Spoilers Star Trek: Lower Decks 4x04 - "Something Borrowed, Something Green"

As a matter of policy, how do you expect anyone to know that (outside of those who happened to read your post here)? I had never heard of this person before yesterday, so how would I or anyone know we are violating a rule?

 

Apologies. I was genuinely curious, not trying to challenge you. I'm sure as a mod that is commonly what someone asking about policy is doing, but I have no issue.

As someone who, as you point out, has been here for two decades (on and off) I haven't ever spent much time thinking about the rules or mods. No double-post, don't get personal, etc., has been easy enough to follow. I inferred from your post that Probert's identity as a board user was somehow easily assessed. You have corrected my misperception. I wouldn't say that means I have some kind of special ignorance of moderators' discretion. But maybe I do? If so, I can live with that.

 

First, this episode gets a solid 8 for me. We get to see more of Orion culture, and why Tendi left to join Starfleet.

Secondly, depicting Orion culture is very tricky. Personally, I have always saw the aliens from any of STAR TREK shows as a fragment of the human condition, but taken to extremes for the sake of crafting a story. Klingons went from Cold War adversaries to Space Vikings; Romulans represents Authoritarianism while the Ferengi represents capitalism taken to its logical conclusion. The Orions? Hedonism taken to extreme, and not just on matters of sex. I seriously doubt that it is the intention of the producers, including the ones behind the ENT episode "Bound" wanted to inject misogyny into the story, but rather, wanted to give a twist on the Orion "animal women" trope from "The Cage", which really was misogynistic. Regardless, LD does a balancing act of making Orion culture both interesting AND silly at the same time, via Tendi's interaction with her old haunts. This taught a valuable lesson: where we come from doesn't dictate our choices in life. IRL, white, black, brown and other...we all have to deal with racial and cultural stereotypes, some warranted, mostly not. However, our respective cultures does not make us, well, us. And, above all, our respective cultures should be respected, not dissected for "further" study, which is another wall that separates us. Just appreciate the differences on their own merits. But, I digress.

Anyway, good episode. Kudos!

 

To me the ship looks like a whale while in the horizontal position. It's energy dampening power is also similar to the whale probe which was added to the opening battle. I feel there must be a connection

 

Well, starting in season 4, the whale probe is now in the space combat section of the opening theme segment, complete with its sound effect indicating it's overpowering everything in its vicinity. So, there might be a connection.

 

Yes! I like this! Whales are scooping up humanoid life forms for their menagerie. Those silly things are blundering about in the dangerous vacuum of space in their fragile ships (which can be left behind as scrap, they aren’t going to need those things again!), it’s a great kindness to corral them! Maybe they can be taught tricks! Or help whale scientists understand the universe better! What higher purpose could there be?

 

I can see that, but I think the message of the episode being that everything we saw shouldn't be taken seriously - having T'Lyn throw away her "research notes" on what she saw - makes me think the writers knew that they were playing up the tropes/cliches too. It was just awkward to me, compared to the representation of a certain other well-known species in episode 5 of this season.

 

Sure, presumably they let her go to Starfleet. But they also apparently basically bred and trained her from birth to be a "stereotypical" Orion.

(Or course, I still don't get how the Orion syndicate exists in a post-scarcity society. lol
At least in the 31st century, it's because Dilithium is exceptionally rare I suppose)

 

I mean the answer has always been there that no society other than the Federation is post-scarcity. It's like the United States in that the fact that it is the richest one in the galaxy.

 

Star Trek cultures don't really make sense because they're all mono cultures as depicted on screen with few exceptions. How do the Klingons, Romulans, Orions, etc. develop any technology if they're all busy finding different ways to kill each other. So are humans I suppose, but apparently we decided that a nuclear holocaust might be enough to get us to stop for a bit.

It'd have been nice if they played against trope, rather than have an episode that confirms Federation prejudices, but I suppose that's also not that funny.

 

I mean, it does kinda make sense? Unless you have a long-form series which spends a ton of time with a given culture (like say DS9 did) you have one of two options when it comes to sci-fi cultural worldbuilding.

1. You do the "planet of hats" thing, and have each alien race depicted as largely monocultural - a stand in/allegory for particular Earth nationalities.

2. You ignore culture altogether, and just have the alien races essentially be goofy costumes put on actors who could just as easily be anything else.

 

I'm really expecting the ship to open up along the hull lines at some point. Like a transformation effect, revealing its true nature/origin.