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The average human eats a 100 spiders every time I cook for them.
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Jonathan Callan
26.6K posts
Jonathan Callan
@JonCallan
I write and do comedy. Television. Game design. Backyard shows, etc. Developing Video Game Narratives Course: https://t.co/HeIcrjHy0C
Los Angeles, CA Katılım Şubat 2009
937 Takip Edilen3.3K Takipçiler
@MuseZack @BradRTorgersen I think the best scene(s) is/are the historian with a Great Men of History boner.
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@BradRTorgersen The best scene in the episode is where Kirk and company are talking about Khan and basically saying "Yeah, he was bad...but still we admire him" and Spock is just baffled by how the humans find him a compelling figure. Modern Trek could never...
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TOS re-watch day 23: "Space Seed" doesn't need any introduction because even non-Trek people know Mantalban as Khan. The best screen villain in the franchise, thanks to Mantalban's reprisal for the second film. Egotistical. Ruthless. Arrogant. Physically mighty. And apparently able to make red-shirt female lieutenants melt with desire just with his electric glare.
My wife's been re-watching these with me, and had plenty to shout at the screen during this episode.
Khan is a genetically-concocted Andrew Tate. Just with hair. Who regards women like tools to be be used or abused as he sees fit. And of course Marla McGivers can't help herself because . . . rizz and vibe.
Naturally Kirk, Spock, et al., knew Khan was the heavy from the moment he revealed his character over dinner.
As for McGivers throwing her panties on Khan's stage, it seemed preposterous to me that any Academy product short of the rancid Kurtzmantrek Starfleet Academy could and would so quickly abandon duty, honor, or career, just to be Khan's trailer park battered wife.
Sleeper ships would of course be re-visited in later Trek lore. And Khan wouldn't be the only 20th-century personality transported to the time of the UFP. It occurs to me this episode really could have been a great season-ending cliff-hanger. Had they been doing such things in the 1960s. More of Khan's crew could have been examined (as people) and their mindset and motivations explored.
Maybe one or two of them have a change of heart? Now, wouldn't that have been an interesting contrast to McGivers immediately falling for Khan's rich Corinthian leather pecs.
As always, I thought the CGI makeover was very respectful to the practical effects of the time. The DY-100 space freighter is rendered very nicely, with the interstellar scarring of a 200-year trip evidenced on its hull.
And Mantalban really is delightfully imposing in this part. Enough to tee up the plot of the second film such that very little exposition was needed to give Star Trek II the emotional heft it needed for a proper show-down between Kirk and his foe. Khan really would sacrifice everything to ensure Kirk was defeated. He would never forgive the bruising of his superman's pride. To say nothing of the brutal indignity of Ceti Alpha V's decay into lifelessness post-shock.
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@dgsbreen @JoyceCarolOates Fancy running into you in the comments. Glad to see you’re still teaching! I truly think of your class often.
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@JonCallan @JoyceCarolOates Hi Jon! Great to hear from you--it has been a pleasure following your career since you graduated.
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anyone who says "academia went far left" has spent little time at a university department meeting or senate.
in fact, anyone who says "academia" isn't on any university payroll.
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@dgsbreen @JoyceCarolOates Are you the Dan Breen who taught Shakespeare at Ithaca College?
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@JoyceCarolOates As an academic, 100% agree. There's a difference between left-sounding sloganeering (in which in fact very few faculty engage) and institutional political leaning--most US faculties are stunningly institutionally conservative.
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Jonathan Callan retweetledi
If anything, Disco Elysium makes fun of communists the most. If you opt into it, it tells you to get the gulags and death squads ready. The communist quest is centered around two geeks who talk about revolution and slaughtering capitalists but don't go outside. The union boss is a fat, corrupt mobster who has no qualms about flooding his own streets with drugs. And at the end of the game, you meet the Deserter, who is a bitter old soviet who couldn't get over the city's failed attempt at communism. His old regime was decidedly defeated in battle, but not before attempting to put nuclear power into "the people's" hands, causing a mini-Chernobyl.
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@mircnry I think we have to view Geordi’s visor as more of a disability accommodation than a man-machine interface. Once the tech evolved, they’d rather have him go natural, but G was already used to it.
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@JonCallan MMIs are mostly ok, see Geordi, but genetic manipulation and AI are definitely a no-go. Genetics are interesting, it’s kinda lost after first contact and ENT but originally the federation is almost a direct response to the genetic wars. AI is more “we don’t know if this is life”
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I contend the implied AI prohibition in Star Trek might partially be about alignment, but is *really* about a larger cultural taboo against transhumanism: gene augments, A.I., man-machine interfaces, etc.
Raymond Arnold@Raemon777
I used to think the Star Trek world was unrealistic in terms of how it used AI. But some recently argued to me, it's actually very straightforwardly a world where everyone knows they *could* build more advanced AI, but, they know that the alignment problem is unsolved. So, they don't. Instead, they limit themselves to LLM-like AI, which operates on discrete tasks. Data is a one-of-a-kind wonder people don't know how to replicate. Pretty much every other time someone tries to build advanced AI, something goes wrong. (Data's creator made a second android, named Lore, who was erratic and manipulative, and eventually turned against the humans) Most other advanced AI in the show either grow into godlike power outside human control, or get shut down while weaker but would clearly become a problem if unchecked. (V'ger, Moriarty). The more I looked at it, the more it seemed Canon Star Trek just straightforwardly depicts an adult civilization that has chosen to be careful.
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It might not have been what was intended at the time, but in retrospect sharing a last name with the most famous example of genetic engineering was a clue. And there were others-doing his work in secret isolation instead of with some Federation science org.
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We have to read between the lines. At our current rate of science, could we break the light cone but still be at Majel-levels of A.I. helper in 300+ years? A decision was made. Data’s creator must have violated it. Then guys like Maddox sought to break the taboo further.
mircnry 📝𓅄@mircnry
@JonCallan MMIs are mostly ok, see Geordi, but genetic manipulation and AI are definitely a no-go. Genetics are interesting, it’s kinda lost after first contact and ENT but originally the federation is almost a direct response to the genetic wars. AI is more “we don’t know if this is life”
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In the future, the Federation seems to have flirted with the idea of the New Flesh only to reject it and decide -rightly or wrongly- what makes us human is sacrosanct.
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Jonathan Callan retweetledi
Weir is exactly the kind of tech-obsessed, vaguely libertarian nerd who used to be an SF mainstay but science fiction publishing at some point decided they wanted to move beyond. But it turns out there's still an enormous audience for his brand of problem-solving techno optimism.
Steve Skojec@SteveSkojec
Andy Weir is one of the most successful novelists of our generation. Both The Martian and Project Hail Mary have gone on to be successful Hollywood films at a time where new stories aren’t getting a lot of play in cinema. PHM is already one of the most successful films of all time. So it fascinates me to see a bunch of amateur writers or those with a fraction of his success taking pot shots at his prose. He’s a master storyteller. You don’t reach that level of breakout success if you’re not. Stop criticizing the people who have already proven their skill and work on your own!
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Jonathan Callan retweetledi
@plzbepatient Zefram Cochrane's characterization is writers Moore and Braga slyly poking fun at the mythology that grew around Gene Roddenberry. The visionary who in the future is celebrated for his high-mindedness actually did it in the moment to make money and get laid.
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My video game writing class starts tonight. There’s still time to sign up. It’s online, so if you’re reading this in Sri Lanka you’re in luck.
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@PanSeikilos @mmcolom @ReviewsPossum Agreed! There’s some inconsistency on this and I prefer the idea that covert operations (and study) is allowed by the Prime Directive (though undertaken with great care and an eye toward the risks of being discovered).
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@JonCallan @mmcolom @ReviewsPossum They are not supposed to even save individuals from planets there are doomed because they do not have the technology to avert some natural disaster wiping the entire planet out. There are other options than a choice between colonialism and strict Social Darwinism.
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Imagine an advanced civilization deciding it has the moral imperative to meddle in the affairs of less advanced civilizations, impose their sensibilities on them, "civilize" them, take sides in their wars, make them dependent on them, and act as their gods.
That's colonialism.
Fandom Pulse@fandompulse
Star Trek: Voyager actor Robert Beltran on how the Prime Directive is ridiculous: "The idea of leaving any species to die in its own filth when you have the ability to help them, just because you wanna let them get through their normal evolutionary processes is bunk -- it's a bunch of fascist crap. I much prefer the Cub Scout motto." Is he correct?
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@mmcolom @ReviewsPossum My point is I agree it’s embedded in the concept of The Prime Directive, which I take in context to be the Federation’s attempt to avoid the entangling interests with lower tech civilizations that present a moral or ethical risk.
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@JonCallan @ReviewsPossum The post above referred to colonialism; Mr. Beltran didn’t.
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@Skade590739 @ReviewsPossum Is there no ethical risk in trying to go about this process? No slippery slope that can lead to paternalism, hierarchy and violence?
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@ReviewsPossum Ok and if your idea of colonialism is stopping wars, feeding people, extending their lives and destroying diseases, then that would be a good thing, yes.
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@mmcolom @ReviewsPossum How many more would be alive that were killed by colonialism? I don’t mean that as an own, I’m genuinely asking. I think there’s a sophisticated moral balancing test to consider here.
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@ReviewsPossum I remember Robert Beltran recounting how he once told a room full of convention-goers, "Don't you realize half of you here would be dead from malaria if humanity lived by the Prime Directive?!"
And he was right.
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That’s why the test for opening relations is warp speed. At that point, you can come to us.
Cultural exchange can happen on more equal terms, but also, the moral risk of intervention is outweighed by the dangers of non-engagement.
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Right. The conversation here is usually the reverse of how we should think of it. The Prime Directive isn’t about protecting the natives. It’s about protecting the Federation from the moral/ethical risks of imperialism. At least that’s what I’ve always thought.
Possum Reviews@ReviewsPossum
Imagine an advanced civilization deciding it has the moral imperative to meddle in the affairs of less advanced civilizations, impose their sensibilities on them, "civilize" them, take sides in their wars, make them dependent on them, and act as their gods. That's colonialism.
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Jonathan Callan retweetledi
Here’s the Toonami promo for Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, narrated by Peter Cullen.
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It’s funny because the implication is the MoWs are a threat downgrade, but often it’s like, “Do the aliens know that frickin’ genies are real?”
Movie Mindset@lifein4chapters
I always love the X-Files monster-of-the-week episodes right after the mythology ones. "Scully I know we confirmed that aliens have been living among us for decades and have perfected human cloning but we need to check out these invisible zoo animals in Idaho"
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