Sure, but I’m not about to absolve the spa of responsibility for what they put out into the world.

Can’t say I agree with that.

Alexandre Boileau, Groupe Nordik’s senior director of marketing in sales, said in an emailed statement to CBC News that the survey was “reviewed in advance” but admits the company “did not apply sufficient scrutiny” to the values-based questions CROP included.

I thought about this back when they had the wheelchair-using crewman in the first couple of seasons of Discovery - I think I’ve come down on the side of “sometimes the old ways are the best ways” with stuff like this.

You can’t suddenly lose power and crash your wheeled chair. For all we know, it’s got some sort of powered unit for use when the user encounters a steep incline or flight of stairs or whatever.

But for everyday use? Yeah, I’ll stick with wheels.

Didn’t he seem visibly shaken when asked about the Protostar crew, like he knew something SAM didn’t?

I didn’t think that at the time, but on rewatch…maybe? At least some of the Prodigy kids are on the memorial wall, but that doesn’t really mean much in context. I’m not sure how the production timelines of the two series aligned when this pilot would have been filming, but they may even have been attempting to do a little synergy.

I would say “yes” to “odd” (or at least unusual), and “no” to “out of place”.

I guess if “Federation Standard” is just American English, the common sign language might as well be ASL…

A learning experience for us all!

TBH this piece didn’t resonate with me at the time, but I have to admit it’s just about perfect, thematically.

I’m not a huge fan of the opening theme, but c’est la vie.

I didn’t realize this was an original recording for the show.

I’ve been digging a little deeper, and in “Ménage à Troi”, Deanna tells Lwaxana that it’s “impolite not to speak aloud” when amongst non-telepaths. It’s very possible that the president is simply deaf, and they were using sign language to maintain those manners.

There definitely seems to be a spectrum - on one end, there’s Lon Suder, who says he can’t read much of anything, and on the other, there’s Tam Elbrun, whose abilities were completely out of control.

The episode definitely doesn’t work as well if the Betazoids can simply read everyone’s minds and know their true intentions.

Which is sort of the whole problem with telepaths.

I think it’s complicated by the fact that Deanna Troi is the Betazoid “prototype,” but as you noted, she was presented as somehow “weaker” than other Betazoids due to her half-human physiology. And even then, she was capable of full telepathic communication with Riker.

But after that, we had stuff like Lon Suder in “Meld,” saying things like, “Most Betazoids can sense other people’s emotions,” without mentioning telepathy at all. Even Memory Alpha seems to have resorted to using the term “telepathy/empathy” here and there - it all seems rather messy.

I really hope they get into this at some point, but my assumption is that the main limitation of programmable matter is that you have to, y’know, program it first, which takes time.

Also, I had no idea that programmable matter is an actual theoretical thing that scientist have been trying to crack for a few decades now!

In the case of the tricorder…I wonder if that’s the Doctor being old-fashioned, since we’ve also seen that tricom badges have tricorders built into them.

I guess as a response to the youth movement that was pressuring him to negotiate. This sort of thing is unfortunately common IRL.

There are arguably spoilers in the track titles, so browse at your own risk.

Genesis is an interesting version of charming because at first glance she starts out as a “mean girl” but then you realize that she’s parodying it hard.

From the trailers, I had assumed that Genesis would be the stuck-up mean girl, and Darem would be the friendly tryhard. Turns out the reality is the exact opposite.

Edit: Also, there’s no need for spoiler tags in these discussion threads!

I think their initial demands were ludicrous because the president had no real intention of rejoining the Federation - it was all theatre.