I like this idea a lot, it might become my new head cannon!

Possibly. But how much more wear & tear would this be compared to the wear put on the warp drive, which gets incredibly frequent use? If that warp drive can withstand it, why not the shield emitters?

Yeah, I think the power-saving argument (#4) is potentially strongest, especially if the plot needs it to be for a given episode.

But I’m having trouble thinking of a situation in the shows where the maneuverability was limited by the shields. Certainly there are plenty of cases where power was routed to shields, maybe even the power that was meant for propulsion. But I think in general, those would be cases where power was already limited, or the need for defense was much higher. In general, I don’t think I recall a trade-off where shields restrict maneuverability or speed.

I totally agree that I love the variety of options! But I would be very happy if one of the options was that we get filler/bottle episodes for a few weeks per season, but every season is 26 episodes long. They could just spread the budget for 10 episodes across all 26, and make the VFX less… shiny.

(Of course, I don’t actually want actors to be worked to the bone like they were in the 90s…)

A pretty cool episode. Top takeaways:

1. I’m going to miss Captain Ransom. I think it would have been fun to have a season or two of him. Only Discovery has had the balls to hand over the Captain’s chair to another during its main run, and I think that is a good thing.
2. Starbase 80 is now set up as a new DS9-style show. A starbase guarding a dimensional portal. God I hope that happens. I just hope they pull off the ensemble cast that made DS9 such a classic.
3. I hate the tease for Rutherford x Tendi, it’s so mean to tease it in the finale :'( But really it’s so cute.

Plenty more I missed of course.

Rewatching in preparation for the finale, and I keep feeling that the voice of Curzon Dax sounds quite similar to the voice of Odo in DS9. I’m quite aware that Rene Auberjonois passed away not that long ago: may he rest in peace. And I guess he was voiced by Fred Tatasciore (Shaxs), which I can hear too. But I keep hearing Odo which is really nice.

That makes about as much sense as saying that pip, gem, npm, cargo, or nix should called be the default package manager on Mac OS…

The default package manager is the default because it manages the system’s software. RPM, Deb/apt, pacman, etc. Homebrew is like pip or docker or cargo or snap or whatever else. You can set it up if you’d like but it’s certainly not a default. (Though I’m not trying to dispute that it’s good 😊)

Mac OS doesn’t have a good default package management solution (though they would if they just opened up the app store and added a CLI). It’s ok to admit it, and say that third party folks (who Apple does not support unless I’m missing something) are powering a pretty good third party experience. If only Apple cared about people who wanted a truly free an customizable computer, they could make a great OS :)

Lol

What’s wrong with homebrew?

Crappy default package management.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

It's not even close!

What you're saying is you wish Ira Steven Behr ran the show instead of Rick Berman. And really, don't we all wish that?

Yes!

Or her usefulness to the episode could be that Edgar Alien Perv has a crush on her.

Yeah that was a super rough episode.

We just are taking two different perspectives about being essential. Uhura was like an organ: quietly essential to the regular operation of your body. Whereas Hoshi is like hands or maybe ears or something: very important for achieving your body's goals, but you can compensate for them not working. You're right Uhura is more essential. I just think it's more interesting watching the hands / ears of the ship helping achieve the mission.

At least it wasn’t as bad as Mayweather’s character arc of becoming a background extra.

😭😭😭 so true

It's funny because I have the exact opposite opinion! I feel like in TOS, Uhura just relays messages and presses buttons on her console. Maybe I'm missing something though. Maybe she's critical to the intra ship communications as the "telephone operator" but she never seems to be critical to the mission.

On the other hand, ENT spends a lot of time building up how many languages Hoshi knows, and how quickly she can pick up new ones, even alien languages. She definitely has her moments where she just struggles until the UT works. But in several episodes they rely on her to translate alien writing, and in at least one or two, she learns to speak a whole new language to communicate. She's also shown to have developed major improvements to the UT. My impression of her, even from Broken Bow when Archer recruited her, was that she's a freaking language savant, operating and developing very new experimental tech. It is sad she didn't get to fully realize her transition from timid linguist to badass crew member (and still linguist). But I always felt like she was doing something critical for the mission, whereas I felt Uhura (in TOS) wasn't.

SNW Uhura is very different in that regard, she does a lot more "mission critical" stuff and she's getting an arc that's very reminiscent of Hoshi (totally a savant, hard working, starting out timid but growing). So I love that for her!

I appreciate the recognition, finally!

It's also a mechanism to sandbox applications, which static linking can't do.

It's not cannon but at least they are somewhat officially acknowledging the absolute dumpster fire that was the ENT finale.

It can be both, and I’m not sure I see the distinction. It’s a coping mechanism, and that’s not actually an awful thing.

Growing up in church, nobody was creating hypotheticals and then trying to explain it using religion. It’s just not what it was about. But I guess if you brought up babies with cancer, then yeah the “mysterious ways” argument would have been a prime cop out to avoid challenging faith too much.

Most commonly, people just wanted to know how to handle the (typically less hyperbolic) challenges in their own lives. They believed they were good and faithful and didn’t understand why God would allow bad things to happen in their lives. Ultimately the “mysterious ways” line was just a coping mechanism, that came with advice to search for the silver linings, and think about past challenges and how they resolved, as evidence of the mysterious ways. Of course it also served to avoid challenging their faith too.

At the end of the day, religion has its very bad elements that I won’t defend. But it’s silly to ignore that for most people, they’re looking for ways to interpret life in order to find meaning, or maybe cope with struggles. For myself, I’m not religious, but if I were trying to help a friend dealing with something difficult in life, I would still encourage them to look for silver linings and to reflect on past challenges. Not to use it as evidence for some god working in mysterious ways, but just to give them perspective to realize that they have the strength to overcome challenges.