Freeman's initiative to revisit planets previously contacted by Starfleet is approved by Admiral Buenamigo, with the first stop being the planet Ornara. In dialogue that surprises nobody at this point, Starfleet never followed up on the whole drug addict situation. Buenamigo also has a reporter tag along to document the initiative. Freeman, being image-obsessed, clamps down on the crew. She especially comes down on Mariner, who she keeps as far from the reporter as possible.
Ornara is doing surprisingly well and doesn't need any Starfleet assistance. (Although the absolutely hilarious mural shows that they could have used help while coming off the felicium.) Buenamigo suggests visiting Brekka next.
Mariner eventually gets to the reporter, which is spotted by Ransom. The reporter then confronts Freeman with all the wackiness that goes on on the Cerritos, which causes Freeman to blow her top. Believing Mariner was the one that told the reporter all of this, she transfers her daughter to the dreaded Starbase 80!
The Cerritos arrives at Brekka to find no one around. They eventually find the planet has been invaded by none other than the Breen! The Cerritos is saved from being destroyed by the arrival of a new fully-automated Starfleet ship: the Texas-class.
The news report airs, which vindicates Mariner as the only person who didn't leak all the weirdness on the ship to the reporter. Freeman attempts to contact Mariner on Starbase 80, only to find that Mariner has already resigned from Starfleet.
We cut to Mariner having joined up with Petra Aberdeen from several episodes ago.
So...
Anyone definitely getting Big Bad Evil Guy vibes from Buenamigo? I'm betting he set up the situation with the Breen to get good press for his new ship, and I wouldn't doubt he's the higher-up behind Rutherford's implant either.
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
Just the fact that the guy’s name means ‘good friend’ should be the tip-off that he’s up to no good Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
So what's the difference between second contacts and following up first contacts?
Texas-class. Ugh. Starfleet is nothing more than a US only club.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
quote:Originally posted by Spike: Texas-class. Ugh. Starfleet is nothing more than a US only club.
I mean, it did look like the old SFB Texas-class. But yeah, fuck Amerocentrism as much as Terracentrism.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
It’s just… eh. OK, I get it’s an American show, and made within an industry that still is incredibly inward-looking and parochial, that spent decades focussing on the domestic market, with foreign sales at best a nice little bonus. But I mean come on. It’s not as ridiculous as Eaves and his “all ships and glasses are named solely after American test pilots” bollocks. But it is still stupid. Can you picture some admiral saying “How about this? We name the class after one small area of one land mass on one planet of the Federation - and name all the ships after settlements in that area!”
The other admirals:
And yes sure there’s precedent for the US Navy doing something similar, but plenty of other navies didn’t.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
↑↑↑ That's why I made sure to use names not only from the rest of Earth in my project, but the rest of the galaxy as well.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
I've long said it would've made more sense to have Earth be one of the rare cultures that names ships. That way, there's a good excuse for Earth names.
Instead, Enterprise featured Andorian and Vulcan ship naming, and probably the Tellarites, too. Even if we drop the Vulcans from having interest in starships anymore, that dilutes the pool for Earth names by quite a bit.
As for American and European names being prevalent, this was touched on in Enterprise to an extent, with North America seemingly being a center of spaceflight even after Cochrane. We also tend to see relatively few humans not of European stock compared to even current UN projections of future population, suggesting that for whatever reason (something cultural, Ww3, whatever), North America tends to be the origin of most spacefaring humans and colonists.
Texas, having a rich history of spaceflight already . . . well, they could do worse. It certainly beats all the Chinese names they'd been tossing out lately, all at once, which was odd simply for the sudden frequency.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Yeah, fucking weird that a culture with 3500 years of unbroken history that accounts for 18% of the current global population is suddenly shown some due.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
quote:Originally posted by Shik: Yeah, fucking weird that a culture {...} is suddenly shown some due.
I think the point was missed: "names they'd been tossing out lately, all at once, which was odd simply for the sudden frequency."
When naming ships, work in whatever you like, but recognize that if all the hero ships suddenly seem to have names from Culture/Language/Area X, it's gonna stand out. That's as true of China as it is of US states like the good ships California and the no-doubt-soon-to-be-revealed-as-evil ships Texas.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Chaps, this is an argument that can’t be resolved.
- There were always California-class ships around, we just never happened to see any. [still haven’t seen any Andromeda-, or Wambundu-, or Chimera-class ships either]
- There were always lots of ships with Chinese names around, we just never happened to see any [and plenty of other races, places and cultures remain under-represented]
I’d like to think that there’s been a conscious decision to expand the pool of names used, to counter past blinkered choices, and more recent ones (Eaves; the California-class and its ships - which are obviously meant to be a sort-of running joke, with the Texas-class a play on that running joke).
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 138) on :
I wouldn't be surprised if there was a discussion, "Well we can't call the "evil" AI ships the Shanghai-class, or Berlin-class, or Mumbai-class without some people crying 'Oh sure, the bad guy ships are from China while the good guy ships are from America.'"
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
