You don’t have to justify it anymore than there is a unique blend of personalities from other Starfleet ships.
Spoilers Explaining crew behaviour in "Temporal Edict"
- Thread starter chrinFinity
- Start date
You don’t have to justify it anymore than there is a unique blend of personalities from other Starfleet ships.
The justification is they're a ship of losers and extreme personalities who are assigned the grunt work of the Federation. Apparently just talented enough to not be cashiered en masse.
Even then it's exaggerated for comic effect.
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I happen to think the OP is right on. Yet another mystery crew illness which impairs performance but no one knows it happened! Brilliant. I hope we see that again.
My view is that the episode was really about the “important” versus the “urgent.” This is a standard trope for business eg don’t let the important stop you from doing the urgent. Clearly repelling boarders is urgent!
well done. Dilbert level humor.
My view is that the episode was really about the “important” versus the “urgent.” This is a standard trope for business eg don’t let the important stop you from doing the urgent. Clearly repelling boarders is urgent!
well done. Dilbert level humor.
These were comedic episodes in series’ that were dramas at their core. Temporal Edict was a comedic episode in a series that is at it’s core, a comedy. It’s number one goal is to make us laugh. And to that end, the writers take liberties with characters, established canon, etc where and when necessary.
Just so I'm clear, you don't try to find reasonable explanations for why a bunny rabbit can stick it's fingers in the end of a rifle and cause the gunshot to blow out the other end, right?
IDK - The live action Trek drama series ALL do that exact same thing from time to time too - depending on the story they are telling ...
That's an action that adheres perfectly to the rules defined by the world in which it is situated.
Star Trek has predefined rules, which Lower Decks (and other new Trek) had ought to follow.
No, it really oughtn't. It's a comedy cartoon.
Where is the predefined rule that people can't be fun?
To quote TOS, "Brain and brain! What is Brain!?"
Fun? I'm a Star Trek fan, I don't know what that is.
Oh, you mean like in that Voyager episode, Seven of Nine told the Borg kids "fun will now commence." Okay, kind of obscure, but whatever. Let's do this apparently Borg thing.
This Borg thing is strange...
The cartoon aspect has nothing to do with anything. It's just a kinda novel way of presenting information that has rarely been used before. Looney Tunes existed in an exaggerated parodic world where the laws of physics and reality are constantly broken for comedic effect. Nothing in Star Trek implies that they exist in such a world, although previous series have stretched the laws of physics and purposefully utilized bunk science, it was always intended to be an order of magnitude more realistic than the common comedy shorts of the '20s to '60s.
The fact that Lower Decks is a comedy is what people tend to get hung up on. There are many levels of comedy. Situational comedy, which LD seems to adhere to, is the most realistic and helps cement its place in the Trek universe (TOS, for example, often used situation comedy in its plots, even in otherwise dramatic episodes). Parody or satire, which McMahan attempts to avoid, can be spotted in many of its jokes, and tends to eschew an in-universe setting, although not necessarily. The fact that these are original characters in original settings helps avoid parody, but the inclusion of Klingon behavior in the last couple episodes brings up some questions. It has been argued that Klingons had devolved into self-parody by the end of DS9 anyway, though (although there are many great DS9 and later Klingon episodes). Absurdist comedy, akin to the Looney Tune example is not representative of what we've seen in LD so far, except, of course, in that they exist in a somewhat absurd universe, something we learned back in the TOS days. The tackling of the transdimensional energy being is probably the only scene I recall that could be akin to a "finger in a gun barrel" moment, and I've already voiced my displeasure with that joke. We can explain that the being was solid enough to tackle (and Mariner would know this), just as well as we can explain that Bugs Bunny would be knowledgeable about a fault in Fudd's brand of rifle that could trigger an incomplete discharge and blowback.
It's in the VOY series bible, I believe
Just Voyager? I thought it was there for all the Berman shows?
hey, people were plenty of fun on DS9
Sure, but that was the series that went against Berman's grain.
^^^
Did you WATCH the majority of TNG? In the B&B 24th century TNG era - "People can't be fun or act like normal humans' seemed to be Starfleet's Sub-Prime Directive. Hell, most characters (including Spock himself) comment on how emotionless and Vulcan-like Picard was.
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