…is an indictment of our times.
A large part of NASA’s problem is that dishonesty is often rewarded, particularly when testifying to Congress.
[Update late morning]
Link added, sorry!
…is an indictment of our times.
A large part of NASA’s problem is that dishonesty is often rewarded, particularly when testifying to Congress.
[Update late morning]
Link added, sorry!
Under promise and over deliver has been a tool for making customers happy for a long time. I put my car in the shop this morning. They predicted it’ll be fixed by Wednesday of next week. If they manage to deliver it early, I’ll be happy. If they are late, I’ll be less happy.
Long ago, when I was a programmer, the joke was the Time Estimation Algorithm. A manager goes to a lead programmer and asks how long it’ll take to write a particular set of code. The programmer looks at the requirements, and a time comes to mind, say 2 weeks. Before saying anything, the programmer doubles the digit and increments the unit. Two weeks becomes 4 months. The manager says that’s too long, so they agree on 4 weeks.
link
https://markatwood.substack.com/p/the-deconstruction-of-scotty-as-an
Gene Coon was a Marine who saw combat in Korea.
Probably one of the reasons Heinlein decided to cut him some slack when Coon called him on the phone one day and told him they had accidently stolen his flat cats and turned them into tribbles.
Scotty was the Engineering Officer, not an NCO.
Aye. Miles O’Brien was a petty officer in TNG and DS9.
I never liked that scene between Scotty and Geordie. I remember wondering if Scotty had been a few too many times through the transporter buffer.
I wonder if Scotty was pulling the leg of what he felt was a particularly naive chief engineer. I will note, I was a wierdo. Everybody’s favorite when Star Trek came around in reruns in the early 70’s was either Spock (most of the ladies) or Kirk (Most of the guys). I was a Scotty Partisan and always shall be.
Scotty won me over in the 60’s too: The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank…
Went back and rewatched DS9 and TNG and the series don’t hold up over time. Haven’t watched TOS since I was a little kid and might leave it that way so as not to ruin the nostalgia.
Well *most* of the plots in TOS are pretty good with a few exceptions. My bottom 3:
1) Omega Glory
2) Turnabout Intruder
3) The Way to Eden
I’m sure you call have your own. Wodun, you’ll find that the TOS falls down in the tech special effect area when watched today. Esp. the tech aboard the Enterprise looks a little clunky. However, not necessarily the sets. The Engineering section looks pretty good even by today’s standards. There are some features of The Bridge that could have been left out. C’est la vie…
The weakest plot gimmick in all of Trek has to be the Transporter.
Assuming it can teleport through subspace, why bother with Warp Drive in the first place?
The one that holds up the best? The middle sequence to 2001: A Space Odyssey…
wow… just wow….
The transporter (most of the time) is limited to short ranges–a few thousand miles. There was an interstellar transporter in Assignment: Earth, but humans didn’t have that technology.
The newer Star Trek movies did have interstellar transporters that can hit a target in subspace, and yeah, that destroys Star Fleet (and the Federation).
The writers could have benefited from reading Larry Niven’s “The Theory and Practice of Teleportation” (sure, that might require time travel, but we’re ok with that). Transporters need to be able to be blocked by simple shields or society collapses.
I don’t think Star Trek ever came up with a good explanation of transporters (I like subspace bubbles–the disassembly/reassembly explanation is stupid).
Or transporter relay stations.
I imagine the transporter prototype was built around a large wood chipper.;
As demonstrated in the movie Fargo…
One of the weird things about current times is that a visual theme is more important than appearance. Video games with very simple graphics are popular if they are fun and to some extent, this carries over into movies/shows. A show being a good story makes up for any visual defects but a the same time, the show must have a visual theme and stick to it.
I still watch Wrath of Khan once a year.
I still watch Wrath of Khan once a year.
The *best* of the Star Trek movies!
They should have led with that rather than “The Motion Picture”, which really suggests they didn’t have a clue what to make other than “The FIRST STAR TREK MOVIE!!!”
So they recycled TOS’es “The Changeling” instead…
I remember reading that there was lots of discussion about the storyline of TMP, they eventually went with something reasonably safe. They did try to make it a follow-on to the sequel that wasn’t, which was kind of an interesting approach.
Plot by committee. Doomed…
Instead of Scotty, how ‘bout we deconstruct Bernie (not Colonel) Sanders?
Is there anything there to deconstruct?
Well I for one would like the dirt on Bernie’s honeymoon in the USSR…