Salacious Snake

Oh hell yeah, Trials and Tribble-ations is one of those things that seems like it should be a shitshow on paper, but they pulled it off so well! I mean, the visual effects alone are awesome for 20 year old TV, but they also managed to cobble together a good, fun show around the concept.

At least with the Doctor it felt somewhat organic, as he'd been around, and he was a likeable character from the start. The way Seven swoops in and becomes the main character is so bananas. I mean, they did some good stuff with her, and Jeri Ryan is a treasure. She can definitely carry the weight, including delivering all of that undeliverable Star Trek dialog (with which Voyager is by far the worst offender). But it really felt like the dungeon master's favorite character suddenly appearing as an NPC and dominating your campaign.

They don't get much more developed. The general level of quality does significantly improve by, like, season 5, but they never really go anywhere with most of the characters. Chakotay and Kim are super boring forever. I'm very slowly progressing through Enterprise; I'm maybe a quarter of the way through season 3. It's a lot like Voyager in that even when it manages to be pretty OK, it still has so much obvious wasted potential. In the case of Voyager, it's ridiculous how much promise there is in certain aspects of the premise. A crew that's half unproven cadets and half insurgents who have to learn to work together? Sounds dope. And then most of that conflict is resolved immediately, only to be paid lip-service periodically thereafter. And Enterprise throws out some interesting ideas. You've got these people flying around in this fancy ship that trivializes interstellar travel in a setting where a whole economy exists around slow ass space boats. In TOS and TNG they're always running into goofy-ass colonies; Enterprise could be digging into the idea of an expanding human frontier. If you're going to do a prequel to TOS, maybe you can explain where all those miners and space farmers came from.

Hell yeah Bubbies.

Oh yeah, for sure. If you're a Cronenberg fan, it's full of Cronenberg-ass shit. Not necessarily one of his real classics, but a middling 'berg is still more interesting to look at than a lot of stuff. Also it's about video games, which should resonate for people here.

Haha, that's really cool. I have such strong memories of being in the computer lab in junior high making SBAITSO say foul things. I actually used him as a vocalist in a couple of songs. Great bot! Just tested it out. One thing that would be cool if you can recreate it: in the original program, typing "say butt" would make him say "butt." It bypasses the logic and simply gives him a string to pronounce. Of course, half the fun is trying to get him to say dumb stuff naturally, but sometimes you want to hear a primitive voice synthesizer say something specific.

This was a good listen. I'm looking forward to part 2! It was fun hearing mention of the canceled Star Trek Online. I was bummed about that one; I was super deep in the forum community. Since there are a lot of Lucasarts fans here, it may be interesting to note that Mike Stemmle was the story lead, and I totally bugged him about games on that forum. I think it was a more ambitious game than the one Cryptic made, which isn't a knock on that one. Like, it may have been overly ambitious. At least I ended up with this little memento (by way of my girlfriend at the time meeting Perpetual people at a job fair):

I think the real question is which one of you is Dark Admiral Jean-Luc Hyperriker.

Just watched the episode, and I also want to jot down a thought. I want to watch this again on Blu Ray, because the visual noise of the bomb sequence interacted very poorly with the low bitrate stream that Fios on-demand stuff uses. It looked like an FMV game from the dawn of the CD-ROM era. That's it, really.

I need to try BioShock again. I keep bouncing off of it (I think I've stupidly bought it on 3 different platforms), but it seems like exactly my kind of thing; I love Looking Glass stuff, and newer things in that milieu like Dishonored.

I enjoyed this conversation a lot! Feels more like a Wild Weasel segment than a 3ma episode, but that's not a complaint; I eagerly consume Wild Weasel when it comes out.

Yeah, I thought he stuck the landing pretty well, which made the sort of lurching pace and linearity of the preceding sessions feel worth it. Now that things have looped back around, I hope it will open up a bit and give the rest of the guys more opportunities for goofs and japery. For future games, I think it would be neat if they fully make the move to a narrative system in the Powered by the Apocalypse vein, at least if their intent is to keep telling stories. If it's more of a messing around situation, then a simulationist system can actually provide a lot of fun prompts and small goals.

Even in its original formulation, that logic problem just comes across to me as vague to the point of incoherence, but I'm not at all versed in that kind of thing. Also, I thought the primates were there for ammunition testing. You can get a good idea of how a bullet will affect a human subject by shooting a primate.

The relative size difference between the two screens is the same for every 3DS and 2DS model. On the XL units, the top and bottom screen are embiggened proportionally. Some games draw stuff across the two screens together, so you cant really change that (or the distance between them). It kinda looks different from one unit to the other, but that's just an illusion created by the bezel and other features of the housing.

I thought Gordon was doing some crazy bird calls in his office.

I love this!

Finally watched parts 3 and 4, and holy smokes I'm enjoying it. A couple of things I wanted to shout out in this episode: When Dale shuffles into the casino, there's a tiny, easy-to-miss moment where Coop is walking away from the camera and the security guard, and the guard shouts at him. The way Cooper flinches in response is just heartbreaking to me. Kyle MacLachlan is just, oh my god. Every moment he's on screen as any of these characters is just fire. I'm constantly floored. The other thing is just that the floating metal space pod scene felt like a surreal 90s CD-ROM graphic adventure to me.

I agree. I've always liked Matthew Lillard, but he is absolutely killing it here. It's really different from his usual vibe which is one of sorta goofy likeability. He's so good as Bill.

I remember thinking it was weird that Painkiller had a pro gaming scene around it. I think it's what Fatal1ty or whatever his name is played for a while. I mean, it was a solid as fuck shooter, but aesthetically it felt like such an awkward knockoff of other stuff with a ridiculous rude 'tude thing going on. edit: I just looked in my steam library and apparently I have Like, what even are all of these?

I thought that was him, too!

It's so slow.

Well, that was weird.

I liked the double Fassbending bits; it's the creepiest/hottest twinning since Dead Ringers. I also admired the relentless snowballing of misfortune that occurs when things start to go wrong. I found it to be a gut-churning meat grinder. Meat and guts just churning and grinding everywhere. One problem is that it sets up some interesting threads and drops them before they go anywhere... llike it wants to get thinky and deep and then in the editing room they remembered that they had to make with the mayhem. On balance, I think I'm going to go against the minor consensus forming here and say that I liked it, but I was also a Prometheus-liker, so take that as you will. It's visually interesting, and the sound design and use of music is great. The Covenant sets are fucking bananas. I think there's a lot to recommend it, but it has to overcome a considerable amount of baggage, After a major perceived misstep, I think there's a desire to see a "redemption" in a case like this, which is a tall order. Of course, there's plenty to criticize when taking it on its own merits, but I thought it was good. edit: McBride was pretty restrained, I thought. I mean, it wasn't like having Kenny Powers on the ship. I saw Tennessee as a callback to the "regular workin' Joe" vibe of the original Alien. I bought his increasing desperation as the bad news continued to pile up.

And the flagon with the dragon has the brew that is true.