Disagree, although I do think they've overused him. His appearance in an alternate timeline future at the end of season 1 was a nice idea to nod to Kirk's role in the prime timeline version of those events. But bringing him back again twice more in the first six episodes of season 2 has made him feel less like a cameo and more like he's becoming part of the main cast.
Lost in Translation - where he interacted with many members of the Enterprise crew (as opposed to just Pike or just La'an, and both times via timeline shenanigans) - felt particularly egregious. Although I did enjoy the episode.
TNG was a mainstream TV hit - I think it's hard for people who don't remember the 90s to realise that TNG was popular like something like Game of Thrones was popular, it wasn't just fans of the genre who watched it. DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, etc were all very small fry relative to TNG.
So I don't think you're in a minority generally in preferring TNG to DS9 - that's what the viewership numbers say too. My general experience is that DS9 is most popular with hardcore Trek fans who love the way it challenges our expectations as fans of the franchise - typified by those who cite In The Pale Moonlight as their favourite episode. ITPM is a great episode when cast against the backdrop of (at that point) 19 seasons of Roddenberry-influenced Trek, but it's a terrible episode to use to get a non-fan into the franchise because it doesn't show anything that makes Star Trek different to everything else out there; in many ways, the same can be said of DS9's later seasons more generally.
I'm seeing lots of positivity here, so I'll be the boring one. I enjoyed it but they didn't quite land it for me. Things that would have been funny in an out-and-out sitcom felt wrong in the context of a 'serious' Trek show. For example, Mariner and Boimler having a really inappropriate discussion about how hot Spock was, while Spock was right there, during a senior staff meeting - it was a bit too jarring for me. You kind of got the feeling the 23rd century officers were all left wondering why 24th century Starfleet is so unprofessional. I think they got this the wrong way round by making it a SNW episode instead of a Lower Decks episode.
Separately though, given that we know Spock and Chapel don't make it, I like that in the two episodes since they got together they have hinted at two separate reasons why they might split up: first the possiblity it's triggered by them having different attitudes to reporting the relationship to Starfleet, and now Chapel's Boimler-induced insecurities about whether she might hold Spock back from doing something great with his life.
I've had Fitbits for years but I'm probably never buying another one.
The main thing keeping me locked into the Fitbit ecosystem was the social features - my family are dispersed around the country and all have Fitbits, so for years we did the weekly step challenges as a bit of friendly competition and a vehicle for staying in good contact. The competition made a genuine difference to our behaviour - especially for encouraging my parents to stay active in retirement.
Then after the Google acquisition they killed off the challenges on spurious grounds. It's generally suspected this is part of a drive to gradually kill off the Fitbit brand and drive people onto Google's own Pixel watches. Now Fitbit's USP is gone and so I'll probably just get a Garmin next time as people generally think that's a better product.
My personal highlight was the scene were Spock and Chapel play chess, and he passive-aggressively pushes her to play faster. Very Vulcan.
My favourite scene too. I am glad they only got one scene together this episode to avoid it veering too hard into the soapy relationshipy aspects after last week. But damn those are two well-written, well-acted characters with insane chemistry - they gave them one scene together, playing chess no less, and it stole the whole episode.
I'm one of them! I didn't even know about r/selfhosted when I was on Reddit but I found this place when I joined kbin. I've been thinking on-and-off over the last year about self hosting so subscribed. I still occasionally look at Reddit in view-only mode though (largely for legacy content) so I also subscribed to r/selfhosted over there too last time I checked it.
It's not subscriber numbers that matter though, it's active users and quality new posts - people who go to the sub regularly, upvote, comment, and create content that causes other people in turn to look at the sub. I'm still a subscriber to a tonne of Reddit subs that I used to post and comment regularly on, and now don't. If every active Reddit user became a passive user then Reddit would grind to a halt overnight, regardless of how many users they notionally have.
I tried virtual tabletops in 2020 but I just didn't enjoy it the same way. Little things that don't matter while you're sitting round a physical table with your friends, like waiting while other players take their turns in combat encounters, suddenly play out very differently when you're sitting at home on your own and can easily get distracted by your phone or TV without appearing rude. The players all just felt a lot less connected to what was going on in the game.
My group meets infrequently anyway and will often fill a whole day with the equivalent of multiple sessions when we do meet up, but when we played online during Covid we found it hard-going just getting through a two hour session.
I really enjoyed this episode. The whole cast of SNW are really strong but Jess Bush has been a particular highlight - I'll admit I was cautious when I first heard they'd cast some Australian model as Chapel, but that caution was gone by the end of episode one and she's become easily one of my favourite characters. Ordinarily I don't tend to find that Star Trek romances do much for me but they've now got me invested in Chapel and Spock.
With hindsight my only mild criticism of the episode is the premise that a human Spock would be more emotional than the Spock we know. We constantly hear that Vulcans feel emotions more strongly than humans, but have learnt to embrace logic to control them - i.e. their nature is more emotional than humans but their nurture counterbalances this. So wouldn't a human Spock (with biologically human nature, but the nurture that Spock carries from his life experience being raised as a Vulcan) actually be super rational and logical?
I found it weird when it aired. My recollection of watching it on TV as a teenager was that Vic became a big presence in the show very suddenly (I may be misremembering and it's been a while since I rewatched DS9) and the amount of screen time they devoted to him in late s6 and s7 felt odd.
My understanding is the way they introduced the law was illegal, i.e. doing so without proper consultation, and therefore it's invalid. But I thought the court didn't rule on whether the law itself breached the right to strike.
Now you're arguing about straw men. The police have looked into the matter and publicly stated there's no evidence that merits any investigation of law-breaking, so I don't know where your 'caught noncing around' straw man is coming from.
If there was illegality at play then people would be looking at this situation differently.
Actually you're not. There is no requirement for everyone to have a TV licence. Plenty of people choose not to watch or record live TV or BBC iPlayer and therefore don't need to pay the licence fee.
Your argument would apply better to one of the UK's 5.8 million public sector workers, whose wages you are forced to pay for through taxation, and which illustrates how absurd it is for you to think you should have an individual veto on the personal conduct of each one of them.
theinspectorst @ theinspectorst @kbin.social Posts 18Comments 262Joined 2 yr. ago 
Disagree, although I do think they've overused him. His appearance in an alternate timeline future at the end of season 1 was a nice idea to nod to Kirk's role in the prime timeline version of those events. But bringing him back again twice more in the first six episodes of season 2 has made him feel less like a cameo and more like he's becoming part of the main cast.
Lost in Translation - where he interacted with many members of the Enterprise crew (as opposed to just Pike or just La'an, and both times via timeline shenanigans) - felt particularly egregious. Although I did enjoy the episode.