I suspect Batel’s fate is foreshadowed in her mindmeld with Spock. The hybridization will give her a Gorn aspect that she can’t live with, but it will also grant her the ability to communicate with the Gorn, and she’ll wind up sacrificing herself.

They are definitely doing this without Starfleet approval. Pike’s ship prioritizes individuals over regulations, an ethos that carries forward when Kirk takes the chair.

It was very, er, Germanic? Like I think she had some kind of braid thing going on that wrapped around her head like she was going to Oktoberfest or something, but the lighting combined with her jet black hair just made it look like a weird sort of bathing cap.

When he started snapping to change things I was like oh, okay, I see what this is. I think Trelane did that too, but it became such a trademark of Q that it was hard to ignore the similarity. And then the voice was just delicious icing on the cake. They didn’t make a big deal of it or make some weird tortured commentary to try and tie it into continuity. They just let it be as a story on its own.

I was impressed with their restraint in not mentioning either Trelane or Q by name. I mean they dressed the entity in the same costume as Trelane, and his behavior and MO are identical, so we’re clearly meant to conclude they are one and the same. But they didn’t burden the story with continuity, and that’s smart.

One of the writers talked about it on Open Pike Night and said it was a deliberate choice to give La’an and Erica opposite trajectories from last season, where now La’an is finally able to move on from her trauma with the Gorn while Erica is dealing with it for the first time.

I like to think that wolkite is a predecessor or a component of the viridium patch that Spock tracks Kirk with in Undiscovered Country.

It would be a simple matter for Trelane to make them all forget about him in “The Squire of Gothos” so that he could have more fun with them. I also like the idea that the Q wore the raiment of “energy entities” at this point in history just as fashion.

I’m so glad I avoided spoilers. Having never seen the TOS episode but being aware of the character, it didn’t click for me until about halfway through the episode that that was Trelane, and then the DeLancey voice at the end sent me over the edge.

I’m usually not a fan of zero tolerance policies, but I make an exception for Nazi shit.

At least given him a few months to alienate and turn on his staff and cabinet first. Let him throw out the first choice psychophants who would gladly carry on his program.

They were already doing that from their social media accounts from inside their cells, but now they can hold meetings.

He did this deliberately because he needs an extralegal militia to do his bidding.

Accidental like Strangelove, perhaps. Just an involuntary spasm revealing his true nature.

Pretty much every time I stumble across a post from tumblr, yeah.

Gone, maybe. Forgettable, hopefully, but never forgotten. Forgetting just means someone new will repeat it.

“that orange freak” suffices

Well, a known fascist tactic is making examples out of randomly chosen people who allegedly said the wrong thing in the wrong place. The amount of noise doesn’t matter in that case. They’ll just pick people at random they can persecute publicly in an attempt to scare everyone into clamming up and obeying.

At that point, there is no point in censoring yourself, because they will target you randomly regardless. At that point, there will be no point in saying or not saying anything online, because the only recourse will be [removed by lemmy.world admins] until the last one is [removed]

The US government and its oligarch pals has so much data on each of us already that if you haven’t been completely sanitary with your internet usage from the start, you’re already in a database, and there’s no point in worrying about it now.

I agree with the sentiment of this post, but let’s face it: if we get to the point where they’re sending secret police to everyone who ever said “fuck Trump” online, we’re beyond fucked, and electronic defenses will be moot at that point. Using euphemisms for Trump and Musk won’t save you from their surveillance.

Right now, it’s important to be outspoken about every one of their abuses, to name and shame them for as long as it’s still allowed, because the moment it’s not, there won’t be anything left to defend.

He eats bad guys.