Spoilers Star Trek Academy [spoiler thread]

[Stalker0]

I mean… it’s a concern for you. I’m not really seeing that the rest of us share this concern. For me, it’s a nothing-burger.

Alright I breezed through the episode. So here is what I found.

1) Only the main guy and his kids do any signing, we never see it from the other Betazoids.
2) The two siblings only do it with their father. There is one scene where the 3 are together and they do it. The other is when they are with some federation people.

So the idea that the kids use sign language with their dad, makes sense. The idea that they use it when federation people are around to be polite, makes sense. The only questionable scene is when they do it just them as a family (rather than speak telepathically)..... is it because the girl has that inhibitor and its actually easier for her to sign than talk in her head? Unknown. But I agree that this is a very minor scene.


There is one technical goof in the episode I caught on this run through. When the dad comes into the whale tank to scold his daughter, he is speaking, but if you watch the scene he is just walking towards them with his hands at his sides, so a small goof, again pretty minor.


So in conclusion, I think the sign language is self contained enough. We can look at it as purely a reflection of a family that has a deaf person, rather than a sudden change in betazoid culture on the whole. So....all is well I'd say.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

They were supposed to be empaths, not telepaths, but I guess they needed someone to fill in for a Vulcan and there was power creep.

Deanna was an Empath (but she could communicate telepathically with other Betazoids, and her Imzadi, aka Riker.), because she was a Half-Betazoid. Lwaxana Troi was reading thoughts casually from the people around her. Tam Elbrun couldn't block out thoughts like most Betazoids, and was a very powerful telepath, but suffered from his inability to block.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Huh?

So, an alien race like the betazoids can't have individuals with different disabilities? Like being deaf?

I mean, it is weird that everybody speaks English and the sign language the betazoids use is ASL (American Sign Language), but . . . that's a sci-fi trope that impacts virtually all sci-fi movies and television.

The betazoids are telepathic . . . why do they need to speak at all? Partly for audience benefit, of course. But it isn't hard to come up with an in-universe reason why betazoids speak verbally and through sign (with deaf individuals within their species). Them using ASL isn't very different than speaking verbal English.

It blows my mind that this is even an issue among the fandom.

You know it is possible to ask these kinds of questions without having your moral standards questioned like this. "Blowing your mind" seems a little hyperbolic and judgemental to me.

 

[Ryujin]

Because that was established in the lore at the time.

If Geordi in season 1 was able to see just fine, but then they introduced the visor in season 2.....you would probably have a few questions. Hey what happened to Geordi? That would be a reasonable thing to ask.


Thats the concern here. Again if they had introduced a new alien race that was deaf (and not telepathic), would have absolutely 0 issue with it. If Betazoids had been using sign language when they were first introduced as a common thing (or we had established that they couldn't speak to each other in their minds)....ok no problem lets go.

Its the retcon that is the concern. Now there maybe explanations for this and that's what we have been debating. But there really should be an explanation for this, not simply "oh yeah the Telepathic race that can speak in each others minds is now using sign language to talk to each other.....because reasons"

It's not a retcon. Inference is a thing.

 

[Ryujin]

Deanna was an Empath (but she could communicate telepathically with other Betazoids, and her Imzadi, aka Riker.), because she was a Half-Betazoid. Lwaxana Troi was reading thoughts casually from the people around her. Tam Elbrun couldn't block out thoughts like most Betazoids, and was a very powerful telepath, but suffered from his inability to block.

I haven't been able to find it online but I seem to remember Deanna telling Lwoxana, in the first season, that it was "rude" to use telepathy around non-telepathic races.

 

[Morrus]

I haven't been able to find it online but I seem to remember Deanna telling Lwoxana, in the first season, that it was "rude" to use telepathy around non-telepathic races.

She’s not wrong.

 

[Tonguez]

I haven't been able to find it online but I seem to remember Deanna telling Lwoxana, in the first season, that it was "rude" to use telepathy around non-telepathic races.

yeah I hate it when they just give each other that smug look and dont say a word!

 

[Morrus]

Hmm. I was not too fond of episode 3. Leaning very heavily into the YA aspects (which I realise was the initial premise, but the first episode had made me hope it wasn't so much that as expected).

Also, I'm not keen on the modern day language -- "@@@hole", "laser tag", etc. I definitely preferred the day of "a double dumb ass on you!"



Question -- how many cadets are there at the Academy? It seems like there's about a dozen? Not enough to fill one department on one starship, let alone a fleet. I assume there was some sort of training program in place beforehand, otherwise who would be crewing all the current Starfleet ships? Was that the War College?

Then again, maybe it's the Strange New Worlds extras cost problem which made it seem like there were only about 10 people on the Enterprise. Maybe there are hundreds of cadets, but we only see a dozen of them?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Hmm. I was not too fond of episode 3. Leaning very heavily into the YA aspects (which I realise was the initial premise, but the first episode had made me hope it wasn't so much that as expected).

Also, I'm not keen on the modern day language -- "@@@hole", "laser tag", etc. I definitely preferred the day of "a double dumb ass on you!"



Question -- how many cadets are there at the Academy? It seems like there's about a dozen? Not enough to fill one department on one starship, let alone a fleet. I assume there was some sort of training program in place beforehand, otherwise who would be crewing all the current Starfleet ships? Was that the War College?

Then again, maybe it's the Strange New Worlds extras cost problem which made it seem like there were only about 10 people on the Enterprise. Maybe there are hundreds of cadets, but we only see a dozen of them?

As you suggest here, scope (or more importantly the appearance of scope) is heavily affected by available budget in TV and film productions. One of the very few places I feel film storytelling actually has the advantage over television is the generally higher budget allows for greater visible scope (and spectacle, but that's a double-edged sword IMO). Using dialogue to help establish scope you don't have the money to show would be nice.

 

[Ryujin]

As you suggest here, scope (or more importantly the appearance of scope) is heavily affected by available budget in TV and film productions. One of the very few places I feel film storytelling actually has the advantage over television is the generally higher budget allows for greater visible scope (and spectacle, but that's a double-edged sword IMO). Using dialogue to help establish scope you don't have the money to show would be nice.

I think the lack of physical sets is also a bit of a limiting factor. You can only fit so many people in front of big LED displays. They could put them on the backgrounds but then you have that budget problem, and I don't know how good those setups are at doing angle and perspective on moving objects.