Superb episode, a real high mark. The 1st episode was so disappointing I was worried they’d gone of the rails with the nonsense kung fu segment in the middle, but Ad Astra Per Aspera was a perfect episode.

The writing was great, and the pace and rhythm perfect with highs and lows, good use of emotions and a perfect ending. I love these character driven episodes - we learnt more about Una, and also La’an in effective way, but also about the context and imperfections of the Federation. The cast is also great, making the close family like dynamics of the Enterprise command staff feel real.

I’m glad they also didn’t put Pike on the stand. It allowed Una and Neera to shine, and Neera (Yetide Badaki) who was a superbly crafted and acted character - she ran the gauntlet of dislikeable to a most loved character in one episode.

This a really good and intersting take.

To take this a step further, replicators can’t make everything but can make most things. “Latinum” may be of value because it is truely a rare and cannot be faked - so gold pressed latinum becomes a currency because the Ferengi have faith in it’s value as a fiat currency. It could also be that the method of gold pressing the latinum makes it near impossible to reproduce and fake, or that the latinum (some kind of alloy?) can only persist and be “stable” when it is pressed.

That’s a good analogy, makes it easier to communicate Reddit’s business model and how messed up they are right now. Thanks for sharing!

I was disappointed in the season opener. The story was silly and incoherent, and to be honest it reminds me of the worst elements of Discovery.

I don’t begrudge them deferring dealing with the Una situation as that is likely (hopefully) going to be strongly character driven episode.

But the Embenga/Chapel subplot was by far the worst part of the whole episode. Exploring the trauma of the Klingon War is actually an intriguing idea, and even the idea of Starfleet medical being weaponised is intriguing but instead we got Embenga and Chapel injecting up and becoming rediculous super soldiers which has zero link to anything we’ve ever had from their backstories. Then we had 10 minutes of tedious kung fu fighting which is a common trope of Discovery; it’s lazy writing and just fills screen time with pointless violence. It is exactly the opposite of what makes SNW so refreshing. I hope to god this stupidity is a one off. If you are going to shoehorn in a pointless action sequence, why on earth would you pick Embenga and Chapel for that? And then the crazy space walk? It was ludicrous.

Other elements were ok but the overall episode felt out of place with what SNW did in series 1. I really hope they have not decided the show needs more “action” because they will be making the same mistakes as Discovery if they do that. SNW series 1 was extremely well recieved because it was character and plot driven; each episode was stand alone but the characters plots extended across the season.

I’d give this episode 5/10 to be honest.

I think this is a important take - as far as users are concerned Reddit merely hosts the content and the community, but as far as Reddit is concerned it owns the content and wants to monetise the community.

The problem for Reddit is the moderation is done by users who do it for free, mostly because they love their communities and want to keep them going. Those people are not easy to replace - plenty of communities shut because no one wanted to moderate them, and plenty of users just aren’t interested. So if they lose the moderators, there is a small pool of people to replace them and many of those may not be motivated in the same way. There will also be bad actors amongst those untested moderators.

Lose the moderators, and the communities fall apart as bad content, rule breaking and negative behaviour takes hold. The “content” becomes lost and the value of what reddit things it owns falls massively. An archive of old reddit comments is actually not worth much - sure people google things and find answers on Reddit - but it’s the current active users and daily content that draws people in.

I think Reddit is doomed as it is failing to understand it’s own business and what made the site successful.