seanfranco.bsky.social
Writer, reader, classic Who fan, board game player, Roman Catholic, anti-capitalist Ⓐ☭⧖. M-I-Z! Support 🇵🇸🇨🇺🏴 f,rt,l≠er
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Getting Started
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Suspicions is yet another Crusher story about doing autopsies that she's not allowed to do. It's presented as a frame story with Guinan, although it's not clear why; perhaps Whoopi Goldberg had another episode for the season left on her contract. More importantly, it's a story about a Ferengi who…
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…are all that work in the story.
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…form of an alien computer virus which cripples the station. There's not much plot for the story to get its teeth into, but this is elevated somewhat by the extended scenes of vulnerability and humanity between Lwaxana and Odo. They have very good chemistry with each other, and basically their bits…
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…Troi's introduction to Deep Space Nine. As usual, she's never turning down an opportunity to find a potential romantic partner. Lacking her usual foil of Picard, she finds herself attached to Odo. Much of the b-plot is contrived to get Lwaxana and Odo trapped in a turbolift, this happening in the…
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…things not seen." The provable existence and material reality of Kahless is what allows Worf's faith to be questioned, leaving him still uncertain at the end of the story, having never obtained the mystical experience that he craved for his own spiritual actualization.
The Forsaken is Lwaxana…
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…the productive operation of their nation. Worf goes back and forth like a yoyo in this story, first highly skeptical then fully accepting and then back to validated skepticism. Perhaps Worf would have benefited from reading Hebrews 11: "Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of…
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…it's somewhat boring to boot.
Rightful Heir is the story of an attempted government coup by orthodox evangelicals. Something that I like about the story is that it actually addresses the fact that the Klingon Empire has never shown an actual Emperor, apparently finding the office unnecessary to…
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…point in continuously encountering god characters when you have Q to write for instead. And now on Deep Space Nine, we have this story: unnamed aliens who for vague motives of exploration mess with the crew members of the space station by solidifying their imaginations. The story doesn't work, and…
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…point in continuously encountering god characters when you have Q to write for instead. And now on Deep Space Nine, we have this story: unnamed aliens who for vague motives of exploration mess with the crew members of the space station by solidifying their imaginations. The story doesn't work, and…
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…Jo'Bril's villainy was accepted, that doesn't negate her offense to Reyga's family. The story is fine, but it's just shy of actually working.
If Wishes Were Horses is an obligtory god story. These were frequent in The Original Series, but became more rare in The Next Generation, as there's no…
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…anomaly, as it is with Reyga, or even with Kurak here in the same story. The ending makes no sense. Crusher winds up being right, but she vaporizes Jo'Bril with a phaser whilst in the star, so it's not like she emerges from the star with any evidence supporting her side of the story; even if…
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…actually seems selfless, interested only in getting credit as a scientist for his research and not interested in monetizing it for profit. It's always nice to see the show present a story contrary to the homogenizing stereotypes of a specific species, although it is always presented as an…
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Suspicions is yet another Crusher story about doing autopsies that she's not allowed to do. It's presented as a frame story with Guinan, although it's not clear why; perhaps Whoopi Goldberg had another episode for the season left on her contract. More importantly, it's a story about a Ferengi who…
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#157 The Savages (1966)
There’s certainly an interpretation of this one which examines the problematic portrayal of the Elders as civilized and the Savages as, well, savage. It’s hard to say if there’s a racial aspect to it, as the story does not adequately flesh out its own world building; I…
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…don’t think the planet is even named. The story itself is a pretty if basic story of revolution, boosted by the idea of Jano’s plan to absorb the Doctor’s intelligence backfiring significantly. Sadly, this is also where Steven exits. Why he would make a good leader here is never really made clear.
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#157 The Savages (1966)
There’s certainly an interpretation of this one which examines the problematic portrayal of the Elders as civilized and the Savages as, well, savage. It’s hard to say if there’s a racial aspect to it, as the story does not adequately flesh out its own world building; I…
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This looks really good. NBS should be proud.
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To be clear, magical realism is a clearly defined thing, and someone writing for The Atlantic should know how to not misuse established literary terms just because they disagree with their local politician.
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When accountability is now propaganda…
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When you definitely have nothing to hide.
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Going back to the original trilogy, you can see Lucas making an effort to make the Rebellion more diverse (for the time), but, curiously, the Imperials stayed British white dudes.
Almost like Lucas was making a point...
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Stuff like that is why I didn't trust the creative decisions to make Imperial characters more ethnically and sexually diverse.
I know minorities also find Imperial characters cool and would like to see themselves reflected in the fiction, but sometimes indulging that desire is a bad idea!
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#158 Warriors of Kudlak (2007)
This is a fun one. The story of Luke learning social mores is a little bit of a drag, but the overall story of kidnapping children to serve as soldiers is a tried and tested story. It’s kinda goofy that it’s laser tag that the aliens are using to test and recruit the…
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…kids, but it works. What’s more interesting is that this is the first time that any of the characters other than Sarah Jane herself ever get to leave Earth. It’s generally outside the scope of this show, so it’s good to see the actual impact that it makes on Clyde, Maria, and Luke. Generally solid.
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#158 Warriors of Kudlak (2007)
This is a fun one. The story of Luke learning social mores is a little bit of a drag, but the overall story of kidnapping children to serve as soldiers is a tried and tested story. It’s kinda goofy that it’s laser tag that the aliens are using to test and recruit the…
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This is an uphill battle. My institution is working on large-scale AI implementation. My direct supervisor has told us that she uses ChatGPT for writing emails or has consulted it for management advice. Copilot is on every piece of Microsoft software we touch.
But I got to keep fighting back.
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Basically this is the first time they were seeing these critiques. Bad press is just not out there generally.
I break it into four major categories for them:
• IP theft/plagiarism
• environmental/energy concerns
• anti-intellectualism/anti-critical thinking
• frequently wrong/halluncinates
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Are they whiskey videos in a jar-oh?
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Come to St. Louis
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#159 The Sea Devils (1972)
This is a followup to both The Silurians and The Dæmons. It feels a lot smaller than the former, and not just because it’s an episode shorter. The Silurians had a broad Quatermass-esque feel to it, whilst this story is much more the standard six-parter that we expect in…
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…this era. It also sidelines the title monster significantly to make way for the Master. As always, this story works well because of Delgado’s performance, but his character doesn’t compliment the plot well, making it an inferior sequel. The Navy also doesn’t work as well here as UNIT would have.
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#159 The Sea Devils (1972)
This is a followup to both The Silurians and The Dæmons. It feels a lot smaller than the former, and not just because it’s an episode shorter. The Silurians had a broad Quatermass-esque feel to it, whilst this story is much more the standard six-parter that we expect in…
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The Chase is a big band-aid episode that tries to resolve some of the goofy biological aspects of the franchise. First up is Professor Galen, someone I can't help feel suspicious about due to Norman Lloyd's role in Dead Poets Society. But he's actually very reasonable here, even when he gets angry…
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…sever Mullibok's connection to the land, for his safety and for the great good of the planet. All of this is so good that it's almost easy to overlook how fun the b-plot is, with Nog and Jake doing the red paperclip story, earning rare respect from Quark.
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…eternal question of Star Trek, the needs of the many versus the needs of the few. But her unresolved trauma prevents her from automatically and forcibly removing Mullibok, to the degree that she is tempted to sacrifice her career. Sisko guides her back so that she can metaphorically and literally…
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…direct rule from the Cardassians. He has a perfectly good life that would continue if not interrupted, minding his own business and working with his two friends who have been rendered mute. It is only in the name of progress that this life on the moon has to end. Kira has to wrestle with the…
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…freedom fighter to military administrator in just a few months, and she's left Bajor behind for the isolation of Deep Space Nine, so close to her home and yet never connected to the land itself. Mullibok is intimately connected to the land, having a home and farm he's built from scratch to avoid…
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…fine, if a bit thin. It needs more substance to work.
Progress is easily the best story of this new spin-off so far. It delves equally into the trauma of Bajoran occupation and Kira's own trauma. Mullibok is the perfect vessel to make Kira question her role in their new world. She gone from…
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…Enterprise. We don't learn anything interesting about Riker in the process, nor are we ever led to believe anything in the story prior to the operating room scene even happened, so there's nothing developed with any other characters. So it's all just a mood piece, and as a mood piece it's…
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…to be the same kind of psychological thriller that its motif drama production also claims to be. The whole story is Riker slowly questioning if anything around him is real. This is a challenging sell from the start, since we the viewer never question if he is actually an officer on the…
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…if she gets anything in return. Now she does wind up getting something, but that doesn't seem to matter as much to Sisko, who has already picked a side from the start of his mediations. Neither story is particularly satisfying, apart from watching Bashir irritate O'Brien.
Frame of Mind attempts…
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…why is it there? None of these questions get answered. We get a far better explanation of the b-plot, where a fifteen-year-old is a major political leader. Her story is problematic for other reasons, mostly because Sisko pressures her from the beginning to concede her claim on the land, no matter…
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…using communal psychic energy to fight a spooky monster. This feels like it doesn't fit into the stories we already know about Bajor. Did the Cardassians just not care about the annual battle between the Sirah and the Dal'Rok? Is the Dal'Rok a problem anywhere else on the planet? What is it and…