I view satirical voice impression and speech synthesis of a real person as two different ethical issues entirely.

I find impressions intended for satire fall within the real of the first amendment, while the latter can be an unwelcome appropriation of identity when done wrong.

I haven’t gotten all the way through it yet, but I have very occasionally come back to it as a hobby project over the past year because I have been trying to collect a dataset of Majel’s lines in order to train a text to speech voice.

Usually, I’d find that a bit unethical, but in this case, they literally tried to collect a dataset before she died, which I think is as close to consent to such a reproduction as most passed actors could give. Also, it’s mostly for fun for something like HomeAssistant on Raspberry Pi.

That’s nuts. I was just up in LA a couple of days ago to see They Might Be Giants. Stopped by the TOS cast signatures in the concrete in the walk of fame.

I’ll have to see if I can get that in next time, although it’s a bigger detour than simply jealously checking out the Micro Center in Tustin, which we have had nothing like back where I live since Fry’s Electronics shuttered (and frankly, Fry’s staff never seemed so nice).

I feel like the first five episodes will be “I’m crying because I dropped a cookie”, and then suddenly the Breen or something blow up half the Federation and crap gets real.

I feel like the premise would be much more interesting if we substitute a planet for growing up in a starship and what the heck the children do in a red alert.

On another note, I hope they put out a good Blu Ray box set like they did with Lower Decks. As of right now, you have to buy season 1 in 2 $20 sets, while season 2 is just one set.

Rest in peace.

You have brought even more dishonor to your house, Paramount, by canceling it.

Although Prodigy got the equivalent of 4 seasons of Lower Decks.

Honestly, I feel like it showed the value of longer seasons - I felt like we had plenty of time to both develop the plot and get episodic.

While those executive geezers don’t give a darn about animation, seeing Prodigy and Lower Decks makes me really think a 50 minute episode TNG/DS9/VOY format animated series with 15-20 episodes a season could be genius, especially if it looked something like Arcane and was somewhat realistic in some aspects but with stylizations to avoid uncanny valley. You could get more time for character development with less labor concerns than an actual shoot, create more interesting aliens while spending less on VFX, and emulate a classic aesthetic without it looking ridiculous.

I see Kevin Riley. I say the magic words:

IIIIIIIIII’LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL TAAAAKEE YOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOEEEEEMMMMM AAAAAGGGGGAAAAAIIIIINNNN KAAATHLEEEEEEEEEEEEN

Now, who’s up for an Ensign or LJG Riley appearance in SNW?

This is simultaneously a post-modern masterpiece and the most disgusting, atrocious thing I have ever seen.

I hope we can yeat Saru in somewhere else - at least the occasional appearance on STA. Let’s hope that Robert Picardo claiming “he’ll be deeper” means he’ll be 99% comic relief like when he said he’d be “more than comic relief” in Prodigy, meaning the show will be a banger rather than a melodramatic despair-fest with the occasional redeeming quality.

Either that or throw him through a portal to another era and call it temporal causality, although I guess the only currently running show they could throw him in is SNW, which wouldn’t make sense for obvious reasons. Now if Prodigy got its (unfortunately improbable) season 3 and he somehow managed to appear and they made a good plot out of it, I might not mind.

I have to agree that First Contact uniform is top-tier.

Also, guy misdated the Romulan supernova.

The planet had previously industrialized and since de-industrialized by choice.

I do have to agree. The setting may be the best part of later seasons of DISCO, even if they (in my personal opinion) frequently squandered it.

Like, I felt like they didn’t need to make up the DMA - they had practically seasons worth of material written for them just from the inherent realities of the setting.

I take this with a grain of salt, in part because of this past headline: Robert Picardo Says The Doctor Isn’t Just Comic Relief In ‘Star Trek: Prodigy’ Season 2

Which isn’t to say I hated him in Prodigy. Rather, I wonder if by “deeper”, it means he’ll be absolutely ridiculous, just rambling about opera and holonovels all the time, and the writing won’t be all dark and brooding on this show.

Glorious use of sarcasm.

In terms of writing, they really captured him well on Prodigy, though he was almost entirely a comic relief character.

Looks-wise, he definitely triggered the uncanny valley and was one of the worse aesthetic adaptations of a legacy character in that show. In general, there are some unintentionally terrifying officers on that show.

I do have to say that was one thing Lower Decks did well - when they brought on a legacy character, they were aesthetically recognizable, but never a caricature.

This is probably the strongest counter so far, unless they’ve somehow found or are working on a way to do it without severely borking the marine biosphere.

Say what you will about Disco, but honestly, Rainn Wilson Harry Mudd is better than the original.

Though honestly, it helps that this Mudd wasn’t in an episode where he did human trafficking and Starfleet did nothing except validate 1950s gender roles for some reason.

I still enjoyed Those Old Scientists when I hadn’t yet watched Lower Decks, granted, I had watched TNG already and so just enjoyed it as TNG-era characters goofing around in the 23rd century.

In fact, after having watched Lower Decks, I don’t necessarily like how Boimler and Mariner are written in this episode - they feel a bit like their basic archetypes than the developed characters they were in the series.

The other good thing about Chain of Command is it gives important context for DS9 without having to stare at scrolling text.

I could understand a few across the city, but I’d say 50 miles of parkland around a city is a little excessive.

You could also probably at least partially pull off “lush” with more native species, which they don’t seem to do.

Additionally, I imagine there’s some people still enjoying desert off-roading or a newer equivalent in the 23rd and 24th century (probably with regulations, of course).

Granted, I’m a bit biased, considering I live in the Southwest and am a fan of some of the more beautiful deserts. I do hate the climate change-induced annual shattering of heat records, though. Never fun when it’s 110s out, especially when you have to walk to classes…

I think it is in Menageries, but I’ll have to check.