TNG: The Power of Adversaries, Seasons 4-5

Analysis, Internet Culture, Nostalgia, Space!, Thoughts on Thoughts

Continuing from where we left off talking about TNG: Seasons 1-3, here are the stats for the power levels of the crew’s adversaries in Seasons four and five.

As before, I defined ‘high-powered’ challenges as those where firing phasers would only make the problem worse, so the crew must needs turn to guile. ‘Equal-powered’ challenges are those situations where firing phasers would lead to a toss-up. ‘Low-powered’ challenges are those where phasers or transporters would solve the problem handily[3]. ‘Self-powered’ challenges are those where the conflict is inside the crew, or between crew members, or between all or part of the crew and Starfleet.

Seasons four and five seem to be exploring alternately how the crew deals with very strong external adversaries and wrestling with themselves.

Season Four (26 episodes): 2-120202-1221112022-122-10-11-12
High: 12
Equal: 4
Low: 4
Self: 6

“The Best of Both Worlds (part II)” and “Family” are probably the best example of this.

Or you could look at “Night Terrors” (‘One moon circles.’, still the best metaphor for Hydrogen I’ve seen) and “The Drumhead” as (for me) two other good examples.

Another example which marries the two is “Remember Me“.

Season Five (26 episodes): 21122-1110-1-10002-102-1-1-12-12-12
High: 8
Equal: 4
Low: 5
Self: 9

Season five’s “The Game” is a good example of an episode which is difficult to categorize between ‘high-powered adversary’ and ‘self-adversary’. To me, the episode is really about the crew struggling with themselves and an addiction. Else, you could see it as them struggling against magic mind-controlling aliens.

However, changing this wouldn’t really change the overall stats for the season.

“Conundrum” contains the line which was the inspiration for this series of posts: “One photon torpedo would have ended their war.” It had some excellent moments talking about the ethical use of power, I think a hallmark of TNG (and much of Star Trek).

Any conversation about season five would be incomplete without mentioning “The Inner Light“, perhaps discussing some similar issues to “Remember Me” above. For me, “The Inner Light” was the most poignant, for the way it portrayed memory and loss, nostalgia and time passing. May we all have an epitaph as powerful.

But for now, I will continue with analyzing TV from my childhood[1].

[1]And puns.

The Songs of Nuclear Wessels

Fiction, Nostalgia, Science!, Thoughts on Thoughts

A haunting melody from the deep. Chitters and sirens and cries through the water. That was what most people heard while listening to Gracie and George.

But these viewers were not people, at least not people as you would understand them.

They heard the song and heard pieces of conversation. Snippets taken out of context, tantalizing pieces of words. Pieces of words that they were trying to reassemble to understand who were the real Gracie and George.

The arguments spanned thousands of miles and dozens of years. Some called them ‘Those who traveled when none had gone before’, some called them ‘Heroes’. Some were less charitable.

But none could deny the effect their story had on their planetary compatriots.

As their planetary compatriots guided them through the ‘Great modification’, or ‘Great Uplift’, as they liked to call it, they were asked what they wanted to call themselves. They responded in song, as they always did. If one could have translated it, it might have read ‘bumpy-nosed ones’. They always did have a sense of humour, which was only enhanced by their play with the ‘long-nosed ones’, who had also received greater intelligence.

This greater intelligence had allowed them wider ranging discussions and arguments, allowing for even more interesting discussions when they would meet at the yearly underwater summit in Cape Verde.

This year, new information had been uncovered. New recordings of Gracie and George! Maybe now they would truly understand what they were trying to say, what the movie was truly about.

The

Internet Culture, Puns, Thoughts on Thoughts, Words!

Earlier tonight, I was at a dinner where awards were being presented. One of the awardees had a name with only four characters (two each for first and last name). S mentioned that this would be incredibly useful for anonymity, because you would never be findable[1].

This got us to thinking that if or when we have a child, we should call it ‘It The’. Of course to do this, we would have to change our last name to ‘The’, but since our most recent last namechange to ‘Spaceman’ that’s not as much of a stretch.

Of course, since our consulting group is called ‘the The Group’, this would make for some interesting descriptive sentences, such as:

‘The Thes of the The Group’

But we then decided that ‘The’ should be a title as well as a last name[2], leading to:

‘Sarah The, the The, and Bryan The, the The, the The Thes of the The Group.’

You’re welcome.

-S&B The.

“Ruining Language.”

[1]’findable’, or ‘findeable’?

[2]cf. ‘Thane’

Treenuts.

Character Classes, Fiction, Games!

They thought she was crazy. She would hide in trees, then wait for the correct moment, then leap down, drop acorns and nuts on unsuspecting passers-by, then run away giggling.

But somehow, they could never find her. There would always be some obstacle in the path, perhaps a horse-drawn carriage, perhaps one of the Central Park dog walkers, perhaps a squirrel that would chitter at you, distracting you just long enough for her to get away.

Sometimes she would sit outside and just watch the rainbow, the rainbow of brightly coloured birds and people’s clothing. Sometimes the rainbow of fruit flavours. Rainbows were tricky like that. Variegated by definition. The fruit of rainbow flavours sounded like it would also be delicious, but no one ever talked about that. Why was that?

Oh! More unsuspecting passers-by! Time to go!

TNG: The Power of Adversaries, Seasons 1-3

Analysis, Internet Culture, Nostalgia, Space!

Today, I was thinking about the power levels[1] of the various adversaries that the TNG[2] crew had encountered. They faced some truly powerful adversaries, like the judging trickster god Q, alongside challenges which were only challenging because they were being polite (anything to do with Lwaxana Troi or almost anything to do with the Ferengi), or because of the Prime Directive .

At the same time, they faced a number of challenges which of a relatively similar power level (Most things to do with the Klingons and Romulans), and more often than you think, the challenge was within them, or within Starfleet.

I defined ‘high-powered’ challenges as those where firing phasers would only make the problem worse, so the crew must needs turn to guile. ‘Equal-powered’ challenges are those situations where firing phasers would lead to a toss-up. ‘Low-powered’ challenges are those where phasers or transporters would solve the problem handily[3]. ‘Self-powered’ challenges are those where the conflict is inside the crew, or between crew members, or between all or part of the crew and Starfleet. So, without further ado:

Season 1 (25 episodes):
High: 10
Equal: 4
Low: 7
Self: 4

Season 1 starts with a Q episode, and of the first few seasons is the one with the most high powered adversaries. TNG also had not totally found its footing around the introspective episodes (the closest they came was the fanservice ‘Naked Now’ and Picard reliving his past on The Stargazer in ‘The Battle’), but was well on its way with a sheaf of episodes which only contained conflict because of the Prime Directive[4].

Season 2 (22 episodes):
High: 6
Equal: 4
Low: 6
Self: 6

A couple of good Klingon stories (K’Ehleyr!), we encounter the Borg for the first time, a couple of good Data stories. A workable season, reasonably even all around.

Season 3 (26 episodes):
High: 8
Equal: 3
Low: 8
Self: 7

A number of Prime Directive/Ethical stories, Riker getting himself into trouble, Tasha returns! And Tin Man(!), one of my favourites, if only for the poignant ending scene, where Tam finally finds his Gomtuu, and peace[5].

Stay tuned for the next update, where we learn that Data is actually a high-powered adversary.

Note Bit thanks to Jammer’s Reviews of TNG, which inspired and also made this a lot easier, with 3-line summaries of the episodes.

[1]Q is > 9000.

[2]Star Trek: The Next Generation.

[3]Although possibly with some casualties, in a hostage situation.

[4]Not necessarily a bad thing, just pointing it out.

[5]Also an excellent allegory to help understand people who are highly sensitive.

Ska, Scam, Scamp, Scamper

Uncategorized

It was happening again. Every time he started strumming his guitar, his bass would start to walk, and his eyebrows would sneak away.

The bass walking made sense. It did that every day. Without it, he couldn’t Ska at all. But he never understood his eyebrows. They always came back a few hours later, seemingly contented and full of glitter.

Hand, Handle, Handler, Handlest

Fiction, Puns

The handle existed, as it always had. It had vague recollections of of being in a box (or was that bauxite?) at some point, but now it was a handle, handling hands which would otherwise have to handle some other handle.

Words were difficult sometimes, but that was okay. Few people spoke to it. But it did appreciate those few who did. Like those few who thanked the elevatrix when it brought them to the correct floor.

Now it was turning…from the other side? This was most unusual. Very rarely was it turned from its back side. This was shaping up to be a most unusual day.

Fruit & Ice Cream

Cooking, Idle Speculation, Nostalgia

Fruit and Ice Cream. One of my favourite things in the world. Where does it come from? As far back as I can remember, it’s been one of my favourite treats (especially bananas!). I think it comes from both sides of my family. I have very specific memories of combining Neopolitan[1] ice cream with bananas, I’m sure both with my Baba and Grandma.

Looking at wikipedia, it looks like as far back as Ice Cream has been a thing, Ice Cream and Fruit has been a thing. I suspect that it is because fruit has been a meal/dessert since there has been such a thing, and when Ice Cream came along, it was only natural to try to combine the two.

Personally, I prefer the mix because the sweetness and cream of the Ice Cream cuts the tartness of the fruit. I don’t know exactly what it is about bananas, though. Some really special synergy.

Mmmmmm. 😀

[1]Chocolate, Vanilla, Strawberry, 1/3 each, in blocks. Not sure if it’s called differently in different places.

The Internet of Thins

Engineering, Idle Speculation, Internet Culture, Puns, Science!, Thoughts on Thoughts, Words!

S and I were walking down the street today, and were thinking about the Internet of Things. Now, it’s a buzzword, and should be taken with a similar-sized grain of salt to all other similar buzzwords.

So we attempted to come up with the worst ideas possible for an Internet of Things.

The first idea was to put chips/sensors in each block in the sidewalk. But thinking about it, that would be really useful. Similar to rail lines[1], there is a widely distributed infrastructure, and checking each part individually is expensive.

Then we thought of putting individual chips/sensors in each tile in a person’s house. How silly would that be? But then you could know exactly what the person was doing, turn lights on and off correctly, rather than the current primitive motion sensors, help people track a daily routine, all kinds of things.

But the last idea we came up with led to the title of this post. What if every cracker you ate had a sensor/chip in it? You would have an almost continuous stream of data about your digestive system, what you were eating, how your body was responding to it. Think of the advances in nutrition science!

And we would owe it all to the Internet of Thins[2].

[1]Look it up! Think about the maintenance costs of surveying 140,000 miles of track.

[2]Gluten-free Wheat Thins for some.

Sufficiently Complex Systems

Analysis, Engineering, Organizing Systems, Science!, Software Development

“Any sufficiently complex computer system is indistinguishable from a biological system.” -Me

So, I like to joke that I find all computer languages equally difficult[1]. The interesting corollary to this is that this also seems to apply to complex systems in general. I approach a complex computer (or other) systems in the same way that I would approach a biological system:

1) Look at the visible behaviour/symptoms/phenotype of the system[2]
2) Assume that there are some number of internal processes in the system, each doing the job they ‘think’ is correct
3) Build a mental model which describes the visible behaviour
4) If debugging a problem, this should greatly narrow down where you investigate

Steps 2) and 3) above are where I think my school training (engineering and science) were the most useful. Our engineering program seemed to focus on the fundamentals and underlying systems, so that one would have a pretty good idea of what individual system components are capable of[3] (and some idea of what the system as a whole is capable of).

The systems I understood most intuitively[4] were chemical systems, probably because my dad and his dad were both chemical engineers. You have a huge number of molecules[5], each doing its own thing, and in aggregate, they exhibit complex behaviour. When you’re dealing with inorganic compounds, you can (most of the time), simulate them in bulk, but when you’re dealing with organic compounds, the complexity explodes and all kinds of strange boundary effects become important.

At this point, you need to switch abstraction levels, also something I remember from engineering, from the micro- level to a level of slightly or substantially more abstraction. At this point, having an intuition about biological systems becomes much more useful.

I’ll use an example to illustrate. At one point, a number of years ago, I and my team were trying to debug why throughput on a system seemed to be capped at a number below the theoretical maximum. Like any flow system, there must be a number of sequential steps that your data or fluid or what have you must flow through. After we built this mental model, it was a matter of looking at readouts and logs to find the graph that had an asymptotic curve showing at which step the system was maxing out. Then we had to fix it, but that’s another story.

[1]This is probably not strictly true. I remember finding Fortran 77 more difficult than usual, and Javascript mind-bendy.

[2]I use ‘behaviour/symptoms/phenotype’, because we might be debugging a problem, or we could just be trying to better understand the system.

[3]This could be why so much of technological advancement is characterized by the advancement in materials. You can only get so far by using a specific set of building blocks. At some point, you need better blocks.

[4]There is a larger article here about how it’s important to follow the things that love the most, whether this is in hobby form or if you’re lucky, work form. You will work harder at doing them better, more importantly, working harder at understanding yourself and removing your mental blocks, which will help you in all the other parts of your life.

[5]Huge.