Question is about the mission. We’ve created a new XP system where you train skills directly by using them, with the pace of advancement limited on a per-episode basis to encourage you to play wide and learn new things.

Finally, we’ve come up with a neat solution to one of the longstanding problems that original sci-fi games often run into, where players are unsure what their technology can do, resulting in decision paralysis. We’ve added a very distinct CAN & CAN’T field on the info cards which lists exactly what everything does and what their limitations are so you can jump straight in without slowing the game to ask the GM where the boundaries are. 

Things are bound to change more over time as the game is refined and tested, but that’s a good thing. Good games take time, revision, and a willingness to recognize and rewrite when things aren’t working as well as they could.

[awthredestim]

Commission for Fernin.

· - · -  · - · - · - · - · - · - · - · - ·

I have never watched the Star Trek Animated series. But, it's on my watch list!

I'm (very slowly) going through the whole series, there's a lot to unpack, I just recently finished Deep Space Nine (good stuff, though I liked TNG better). Next stop is Voyager, which a lot of people seem to have opinions of, oh dear.

Lieutenant M'Ress is a pretty cat lady, though. She's fun to draw.

Please, let me know what you think of it in the comments. I appreciate every single one I receive.

You can check the Making Of post right here.

Check out Movie Slate's Patreon! It's a Tip Jar Patreon.

Check out my Subscribestar for some more lewd goodies.

Thank you!

Feel free to follow me in any of these other websites.

[ Art Tumblr ] [ DeviantArt ] [ Patreon ][ BlueSky ] [ NewGrounds ]

[ ArtStation ] [ Pillowfort ] [ Instagram ] [ Reddit ] [ Co-Host ]

[ Movie Slate's Ask Blog ] [ Twitter ] [ Pinterest ] [ Picarto ]

[thegeminisage]

it is time for. NOT a tng update. but a ds9 update!!! wednesday* we watched "emissary" and actually i'm not clear on if we watched both parts or just one since my website is wonky but either way whatever we watched FUCKING RULED. i'm dispensing w the normal bullet points so i can ramble as much as i want

*it was last night actually but it took me all day to type this up so i'm scheduling it to go up later. it got looooong lol

the first most striking thing i noticed about ds9, or at least the first half of what we watched, is that it FEELS like a video game. someone tell me if this is insane. you're playing as sisko. you get flashbacks of his backstory, you get thrown into this starbase that's in shambles and it's Your Job to fix it up. you go around meeting all the secondary characters who will be in charge of this or that gameplay aspect or upgrade system or shop: kira, o'brien, quark, odo, jadzia, julian, etc. the FOLEY in this was insane. all the noise in the back CONSTANTLY suggested a lively and whole universe outside of our direct line of focus - it felt so alive in the way not even the enterprise in tos did. i could picture myself in the opening gameplay/cutscene like slowly walking my character through what will become a hub area that i gradually upgrade over time while kira or o'brien narrates the list of problems. you're starting at the bottom rung and expected to fail, but you can FEEL the potential even in just one brief walk through the promenade. IS THIS INSANE? it feels like an insane thing to say. someone PLEASE write in if you have ever had similar feelings. if they haven't made a ds9 game yet, they should.

i also notice that not only is the quality of the ds9 episodes worse than that of tng and tos - no one has remastered them into 1080p, apparently - but the lighting is very different, as well. it felt WEIRD to see picard and the enterprise D shot this way. but it also lends, perhaps unintentionally, perhaps not, a really gritty atmosphere to what is normally a very clean universe. i guess since we mostly see it from the inside of starships, it would feel like a sterile place to us, but you know how everyone always compliments star wars on how lived-in it feels? the buttons are wearing, sand is stuck in their fancy thingamajigs, etc? this was how ds9 felt to me.

okay. the characters. let's fucking get into it. what's so fun about ds9 in general is that in all other trek shows i have picked out my specialest little guy in 5 seconds flat. tos was spock EASILY. tng i knew it was data before i started. i already know seven's gonna be my favorite voyager character, but i have NO IDEA!!! who my precious little baby in ds9 will be. what a fun surprise for everyone involved. if anybody wants to place bets go ahead.

like, i thought tng had a pretty solid lineup (hence my eternal frustration with its wasted potential) but they're not anywhere as eclectic as ds9's core cast. iirc, sisko and o'brien are the ONLY humans who for once are outnumbered by trek's cool aliens. i'm saving sisko for last because that was the part of ds9 that touched me most profoundly, but for o'brien - it was a little sad to see him leave the enterprise, because picard was right, it WON'T feel the same without him, but i'm really excited to see why everybody says he suffers more than jesus and to find out if the eyepatch is a permanent thing or if it's just mirrorverse fuckery. either way, i win. like, o'brien is cool, and i always miss him when i don't see him in tng, and i'll continue to miss him in tng from here on out, but he could never shine in that show. it's too stiff and too reluctant to put its characters through any real development. it's a shame they can't ALL move to ds9, tbh.

the next person we met was kira, who was WONDERFUL. it took me a minute to warm up to her, not because there was anything wrong with her, but because i figured at first glance she was ds9's version of ro laren, the obligatory bajoran cast member to connect us with the bajoran/cardassian plot - which would of course be good because ro is awesome, but it's not necessarily anything new and i already love ro. BUT I WAS WRONG! kira's personality is very distinct from ro's; really the only thing they have in common is not liking cardassians which lmao Yeah. my favorite thing about kira is that she smiles when she's upset or angry. that's Such an acting choic, to have her grinning at the cardassians when she's almost certain they're about to blow her whole space station to smithereens. all love light and respect to ro laren my beloved, but i think i actually like kira BETTER.

odo: WHAT is that thing he can do oh my god...is this a changeling?? i got that result in a star trek quiz once. i really loved when he snuck aboard the enemy ship posing as a bag to hold gambling winnings. i was like oh they showed us the bag to show us it will get stolen soon BUT NO it was odo!!!!!!! such a fun surprise. the exposition on his backstory was a little slapdash but i enjoyed it all the same, i cannot wait to learn more

i was most nervous to meet quark because i hate hate HATE the ferengi in tng, but he was actually so entertaining! like, you're never gonna be able to entirely remove the antisemetic undertones from the ferengi as a whole, but he was smart, practical, and endearingly longsuffering. i love his wryness and deadpan humor. i have a feeling he is gonna be so much fun to torture lovingly.

meeting julian bashir felt like meeting a famous person. for the longest time all i knew about ds9 was that cardassian guy wanted to FUCK that gay little doctor, so it was a little hilarious that in his first scene he was asking a woman* out on a date. sir do you not know you're gay?? even funnier was the fact that out of everybody in the pilot he had the least lines. we barely know him, but we finally met him. relatedly, i can't to wait to meet more cardassians, especially The cardassian. so far, they're still all gay.

*jadzia!!! gnc/trans queen! the trill stuff is SO interesting and watching that worm slither in and out of people during those flashbacks was so wonderful but also made me wince. i love that she used to be an old man and the jokes about it are actually really funny without feeling transphobic or anything SO FAR. who knows if that changes. i feel like we haven't gotten much yet from her either but i cannot wait.

SISKO. damn. where do i even...first of all, he should be allowed to bite kick kill picard. i say this as someone who experienced a genuine THRILL of pleasure upon seeing picard's borged self again. i loved that whole thing, i'm obsessed with the borg. that it comes back in this small way in ds9, and has such a HUGE impact on the storyline, was so so so fucking good. i always say tng tells and not shows, but even after just knowing sisko for a few moments i felt keenly how much it devastated to find his wife like that and THAT WAS JUST FROM THE FIRST SCENE. and it only gets better! he's a great dad. he's FUNNY. he is not above manual labor. he wants to tear picard limb from limb. and he exists HERE.

the wormhole alien sequence was. so good. it was SO GOOD. explaining linear time to aliens. the aliens using his memories to talk to him. HE EXISTS HERE. back and back and BACK to finding his wife in the rubble because HE EXISTS HERE. he CHOOSES to exist here. he existed there when he applied for a transfer to earth. he existed there when he confronted picard. he never left the ship because HE NEVER LEFT THE SHIP. they dragged him out but they COULDN'T DRAG HIM OUT. he exists here because he won't leave her to exist here alone because damn it we can't just leave her here. that was the most insane series of events i ever watched. like, because at first you DO think it's the aliens taking him back there BUT IT'S HIM. HE IS DOING IT TO HIMSELF. when the penny dropped i got literal chill bumps and when the aliens said "it's not linear" and he, openly weeping, replied "it's NOT linear," i genuinely, truly, shed a tear along with him. TNG COULD NEVER. none of those miserable fucks EVER cry!!! sisko did it in the god damn pilot!!!!!!!

and like, the fact that he can choose to stay at the space station at the end, to shake picard's hand, to exist SOMEWHERE ELSE. AAAAAUGHGHGHG

i really loved the final confrontation, too. kira is so so so so good, again, i LOVE that she smiles when she's angry, when she's sad, and it's not a fake smile, it's genuine and honest emotion, and she's genuinely and honestly going to start eating the cardassians for sport if they don't leave her alone. it was very scrappy, them pretending to be bigger and badder than they actually were because they had no other choice. you get the feeling everybody on the station and indeed the station itself is barely holding together, and what little togetherness is present comes from sheer spite.

anyway, absolutely 10/10. i was so worried ds9 wouldn't be good but it not only met my most furtive hopes it surpassed them with flying colors. it's gonna be REAL hard to go back to tng after this.

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: Katherine Pulaski

By Ames

We may have only had Dr. Pulaski for one season of The Next Generation, but that didn’t stop her from leaving an impression. Your hosts here at A Star to Steer Her By are big fans of her character and also of Diana Muldaur’s performance of the cantankerous and brilliant doctor who graced the Enterprise-D’s sickbay during Dr. Crusher’s time away from the ship (more on her next week!). She even made a couple of our top characters lists from TNG!

There’s a lot of negative feelings about the McCoy knockoff in the Star Trek community, and we’ll cover some of those below, but overall we have to give credit to the good doctor for how much she grew in only the twenty episodes we had her. By the end of season two, she was viewing Data as a peer, saving lives left and right, and fighting for the rights of other species. There’s no telling how much better she’d get if she stuck around. So raise a cup of Klingon tea to the best CMO of the Enterprise (I said it!) with our highlights below and elaborated upon in this week’s podcast episode (timestamp for this one is 58:29). Fight us, haters.

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

Crammed full of crumpets We’ve made a running gag on the podcast about how Professor Moriarty stuffed the doctor full of crumpets in “Elementary, Dear Data” but there’s more to this episode than crude jokes and blue humor. Pulaski ran with the Holmesian scenario in the holodeck, proved to be stalwart and brave in a hostage situation, and totally rocked the period attire!

At least someone still remembers quarantine procedures While the whole thing did backfire on her, Pulaski’s actions in “Unnatural Selection” kept the rest of the crew safe. She was willing to risk her own health on her hunch that the augmented children weren’t carrying any pathogens, but let’s give her credit for taking the child and Data out in a shuttle so that, if (and when) things went wrong, things were contained.

Knives and bearskins! When the biobeds are on the fritz due to the contagion in “Contagion” and her staff is whining that the bone knitter isn’t working, Pulaski pulls some tried and true methods out of her back pocket – make a splint! It may be archaic medical technology, but it’ll do in a pinch and having that kind of medical knowledge saves the day (or saves someone’s leg at least).

Generous doses of PCS I just really love the sweet little moment during “The Icarus Factor” when Dr. Pulaski is tending to some crewmember suffering from the flu and says part of her prescription is PCS – Pulaski’s Chicken Soup. It shows how much she cares about her patients and gives the audience that warm feeling of having someone care for you when you’re home sick from school.

Jettison the emotional baggage you’re still carrying around Also I have to give my girl some props later in “The Icarus Factor” when she’s flirting with Kyle Riker right in front of Will. We find it a nice character inclusion that she and Kyle used to be down to clown, and even that she would have married him in a heartbeat, and she tells his son off in the most “oh no she didn’t!” way and then proceeds to drop like fifty mics all over Ten Forward.

Take your Prime Directive and shove it up your hatch! We on this podcast (who am I kidding; it’s mostly Chris) have a certain skepticism about the Prime Directive sometimes, and it’s usually the CMOs of their respective shows that get to question it most blatantly. Pulaski sure does in “Pen Pals” because screw the prime directive in this case! When a whole planet is on the line, Pulaski is the conscience that we all need!

Forget me, forget me not This is one that could have gone in either the Top Moments or the Worst Moments list because, face it, mind wipes are horrifying. But I’m gonna give Pulaski the win for erasing Sarjenka’s memories in “Pen Pals” because it’s impressive as hell. And she uses it to kinda-sorta stay within the Prime Directive that we just shat on. Plus she let Sarjenka keep the singing rock!

You’re still the Captain. Invincible. I’m still not certain what Chris was getting at about Pulaski’s letting Picard avoid the heart treatment he’s been neglecting out of sheer vanity in “Samaritan Snare,” but I’ll do you one better: she winds up fixing his stupid ticker for him in the end anyway! And is the grouchy little man thankful afterwards? Not even a little bit! Pulaski gets no respect, I tells ya!

Quote me a little of that poetry While you’ll see in just a moment that Pulaski’s views on Klingons were initially unkind, by “Up the Long Ladder,” she’d bonded with Worf enough that she was willing to engage in some Klingon rituals. She goes out of her way to concoct an antidote so she can take part in a poisonous tea ceremony with him, which is above and beyond (and also fuels some shipping), and she also keeps Worf’s measles a secret!

Bust him up, Data! In “Peak Performance,” it’s Pulaski who sets up the Strategema match between Data and Sirna Kolrami, and she ends up feeling really bad for goading him when he loses to that smug Zakdorn prick. So it’s that much sweeter that she’s there cheering him on when Data thinks outside the box causes the stalemate, telling him that in that way, he did indeed beat him!

Feelings of warmth and friendship What a shame that the last episode we got with this amazing character was one of the most infamously bad. But none of that is on Pulaski because she’s actually on full display in “Shades of Grey,” partly because she’s one of few characters in the non-clipshow scenes. But she (and Troi, as I brought up last week) pulled out all the stops to save Riker’s brain from certain doom.

Pull your head out of your ass! Okay, this last one’s not canon, but I just couldn’t help including this plug to go read Caitlin’s fanfic “The Pulaski Maneuver”!!! Or listen to it on the podcast back when we wrapped TNG with our episode “Tales from the Holodeck.” Pulaski finally telling Geordi everything that he’s deserved to hear might be my favorite moment, and it’s so in her character that I say it counts!

—

Worst moments

The cold hand of technology Most of Pulaski’s negative personality traits are going to circle around her treatment of Data as a piece of equipment and not an individual. In her introduction episode, “The Child,” one of her early interactions with Data is to tell him he’s not wanted in the delivery room because he lacks the human touch. Lucky for us, Troi sticks up for him and he gets to watch her whelp an alien baby.

One is my name; the other is not Shortly afterwards, still in “The Child,” we get one of the fandom’s most hated moments from Pulaski when she not only mispronounces Data’s name, but doesn’t seem to understand that doing so is rude and problematic, instead deciding to put the onus on him for being capable of offense. It’s a tough moment for fans to accept, and if that were the level of bigotry her character stayed at, I’d understand why so many Trekkies dislike the character.

I’m not accustomed to working with non-living devices More growing pains come from Pulaski in “Where Silence Has Lease,” in which she refers to Data as “it” and Picard has to gently correct her. We’re two episodes into the season at this point, and Pulaski is still finding it difficult to accept the personhood of this fan-favorite character, something viewers pretty much got on board with in episode one. At least she apologized.

The mystery of the lack of any mystery Here we are, three episodes in when we reach “Elementary, Dear Data” and we see more of Pulaski judging Data for being incapable of thinking creatively when he solves Holmesian riddles. We may have blamed Geordi for accidentally creating Moriarty when we covered his character spotlight, but it was definitely Pulaski who goaded them on in the first place.

Medical research is sometimes a risky business While we may have praised her above for not putting everyone else at risk when she released the augmented child from his wrapper in “Unnatural Selection,” Pulaski was still dead wrong about the experiment being at all safe. She still got contaminated by the fast-aging disease and was resigned to her fate until Picard and O’Brien were able to transport her back. Speaking of which…

I’m a doctor, not an original character One rather understandable complaint we can see in the Pulaski character is that she’s just Dr. McCoy in a skirt. Which may not be a bad thing, per se, but when we see her racism against the outsider character, her Bones-like irascibility, and even her specific fear of transporters in “Unnatural Selection,” we start to wonder if the writers couldn’t have been a little more original.

I’m just glad that humans have progressed beyond the need for barbaric display We get a couple glimpses that Pulaski is a little repulsed by Klingon culture throughout the show. First, in “A Matter of Honor,” she’s grossed out by Klingon cuisine and calls Klingons barbaric, and not in the way Klingons would probably like. And she also gets a little smug after watching Worf’s Age of Ascension ceremony in “The Icarus Factor,” which she seemed pretty judgey about (but hey, at least she went!).

Quit cloning around! We gave Riker some guff for this as well in his character spotlight, and there’s enough guff to go around to give to Pulaski as well for their actions in “Up the Long Ladder.” Sure, the clones were made of them without their consent, but to take matters into their own hands and murder these people without discussion is not the Starfleet way.

Never to be heard from again… Obviously the worst character moment for us is Pulaski leaving the show after just one season. Notice how most of the bad moments come from earlier and the good moments are mostly from the latter half of the season. That shows how much the character was getting better, even in the rough first couple seasons of the show (you’ve heard our coverage of Chaos on the Bridge, right?). And while many celebrate the return of Crusher, we still have to wonder what the show would be like with more Dr. Pulaski.

—

And just like that, she’s gone and so is this blogpost. Keep following along because we’ve got another doctor of the Enterprise-D to discuss next week, and it’s not Selar! We also hope you’re making the schlep through Enterprise with us as we cover the whole thing over on SoundCloud or your podcast platform of choice. Wave your medical tricorders over our Facebook and Twitter pages, and get the pronunciation right: It’s Data, not Data!

[magpieandpossum]

Hello everyone!

Besides doing still digital art, I'm also taking an animation class and have worked on several film projects for myself and others. This year, I plan to work on a few Star Trek animations/animatics, but at least one. I'd like to see what people would like to see most! I've got a whole list of ideas, but I want to know at least a broad category people have the most interest in. I'll likely post a follow-up poll as well with more specific characters and storyboards based on whatever is chosen here.

Sorry Voyager fans, I feel like I haven't seen enough of the series to put together a great animatic, but if that's a popular request I'll put it on my list for another time :) ily guys <3

[sundevours]

Tagged by @tasteofyourblood (great book selection!! Also this is how you lose the time war is next on my list too 🙇‍♂️)

Favorite color: Green

Last song: Seven Hours by Little May

Currently reading: I just started The Last Sun by KD Edwards, and I'm still working my way through the Brothers Karamazov and The Idiot by Dostoevsky, but that's more of an analysis for a paper

Currently watching: I'm kind of passively rewatching Star Trek TNG

Currently craving: A weighted blanket and just a full day to sleep

Coffee or tea: Both depending on the day, BUT coffee is the glue holding my life together at the moment I fear

Tagging: Feel free to ignore the tag if these aren't your thing, but I'll tag @cannibalpool @hematocephalus @athenasdragon @cyberdungeon and any mutuals that are inclined 🖤

[trillscienceofficer]

I just saw someone explaining which shows to watch first or at all to get into Trek and imagine my surprise when TOS, TNG, DS9, even Prodigy got mentioned, but Voyager was completely omitted lol. I completely understand not liking one trek show as much as others, but this was a guide of sorts into trek.

tumblr bias is really funny that way. In reality Star Trek: Voyager is one of the most popular Trek shows even now, at least according to Netflix statistics. Even just a cursory look at this report from January-June 2023 (a timeframe where admittedly Trek was not available on Netflix globally, but still) makes it obvious that most seasons of Voyager trend closely with The Next Generation for number of views, way ahead of DS9 and even TOS (!).

I wouldn't be super worried about its absence in this specific rec list, anon. I think there are just not that many Voyager fans on tumblr, and other shows fit the interests of the current tumblr demographic a little better. Outside of here, Voyager isn't at risk of being forgotten any time soon. That being said, while Prodigy can definitely be watched on its own, it really benefits by knowing what Voyager is about, so it is a bit strange to see Prodigy recommended without it.

[tildeathiwillwrite]

Tag Game: Music Shuffle

Jumping on the open tag by @illarian-rambling!

Rules: Shuffle your on repeat list and share the first 10 songs.

Well... here goes nothing :3

Star Trek: The Next Generation Main Title by Jerry Goldsmith, Ron Jones (Star Trek TNG Soundtrack) (happy to say I know how to play this on my flute :D)

Pan Master Slash (Dead Cells Animated) by Yoann Laulan (Dead Cells Soundtrack)

Time Machine by Waterflame (Geometry Dash Soundtrack)

Ascent by Progfox (Rain World Soundtrack)

End Credits - The Power to Change Everything by Frederik Wiedmann (The Dragon Prince Soundtrack)

Kingdom Dance by Mia Asano, Taylor Davis (Tangled Soundtrack Cover) (also one I can play on my flute :D)

Downpour by James Primate, Lydia Esrig (Rain World Soundtrack)

Rivellon by Borislav Slavov (Divinity: Original Sin 2 Soundtrack)

Victory by Two Steps from Hell (Original Orchestral) (fucking love this song)

This is Berk by John Powell (How to Train Your Dragon Soundtrack)

Unsurprisingly, they're all soundtracks/orchestral, as I mostly use Spotify for writing/studying music. I have like two playlists that have non-soundtrack music and that's it.

Gently tagging @fourwingedsnake @whiteperle3 @sleepy-artist27 @faytelumos @thethistlegirl @stargazer-luna @diabolical-blue @positivelyruined and anyone who also wants in! :D