Have any of the novels ever just made you mad? (
- Thread starter darkwing_duck1
- Start date
for me.
It's a message board. People debate things, and it's not a place for the same kinds of social niceties you find in real life. If you can't handle the fact that someone contradicts someone else -- even in a manner that is free of personal insults, such as the vast majority of Christopher's posts -- then why are you on the Internet?
And saying that somebody needs a psychological evaluation because you don't like how often they express a contrary viewpoint on an Internet message board is absolutely beyond the pale of reasonable criticism.
Nardpuncher
Rear Admiral
I should add is that even though I'm sure Christopher would be a neat guy to chat with as he is very knowledgeable, it wouldn't be a good thing if he started sentences with "Actually..." a lot in what we call real life.
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
I disagree - the thalaroned senators looked more shocked that they were turning into ash than they looked in agony (which would be screaming in pain, etc).
The objections against using thalaron weaponry were:
-that that thalaron is a weapon of mass destructin and should not be used (which reveals the characters as inconsistent, considering the fact that, on many occasions, photon torpedos were depicted as WMS and never were the characters squeamish about usinng them on this basis);
-that it would generate an arms race in the future (which makes no sense because there would be no 'future', and ash clouds floating above dead worlds have no external politics; total annihilation is a FAR worse scenario than worrying about weapon proliferation).
As for thalaron weapons being 'biogenic' (use of such weapons being forbidden by a treaty); transphasic torpedoes were subspace weapons, use of which was forbidden by a treaty, and they were fired left and right as if they were confetti (first by Picard, then all of Starfleet.everyone else).
And I justified each of my 'interpretations'; as I already said, I find your 'interpretation' arguable, at best.
This is the Internet, not real life. Etiquette is different here. Deal with it.
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
Nardpuncher
Rear Admiral
And just because I may not approve of the way Christopher responds most of the time doesn't mean I cannot "handle" it and that I need to deal with it.
And sure he debates sometimes, but it's just the frequent gainsaying that would be mildly off-putting in real life.
I guess he's like Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. I could be friends with that guy, but might need to give him some friendly advice that's all.
Yeah, you're right. David Mack is a hack. And we're all stupid for liking "Destiny". There. I'm done.
Enjoy your misery.
I read the first TNG novel, ghost ship, and nearly gave up reading forever. That an editor could approve this monotonous dull 5th rate yawn was shocking.
I don't know what compelled me to read it to the end (after several attempts). I will never get that time back. It is the worst piece of literature I've read.
I don't know what compelled me to read it to the end (after several attempts). I will never get that time back. It is the worst piece of literature I've read.
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Nardpuncher
Rear Admiral
I remember reading that one in the summer of 1988 when it came out and I was about 14 at the time and eager for a TNG book and yeah, it was a plodding thing. I seem to remember a part where Picard agrees to sit in one of those sensory deprivation chambers so that he can sympathize with the ghosts trapped on the alien ship. That part was long for Picard and felt loooooong for me too.
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
"stupid"? Hardly.
You're just willing to forgive glaring inconsistancies (you've all but admitted this), grit, character destruction - if you find part of the books as good.
I can imagine him doing that in real life, too. And everybody doing the eyeroll every time he does it.
Yeah, you're right. David Mack is a hack. And we're all stupid for liking "Destiny". There. I'm done.
Enjoy your misery.
Obviously no one has called David Mack a 'hack' and no one has called anyone else 'stupid', there are just a group of readers who disagree with the ending.
I have tried to use past precedence from the Trek universe when making my points on this subject. And people have rightly pointed out the hypocrisy of Picard using one illegal weapon but then refusing to use another one on 'moral' grounds.
Whereas if you replace the word Picard with the word Janeway it suddenly becomes totally in-character.
Not necessarily. In Insurrection Geordi pointed out that subspace weapons were banned because they had unpredictable properties. Transphasic torpedoes use subspace, like many other things. So were do you draw the line? They don't seem to behave unpredictably, so I don't think the accords would apply here, and that the descriptions in Insurrection was badly formulated.
I'll agree we're probably looking at a gray area here (subspace weapons). Still doesn't excuse violating the 'Temporal Prime Directive'.
I think survival of your very existence trumps the Temporal Prime Directive. You use whatever methods at your disposal to defeat your enemy, without resorting to genocide...
I still think the President ordering the genocide of the aliens in Independence Day was a bad idea, but there are similarities to Destiny's Borg Invasion. Is it right to commit genocide to stop someone else committing genocide against you? Because that is what this argument boils down to, regardless of the weapons used (or not used).
Look what the Thalaron explosion did in Romulan space, created a violent unstable wormhole to the Small Magellanic Cloud (Titan: Taking Wing/The Red King). do we really want those kind of spatial anomalies popping up everywhere a Borg cube is destroyed?
I still think the President ordering the genocide of the aliens in Independence Day was a bad idea, but there are similarities to Destiny's Borg Invasion. Is it right to commit genocide to stop someone else committing genocide against you? Because that is what this argument boils down to, regardless of the weapons used (or not used).
Look what the Thalaron explosion did in Romulan space, created a violent unstable wormhole to the Small Magellanic Cloud (Titan: Taking Wing/The Red King). do we really want those kind of spatial anomalies popping up everywhere a Borg cube is destroyed?
But if you don't use the means at you disposal, up to and including genocidal weapons, you're saying that your way of life isn't important enough to protect. The Borg aren't like the Romulans, the Klingons or the Cardassians where some semblance of your civilization lives on, they extract the biological and technological distinctiveness and everything else is lost. The Borg are no different than cancer cells and need to be eradicated, right down to the last drone.
Like I've said before in these discussions: History may brand me a monster if the Thalaron weapons work... but at least there will be historians to debate the issue (and I realize this takes the discussion into theoretical territory of what happens if the Caeliar don't save us) .
Was that a result of the usage of the Thalaron weapon or was that because a phaser beam was shot into the chamber just before it discharged? Because I saw no issues when the smaller device was used in the Romulan Senate chamber.
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