Podcasts about commander data

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every second Saturday at 6pm GMT, with the occasional bonus episode between them. This week, Jonathan Frakes' Star Trek: Insurrection. On routine assignment to the Briar Patch, Commander Data suddenly and mysteriously malfunctions. Acting against orders, Data takes a covert Starfleet team hostage and exposes their activities to the indigenous population known as the Baku. Sensing that there is more to the story than Starfleet will admit, Captain Jean Luc Picard leads the USS Enterprise on a mission to discover what exactly has happened to their beloved colleague. At time of recording, it was not ranked on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

Our most ambitious data dive yet: analyzing the history of Top Commanders over time! Which ones were flash-in-the-pan, and which ones have stayed strong? Did any make a comeback? Let's find out!Proud partners with DragonShield: https://www.dragonshield.com/?ref=edhrec  Get trading on Cardsphere! https://cardsphere.com/?referrer=edhrecastAccess to exclusive content, Challenge the Stats spreadsheet, EDHRECast Discord, & more on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/edhrecastWant to see the decks we play? Check them out here: https://edhrec.com/articles/edhrecast-our-decks/Follow the cast on social media:@EDHRECast@JosephMSchultz@danaroach@mathimus55

David and Ryan return with another round of March Auction Madness!  This time it's for Heritage Auctions' Planet Hollywood collection which goes under the hammer from March 20th through 24th and features over 1,600 lots of Hollywood glory.  We have Shining Axes (hero and stunt), James Dean's monkey, Lt. Commander Data costumes, Apollo Creed costumes, Biff bats, Nurse Ratched's duty wear, Conan knives, Terminator jackets, Heston spacesuits, Leia blasters (hero and stunt), Indiana Jones whips (maybe a Raiders one?), Home Alone hats, Princess Bride ships, Joker over coats, Spaceballs: The Action Figures (no, Dave, I didn't see you playing with your dolls again), dino-DNA smuggling Barbasol cans, and Hocus Pocus spellbooks!  Get your hands off our lots, you damned dirty apes! It's almost too much to fit into one podcast... which is why we're doing two!  Join us again on Sunday, March 17th at 7pm GMT, 4pm EDT, 12pm PDT for our second-ever live-auction-catalog trawl as the guys are drawn into the gravitational well of Planet Hollywood! SDAMO - Instagram https://www.instagram.com/propspodcast/ SDAMO - Threads https://www.threads.net/@propspodcast SDAMO - Twitter https://twitter.com/propspodcast?lang=en SDAMO - Facebook https://www.facebook.com/propspodcast/ SDAMO - TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@props.podcast David Mandel - Instagram https://www.instagram.com/davidhmandel/

David and Ryan return with another round of March Auction Madness!  This time it's for Heritage Auctions' Planet Hollywood collection which goes under the hammer from March 20th through 24th and features over 1,600 lots of Hollywood glory.  We have Shining Axes (hero and stunt), James Dean's monkey, Lt. Commander Data costumes, Apollo Creed costumes, Biff bats, Nurse Ratched's duty wear, Conan knives, Terminator jackets, Heston spacesuits, Leia blasters (hero and stunt), Indiana Jones whips (maybe a Raiders one?), Home Alone hats, Princess Bride ships, Joker over coats, Spaceballs: The Action Figures (no, Dave, I didn't see you playing with your dolls again), dino-DNA smuggling Barbasol cans, and Hocus Pocus spellbooks!  Get your hands off our lots, you damned dirty apes! It's almost too much to fit into one podcast... which is why we're doing two!  Join us again on Sunday, March 17th at 7pm GMT, 4pm EDT, 12pm PDT for our second-ever live-auction-catalog trawl as the guys are drawn into the gravitational well of Planet Hollywood! SDAMO - Instagram https://www.instagram.com/propspodcast/ SDAMO - Threads https://www.threads.net/@propspodcast SDAMO - Twitter https://twitter.com/propspodcast?lang=en SDAMO - Facebook https://www.facebook.com/propspodcast/ SDAMO - TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@props.podcast David Mandel - Instagram https://www.instagram.com/davidhmandel/

A new week means new questions! Hope you have fun with these!Legend says that the goddess Athena gave the gift of what kind of tree?The Bahamas lie to the east of which U.S. state?In Star Trek the Next Generation, Commander Data has an "evil twin" named what?What organization has the symbol and reverse colors of the Swiss Flag?The stars Castor and Pollux are in which constellation of the night sky?Which gland is located at the base of the brain and is an edoctrine gland?A member of the "big four" what sort of creature is a krait?Who was the third man on the moon?What was Cleopatra's first language?MusicHot Swing, Fast Talkin, Bass Walker, Dances and Dames, Ambush by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Don't forget to follow us on social media:Patreon – patreon.com/quizbang – Please consider supporting us on Patreon. Check out our fun extras for patrons and help us keep this podcast going. We appreciate any level of support!Website – quizbangpod.com Check out our website, it will have all the links for social media that you need and while you're there, why not go to the contact us page and submit a question!Facebook – @quizbangpodcast – we post episode links and silly lego pictures to go with our trivia questions. Enjoy the silly picture and give your best guess, we will respond to your answer the next day to give everyone a chance to guess.Instagram – Quiz Quiz Bang Bang (quizquizbangbang), we post silly lego pictures to go with our trivia questions. Enjoy the silly picture and give your best guess, we will respond to your answer the next day to give everyone a chance to guess.Twitter – @quizbangpod We want to start a fun community for our fellow trivia lovers. If you hear/think of a fun or challenging trivia question, post it to our twitter feed and we will repost it so everyone can take a stab it. Come for the trivia – stay for the trivia.Ko-Fi – ko-fi.com/quizbangpod – Keep that sweet caffeine running through our body with a Ko-Fi, power us through a late night of fact checking and editing!

This episode explores AI ethics through the iconic character of Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation. We examine Data's quest to understand humanity, including his limitations emulating emotions. A classic episode "Measure of a Man" tackles Data's legal status and personhood in a thought-provoking trial. We analyze how Star Trek used androids to raise prescient philosophical questions about the implications of creating AI life. While fictional, Data's journey mirrors issues around developing real-world AI that exceeds human intelligence in some areas, while falling short in others like emotional intelligence. By using sci-fi storytelling, Star Trek compellingly opened minds to rethink our relationship with thinking machines. Listen for an imaginative look at AI through the eyes of one of sci-fi's most sympathetic android characters. Are you interested in learning to use AI? Take a look at my free class on Udemy: The Essential Guide to Claude 2!⁠ This podcast was generated with the help of artificial intelligence. We do fact check with human eyes, but there might still be hallucinations in the output. Music credit: "Modern Situations by Unicorn Heads"

Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu continue our exploration into the poetry of the stars with Part 2 of our episode featuring poet/astronomer/cosmologist Dr. Yun Wang and poet/author Midge Goldberg, editor of “Outer Space: 100 Poems.” We pick up right where we left off in Part 1, with a discussion of standard candles and how Edwin Hubble used Cepheid Variable Stars to determine the distance to Andromeda – incorrectly, as Chuck explains. We then find out that Yun is working on not one, but two upcoming space telescopes: The Euclid Space Telescope launching in July 2023 and the Roman Space Telescope, a Hubble-class space telescope named after Nancy Grace Roman, NASA's first Chief of Astronomy, launching in 2027. As with Part 1, The LIUniverse couldn't possibly have two poets as guests on the show without a little poetry reading and analysis. Allen kicks it off by reading a Walt Whitman poem, “A Noiseless, Patient Spider.” Midge follows up with a reading excerpted from “My God, It's Full of Stars” by Tracy K. Smith, one of the first poems she chose to put into “Outer Space: 100 Poems.” Yun reads both the original Chinese version and then the translation of a poem by Su Dongpo, the Song Dynasty poet who is the third of the greatest poets in Chinese history, followed by an English translation. (The group discussed the other two, Du Fu and Li Bai of the Tang Dynasty era in China, in Part 1 – just another reason to go and listen if you haven't already, poetry fans!) Chuck reads from a poem by Salvatore Quasimodo, the Nobel prize-winning Italian poet, after which he reminds us all about Commander Data's unfortunate attempt at poetry about his cat Spot on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Allen begrudgingly reads the first couplet, and Midge describes what happens when AI writes a sonnet. Finally, Charles ends the episode with a reading and discussion of “When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer” from Walt Whitman's “Leaves of Grass,” which Yun explains she doesn't hate anymore, but still doesn't love. If you'd like to know more about Dr. Yun Wang and her many scientific and poetic publications, see her bio page at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech): https://web.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/wang/. To learn more about Midge Goldberg, visit her website: https://www.midgegoldberg.com/ or follow her on Twitter at @MidgeGoldberg. “Outer Space: 100 Poems” is published by Cambridge University Press: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/outer-space-100-poems/7D8D674BE0C7215CCC9FD0284044B819 We hope you enjoy this episode of The LIUniverse, and, if you do, please support us on Patreon. Credits for Images Used in this Episode: – Edwin Hubble in 1931 – John Hagemeyer, Public Domain – Euclid Space Telescope (rendering) – European Space Agency, CC BY-SA 3.0 – Roman Space Telescope (rendering) – NASA (WFIRST Project and Dominic Benford), Public Domain – Painting of Su Dongpo (posthumous) – Zhao Mengfu, 1301, Public Domain

First, skip the first 85 seconds or so. I can't edit and the intro, which was wonderfully hysterical, didn't record at all. Oh, the irony. It was supposed to be the ChatGPT production of "if Eminem rapped about cats". Check it out on YouTube. It's worth 2 minutes. My guest is Dan Steele, one of the forerunners of ChatGPT. He wrote a book entitled "The Book on ChatGPT". Well, he didn't exactly write it. ChatGPT did. He takes us through his history which parallels ChatGPT, the uses of this extraordinary technology, and we discuss many issues. From what it can do now to what it might be able to do soon. Who are the likely winners? What jobs are in jeopardy? What are the legal implications to Copyrighted work and art writ large? Is this "I, Robot", "Terminator", or "Ex Machina"? Might it be friendly Commander Data or is it H.A.L. or Ultron? Is this the ultimate tool of chaos or are their silver linings? How is Elon Musk involved?

First, skip the first 85 seconds or so. I can't edit and the intro, which was wonderfully hysterical, didn't record at all. Oh, the irony. It was supposed to be the ChatGPT production of "if Eminem rapped about cats". Check it out on YouTube. It's worth 2 minutes. My guest is Dan Steele, one of the forerunners of ChatGPT. He wrote a book entitled "The Book on ChatGPT". Well, he didn't exactly write it. ChatGPT did. He takes us through his history which parallels ChatGPT, the uses of this extraordinary technology, and we discuss many issues. From what it can do now to what it might be able to do soon. Who are the likely winners? What jobs are in jeopardy? What are the legal implications to Copyrighted work and art writ large? Is this "I, Robot", "Terminator", or "Ex Machina"? Might it be friendly Commander Data or is it H.A.L. or Ultron? Is this the ultimate tool of chaos or are their silver linings? How is Elon Musk involved?

Welcome to the first minisode of the month. Erin, Matt and Andy have a chat with a fun character! Come back every week for what the New York Times calls the best podcast in the universe...or that might have been Matt, it's hard to tell. Tell your friends Rate/review on iTunes Donate to our patreon, just search dumb fun Keep on Listening! Also, come to the Laugh Factory Chicago, first Sunday of Every month at 7pm for Character Assasination! Theme song by Brett Gretzky Logo by Chris R

Ken Radner leads a round table discussion on the character of LT. Commander Data with panel members Dan Martin and special guest Jamie Insalaco. (Greg Vorob appears at the beginning and end and he'd personally like to apologize for his squeaky desk chair....) --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/star-trek-undiscovered/support

Is the future of AI more like HAL 9000, Skynet and the Matrix? Or is it more like Wall-E, Star Trek's Commander Data or C-3PO from Star Wars? Some of the world's most brilliant minds like Michio Kaku and Stephen Hawking recognize the tremendous potential for artificial intelligence but also offer words of caution at its development Is artificial intelligence the next step in our evolution, or the first step in our ultimate destruction How will AI impact what humans create, and could humans be entirely removed from the creative process?

Is the future of AI more like HAL 9000, Skynet and the Matrix? Or is it more like Wall-E, Star Trek's Commander Data or C-3PO from Star Wars? Some of the world's most brilliant minds like Michio Kaku and Stephen Hawking recognize the tremendous potential for artificial intelligence but also offer words of caution at its development Is artificial intelligence the next step in our evolution, or the first step in our ultimate destruction How will AI impact what humans create, and could humans be entirely removed from the creative process?

Is the future of AI more like HAL 9000, Skynet and the Matrix?Or is it more like Wall-E, Star Trek's Commander Data or C-3PO from Star Wars?Some of the world's most brilliant minds like Michio Kaku and Stephen Hawking recognize the tremendous potential for artificial intelligence but also offer words of caution at its developmentIs artificial intelligence the next step in our evolution, or the first step in our ultimate destructionHow will AI impact what humans create, and could humans be entirely removed from the creative process?Support the show

Unlängst hat Elon Musk der Welt einen humanoiden Roboter vorgestellt, der schon in wenigen Jahren als Haushaltshilfe einsatzbereit sein soll. Und Musk ist nicht der Einzige: Unternehmen und Universitäten rund um den Globus arbeiten an Robotern, die nützliche Fertigkeiten im Alltag haben, motorisch weitentwickelt und irgendwann sogar in der Lage sein sollen, überdies zudem intelligente Gespräche zu führen. Doch wie weit ist diese Technologie wirklich? Was ist Marketing, was Utopie, was Wirklichkeit? Und was schlicht Unsinn? Der Informatiker Jan Peters ist Professor für Robotik, maschinelles Lernen und intelligente autonome Systeme an der TU Darmstadt. Er zählt den führenden Fachleuten hierzulande auf diesem Gebiet und ist auch international ein mehrfach ausgezeichneter Forscher. Peters erklärt, wie Maschinen lernen, wie wichtig welche Daten sind, warum Robotik zusätzliche Anforderungen stellt, wie gut Computer schon heute mit Sprache umgehen können – und wieso eine elementare Idee schon der deutsche Ausnahmemathematiker Carl Friedrich Gauß hatte.

Playmates ruled the Star Trek toy world back in th 90's, now after nearly a 25 year absence, they are BACK!  Wave one of the highly anticipated first wave has started to hit store shelves. This firat wave includes 8 characters, From Star Trek Discovery we have Commander Saru and Science Officer Burnham in New Univerae packaging. Admiral Kirk, Captain Spovk and Khan, as seen in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, and from TNG we have Commander Data, Captain Picard and Commander Riker, with Nostalgic packaging.  All figures are 1:14 scale with 14 points of articulation. We will take a look at these awesome  new figures. 

Wassup Zengineers! I've had this sitting on my desktop for a couple years at this point. Had some time, so I finally processed it. Enjoy. Hope all is well

252 - Thomas Riker Season 7 - Part 2 - ...and now the conclusion. The trio completes their Thomas trilogy covering the first appearance of transporter double Lieutenant Riker, and his subsequent adventures on the Enterprise-D (if he had replaced Commander Riker). We continue our journey into season seven with the Riker-focused episode, "Pegasus." How does a mid-career Riker deal with his former captain, Admiral Pressman, and his new captain, Jean-Luc Picard? Especially a Riker who has been stranded for years, reflecting on his life choices? We also follow Data in red, as he grows in the role of first officer through the rest of the season. How do the "Lower Decks" officers try to press a Commander Data? Who gives Deanna Troi her bridge officer test? And what are the potential futures for Thomas Riker and Data in "All Good Things..."? We also go through four TNG feature films, ending with saying goodbye to Data and Riker in a whole new way.

252 - Thomas Riker Season 7 - Part 2 - ...and now the conclusion. The trio completes their Thomas trilogy covering the first appearance of transporter double Lieutenant Riker, and his subsequent adventures on the Enterprise-D (if he had replaced Commander Riker). We continue our journey into season seven with the Riker-focused episode, "Pegasus." How does a mid-career Riker deal with his former captain, Admiral Pressman, and his new captain, Jean-Luc Picard? Especially a Riker who has been stranded for years, reflecting on his life choices? We also follow Data in red, as he grows in the role of first officer through the rest of the season. How do the "Lower Decks" officers try to press a Commander Data? Who gives Deanna Troi her bridge officer test? And what are the potential futures for Thomas Riker and Data in "All Good Things..."? We also go through four TNG feature films, ending with saying goodbye to Data and Riker in a whole new way.

This week we find the Enterprise crew on their way to Torona IV to meet the Jarada, an insect-like race that follows very strict protocols. This trip is to re-establish contact with the Jarada after a disastrous first contact 20 years prior. Captain Picard, under immense stress while preparing for this meeting, spends sometime on the Holodeck in an attempt to relax. Picard is joined by Lt. Commander Data, Dr Crusher and Ship's Historian Dr. Whalen, but instead of finding relaxation, they find themselves in a perilous situation. Meanwhile, on the bridge, the Jarada are insulted by Riker's attempt at contact and the crew tries to figure out exactly what they should do in order to avoid a repeat of the first Jarada contact. Will the Holodeck revelers survive the program? Will Riker avoid another Jarada incident? Will Wesley come in to save the day....again?!? Join us to get all those answers and more on this episode of Hailing Frequencies Open.

Lieutenant Barclay causes a ruckus. Join your mentally-stimulated hosts as they discuss the highs, lows, and oddities of this memorable installment of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Spoiler warning! We dive right into a detail-rich discussion of this episode, so if you haven't had a chance to see it yet – beware! Next week: We return to our weekly coverage of Star Trek: Discovery's fourth season! Note that this and all episodes of the It's Got Star Trek podcast contain explicit language and, frankly, an unnecessary amount of offensive content, so the show is intended only for adults and really really cool kids. Please utilize one of the following options if you have an interest in contacting your hosts: Email us at feedback@itsgotstartrek.com Twitter us @ItsGotStarTrek Instagramaphone us @ItsGotStarTrek Facebookify us @ItsGotStarTrek Watch a static image while listening to the podcast on YouTube Telephone us at 202-456-1414 You can also visit www.itsgotstartrek.com and leave a comment or head on over to the It's Got Everything subreddit to join the discussion. Don't say we didn't give you options here!

Oh no! What's happened to Commander Data! Has he lost his head forever? Guinan and Samuel Clemens are on the case in part one of this season spanning story.

This week on Episode 516 of Priority One: that's a wrap on filming for season one of Strange New Worlds, details on Trek panels for Comic-Con@Home, and Lower Decks beams back onto screens next month!  In gaming news, Harcourt Fenton Mudd is at it again, scouring the galaxy to bring you deals and gear from across time itself, and the newest patch to Star Trek Fleet Command brings a commanding presence to the game.   This week's Community Question is: What is the next Star Trek Online event reward you would like to be made available for purchase? Let us know on social media like Facebook, Twitter, or by visiting our website! TREK IT OUT Edited by Thomas Reynolds Strange New Worlds Goes To Wrap 1 By Cat Hough Last week, Anson Mount tweeted that filming for the last episode of Season 1 for Strange New Worlds has started. He also hinted at some surprises in store, saying, “old school fans are going to [be] VERY excited to see what we're trying to pull off with this one. Getting to do many things I've never attempted as an actor. So much fun!" https://twitter.com/ansonmount/status/1412781659376787459?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1412781659376787459%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ffilmdaily.co%2Fobsessions%2Fstar-trek%2Fstrange-new-worlds%2F No release date has been announced for Strange New Worlds, but to recap what we do know about it: first, it is more episodic than Discovery or Picard. Second, it will likely have a more classic Original Series theme and look. Showrunner Akiva Goldsman said it's important to keep continuity with The Original Series, while also distinguishing Strange New Worlds as its own show. Can't even tell the difference. Image: ViacomCBS. Goldsman described it to The Hollywood Reporter saying, “Remember the Enterprise existed as a little piece of [the show Discovery] but now is its own object. When you close your eyes and think of the key sets and situations that you think of in The Original Series, that's what we're looking to do." We may possibly get more information during Comic-Con@Home since a Star Trek Universe panel has been announced–though my best guess will be sometime in early 2022.  Star Trek@Comic-Con@Home By Cat Hough Speaking of the San Diego Comic-Con–or the virtual version, Comic-Con@Home–Paramount+ announced back-to-back Star Trek panels starting Friday, July 23 at 10 a.m. PT. Paramount+'s Comic-Con panels will feature sessions with the cast and producers from Star Trek: Prodigy and Star Trek: Lower Decks. Images: ViacomCBS/Comic-Con International, via Deadline. Prodigy, the first Star Trek animated kids series [TAS doesn't count, we've been over this already–Ed.], will kick off the presentation with Lower Decks set to follow. The Prodigy presentation will be the inaugural panel for the upcoming kids series, following a crew of young aliens who must figure out how to work together, while navigating a greater galaxy in search of a better future. These six young outcasts know nothing about the ship they have commandeered, but over the course of their adventures together, they will each be introduced to Starfleet and the ideals it represents. Lower Decks voice cast members Tawny Newsome, Jack Quaid and Eugene Cordero will then appear with creator Mike McMahan for an exclusive conversation and an extended look at Season 2 with Lower Decks' own Jerry O'Connell moderating the conversations. And speaking of Lower Decks… Lower Decks Season 2, Coming Through! By Rosco McQueen It's officially one month until Lower Decks returns to the screen for season two, with a very short teaser released this week.  While the teaser was short, in Lower Decks fashion it was brimming with details.  In the opening shot alone we saw the Cerritos alongside some Parliament-class starships, Andorian cruisers, a Maquis Raider and a couple of Daedalus-class ships, all docked at a starbase that seems inspired by the Watchtower-class from Trek-lit novels. In the teaser Mariner and Boimler crash through a space mall in a space dune buggy, and narrowly avoid some space fish people [they're not people!–Ed.] originally seen in The Next Generation.  The lower deckers sport some flashy new dress uniforms, and just to add to the mix, some Commander Data collectable figurines fly out the back of the buggy.   https://twitter.com/StarTrek/status/1414630633448480776?s=20 Did we miss anything?  Let us know in the comment section at priorityonepodcast.com. Quick News Roundup Here are a few headlines that we didn't discuss but might interest you. The first four Star Trek films are being re-released...this time in 4K Ultra HD with Dolby Vision and HDR10. What does that mean? You'll be able to make out every follicle of Ricardo Montalban's chest hair [what are you on about, dude was smoother than Michael Phelps on a Slip'n'Slide–Ed.]! Packed with extra features (much like Khan's chest) this 4-disc set doesn't have a release date yet but, we'll be sure to keep you updated! While we're talking about merch, Playmates just announced a new line of Star Trek toys coming in 2022. According to StarTrek.com, there will be a lineup of action figures and accessories from all era's of the franchise–new and old. Star Trek also gets to celebrate some recognition with five Emmy nominations this year. Discovery is up for Outstanding Prosthetic Makeup, Outstanding Period And/Or Character Makeup (Non-Prosthetic), Outstanding Sound Editing For A Comedy Or Drama Series, and Outstanding Special Visual Effects In A Single Episode. Lower Decks has been nominated for Outstanding Sound Editing For A Comedy Or Drama Series. STAR TREK GAMING NEWS Edited by Thomas Reynolds Taking Some Time On Mudd's Market By Rosco McQueen Harcourt Fenton Mudd is at it again, scouring the galaxy to bring you deals and gear from across time itself.  This week Star Trek Online announced three previous event rewards are joining Mudd's Market. The store is adding the Red Angel Suit, the Dot 7 Drone Kit Module, and the Elachi Walker Combat/Vanity Pet. Hard-earned Zen can be put to use with every item in Mudd's Market (except the bundles) discounted by 75% until July 19 at 10am PT. So now is the perfect time to collect the Red Angel Suit if you missed out. All proceeds will presumably go to posting bail. Image: ViacomCBS, via TrekNews.net That leads us to our community question this week:    What is the next Star Trek Online event reward you would like to be made available for purchase? Let us know in the comment section for this episode at priorityonepodcast.com or by replying to our community question post on our social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Courtesy Codes for Wayward Planeswalkers By Thomas Reynolds Magic: Legends may be headed towards shutdown in a few months, but Cryptic apparently hopes you'll stick around. There's been no official announcement at the time of recording [sort of–Ed.], but check your email if you played the Legends beta test at any point. You may find free codes for other Cryptic MMO bundles, including a STO Federation Elite Starter Pack and a Fleet Admiral Bundle–a combined US$70 value–as a thank-you for participating. Commanding Time In Star Trek Fleet Command By Rosco McQueen It's the best of both worlds, only this time it's part three!  The third section of Star Trek Fleet Command's Next Generation arc has just landed, with Commander William T. Riker in the spotlight. Patch 32 brings with it a new officer, a new ship and, for Star Trek Online players, some familiar gameplay elements to the Kelvin Universe.   “With the Enterprise-D mysteriously returned to its former glory, the time has come to find and rescue the rest of the crew and get them home to their own universe. You manage to track down Commander William Riker, who finds himself at the forefront of the Bajoran resistance against the rampant Cardassian Empire. And with the Cardassians holding many Enterprise-D crew members captive, the conflict is personal for Riker.” Amazing, The Beard actually overpowers the lens flare. Image: Scopely. Also there are some changes to the Away Team assignments. Introduced in Patch 30, this feature gives you the possibility to send officers on Assignments and receive rewards. Now the assignments are part of your daily goals, giving players the ability to gain more daily goal points and more speed ups. So in STO terms, duty officer assignments have been added to the endeavor system. Available to players in this patch is a new officer: Epic William Riker, a new ship: the Meridian, an isogen mining vessel, fifteen new missions and more.

This week on Episode 516 of Priority One: that's a wrap on filming for season one of Strange New Worlds, details on Trek panels for Comic-Con@Home, and Lower Decks beams back onto screens next month!  In gaming news, Harcourt Fenton Mudd is at it again, scouring the galaxy to bring you deals and gear from across time itself, and the newest patch to Star Trek Fleet Command brings a commanding presence to the game.   This week's Community Question is: What is the next Star Trek Online event reward you would like to be made available for purchase? Let us know on social media like Facebook, Twitter, or by visiting our website! TREK IT OUT Edited by Thomas Reynolds Strange New Worlds Goes To Wrap 1 By Cat Hough Last week, Anson Mount tweeted that filming for the last episode of Season 1 for Strange New Worlds has started. He also hinted at some surprises in store, saying, “old school fans are going to [be] VERY excited to see what we're trying to pull off with this one. Getting to do many things I've never attempted as an actor. So much fun!" https://twitter.com/ansonmount/status/1412781659376787459?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1412781659376787459%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ffilmdaily.co%2Fobsessions%2Fstar-trek%2Fstrange-new-worlds%2F No release date has been announced for Strange New Worlds, but to recap what we do know about it: first, it is more episodic than Discovery or Picard. Second, it will likely have a more classic Original Series theme and look. Showrunner Akiva Goldsman said it's important to keep continuity with The Original Series, while also distinguishing Strange New Worlds as its own show. Can't even tell the difference. Image: ViacomCBS. Goldsman described it to The Hollywood Reporter saying, “Remember the Enterprise existed as a little piece of [the show Discovery] but now is its own object. When you close your eyes and think of the key sets and situations that you think of in The Original Series, that's what we're looking to do." We may possibly get more information during Comic-Con@Home since a Star Trek Universe panel has been announced–though my best guess will be sometime in early 2022.  Star Trek@Comic-Con@Home By Cat Hough Speaking of the San Diego Comic-Con–or the virtual version, Comic-Con@Home–Paramount+ announced back-to-back Star Trek panels starting Friday, July 23 at 10 a.m. PT. Paramount+'s Comic-Con panels will feature sessions with the cast and producers from Star Trek: Prodigy and Star Trek: Lower Decks. Images: ViacomCBS/Comic-Con International, via Deadline. Prodigy, the first Star Trek animated kids series [TAS doesn't count, we've been over this already–Ed.], will kick off the presentation with Lower Decks set to follow. The Prodigy presentation will be the inaugural panel for the upcoming kids series, following a crew of young aliens who must figure out how to work together, while navigating a greater galaxy in search of a better future. These six young outcasts know nothing about the ship they have commandeered, but over the course of their adventures together, they will each be introduced to Starfleet and the ideals it represents. Lower Decks voice cast members Tawny Newsome, Jack Quaid and Eugene Cordero will then appear with creator Mike McMahan for an exclusive conversation and an extended look at Season 2 with Lower Decks' own Jerry O'Connell moderating the conversations. And speaking of Lower Decks… Lower Decks Season 2, Coming Through! By Rosco McQueen It's officially one month until Lower Decks returns to the screen for season two, with a very short teaser released this week.  While the teaser was short, in Lower Decks fashion it was brimming with details.  In the opening shot alone we saw the Cerritos alongside some Parliament-class starships, Andorian cruisers, a Maquis Raider and a couple of Daedalus-class ships, all docked at a starbase that seems inspired by the Watchtower-class from Trek-lit novels. In the teaser Mariner and Boimler crash through a space mall in a space dune buggy, and narrowly avoid some space fish people [they're not people!–Ed.] originally seen in The Next Generation.  The lower deckers sport some flashy new dress uniforms, and just to add to the mix, some Commander Data collectable figurines fly out the back of the buggy.   https://twitter.com/StarTrek/status/1414630633448480776?s=20 Did we miss anything?  Let us know in the comment section at priorityonepodcast.com. Quick News Roundup Here are a few headlines that we didn't discuss but might interest you. The first four Star Trek films are being re-released...this time in 4K Ultra HD with Dolby Vision and HDR10. What does that mean? You'll be able to make out every follicle of Ricardo Montalban's chest hair [what are you on about, dude was smoother than Michael Phelps on a Slip'n'Slide–Ed.]! Packed with extra features (much like Khan's chest) this 4-disc set doesn't have a release date yet but, we'll be sure to keep you updated! While we're talking about merch, Playmates just announced a new line of Star Trek toys coming in 2022. According to StarTrek.com, there will be a lineup of action figures and accessories from all era's of the franchise–new and old. Star Trek also gets to celebrate some recognition with five Emmy nominations this year. Discovery is up for Outstanding Prosthetic Makeup, Outstanding Period And/Or Character Makeup (Non-Prosthetic), Outstanding Sound Editing For A Comedy Or Drama Series, and Outstanding Special Visual Effects In A Single Episode. Lower Decks has been nominated for Outstanding Sound Editing For A Comedy Or Drama Series. STAR TREK GAMING NEWS Edited by Thomas Reynolds Taking Some Time On Mudd's Market By Rosco McQueen Harcourt Fenton Mudd is at it again, scouring the galaxy to bring you deals and gear from across time itself.  This week Star Trek Online announced three previous event rewards are joining Mudd's Market. The store is adding the Red Angel Suit, the Dot 7 Drone Kit Module, and the Elachi Walker Combat/Vanity Pet. Hard-earned Zen can be put to use with every item in Mudd's Market (except the bundles) discounted by 75% until July 19 at 10am PT. So now is the perfect time to collect the Red Angel Suit if you missed out. All proceeds will presumably go to posting bail. Image: ViacomCBS, via TrekNews.net That leads us to our community question this week:    What is the next Star Trek Online event reward you would like to be made available for purchase? Let us know in the comment section for this episode at priorityonepodcast.com or by replying to our community question post on our social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Courtesy Codes for Wayward Planeswalkers By Thomas Reynolds Magic: Legends may be headed towards shutdown in a few months, but Cryptic apparently hopes you'll stick around. There's been no official announcement at the time of recording [sort of–Ed.], but check your email if you played the Legends beta test at any point. You may find free codes for other Cryptic MMO bundles, including a STO Federation Elite Starter Pack and a Fleet Admiral Bundle–a combined US$70 value–as a thank-you for participating. Commanding Time In Star Trek Fleet Command By Rosco McQueen It's the best of both worlds, only this time it's part three!  The third section of Star Trek Fleet Command's Next Generation arc has just landed, with Commander William T. Riker in the spotlight. Patch 32 brings with it a new officer, a new ship and, for Star Trek Online players, some familiar gameplay elements to the Kelvin Universe.   “With the Enterprise-D mysteriously returned to its former glory, the time has come to find and rescue the rest of the crew and get them home to their own universe. You manage to track down Commander William Riker, who finds himself at the forefront of the Bajoran resistance against the rampant Cardassian Empire. And with the Cardassians holding many Enterprise-D crew members captive, the conflict is personal for Riker.” Amazing, The Beard actually overpowers the lens flare. Image: Scopely. Also there are some changes to the Away Team assignments. Introduced in Patch 30, this feature gives you the possibility to send officers on Assignments and receive rewards. Now the assignments are part of your daily goals, giving players the ability to gain more daily goal points and more speed ups. So in STO terms, duty officer assignments have been added to the endeavor system. Available to players in this patch is a new officer: Epic William Riker, a new ship: the Meridian, an isogen mining vessel, fifteen new missions and more.

Bill, Chris, and Larry revisit the collecting week's news including Mezco, Hot Toys, Storm, and more. The spotlight figure this week is the Exo-6 Lt. Commander Data from Star Trek: First Contact.

Bill, Chris, and Larry revisit the collecting week's news including Mezco, Hot Toys, Storm, and more. The spotlight figure this week is the EXO-6 Lt. Commander Data from Star Trek: First Contact.

Captain Picard catches Data in a series of increasingly ridiculous lies. Join your fraudulent-wormhole-avoidant hosts as they discuss how this episode makes for an excellent introduction to the broader Star Trek universe, alternative strategies that may have more efficiently avoided endangering the crew, and another hilarious example of Captain Picard putting on a silly accent. Spoiler warning! We dive right into a detail-rich discussion of this episode, so if you haven't had a chance to see it yet – beware! Next week: We get shap-happy while discussing Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's "Move Along Home" - Allamaraine! Note that this and all episodes of the It's Got Star Trek podcast contain explicit language and, frankly, an unnecessary amount of offensive content, so the show is intended only for adults and really really cool kids. Check out the Feedspot list of Top 60 Star Trek Podcasts for 2021. Please utilize one of the following options if you have an interest in contacting your hosts: Email us at feedback@itsgotstartrek.com Twitter us @ItsGotStarTrek Instagramaphone us @ItsGotStarTrek Facebookify us @ItsGotStarTrek Watch a static image while listening to the podcast on YouTube Telephone us at 202-456-1414 You can also visit www.itsgotstartrek.com and leave a comment or head on over to the It's Got Everything subreddit to join the discussion. Don't say we didn't give you options here!

Positively Trek 105: Book Club: MetamorphosisMy Other Brother Darryl For all of his existence, Lt. Commander Data has had one wish: to be human. However, when he is finally presented with the chance, will he find that being flesh and blood is all it’s cracked up to be? The first “Giant Novel”! This week on the Positively Trek Book Club, hosts Bruce and Dan are talking about an early Star Trek: The Next Generation novel: Metamorphosis by Jean Lorrah. We discuss Data’s quest, his journey as a human, the mysterious Konor, Elysia’s “gods,” Data’s soul, and wrap up with our final thoughts and ratings for the novel. Show page: http://positivelytrek.libsyn.com/ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/positively-trek/id1501468628 Twitter: http://twitter.com/positivelytrek Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PositivelyTrek Help support the podcast! Go to https://www.patreon.com/positivelytrek to help out! Shatner Of The Mount by Fall On Your Sword - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU2ftCitvyQ Take a Chance by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4457-take-a-chance License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. STAR TREK and all related marks, logos and characters are owned by CBS Studios Inc. Positively Trek is not endorsed or sponsored by or affiliated with CBS/Paramount Pictures or the STAR TREK franchise.Hosts Dan GuntherBruce GibsonProduction Bruce Gibson (Editor and Producer)Dan Gunther (Producer)William Smith (Associate Producer)

Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Commander Data, Geordi LaForge, that big dummy Will T. Riker, First Contact, and Tom Hardy the Nemesis This week the guys are joined by the fabulous Mary for our first (definitely not last) Star Trek Episode! We discuss The Next Generation the show, all the “TNG” movies, a bit of the Kelvin universe and we even pay a slight homage to the original show. We breakdown where our love of Star Trek originated, why we still love it and why it is the best. We talk episodes we love, our favorite characters and some very confusing feelings initiated by the Borg Queen. So join us on this journey through space, the final frontier. Mary, cause she's awesome, has an amazing Crispy Gem recommendation. Tuck and Ryan, cause they are lazy, steal one recommendation from a listener so check it out! Check out https://tuckandrolls.ca/ Like the opening song? Check out: https://nationalsecuritycouncil.bandcamp.com/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/tucknrolls/message

Why Cobra Kai Season 4 Needs Mike Barnes and Julie Pierce. Cobra Kai has given us the best of felony-producing teenage (and adult) fights - that bear some credulity to be sure - and boasts a stunt double list that is more plentiful than Lt. Commander Data has positronic connections. But make no mistake, Cobra Kai is primarily focused on relationships and stories. My Podcast website. Tv theories by Bizhacks. https://bizhackspodcasts.wordpress.com/ --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/keith-detwiler/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/keith-detwiler/support

From engaging with "Commander Data" as a colleague, to future aggressors being machines like the Terminator, the Borg or Hal, the idea that computers will become more like humans and engage with us more naturally that a keyboard and mouse has generally been the area of science fiction.  But in some respects the reality is closer than we think, from the chatbot you use on a company Facebook page, to the experimentation that is going on to capture, not only what people think, but the way people think is very much on todays agenda.  This interview with David Burden, MD of Daden Ltd (https://www.daden.co.uk/) , and co-author of the book, Virtual Humans highlights the current development, but also a lot of the issues that have come to the surface as a result, including digital immortality and the ethics of using the data that is derived. The book and more information about the work that David and Maggie Savin-Baden have been doing can be found here: http://virtualhumansbook.blogspot.com/

From engaging with “Commander Data” as a colleague, to future aggressors being machines like the Terminator, the Borg or Hal, the idea that computers will become more like humans and…

Farewell, Commander Data. For real this time? Amy Rapeer presents 10 TV Characters Who Died In 2020...ENJOY!Follow us on Twitter:@AmyRapeer@WhatCultureFor more awesome content, check out: whatculture.com/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

2021 is here, and what better way to start off the year than with a data update? Where is commander after 2020, and what trends have shaped it over the past several years? Let's take a look! Want access to our Challenge the Stats spreadhseet, EDHRECast Discord, and more? You can support the cast on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/edhrecast Check out the EDH Wiki! https://edhwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page Follow the cast on Twitter: @EDHRECast @JosephMSchultz @danaroach @mathimus55

#CBS #StarTrek #Picard Episode 10 Review: Et in Arcadia Ego: Part 2 Star Trek Picard season 1 episode 10 is here. As the synthetics begin construction of a beacon to signal to the powerful extragalactic synthetic alliance, our misfit crew tries to find a way to save the galaxy. But how will they stop the Romulan fleet on the way to wipe out the budding synthetic civilization? What of Commander Data? Do Star Trek Picard and CBS land their starship gracefully? Find out on Nerd Talk's review of the Star Trek Picard season finale! For the full video version, check us out on YouTube! Links down below! Check out Nerd Talk's Twitter and Podcast: Video Version: https://youtu.be/bnHlg7wcuTI Twitter and Twitch: https://twitter.com/NerdTalkDan Instagram and TikTok: @nerd_talk_dan

On this episode Jeremy and Adam bring two of their favorite robotic television fathers to the ring. Its Cliff Steele from the Doom Patrol versus Lt. Commander Data from Star Trek the Next Generation.

Episode 8 Are the robots coming back for their jobs?  Science fiction has long-depicted robots as both human helpers and foils.  From Rosey on the Jetsons to Commander Data on Star Trek to the Terminator and even HAL, they can be a helper, a hero, or an anti-hero.  Charlie and Frank discuss the concept of robots and their role in our Digital Society. But can robots be employees?  You’ll hear about one company that has developed a “Digital Workforce” of call center agents that can be hired and fired on demand.  When one of us makes a mistake, you usually say, “well we’re only human.”  Can you say that about a robot? Articles mentioned: Automation Anywhere Introduces the New Digital Worker The Rise of Digital Worker Companies discussed: Inference Solutions

Una McCormack: The Last Best Hope. Since the debut of Star Trek: Picard earlier this year, fans have been enjoying the continued adventures of Jean-Luc Picard as he delves into the mystery of Dahj and Soji, the android daughters of his former shipmate, Lt. Commander Data. However, many things have changed since Star Trek Nemesis and the year in which Picard is set. How did we get from there to here? In this episode of Literary Treks, hosts Dan Gunther and Bruce Gibson welcome Una McCormack, author of Picard: The Last Best Hope to the show. We discuss the process of writing the novel, the social issues it deals with, the threat of the breakup of the Federation, the research led by Dr. Amal Safadi, the crew of Picard's new ship, the Verity, the revenge of the synths, a melancholy ending, and wrap up with what Una is currently working on and where she can be found online. In the news segment, we judge the upcoming Star Trek: Discovery: Die Standing by its cover and back-cover blurb, and report on the pending sale of Simon & Schuster. We also respond to feedback from The Babel Conference for Literary Treks 297: A Palm Punch with No Follow Through. News DIS: Die Standing Cover (00:02:57) ViacomCBS Selling Simon & Schuster (00:06:39) Listener Feedback (00:10:09) Feature: Una McCormack The Process (00:12:21) Social Issues (00:21:30) Federation Secession (00:26:21) Critical Findings Remain Secret (00:32:10) Admiral Picard (00:41:37) A Melancholy Ending (00:46:27) U.S.S. Verity Crew (00:52:40) Revenge of the Synths (00:57:03) Close to Canon (01:02:51) Hollow Men and More (01:04:57) Final Thoughts (01:08:17) Hosts Dan Gunther and Bruce Gibson Guest Una McCormack Production Bruce Gibson (Editor and Producer) Dan Gunther (Producer) C Bryan Jones (Executive Producer) Ken Tripp (Executive Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer) Ken Tripp (Associate Producer) Brandon-Shea Mutala (Associate Producer) Justin Oser (Associate Producer) Norman C. Lao (Associate Producer) Greg Rozier (Associate Producer) Jeffery Harlan (Associate Producer) Casey Pettitt (Associate Producer)

Una McCormack: The Last Best Hope. Since the debut of Star Trek: Picard earlier this year, fans have been enjoying the continued adventures of Jean-Luc Picard as he delves into the mystery of Dahj and Soji, the android daughters of his former shipmate, Lt. Commander Data. However, many things have changed since Star Trek Nemesis and the year in which Picard is set. How did we get from there to here? In this episode of Literary Treks, hosts Dan Gunther and Bruce Gibson welcome Una McCormack, author of Picard: The Last Best Hope to the show. We discuss the process of writing the novel, the social issues it deals with, the threat of the breakup of the Federation, the research led by Dr. Amal Safadi, the crew of Picard's new ship, the Verity, the revenge of the synths, a melancholy ending, and wrap up with what Una is currently working on and where she can be found online. In the news segment, we judge the upcoming Star Trek: Discovery: Die Standing by its cover and back-cover blurb, and report on the pending sale of Simon & Schuster. We also respond to feedback from The Babel Conference for Literary Treks 297: A Palm Punch with No Follow Through. News DIS: Die Standing Cover (00:02:57) ViacomCBS Selling Simon & Schuster (00:06:39) Listener Feedback (00:10:09) Feature: Una McCormack The Process (00:12:21) Social Issues (00:21:30) Federation Secession (00:26:21) Critical Findings Remain Secret (00:32:10) Admiral Picard (00:41:37) A Melancholy Ending (00:46:27) U.S.S. Verity Crew (00:52:40) Revenge of the Synths (00:57:03) Close to Canon (01:02:51) Hollow Men and More (01:04:57) Final Thoughts (01:08:17) Hosts Dan Gunther and Bruce Gibson Guest Una McCormack Production Bruce Gibson (Editor and Producer) Dan Gunther (Producer) C Bryan Jones (Executive Producer) Ken Tripp (Executive Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer) Ken Tripp (Associate Producer) Brandon-Shea Mutala (Associate Producer) Justin Oser (Associate Producer) Norman C. Lao (Associate Producer) Greg Rozier (Associate Producer) Jeffery Harlan (Associate Producer) Casey Pettitt (Associate Producer)

Picard - wenn Captain Jean-Luc Picard (endlich) zurück kehrt!Meine Güte war das spannend! Und ich spreche noch nicht mal von der endlich ersten Folge, die man seit dem 24. Januar endlich zu sehen bekommt. Ich bin immer noch bei der Vorgeschichte: von Netflix groß angekündigt, um dann plötzlich von amazon mit einem Ausstrahlungstermin versehen worden zu sein... wie geht denn bitte sowas? Ganz ehrlich? Total egal, die Wartezeit hat sich gelohnt: Jean-Luc, und damit Sir Patrick Steward, ist in seiner Glanzrolle zurück! Daher: SPOILERALERT! Star Trek mit Jean-Luc Picard, es geht weiter! / Bild-Quelle: amazon.deEintrag des Captains, Sternzeit 24. Januar 2020. Ein Datum, dass Seriengeschichte schreibt. Mit jungen 79 Jahren kehrt Sir Patrick Steward auf die Mattscheibe zurück, in seiner unangefochtenen Glanzrolle als Captain der Enterprise, Jean-Luc Picard. Und wer es noch sehen möchte, möge hier ENDEN! SPOILER-ALARM! Auch wenn uns Netflix die neuen Abenteuer bescheren wollte und sich amazon mit einem wohl Geld-technischen Geniestreich die Rechte dafür geschnappt hat, auch wenn es Streit um die Story und das Drehbuch um Vorfeld, es wäre alles nur geklaut - hey, hallo Hollywood! - gab und wir, Fans als auch "Neu-Trekkies" mit Spannung den 24.01. dunkelrot und unter Androhung von Urlaub im Kalender markiert hatten: Star Trek Picard geht los! Ich hätte es, dank Terminlage bis abends und einer Abenteuerfahrt im Mietwagen, bei dem durch Außentemperaturen im Minusbereich erste Zweifel an dem zugesagten Winterpaket kamen, fast noch "in time" für Mitternacht zur ersten Folge geschafft, wobei die Müdigkeit dann über Picards Rückkehr siegte. Die Spannung auf die Staffel am frühen Morgen und später im Flieger war dadurch nicht weniger getrübt. Aber: worum geht es nun? Wir befinden uns am Ende des 24. Jahrhunderts, die Menschheit existiert, aus heutiger Sicht verblüffend, immer noch und bewohnt die Erde. Allerdings sind wir, nicht zuletzt durch die Abenteuer des Raumschiff Enterprise, auf dem Picard sieben Staffeln der wohl charismatischste und zugleich diplomatischste Captain einer langen Saga war (friss Staub, James T. Kirk! dargestellt von William Shatner), mit einer ersten Begegnung in den Weltraum vorgedrungen und haben uns als Vermittler und Entdecker, als neutrale Forscher und neugierige Wesen auf andere Völker aber auch Verteidiger der Direktive sowie im Kampf als würdige Gegner hervor getan. Unser Captain ist als Admiral im Ruhestand, was er pfleglich betont, und seit 14 Jahren aus der Sternenflotte ausgeschieden. Und er lebt, verdient und seiner aus der Serie bekannten Vorliebe frönend, im Frankreich, wo er sein eigenes Weingut betreut. Das er seine aktive Zeit und die Sternenflotte vermisst, dafür muss man nicht mehr als ein paar Minuten zu Beginn gesehen und ein wenig die Anzahl von gleichfarbigen Karten in einem Kartenspiel verstanden haben. Das war es dann aber an sich schon, was wir von ihm erfahren, wäre da nicht das Interview, dass in eine andere Richtung geht und uns zum Beispiel den Tod von Commander Data offenbart. Und dass ein paar durchgedrehte Androiden wohl auch einen neuen Krieg angezettelt haben, der aus einer humanitären Umsiedlungsaktion ein Fiasko und somit den Rücktritt von Admiral Picard herauf bezwungen hat. Die special Effects von Technik und Szenen liegt auf gewohnt hohem Niveau und unterstreicht Erinnerungen als auch aktuelle Geschehnisse. Spannend wird es, als seine, nein, eine Tochter auftaucht. Die sich, nach tragischem Tod, gleich noch als Zwilling heraus stellt. Aber nicht einfach so, sondern geklont. Und es wäre nicht das fast 25. Jahrhundert, wäre es nicht ein geklonter Android, der nun tot und als zweites Duplikat irgendwo in der Galaxis unterwegs ist. Die Story ist kurzweilig und nimmt einen mit. Da Star Trek - The Next Generation, deren komplette sieben Staffeln wiederum auf Netflix zu finden sind, einige Zeit her ist, ist es hilfreich, hier nicht erstmalig einzusteigen. Die Erinnerung an das Staffelfinale ist lange her und was Data nun widerfahren ist oder was man sich selbst zusammen reimte, ist ein wenig verschwommen - aber genau darauf baut Picard als Serie nun gekonnt auf. Der Zuschauer wird, wenn auch mit langen Atem, da nun jeden Freitag eine neue Folge "live" geht und nicht die komplette Staffel zum Binge-Watching online gestellt wurde, durch die Geschehnisse geführt. Und, wie wir aus diversen Spoiler- und Sensationsmeldungs-YouTube-Videos wissen, kommt die alte Crew wohl größtenteils wieder zusammen. Auf jeden Fall scheint sich der Hype gelohnt zu haben: beim Aussteigen aus meinem Flug entstand mit mehreren Passagieren eine Diskussion über die Wertung der ersten Folge. Am Folgetag bei einem Fotoshooting wuchs für einen Teilnehmer des Termins minütlich die Vorfreude auf den Abend, da man sich endlich Picard ansehen konnte. Es scheint so, als wäre der Preisaufschlag, mit dem amazon Netflix Picard weggeschnappt hat, eine rentable Investition gewesen. Ich vergebe, nach der ersten Folge, zwei enthusiastisch erhobene Daumen: für die immer noch bedächtig charaktervolle Rolle, die nur Patrick Steward gerecht werden kann. Die Story, das Borg-Schiff, dass nicht von den Borg zu sein scheint und auch den Effekten, die nun 2020 in Full-HD auch die Nachbarn zwangsweise, und sei es nur zum mithören, bringen. Möge die nächste Folge und der kommende Freitag sich nicht all zu lange auf sich warten lassen! Energie! Meinen PodCast abonnieren: | direkt | iTunes | Spotify | Google |

[This is the text of a lecture that I delivered at Tilburg University on the 24th of September 2019. It was delivered as part of the 25th Anniversary celebrations for TILT (Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society). My friend and colleague Sven Nyholm was the discussant for the evening. The lecture is based on my longer academic article ‘Welcoming Robots into the Moral Circle: A Defence of Ethical Behaviourism’ but was written from scratch and presents some key arguments in a snappier and clearer form. I also include a follow up section responding to criticisms from the audience on the evening of the lecture. My thanks to all those involved in organizing the event (Aviva de Groot, Merel Noorman and Silvia de Conca in particular). You can download an audio version of this lecture, minus the reflections and follow ups, here or listen to it above]1. IntroductionMy lecture this evening will be about the conditions under which we should welcome robots into our moral communities. Whenever I talk about this, I am struck by how much my academic career has come to depend upon my misspent youth for its inspiration. Like many others, I was obsessed with science fiction as a child, and in particular with the representation of robots in science fiction. I had two favourite, fictional, robots. The first was R2D2 from the original Star Wars trilogy. The second was Commander Data from Star Trek: the Next Generation. I liked R2D2 because of his* personality - courageous, playful, disdainful of authority - and I liked Data because the writers of Star Trek used him as a vehicle for exploring some important philosophical questions about emotion, humour, and what it means to be human.In fact, I have to confess that Data has had an outsized influence on my philosophical imagination and has featured in several of my academic papers. Part of the reason for this was practical. When I grew up in Ireland we didn’t have many options to choose from when it came to TV. We had to make do with what was available and, as luck would have it, Star Trek: TNG was on every day when I came home from school. As a result, I must have watched each episode of its 7-season run multiple times.One episode in particular has always stayed with me. It was called ‘Measure of a Man’. In it, a scientist from the Federation visits the Enterprise because he wants to take Data back to his lab to study him. Data, you see, is a sophisticated human-like android, created by a lone scientific genius, under somewhat dubious conditions. The Federation scientist wants to take Data apart and see how he works with a view to building others like him. Data, unsurprisingly, objects. He argues that he is not just a machine or piece of property that can be traded and disassembled to suit the whims of human beings. He has his own, independent moral standing. He deserves to be treated with dignity.But how does Data prove his case? A trial ensues and evidence is given on both sides. The prosecution argue that Data is clearly just a piece of property. He was created not born. He doesn’t think or see the world like a normal human being (or, indeed, other alien species). He even has an ‘off switch’. Data counters by giving evidence of the rich relationships he has formed with his fellow crew members and eliciting testimony from others regarding his behaviour and the interactions they have with him. Ultimately, he wins the case. The court accepts that he has moral standing.Now, we can certainly lament the impact that science fiction has on the philosophical debate about robots. As David Gunkel observes in his 2018 book Robot Rights:“[S]cience fiction already — and well in advance of actual engineering practice — has established expectations for what a robot is or can be. Even before engineers have sought to develop working prototypes, writers, artists, and filmmakers have imagined what robots do or can do, what configurations they might take, and what problems they could produce for human individuals and communities.”  (Gunkel 2018, 16)He continues, noting that this is a “potential liability” because:“science fiction, it is argued, often produces unrealistic expectations for and irrational fears about robots that are not grounded in or informed by actual science.” (Gunkel 2018, 18)I certainly heed this warning. But, nevertheless, I think the approach taken by the TNG writers in the episode ‘Measure of a Man’ is fundamentally correct. Even if we cannot currently create a being like Data, and even if the speculation is well in advance of the science, they still give us the correct guide to resolving the philosophical question of when to welcome robots into our moral community. Or so, at least, I shall argue in the remainder of this lecture.2. Tribalism and Conflict in Robot EthicsBefore I get into my own argument, let me say something about the current lay of the land when it comes to this issue. Some of you might be familiar with the famous study by the social psychologist Muzafer Sherif. It was done in the early 1950s at a summer camp in Robber’s Cave, Oklahoma. Suffice to say, it is one of those studies that wouldn’t get ethics approval nowadays. Sherif and his colleagues were interested in tribalism and conflict. They wanted to see how easy it would be to get two groups of 11-year old boys to divide into separate tribes and go to war with one another. It turned out to be surprisingly easy. By arbitrarily separating the boys into two groups, giving them nominal group identity (the ‘Rattlers’ and the ‘Eagles’), and putting them into competition with each other, Sherif and his research assistants sowed the seeds for bitter and repeated conflict.The study has become a classic, repeatedly cited as evidence of how easy it is for humans to get trapped in intransigent group conflicts. I mention it here because, unfortunately, it seems to capture what has happened with the debate about the potential moral standing of robots. The disputants have settled into two tribes. There are those that are ‘anti’ the idea; and there are those that are ‘pro’ the idea. The members of these tribes sometimes get into heated arguments with one another, particularly on Twitter (which, admittedly, is a bit like a digital equivalent of Sherif’s summer camp).Those that are ‘anti’ the idea would include Noel Sharkey, Amanda Sharkey, Deborah Johnson, Aimee van Wynsberghe and the most recent lecturer in this series, Joanna Bryson. They cite a variety of reasons for their opposition. The Sharkeys, I suspect, think the whole debate is slightly ridiculous because current robots clearly lack the capacity for moral standing, and debating their moral standing distracts from the important issues in robot ethics - namely stopping the creation and use of robots that are harmful to human well-being. Deborah Johnson would argue that since robots can never experience pain or suffering they will never have moral standing. Van Wynsberghe and Bryson are maybe a little different and lean more heavily on the idea that even if it were possible to create robots with moral standing — a possibility that Bryson at least is willing to concede — it would be a very bad idea to do so because it would cause considerable moral and legal disruption.Those that are pro the idea would include Kate Darling, Mark Coeckelbergh, David Gunkel, Erica Neely, and Daniel Estrada. Again, they cite a variety of reasons for their views. Darling is probably the weakest on the pro side. She focuses on humans and thinks that even if robots themselves lack moral standing we should treat them as if they had moral standing because that would be better for us. Coeckelbergh and Gunkel are more provocative, arguing that in settling questions of moral standing we should focus less on the intrinsic capacities of robots and more on how we relate to them. If those relations are thick and meaningful, then perhaps we should accept that robots have moral standing. Erica Neely proceeds from a principle of moral precaution, arguing that even if we are unsure of the moral standing of robots we should err on the side of over-inclusivity rather than under-inclusivity when it comes to this issue: it is much worse to exclude a being with moral standing to include one without. Estrada is almost the polar opposite of Bryson, welcoming the moral and legal disruption that embracing robots would entail because it would loosen the stranglehold of humanism on our ethical code.To be clear, this is just a small sample of those who have expressed an opinion about this topic. There are many others that I just don’t have time to discuss. I should, however, say something here about this evening’s discussant, Sven and his views on the matter. I had the fortune of reading a manuscript of Sven’s forthcoming book Humans, Robots and Ethics. It is an excellent and entertaining contribution to the field of robot ethics and in it Sven shares his own views on the moral standing of robots. I’m sure he will explain them later on but, for the time being, I would tentatively place him somewhere near Kate Darling on this map: he thinks we should be open to the idea of treating robots as if they had moral standing, but not because of what the robots themselves are but because of what respecting them says about our attitudes to other humans.And what of myself? Where do I fit in all of this? People would probably classify me as belonging to the pro side. I have argued that we should be open to the idea that robots have moral standing. But I would much prefer to transcend this tribalistic approach to the issue. I am not advocate for the moral standing of robots. I think many of the concerns raised by those on the anti side are valid. Debating the moral standing of robots can seem, at times, ridiculous and a distraction from other important questions in robot ethics; and accepting them into our moral communities will, undoubtedly, lead to some legal and moral disruption (though I would add that not all disruption is a bad thing). That said, I do care about the principles we should use to decide questions of moral standing, and I think that those on the anti of the debate sometimes use bad arguments to support their views. This is why, in the remainder of this lecture, I will defend a particular approach to settling the question of the moral standing of robots. I do so in the hope that this can pave the way to a more fruitful and less tribalistic debate.In this sense, I am trying to return to what may be the true lesson of Sherif’s famous experiment on tribalism. In her fascinating book The Lost Boys: Inside Muzafer Sherif’s Robbers Cave Experiment, Gina Perry has revealed the hidden history behind Sherif’s work. It turns out that Sherif tried to conduct the exact same experiment as he did in Robber’s Cave one year before in Middle Grove, New York. It didn’t work out. No matter what the experimenters did to encourage conflict, the boys refused to get sucked into it. Why was this? One suggestion is that at Middle Grove, Sherif didn’t sort the boys into two arbitrary groups as soon as they arrived. They were given the chance to mingle and get to know one another before being segregated. This initial intermingling may have inoculated them from tribalism. Perhaps we can do the same thing with philosophical dialogue? I live in hope.3. In Defence of Ethical BehaviourismThe position I wish to defend is something I call ‘ethical behaviourism’. According to this view, the behavioural representations of another entity toward you are a sufficient ground for determining their moral status. Or, to put it slightly differently, how an entity looks and acts is enough to determine its moral status. If it looks and acts like a duck, then you should probably treat it like you treat any other duck.Ethical behaviourism works through comparisons. If you are unsure of the moral status of a particular entity — for present purposes this will be a robot but it should be noted that ethical behaviourism has broader implications — then you should compare its behaviours to that of another entity that is already agreed to have moral status — a human or an animal. If the robot is roughly performatively equivalent to that other entity, then it too has moral status. I say “roughly” since no two entities are ever perfectly equivalent. If you compared two adult human beings you would spot performative differences between them, but this wouldn’t mean that one of them lacks moral standing as a result. The equivalence test is an inexact one, not an exact one.There is nothing novel in ethical behaviourism. It is, in effect, just a moral variation of the famous Turing Test for machine intelligence. Where Turing argued that we should assess intelligence on the basis of behaviour, I am arguing that we should determine moral standing on the basis of behaviour. It is also not a view that is original to me. Others have defended similar views, even if they haven’t explicitly labelled it as such.Despite the lack of novelty, ethical behaviourism is easily misunderstood and frequently derided. So let me just clarify a couple of points. First, note that it is a practical and epistemic thesis about how we can settle questions of moral standing; it is not an abstract metaphysical thesis about what it is that grounds moral standing. So, for example, someone could argue that the capacity to feel pain is the metaphysical grounding for moral status and that this capacity depends on having a certain mental apparatus. The ethical behaviourist can agree with this. They will just argue that the best evidence we have for determining whether an entity has the capacity to feel pain is behavioural. Furthermore, ethical behaviourism is agnostic about the broader consequences of its comparative tests. To say that one entity should have the same moral standing as another entity does not mean both are entitled to a full set of legal and moral rights. That depends on other considerations. A goat could have moral standing, but that doesn’t mean it has the right to own property. This is important because when I am arguing that we should apply this approach to robots and I am not thereby endorsing a broader claim that we should grant robots legal rights or treat them like adult human beings. This depends on who or what the robots is being compared to.So what’s the argument for ethical behaviourism? I have offered different formulations of this but for this evening’s lecture I suggest that it consists of three key propositions or premises.(P1) The most popular criteria for moral status are dependent on mental states or capacities, e.g. theories focused on sentience, consciousness, having interests, agency, and personhood.(P2) The best evidence — and oftentimes the only practicable evidence — for the satisfaction of these criteria is behavioural.(P3) Alternative alleged grounds of moral status or criteria for determining moral status either fail to trump or dislodge the sufficiency of the behavioural evidence.Therefore, ethical behaviourism is correct: behaviour provides a sufficient basis for settling questions of moral status.I take it that the first premise of this argument is uncontroversial. Even if you think there are other grounds for moral status, I suspect you agree that an entity with sentience or consciousness (etc) has some kind of moral standing. The second premise is more controversial but is, I think, undeniable. It’s a trite observation but I will make it anyway: We don’t have direct access to one another’s minds. I cannot crawl inside your head and see if you really are experiencing pain or suffering. The only thing I have to go on is how you behave and react to the world. This is true, by the way, even if I can scan your brain and see whether the pain-perceiving part of it lights up. This is because the only basis we have for verifying the correlations between functional activity in the brain and mental states is behavioural. What I mean is that scientists ultimately verify those correlations by asking people in the brain scanners what they are feeling. So all premise (2) is saying is that if the most popular theories of moral status are to work in practice, it can only be because we use behavioural evidence to guide their application.That brings us to premise (3): that all other criteria fail to dislodge the importance of behavioural evidence. This is the most controversial one. Many people seem to passionately believe that there are other ways of determining moral status and indeed they argue that relying on behavioural evidence would be absurd. Consider these two recent Twitter comments on an article I wrote about ethical behaviourism and how it relates to animals and robots:First comment: “[This is] Errant #behaviorist #materialist nonsense…Robots are inanimate even if they imitate animal behavior. They don’t want or care about anything. But knock yourself out. Put your toaster in jail if it burns your toast.”Second comment: “If I give a hammer a friendly face so some people feel emotionally attached to it, it still remains a tool #AnthropomorphicFallacy”These are strong statements, but they are not unusual. I encounter this kind of criticism quite frequently. But why? Why are people so resistant to ethical behaviourism? Why do they think that there must be something more to how we determine moral status? Let’s consider some of the most popular objections.4. Objections and RepliesIn a recent paper, I suggested that there were seven (more, depending on how you count) major objections to ethical behaviourism. I won’t review all seven here, but I will consider four of the most popular ones. Each of these objections should be understood as an attempt to argue that behavioural evidence by itself cannot suffice for determining moral standing. Other evidence matters as well and can ‘defeat’ the behavioural evidence.(A) The Material Cause ObjectionThe first objection is that the ontology of an entity makes a difference to its moral standing. To adopt the Aristotelian language, we can say that the material cause of an entity (i.e. what it is made up of) matters more than behaviour when it comes to moral standing. So, for example, someone could argue that robots lack moral standing because they are not biological creatures. They are not made from the same ‘wet’ organic components as human beings or animals. Even if they are performatively equivalent to human beings or animals, this ontological difference scuppers any claim they might have to moral standing.I find this objection unpersuasive. It smacks to me of biological mysterianism. Why exactly does being made of particular organic material make such a crucial difference? Imagine if your spouse, the person you live with everyday, was suddenly revealed to be an alien from the Andromeda galaxy. Scientists conduct careful tests and determine that they are not a carbon-based lifeform. They are made from something different, perhaps silicon. Despite this, they still look and act in the same way as they always have (albeit now with some explaining to do). Would the fact that they are made of different stuff mean that they no longer warrant any moral standing in your eyes? Surely not. Surely the behavioural evidence suggesting that they still care about you and still have the mental capacities you used to associate with moral standing would trump the new evidence you have regarding their ontology. I know non-philosophers dislike thought experiments of this sort, finding them to be slightly ridiculous and far-fetched. Nevertheless, I do think they are vital in this context because they suggest that behaviour does all the heavy lifting when it comes to assessing moral standing. In other words, behaviour matters more than matter. This is also, incidentally, one reason why it is wrong to say that ethical behaviourism is a ‘materialist’ view: ethical behaviourism is actually agnostic regarding the ontological instantiation of the capacities that ground moral status; it is concerned only with the evidence that is sufficient for determining their presence.All that said, I am willing to make one major concession to the material cause objection. I will concede that ontology might provide an alternative, independent ground for determining the moral status of an entity. Thus, we might accept that an entity that is made from the right biological stuff has moral standing, even if they lack the behavioural sophistication we usually require for moral standing. So, for example someone in a permanent coma might have moral standing because of what they are made of, and not because of what they can do. Still, all this shows is that being made of the right stuff is an independent sufficient ground for moral standing, not that it is a necessary ground for moral standing. The latter is what would need to be proved to undermine ethical behaviourism.(B) The Efficient Cause ObjectionThe second objection is that how an entity comes into existence makes a difference to its moral standing. To continue the Aristotelian theme, we can say that the efficient cause of existence is more important than the unfolding reality. This is an objection that the philosopher Michael Hauskeller hints at in his work. Hauskeller doesn’t focus on moral standing per se, but does focus on when we can be confident that another entity cares for us or loves us. He concedes that behaviour seems like the most important thing when addressing this issue — what else could caring be apart from caring behaviour? — but then resiles from this by arguing that how the being came into existence can undercut the behavioural evidence. So, for example, a robot might act as if it cares about you, but when you learn that the robot was created and manufactured by a team of humans to act as if it cares for you, then you have reason to doubt the sincerity of its behaviour.It could be that what Hauskeller is getting at here is that behavioural evidence can often be deceptive and misleading. If so, I will deal with this concern in a moment. But it could also be that he thinks that the mere fact that a robot was programmed and manufactured, as opposed to being evolved and developed, makes a crucial difference to moral standing. If that is what he is claiming, then it is hard to see why we should take it seriously. Again, imagine if your spouse told you that they were not conceived and raised in the normal way. They were genetically engineered in a lab and then carefully trained and educated. Having learned this, would you take a new view of their moral standing? Surely not. Surely, once again, how they actually behave towards you — and not how they came into existence — would be what ultimately mattered. We didn’t deny the first in vitro baby moral standing simply because she came into existence in a different way from ordinary human beings. The same principle should apply to robots.Furthermore, if this is what Hauskeller is arguing, it would provide us with an unstable basis on which to make crucial judgments of moral standing. After all, the differences between humans and robots with respect to their efficient causes is starting to breakdown. Increasingly, robots are not being programmed and manufactured from the top-down to follow specific rules. They are instead given learning algorithms and then trained on different datasets with the process sometimes being explicitly modeled on evolution and childhood development. Similarly, humans are increasingly being designed and programmed from the top down, through artificial reproduction, embryo selection and, soon, genetic engineering. You may object to all this tinkering with the natural processes of human development and conception. But I think you would be hard pressed to deny a human that came into existence as a result of these process the moral standing you ordinarily give to other human beings.(C) The Final Cause ObjectionThe third objection is that the purposes an entity serves and how it is expected to fulfil those purposes makes a difference to its moral standing. This is an objection that Joanna Bryson favours in her work. In several papers, she has argued that because robots will be designed to fulfil certain purposes on our behalf (i.e. they will be designed to serve us) and because they will be owned and controlled by us in the process, they should not have moral standing. Now, to be fair, Bryson is more open to the possibility of robot moral standing than most. She has said, on several occasions, that it is possible to create robots that have moral standing. She just thinks that that this should not happen, in part because they will be owned and controlled by us, and because they will be (and perhaps should be) designed to serve our ends.I don’t think there is anything in this that dislodges or upsets ethical behaviourism. For one thing, I find it hard to believe that the fact that an entity has been designed to fulfil a certain purpose should make a crucial difference to its moral standing. Suppose, in the future, human parents can genetically engineer their offspring to fulfil certain specific ends. For example, they can select genes that will guarantee (with the right training regime) that their child will be a successful athlete (this is actually not that dissimilar to what some parents try to do nowadays). Suppose they succeed. Would this fact alone undermine the child’s claim to moral standing? Surely not, and surely the same standard should apply to a robot. If it is performatively equivalent to another entity with moral standing, then the mere fact that it has been designed to fulfil a specific purpose should not affect its moral standing.Related to this, it is hard to see why the fact that we might own and control robots should make a critical difference to their moral standing. If anything, this inverts the proper order of moral justification. The fact that a robot looks and acts like another entity that we believe to have moral standing should cause us to question our approach to ownership and control, not vice versa. We once thought it was okay for humans to own and control other humans. We were wrong to think this because it ignored the moral standing of those other humans.That said, there are nuances here. Many people think that animals have some moral standing (i.e. that we need to respect their welfare and well-being) but that it is not wrong to own them or attempt to control them. The same approach might apply to robots if they are being compared to animals. This is the crucial point about ethical behaviourism: the ethical consequences of accepting that a robot is performatively equivalent to another entity with moral standing depends, crucially, on who or what that other entity is.(D) The Deception ObjectionThe fourth objection is that ethical behaviourism cannot work because it is too easy to be deceived by behavioural cues. A robot might look and act like it is in pain, but this could just be a clever trick, used by its manufacturer, to foster false sympathy. This is, probably, the most important criticism of ethical behaviourism. It is what I think lurks behind the claim that ethical behaviourism is absurd and must be resisted.It is well-known that humans have a tendency toward hasty anthropomorphism. That is, we tend to ascribe human-like qualities to features of our environment without proper justification. We anthropomorphise the weather, our computers, the trees and the plants, and so forth. It is easy to ‘hack’ this tendency toward hasty anthropomorphism. As social roboticists know, putting a pair of eyes on a robot can completely change how a human interacts with it, even if the robot cannot see anything. People worry, consequently, that ethical behaviourism is easily exploited by nefarious technology companies.I sympathise with the fear that motivates this objection. It is definitely true that behaviour can be misleading or deceptive. We are often misled by the behaviour of our fellow humans. To quote Shakespeare, someone can ‘smile and smile and be a villain’. But what is the significance of this fact when it comes to assessing moral status? To me, the significance is that it means we should be very careful when assessing the behavioural evidence that is used to support a claim about moral status. We shouldn’t extrapolate too quickly from one behaviour. If a robot looks and acts like it is in pain (say) that might provide some warrant for thinking it has moral status, but we should examine its behavioural repertoire in more detail. It might emerge that other behaviours are inconsistent with the hypothesis that it feels pain or suffering.The point here, however, is that we are always using other behavioural evidence to determine whether the initial behavioural evidence was deceptive or misleading. We are not relying on some other kind of information. Thus, for example, I think it would be a mistake to conclude that a robot cannot feel pain, even though it performs as if it does, because the manufacturer of the robot tells us that it was programmed to do this, or because some computer engineer can point to some lines of code that are responsible for the pain performance. That evidence by itself — in the absence of other countervailing behavioural evidence — cannot undermine the behavioural evidence suggesting that the robot does feel pain. Think about it like this: imagine if a biologist came to you and told you that evolution had programmed the pain response into humans in order to elicit sympathy from fellow humans. What’s more, imagine if a neuroscientist came to you and and told you she could point to the exact circuit in the brain that is responsible for the human pain performance (and maybe even intervene in and disrupt it). What they say may well be true, but it wouldn’t mean that the behavioural evidence suggesting that your fellow humans are in pain can be ignored.This last point is really the crucial bit. This is what is most distinctive about the perspective of ethical behaviourism. The tendency to misunderstand it, ignore it, or skirt around it, is why I think many people on the ‘anti’ side of the debate make bad arguments.5. Implications and ConclusionsThat’s all I will say in defence of ethical behaviourism this evening. Let me conclude by addressing some of its implications and heading off some potential misunderstandings.First, let me re-emphasise that ethical behaviourism is about the principles we should apply when assessing the moral standing of robots. In defending it, I am not claiming that robots currently have moral standing or, indeed, that they will ever have moral standing. I think this is possible, indeed probable, but I could be wrong. The devil is going to be in the detail of the behavioural tests we apply (just as it is with the Turing test for intelligence).Second, there is nothing in ethical behaviourism that suggests that we ought to create robots that cross the performative threshold to moral standing. It could be, as people like Bryson and Van Wysnberghe argue, that this is a very bad idea: that it will be too disruptive of existing moral and legal norms. What ethical behaviourism does suggest, however, is that there is an ethical weight to the decision to create human-like and animal-like robots that may be underappreciated by robot manufacturers.Third, acknowledging the potential risks, there are also potential benefits to creating robots that cross the performative threshold. Ethical behaviourism can help to reveal a value to relationships with robots that is otherwise hidden. If I am right, then robots can be genuine objects of moral affection, friendship and love, under the right conditions. In other words, just as there are ethical risks to creating human-like and animal-like robots, there are also ethical rewards and these tend to be ignored, ridiculed or sidelined in the current debate.Fourth, and related to this previous point, the performative threshold that robots have to cross in order to unlock the different kinds of value might vary quite a bit. The performative threshold needed to attain basic moral standing might be quite low; the performative threshold needed to say that a robot can be a friend or a partner might be substantially higher. A robot might have to do relatively little to convince us that it should be treated with moral consideration, but it might have to do a lot to convince us that it is our friend.These are topics that I have explored in greater detail in some of my papers, but they are also topics that Sven has explored at considerable length. Indeed, several chapters of his forthcoming book are dedicated to them. So, on that note, it is probably time for me to shut up and hand over to him and see what he has to say about all of this.Reflections and Follow Ups After I delivered the above lecture, my colleague and friend Sven Nyholm gave a response and there were some questions and challenges from the audience. I cannot remember every question that was raised, but I thought I would respond to a few that I can remember.1. The Randomisation CounterexampleOne audience member (it was Nathan Wildman) presented an interesting counterexample to my claim that other kinds of evidence don’t defeat or undermine the behavioural evidence for moral status. He argued that we could cook-up a possible scenario in which our knowledge of the origins of certain behaviours did cause us to question whether it was sufficient for moral status.He gave the example of a chatbot that was programmed using a randomisation technique. The chatbot would generate text at random (perhaps based on some source dataset). Most of the time the text is gobbledygook but on maybe one occasion it just happens to have a perfectly intelligible conversation with you. In other words, whatever is churned out by the randomisation algorithm happens to perfectly coincide with what would be intelligible in that context (like picking up a meaningful book in Borges’s Library of Babel). This might initially cause you to think it has some significant moral status, but if the computer programmer came along and told you about the randomisation process underlying the programming you would surely change your opinion. So, on this occasion, it looks like information about the causal origins of the behaviour, makes a difference to moral status.Response: This is a clever counterexample but I think it overlooks two critical points. First, it overlooks the point I make about avoiding hasty anthropomorphisation towards the end of my lecture. I think we shouldn’t extrapolate too much from just one interaction with a robot. We should conduct a more thorough investigation of the robot’s (or in this case the chatbot’s) behaviours. If the intelligible conversation was just a one-off, then we will quickly be disabused of our belief that it has moral status. But if it turns out that the intelligible conversation was not a one-off, then I don’t think the evidence regarding the randomisation process would have any such effect. The computer programmer could shout and scream as much as he/she likes about the randomisation algorithm, but I don’t think this would suffice to undermine the consistent behavioural evidence. This links to a second, and perhaps deeper metaphysical point I would like to make: we don’t really know what the true material instantiation of the mind is (if it is indeed material). We think the brain and its functional activity is pretty important, but we will probably never have a fully satisfactory theory of the relationship between matter and mind. This is the core of the hard problem of consciousness. Given this, it doesn’t seem wise or appropriate to discount the moral status of this hypothetical robot just because it is built on a randomisation algorithm. Indeed, if such a robot existed, it might give us reason to think that randomisation was one of the ways in which a mind could be functionally instantiated in the real world.I should say that this response ignores the role of moral precaution in assessing moral standing. If you add a principle of moral precaution to the mix, then it may be wrong to favour a more thorough behavioural test. This is something I discuss a bit in my article on ethical behaviourism.2. The Argument confuses how we know X is valuable with what makes X actually valuableOne point that Sven stressed in his response, and which he makes elsewhere too, is that my argument elides or confuses two separate things: (i) how we know whether something is of value and (ii) what it is that makes it valuable. Another way of putting it: I provide a decision-procedure for deciding who or what has moral status but I don’t thereby specify what it is that makes them have moral status. It could be that the capacity to feel pain is what makes someone have moral standing and that we know someone feels pain through their behaviour, but this doesn’t mean that they have moral standing because of their behaviour.Response: This is probably a fair point. I may on occasion elide these two things. But my feeling is that this is a ‘feature’ rather than a ‘bug’ in my account. I’m concerned with how we practically assess and apply principles of moral standing in the real world, and not so much with what it is that metaphysically undergirds moral standing.3. Proxies for Behaviour versus Proxies for MindAnother comment (and I apologise for not remembering who gave it) is that on my theory behaviour is important but only because it is a proxy for something else, namely some set of mental states or capacities. This is similar to the point Sven is making in his criticism. If that’s right, then I am wrong to assume that behaviour is the only (or indeed the most important) proxy for mental states. Other kinds of evidence serve as proxies for mental states. The example was given of legal trials where the prosecution is trying to prove what the mental status of the defendant was at the time of an offence. They don’t just rely on behavioural evidence. They also rely on other kinds of forensic evidence to establish this.Response: I don’t think this is true and this gets to a deep feature of my theory. To take the criminal trial example, I don’t think it is true to say that we use other kinds of evidence as proxies for mental states. I think we use them as proxies for behaviour which we then use as proxies for mental states. In other words, the actual order of inference goes:Other evidence → behaviour → mental stateAnd not:Other evidence → mental stateThis is the point I was getting at in my talk when I spoke about how we make inferences from functional brain activity to mental state. I believe what happens when we draw a link between brain activity and mental state, what we are really doing is this:Brain state → behaviour → mental stateAnd notBrain state → mental state.Now, it is, of course, true to say that sometimes scientists think we can make this second kind of inference. For example, purveyors of brain based lie detection tests (and, indeed, other kinds of lie detection test) try to draw a direct line of inference from a brain state to a mental state, but I would argue that this is only because they have previously verified their testing protocol by following the “brain state → behaviour → mental state” route and confirming that it is reliable across multiple tests. This gives them the confidence to drop the middle step on some occasions, but ultimately this is all warranted (if it is, in fact, warranted – brain-based lie detection is controversial) because the scientists first took the behavioural step. To undermine my view, you would have to show that it is possible to cut out the behavioural step in this inference pattern. I don’t think this can be done, but perhaps I can be proved wrong.This is perhaps the most metaphysical aspect of my view.4. Default Settings and PracticalitiesAnother point that came up in conversation with Sven, Merel Noorman and Silvia de Conca, had to do with the default assumptions we are likely to have when dealing with robots and how this impacts on the practicalities of robots being accepting into the moral circle. In other words, even if I am right in some abstract, philosophical sense, will anyone actually follow the behavioural test I advocate? Won’t there be a lot of resistance to it in reality?Now, as I mentioned in my lecture, I am not an activist for robot rights or anything of the sort. I am interested in the general principles we should apply when settling questions of moral status; not with whether a particular being, such as a robot, has acquired moral status. That said, implicit views about the practicalities of applying the ethical behaviourist test may play an important role in some of the arguments I am making.One example of this has to do with the ‘default’ assumption we have when interpreting the behaviour of humans/animals vis-à-vis robots. We tend to approach humans and animals with an attitude of good faith, i.e. we assume their each of their outward behaviours is a sincere representation of their inner state of mind. It’s only if we receive contrary evidence that we will start to doubt the sincerity of the behaviour.But what default assumption do we have when confronting robots? It seems plausible to suggest that most people will approach them with an attitude of bad faith. They will assume that their behaviours are representative of nothing at all and will need a lot of evidence to convince them that they should be granted some weight. This suggests that (a) not all behavioural evidence is counted equally and (b) it might be very difficult, in practice, for robots to be accepted into the moral circle. #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; } /* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */ Response: I don’t see this as a criticism of ethical behaviourism but, rather, a warning to anyone who wishes to promote it. In other words, I accept that people will resist ethical behaviourism and may treat robots with greater suspicion than human or animal agents. One of the key points of this lecture and the longer academic article I wrote about the topic was to address this suspicion and skepticism. Nevertheless, the fact that there may be these practical difficulties does not mean that ethical behaviourism is incorrect. In this respect, it is worth noting that Turing was acutely aware of this problem when he originally formulated his 'Imitation Game' test. The reason why the test was purely text-based in its original form was to prevent human-centric biases affecting its operation.5. Ethical Mechanicism vs Ethical Behaviourism After I posted this article, Natesh Ganesh posted a critique of my handling of the deception objection on Twitter. He made two interesting points. First, he argued that the thought experiment I used to dismiss the deception objection was misleading and circular. If a scientist revealed the mechanisms underlying my own pain performances I would have no reason to doubt that the pain was genuine since I already know that someone with my kind of neural circuitry can experience pain. If they revealed the mechanisms underlying a robot’s pain performances things would be different because I do not yet have a reason to think that a being with that kind of mechanism can experience genuine pain. As a result, the thought experiment is circular because only somebody who already accepted ethical behaviourism would be so dismissive of the mechanistic evidence. Here’s how Natesh expresses the point:“the analogy in the last part [the response to the deception objection] seems flawed. Showing me the mechanisms of pain in entities (like humans) who we share similar mechanisms with & agree have moral standing is different from showing me the mechanisms of entities (like robots) whose moral standing we are trying to determine. Denying experience of pain in the 1st simply because I now know the circuitry would imply denying your own pain & hence moral standing. But accepting/ denying the 2nd if its a piece of code implicitly depends on whether you already accept/deny ethical behaviorism. It is just circular to appeal to that example as evidence.”He then follows up with a second point (implicit in what was just said) about the importance of mechanical similarities between entities when it comes to assessing moral standing:“I for one am more likely to [believe] a robot can experience pain if it shows the behavior & the manufacturer opened it up & showed me the circuitry and if that was similar to my own (different material perhaps) I am more likely to accept the robot experiences pain. In this case once again I needed machinery on top of behavior.”What I would say here, is that Natesh, although not completely dismissive of the importance of behaviour to assessing moral standing, is a fan of ethical mechanicism, and not ethical behaviourism. He thinks you must have mechanical similarity (equivalence?) before you can conclude that two entities share moral standing.Response: On the charge of circularity, I don’t think this is quite fair. The thought experiment I propose when responding to the deception objection is, like all thought experiments, intended to be an intuition pump. The goal is to imagine a situation in which you could describe and intervene in the mechanical underpinning of a pain performance with great precision (be it a human pain performance or otherwise) and ask whether the mere fact that you could describe the mechanism in detail or intervene in it would be make a difference to the entity’s moral standing. My intuitions suggest it wouldn’t make a difference, irrespective of the details of the mechanism (this is the point I make, above, in relation to the example given by Nathan Wildman about the robot whose behaviour is the result of a random-number generator programme). Perhaps other people’s intuitions are pumped in a different direction. That can happen but it doesn’t mean the thought experiment is circular.What about the importance of mechanisms in addition to behaviour? This is something I address in more detail in the academic paper. I have two thoughts about it. First, I could just bite the bullet and agree that the underlying mechanisms must be similar too. This would just add an additional similarity test to the assessment of moral status. There would then be similar questions as to how similar the mechanisms must be. Is it enough if they are, roughly, functionally similar or must they have the exact same sub-components and processes? If the former, then it still seems possible in principle for roboticists to create a functionally similar underlying mechanism and this could then ground moral standing for robots.Second, despite this, I would still push back against the claim that similar underlying mechanisms are necessary. This strikes me as being just a conservative prejudgment rather than a good reason for denying moral status to behaviourally equivalent entities. Why are we so confident that only entities with our neurological mechanisms (or something very similar) can experience pain (or instantiate the other mental properties relevant to moral standing)? Or, to put it less controversially, why should we be so confident that mechanical similarity undercuts behavioural similarity? If there is an entity that looks and acts like it is in pain (or has interests, a sense of personhood, agency etc), and all the behavioural tests confirm this, then why deny it moral standing because of some mechanical differences?Part of the resistance here could be that people are confusing two different claims:Claim 1: it is impossible (physically, metaphysically) for an entity that lacks sufficient mechanical similarity (with humans/animals) to have the behavioural sophistication we associate with experiencing pain, having agency etc.Claim 2: an entity that has the behavioural sophistication we associate with experiencing pain, having agency (etc) but then lacks mechanical similarity to other entities with such behavioural sophistication, should be denied moral standing because they lack mechanical similarity.Ethical behaviourism denies claim 2, but it does not, necessarily, deny claim 1. It could be the case that mechanical similarity is essential for behavioural similarity. This is something that can only be determined after conducting the requisite behavioural tests. The point, as always throughout my defence of the position, is that the behavioural evidence should be our guide. This doesn’t mean that other kinds of evidence are irrelevant but simply that they do not carry as much weight. My sense is that people who favour ethical mechanicism have a very strong intuition in favour of claim 1, which they then carry over into support for claim 2. This carry over is not justified as the two claims are not logically equivalent.Subscribe to the newsletter

Welcome to Warp My Tardis Podcast on the Geek Culturecast network. This episode: KJ, and Chulak talk about all things Sci-Fi from SDCC 2019.Are you looking for new ideas and adventures for your RPG Group? How about a monthly magazine filled with plot twists, one shots and side quests? Look no further, DM Dave brings you Broadsword magazine. Broadsword is a monthly digital and printed magazine that provides DMs with ideas, tidbits and even complete side quests that can be fit into almost any campaign. Check out Broadswords magazine at http://dmdave.com/broadsword-magazine-preorder-1/On Legends of the Panel last week (Season 5, episode 14) we talked about the Comic Book announcements from San Diego ComicCon 2019. This week we address the SciFi announcements.Let’s start with Fox and the announcement that The Orville, the Seth Macfarlane Sci-Fi show paying homage to classic Star Trek: The Next Generation, will be moving from Fox Television to Hulu for season 3. Macfarlane made the announcement that due to other commitments, that to provide the show with the integrity that he wants, that Hulu makes more sense as a delivery method. No mention was made for international audiences on how the move to Hulu will affect them. KJ hopes that CRAVE TV will continue to host HULU content in Canada.CBS All Access hosted several events including two specific Star Trek announcements. One being the launch of Season 3 for STD… I mean Star Trek; Discovery. Now having followed the Red Angel 700 years into the future, we really don’t know what we are going to get with STD. New characters are coming onto the cast, but we are really left with the unknown a as the antique Discovery needs to find its place in what may be a dystopian future… or maybe not. What we do know is that they are indeed in the PICARD timeline.Speaking of Picard, the full trailer for the new Star Trek: Picard series looked fantastic. A combination of shows like Dark matter, Deep Six and FarScape as well as the traditional Star trek universe, and we now know at least 4 characters we love from the original TNG. Ryker and Troi are still matrimonius (is that a real word?) as well we now know that Commander Data and Seven of Nine have made their way to the new future. We can’t wait until late 2020 for this one.Also on the show we talked about several KickStarter Projects. If you act soon you may still be able to be a part of these exciting projects:Chosen – A Sword and Fantasy tribute from the creative mind of Chris Campana. The story follows a young elf named Brynn, who is forced to leave her family and homeland behind, and set off on a quest, so that she may somehow, save those she loves from an evil on the verge of destroying the entire realm. It’s a story of fate… gone wrong?EVERGLADE ANGELS - a graphic novel from Scott Lobdell writer of Marvel's X-MEN, and the writer & creator of HAPPY DEATH DAY, co-created by Blake Northcott international bestselling author of ARENA MODE and THE NORTH VALLEY GRIMOIRE with artwork by Roc Upchurch, the co-creator and artist of RAT QUEENS (the Eisner and Hugo nominated Image Comic series that won a GLAAD Media Award in 2015).Trial by Trolley – a Game from the creators of Cyanide and Happiness web comic, where two teams create moral dilemmas, sabotage each other and then, make a decision on who gets run over by Trolley Tom. It’s a card game of Moral epic proportions.Thank you for downloading, subscribing, listening and supporting Warp My Tardis here on the Geek Culturecast network. We appreciate you taking the time to listen to each episode. For more information about the network go to www.geekculturecastnetwork.com, and look for Legends of the Panel on your podcast service for even more Mr. Chulak, The Lady Archer and KJ the Comic Guy, another show here on the Geek Culturecast network.Kickstarter Links from this episode:Chosen by Chris Campana: http://kck.st/2yprjLPEverglade Angels: http://kck.st/2lbZR0ETrial by Trolley: http://kck.st/2L8cENvFollow us:Instagram @warpmytardis and @legendsofthepanelKJ the ComicGuy @kjweir1970 on instagramMr. Chulak @geekculturecast on instagramThe Lady Archer @whatthefraq on Instagram

Welcome to Warp My Tardis Podcast on the Geek Culturecast network. This episode: KJ, and Chulak talk about all things Sci-Fi from SDCC 2019.Are you looking for new ideas and adventures for your RPG Group? How about a monthly magazine filled with plot twists, one shots and side quests? Look no further, DM Dave brings you Broadsword magazine. Broadsword is a monthly digital and printed magazine that provides DMs with ideas, tidbits and even complete side quests that can be fit into almost any campaign. Check out Broadswords magazine at http://dmdave.com/broadsword-magazine-preorder-1/On Legends of the Panel last week (Season 5, episode 14) we talked about the Comic Book announcements from San Diego ComicCon 2019. This week we address the SciFi announcements.Let’s start with Fox and the announcement that The Orville, the Seth Macfarlane Sci-Fi show paying homage to classic Star Trek: The Next Generation, will be moving from Fox Television to Hulu for season 3. Macfarlane made the announcement that due to other commitments, that to provide the show with the integrity that he wants, that Hulu makes more sense as a delivery method. No mention was made for international audiences on how the move to Hulu will affect them. KJ hopes that CRAVE TV will continue to host HULU content in Canada.CBS All Access hosted several events including two specific Star Trek announcements. One being the launch of Season 3 for STD… I mean Star Trek; Discovery. Now having followed the Red Angel 700 years into the future, we really don’t know what we are going to get with STD. New characters are coming onto the cast, but we are really left with the unknown a as the antique Discovery needs to find its place in what may be a dystopian future… or maybe not. What we do know is that they are indeed in the PICARD timeline.Speaking of Picard, the full trailer for the new Star Trek: Picard series looked fantastic. A combination of shows like Dark matter, Deep Six and FarScape as well as the traditional Star trek universe, and we now know at least 4 characters we love from the original TNG. Ryker and Troi are still matrimonius (is that a real word?) as well we now know that Commander Data and Seven of Nine have made their way to the new future. We can’t wait until late 2020 for this one.Also on the show we talked about several KickStarter Projects. If you act soon you may still be able to be a part of these exciting projects:Chosen – A Sword and Fantasy tribute from the creative mind of Chris Campana. The story follows a young elf named Brynn, who is forced to leave her family and homeland behind, and set off on a quest, so that she may somehow, save those she loves from an evil on the verge of destroying the entire realm. It’s a story of fate… gone wrong?EVERGLADE ANGELS - a graphic novel from Scott Lobdell writer of Marvel's X-MEN, and the writer & creator of HAPPY DEATH DAY, co-created by Blake Northcott international bestselling author of ARENA MODE and THE NORTH VALLEY GRIMOIRE with artwork by Roc Upchurch, the co-creator and artist of RAT QUEENS (the Eisner and Hugo nominated Image Comic series that won a GLAAD Media Award in 2015).Trial by Trolley – a Game from the creators of Cyanide and Happiness web comic, where two teams create moral dilemmas, sabotage each other and then, make a decision on who gets run over by Trolley Tom. It’s a card game of Moral epic proportions.Thank you for downloading, subscribing, listening and supporting Warp My Tardis here on the Geek Culturecast network. We appreciate you taking the time to listen to each episode. For more information about the network go to www.geekculturecastnetwork.com, and look for Legends of the Panel on your podcast service for even more Mr. Chulak, The Lady Archer and KJ the Comic Guy, another show here on the Geek Culturecast network.Kickstarter Links from this episode:Chosen by Chris Campana: http://kck.st/2yprjLPEverglade Angels: http://kck.st/2lbZR0ETrial by Trolley: http://kck.st/2L8cENvFollow us:Instagram @warpmytardis and @legendsofthepanelKJ the ComicGuy @kjweir1970 on instagramMr. Chulak @geekculturecast on instagramThe Lady Archer @whatthefraq on Instagram

Forever to be remembered as Lt. Commander Data on Star Trek: the Next Generation and other treks to follow, Brent Spiner is a versatile actor and performer with notable Broadway credits—and two fervent fans in Leonard and Jessie, who saw him play John Adams in a masterful revival of 1776. He’s happy to discuss all facets of his career, from musical theater to his memorable role in Independence Day. Even longtime fans may learn things they didn’t already know about Brent in this delightful chat.

This week, we Trek Out Star Trek's presence at San Diego Comic Con! Discovery, Short Treks, Lower Decks...Picard. All of it! Of course, as always, before we wrap up the show, we'll open hailing frequencies for your incoming messages! TREK IT OUT by Jake Morgan Discovery and Short Treks This is it. San Diego Comic Con. The biggest pop culture convention. In. The. World. And Star Trek was there in FULL force. On Saturday, July 20th, Star Trek's creative teams and on-screen talent took over the vaunted “Hall H” for an hour and a half, and gave us a taste of what's to come from our favorite franchise! First to take the stage was the Star Trek: Discovery team, including showrunner Michelle Paradise, Star Trek Franchise Lead Alex Kurtzman, Executive Producer Heather Kadin, Series Lead Sonequa Martin-Green, and series newcomer David Ajala. Kurtzman started the season 3 discussion by saying “So there will be lots of huge changes in season three. There will be things you recognize, there will be things you don't recognize. Part of the fun of it is that we get to honor canon but shake it up hugely. We're not erasing anything, so please don't worry about that. It's all still what it was” Kurtzman also discussed Discovery's newest character, “Book”. “His full name is Cleveland Booker and he will be a character who isn't exactly what you expect right away. When they get to the other side of the wormhole, they have big problems. In fact, even getting to find each other may be really difficult, because they may not have actually landed in the same place.” After announcing the addition of SIX new Short Treks, the panel released a one minute and forty-two second trailer that featured Anson Mount's Christopher Pike, a “Fascinating” Turbolift ride with Number One and Ensign Spock, and tribbles galore. Kurtzman explained that there will be THREE Short Trek's that include Pike, Number One, and Spock, two animated featurettes, and a Prequel to “Star Trek: Picard” that takes about 15 years prior to the series start.  Finally, Alex Kurtzman teased a possible Pike series by saying “There's obviously been a lot of speculation about whether Pike and Number One and Spock would get there own show. So I guess my question to you guys is, do you want them to get their own show? [FANS CHEERING] Okay, we'll think about it.” Star Trek: Lower Decks Next to hit the stage was the team from Star Trek's upcoming animated-comedy - Star Trek: Lower Decks. During the panel, moderated by series regular Jerry O'Connell, Mike McMahon described the time frame of the show, saying “It takes place in 2380, so it's right after “Nemesis”, Voyager is back.I'm a TNG guy, I really wanted to do it like that” McMahon, with the help of panelists and series stars Tawny Newsome and Jack Quad, described the uptight Ensign Boimler and the Devil-May-Care Ensign Mariner saying “Boimler and Mariner are often given the same jobs and go about it in totally different ways.”. Of the newly-graduated-Medical Ensign Tandi, McMahon says “there's no gross alien illness that she's not just absolutely thrilled to be dealing with”. McMahon goes on to compare engineering Ensign Rutherford to another famous TNG engineer “like Geordie LaForge, he is amazing at engineering stuff, but unlike Geordie LaForge he DOES NOT solve the problems by the end of every episode” Finally, McMahon discusses the California-Class U.S.S. Cerritos' command crew “It was important to me that our ship felt like it was a real operating ship in Starfleet, and that there were characters in the ship, Senior officers, who consider it to be their show - even though it's not” Star Trek: Picard SDCC Panel Last, but certainly not least, the production team and cast of the upcoming “Star Trek: Picard” took the stage, and they did not disappoint. During their forty minute panel, the team discussed the highly anticipated series.. Sir Patrick Stewart and Alex Kurtzman reiterated points regarding Stewart's return to the character and the difference in tone between Picard and Discovery, with Producer Heather Kadin referring to Picard as more “Lyrical and Grounded” than Discovery. The cast could not say much about their roles, but most agreed with Allison Pill, who plays Dr. Agnes Jurati “think the really interesting thing about this cast as a  whole is everybody here is pretty broken, in terms of their character, in very interesting ways and different to a lot of what we've seen. There's just a lot of lonely sad sacks.” Then, Sir Patrick Stewart introduced the series first full-length trailer. The excitement in Hall H was so high, they had to play it twice. In the two minute and nine second presentation, a conflicted Picard recalls the sacrifice of Commander Data and admits that, despite trying, he does not feel that he belongs on the family vineyard. A young woman -Dahj - approaches Picard in need of help, and the former Starfleet officer feels drawn to do so. We are introduced to the cast of the series with bits of action, a possible Borg experimentation facility, a Borg cube, and the ominous proclamation that “She's the end of all, she's the destroyer”. As the action slows, Star Trek: Voyager's 7 of 9 - portrayed by Jeri Ryan - asks Jean-Luc Picard if he's there to save the Galaxy. In the final scene, Picard is holding a hand of cards. He looks up and says “I don't want the game to end”, and it is revealed that Picard is speaking to Commander Data, who replies “I can see that Captain”. Following the trailer, Jeri Ryan, Brent Spiner, and “Star Trek: The Next Generation's” Hugh of Borg - John Del Arco - joined the panel. In responding to a question regarding his return to the iconic role of Data, Brent Spiner replied “The possibility of standing next to Patrick on a set again was just more I could say no to. And I had to consider the fans as well. To think that this was going to happen, and there was a possibility that I might be there - there was no way I could refuse that. Of course I had to be there.”. But Stewart and Spiner will not be the only Next Gen Alumni to appear on the upcoming series. Show-Runner Michael Chabon said “The joy on Patrick's face on the days when we've had returning cast members, and in particular one whose name came up earlier - but I just want to mention is a part of “Star Trek: Picard” - not only having directed 2 episodes, but will be returning along with Marina Sirtis, and that is Jonathan Frakes” Picard After The Panel With TV Line While the news that dropped on the stage of Hall H was HUGE, some of the clarifications after the panel were equally interesting. In a ten minute interview with TV Line, the cast shed some light on what we saw and heard.  John Del Arco, the actor who played the Borg “Hugh” in “Decent”, confirmed Hugh's status. “I can confirm to you that I'm still a part Borg, and that I am a developed human version of the last time I saw [Picard]. As they're leaving the planet [In “Decent, Part II”], I say ‘well what are we going to do now, we have no leader?' and Picard says ‘I don't think that's true'. So the implication being, in TNG, I ended up with this colony of Borg. And all I can say is that he has developed further in his leadership capacities.” Brent Spiner also cleared up any confusion about who he'll be playing in the upcoming series. When asked if he was indeed playing Data, not B4, Spiner elaborated “Correct, although i think in that draw is B4. But Data is indeed on the show. I spoke to Alex Kutzman about this morning to be able to say that, not to lead you down a path, but he isn't in every episode. He makes some  appearances, but he is IN THE SHOW in other ways” Sir Patrick spoke about his thoughts on more of his Star Trek: The Next Generation costars joining him on Picard. Stewart was clear that he did not want to remake TNG, and said “I know that our lovely fanbase were hoping that they would see the crew of the Enterprise all back. But no, that's NEVER going to happen, but there are encounters - some of which have been shot, some of which are only still in the planning stage. But hopefully we will have more than one season and there will be other opportunities. And apart from the principal cast of Next Generation, there were other characters that we encountered at different times who also might show up again”Finally, Stewart teased a return to the TNG uniform, saying “I did strongly make the point that I did not want to be in a uniform. At all. And I spoke strongly about that, and I have just made myself look slightly foolish by insisting that in the end of next week's work, I will be in a uniform [...] It's a  flashback, and I said in order for this to have the right kind of context, I need to be in a uniform.”

This week, we Trek Out Star Trek’s presence at San Diego Comic Con! Discovery, Short Treks, Lower Decks...Picard. All of it! Of course, as always, before we wrap up the show, we’ll open hailing frequencies for your incoming messages! TREK IT OUT by Jake Morgan Discovery and Short Treks This is it. San Diego Comic Con. The biggest pop culture convention. In. The. World. And Star Trek was there in FULL force. On Saturday, July 20th, Star Trek’s creative teams and on-screen talent took over the vaunted “Hall H” for an hour and a half, and gave us a taste of what’s to come from our favorite franchise! First to take the stage was the Star Trek: Discovery team, including showrunner Michelle Paradise, Star Trek Franchise Lead Alex Kurtzman, Executive Producer Heather Kadin, Series Lead Sonequa Martin-Green, and series newcomer David Ajala. Kurtzman started the season 3 discussion by saying “So there will be lots of huge changes in season three. There will be things you recognize, there will be things you don’t recognize. Part of the fun of it is that we get to honor canon but shake it up hugely. We’re not erasing anything, so please don’t worry about that. It’s all still what it was” Kurtzman also discussed Discovery’s newest character, “Book”. “His full name is Cleveland Booker and he will be a character who isn’t exactly what you expect right away. When they get to the other side of the wormhole, they have big problems. In fact, even getting to find each other may be really difficult, because they may not have actually landed in the same place.” After announcing the addition of SIX new Short Treks, the panel released a one minute and forty-two second trailer that featured Anson Mount’s Christopher Pike, a “Fascinating” Turbolift ride with Number One and Ensign Spock, and tribbles galore. Kurtzman explained that there will be THREE Short Trek’s that include Pike, Number One, and Spock, two animated featurettes, and a Prequel to “Star Trek: Picard” that takes about 15 years prior to the series start.  Finally, Alex Kurtzman teased a possible Pike series by saying “There’s obviously been a lot of speculation about whether Pike and Number One and Spock would get there own show. So I guess my question to you guys is, do you want them to get their own show? [FANS CHEERING] Okay, we’ll think about it.” Star Trek: Lower Decks Next to hit the stage was the team from Star Trek’s upcoming animated-comedy - Star Trek: Lower Decks. During the panel, moderated by series regular Jerry O’Connell, Mike McMahon described the time frame of the show, saying “It takes place in 2380, so it’s right after “Nemesis”, Voyager is back.I’m a TNG guy, I really wanted to do it like that” McMahon, with the help of panelists and series stars Tawny Newsome and Jack Quad, described the uptight Ensign Boimler and the Devil-May-Care Ensign Mariner saying “Boimler and Mariner are often given the same jobs and go about it in totally different ways.”. Of the newly-graduated-Medical Ensign Tandi, McMahon says “there’s no gross alien illness that she’s not just absolutely thrilled to be dealing with”. McMahon goes on to compare engineering Ensign Rutherford to another famous TNG engineer “like Geordie LaForge, he is amazing at engineering stuff, but unlike Geordie LaForge he DOES NOT solve the problems by the end of every episode” Finally, McMahon discusses the California-Class U.S.S. Cerritos’ command crew “It was important to me that our ship felt like it was a real operating ship in Starfleet, and that there were characters in the ship, Senior officers, who consider it to be their show - even though it’s not” Star Trek: Picard SDCC Panel Last, but certainly not least, the production team and cast of the upcoming “Star Trek: Picard” took the stage, and they did not disappoint. During their forty minute panel, the team discussed the highly anticipated series.. Sir Patrick Stewart and Alex Kurtzman reiterated points regarding Stewart’s return to the character and the difference in tone between Picard and Discovery, with Producer Heather Kadin referring to Picard as more “Lyrical and Grounded” than Discovery. The cast could not say much about their roles, but most agreed with Allison Pill, who plays Dr. Agnes Jurati “think the really interesting thing about this cast as a  whole is everybody here is pretty broken, in terms of their character, in very interesting ways and different to a lot of what we’ve seen. There’s just a lot of lonely sad sacks.” Then, Sir Patrick Stewart introduced the series first full-length trailer. The excitement in Hall H was so high, they had to play it twice. In the two minute and nine second presentation, a conflicted Picard recalls the sacrifice of Commander Data and admits that, despite trying, he does not feel that he belongs on the family vineyard. A young woman -Dahj - approaches Picard in need of help, and the former Starfleet officer feels drawn to do so. We are introduced to the cast of the series with bits of action, a possible Borg experimentation facility, a Borg cube, and the ominous proclamation that “She’s the end of all, she’s the destroyer”. As the action slows, Star Trek: Voyager’s 7 of 9 - portrayed by Jeri Ryan - asks Jean-Luc Picard if he’s there to save the Galaxy. In the final scene, Picard is holding a hand of cards. He looks up and says “I don’t want the game to end”, and it is revealed that Picard is speaking to Commander Data, who replies “I can see that Captain”. Following the trailer, Jeri Ryan, Brent Spiner, and “Star Trek: The Next Generation’s” Hugh of Borg - John Del Arco - joined the panel. In responding to a question regarding his return to the iconic role of Data, Brent Spiner replied “The possibility of standing next to Patrick on a set again was just more I could say no to. And I had to consider the fans as well. To think that this was going to happen, and there was a possibility that I might be there - there was no way I could refuse that. Of course I had to be there.”. But Stewart and Spiner will not be the only Next Gen Alumni to appear on the upcoming series. Show-Runner Michael Chabon said “The joy on Patrick’s face on the days when we’ve had returning cast members, and in particular one whose name came up earlier - but I just want to mention is a part of “Star Trek: Picard” - not only having directed 2 episodes, but will be returning along with Marina Sirtis, and that is Jonathan Frakes” Picard After The Panel With TV Line While the news that dropped on the stage of Hall H was HUGE, some of the clarifications after the panel were equally interesting. In a ten minute interview with TV Line, the cast shed some light on what we saw and heard.  John Del Arco, the actor who played the Borg “Hugh” in “Decent”, confirmed Hugh’s status. “I can confirm to you that I’m still a part Borg, and that I am a developed human version of the last time I saw [Picard]. As they’re leaving the planet [In “Decent, Part II”], I say ‘well what are we going to do now, we have no leader?’ and Picard says ‘I don’t think that’s true’. So the implication being, in TNG, I ended up with this colony of Borg. And all I can say is that he has developed further in his leadership capacities.” Brent Spiner also cleared up any confusion about who he’ll be playing in the upcoming series. When asked if he was indeed playing Data, not B4, Spiner elaborated “Correct, although i think in that draw is B4. But Data is indeed on the show. I spoke to Alex Kutzman about this morning to be able to say that, not to lead you down a path, but he isn’t in every episode. He makes some  appearances, but he is IN THE SHOW in other ways” Sir Patrick spoke about his thoughts on more of his Star Trek: The Next Generation costars joining him on Picard. Stewart was clear that he did not want to remake TNG, and said “I know that our lovely fanbase were hoping that they would see the crew of the Enterprise all back. But no, that’s NEVER going to happen, but there are encounters - some of which have been shot, some of which are only still in the planning stage. But hopefully we will have more than one season and there will be other opportunities. And apart from the principal cast of Next Generation, there were other characters that we encountered at different times who also might show up again”Finally, Stewart teased a return to the TNG uniform, saying “I did strongly make the point that I did not want to be in a uniform. At all. And I spoke strongly about that, and I have just made myself look slightly foolish by insisting that in the end of next week’s work, I will be in a uniform [...] It’s a  flashback, and I said in order for this to have the right kind of context, I need to be in a uniform.”

Was fällt Dir als erstes ein, wenn Du "Künstliche Intelligenz" hörst?Wir Deutschen sind ja nicht bekannt dafür, uns gerne von unseren Gewohnheiten zu verabschieden. Selbst erfolgreiche Technologien, die wir erfunden haben, mussten erst ex- um dann wieder re-importiert zu werden. Bekannteste Bespiele: das mp3-Format. Und für die Daueranhänger der deutschen Automobilbranche: die Intervallstellung des Scheibenwischers. Und dass wir alle mit künstlicher Intelligenz hadern, wissen wir mittlerweile auch. Aber schon geil, was bei raus kommt, wenn man gezielt nach Assoziationen zum Thema "künstlicher Intelligenz" das Volk befragt! Arnold Schwarzenegger als Terminator in Genisys / Bild-Quelle: Paramount Pictures + Skydance Productions Ich gebe zu, als ich diese Frage gehört habe, ist mir sofort das oben stehende Bild eingefallen... Was aber nun, wenn man einen repräsentativen Durchschnitt der Bundesbürger befragt? Und, weil das Sommerloch näher kommt, bzw. in einigen Bundesländern schon präsent ist, gleich eine ganze Befragung daraus macht? Das dachte sich wohl auch die Gesellschaft für Informatik, die so auf ihr doch schon 50-jähriges Bestehen hinweisen wollte. Ich zitiere kurz aus der Pressemeldung: Die GI hat "die bekanntesten Science-Fiction-Maschinen mit Künstlicher Intelligenz in der deutschen Bevölkerung ermittelt". Gut, sind wir also wieder eine Studie weiter, die wir alle bezahlt haben, da auch das Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung mitgemischt hat. Und das alles wurde plakativ unter den Projekt-Titel "#KI50: Künstliche Intelligenz – gestern, heute, morgen" gestellt. Wenn jetzt ein Star Trek Next Generation Fan den Kopf hebt, ist das nicht unberechtigt: die im Original "all good things" lautenden beiden letzten Folgen der siebten Staffel haben es in Deutschland mit dem Titel... na... genau: "Gestern, heute, morgen" in die Glotze geschafft. Aber nun schnell zu den Fakten: Die Gesellschaft für Informatik hat die Studie beim Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach in Auftrag gegeben. Im Zeitraum vom 02. bis 16.05.2019 wurden 1.283 "Face to face"-Interviews mit einem repräsentativen Querschnitt der deutschen Bevölkerung ab 16 Jahre geführt. Und nun wurden zwei Fragen gestellt. Überlege mal für Dich selbst, wie Deine Antwort ausgesehen hätte: Welche Maschinen mit Künstlicher Intelligenz sind aus Filmen, Büchern oder Comics bekannt?Welche SciFi-Maschinen haben Deine eigene Vorstellung von Künstlicher Intelligenz am stärksten geprägt?Also... wen kannst Du aller aufzählen, wenn Du Dich an Filme, Bücher und Comics erinnerst? Und welche "Maschine" davon, hat Deine Vorstellung, wie Du künstliche Intelligenz heutzutage siehst, nachhaltig geprägt? Unsere repräsentative Querschnittsmenge hat die Bekanntheit wie folgt benannt: Darf ich vorstellen: Künstliche Intelligent, bekannt aus Funk und Fernsehen! / Bild-Quelle: gi,deIrgendwie irritiert mich, dass JARVIS so weit unten erst auftaucht, dass K.I.T.T. es tatsächlich auf Platz drei geschafft hat und das Agent Smith aus Matrix als künstliche Intelligenz gesehen wird. Und, was waren Deine Antworten? Und jetzt zu Frage 2: Was hat Deine Meinung zu dem Thema am meisten geprägt. Unser Durchschnitt meinte hierzu: ...und das prägte die Meinung zu künstlicher Intelligenz! / Bild-Quelle: gi.deVerdammt... R2-D2 hat Commander Data besiegt! Was für eine Klatsche! Ein rollender Mülleimer mit ein paar Blinklichtern der "piep piep piep ich hab euch alle lieb" sagen kann! Da fällt mir der Dialog zwischen Picard und Data ein, der alles aussagt, was nicht piept: "And for a time I was tempted by her offer." "How long a time?" "0.68 seconds, Sir. - For an android that is nearly an eternity." Also, fassen wir die Top 3 nochmals zusammen: Künstliche Intelligenz, die in Deutschland aus welcher Quelle auch immer am bekanntesten ist: Der Terminator, 76% (Danke, Arnie! Wir freuen uns auf den nächsten Teil dieses Jahr!)R2-D2, 65% (Ein harter Schlag für einen Next Generation Fan!)K.I.T.T., 59% (Fahr schon mal den Wagen vor Harry! Und das ist eine "Uhr" gesprochen! Unfassbar!) Künstliche Intelligenz, die unsere Wahrnehmung zu diesem Thema am meisten geprägt hat: R2-D2, 20% (Tüdeldüh-piep-pfeif-dings-unidentifizierbarPfffft WIRKLICH?!?)Commander Data, 17% und Der Terminator, 17% (Nicht das beste Ergebnis, dass beide auf gleicher Ebene stehen!)K.I.T.T., 16% (ein verdienter dritter Platz für einen modernen Antrieb, der lauter war, als manch Truck in der Serie - und trotzdem hat ihn nie einer gehört!)So - wissen wir das auch. Kann sich von Euch noch jemand erinnern, warum das jetzt alles von wem befragt wurde? Egal - ich bin mal Star Trek gucken! Bei bei Euch so: welche Antworten habt ihr gegeben. Und passt ihr in den repräsentativen Durchschnitt? Oder heult ihr noch, da Klassiker wie HAL es noch nicht mal auf die Bekannteste-Liste geschafft hat? Und wer fehlt, Eurer Meinung nach? Ich bin gespannt auf alles, was mit von Euch so erreicht: email, Kommentar, Sprachnachricht, Bewertung - HER DAMIT! Meinen PodCast abonnieren: | direkt | iTunes | Spotify | Google |

Through the Mirror. In the dreaded Mirror Universe, Captain Jean-Luc Picard and his crew aboard the fearsome I.S.S. Enterprise plot to raid our universe for valuable plunder to fuel the ever-expanding war machine of the Terran Empire. Unbeknownst to the Enterprise crew in the Prime Universe, infiltration of Starfleet by Mirror-Picard and his crew has already begun... In this episode of Literary Treks, hosts Dan Gunther and Bruce Gibson are joined by Trek.fm's own Amy Nelson to talk about the five-part IDW Comics miniseries Through the Mirror. We discuss each issue of the series, which features two stories running in tandem: story A, in which our heroes must thwart an attempt by the mirror crew to steal resources from our universe, and story B, in which the mirror Commander Data attempts to track down former Emperor Spock and learn the secrets of the prime universe. In the news segment, Dan and Bruce review the second issue of the Star Trek: Discovery: Succession comic miniseries. News Succession #2 (00:03:05) Feature: Through the Mirror Something New (00:11:08) Issue #1 (00:13:09) Issue #2 (00:37:23) Issue #3 (00:53:47) Issue #4 (01:06:57) Issue #5 (01:20:03) Ratings (01:37:32) Final Thoughts (01:45:51) Hosts Dan Gunther and Bruce Gibson Guest Amy Nelson Production Matthew Rushing (Editor and Producer) C Bryan Jones (Executive Producer) Ken Tripp (Executive Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer) Richard Marquez (Production Manager) Brandon-Shea Mutala (Patreon Manager) Ken Tripp (Associate Producer) Brandon-Shea Mutala (Associate Producer) Bruce Gibson (Associate Producer) Justin Oser (Associate Producer) Norman C. Lao (Associate Producer) Greg Rozier (Associate Producer) Jeffery Harlan (Associate Producer)

Today marks thirty years to the day that TV's Star Trek: The Next Generation first premiered in syndication. The sequel series was a risky venture by Paramount, but three decades later, it’s fair to say that Captain Picard, Commander Data, and the other crewmembers of the Enterprise-D are at least as beloved as their legendary predecessors. Why did The Next Generation work almost despite itself? I discuss that question and more with my special guest, Mark A. Altman.In addition to working on such series as TNT's The Librarians and ABC's Castle, Mark has been called “The World’s Foremost Trekspert,” having authored or co-authored dozens of books and articles about Gene Roddenberry’s creation, including Trek Navigator, Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, and last year's best-selling two volume set The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek. Join us for a fun and...(wait for it)...engaging chat about Star Trek: The Next Generation's thirty-year voyage, and what the future may hold for the Trek franchise.

Pen Pals.   When Lt. Commander Data contacts a girl named "Sarjenka" from a pre-warp civilization in distress on his 24th-century space ham radio, it leads to a super-secret philosophical discussion about the nature of the Prime Directive in Captain Picard's quarters. Should the Prime Directive be interpreted strictly or loosely? How should Starfleet officers weigh the high-stakes, life-or-death consequences for an entire civilization against their responsibility and oath to uphold the Prime Directive? Would interpreting Sarjenka's "whisper in the dark" as a formal request for help count as "sophistry," as Captain Picard claims? And what role do friendships and emotions play in determining moral obligation in light of the Prime Directive?   In this episode of Meta Treks, hosts Zachary Fruhling and Mike Morrison discuss the second-season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Pen Pals." But this is episode 73 of Meta Treks, and the number 73 has a very special meaning in Morse code in ham radio circles: "Best regards." Because Zachary himself has been a third-generation licensed ham radio operator since he was just a tad older than Sarjenka, this episode of Meta Treks debates the role and responsibilities of radio communication in the Star Trek universe, whether that newfangled subspace radio or good old-fashioned RF. Zachary and Mike also discuss Wesley Crusher's first command and what it means to have "command presence."   Chapters  Intro (00:01:35)  Initial Thought on Pen Pals from TNG Season 2 (00:03:29)  The Ham Radio Connection (00:07:50)  Unusually High Stakes and the Philosophical Debate (00:17:14)  "Obligations that go beyond duty..." (00:22:05)  The Individual Positions of the Crew in the Debate (00:25:43)  Worf Takes the Kantian Position (00:27:01)  Picard's Argument for Causal Determinism (0029:59)  Line Drawing Problem (00:35:28)  Making the Decision: Command Presence and the Nature of Command (00:42:10)  Principles vs. Consequences (00:49:07)  Wesley's First Command (00:50:57)  Riker's Advice: What Would Picard Do (00:59:17)  Regulation and Communication (01:00:29)  Subspace QSL Cards and Q Codes (01:03:31)  Closing (01:07:33)   Hosts  Zachary Fruhling and Mike Morrison   Production  Mike Morrison (Editor) Zachary Fruhling (Producer) C Bryan Jones (Executive Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer) Ken Tripp (Executive Producer) Patrick Devlin (Associate Producer) Kay Shaw (Associate Producer) Richard Marquez (Production Manager) Brandon-Shea Mutala (Patreon Manager)

"Real Life" and "The Offspring" Comparison.  Don't forget your box of tissues for this episode of To The Journey, as hosts Kay Shaw, Zachary Fruhling, and Suzanne Williamson compare and contrast the tearjerker episodes "Real Life" (Star Trek: Voyager) and "The Offspring" (Star Trek: The Next Generation). From the respective motivations of The Doctor and Lt. Commander Data in exploring family life, to lessons learned from love and loss, Kay, Zachary, and Suzanne laugh and cry together as they discuss these emotionally charged, fan-favorite episodes of Voyager and The Next Generation.   Chapters  Intro (00:00:00)  You Need a Box of Tissues (00:01:39)  Comparing Androids and Holograms (00:03:12)  Stepford Family (00:05:29)  Why So Sad, Doc? (00:08:08)  Like "The Sims" (00:10:00)  The Reasons Why (00:12:01)  Picard Doesn't Deal With the Unknown All That Well (00:14:45)  Freeze Program! - B'Elanna and Family (00:16:37)  Access the Aryan Database (00:23:09)  Love Them For Who They Are (00:25:53)  Of Endings We Wish To Speak (00:27:34)  Lal McGuire (00:33:06)  Death Never Makes Sense (00:34:11)  Is It Worth the Pain? (00:37:15)  Contrasting TNG and Voyager in General (00:39:31)  That "To The Journey" Show is a Real Downer (00:42:07)  Takeaways for Data and The Doctor (00:48:31)  Closing (00:51:54)     Hosts Kay Shaw, Zachary Fruhling, and Suzanne Williamson    Production Kay Shaw (Editor) Suzanne Williamson (Producer) Zachary Fruhling (Producer) C Bryan Jones (Executive Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer) Ken Tripp (Executive Producer) Bruce Lish (Associate Producer) Joo Kim (Associate Producer) Richard Marquez (Associate Producer) Richard Marquez (Production Manager) Brandon-Shea Mutala (Patreon Manager)

In part two of our character profile of Data we talk about the relationships he developed with the crew and his family. Enjoy!

When the Entrepreneur rolls up on a pretty basic space station, the crew attempts to gauge if the mining being done there is up to snuff. Unfortunately, questions about "what constitutes life" get in the way of their review, and Commander Data misbehaves again. What's under a Klingon's beard? How many classes does Worf teach? Where did the rocks come from? It's the episode that's not as cute as WALL-E.

In the first of two parts we discuss and analyse the profile of Data. We talk about his service background, his use of contractions and strive to become more human. Enjoy!

"Birthright," Parts I and II.  In the sixth-season episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Birthright," Parts I and II, there are parallels between Lieutenant Worf and the Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates. Both Worf and Socrates were accused of corrupting the minds of the youth, both were protesting the perceived injustices and irrationality of the established state, and both were sentenced to death by execution (a fate escaped by Worf more successfully than by Socrates!).  In this episode of Meta Treks, hosts Zachary Fruhling and Mike Morrison discuss the similarities and dissimilarities of Worf and Socrates. Had Worf been successfully executed, would Worf have been remembered in future Klingon history as a martyr and as the founder of a new Klingon philosophical movement, Worfism (and eventually neo-Worfism), emphasizing the ideal form of the Klingon Empire?  In addition, Zachary and Mike discuss ancestral and cultural identity, both in the galactic melting pot of the Star Trek universe and in our globalized society here in the real world. Finally, not forgetting the subplot of the emergence of Lt. Commander Data's newfound ability to dream, Zachary and Mike discuss the role and significance of dreams and mythology in a modern, progressive, scientific, and rationalistic society.   Chapters  Welcome to Episode 65 (00:01:06)  Worf and Socrates (00:03:08)  Worf the Martyr and Neo-Worfism (00:10:56)  Slavery, Melting Pots, and Cultural Identity (00:28:13)  Fatherless Data and Worf - Identity and Meaning (00:37:10)  Klingon Beatnik - "Hey, Mr. Bat'leth Man, Slay a Targ for Me" (00:48:48)  Modernity, Dreams, and Mythology (00:56:11)  Cosplay and Choosing Your Own Identity (01:07:44)  Final Thoughts (01:11:10)   Hosts Zachary Fruhling and Mike Morrison   Production Mike Morrison (Editor) Zachary Fruhling (Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer) Ken Tripp (Executive Producer) C Bryan Jones (Executive Producer) Patrick Devlin (Associate Producer) Kay Shaw (Associate Producer) Kit Loffstadt (Associate Producer) Richard Marquez (Production Manager) Brandon-Shea Mutala (Patreon Manager)   Send us your feedback! Twitter: @trekfm  Facebook: http://facebook.com/trekfm  Voicemail: http://www.speakpipe.com/trekfm  Contact Form: http://www.trek.fm/contact  Visit the Trek.fm website at http://www.trek.fm/  Subscribe in iTunes: http://itunes.com/trekfm   Support the Network! Become a Trek.fm Patron on Patreon and help us keep Star Trek talk coming every week. We have great perks for you at http://patreon.com/trekfm

When the Enterprise chooses the flashpoint of a Klingon civil war to begin the galaxy's biggest game of Cat's Cradle, Klingon Jake's future in the empire is at stake. But when Captain Picard's most dramatic "Apparently..." story comes back to haunt him, it's up to Commander Data to take command of a little ship with a secret strategy. Does the Sutherland have a clip show machine? What's the name of the captain from Crimson Tide? It's the episode where lose all our feminist credibility by playing a terrible game that we're extremely ashamed of.

La Forge Character Moments. Star Trek: The Next Generation features great characters, but there's no doubt that Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Lt. Commander Data get the bulk of fan attention. Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge does not often get the spotlight, so in this episode, Phillip, Darren, and Daniel showcase his best moments. The trio goes round-robin, discussing episodes like "The Arsenal of Freedom," "I, Borg," and "Interface." Levar Burton embodied a memorable character for seven years on television and in four feature films - whether portraying a desire for sight, a strong friendship with an android, or a passion in his beliefs. His laughter and ability to emote behind the VISOR makes Lt. Commander La Forge a great member of the TNG family. Join Earl Grey as the discuss their favorite Next Gen moments featuring La Forge. CHAPTERS Intro (00:02:05) Favorite Moments (00:03:00) Honorable Mentions (00:46:50) Conclusion (00:48:18) HOSTS Daniel Proulx, Phillip Gilfus, & Darren Moser PRODUCTION Darren Moser (Editor and Producer) C Bryan Jones (Executive Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer) Norman C. Lao (Executive Producer) Michael E Hueter  (Associate Producer) Stephen Boyd (Associate Producer) Ron Saarna (Associate Producer) Richard Marquez (Production Manager) Will Nguyen (Content Manager) Send us your feedback! Twitter: @trekfm Facebook: http://facebook.com/trekfm Voicemail: http://www.speakpipe.com/trekfm Contact Form: http://www.trek.fm/contact Visit the Trek.fm website at http://trek.fm/ Subscribe in iTunes: http://itunes.com/trekfm

A seemingly routine mission ends with the loss of Lt. Commander Data. Only (spoiler alert) he is not dead. He has been added to a collection of priceless items by an amoral collector. Will the crew of the Enterprise realize he is alive? If they do, will they be able to get him back? And how will Data handle kidnapping and captivity? Find out when we put The Most Toys into the Mission Log. Got a message for us? We would love to hear it: On Facebook: On Twitter: On Skype: MissionLogPod On the phone: (323) 522-5641 Online: We may use your comments on a future episode of Mission Log.

A seemingly routine mission ends with the loss of Lt. Commander Data. Only (spoiler alert) he is not dead. He has been added to a collection of priceless items by an amoral collector. Will the crew of the Enterprise realize he is alive? If they do, will they be able to get him back? And how will Data handle kidnapping and captivity? Find out when we put The Most Toys into the Mission Log. Got a message for us? We would love to hear it: On Facebook: On Twitter: On Skype: MissionLogPod On the phone: (323) 522-5641 Online: We may use your comments on a future episode of Mission Log.

A seemingly routine mission ends with the loss of Lt. Commander Data. Only (spoiler alert) he is not dead. He has been added to a collection of priceless items by an amoral collector. Will the crew of the Enterprise realize he is alive? If they do, will they be able to get him back? And how will Data handle kidnapping and captivity? Find out when we put The Most Toys into the Mission Log. Got a message for us? We would love to hear it: On Facebook: On Twitter: On Skype: MissionLogPod On the phone: (323) 522-5641 Online: We may use your comments on a future episode of Mission Log.

Command Styles.When it comes to command, Captain Jean-Luc Picard is the pinnacle of Starfleet captains. However, many times in The Next Generation, Picard and his first officer Will Riker turn over command to other members of their crew. Phillip, Daniel, and Darren analyze the command styles of the other personnel who sat in the center seat of the U.S.S. Enterprise, and other starships, during various missions. They study second officer Lt. Commander Data's command tenure on both theEnterprise and the Sutherland ("Redemption, Part 2" and "Gambit, Parts 1 and 2"), Commander Beverly Crusher's time in the captain's chair ("Descent, Parts 1 and 2" and "All Good Things..."), Lt. Commander Deanna Troi's turn in command ("Disaster"), and Lieutenant junior grade Geordi LaForge's time as acting captain ("Arsenal of Freedom"). Earl Grey also discusses that other captain of theEnterprise-D, Captain Edward Jellico ("Chain of Command, Parts 1 and 2"). How did these commanders handle people? What challenges did many of them overcome as first time captains? How many of them consulted Livingston for advice in the ready room? Put on your red shirt so you can tug on it, as Earl Greydiscusses the command styles in TNG.HostsDaniel Proulx, Phillip Gilfus, & Darren MoserEditor / ProducerDarren MoserExecutive ProducersNorman C. Lao, Matthew Rushing, & C Bryan Jones Production Manager Richard Marquez   Content Manager Will Nguyen ChaptersData (Second Officer) (00:03:50) Beverly Crusher (Commander)  (00:18:36) Deanna Troi (Lt Commander/Commander) (00:24:57) Geordi La Forge (Lt. Jr. Grade/Lt/Lt Commander) (00:32:02) Edward Jellico (Captain) (00:38:02)Final Thoughts (00:48:38) Send us your feedback! Twitter: @trekfm Facebook: http://facebook.com/trekfm Voicemail: http://www.speakpipe.com/trekfm Contact Form: http://www.trek.fm/contact Visit the Trek.fm website at http://trek.fm/ Subscribe in iTunes: http://itunes.com/trekfm Support the Network! Become a Trek.fm Patron on Patreon and help us keep our shows coming to you every week. We have great perks for you at http://patreon.com/trekfm

An old foil wants to take Data apart in an effort to study him and make more Datas. Data says there is a problem though, that might kill him. But the would be studier says that is not a problem: Data is not alive. Is he? And does that matter? It is up to Picard save the existence of Commander Data when we put The Measure of a Man in the Mission Log.    Have an argument you would like to make? State your case: On Facebook:  On Twitter:  On Skype: MissionLogPod On the phone: (323) 522-5641 Online:  We may use your comments on a future episode of Mission Log. Get two Transporter Syncs for the price of one at  using offer code ML2FER

An old foil wants to take Data apart in an effort to study him and make more Datas. Data says there is a problem though, that might kill him. But the would be studier says that is not a problem: Data is not alive. Is he? And does that matter? It is up to Picard save the existence of Commander Data when we put The Measure of a Man in the Mission Log.    Have an argument you would like to make? State your case: On Facebook:  On Twitter:  On Skype: MissionLogPod On the phone: (323) 522-5641 Online:  We may use your comments on a future episode of Mission Log. Get two Transporter Syncs for the price of one at  using offer code ML2FER

An old foil wants to take Data apart in an effort to study him and make more Datas. Data says there is a problem though, that might kill him. But the would be studier says that is not a problem: Data is not alive. Is he? And does that matter? It is up to Picard save the existence of Commander Data when we put The Measure of a Man in the Mission Log.    Have an argument you would like to make? State your case: On Facebook:  On Twitter:  On Skype: MissionLogPod On the phone: (323) 522-5641 Online:  We may use your comments on a future episode of Mission Log. Get two Transporter Syncs for the price of one at  using offer code ML2FER

The Arts in TNG.The Next Generation arguably features the most concerts, play performances, poetry readings, and art works than any other Star Trek television series. Whether it was having every senior officer being musically inclined, having fun in the clay modeling room making a mask or an entry for "Captain Picard Day," or keeping Commander William T. Riker from the nude modeling painting class, TNG inserted cultural works into many episodes. The show's writers/producers made sure that noted Shakespearean performer Sir Patrick Stewart incorporated several references in the series' seven-year run, from the Bard's historical plays to his sonnets. Lt. Commander Data's development in humanity also included his exploration of artistic self-expression, leading to him playing the violin, painting his dreams, and being directed by Captain Jean-Luc Picard in his one-man performance of a "A Christmas Carol." Join co-hosts Phillip Gilfus, Darren Moser, and Daniel Proulx as they find the "sweet spot" of the NCC-1701-D, bust out their Ressikan flute and rolled-up piano keyboard, and talk about the great music, plays, and art of TNG. Try not to fall asleep as they reenact the most famous poetry reading in all of Trekdom!  HostsDaniel Proulx, Phillip Gilfus, & Darren MoserEditor / ProducerDarren Moser Production Manager Richard Marquez   Content Coordinator Will Nguyen ChaptersTNG as teacher of the arts (00:02:50)Musician Characters (00:08:20)Classical Music in TNG (00:13:30)Singing (00:30:07)Shakespeare (00:32:36)A Christmas Carol (00:40:40)Beverly's Theater (00:42:30)Ode to Spot (00:47:51) Art (00:51:23)Clay (00:55:06)Ending (01:03:32) Send us your feedback! Twitter: @trekfm Facebook: http://facebook.com/trekfm Voicemail: http://www.speakpipe.com/trekfm Contact Form: http://www.trek.fm/contact Visit the Trek.fm website at http://trek.fm/ Subscribe in iTunes: http://itunes.com/trekfm Support the Network! Become a Trek.fm Patron on Patreon and help us keep our shows coming to you every week. We have great perks for you at http://patreon.com/trekfm

Delving into bloopers from past and future episodes.Just a heads up The "you guys suck for not tell me this was funny!" outburst: the recording was done before any of the podcasts were posted anywhere so it was with thoughts of the large audience of silent readers. ;) And the fact that I'm laughing through it gives it a sad beauty.I very sarcastically adore when anyone proposes I am scolding my audience during this blooper reel. I'm actually laughing at the ridiculous laziness of how complacent everyone online has gotten to just download freebies so thanklessly. I really think that comes from some strange form of modern programming in this day and age to wander obliviously along with a feeling of entitlement when humanity has come so far to give us conveniences we take for granted that many people who are poor do not have. As for any guilt anyone feels from this or any of my intros I must go back to Brent Spiner's interest when fans of Lt. Commander Data put emotions on his blank face. One must ask oneself, "Well I didn't provide that emotion with my performance, so where did that feeling come from?"

Recorded live in front of 800 Nerds at San Diego Comic-con on 7/23, this awesometastic mashup of television space travelers yields some of our best podcast moments. Talk of leeches, Steven Moffat Muppets, Karen's love of Lt. Commander Data and how The Doctor and Wesley Crusher pilot their respective ships--namely the TARDIS and the Enterprise (1701-D, of course). THIS. EPISODE. RULES. SIDENOTE: Thanks to BBC America who sponsored the event by allowing the attendees to "enjoy their burritos" which Matt and Karen helped hand out in TARDIS sleeves. Genius! SIDESIDENOTE: There are some spoilers if you haven't seen this season of Doctor Who yet!