VOY 6x13: Virtuoso

Condescending all around and then pull a 2024 tech bro move by training their AI on The Doctor and throwing him out.

(I’m disregarding the fact that The Doctor is an AI himself)

  • Admiral PatrickOP
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    323 days ago

    I like the concept of the episode (a society that has never experienced music), and Picardo’s performance was top shelf as always. But the Qomar were so irredeemably arrogant. And then the ending where they were shocked The Doctor wasn’t grateful that they stole his likeness just hit too close to 2024 and how tech bros are doing the same thing.

    • @ummthatguy
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      3 days ago

      Totally fair from that recontextualization. Unwarranted appropriation of content via lack of updated legislation.

      The other thing that bugged me about the Qomar: How in the flying fuck does a society/culture develop without music?! Are we to assume they also have no art, literature, or imagination? Rant aside, still fun to watch.

      • @davidgro
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        93 days ago

        I buy it.

        Sure humans tend to integrate music into nearly everything we do, but even here on earth as far as I can think of at the moment it’s just us, birds, and whales. I’m sure there’re a few more examples, but the vast majority of life on earth (including other sentient life) doesn’t have much if any appreciation for or ability to create music. (Dogs howling back at us somewhat rhythmically in YouTube clips is at best a borderline case.)

        The further pondering about the arts for the species in question is anyone’s guess I assume. I don’t remember this episode.

        • @jj4211
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          3 days ago

          I suppose I could buy an intelligence that doesn’t particularly care about music (as you say, other than a few, most species seem utterly disinterested in music).

          What I find unlikely is that a species would just love music and yet never come up with it. Day to day sometimes folks experience randomly musical events, a little random sequence of sounds that happen to exhibit a little rhythm or melody. Surely if they were that captivated by music, they would have latched on to those and played with the concept a bit during their civilisation’s progression…

          • @davidgro
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            43 days ago

            Oh, yeah, if they love it in the episode, that doesn’t make sense.

      • Admiral PatrickOP
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        33 days ago

        Yeah, lol, I have a (bad?) habit of viewing Trek through contemporary eyes each watch through rather than keeping in mind the era when it was written / aired. On one hand, it helps to keep it timeless, and on the other, it will arbitrarily make random episodes unwatchable every so often.