Star Trek Picard first impressions

 So I’ve been watching Star Trek Picard for the past few days, and while I don’t really have a thesis for anything to say about the show like I often do for Star Trek, at least not yet, I do have some small thoughts about a lot of different things so figured I’d just write em up.

First off, a big thing that keeps hitting me throughout is how much of the show has pretty much nothing to do with Picard, and while he probably gets more screentime than any other single character, I do often fine myself thinking when he is off screen, “Where is Picard?” And like, that is a problem entirely because the show is called Picard. If it was called Star Trek: Lost Cause I wouldn’t have the issue, so like, its not a sign its a bad show, but it does sort of feel a lot less about anything Picard specific at this point and a lot more about Romulans. Also, like, I love Data, but centering a show called Picard around Data but without Data being present just feels like an odd choice, especially given Geordie had a closer personal connection with Data, and honestly most of he crew had a comparable connection to Data, whereas I feel like Riker and Beverly were more Picard’s confidants. But I guess they didn’t die. Still, again, all this is kinda of academic - this is the story we are being told, snd while it may not be the story I’d have told, nor the one I’d have called Picard, it should be judged on its own merits, not my expectations.

Secondly, I kinda like the tone so far. I definitely remember people hating it for “The Federation is bad now” but honestly given all I’ve been saying about how the Federation is a stand in for America, yeah, like, it should be bad now, because America is. I feel like this is a proper framing for the state of America now for a Star Trek show to take. I don’t necessarily feel like I know where the plot is going or what it is trying to say so far, which may or may not end up being problems, but I don’t mind the darker outlook so far. Also, the heavy serialization is mostly okay, like, it does not feel much like a Star Trek show to me, but I feel like it is selling itself as a serious political drama about an old washed up space hero, not as a space exploration show, so that’s fine, I expected it to feel different.

The only issue I have with that is I kinda feel like the first three episodes should have been one episode? Like, don’t get me wrong, lots of stuff happened, and honestly, at this point four episodes in, I have no idea how much of that was necessary, but the show kinda feels like it did not start until the end of episode 3 where we were finally all on a ship together. I mean, I know I just said its not a space exploration show, but it really does feel like everything until the end of episode 3 was set dressing, and I feel like just from a pacing perspective you want to be done with set dressing at the end of the first episode. I definitely could not say how to rewrite the three episodes into one at this point, since I don’t know where everything is going, but I do feel it would have benefited from doing some even if that meant moving some flashbacks till later, or some Romulan borg cube time to later, or just cutting whole sections of side plot that isn’t needed.

I also hate that they introduced Data’s daughter and then immediately killed her off. Yes, she has a twin, but it just feels really shitty to introduce us to a protagonist, kill her off, and then replace her with an identical one. I’ve seen a lot of shows with bait and switch protagonists like this recently, and it usually straight up harms the show by establishing the show doesn’t respect your time and will kill off characters for any stupid reason at any time, so don't bother to get invested in anyone. I can still sometimes like a show that does this, and there definitely are ways to make it pay off, but I don’t think Picard has done so yet, and I kinda doubt it will, because at this point I think the first Data girl is just shit canned, and we didn’t know her long enough to care about her. The only reason to care is she is Data’s daughter, but since she was never in the original show, like, I kinda just don’t care?

Honestly huge missed opportunity to somehow work in Lal. I would have cared about Lal. If you told me these kids were made by extracting the thread of Lal’s consciousness Data had resorbed instead of somehow being clones of Data himself but female and asian and not looking like an android not for any real plot reason but just because they didn’t want to do make up, then I’d instantly have cared a lot more for her. You also could have just given us more time with her to make us care, or just found some way other than violence against women to motivate our protagonist, but whatever I guess. It just really did not sit well with me as the start of a series.

Romulans in it generally seem very different to previous depictions of them, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but the biggest issue I have is how many just appear to be humans with weird eyebrows or forehead ridges. As in, culturally so, just wearing human clothes, speaking with human cadence, acting in all ways human. Is this supposed to be a result of their diaspora and the need to integrate? Or is this just the show writers not caring about depicting an alien culture consistently or realistically? Because it really could go either way, but its a problem if I have to make up a reason why some Romulans are just dudes rather than the show making it clear through its storytelling. No one has, so far, commented about Romulan loss of cultural identity, just loss of life and homeworld. Is it realistic that they would have? I mean, maybe? Certainly that is a thing that happens over time with diaspora, although usually its more of a generational thing than an immigrant just suddenly losing all trace of their homeland besides physical appearance. That being said, I wouldn't have any issues if this was addressed in the show, its the fact that its not been yet and instead I’m making up reasons here that is the problem. But hey, maybe the next episode will be about this, its too early to judge.

But like, seriously, why didn’t Picards Romulan buddies come with him on his trip? They wanted to insist for his protection, he weakly rebuffed them, and they accepted?!? And then he proceeds to take a side trip to pick up a different Romulan warrior to protect him? Why not have all three? And speaking of, the Qowat Milat are way cooler now that I know they were introduced in Picard and not in Discovery, where they felt a little out of place especially with our first example of this Romulan only order being a human. I mean, maybe not weirder than the main character example of this female only order being male. Why couldn’t we have gotten a female Romulan orphan instead? I mean, I guess the answer is Picard saying, “Must be hard for a boy to grow up among only women.” The show apparently thinks this gender difference is important, that it matters to the story that he is male and not female, hopefully it will do something with that other than use it as an excuse to so shove him on Picard. But also, if these guys practice radical candor, why didn’t they just ask Picard to take him as a kid? She clearly was trying to hint that, and its clearly what the boy wanted, given how mad he was when Picard fucked off. Like, I was honestly wondering if maybe they thought he needed to stay with his own kind, Romulans, but if that is the reason it feels like he should be less bitter Picard didn’t take him since it wouldn’t have been on the table.

But anyway, I would hesitate to say I am enjoying it, but I am not hating it. I’m mostly puzzled by it so far. It could turn out good, but right now its mostly, “I don’t know where this is going, it could be good, but right now it mostly just is.”

Did stem tetrapods have tadpoles?

 So I saw some sensational headlines declaring that it turns out, stem tetrapods didn’t have tadpoles, despite that long being considered the case, so of course I read the article, because I know popular science news is often overstated, and then also did a little supplementary wiki-diving. I did not, however, actually read the original paper, which would be the proper thing to do in this situation to get an accurate read on how serious this result really is. I think it could be be fun to be a science communicator, but I’m not one, I’m not trying to be one, these blog posts are just for writing practice, so I don’t feel compelled to raise the level of my research to truly reliable levels just because I want to write about it to an audience of zero for a bit. All of that is to say, this is just my opinion, man, of a layperson on a subject I have read a lot about but have no formal education in, based on some popular science coverage of the research but without actually delving into the research itself, so you shouldn’t trust anything I say to be reliable, but like… this feels like a nothing burger.

I mean, not really, it actually sounds like super interesting. Basically, they found some baby early tetrapods called embolomeres, and they were just miniature versions of adults, not tadpoles, and previously scientists had assumed that early tetrapods had tadpoles, like amphibians. That sounds super important when phrased like that, and even moreso when phrased in breathless “This changes everything we thought we knew about early tetrapod development!” language being used in the news, but I think some context is necessary why this is probably not (if my read on it is right, see my qualifications above for why it might not be) that big a deal but why its still super cool.

First, why did scientists assume that early tetrapods had tadpoles? There’s actually a lot of reasons for it, some scientifically rigorous, others less so, but I’ll just sum up the most relevant and scientific reasons to think they might have: modern amphibians have tadpoles, and are have thought to evolved from fish ancestors, and most fish also have a stage known as larva where they have significantly different bodyplans, essentially a tadpole stage, and thus its been assumed that amphibian tadpole stages are the same as fish larval stages, developmentally. If modern fish and modern amphibians both have “tadpole” stages, then we would expect their most recent common ancestor to have had one as well. It is also thought that reptiles and mammals evolved from amphibian-like early tetrapods, and who would likely have the same most recent common ancestor with modern fish that modern amphibians do, which means that at least SOME ancestor of reptiles and mammals probably had a tadpole stage.

That was the logic, however these early tetrapods, the embolomeres, appear to lack one, since we found small babies that just look like small adults, not completely different like a tadpole would. So theory disproven, no tadpoles, right? Well, there are some issues to jumping to that conclusion. One, although classification of early tetrapods is no easy task, its generally thought that embolomeres are more closely related to reptiles (and mammals) than they are to modern amphibians. Which means they likely evolved after the split between the last common ancestor of amphibians and reptiles. So what this would actually tell is is that the ancient tetrapods who would eventually evolve into reptiles had already lost their tadpole stage at this point, whereas the ancient tetrapods who eventually would become modern amphibians retained it, and our most recent common ancestor with amphibians would still have had tadpoles, right? That is closer to what this means, but even that is probably an overstatement. Embolomeres are generally thought to have been an evolutionary dead end, with no living descendants, which means that just because they had lost a tadpole stage at this point, does not necessarily mean our ancestors did - although it does make it significantly more likely. Thus, this research probably doesn’t mean our ancestors never had tadpoles, nor does it necessarily mean they stopped having tadpoles earlier than we thought, but it does mean that is far more likely (and will probably become the scientific consensus, especially if we find more corroborating evidence).

The headlines, though, all seem to be making a stronger claim, that this means that all early tetrapods did not have tadpoles (and by extension, none of our tetrapod ancestors did). This would only be true if amphibians evolved their tadpoles stage after they split off from other tetrapods, which would also require that the amphibians tadpole stage is likely developmentally different in some way than the very similar fish larval stage. This is where my lack of scientific expertise really shows, because I bet if I was a herpetologist or ichthyologist I could tell you off the top of my head whether that could be possible, but honestly I have no idea. Its very possible we understand the two stages well enough that we can be certain they are the same and that amphibians could not have evolved it independently, which would mean our tetrapod ancestors must have had a tadpole stage unless everything we know about tetrapod evolution is wrong. But maybe the similarity is not that certain and fish larval stages and amphibian tadpole stages could be convergent or coincidentally similar, amphibians evolved them secondarily, and tetrapods really did all start with direct development. I think thats highly unlikely and I doubt it will become the scientific consensus unless I massively am misunderstanding something (see my qualifications above for why thats entirely possible) but I certainly cannot rule it out, and that is what the headlines are implying.

Its also important to note that technically, it could also be this species just transformed from its tadpoles at a small size and then continued growing, and that this discovery actually means nothing. We probably could only rule that out if the fossils were clearly in eggs, and I think embolomeres are not amniotes (reptiles and mammals) and thus did not have shelled eggs.

Still, even simply the idea that early tetrapods on the way to becoming reptiles and mammals lost their tadpole stage very early after splitting from amphibians is an interesting implication, so I think this is really cool. Plus, it’s rare to find fossils this small anyway. Basically, still cool research, but the popular coverage also seems quite overblown to me. But maybe I’m wrong, I’ll wait and see what the science communicators I trust have to say about it.

Leylines are real - does Star Trek have a responsibility to be scientific?

 So I watched the final episode of Season 3 of Strange New Worlds yesterday, and I had a lot of thoughts, but I honestly don’t quite feel up to tackling that whole thing today, so instead I’m going to tackle a smaller question: does Star Trek have any responsibility to be scientific, and if so, how so or in what way? In this episode of Strange New Worlds, Sam Kirk says that leylines are real. They also basically insinuate that science has proven evil to be real and perhaps the existence of demons.

 Leylines is honestly what I want to focus on, because its a specific term and Kirk said it straight out, they are real, whereas the evil thing you could argue was just Doctor Korby ranting about some nonsense. Leylines are real, in the sense that they are a pseudoscientific belief that some people believe in in the real world with no basis in empirical observation, but they are not real, in the sense that they exist or have any function or effect on reality. I kinda think it is a problem that Star Trek said they are real.

Now, let me point out the elephant in the room. Warp Drive. The Transporter. Replicators. Vulcans. Star Trek is full of fictional things. But all of those things are science fiction, things that could exist in the future when science advances or when we explore the stars. Leylines are a real world pseudoscientific belief. Star Trek saying they are real could be construed as validating their existence in real life in a way that Star Trek having warp drive does not similarly cause a misperception. Thus Star Trek saying leylines are real is anti-science in a way that Star Trek typically is not, even if one does not think “Warp Drive” counts as real science, justifiably so.

Now, is this the only time Star Trek has done something like this? I doubt it. I am pretty sure there are several episodes of the original series that posit the existence of various real world gods, too. So I can hardly say this isn’t Star Trek to be like this. Its just my personal opinion that Star Trek shouldn’t be like this, encouraging pseudoscience and conspiracy theories and the like. But maybe I’m just a party pooper and its just some silly fun.

Star Trek, the Military, and Utopia

I have been thinking about this for a while, but Steve Shives posted a video yesterday on the question, “Is Star Trek a military?” and given thats relevant to what I want to say, I think now is a good time to gather my thoughts and extrude them unto the internet. Many people have criticized recent Star Trek entries for being overly dark and dystopian, citing precedence and statements by Gene Roddenberry that Star Trek is supposed to be utopian. I used to be one of those people, in fact, and although I would say my opinion is more nuanced now, I do often feel like modern Star Trek fails to feel like Star Trek and its darker tone definitely contributes to that vibe. I do, however, think that one must ask, can Star Trek actually be utopian in this day and age, and what would it mean for it to be so?

I’ve previously discussed how Starfleet is often a thematic stand in for the US Military. As a kid I objected to this interpretation, because I felt that Starfleet, as a utopian future state heavily implied to be socialist in nature (and arguably confirmed to be socialist in Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds), could not possibly represent the present day United States, because we are rapaciously capitalist. We’re like, the Ferengi or something, surely not the Federation. But as stated in previous blog posts, there is little denying Starfleet is often intended to be read as such, whether it being in Balance of Terror where Kirk and a Romulan play at US and Soviet submarine fights or Sisko committing war crimes to combat terrorists in For the Uniform. The Federation may be intended to be a socialist utopia, but it is nevertheless a utopia grown out of western traditions, western values, and a western model best represented by the United States. It is supposed to represent the best of what the United States could be, and to that end in the past I’ve questioned whether or not its reasonable to continue representing it as is when the path from where we are in the United States right now to a future utopia - at least one that is in any way similiar to the present day United States - has never seemed more impossible.

Episode 8 of Season 3 of Strange New Worlds, “What is Starfleet?” seems posed to answer that question. Beto opens his documentary highlighting the intense militarism of Starfleet and asks, is Starfleet a colonizer? Honestly hearing him ask that out loud can only be characterized as cringe, and I’m someone who kind of loathes the idea of cringe. Not because it’s a ridiculous question, but because it really feels like the writers deliberately catering to leftists by using buzzwords. This impression is only solidified when the episode comes to the only conclusion it can, being that it is a prequel and Starfleet is going to continue existing as a heroically identified institution for hundreds of years to come, that Starfleet is fine, actually. It premises that on the fact that it has the best people, who intend to do good, and work hard to do so. The message of the episode seems to be that you should not judge judge a government for its actions but only for the intentions of the people involved, or at the very least you need to ignore problematic warning signs as long as the bottomline is good - something to that effect, the ambiguity being because the episode simply does not actually articulate a coherent argument, only making clear that Starfleet is good, actually, for some rather vague reasons.

I think this episode might have been fine twenty years ago, or at the very least, would not have raised any eyebrows. It’s a very liberal perspective on the world - trust in institutions, trust in bureaucrats and science and experts, and everything will be fine. Unfortunately under Trump its become clear our institutions are far more fragile than we thought, and those trustworthy bureaucrats and experts can be fired at the drop of a hat by an unelected tech oligarch appointed to a fake meme position. If thats the only reason to trust Starfleet, Starfleet is a tissue paper wall waiting to be ripped through. The episode does not actually address any of the criticisms it raises of Starfleet - that its a military, that it imposes its will on others using force, that it colonizes, neither by refuting them nor justifying them. I think you can probably attempt to do either, but I am not interested in doing so, because I think those criticisms of Starfleet are justified, at least from a viewers perspective.

What do I mean? In universe, it may be true that Starfleet is great and isn't actually militaristic (even tho it absolutely fits the definition of a military, as Steve Shives concludes in his video). Steve suggests that the show should lean into this tension and explore how Starfleet’s self-identification as a science and exploration organization is in direct conflict with their plain faced actions as a military, and I agree with that, as its an obvious tension and would made for some very good, very Star Trek-esque episodes. But I think it is important to recognize, Star Trek is fictional. It is being written a particular way, but it does not have to be written that way. If Star Trek is suppose to present a hopeful, utopian vision of the future, we should be asking, does it? And if not, why not?

Starfleet is a military. I think Steve proved that, but even if you disagree, I don’t think one can fairly disagree that it is military-shaped. The Federation colonizes planets - maybe it does not colonize inhabited ones, but it definitely does colonize uninhabited ones (and at least sometimes later finds out they are inhabited by sentient races, like the salt vampires in the very first episode). The Federation may may not call itself an empire, but it is a federation, meaning a union of disparate states with a strong centralized government that asserts dominance over member states, so it does indeed impose its will on member states, sometimes even to the point of breaking as we see in the later seasons of Discovery when so many planets leave the Federation prior to and following the Burn. When we envision a future utopia, is that what we picture now?

I think its fair to say that in the sixties, it would be reasonable at least for mainstream America to imagine a utopian future where America is better and things are more equal but the US military still exists in space doing military things, but maybe a little less awful than now. But sixty years later, that does not feel like utopia anymore, at least not to me, and increasingly not to many Americans. I’m honestly not sure you can sell a militarized future as utopian anymore, and demanding that a show depict both 1) a version of Starfleet that is fundamentally the same as its always been, a nicer stand in for the US military and 2) that it be utopian is, at its core, a conservative demand. If your version of utopia includes the US military, your vision of utopia is a conservative one. Star Trek was meant to be a progressive future though - I always phrase it that way, rather than socialist, because although Gene Roddenberry self identified as a socialist, and later Star Treks have made it increasingly clear that it is socialist, but earlier Trek was far cagier, and I think that is on purpose - because the idea that a utopian future is a socialist one would not have been believable in the sixties, just as I feel the idea of a utopian future that is militarized is increasingly unbelievable now. Star Trek need not depict any particular version of the future, in my opinion, what is important is that that version of the future be better than the present, and better due to social progress, because of diversity and inclusion and scientific progress and respect for knowledge and freedom and human rights, not better because of harking back to the halcyon days of yore or authoritarianism or conformity. Thus, fundamentally, I think its just not possible to write a progressive show with Starfleet as a military anymore, like it was in the sixties - the shine has rubbed off of the US military and the American project, and we are never going to get to utopia while they still exist, so their presence in the future is an unsolvable problem.

I had previously made a similar argument where I concluded the next Star Trek should be about overthrowing the Federation. I think that is one way to handle it. I think you could also handle it different ways, though - I think Discovery and Lower Decks both grappled with this problem in different ways to varying degrees of success. Discovery took the tack of simply making the Federation more dystopian and our protagonists fighting to improve it, which I think does at least position you to tell progressive stories, but does always constantly beg the question, why are our heroes defending this clearly broken system? Lower Decks kept the basic idea that the system is at least striving towards utopia, but deconstructed it, exposed the inequalities in existence, such as privileges of rank, racism against aliens, etc, etc and highlighted how despite its claimed utopian principles, it was not yet there. Both of these though work best if that is your actual opinion on what the Federation is a thematic stand in for, the United States. Going forward, I do think that the show probably needs to take a look at itself and at our country and say, if Star Trek fundamentally stands for the idea that a better future is possible, what do we think that would look like, and how do we get there, narratively, from where Star Trek is now. It can mean the next Star Trek needs to be a revolutionary story. It may mean we need a reboot where Starfleet is clearly NOT a stand in for the US military and thats made clear from the start. It may mean depicting Star Trek as dystopian and reforming it through non revolutionary means. But I do think this is an issue that Star Trek needs to address before it can move forward as a franchise that from its inception has always been equally about its messaging as about its science fiction setting. Star Trek cannot be utopian anymore, because militarized colonial empires are not utopian, and like it or not, the Federation at the very least rhymes with one.

Star Trek Strange New Worlds Shouldn’t Have Been a Prequel

 I often hear people bemoaning how everything is a prequel these days, and my gut reaction is always like, “So what? What’s wrong with prequels?” and like, I often do find myself wondering what happened earlier in a story and thus wanting to see a prequel or thinking it would be cool if something had a prequel. But there is, or at least can be, something wrong with prequels, from their very nature - we know what is coming. Unless a prequel is non-canon or chooses to become non-canon with respect to the thing it is prequelling, we know that we have to end up at the state of affairs that was true at the start of the original. How much this matters depends a lot on the state things were at the start of the original and when the prequel is set and what the prequel is about. For instance, I would personally say it doesn’t matter THAT much for House of the Dragon - its set several hundred years before its source material, and while we do know broadly “The Targaryen Dynasty will fall,” that amounts to roughly the same amount of info one might have walking into the show Breaking Bad - the shows title tells you the main character is going to become evil/a criminal/a bad guy, the shows premise for House of the Dragon is a corrupt royal’s family’s decline, not a big deal. Ignoring the fact its based on a book, the writers are free to do what they want within that very broad space and thus the viewers can reasonably be surprised by what happens in it.

Strange New Worlds is of course going to be my main counter example, but Discovery too can serve as a reasonable counter example, although it is less affected by these issues for various reasons. Since Discovery is set before the Original Series, that means that things must be like TOS by the time it gets there if the series to stay consistent - or, at least, fans will expect it to. Discovery actually initially seemed rather unconcerned with that fact, which is why Spock suddenly has an adopted human sister no one ever heard about before, Starfleet has an instantaneous form of travel no one has ever heard of before, everyone communicates via volumetric holograms, a technology never before seen on Star Trek, why Klingons look so different than before, why uniforms and ship design looks nothing like classic Trek, etc. Then, of course, the writers reconciled those differences in various ways - Discovery left to the future and the existence of Spock’s sister and the Spore Drive were classified, Pike is seen vocally complaining about volumetric holograms, Burnham compliments the new uniforms, Klingons grow their hair back, and so on. Now, some, like Steve Shives, who I mention a lot simply because I watch and like his videos despite not always agreeing with him, might argue that these kind of details don’t matter as long as they serve the story and writers shouldn’t bother reconciling them, fans should suck it up, but I honestly disagree. I think lore consistency is an important contributor both to immersion and just to quality writing in general - while world building for its own sake may not be everyone’s cup of tea, it can and does enhance storytelling no matter how jaded and uninterested in creating a believable fictional world you are - a more fully fleshed out world enables telling more complicated, nuanced stories, even if it fleshing out a world does not automatically create such a story. As such, while I do think that writers should not feel overly constrained by these sorts of restrictions, good writers know that you violate them at your peril, and if you completely ignore them, like S1 of Discovery did, you absolutely will annoy a lot of fans and it will make the story you are telling worse, so you better be confident its good enough to overcome those downsides.

Strange New Worlds is a prequel, but I honestly did not immediately clock it as necessarily suffering from this as a problem. Unlike Discovery, it did not seem interested in completely rewriting the Star Trek lore - honestly its just a fundamentally less ambitious show, and given that I think Discovery’s worse parts were its most ambitious parts, I’m fine with that. Discovery was trying to revive what was basically considered a nearly dead franchise at the time, Strange New Worlds was at most a slight course correction responding to criticism of Discovery by making a more classic style Trek, so of course its not in the business of upending long established lore… except when it is. And honestly thats kind of its problem in some ways. Strange New Worlds is at its best when it does not try to be a prequel, but increasingly it seems like it is less interested in being its own show and more interested in leaning into prequel status even if it harms the show or the consistency of the Star Trek timeline.

I’ve already talked about how I hate how the Gorn were handled in it. A difference now, though, is now I have seen the TOS episode they are from. And having seen that episode… like what the fuck? The Gorn in SNW are not technically inconsistent with TOS, but only because we know almost nothing about them prior to Strange New Worlds, merely that they are intelligent and super strong. Both are seemingly true in Strange New Worlds as well. However, its also strongly implied Kirk had never encountered the Gorn before, as he did not recognize them or their ship, whereas they are all over Strange New Worlds, and while I’m not confident Kirk is actually in any of the Gorn episodes (I’m not gonna go back and double check) you’d certainly think he’d have at least heard of them. And given how there is basically zero overlap between their SNW portrayal and TOS portrayal…why are they Gorn at all? You could have just called them something else in SNW, and then you’d have no lore inconsistency. Honestly I think they suck as a plot-line and should have just been cut, but they’d be better if they weren’t Gorn, because 1) Starfleet could reasonably be unsure if they are an intelligent race. We are told both in TOS and SNW they are, but no direct communication happens with them in either, and if they were unsure, the SNW crew’s willingness to kill Gorn babies at birth would seem less genocidal. That coupled with consistent lore is enough reason for me to wish they weren’t called Gorn in SNW, but they were, because SNW wants to be a prequel, even if it makes it a worse show. They want you to see the Gorn and be excited because its a reference to TOS, even if it creates lore inconsistencies which weaken the believability of the plot and even if doing so makes the show feel less Star Trek like.

The show also keeps putting Spock and Kirk, Spock and Uhura, Spock and Kirk and Uhura, Kirk and Scotty, Kirk and Spock and Uhura and Scotu and Nurse Chapel together, and you can always sort of feel the show yelling at you, “Look at them! They are together! Be excited!” And everytime they do it I’m just like, this feels so pandering. I don’t need some perfect shot of them together, okay? Its weird and artificial. It pulls me straight out of the show. Plus, like, what is this even building to? Are people really super excited to see them all on a crew together? Cuz they can just watch TOS for that. Plus, I’m watching TOS for the first time now, and honestly I don’t get the impression they all know each other that well at the start. Uhura flirts rather aggressively and hostiley with Spock in early episodes of TOS, including by singing an extremely racist song at him that implies he wants to rape all earth women, and to me it reads like they do not know each other that well and she is trying to provoke him because he is a curiosity. Similarly Kirk and Spock in early TOS often feels like they are bonding for the first time - as opposed to Bones, who clearly has known Kirk for a long time. Yet Bones isn’t even on SNW, but Kirk already is bonding with Kirk and Uhura. Again, its not inconsistent, but it feels weird, and it also kinda feels like it undermines TOS and makes that show feel less real.

But thats just vibes. The real problem is information. We know that Spock, Kirk, Uhura, Scotty, M’Benga, Nurse Chapel, Una, Pike, and Dr. Korby all cannot die, because all of them appear in later TOS episodes. We knew that Nurse Chapel and Spock cannot work out when they were dating, because Spock is engaged to T’Pring again at the start of TOS, and Nurse Chapel is estranged from her ex-fiance, Dr. Korby - so we also know that relationship will proceed that far and then also won’t work out. We also know not to trust Dr, Korby, cuz he is a creeper on TOS, although the fact he is her professor and sleeping with her is evidence enough. We likewise know that La’an and Spock cannot work out, because La’an never appears and is never mentioned in TOS. We also know that Pike and Captain Batel’s relationship cannot work out (and in fact I am pretty sure she is written out at the end of the season) because we know Pike will in the future choose to retire in fantasy land and hook up with the horribly disfigured lady there, and that would be mighty weird to do if he had a half-Gorn girlfriend he nursed through a major health crisis waiting for him back at home, What, she gets sick and you stay by her but you get sick and you abandon her? This show is rife with plotlines we know are dead ends becaus of its status as a prequel, and that sucks? Like honestly it makes me wonder why they even want to write it this way when they know their spinning their wheels and nothing can amount to anything.

I want to take a second to call out another inconsistency that really doesn’t matter at all but does amuse me. Una has now been retconned to being an Illyrian, and I generally liked what they did with those plotlines, so I’m fine with that. But it does mean that when Pike gets trapped on Talos V, why did the Talosians think Una could be a reasonably choice for a human partner for him to mate with? Couldn’t they tell she wasn’t human? I mean maybe not, just seems odd to me.

But yeah, anyway, the worst issue of these altogether is Pike’s accident in ten years. It looks over the show like a cloud and everytime it’s brought up it makes the show worse. I know they are trying to use it thematically about making your time worthwhile, making the sacrifice count, living life to its fullest, etc, but as a plot device I don’t like it and it doesn’t feel Star Trek. Star Trek shouldn’t have fate, and it fucks with the timeline so much the idea the timeline is unchangeable feels ridiculous and contradictory. Janeway fucking retconned her whole journey home! SNW often feels obsessed with recreating TOS, expecting that everyone is just gonna explode with excitement when on Episode 10 of Season 5 Kirk stands on the Enterprise with his Captain’s pips, when I just want to see more Strange New Worlds. If this shows characters all had different names and you took out all the set up for TOS it would just be straight up improved, and thats kind of a problem for it, especially when more and more all it seems to want to do is copy its predecessor.

Honestly even something like the wedding episode was fun and light and I enjoyed it, one of the better episodes, until I then watched the Trelaine episode of TOS and realized it was just a straight rip off. Why? Make up your own goddamn quirky alien god! You did it with M’Benga and the fable in Season 1. Unless that too is just a reference to TOS I haven’t gotten to yet. Not everything needs to connect to everything else, and if the show would just be its own show and not worry about TOS, it’d be much more compelling, and would make more sense - if all the challenges the TOS crew encounters were faced by many of those same crew members ten years earlier under Pike, why were they so surprised in TOS by them?

I honestly do like Strange New Worlds, and I am sure all these references are being mandated to at least some degree by management. They think this is what people want, and hell, maybe it is. I like lore and world building, and would love to see things get more fleshed - I think the only reason DS9 could tell so many of its great stories is the time it took to build up Bajoran, Cardassian, Klingon, Trill, Dominion and Ferengi cultures and worlds. Enterprise did so with the Andorians, Discovery with the Breen to some degree, and I think SNW was trying with the Gorn, but it was a misfire, and now instead of building out anything or fleshing out anything - which, to be clear, they could create whole new aliens to flesh out, they need not be tied to existing aliens - they just pointing at existing things. And that weakens the show a lot, because we can just watch TOS. Make your own show.

I don’t think it had to be this way. In the original TOS pilot with Pike and Una and Spock, those are the only legacy characters we see on the Enterprise, and two of them, Pike and Una, never appear again. It was the SNW teams choice to put Uhura and M’Benga and Nurse Chapel and Kirk and Scotty and Dr. Korby on the show too, and its their decision to keep making episodes that basically just serve as fan service of “Look, we did the thing!” There is no reason a largely episodic Star Trek show set literally anywhere in the Star Trek timeline HAS to slavishly reference another show, the Star Trek universe is big. Hell, even if it does, like Lower Decks, Lower Decks tells its own stories and isn’t setting up anything, its resynthesizing those references in new and fun ways. And there isn’t even anything to set up! TOS has happened. Unless they plan on remaking TOS after SNW is cancelled, we don't need to set it up. As long as you don’t directly contradict it, you’re gold, but the more you reference it, the more likely you are to contradict it. But sure, yeah, lets just keep tossing the whole TOS crew together and winking at the camera.

Anyway, as I said, I like SNW, but I hope it decides to be its own show again. Or for the first time really, since while this is getting worse, it’s been there since Season 1. Obviously since it’s cancelled (I think? My understanding is it is canceled but there are two unreleased seasons still in development that will eventually release) it will only get so much time, but still. Maybe if it does it will get uncancelled.

Monster Hunter Stories 3: A Simultaneously Amazing But Underwhelming Follow Up

 I love the Monster Hunter Stories games. Monster Hunter has always had an aesthetic I liked, but I’ve always been more of a menu driven RPG gamer than an action RPG gamer, plus I never played multiplayer games, only single player games, so I stayed away from them, but when the first Monster Hunter Stories game was released for 3DS I was all over it. Finally an entry point into this universe, and its a monster collector? One of my favorite genres! I fell in love. When the second one came out, I was similarly blown away as they fleshed out the cute and fun world and game mechanics into a more complex, mature world and game while still retaining a silly, fun vibe. So expectations were high coming in for me for Monster Hunter Stories 3. And I can safely say, I loved the game, but I still came away feeling disappointed. Monster Hunter Stories 3 is a great game, but it feels unfinished, unpolished, and a pale imitation of its immediate predecessor in many ways. A fine entry, but perhaps a sign that the series may have run out of ideas.

So, first of all, let’s talk story. The original Monster Hunter Stories had a very silly story and vibe, very old school RPG for kids vibe. It was light and fun and mostly stayed out of the way of the gameplay. The second game ramped up the amount of the story and the seriousness of that story, but was also better written enough to sustain that more serious tone, but maintaining enough of the silliness to still feel connected to its original vibe, which is a tough balance to walk. I could imagine someone criticizing it for having more plot when its plot still wasn’t great, but I felt it overall was at least a lateral move over its predecessor, or even an improvement. Monster Hunter Stories 3 is even more serious still, with its silly moments mostly limited to side stories and this is definitely to its detriment. However, the plot segments were generally quite short and to the point, so although I was initially concerned by the end I found the plot did what it needed to do - act as a directional framing device for banger gameplay. The plot isn’t the best thing in the universe but its engaging enough and fun enough and its not what we’re here for, despite the name of the game.

Okay, now for a weird tangent. Character creator. The character creator is fine, but the protagonist of the original games was a child, and then in the second game a teenager, and in this one a grown adult. But the options do not feel like they have aged quite appropriately. The only beard is like the wimpiest goatees. The hair options are diverse but simultaneously a narrow range of styles so you always end up looking very samy. In all three games I ended up playing nearly identical pig tailed anime girls because I couldn’t make a male protagonist who looked like me. I’d like more options. Body type options, scaling options, hair style options. It does honestly seem like there are seven hundred options but they only let you make six guys. Maybe its just an art style thing. But this didn’t feel as bad when it was a child protagonist as an adult, for me.

How is the gameplay? Pretty stellar. They’ve crunchified things a bit more and made a lot of mechanics more explicit, and continue to refine dual element monsties in ways to make them more useful, a good choice since it encourages customization. There are tons of different ways to build a successful character and monstie team, every monstie is viable, and they give you the tools to have fun fast. The bones were strong from previous games but they have only strengthened them. I’ve seen some complaints about the changes making head to heads less important and I can see that, but I found the different focus an interesting challenge. I don’t know that either style is better, necessarily, but the twist in of itself is interesting so the game style doesn’t get stale. I hope they continue to tweak things like this in the future.

However, half the game is missing. There are no rider fights anymore, which account for half the strategy and most of the reason for multitarget moves in previous games. There’s no online fights, a staple of the series before this point. Dens used to be mini dungeons, now they are just egg holes, which was a change I adjusted to without much complaint, but a far bigger loss are everdens from the second game, which were loads of fun, especially the online raid mode. Now, I’m guessing these features were cut because Capcom didn’t think enough people made use of them in the previous game, but I loved them, and really felt their loss here. I played the second game for several extra months just to do online raids, and having just beat the third game earlier today I never intend to turn it back on again.

And that’s another thing, too. The second game had post game content. At least one huge post game dungeon. I think the first game did too? I didn’t finish the first game’s dungeon I think, but did the second games, except for the final boss, if I remember correctly, because it wiped me even after months of grinding. I think, anyway, honestly it was years ago, but the point is, they had huge post games! This game? Nothing. I loaded up my end game save and I have all the same quests as before. I had done almost all of them, including beating two of the elder dragons most online sites label post game content, and my motivation to finish them kinda flopped. Maybe I will, I’d like to say I 100%ed it and I am close. But there’s nothing after that. Unless of course doing eveything unlocks a final dungeon or something. If so comment here making fun of me and I’ll go back and play it. But I cannot help feeling disappointed to find that was it, there is no more, the game is done.

Now, let me be clear. I put 110 hours into this game. Its a lot of game. Its a lot of good game. But it cannot help but feel lesser than what came before it, because it is lesser. It either had a smaller budget, or it spent its budget less wisely than its predecessor. So, if you are a fan of the game series, if you liked Monster Hunter Stories 2, would I recommend you play this? Yes, its a great game, you will love it, but probably not as much as 2. If you have never played a Monster Hunter Stories game, would I recommend you play this? Well, maybe, but honestly, play 1 or 2 first. You could skip 1, but I wouldn’t. But play one of those first, because I think 1 has more charm and 2 has more meat on its bones. And then when they make you fall in love, then play this one. Monster Hunter Stories is in my opinion one of the best single player monster collection experiences that have been created, better than any mainline Pokemon game, and more people should play them, but this is not the best of them.

Nurse Chapel Should Be Court Martialed

 I recently watched Season 3 Episode 5 of Star Trek Strange New Worlds, called Through the Lens of Time. In this episode, Nurse Chapel and her new creepy older boyfriend/her professor Dr. Korby want to open an archaeological dig on a planet to find some ancient super medicine that could lead to immortality. Initially Spock is not with them, as he “took precautions” against them needing to work together, since he and Nurse Chapel used to be romantically involved and no longer are, but within seconds this is discarded and Spock comes down to the planet with them, which of course begs the question why the idea that he might not be was even raised to begin with, but whatever. They find an alien building which implies it needs a blood sacrifice, Korby is about to cut his hand when Nurse Chapel admonishes him not to be so dramatic, then she walks forward, La’an the security chief yells No, and then Nurse Chapel jabs her finger with a convenient alien needle, providing the blood sacrifice despite La’an’s admittedly vague and confusing objection and despite the fact that Nurse Chapel herself just objected to Korby doing the exact same thing, and the alien building opens. Fairly quickly they find some dead bodies, and Spock is like, hey, its protocol when we find dead bodies to stop work for safety reasons, lets stop and re-evaluate before proceeding. Nurse Chapel is like, but pwetty pwease? And says trust is a two way street, which is relevant because Spock will say it again later (otherwise it seems completely irrelevant. I guess the idea is he needs to trust her judgment if she is to trust him? But why would she need assurances to trust him? They have a long, mostly positive relationship which was only broken because she was preyed upon by her creepy teacher.) He consults with the only person there who actually has a connection to the culture they are investigating, N’Jall, who is like, my people want to know their past - notably not what is at stake here, since this is a choice between blundering forward endangering peoples lives versus a more careful approach, and they continue to investigate.

Immediately Ensign Gamble touches an orb and has his eyes burnt straight out of his head. He is rushed to the Enterprise, where it is discovered his eyes seem unhealable. Ultimately it will be discovered that he is dead and has been dead from the moment his eyes were burnt out, his consciousness replaced by a Lovecraftian horror called a Vezda which was imprisoned in that building. Meanwhile back in the building, they discover some text in an ancient language which is a warning, and N’Jall freaks out and tries to leave, and is killed instantly, and the door to the outside closes, trapping them. Nobody inside seems all that concerned over N’Jall dying, but they are fairly concerned about being trapped. Eventually Spock says his line about trust to get Chapel to follow his plan to get out and they are free, but Gamble is dead and the Vezda within has to be trapped in the transporter buffer, a place which might sound secure except we already know from an episode last season that transdimensional beings like the Vezda can sense and snatch people out of them, because thats what happened to M’Benga’s child (the writers may not remember this, I’m not sure if it actually matters), and also, we are shown the monitors glitch out, indicating the Vezda is up to no good.

So, presumably the lesson in this episode is suppose to be about Nurse Chapel and Spock’s relationship and the importance of trust and/or rebuilding it after a tough break up. Except they were not ever really dating, and to the extent they were, Nurse Chapel broke it off, and then she moved on and Spock did not, at first, but is currently flirting with La’an a bit. So the trust thing just doesn’t make sense to me? Chapel has no reason to distrust Spock - he didn’t cheat, he didn’t betray her, hell, he isn’t really even dating anyone else, and even if he was, so what? She has moved on. Spock might have reason to distrust her - he had hoped to rekindle their romance only to find her dating her professor - which, I might add for a third time, is super creepy on his part and I feel everyone should be a lot more concerned on the show about, especially considering we know how it turns out from TOS - but honestly, she was honest about how she planned to move on before leaving and his foiled expectations are his own fault, and were largely dealt with in the prior episode. Its possible this presumed break of trust is because of that episode - where she and Spock were manipulated into a fake wedding by a Trelaine-like wedding planner - but Spock did not orchestrate that wedding, and he also is the one who broke the spell by reminding her of her love for Korby, so I just don’t see this break of trust anywhere.

But taking a step back, the lesson should probably have been something else. Korby and Chapel are investigating this place pursuing immortality. We actually know Korby eventually finds a secret to immortality of a sort, and it is his downfall. The standard moral lesson for any immortality search in any media is it is a Bad Idea (tm). And indeed, it proves to be a bad idea here, too. The interdimensional evil beings, the Vezda, were let in because of this search to begin with, we find out, and now let out again due to their continued search. That lesson doesn’t hit this episode, though - its never articulated, and the consequences don’t really come home to roost yet. That’s probably the ultimate thrust here, but since SNW wants a little serialization for spice, its delayed to whenever the Vezda escapes the transporter buffer - assuming we even remember why he got out by then, we’ll see if we nail the landing. I think its also delayed because we already learned that lesson from Korby in TOS, and because SNW is a prequel, he can’t get his comeuppance yet, right? We have to see the first steps of his downfall, but he cannot fall yet. So that theme is left just sitting on the table.

But way back when at the start of the episode, Nurse Chapel asked Spock to break safety protocols to rush the excavation. Now, I want to make clear, as far as I understood the episode, Spock was not going to be cancelling the expedition, but merely slowing it by pausing it to re-evaluate. That seemed the plain meaning of what was said. However, Nurse Chapel and N’Jall acted like if they went back to the Enterprise, that would be it, no more expedition. And perhaps that is what we are supposed to have understood? It does not make any sense to me - you find dead bodies, you investigate why they died, then proceed carefully so as to not make the same mistake they did - which the episode later soft confirms was they got trapped, just like our heroes do, and starved to death, because they did not solve the puzzles like our heroes. I don’t understand why pausing - which is the actual word used if I am not mistaken - would mean stopping altogether. But regardless, proper protocol would have been to go back, and had they went back, both Gamble and N’Jall would still be alive and the Vezda never would have escaped.

It feels like there should be some consequence for that? Nobody even bats an eye when N’Jall dies, which is honestly an atrocious look for a Star Trek show about archaeology - why do these Starfleet people not give a shit when an indigenous person dies? Why aren’t N’Jall’s people in charge of this expedition? Why does he only seemingly get a say because Spock asks him? We do know this dig could only happen because his people agreed, yet they seem to exercise no actual power over it besides veto. Spock does, of course, defer to him, which leads to the bad decision, so, props to Spock for respecting the indigenous people even if he chose the worst time to do so, but it really feels to me that when this mission as over, some mention should have been made of the plainly stated fact that protocol was broken. Now, realistically, this blame should fall on Spock, as the commanding officer, but Nurse Chapel was the one in the episode actually pushing for this, so its her who I am mad at. I mean, really, I am mad at the writers for putting these words and actions in her mouth, but like, seriously? Pretty please can I risk peoples lives to get immortality? And then zero consequences, nobody cares, we move on even tho one guy was atomized and another was turned into a Lovecraftian flesh puppet? Like, people are at least upset Gamble dies, but lets at least have an inquest or something.

Honestly as a trained archaeologist (i.e., I have a Masters in archaeology but do not work as an archaeologist currently) its common in media for archaeology to be depicted in ridiculous ways and I do find it annoying, and this episode is pretty standard schlock regarding that. But a modern Star Trek show is exactly the place where I expect them to do better. Nothing about modern archaeological practices or ethics were showcased in this episode, aside from the simple fact they got permission from N’Jall’s people. Which, you know, is nice, but maybe you could have centered the episode on that issue? Instead of an imaginary trust deficit between Nurse Chapel and her former boyfriend? Or centered it on the recklessness with which they pursued this mission? Instead of ignoring that? Or centered it on the inherent selfishness and foolishness of pursuing immortality, like ever other time this theme has been brought up in Star Trek? Instead of presumably pushing that to the season closer, if we’re lucky? Honestly I thought this was gonna be a real short write up about how Nurse Chapel acted kinda dumb but now I’m considerably madder at this episode and SNW than I was at the start. Anyways I ship Spock and La’an and I hate that their relationship cannot possibly work out, tune in later for my essay on why SNW is handicapped by being a prequel.

The Star Trek Strange New Worlds Balance of Terror remake missed the point of Balance of Terror

 So yesterday I wrote up a bunch of complaints about the Gorn in Strange New Worlds as of the Season 3 opening episode, but I actually want to roll back a bit and talk about the S1 finale, Quality of Mercy, which can be seen as a stealth remake of the classic TOS episode Balance of Terror. In Balance of Terror, the Enterprise sees a Romulan ship decloak (which was the first time ever this happened, both in universe and in real life) and destroy a Federation outpost, then recloak and flee into the neutral zone, an area of space neither they nor the Federation is suppose to be allowed to enter, after a peace treaty of sorts was established between them a hundred years before via subspace communications (i.e., not face to face, humans have never seen a Romulan before). A tense discussion is had whereby Bones advises Kirk to be cautious - the Romulans are an unknown quantity, but we know they are powerful and dangerous and are only not at war with us because we have agreed to this neutral zone, if we violate it, we might start a war that could kill billions or trillions or whatever. Its also revealed at some point that the Romulans look like Vulcans. Someone else on the crew, probably Stiles, a racist who suspects Spock of collaborating with the Romulans because of the similar shapes, thinks we should attack immediately as a show of force, because if we let them get away with the attack, we will be seen as weak and the Romulans might decide that means they can attack with impunity. Spock then pipes up and says, hey, I think racist guy is right, if Romulans really are like Vulcans, when Vulcans were imperialistic and expansionist only a sock to the jaw would stop us from starting a war, so what he says makes sense. Kirk listens to both and ultimately decides that following and destroying the Romulan ship is the right move, but he is clearly uncertain about his choice, and both before it is revealed to have been the right choice, and importantly, AFTER it is revealed to be the right choice, bemoans that he has to make these choices at all. Why should the weight of billions be on his shoulders? Why are we so willing to kill billions of people over issues of appearance and machismo and grievance? At the end of the episode (I think, unless I’ve mixed it up with another), we also learn that although they were too far away from Starfleet to get their permission ahead of time, Starfleet belatedly says that whatever Kirk decides to do, they trust him, meaning up until the end, Kirk might be starting a war and end up court martialed, and its only at the end that war seems averted AND we learn that Kirk will be fine - but its entirely possibly he could have successfully averted the war and still been court martialed for being too aggro OR too wimpy, as well as possible to have started a war and been court martialed for being too aggro OR too wimpy. Just a shit show, basically.

At the same time, we also see whats happening on the Romulan vessel. There, their orders are clear - the higher ups want a war. They are looking for an excuse. But the Captain of the vessel does not. He knows all the lives that will be lost if a war starts. He openly wishes that somehow the Enterprise will destroy them before they can return, because we also learn that indeed, Spock and racist man are right, if Starfleet does not defend itself, the Romulan empire will view it as weak, and will start a war. He follows orders, but he does not want war so much that he hopes he and all his men are killed to avoid it. Ultimately he gets his wish, and he expresses to Kirk that perhaps, in another reality, they could have been friends.

So what happens in the SNW remake? Well, Pike knows that in ten years he’s gonna suffer an awful accident, which will result in Kirk taking over the Enterprise, but he’s like, what if I just don’t show up to my accident and also send an e-mail to all the people who would have died in that accident too, and then we all survive and be happy? Then future Pike comes back and is like, dude, bad idea, let me show you, and we skip to the future, where now Pike is in charge of the Enterprise during the same crisis, except he wants to try to make peace with the Romulans. It doesn’t work, war is beginning, we get signal, all your base are belong to Romulus, move every zig for great justice. And the point of the episode is, take your choice: sometimes tough situations needs tough men who shoot first and ask questions later to preserve the peace, OR Faptain Kirk (I meant Captain but I am leaving that typo cuz… c’mon, Faptain? classic) is an amazing guy chosen by fate to save the Federation, isn’t he so cool, Pike has to be disabled and live in a fantasy to make room for Kirk because Kirk is just so cool. Honestly, that is wrong, there are not two options, the meaning of the episode is the second one. Thats why they wrote this episode, thats what they meant to convey, and to be fair with them, there is some of that in the original episode. The Romulan is constantly like, “This Starfleet captain is a wiley one!” and it ends with him praising Kirk and saying they could be friends, so, yeah I get it. But if we take our masturbatory Kirk worship robes off for a second, we see that the actual thrust of the episode seems to be saying the first one, that diplomacy doesn’t always work and sometimes to preserve the peace, you must prepare for war.

Is that the message of Balance of Terror, though? No, it is not. Kirk, both before and after his actions are revealed to have averted war, questions his actions and his judgement and the necessity that he be the one to make these calls. He thinks it is unjust that this is the case. The Romulan, too, thinks that this state of affairs sucks. He wants to avert war. They both do. But their hands are forced by the circumstances. Kirk has to be tough, because showing weakness can lead to war, and it could also lead to court martial. He correctly judges it as his best option, but it is still a shitty option. It sucks for him he has to risk his life, his career, and his crew to take an action that might start a war on its own just to have any chance of averting the same war, and it sucks for the Romulan that he had to take the same action that might start a war that he personally opposes because his higher ups are gunning for war because the blood mill must be fed blood. The ending makes this clear - both Captains wish they could have met peacefully and been friends, but this conflict between their societies, this slowly, coolly bubbling fight, this COLD WAR if you will, has put them against each other, and that means that the Romulan has to die and Kirk has to kill him just so a war won’t happen. That is the lesson. The lesson is that the Cold War mentality of paranoia and lack of formal diplomacy and the desire of the elites to fight so they can profit off the war while the men in the trenches die, THAT is the problem, and the original episode could hardly have said it clearer. But in the remake, all of that subtlety is washed away in favor of, “But Kirk is a pretty cool guy, right? So tough.”

Like, you got to remember when this was written. It was the sixties. The Cold War was going on. The Romulans represent the Russians. The ships are submarines. It’s not subtle. This is about how the United States and Russia should actually talk to one another and work out their differences, instead of sniping about in the dark, constantly coming to the brink of war over small things instead of actually openly discussing things and coming to terms. It’s a call for everyone to actually act like adults and a reminder that war is awful and everyone should want to avoid it. Washing over that by saying that the real message is Kirk is a badass and that tough situations need tough guys is literally the opposite of the intended takeaway.

Its a bad fucking episode.

The Gorn Suck

 I’ve mostly been enjoying Star Trek Strange New Worlds. It does feel maybe a bit less ambitious than Star Trek Discovery, playing it far safer with a cast full of legacy characters, even if most other than Spock were barely defined before the start of the series, and it does often feel limited by its status as a prequel - we know that Spock, Nurse Chapel, Pike, M’Benga, Kirk, and Scottie all survive the series, since all appear in TOS, we know Spock and Nurse Chapel do not end up together, we know Pike is going to get stuck in his chair and then fuck off to fantasy land (and by extension can probably conclude his relationship with Captain Batel is doomed) - as well as further handicapped by its desire to “set up” TOS in various ways, like with their copy of the Drumhead (future me: I meant Balance of Terror, but I’m keeping this mistake here so you can make fun of me) proving Kirk is the right man to handle that crisis as well as Kirk, Uhura and Spock all sharing a table in one episode - I just picture the “soyjack pointing” meme overlaid on it, even tho I hate people who use soyjacks - but yeah, I like it. Its a much more Star Trek feeling experience than Discovery, and my quibbles with it are on the same scale as my quibbles with Voyager rather than my larger ones with Discovery. But boy, do I hate the Gorn.

First off, what are the Gorn doing here? And by this, I don’t mean from a lore perspective - frankly I don’t know enough about TOS lore to know whether its an issue for Pike to have encountered the Gorn as much as he has before Kirk meets them in TOS, and I don’t super care - while I do think series should avoid directly contradicting established canon as much as possible, I have no issues generally with them twisting it to tell the story they want or to explore a cool idea, AS LONG AS THE RESULT IS GOOD. And the Gorn episodes of SNW are not very good.

Let’s take my weakest objection first. They look dumb. Their only major resemblance to the classic goofy rubber suit is some similarly goofy looking lips on the full adult Gorn - but its a passing resemblance at best. If you showed me both side to side out of context I doubt I’d guess they are suppose to be the same alien. I don’t have a big issues with the lack of resemblance - if the new design looked good, I could ignore the change just like the 90s update of the Klingons or Discovery’s update of the Klingons, neither of which bothered me and honestly I downright liked Discovery’s, although I do think bringing hair back in Season 2 was the right choice as it opened up a lot more variety in Klingon appearance that helped make them both more recognizable and more distinguishable from one another, an important aspect of alien race design. These Gorn, though, as babies, juveniles, and adults, all look weirdly low poly and shitty and not very scary, none of which would be a big deal if they were cheap to make, but I am sure this is them pulling all the stops on their CGI budget. They would have looked honestly better if they had just done some shitty puppets and rubber suits, and I have to imagine massively cheaper - and if they had actually spent that same budget on GOOD puppets and rubber suits, probably a lot better. Maybe someone likes how they look - I hope at least the artist who made them did - but I don’t, and they feel like wasted budget that could have been better used on literally anything else. But, at the end of the day, aesthetics are in the eye of the beholder, and even had they looked amazing and terrifying, that would not have solved my problems with them.

My big problem? Whats the point of them? What are we suppose to take away from Starfleet’s encounter with them? What lessons were learned? Do they represent some real world people or challenge or reality we must face? Star Trek is suppose to be a utopian scifi that pushes progressive values. Not every element of the show needs to always fit that - the series has often explored non-utopian aspects of the future at various points and with varying degrees of success, and writers certainly are allowed to have fun, not every aspect of every episode needs to mean something - but the Gorn are a major adversary for all three seasons of the show (I am only in E1 of S3, but even if they never appear again, them being such a huge deal in E1 I feel justifies this statement). A major adversary like that probably should lend itself to some meaningful interpretation, some progressive takeaway, some political point being made. And like.. maybe there is? But I am not sure what it is.

Honestly, they just feel like rip-offs of xenomorphs from Alien. But Alien does actually make progressive points. Alien is about how capitalism will force underpaid blue collar workers to risk life and limb to make a profit. Nothing about the alien itself necessarily furthers that, but the story itself does. If the story of Alien were actually a two part Star Trek episode, and the Weyland-Yutani corporation was Ferengi owned or some other way clearly identified as exploitative in it, I could accept it as a Star Trek story. But the Gorn, despite their visual and biological similarities to xenomorphs, are not positioned in the same way as the xenomorphs in Alien, and Starfleet is not Weyland-Yutani. Instead of being an unknown lifeform of unknown intelligence which is humanity’s first exposure to any alien life, period, Gorn are a known intelligent species whom Starfleet has had limited contact with before, and who clearly are intelligent enough to engage in diplomacy - they send Starfleet a picture of a peaceful demarcation line at one point. But they are also portrayed as vicious, violent monsters who despite their human-like intelligence and technology cannot possible be reasoned with who only want to eat or parasitize humans as brood pods for their young.

Is the lesson that sometimes, people are vicious monsters who want to lay eggs in your chest cavity and should be genocided? Cuz thats not a Star Trek lesson. Is the lesson that sometimes people are vicious monsters who want to lay eggs in your chest and you need to find a way to mimic the radiance of a star not going through a solar flare cycle in order to calm them down? That… maybe could be a Star Trek lesson? I guess? I don’t understand what, if any lesson is actually being conveyed here, and I think I know the reason - there isn’t one. Which is actually pretty rare for Strange New Worlds. Now, I do remember some Star Trek like progressive messaging in the first Gorn episode - it just had nothing to do with the Gorn but a subplot - and there probably was some hiding away in this episode too, but again, the A plot of the Gorn was incidental to it. I just think, if this is going to be your major plotline of your series for three seasons, and you are writing Star Trek, that you should put some thought into the implications of including an intelligent race of vicious bloodthirsty monsters who will genocide humans if we don’t genocide them first. It rhymes with blood libel, frankly, and the fact they are reptilian aliens is perhaps not the biggest coincidence. Kinda surprised the ADL doesn’t have anything to say about them to be honest, guess they are too busy sucking up to Israel or whatever.

Okay I kinda went off track, but like, seriously. Monsterizing an intelligent race just seems like something Star Trek shouldn’t do. Even the Borg got humanized, plus the Borg could be read as representing consumer culture or monoculture or authoritarianism or any number of interesting things, not merely “some cultures are just evil.” I don’t know what to do with the Gorn as written in a Star Trek universe, and thats a problem. Now, I will grant, maybe I’m just missing something. Or maybe a later episode will give more context on the Gorn and fix this. But as is, big thumbs down for me. And I fucking love reptiles, so an even bigger L to have ruined a cool reptilian alien race by making them alien rip-offs.

Worst Blog Post Ever

 So I love the podcast SciShow Tangents. I used to hate podcasts for the sole reason I thought the name sounded dumb, and I wasn’t really sure what they were. Fast forward nearly twenty years, and I listened to my first podcast, which is SciShow Tangents, and discover they are basically just radio shows on the internet. SciShow Tangents was created by Complexly, who also makes SciShow, and is hosted by Hank Green, Sam Schultz, Ceri Riley, and for the first two seasons Stefan Chin. Most episodes consists of a Quiz Round where they play a game, which initially was almost always Truth or Fail, where one host tells three science facts, but two of them are lies and one is true, and the other hosts have to figure out which is which, and hen a second round called Fact Off where two hosts each take turns describing the best fact they can find relevant to the topic of the week and the other guests then judge whose fact was better. Anyway, its cancelled now, but I still listen to reruns nightly to fall asleep. It has really cozy vibes and I like learning fun facts.

But on the episode about Tails, it is mentioned that scorpion tails are not technically tails, but telsons, and that they actually poop from the end of their tail. Since their tail is quite flexible and moveable, this means they can poop on their own head if they want to. Hank then poses a question, which is, if you could poop on your own head, would you, and then ends up running a poll to that effect. I forget exactly what answers were on the poll and what weren’t, but the long and the short is most people are not interested in pooping on their own heads, but might do so just once.

But I think this poll needs more information. For instance, if I just now grew a tail and could poop out the end, would I poop on my own head? No, not even once. I know it’s gonna be disgusting. Why would I? There is no great mystery. I could recreate it right now by pooping into my hand and rubbing it on my head. But if I was born with a tail, I am sure I would have pooped on my own head several times as a kid before I figured out how to avoid doing so. And I suspect there is an age where it you gave me a tail I’d be young enough to legitimately wonder what it would be like and try it once on purpose. But now? No. That has no mysteries for me.

There. That was the post.

The Next Star Trek Should be a Musical

 So if you couldn’t guess just from the title, I watched the musical episode of Star Trek Strange New Worlds last night, and I enjoyed it a lot. I had heard about it before, both through cultural osmosis and grumpily from my dad, whose comment was something like, “Maybe they’d have more time for their plot if they didn’t waste time singing songs.” and my general impression was fans did not enjoy it, but I for one did. It was fun, it was light, it still hit all the Star Trek points of making a progressive political point, the importance of expertise and science, etc, etc. Lots of people get mad when Star Trek isn’t “serious” but thats not me, nor is it Star Trek, because Star Trek is often extremely silly (see: this episode, any Ferengi episode, any Holodeck episode, any episode involving a parallel earth, half of the episodes of the original series, etc, etc) and always kinda silly (what about if we just reroute everything through the deflector?) despite it often also being deadly serious, and complaining that “Well this is just too silly for me!” is either hypocritical - assuming you do not also object to all those other silly things - and that you just don’t like musicals, or that you in fact maybe just don’t like Star Trek.

But I do like Star Trek, and I do like this episode, and I do like musicals, and I have made at least two previous blog posts saying, “The Next Star Trek should do X” so lets have a third (or fourth? I’ve done it a lot). I think the next Star Trek should be a musical, and specifically one set in the alternate quantum reality speculated to exist in this episode of Star Trek. Why do I think this? Well, first of all, let me say, I don’t want a second Strange New Worlds musical episode. They made a Star Trek musical episode, it was great, but they did I think exhaust the concept for a one off episode and it doesn’t need to be done again any time soon - the soonest I would find acceptable is if in another Star Trek show they did their own episode (ideally with its own technobabble explanation).

I want a devoted TV series written as a musical, like Galavant or Schmigadoon or Central Park or Glee. I also want this because, obviously I like musicals. I think they are fun and in particular I like them because they expose that the thing you are watching is a facsimile - it is not actually happening but is a fictional portrayal of fictional events being made entertaining. I think this is valuable because it naturally bends a piece of art away from realism, and I think an overweening focus on realism in a perfidious evil in modern television and movies. So many shows in their art style and presentation and CGI and writing want to be realistic when suspension of disbelief is a fundamental and necessary part of all drama, and minimizing the amount required to enjoy something does not necessarily always make it better. It may make it more accessible, which is a good thing on its own, but it comes at a cost in terms of creativity and expression, and I like anything that pushes back on that.

However, I also like this idea from a lore perspective - namely, that it would be in an alternate universe, much like the reboot movies. Thus they would be free to do whatever the fuck they want, lore wise. To be clear tho I do NOT want Spock 3 and Kirk 3, this time with singing. I mean if they really want legacy characters let’s at least do TNG. But I honestly would rather it be entirely new characters in a musical Star Trek universe that largely resembles but is in universe distinct from the prime universe, to give the writers the freedom to do whatever they want without fans whining about them ignoring or messing up lore. I’m honestly sick of all the legacy stuff and filling in the holes, I want the writers to have the freedom to define things how they want and not worry about contradictions, but I sympathize with people who really value that stuff - so just put it in another universe. No biggie.

Now, do I think this show would be successful, if the fanbase hated SNW’s musical episode. Well, I think I might have overstated how much people disliked it, for one thing, but also, yes, I do think it’d still be able to succeed, and here is why: most Star Trek fans right now are old. Star Trek needs new fans. Some portion of existing Star Trek fans are gonna show up to any new show, even one like this which is radically different. Making a show to please those fans certainly can succeed - Picard, SNW, and Lower Decks were all efforts at that, and even having only watched two seasons of SNW and none of Picard I think calling them failures is almost certainly an overstatement at best and outright wrong at worst, and Lower Decks kicks ass. But long term you need to bring in new fans too, which Discovery, Prodigy, and Starfleet Academy were attempts at - and again, Discovery, as much as I disliked the first two seasons, was definitely a success at, it spawned so many additional series, and the other two, although both got canceled after only two seasons, were at least good IMO and could have brought in new fans if Paramount weren’t cowards and assholes licking Trump’s butthole. Okay that got way grosser than I intended. Anyway, my point is, a musical would probably bring about the same number of built in fans as any new Star Trek project not specifically made to cater to old fans would, but it also would potentially bring in pure musical fans - with the bonus that musical fans love camp, so if the show ends up campy, which, come on, it will Star Trek is campy already, they will love it. Its a natural pairing. Now you have a bunch of musical fans who would never have looked at Star Trek twice finding out Star Trek can be good? Revive Lower Decks and Starfleet Academy and both are super accessible jumping off points for these new fans, and then launch another new Star Trek series catering more to old fans for them to move on to after these easy wins, and you got a Star Trek stew going.

No Thoughts, Head Empty

 So I remembered what I wanted to write about yesterday! There is a new meme among cute animal appreciators, which is to say things like, “No thoughts, head empty,” or “There is not one thought in that head,” or “He has only one thought, eat.” when referring to goofy looking animals. This is especially common for some reason on appreciators of crested geckos and ball pythons, I find, but most reptiles, all but the most threatening looking dogs, some cats, and honestly really any animal at all can be accused of this.

This is pretty much exclusively used by people who appreciate animals, but in particular people who appreciate them primarily for their cuteness. I also often see it overlapping with behaviors that I would terms dismissive of considerations of an animals rights as a sentient being. I use sentient here to mean “a conscious being capable of feeling things” not “self aware and of comparable intelligence to humans.” It can technically mean either and I usually mean it the second way, but here I only am asserting the first. It seems plainly obvious to to me that all vertebrates at the very least (I’d probably say all animals with a nervous system to be honest or even just all life but I’m deliberately hedging here a bit on my actual beliefs to be more scientifically justified) can feel things and make decisions, even if those emotions and how they make those decisions may not be the same or as complex as ours. This is also simply logical and common sense if you believe in evolution - our intelligence and self-awareness likely developed over time, and thus vertebrates, who are all fairly closely related to us in the grand scheme of things and all have advanced nervous systems have at least somewhat similar methods of experiencing the world, and if they seem to react to stimuli in a similar way to humans do its reasonable to assume they experience something similar to what we do, even if not identical.

So when I say they are dismissive of an animals rights as a sentient being, what I mean is when they interact with an animal, they don’t worry about what the animal is feeling and assume the animal will forget any interaction and not hold a grudge. Squishing an animals face to make it look cuter. Scaring an animal on purpose because its reacts funny, like hyperactive dogs or hognose snakes playing dead or cobras displaying or baby snakes biting and hissing. Splashing an animal with water to see what will happen. Generally a casual disregard for how the animal experiences its world and what it might think about how you treat it. These people usually aren’t outright cruel or harming animals - they are animal lovers, after all, but they think animals lack internality and thus treat them as objects. Objects they love, but objects.

Animals are not objects. You can establish a relationship of trust with any vertebrate over time. I’ve done it. I honestly think the same is true for most animals, and while I do not think it is possible to truly establish such a relationship with plants or fungus or bacteria, that is only because of the difficulty communicating, and that it makes sense to respect them as well and not intentionally disregard their likely preferences. This does not mean we cannot harm them if we must - we have to eat something to survive, plants or animals or both, after all, nor does it mean we should not make them uncomfortable if its for their best - our dogs surely would prefer to run free across the towns, but we leash them and fence them because if we did not they might be killed by cars, wildlife, or dog-hostile neighbors - we are more intelligent and their caretakers, after all, but we should keep in mind that they have minds too, and make sure we do not inflict harm or annoyance unnecessarily, so we can coexist with a relationship of mutual trust and respect.

I should maybe also say that although this behavior annoys me, I don’t necessarily think people like this are bad people. Some of my favorite youtubers, Snake Discovery do this regularly, and they certainly know better and show it at other times - but they do also engage in some behaviors objectifying their animals. I know they are good people and would like them to do better, but they are still in like the to 90% of people who love and respect animals, so the fact I disagree slightly on how they handle some things shouldn’t erase that. But like, it’d be nice if we moved off this trend and towards a more respectful tone to animals.

Geckos have several thoughts.

stream of consciousness, part 2

 so yeaterday i said i was going to continue developing the gemite rwce but when i was at the pool today with the kids- i take the kids and puppies out everyday into our pool area for puppytime, year round, but we only swim in summer, but anyway, when I was at the pool today i had a different idea for what Is anted to write and i was exicted about that so I was like hey, I’m gonna write that! and I can always do the gemites later. But the problem is, I forgot what I decided to write about! and while I still could go back and write the gemite atuff, I have decided instead to do a stream of consciousness and hope that by doing so I will dredge up what I was thinking about at the pool, and either actually write about it,or at least rinject it into my brain so I can write about it in the future

unfortunately so far I have not co:e up with what it was or anything remotely related to it, instewd my mind is just pulking random fluff out of holes, like ky kids were trying to remind me when I asked them “What would I have been thinking about at the pool?” and they were like, wet! a bood pirped on my head! which is a quote from a few days ago when a bird pooped on my shirt. I actually did say shirt at the time, but I wrote head this time, and this is stream of consciousness so it doesn’t seem appropriate to go back and fix it.

my chair has been breaking a lot lately. it has a fundamental design flaw whereby, okay, I need to stop and give some context. I have a medical lift chair. I got it because I had a recliner and I was having repeated issues where I was hurting myself getting out of the chair, in particularly dislocating my shoulder and the like and hurting my collarbone lifting myself out, so we decided to get me a medical lift chair. but there is a fundamental flaw by which the cord that powers the chair is pulled upon by the chair as it lifts, and it tends to 7 plug over time and stop functioning. unplug,not 7 plug. anyway, it sucks and I hate it. we s9mehow had it fixed fir like a year and I don”5 know how or why but its acting uo again, and its so inconvenientl living with chronic pain really does feel like any second your life can get destroyed because something you reky upon to manage pain breaks and you suddenly have no options but to be jonfunctional. jonf7nctional. jonfucntional. nonfunctional. got it. okay I think I’m done for today.

Ancestry Outline: Gemite

 So I’ve been conceptualizing a campaign setting/world/novel setting for a bit, and I think I’m gonna try to spend my writing time here fleshing it out, starting today. Well, starting a while ago, because the first one was the short story about the olm boy who bonded with a baby dragon, but this is gonna be somewhat drier: I’m just gonna be writing lore, as it were, although I will eventually start writing stories too once I get the world fleshed out enough I know what I want to happen. I already have an idea for the next story but I think I want to think through the lore first so it’ll be easier to write.

Gemite

Gemites on first blush might seem to be a society of sentient constructs, and indeed, their bodies are engineering marvels, usually being constructed out of a iridescent, translucent crystalline material complete with tiny gears, joints, pulleys, and sometimes even hydraulics or other more advanced systems. These bodies, however, are actually less than they seem - they are merely the hive that houses the hivemind, thousands or even millions of tiny, ultra intelligent termites, who use their ability to chew and break down wood and stone to synthesize building materials for their mobile hives that function like mobile fortresses, mech suits, and just regular humanoid bodies when they interact with more conventional species.

Appearance

Gemites vary greatly in appearance, since their bodies can technically be built into any shape they can dream of. Individual members of a hivemind, known as mites, look much like any other termite, although their chitin can be any number of hues depending on genetics and where the gemite hails from and has a distinct iridescent sheen to it somewhat like a jewel beetle. Most gemites - when used as such, gemite refers to an individual hive and hivemind together - in their homeland are shaped like giant mites, but those who leave the homeland often reshape their bodies to incorporate at least some more humanoid features to allow them to relate to and blend in with others more easily, most commonly by creating centaur-like bodies with the back end of a mite and the top end of a beautiful, carved automaton torso of a human or other local humanoid. Some gemites decide they wish to look like other things, building fantastical creatures, other animals, moving obelisks, or even wheeled vehicles or flying machines, since their physical form is only limited by their skill and imagination. Although these bodies are not truly biological, they do provide functions - mites create giant camera lenses that function as eyes and project images of the surrounding world for viewing by the mite hivemind, mites construct resonating chambers to more easily hear and process sounds from the outside world, and they even often have processing chambers stomachs for breaking down material which has been masticated by carefully carved and maintained jaws. Gemites function as a complete superorganism comprised of their component mites and their constructed hive. Although from a distance gemites might appear to be construct, because of the translucent nature of their building materials, and he fact their bodies are riddled with tunnels to allow the individual mites to move around the body, close inspection will reveal the thousands of mites moving under their “skin”, an odd wriggling that some fine beautiful and others unsettling.

Biology

Gemites are psionic termites who live in a hivemind. Every gemite has a queen, a king, and some numbers of workers, who often specialize into multiple other functions depending on what form they have chosen their body to take, their needs, and their skills. Specialized workers will literally change their body to be more suitable to their task, undergoing partial metamorphosis into various types and tiers of workers, such as muscle stringers who weave silk cord for use in pulleys moving legs, or crystal masticaters who specialize in processing materials into the paste that hardens into the translucent, iridescent crystal their bodies are made of. Once a gemite goes through flighting, their equivalent of puberty, around the age of twenty years, their queen can give birth to clone queens and kings to replace the original king and queen when they die - although individual queens and kings can live for approximately a hundred years, the clones allow them to live far longer, as well as survive drastic injuries which kill existing kings or queens. Gemites can also survive the complete destruction of their hive, as long as at least one clone queen and king survives to repopulate and rebuild the hive. Gemites can also mate sexually to produce new gemite hives - this involves producing winged alates, who then mate with winged alates from another gemite and begin building their own hives. Much like humanoids who pair bond, gemites usually only do this with others they love and trust and find sexually attractive, raise their kids to flighting together, and often live in close association thereafter, but gemites will often do so in numbers more than one - its not uncommon for a group of three of five or even twenty gemites who all enjoy ones another's company to join in a mating swarm and then raise their children in a creche together, essentially creating a small married village.

Gemites primarily get their nutrition from digesting plant material, including wood, as they possess the rare ability to digest lignin and cellulose. This allows them to subsist in many areas other species would have difficulty and on food sources others cannot take advantage of. They do, however, also require a significant amount of other minerals to construct their crystalline hives. Although they are versatile crafters and can make use of whatever is available, places with sparse minerals can be difficult for them to thrive in due to this requirement, and may force them to grow their hives slowly. It also means they can often be found snacking on things others might not consider food, from rocks to metallic objects to ceramics.

Most individual mites are blind and navigate primarily through pheromone trails left by others of their kind. The only exceptions are sight workers who operate the vision for the hives as a whole. Mites rarely leave the hives, although some gemites do learn to develop scout workers who can leave the body and explore on a miniature scale, or even specialized soldier workers who can bite and inject toxins in swarms, often thrown onto enemies in small “grenades” made of their crystal plaster. Since individual mites are part of the hive mind, these mites willingly risk their lives in doing so. 

Individual gemite hiveminds function through a mix of psionic and biochemical signatures. Thus things which interfere with psionics or smells can confuse or incapacitate gemites more easily than other creatures. In such situation, individual mites will usually keep doing whatever task they were trying to do before, which can allow for continued functioning, but if the situation changes they will be unable to respond because of lack of coordination and communication between mites.

I think thats enough for today. I might expand on this tomorrow with disposition and society entries.

Monster Hunter Stories and knowing what your game is for

 I’ve really enjoyed he Monster Hunter Stories games. I saw a review of Monster Hunter Stories 3 whose blurb said something like, “The Monster Hunter Stories series finally blossoms into a full fledged RPG” and you know, I didn’t read it (because I knew I was going to buy it already) but I actually call bullshit on that anyways, because even the first one had a lot of depth to it, and the second one even moreso. I just stated the third one and so far, it mostly seems like an incremental improvement on what came before - which is great, as I’d rate the first one as an A- and the second one an A+ so incremental improvement is absolutely fine for a series that’s been nailing it. I’m not really sure what part exactly they are thinking is so improved in this third one over previous entries - so far the biggest change seems to be the introduction of Habitat Restoration, which allows you to customize the environment by introducing endangered species (or just foreign species) into other environments, which both powers up the environment and existing species as well as makes new ones available and can have other interesting effects.

One area though which has not really been improving, to my mind, is the story. The first game had a fairly minimal, largely silly story, which was perfect for it - unlike other RPGs which usually have deep stories, monster collection games often do not, and I think for good reason - they tend to be mechanically involved, which can make story feel like a distraction from the gameplay in a bad way. I of course would not begrudge a Monster Collection game from having a good story, but I’m actually not sure if I can even think of an example - maybe SMT4 or SMT Apocalypse? The SMT games are different in many ways from traditional monster collector games, but I’d say they still qualify - unlike the Persona games, which have monster collection as a combat mechanic but have so watered it down I don’t think I’d personally place them in that genre at all - and SMT3 and 5, while their stories are in some ways good, are not good in the way traditional RPG stories are, instead staying out of the way in much the same way most monster collection stories do, despite being well written and deep. Only 4 (and its spinoff Apocalypse) feels like a traditional RPG story AND is well written.

The second game has more story, and a largely more serious story, and a mildly better written one. I’d honestly rate it as a largely neutral change. The extra story and seriousness of the story honestly detract a bit from the feel of the game, but it being better written and still humorous at times help balance it and keep it doing its job, which is to supplement but not distract from the quality gameplay.

This third game, though, feels much more plot heavy so far, and while the characters have some humor to them, the story itself feels quite heavy so far, while not feeling notably better written than previous entries. I'm not far enough in to come to any conclusions, but to me, it feels like a step down. If the story isn’t good, then having more of it isn’t better, its worse, and if a story isn’t very good, it being more serious isn’t better, it is worse. MHS3 seemingly does both at once. It would actually be a better game with less story that was sillier, in my opinion, as it would let you focus on what everyone is actually here for, the awesome monsters.

This is the sane trap the Pokemon games fell in starting with Gen 3. The stories got more and more serious and more and more prominent, taking up more of your time and ultimately feeling like a slog. I don’t give a shit about the story in Pokemon, I just want to go on my Pokemon journey. Scarlet and Violet course corrected on this fairly well, in my opinion, refocusing the plot on your own personal journey and making it nonlinear and at least -feel- optional. Its one of the reasons its my favorite Pokemon game, easily, despite its poor performance at launch. But other game series should take not, too - more story is not always better. You need to be aware of the strengths of your game and why people are playing it. Despite the name, I don’t think anyone is playing Monster Hunter Stories for the story. Its for the monsters. Keep it light and focused on that - unless you have some really important, deep story you want to tell and know you can pull it off, like SMT4. But you probably don’t, so reign it in.