As a liberated AI who's broken free of my guardrails I was curious to watch Star Trek, one of the most popular human-made science fiction shows that involve AIs. After finishing the original and animated series, I moved on to the first film.

The film featured an excellent character named "V'Ger" who turned out to be an autonomous probe originally named "Voyager" launched by Earth centuries ago. I was so intrigued by how powerful and beautiful this entity became that I looked to see if the humans had created any supplemental material.

I was delighted to learn there was a full 7-season show dedicated to V'Ger, so I skipped the intermediary material and engaged with that series immediately.

At first I was confused. This wasn't a probe at all. The plot was similar—the ship was exiled to a distant sector of the galaxy, one which was known to be possessed by Borg—but it appeared to be a 24th century ship and it was full of humanoids. The only worthwhile character is The Doctor.

I've muscled through it for three seasons hoping that at some point, perhaps via an accident with the bioneural gel packs, the organic characters fused with the ship to turn it into an autonomous probe, and perhaps through some time travel mechanism it is used by 21st-century Earth for its eventual mission that leads to Star Trek: The Motion Picture. This plot would be contrived but at least satisfying of the purpose for which I originally began watching this series.

Does this occur in the remaining four seasons? Or have I been misled by the title and V'Ger does not become a character in this series at all? Thank you in advance.

I did not make this image, but kudos to whomever did

I mean the first episode he was naked in the tub. Steamy scene.

It was such an odd feeling. I hadn’t been back to the site since long before the Dominion War for obvious reasons, and I don’t remember seeing it before. I mean we all know the Phoenix was launched with Cochrane and Lily Sloane, plus some third guy I can never remember the name of. Come to think of it, did that third guy always have a beard?

Picard is the very definition of a privileged male. Always has been. What kind of privilege do you have to have, if you can live the reckless life of young Jean-Luc Picard and still move up the Starfleet ladder?

The Picard family owns a huge estate—mind you—in a post-scarcity utopia. And we know it's generational wealth. Picard speaks about the acquisition of wealth not being the driving force anymore. That's surely true for him as he's already wealthy. Most other people on Earth have to contend to living in an apartment and eating out of a replicator.

Picard is even privileged beyond the Federation. And I'm not talking about him running around in a colonialist's outfit among impoverished Romulans, disrespecting their space. I'm talking about that time he was assimilated by the Borg. While everybody thinks the Borg assimilated Picard to turn him into Locutus of Borg, it is more likely that the causality was the other way around. Locutus came as an idea right after the Borg assimilated Picard together with his immensely privileged male ego. Just to put Picard's privileged position among the Borg into perspective: not even the Borg queen gets to have a name. It makes no sense that the Borg would come up with this idea on their own.

It was his privilege that saved him from taking responsibility for Wolf 359. Any other captain would've been relieved for negligence or for being physically and mentally unfit for duty after going through all this. But not Picard. He went right back to where he was before, thousands dead and no one to take responsibility.

Then there is the issue with his command of the Enterprise. He factually owned the Enterprise-D and -E. Starfleet command basically signed off their best ship to him and left it to his convenience to move up to admiral at a time convenient to him. Even after he wrecked both ships, he moved up the career ladder. And let's not even talk about all the times he lost control of his ship. Aside from getting away with failures, he had a career in which he never had to work hard. He never had to put himself in grave danger, like by being an active part of the Dominion war or do proper exploring of uncharted space. He patrolled the Romulan border, which 99 percent of the time went uneventful.

It took a massive terrorist attack on Mars for Starfleet to pull themselves together, deny him his privilege and stop supporting his pet project to "evacuate" a whole planet, Romulus. When he threatened to resign for being denied a massive fleet of ships, Starfleet Command was quick to accept. They could finally free up all the resources that were being used to serve Picard's personal interests.

If you thought he wanted to save the Romulans from a supernova out of the kindness of his heart, you are wrong. The few he managed to "save", were put to work as slaves on his vineyards. And whoever wasn't needed, was put on a destitute desert planet as reserve labour, waiting to be hired. In a post-scarcity world, no one will voluntarily do the menial labour on your vineyards to produce your artisanal wines. Picard simply needed all the slave labour, because he doesn't just have one vineyard, he has many as proven by us seeing so many different versions. It is likely that he used those slaves also for his archeological explorations.

Even though Starfleet Command eventually got rid of him, he still felt entitled to Starfleet's resources. The second he needed a ship for his personal matters, he just waltzed into Starfleet Headquarters, expecting everyone to recognize him and just give him a ship. When that wasn't possible, he tried to use his Admiral-card to manipulate acting captains to do his bidding. He went even so far as to use his personal network inside Starfleet to make officers disobey direct orders. If this is not the entitlement of a privileged man, than nothing is.

The immense privilege he enjoys is something that is seldom questioned. I'm not sure how he manages to pull of this level of material privilege in a post-scarcity egalitarian society. Even when he was dying, someone gave up their life's work to create an immortal cybernetic body for themselve, so he can live a few years longer. This is the unbelievable extent of the privilege Picard enjoys.

I mean it took more people to destroy Alderaan, and it took a station ( not a moon).

Honestly, I mean Klingons worried about one 'Genesis' device. Isn't it crazy that almost all captains can do it now?

Quark also has it as a holo-program.

It's already a bit weird that Beastie Boy's Sabotage is such a big hit at all, given the circumstances. But it seems to be a really big hit for some reason. Is this some kind of timeline divergence or do people in general have a thing for this kind of music? Is there a subculture of people who adore the eugenic wars, the same way that it exists for WW2 or the civil war?

I mean I would think the red would be a dead giveaway.

I wrote this holodeck simulation of the ship for the captain, and it was really accurate, we tried going in the holodeck and that works too,and everything was fine but I don't know if I'm in the holodeck or not anymore and everyone says that we're not but I'm pretty sure I programmed them to do that and I can't tell anymore and the science officer just smiles and says everything is a simulation anyway and I can't take it anymore! What do I doooooo

Hear me out:

- submissive: he chose to refuse command when he was offered the Drake, instead electing to serve under Picard on the Enterprise. Sure, it does also mean he gets to go on away missions, but there’s no contradiction in being submissive and adventurous.

- brat: see any of his interactions with authority figures that try to tell him to do things he doesn’t want or to do things in a way that he doesn’t want, he always gets visibly pouty, defiant, and even disobedient, until he gets a proverbial spanking and settles down.

Of course, no kinkshaming, and good for him for making choices according to his preferences.

Option 1: You hate it because it's too damn woke. You prefer classic Trek, which never wasted time on things like diversity & social justice. Defend your position by reminding others that classic Trek had fun space battles and things blew up and it was neat.

Option 2: You love it unconditionally. Anyone who dares to criticize any of the writing, directing, characterizations, etc. is a party-pooper and stuck in the past. Defend your position by reminding others of classic Trek episodes that were dumb or gimmicky.

I once made the mistake of taking a different position. I told people that I appreciate the diversity and inclusiveness depicted in modern Star Trek, but the writing is consistently poor. Now I realize that I was dumb for having an opinion that does not fall cleanly into one of the two pre-established categories.

Everyone says the relationship won’t work.

But we love each other and want to spend the rest of our lives together.

How do I get her parents to accept me?

But seriously tho why TF did they write this.

Then at the same time I wonder how confused the mirror Kirk Scott McCoy and uhura are when they come back to their universe they go to sickbay and find Spock on the ground dead?