u/beardedchimp

Star Trek and in universe character explanations can present themselves in any self justifying way they want. That doesn't stop me as a viewer from forming a reasoned view based on what I've been shown, not what I've been told is how I should believe.

For example Sisko committed an egregious war crime by using biological weapons to render a Maquis planet uninhabitable. We have the blatantly obvious collective punishment but there could be arguments as to whether the forced civilian displacement is just a war crime by itself or could be considered part of the ultimate result of ethnic cleansing, particularly since the war crime of using biological weapons wasn't just transitory but made it unlivable for generations. No hand waving about the Maquis legal status can save him, even our primitive unenlightened legal standards would have him tried at the Hague.

Star Trek as a show and the characters in the series disagree with me because Sisko continues to be treated as a moral champion of the people and not thrown in prison for the rest of his life. Similarly in that Trill episode we are shown quite clearly the disturbing levels of indoctrination behind being chosen to be joined, their cult levels of punishment for disobeying the rules where you'll be essentially excommunicated from the rest of society. Then there is Ezri herself who openly describes never wanting or intending to be joined but was essentially railroaded into doing so.

TLDR; Sisko is a war criminal and I have reasoned rationale for my views on Trill symbionts.

Being remembered about in the future no matter how accurately or to what level of detail isn't in any way an extension of you as a conscious being. What "lives" on in these future hosts is a caricature of your identity.

Your unimaginably complex branching, interconnected neurons that developed across your lifetime is what makes you as a person. The Trill symbiont retains the memory of earlier hosts, but to retain their personality would require them to store your entire brains neuronal structure. Instead they use the memories to simulate what they think was their personality devoid of the beautiful neuronal complexity that goes on when you might simply make a witty joke.

The idea of this symbiote centuries later presenting a caricature that's been manipulated through how they'd have liked me to behave is terrifying, I have enough existential dread as is. Later Dax hosts make statements like "this earlier host would have responded like this and would have found your (deeply offensive and derogatory) joke hilarious". The symbionts, or at least Dax, are morally repugnant for ascribing thoughts and actions to someone long dead just off their retained memory.

Did you watch the episode showing how the Trill choose and indoctrinate them into being joined? Then the symbiotes force the hosts to maintain the lie about them being special. They force the hosts to adhere to rules just because they'd experienced interactions with others in the past. The Dax symbiont is treated like this great and knowledgable being that is revered across their wider society, nobody cares about hosts from a century ago only Dax.

Ezri was basically coerced into accepting the symbiote, Dax was this revered persona and to reject and let it die would have made her persona non grata for her entire species. What was so wrong about letting Dax who had lived for an extremely long time die from injuries just like anyone else? As stated numerous times a Tok'ra would rather die than be blended with an unwilling host, and yes, they would of course not consider "willing" through coercion to count.

They are a far cry closer to the Goa'uld than the Tok'ra.

Tripods piloted by Triffids, the world wouldn't stand a chance.

You dare dignify that plagiarised derivative drivel? Joe Spencer would like a word with you.

You shouldn't be so bigoted towards others religious beliefs and dismiss my fervent belief in the only indisputable true gods, like the all powerful Osiris.

No, in the film he shows the point of origin from the cartouche and upon seeing the actually Stargate for the first time he draws the slightly different looking point of origin on the monitor. They proclaim that Daniel had identified the seventh symbol and immediately started dialling. They had been attempting unsuccessfully to dial for months with 6 symbols but suddenly the computer screens were all set up for seven.

And I guarantee they won't have British Columbia's forests that dominate every habitable planet in the Milky Way.

That's an extreme take.

In the initial episode he created the android SG1 having scanned their brains and transferred their entire lifetime of knowledge and memory into the android.

The follow up episode that resulted in them all being killed (deactivated? shut down? Neural networks wiped?). I thought that because his technology was able to scan and store everything in the brain, later injecting it into the android, he should be able to take those existing saved brain scans and manufacture a whole new team of SG1 androids.

I've always found it hilarious that in the film the computer interface has been designed for 7 symbols. Then they have this whole mechanical tracking interface to follow where it goes in the universe despite having absolutely no idea it was a transportation device.

They had this alien Stargate that was so advanced they couldn't begin to understand it. But for some reason they already knew it sent you to another galaxy and had constructed a mechanical system that can track a wormhole as it stretched out to the other side of the observable universe.

General Ryan, the actor did a terrible job and felt like an extra whose acting ruined the suspension of disbelief that it was a real General.

The chances of anything coming from mars are a million to one – but still they come! Recognising the existential threat of the Goa'uld, they'd send a few Triffids through that a few days later would have wiped out all the system lords.

Rodney McKay's behaviour in SG1 should have precluded him from ever being part of Atlantis. He unapologetically groped women while making extremely sexually abusive comments that even many, many years before the initial broadcast were viewed as disgustingly unacceptable.

I found the actor who portrayed Pete Shanahan as endlessly obnoxious, bad casting and his forced attempts to be funny in every scene were jarring.The SG1 actors physical comedy and mannerisms were clever, subtle and rewardingly witty. Pete Shanahan's actor's performance was more like an episode of Friends, loud and in your face with him thinking the great writing would make it funny despite him behaving with exactly the same enthusiasm and tone in every single scene.

It was repeated ad-nauseam that they defeated the Ancients but their portrayal onscreen made that preposterous. The ancients with readily available of ZPMs could have jumped all of Atlantis to anywhere in the galaxy on a whim. The Wraith's hyperdrives were unbelievably slow, the ancients could ship their entire civilisation to the other side of the galaxy in like 10 minutes. If the Wraith's overwhelming numbers could be seen as a threat, they can move their entire civilisation to another galaxy as they had done so in the past. It'd take the Wraith 100,000 years to catch up having starved in the vast emptiness between galaxies.

I always figured they maintained a relaxed communication that was akin to just talking with old friends and seeing how they've been for the last century.

The ancients disappearing due to an intergalactic plague and ascension is obvious misinformation. The Furlings wiped them all out, the collective guilt for their entire civilization resulted in them migrating to a galaxy far, far away.

Am I remembering correctly that Daniel said he was the first emperor of China and unlike all the other system lords pretending to be gods he presented himself as a supreme Emperor.

Why would anyone like either iteration of Dax? She was a bloody Goa'uld!

In series 5 Kevin Sorbo's narcissism and fundamentalist religious beliefs truly hit the bonkers upper limit. Kevin Sorbo has now been discovered to be a classic theological angel, him portraying a demi-god as Hercules wasn't enough, now he was a galactic cosmic being whose morality was the perfect ideal to measure every other being against.

The only exception I'll give is for Citizen Joe where they tied the clip show element in quite naturally.

The Sodan fighting style was in reality a sophisticated mating ritual dance, with Haikon approving of the fight and giving consent for their marriage.

Daniel had been visiting Chaka for nearly a year creating a friendship and learning Unas words, that all happened off screen. I found it great writing to just occasionally reference these relationships without wasting time with a soap opera romantic drama between Teal'c and Ishta. It let us know it still existed, unlike say TNG where characters/entities/species effectively ceased to exist once the credits rolled.

As a teenager with brutal insomnia, I remember ~98 Film4 (in Northern Ireland) broadcasting Chameleon staring Bobbie Phillips at about 2am. They never re-broadcast it and I had forgotten the film's name along with Bobbie's, it wasn't until about 15 years later I stumbled across it again and fully respected my teenage obsession.

Film4 used to broadcast all kinds of amazingly terrible sci-fi in the middle of the night. Along with Crash 1996 at 3am which sorta fucked me up as a kid, wild film.