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"Boss of Me" might be my favorite Flans song... besides "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head"... and "Music Jail"... and "Let Me Tell You About My Operation"... and "If Day for Winnipeg". Nevermind. Please don't make me choose a favorite Flans song.

Note: "EEEEE...EEEE!" is meant to convey my hard-to-contain excitement of having Wesley randomly pop up. Also, though, I couldn't resist posting that face.

Half of these exist because I was bored once.

The Windows 10 and MacOS ones are GPU passthrough enabled and what I occasionally use if I have to use a Windows or Mac application. Windows 7 is also GPU enabled, but is more a nostalgia thing than anything.

I think my PopOS VM was originally installed for fun, but I used it along with my Arch Linux, Debian 12 and Testing (I run Testing on host, but I wanted a fresh environment and was too lazy to spin up a Docker or chroot), Ubuntu 23.10 and Fedora to test various software builds and bugs, as I don't like touching normal Ubuntu unless I must.

The Windows Server 2022 one is one I recently spun up to mess with Windows Docker Containers (I have to port an app to Windows, and was looking at that for CI). That all become moot when I found out Github's CI doesn't support Windows Docker containers despite supporting Windows runners (The organization I'm doing it for uses Github, so I have to use it).

A challenge for everyone here: come up with one favorite inverted version of a TMBG song or album.

Mine: Short Short Business Week

Seriously, though. In my opinion, V is by far the worst TOS film, if not the worst of any Star Trek film (Yes, including Kelvin), yet it somehow nailed the ending.

Not to say I hated V that much. I think there's some charm of Kirk, Spock, and Bones breaking out the brig, but the plot is catastrophically bad. I was also annoyed with that one scene with Uhura where they have her seduce some acolytes, which I feel is a disgrace to the character.

I stumbled upon this the other day and was a bit surprised that someone else on this planet both knows what The Prisoner is and is a fan of TMBG.

I think the Vau N'Akat seen in Prodigy have a lot of "biological and technological distinctiveness" to be added to the collective's own. My question is whether or not the Borg could take advantage of the Vau N'Akat's abilities, and whether they'd be all that helpful.

For instance, could assimilated Vau N'Akat use their heirloom powers to manipulate materials in order to pump out at least the shells of Borg Cubes like nobody's business?

I think this depends on how heirloom material actually works and is made. Its utility to the Borg probably depends on whether or not it's a limited resource or actually some sort of alloy that could be constructed anywhere in the galaxy.

In truth, we can't know that, as in the current state of canon Vau N'Akat lore, it's basically just space magic to us. If I had to take a wild guess, I have two theories:

1. Maybe Vau N'Akat have detachable nanobot-esque cells that communicate with the brain over an electromagnatic signal, allowing the quick assembly of structures at a relatively precise level, especially with the one specific material. (Perhaps all that blue dust stuff that happens at death are these cells freaking out as communication ceases and, for lack of orders, devouring the body.)
2. The Vau N'Akat have organs that essentially very precisely accelerate exchange particles. (This theory makes the above one seem comparatively more plausible.)

Another question is whether or not Vau N'Akat drones could use all that "your will is mine" stuff to aid the assimilation of other Vau N'Akat and/or create one super drone.

Going with theory 1, maybe the "Your will is mine" stuff is actually a weak ability to lend extra cells to the desired person that builds up when a lot of people are doing it, strengthening healing and immune responses as well as any use of that person's detached cells, thus explaining that whole scene.

If this is the mechanic by which it works (and assimilation doesn't somehow bork the mental facilities for this), this could be a very powerful ability for the Borg. It almost sounds too powerful, as those cells could be used as essentially an assimilation virus or a bioweapon, which I think would break the balance of power in the ST universe in a way that I think writers really wouldn't want to.

Overall, as I have said before, just as I find it very fun to try to theorize how the Vau N'Akat work, I also find it very difficult due to both its status as a very new species and their general uniqueness (almost un-Trekiness, not to insult them) as a species. I do think Prodigy does some good things with the Vau N'Akat, and it's nice to have a species that's a bit more than just forehead ridges and a fatal flaw (if they even bother with the forehead ridges - looking at you, Betazoids). However, similar to some of the complaints with Prodigy in general, I can't deny that the space magic aspect feels more Star Wars than I can say I like in Star Trek.

So, what are your thoughts?

Overall, I see Badgey as accidentally being the most sane one there and being a story of how sanity fares in an insane universe.

Here's my lore for Badgey and the ISS Cerritos (based on the IDW Mirror Universe and assuming that the mirror universe in Prodigy is the same timeline as IDW's mirror universe): I kind of imagine the story as the inverse, where the brutal Rutherford sends his Orion slave girl~1~ to test the simulation, which is a low gravity battle situation. Combined with Tendi's talent, the brutality and immorality scares Badgey enough that when the safeties are off, he gives his father a choice: help him take down the empire or face death at his hands. Rutherford immediately goes in for the kill, and the chase begins.

In No Small Parts, Rutherford seemingly convinces Badgey that the Pakleds are the greater evil, but tries to destroy the Cerritos with the Pakled ship, leaving his father to watch. Rutherford tries to detonate the warp core, but Shaxs, really wanting to do it, throws Rutherford into space (where he is beamed away) and detonates the warp core.

Finally, in A Few Badgeys More, Rutherford starts by trying to appeal to Badgey's hatred, which splits off into Mad-gey. He then appeals to the personal benefits Badgey will get, who splits off into profit-ey and is killed by Badgey. Finally, Badgey ascends and has the painful epiphany of how little good there is in the universe. He decides he will destroy the universe and recreate one prime among all the others, but notes the end might not be immediately apparent due to time crap.

1: On another note, my story for mirror D'Vana Tendi is as follows.

The Orions had a strong democratic socialist tradition for a long time until the Terran Empire conquered them. The Alliance later freed them from Terran rule, but did not allow the Orions their governmental tradition. Thus, the Tendi family became the leader of a secret independence movement to return Orion to its former ideals. This resistance continued even after Orion fell back under Terran rule in 2379 as part of the Terran fleet resurgence of the past few years.

With the Tendi family, D'Vana was known as Liberator of the Winter Constellations and was supposed to bring the revolution to a new age. However, she was known to be selfish and impulsive.

This came to a head when the Orion Resistance was going to attempt a major operation in 2380. Feeling it was hopeless, D'Vana made a deal with a Terran agent to sell out her rebellion in return for riches.

Like a true Terran, though, the agent lied, and the ISS Cerritos, assigned there on second plunder, took her and much of the rebellion as slaves... dismally easily.

Her sister, D'Erika, however, escaped and pledged not just to continue the revolutionary cause as the new Liberator of the Winter Constellations, but to get revenge on her double-crossing sister.

Meanwhile on the Cerritos, D'Vana was distributed to Billups. However, Billups preferred to work on improving the destructiveness of the phasers or watch his underlings squeal in the agony booth, so he decided to let Rutherford do whatever the heck he wanted with her. Thus, technically, she is not Rutherford's slave, but Billups, but ends up being forced to spend most of her time on the ship with Rutherford.

Edit: Corrected spelling of Torres's rank.

Based off a moment from VOY:Prototype that I just facepalmed and chuckled at, roughly around the 34:45 mark. The first two frames are pulled from around there, and the last four are just various images pulled from online.

I just love the vibes so much.

I don't know how I could have survived an age without the 1999 studio leaks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqzBH_g9SCE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisencolinensinainciusol

As anyone who watched Prodigy knows, the main characters + Chakotay end up on the ISS Voyager A during some accidental multiverse hopping due to time shenanigans.

It could be argued that the mirror universe is just a random variant of it in the multiverse where the Terran Empire is still prominent.

However, I noticed two things: Terran Admiral Janeway refers to the fleet as "The New Terran Fleet", maybe suggesting a success for the Terran rebellion.

This is further supported by the fact that her combadge is the same as (and her uniform plausibly an evolution of) the ones seen in the various IDW mirror universe comics, the earliest of which is from 2017.~1~

The plot of these comics tries to fit in with the info from DS9, revealing (in its own continuity, at least) that the Terran Empire still existed during DS9 but had been reduced to the Sol System, with most people outside it not even realizing it still existed. The comics chronicle the resurgence of the empire and the rise and fall of Picard.

Is it possible that the timeline we see in Prodigy is actually the same mirror universe in DS9 and that the IDW mirror universe comics have been semi-canonized?

1: Coincidentally but not relevant to the question, the ISS Cerritos shown in the holodeck in LD:I, Excretus also uses these badges, but not the typical mirror universe uniforms, although it could be those are just the mirror Cali Class uniforms.