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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, this is a Star Wars project. The obvious villains are the writers. 😜 Writing is the franchise's Achilles heel. An all-star cast and stunning visuals are simply a matter of throwing enough money at the project. You can't simply buy a compelling creative vision or turn that vision into a viable screenplay by just throwing money at it. It doesn't really matter how good your actors are or how bottomless your VFX budget is if the story you're telling is badly composed or just boring. Like The Acolyte, The Book of Boba Fett, Solo: a Star Wars Story, etc.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    IMO, Kirsh's "agenda" seems pretty obvious. He's pretty consistently depicted as the person most invested in the actual wellbeing and care of the Hybrids, whom he seems to regard as fellow Synths. He encourages them to be more Synth-like, but he's also shown encouraging them to take advantage of the freedoms they have that aren't afforded to normal Synths. He exhorts them to disregard fear as an animal weakness, but also encourages Wendy to make her own choices and provides her with ethical guidance and quietly encourages Tootles's desire to become a scientist and to choose a new name for himself to reflect his new direction in life. He is clearly aware that his employer is a reckless idiot, and does what he can to minimize the risks involved with Boy Cavalier's actions. He knows something is wrong with Slightly, and it seems likely that his goal is to resolve the matter quietly and without bringing it to the attention of his superiors who might punish or even destroy Slightly for having been manipulated into betraying Prodigy. There's no presumption of infallibility when it comes to Boy Cavalier. He's written as a fairly typical techbro douchebag. He believes he's a genius, but it's pretty clear in-series that he's just another rich idiot who failed upwards and likes to LARP as the next Nikola Tesla or Thomas Edison by claiming credit for the innovations of the companies he's bought his way into. (He's modeled on a real person, and it is NOT subtle at all.) Well, that's a fairly standard sci-fi trope... give a computer with greater-than-human intelligence the ability to think like a human and you've got at least a 50-50 on it going crazy rampage nuts sooner or later. 😆 After all, we're told directly in-series that the reason Prodigy is using kids for these experiments is because their minds are better able to adapt to their new state as Synths. That implies both that they've tried this unsuccessfully with adults and that the success rate with kids is not 100% either. Yeah, it's got a good critical reception... which means very little considering how many critics are bought-and-paid-for. Audience scores are lower, but still generally favorable. It's a mindless sort of nostalgia-driven series so we'll see if those numbers trend up or down.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah. While it has not always been consistently presented - e.g. TNG "Unnatural Selection", VOY "Lineage" - the United Federation of Planets does have a ban on genetic modification of sentient beings. Dr. M'Benga's violation of that ban in this episode is kind of the least of this episode's writing problems, though. Consider, if you will... The fact that M'Benga almost certainly broke the law for this weirdly trivial away mission is a tiny, tiny problem next to the vast number of other writing problems in this episode.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Aside from his communications with Slightly, we mainly only see Morrow interact with the computers on his own ship (the Maginot). In space, nobody can hear FX lazily rip off the original Alien in the hopes that that will make this mess less unwatchable?
  5. Seto Kaiba
    "Four and a Half Vulcans" It's funny that we flashed back to the episode where Una was prosecuted for being genetically modified, when what the crew are about to do here is almost certainly illegal. There's a really weird and nonsensical leap in reasoning here. Why is it necessary to go in disguise at all? Why does the injection make the crew racist?! WHY IS THAT A QUESTION I HAVE TO ASK?! I very nearly stopped watching at that point. I am 7 minutes and 38 seconds into this and I am very ready to walk away and skip the rest of this episode. This premise is awful. It's just awful. Genetically modifying someone to change their species doesn't magically implant that species's cultural norms and social values into that person. The whole crew just sort of rolls with the idea that talking like a Vulcan and being a racist arse are just genetic. The opening credits are more than ten minutes into the episode's runtime, and I'm ready to drop the entire episode before the damned title's done. Is this really just going to be forty minutes of Pike, La'an, Uhura, and Chapel being rude and racist to the entire rest of the crew? I think the writers may have forgotten the "Vulcans think Humans smell bad" thing was mainly a problem for Vulcan women, who had a heightened sense of smell. I also think the writers may have Vulcans confused with TNG-era Soong androids given that the episode seems to think being Vulcan gives people Super Multitasking Powers. ... this writing is terrible. I'm not quite 25 minutes into this trainwreck and I'm ready to put this one down there in the Hall of Shame with "Spock's Brain", "Turnabout Intruder", and "Code of Honor". I am unaccountably gratified to see that Star Trek fans on social media are already calling this episode out as inherently racist in its premise. That might be the stupidest plot twist since Dr. Brahms found Geordi's holodeck deepfake of her. Apparently Vulcans are now the kind of generic space elf that is deeply offended by the existence of spices and seasoning. I know it's a popular Tolkien-inspired elf trope, and I hate it. Vulcans are desert-dwellers. They should have a pretty refined appreciation for spices and seasonings instead of being offended by the existence of salt. I'll admit, "Doug of Vulcan" is growing on me. Kind of surprising he's not in Starfleet, considering he seems to be quite the xenophile by Vulcan standards. He's a very T'lyn sort of free spirit. Either that or it's because he's the only Vulcan in this episode who's not being a racist prick. The episode's problem is then solved offscreen, for maximum frustration and minimum catharsis. I cannot begin to express how frustrating that is. This episode has a post-credits scene. That. Was. F***ING TERRIBLE. I have an actual headache from watching that. It really was about thirty minutes of the crew being racist for no reason.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    I can attest that when this one was first pitched there was a good deal of debate over whether it was "crazy enough to work" or just regular crazy. 🤔 I worked on this one personally, and while I'm limited in what I can say by a raft of NDAs I've been dying to hear what someone outside the fast feedback fleet has to say about it, so I greatly appreciate you sharing your experience. Yeah, TPTB felt that the Charger lost a certain je ne sais quoi without making some proper engine noise. I know some were hoping a simulated engine note would offset some of the hesitancy potential buyers might feel at the prospect of an otherwise-silent muscle car. One of the tradeoffs of e-motors vs. an internal combustion engine and mechanical transmission. When there's nothing mechanical stopping you from delivering maximum torque to the wheels even at 0rpm, certain precautions have to be taken in launch calibration to avoid damaging or outright destroying tires on an aggressive step-in. Even a comparatively dozy BEV like the Fiat 500e can easily lay down a strip of smoking rubber or shred a tire without that calibration. (I found that out the hard way.) I'm glad to hear that you enjoy it, your earlier difficulty aside.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, the implication in Alien: Resurrection is that the corporatocracy that ruled Humanity in the previous (and subsequent) Alien films collapsed or was overthrown somewhere in the early 24th century and replaced by the "United Systems". Being bought out by WalMart was, at the time the film was made, intended to be a corporate Fate Worse Than Death. (WalMart was still an up-and-comer at the time the film was being written.)
  8. Seto Kaiba
    It's a minor detail that comes up in a conversation between Ripley 8 and the doctors in the Auriga's mess hall when Dr. Gediman doesn't know what "the Company" means. "Weyland-Yutani. Ripley 8's former employers. Terran growth conglomerate. They had defense contracts under the military. Oh they went under decades ago, Gediman, way before your time. Bought out by WalMart." - Dr. Wren
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Going full Terminator 2 would really, REALLY bad a bad idea. Earth's governments and militaries are under the control of "The Five" megacorporations. It's not until Weyland-Yutani collapses between Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection that the government regains some control. I feel vindicated that someone else noticed this and felt that was unrealistic. 😆 Bangkok at midday, with no traffic on any visible road? Talk about unrealistic. From the dialog, apparently they were supposed to put GPS tags on any survivors they found so follow-on teams could extract them.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Please no. Just... no. The first two were bad enough, and the writer-director is the same hack behind the first one. Just take the pen away from Christophe Gans already.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Oh boy, what will I observe in "Observation"? My hope is for a steady improvement in the quality of the writing. My expectation... a lot of faffing about and not a lot else. First big surprise... Interesting if true, as this would concretely explain why animals and particularly cats seem to be much better at detecting the Xenomorph's approach than Humans. If this series were better written, I would suspect that Boy Cavalier's misquotation here is meant to show that even as a genius he is eminently fallible. That was, after all, how they played a similar gaffe in Alien: Covenant when David 8 mistakenly attributes Ozymandias to Lord Byron instead of Percy Shelley. Instead, because this series is a mess and nobody corrects him, I'm just going to assume that the writers used some AI search tool and got hallucinated at because the statement he attributes to Isaac Asimov is actually Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Boy Cavalier is for some reason mightily impressed by his billion dollar AI robot's feat of... adjusting the pitch of a replayed audio file? Show this boy WinAmp plugins or a Gen IV Pokemon game's Pokedex... it'll blow his f***ing mind. Hell, show him the YouTube search results for "Nightcore" and we'll never hear from him again. With this, I come to the realization that I am bored. Deeply and profoundly bored. There is no sense of direction or momentum to this story. This is a horror story with no tension. No menace. No sense of mounting dread. Just a bunch of the freshman year Intro to Philosophy pseduo-profound navel gazing bullsh*t from a double handful of incredibly pretentious characters with some monsters hanging around in the background presumably even more bored than the audience is. Someone really needs to tell Ridley Scott and the others that if they want to do Blade Runner spinoffs they can just DO Blade Runner spinoffs. They don't need to waste everyone's time trying to turn every Alien sequel into a failed soft launch for a Great Value brand version of Blade Runner. The most interesting shot of the episode so far is a random monitor lizard swimming in the foreground. Swimming monitor lizard has my vote for best character. Thanks to Hermit's history lesson we get names for all five of the megacorporations that rule the world: Weyland-Yutani, Prodigy, Threshold, Dynamic, and Lynch. I swear they put more effort into picking and licensing music for the credits than they did into actually writing this. Someone help Noah Hawley, his horror series doesn't know how to horror.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    That, in all fairness, has been SOP for the franchise since Aliens. Weyland-Yutani is an older and more established megacorp than Prodigy is and their immense wealth doesn't make them any more careful when it comes to the lives of employees. The one time someone actually tries to exercise proper safety protocols is the original Alien, and Ripley gets overruled on that by Ash because he's got orders to bring the alien back no matter what.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    That's awful. 🤔
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Rewatched "A Quality of Mercy" as part of introducing my Trekkie parents to Strange New Worlds. When it comes to the subject of Pike being a soft touch, no episode really encapsulates it better than "A Quality of Mercy" and its alternate take on the events of TOS's iconic "Balance of Terror". Not only does Pike's softer, more informal style lead to him failing to crack down on the racism on his bridge but even with a second ship for support he ends up fumbling the encounter with the Romulan Bird of Prey so badly that it causes more than a decade of warfare that goes so badly for the entire quadrant that the Klingon monks on Boreth make another once-in-a-generation exception for the same guy to take a time crystal and fix the timeline. And a random thought... since Strange New Worlds definitely wants to skew lighter and softer than other modern Star Trek shows (to its considerable benefit), y'know who'd be a good antagonist to bring back? The Kzinti. They're mentioned in Picard and we actually see a Kzinti Starfleet officer on the Cerritos in Lower Decks. They're a stubborn nuisance-level threat who are apparently still hassling the Federation on some level even in 2401. They were originally going to show the Kzinti starting sh*t with humanity back in Enterprise's fifth season (before the series was cancelled), and it'd be fun to bring them back as a lighter-and-softer nemesis for Pike now that the Gorn have been put back on the shelf until Kirk's era and the Federation's cold war with the Klingons is ongoing.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, you'd think so. Especially given that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds usually aligns itself with pre-Kurtzman Star Trek in depicting the Federation as an enlightened civilization that places considerable value on ethical behavior and personal integrity. One has to wonder if the writer's an only child... because anyone with siblings would probably find the non-reaction to what happens the strangest thing of all. Worf is probably the least threatening person on that list! He'd just tell them "You have no honor!" and have them confined to quarters. Kirk or Picard would murder them with words before confining them to quarters and ending their careers with a sternly worded letter of complaint. Sisko would hit 'em with the side eye and then tell Odo to throw them in a holding cell, probably more to save them from the wrath of Major Kira than as a punishment. Archer would smile blandly and confine them to quarters. Freeman would just yell impotently and Burnham would just cry about it. FAFO with Janeway... you just don't. Not if you want to live. There is a BODY COUNT and it is NOT small. (Canonically, it's in the trillions by 2401.)
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, I get the feeling they were trying for that Star Trek VI effect where the writers put the racism on the minority character to make it more effective narratively. The ending is really unsatisfying too, because there are no real consequences for him either.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Had some good episodes of Secrets of the Silent Witch and Betrothed to My Sister's Ex this week. Dan Da Dan was initially a pretty interesting, but has bogged down so very badly in this "Evil Eye" business that I'm just bored with it. You can only make a character so stupid until their voice becomes The Most Annoying Sound. Jin started on the wrong side of that line and he has been tracking steadily in the wrong direction. Having a redeemable villain is a fairly standard staple of shounen anime and has been forever... but there are some types of villain who AREN'T and trying to pretend that they are is just wasting everyone's time.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    This one lost a bit of its context when I got merged into the thread. It was originally a standalone post. IIRC @Swann was comparing it to the cover of the KISS album Dynasty? Not quite a weirdest places reference but more a weird reference in Macross.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    So... "What is Starfleet?" Huh, so the specs of the Constitution-class appear to have been definitively revised. They've decided to go official with the idea that the Enterprise was the Federation flagship even in Pike's time. Previously the first Enterprise to be actually established as the flagship was the Enterprise-D. They've also radically enlarged her. She's 442.6m long now instead of 289m. Pike's Enterprise is about the same size as an Excelsior-class ship now. We get to see Lt. Ortegas's quarters. Seems she's a bit of a gearhead. There's what looks like a small model turbine engine on her desk, a partially disassembled motorbike behind her, and her room is dominated by what looks to be a totally unmodified Husky heavy duty brand 52" wheeled toolchest from Home Depot. I am about 13 minutes into "What is Starfleet?" and this may be the first episode of Strange New Worlds to lose me. This episode's framing device is just plain unpleasant. You'd think a Federation news reporter would be above this kind of painful-to-look-at yellow journalism. Especially about his own sister's ship and career! Ending the episode's A-plot on a threat feels kind of off-message... There's a deep deep cut at 37:11. We see Number One tucking into a tray of those memetically infamous cubes of what look like play-doh from the ambassadorial reception in TOS "Journey to Babel". Definitely the weakest episode of the season so far... and a strong contender to unseat "The Serene Squall" as the worst episode of the series to date IMO.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, some of those deliberately-alien spellings are downright awful. Probably not. The original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series had a much wider array of sizes for Zentradi soldiers, but it wasn't super great at keeping them in scale with each other. A lot of the background Zentradi seen near VF-1s tended to get drawn around 12-13m tall instead of the 10m they were supposed to be. They were much better about it in the movie. They run the gamut from Milia at a humble 8.55m all the way up to Vrlitwhai at 13.54m and Boddole Zer standing a full head taller than him (~16-17m?). Scale 'em down to Human size the same way they do Milia, and the Commander-type Zentradi are still giants. Quamzin would be 237cm (7'9"), Vrlitwhai would be 271cm (8'11"), and Boddole Zer would be around 320cm (10'6"). If basketball is still played in the Macross universe, there has to be a Zentradi-only league because that's just plain unfair.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    One of the many details that changed between the first Star Trek pilot "The Cage" and the series proper was the size of the Enterprise's crew. Captain Pike mentions the Enterprise's crew as being 203 people (excluding himself) in "The Cage". When the subject of the size of the Enterprise's crew comes up in the first season episode "Charlie X", Captain Kirk's Enterprise is said to have a crew of 428. They stuck with that number for the rest of the series and most of the movies. Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ran with the numbers from that original series pilot episode as the normal crew of the Enterprise during Pike's era.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Sanity check... I somehow missed that among all the things going on in the episode, and it seems like a fairly important point that probably should have been obvious to the viewer.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Hm... it depends on what LEDs they've chosen, but in theory a stack of 8 AG4s should be able to run LEDs like this for maybe a week or so of continuous operation. I'd assume most collectors won't leave the LEDs on continuously, so it hopefully shouldn't be a problem.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    After a bit of poking around Pose+'s website, it looks like it takes LR626 or AG4 button batteries. CollectorsBase's website says it takes eight of them. (A ten pack's like five bucks on Amazon, so not too bad.)
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Bless you for your diligence. 😁 He's a good head shorter than Vrlitwhai and the VF-1 Valkyrie even in the original TV series: The statistically average Zentradi soldier is supposed to be around Exsedol's size in this image at ~10m, though that's a round order average cited in a bunch of different titles and quite a few of the ones listed are actually shorter (with Milia being a mere 8.55m) or taller (e.g. Klan, our poster child for inconsistently rendered height). DYRL? does a much better job of drawing the rank-and-file Zentradi in correct scale to the VF-1 and it also made several characters explicitly shorter. Look at how sharply Vrlitwhai closed the size gap between himself and Exsedol, who stayed the same height in the movie version: It wouldn't be at all surprising if he got a bit shorter in the movie version the same way Vrlitwhai did. Even if he has probably been downgraded from the stuff of basketball legend to merely taller than average, his bios in the Macross: Do You Remember Love? Data Bank, This is Animation: the Select #11, and Macross Chronicle all still describe him as being a Commander-class Zentradi though.
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