Episode 655 - Enterprise - "Detained" - 04/24/2002

http://www.allstepisodes.com/megvid.php?n=5121

Archer and Travis find themselves imprisoned in a Suliban internment camp by the Tandarans.

Enjoy!

Thank you very much for all that feedback. I've got a burlesque show tomorrow so I may not respond to every point.

Most of this, I think, is fair criticism, and I want to point out that this is NOT an attempt to write a Mary Sue--aside from this forum I'm not interested in publishing it--as much as an exercise for developing my character's background, which is not unusual in roleplay and as far as I'm concerned has its place in MMORPGs as much as any other RPG. Also, I'm not fully satisfied with the hand-waving that explains why trans folk are invisible in the Star Trek world, and was trying to come up with a way to explain this to my own satisfaction.

Of course I agree that Roddenberry had envisioned an egalitarian world, but I think it's rather presumptuous to think that the entirety of Federation space is equally egalitarian, without exception. It's an ideal--one pursued as far as practical, but an ideal nonetheless. It really isn't a stretch to presume that, say, earth has resolved its issues with trans folk, but other Federation worlds may not have.

And I'm not particularly convinced that Betazoids are automatically more enlightened, or that they're without their bigotries--especially when Deanna Troi's own grandfather thought poorly of races that relied on speech and insisted provincially upon communicating telepathically. (See http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Deanna_Troi#Early_life_and_career for citation. It reminds me of one of my great-grandmothers, who only spoke Scots Gaelic. Oh, she UNDERSTOOD English just fine, but she refused to speak it.) So if the bio of a well-known canon Betazoid character suggests bias isn't unknown on Betazed, why insist that they can't also be biased against trans folk? Besides, how do we know that being transgender isn't more common among humans--my character being 1/4 human--than among the Betazoids? Maybe among them it's such a rare thing to be trans that they've always treated it aberrantly and severely. We don't know.

And we don't know because--as I was trying to point out before--transgender folk, at least among humans, are invisible in the Star Trek universe. It's far more likely to come up among non-human species, some of which aren't even Federation. It's not discussed at all, so we don't know what the situation regarding trans folk is, anywhere in the Federation. Again, egalitarian ideals are just ideals, and while race and nationality was quite visible in Roddenberry's vision of Star Trek, we LGBT folk aren't--and I dare say trans folk are even less visible. So who knows which species have some transgender behavior? In Star Trek, it's apparently all or nothing.

As for surgery--of course surgery exists. Surgeries to make Starfleet officers resemble other humanoid races as part of covert operations is a fairly routine thing. (See http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Cosmetic_surgery for a few dozen examples.) While surgery to replace organs is a thing of the past, it would seem that surgery still exists for other reasons. It's not a stretch to presume trans folk would undergo some sort of surgical modification if they needed it for their well-being.

You've got a point about 20th Century earth culture and the Star Trek obsession with it. I may as well point out that I name my ships after SF stories--the USS Nova Express, the USS Lilith's Brood, and the USS Lathe of Heaven. Classy names, methinks. At any rate, this is my attempt to explain that naming scheme and tie it into my character. But that's not just *my* obsession, to be fair. My take on the matter is that the 20th Century, culturally speaking, was a turning point. It ended with a devastating war that threatened to pull humanity into a new dark ages, and therefore it was the default starting point for the renaissance that followed World War III, just as Greco-Roman culture was the default starting point for the European Renaissance after Europe had plunged into its own dark age. Granted, it's a bit hand-wavy, but that's rather hard to avoid for any SF author working within the parameters of a world derived from what we, here and now, would recognize, and Roddenberry went there well before I did.

As for your final comment--that, I fully admit, was laziness on my part, because while I could've invented an Admiral to be my adviser, it seemed worthwhile to have one who was known to be close to the Betazed people--close enough to marry one, at any rate. And for all my research, I simply could not find out enough about Betazed culture and notable characters in its history to tie my character's family into that with conviction--I would have needed to invent a whole family tree for that to work. So for expediency's sake I made my character a somewhat distant relative of a canon character. (Mary) Sue me. :P ;)

And, to reiterate--this is ONLY for my character development, and also to address some issues with the lack of visibility of trans folk in the Star Trek universe, to my satisfaction. I wouldn't even count this as fanfic, personally.

Story issues I totally put up to the release of Drew Karpyshyn the writer for the first 3 Mass Effect books and the lead writer for the series prior to the completion of Mass Effect 3. EA does not get off so easy, taking a game series that was originally a single player game and forcing an online component that requires you to play or you can not get the ending you deserve, force of Origin on PC, on disc DLC, the original lack of completion of the game to add DLC I lay all at EA's feet, guess that's what happens when Bioware gets bought out.

I'm up for it.

Maybe we could set up a one-time event to gauge interest? I would certainly do my best to show up, or help out if there was a way I could do so.

Come to think of it, Origin is part of why I didn't give a damn. If they had let me buy the game on Steam like I wanted to, there would have been a little popup and the DLC would have downloaded automatically and ta-daaaaa. I have not opened Origin ONCE since ghostbaby threw his RGB-themed plot hole party. It isn't quite the level of table-flippery I reached trying to install Assassin's Creed 2 -- after which I swore off Ubisoft games forever -- but there are a lot of stupid barriers between me and this DLC that only exist for branding purposes.

Quote by DoctorDisaster

The weird part is that Mass Effect was this huge important series of games for me, I detested the stupid crap they tried to pull with the ME3 ending, and yet I haven't bothered to play this or even look up the spoilers. When I heard it was out, my reaction was total apathy. I realized that I've mentally shelved Mass Effect next to the Matrix and Star Wars in the "creators with egos way out of proportion to their talent" section. This seems really unfair, since we're talking literally 10 minutes of crap at the end of an otherwise amazing series, but this defense mechanism of total divestment when the writing nosedives has been so honed by formative fanboy disappointment that at this point I can't help it. I can't MAKE myself give a damn.

I'm with you. From the way that the devs of ME3 treated the fans from before release, through the ending debacle, and now this, I'm done with Bioware. They've crawled up their own asses and think that their shit doesn't stink.


Edit: Also, EA and Origin. Man, screw that shit.

@ DoctorDisaster "There there it's ok" =P

Unfortunately, RP hasn't happened in quite some time. I used to organise it in the beginning but another member took over RP and then it stopped when the member wasn't here anymore. If there is a lot of interest in it, I'm sure the Admiralty would consider finding someone to organise it again.

This should still be ok to mess around with during the Stress Test if anybody is interested.

They happen rarely. Though I might be wrong, it seems that they are hard to organise here. You can see announcements of past RP events on the boards in Holodeck or LCRS, I forget which.

Quote by NicholasJohn16

I'll be in Vent during this if anyone wants to join me. :)

Maaaaybe :)

I'll be in Vent during this if anyone wants to join me. :)

The weird part is that Mass Effect was this huge important series of games for me, I detested the stupid crap they tried to pull with the ME3 ending, and yet I haven't bothered to play this or even look up the spoilers. When I heard it was out, my reaction was total apathy. I realized that I've mentally shelved Mass Effect next to the Matrix and Star Wars in the "creators with egos way out of proportion to their talent" section. This seems really unfair, since we're talking literally 10 minutes of crap at the end of an otherwise amazing series, but this defense mechanism of total divestment when the writing nosedives has been so honed by formative fanboy disappointment that at this point I can't help it. I can't MAKE myself give a damn.

Episode 654 - Enterprise - "Oasis" - 04/03/2002

http://www.allstepisodes.com/megvid.php? n=5120

Archer, T'Pol, Trip and Travis find a crew apparently alive on a ship that crash-landed years ago.

Enjoy!

They're just farming for "likes." Meh.

I'm with you badsaint. I don't use Facebook either and haven't found ANYTHING that makes me want to change that. :blink: Although it does bug me that contests like this seem to always be done on Facebook which leaves out a fairly large group of people :( Oh well....

The new fourth ending seems the most in league with the game, but I rather go with destruction ending since that was the objective of the whole series and it's the only one where Shepard is actually shown to be alive.

I cheated and saw all three endings, control seemed to turn Shepard into an angry guardian being. What she says and the way she says things, it's puts me off as being, not power hungry, but something close to arrogant, or maybe it's just assuredness in her power to dominate if needed.

Ha! You're right! I didn't notice that!

They should have thrown in a badass Cyborg MMO7.

-Mal