#161
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Watching Trekkies fighting each other



Snypa
#162
UNUSUALY COOL
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upvoting a video of imperialist cracker Ivanova getting her ass kicked for grabbing a hijab
#163
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Was Cestus III an intrusion on their space?
#164
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yeah I'm probably going to post about Arena in the bad thread just to think through it... the last two shows in the franchise have converted an Internet-monetized fan-to-fan industry into a sort of eternal ghost tour, YouTube advertising bucks thrown at people explaining to each other how Gene's dream has been betrayed and the Federation wouldn't do this or that and so on. And not only did Roddenberry have nothing to do with thinking up the Federation, the writers of "Arena" invented the Federation to present it as an imperialist venture that provokes wars by treating everything & anything not yet exploited as terra nullius by default. Not through subtext either, the good guys have to come clean about it in dialog because otherwise a gang of twinks will massacre them.

anyway that's the Left Case For Trump so far, looking forward to continuing the discussion in ways very similar to this post for the next few pages.
#165
take a shit on the floor
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it was probably hard to pick up on because of fight with the man in the godzilla halloween costume
#166
UNUSUALY COOL
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double post

Edited by cars ()

#167
UNUSUALY COOL
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double post

Edited by cars ()

#168
UNUSUALY COOL
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Horselord posted:

it was probably hard to pick up on because of fight with the man in the godzilla halloween costume



Workers' Party of Korea/Pulgasari erasure. User probated for 10,000 years until it's time to conquer Earth.

#169
take a shit on the floor
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how'd you miss the edit button twice
#170
take a shit on the floor
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forum's poster cars is sundowning
#171
UNUSUALY COOL
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One thing Roddenberry did get right was that he didn't really try to be the auteur show-runner he pretended to be, he mostly just got a bunch of smart weird people into a room to come up with better scripts than his and sanded off the edges to try to create a product that a network could use to sell commercials, so most of the allegories are these sci-fi short story elements that are clumsily self-conscious about representing race, class, etc.

As opposed to Babylon 5 where Straczynski, including Straczynski's debates with Usenet, had much more direct influence on the scripts, and so it's a lot of 1990s Democrat political caricatures wearing Groucho Marx glasses. Like the aliens in that video at the top are his idea of Arab Muslims as divided between liberal Sufis and a majority that's a baffling, violent child race, but hey, they can't be Muslims because they're also a monoculture of alcoholics that names a drink after Ivanova after she mighty-whiteys them into submission and brings out their inner United States. The show's fans considered stuff like that the reason why Babylon 5 was too smart to be as popular as Deep Space Nine.
#172
take a shit on the floor
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i'll be honest i didn't watch much babylon 5 because it was always on at weird times in the uk and it just looked really clumsy and cheap. i heard they gave walter koenig a good role though
#173
UNUSUALY COOL
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Babylon 5 was okay for a dirt-cheap D-list sci-fi show but it was mostly carried by its cast. When people talk up the plotting or writing over Deep Space Nine they usually just end up listing a bunch of stuff that DS9 did better, like storming Heaven and killing God.

Otherwise it was an exercise in "how many Mighty Whiteys would you like today", the main hero of the show is Tron from Tron who nukes an alien ship, winning the war through his cleverness in nuking one alien ship, which impresses the aliens so much they give up and have an internal religious war over him. The nuke also earns him a foreign wife from among the enemy who fulfills her destiny by turning herself half-cracker to marry her cracker savior. It's like if Kira married Sisko but had surgery to fix her nose first.
#174
take a shit on the floor
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that sounds like it sucks
#175
UNUSUALY COOL
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it's all on the shoulders of the actors, unnecessarily talented types whose careers were killed by science fiction roles. You get Tron, old bald Will Robinson, Chekov without the moose-and-squirrel accent, that one Romulan villain from TNG only he actually gets up out of the makeup chair... all the stars come out to shine on Babylon 5. As a measure of how fully 1990s Online it was IIRC they ended one episode by having the British guy sing a Gilbert & Sullivan song a capella over the credits. The British guy is also a ninja
#176
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There's also a Bruce Willis knockoff cop. I think you pointed out before in our previous B5 discussion how there is a quiet, desperate, glad-to-be-working undercurrent to the actors upon arriving to their last station in showbiz. There's a self-conscious "I'm in a bad T.V. show right now" awareness to having to say these kludgy, expository lines after coming back from the commercial break. It has been a long time since I watched it but other than the actors trooping their way through it, one thing I think it did well for the time is making outer space seem big and the world seem bigger than the characters. There's all this other stuff happening in the background and people are just going about their lives indifferent to whatever the characters are doing.

I think 1990s Democrat sounds accurate re: the show's politics, like Sorkin. I was pulled into it as a kid though because it presented earth as already having this dysfunctional, quasi-fascist government that just goes completely fascist in the show and a big war breaks out, and I remember the way they presented it as being really scary, like a huge weight landing on everybody. Doesn't break out of Sorkin though. Anyways, I couldn't think of anything else Ivanova was in other than Maniac Cop before looking at IMDB. Apparently there was a Dallas soap opera knockoff, a steady diet of single-serving T.V. appearances, but more recently a lot of video game voice-actor roles, which makes me happy. Glad to be working.

Also on the self-awareness of the actors, haven't read this but just discovered Londo wrote a novel with another guy while acting on the show. It's Galaxy Quest basically. Aliens watching a T.V. space opera confuse a fictional space ambassador for the real thing and kidnap him because they need his diplomatic advice.

Edited by trakfactri ()

#177
lies half the time
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chekov made a good telepathic space nazi imho
#178
UNUSUALY COOL
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Londo is an exception because he’s that guy from Animal House.
#179
bb bourgeoisie
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this is A) a profoundly unkind depiction of Straczynski's scifi heartbreaker, B) very off topic for this thread, which is about how trump is actually good
#180
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Trump
#181
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star trump
#182
UNUSUALY COOL
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winebaby posted:

this is A) a profoundly unkind depiction of Straczynski's scifi heartbreaker,


#183
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B5 tried really hard.

They didn't get a lot right, but they tried. Namely, the implication that bastions of good can and should fight the slide to fascism. What's really unpleasant about most of today's media isn't that fascism is depicted, it's that it's depicted as a necessary evil that is more efficient and powerful than democracy. Love long... and obey.
#184
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Horselord posted:

calling this an argument implies a level of mutual intelligibility that isn't there



awesome post got him!

#185
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#186
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Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar led an escalating pressure campaign against his own Food and Drug Administration this spring and summer, urging the agency to abandon its responsibility for ensuring the safety and accuracy of a range of coronavirus tests as the pandemic raged.
#187
lies half the time
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trakfactri posted:

Watching Trekkies fighting each other



Snypa



i watched this once through after you posted it

i went to youtueb just now to find some music and its front page recommendations are about 50% babylon 5 vids

#188
[account deactivated]
#189
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#190
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Shouldn't it be bint Laden?
#191
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#192
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#193
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Arguing with a friend yesterday: "They'll never accept a full withdrawal. They haven't been able to since Vietnam, they are psychologically incapable of admitting or understanding failure."

Today: https://nationalpost.com/news/world/mcconnell-pushes-back-on-trump-says-taking-troops-from-middle-east-would-be-like-humiliation-of-saigon


Thanks Mitch!

“We are on the verge of defeating al Qaeda and its associates, but we must avoid our past strategic error of failing to see the fight through to the finish,” wrote Miller, a former Green Beret and counter-terrorism official.



they've been on the verge of victory for 19 years. any day now. it's so close!

#194
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A total withdrawal from Afghanistan now would be difficult for the U.S. military to execute, especially given the reliance of NATO allies on the United States for logistical support, sources add.
#195
lies half the time
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spite is sorta a shit reason to end a war but ill take it
#196
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you know who else holed up in their bunker during their downfall? that's right.
#197
Online
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#198
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you know, im beginning to think a lot of what is being said about donald trump is misleading or only partially true
#199
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kamelred posted:

you know, im beginning to think a lot of what is being said about donald trump is misleading or only partially true


write to your congressman

#200
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still waiting for US officials to admit that there's a goddamn cheeto in the white house!!!!