Grrl Power #1490 – Maybe the ship computer is the funny one
The trying-to-come-up-with-a-page-title me of right now as I’m posting this comic really wishes that writing-the-comic-page-in-the-past me would do better at sticking to a single theme per page. This page goes from explaining the prank from the previous page to computer voice gender preferences to ship AI’s of pop-culture to betting to trope-aware arguing. I spent an hour trying to think of a title for this page and I bet most of you only pay attention to them when you’re looking through the archive to try and find part of a story segment. And honestly, the page titles aren’t always super helpful for that. There are times I’m looking for a page to link in reference and I just don’t remember where a certain page appears, and the page title is something like “Flibbity Gooberly” while the page itself is Dabbler trying to draw the Orb upgrade interface or something. It probably made sense to me at the time I posted it, but it was some obscure-ass reference that I, myself, have now forgotten/disassociated.
You know, the Enterprise-D’s computer was just about the perfect kind of advanced computer. It was something resembling an AI, in that it could parse natural speech and extrapolate contextually, (especially when they were talking to it in the holodeck) but it wasn’t the sort of computer that was anthropomorphized in any way, and didn’t ever seem to have any ambitions of its own. Unless there’s an episode I’m not remembering where it went crazy. The closest I can recall was when it created Moriarty, and that was just based on a badly worded request from… Jeordi? It’s been a while since I saw it.
Actually, by far the worst kind of computer techno-fear episodes they ever did were all the Holodeck’s fault. Every season had an episode where the safety protocols got disengaged and people got trapped. Hey geniuses, maybe make it so the regular holodecks can’t have the safeties disengaged under any circumstances. Like the whole thing shuts down if anything goes awry. Have the first thing every single line of code does is check to make sure the squishy meatbags inside can’t have their noggins cracked open because the rocks are too hard or whatever. Like how post-Otis elevators can’t fall if the cable breaks, because the weight of the carriage pulling on the cable is what holds the emergency brakes open. If the cable snaps, the spring-loaded brake returns to its original shape, jutting out past the carriage to catch on the rails.
So then I guess maybe you’d want a smaller holodeck that can only be used by the redshirts… er… I guess they were gold in TNG. They shouldn’t have muddied those waters by making an unnecessary change. But I suppose that could have happened because the “main” actors didn’t want to do a lot of close up shots with their yellow shirt reflecting on their chins, making them look jaundice? Pure speculation on my part. It was probably totally arbitrary. Anyway, at least in that security focused holodeck, you could be reasonably sure that random crew members >cough<Barclay>cough< weren’t side loading custom mods or rootkits or whatever.
Oh, look who it is in the vote incentive. And a not-quite-yet-but-it’s-coming NSFW version over at Patreon.
Vote incentive and Patreon updated with some shading. Not finished yet, but progress.
I think she would get in trouble for doing this. She’d mess up the… floor of the waterfall? Is that what it’s called? The receiving pool? No, probably not that. Anyway, she’d churn things up and cause a ton of weird erosion.
Since you might be wondering, Niagara Falls is about 165 feet high, so Babezilla obviously doesn’t have to be full sized. I’d say she’s about 175-180 feet tall here?
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Rommie was one of like, three good things about Andromeda. I wanted to like it so much, the premise of rebuilding civilisation , returning not so much law and order but something more like decency to the galaxy, all of it seemed so appealing. But alas. Went off the rails harder than nBSG.
I feel like it started going off the rails once Sorbo became an Executive Producer. Turns out the man has a Shatner-level ego…and some not-great political opinions to boot.
Personally if I had to pick a sexy ship AI, I would have said EDI. And that’s coming from someone who never played Mass Effect.
Also, Maxima’s outrage in the last panel is hysterical.
Mass Effect is worth playing for more reasons than EDI.
Well, she’s not really sexy, but for a female ship’s A.I., I’d choose Nell from “Battle Beyond The Staaaaarrrss…”.
My vote goes for Estelle from AI2U.
This is why I gave my sorceress character an active exposition spell. Aside from getting opponents to monologue their plans it’s also handy for hand waving in universe exposition for the reader.
Do they know they’re in a webcomic that updates twice a week? That we the readers would occasionally need clunky exposition for information not naturally presented or occasional refreshers for plot clarity? I mean maybe I’ll give that to Cora but Max knowing is a step too far! I don’t buy it! Sydney can say and do whatever she wants tho. She special.
Sydney and Deus have a level of nerdyness that bring them close to the fourth wall. Nerdyness may be Deus superpower, that might explain why he is always two steps ahead of everyone.
I mean if your holodeck can spontaneously create an AI just by phrasing your request in an interesting way you’d think someone would be doing just that a lot to generate kind and helpful AI based on very kind historical characters left and right to then install as part of an entire population of ship-AI (so that one of them going nuts can’t override everything).
It also makes me wonder why she doesn’t have a small host of AI crewmembers to manage the ship in those scenarios where it needs to move with person-like intuition and computer-like reaction speeds.
@DaveB, you title made me think of Holly/Hilly from Red Dwarf. An AI so old they’ve gone peculiar (or maybe just senile) in one of the best Sci-Fi comedies ever.
And if you want sexy male AI try Queeg 500, played by Charles Augins, also from Red Dwarf.
P.S. The reason TNG switched the Red and Mustard Yellow shirts around is because when they screen tested Patrick Stewart in the Yellow costume under studio lights it looked wrong, yet Red looked right in every way.
Whereas, with Data, they just came up with an excuse not to have him in blue when the makeup clashed despite bring the de facto science officer (he’s “Ops”!) rather than do a full circuit and have science/medical yellow and engineering/grunts blue.
I’ll never understand why they just didn’t keep the TOS-movie era costumes. Those were the coolest.
Should have used “but Cortana did enable the Chief’s gambling.”, In reference to both the “not a *ship* AI” text, the fact she chose the chief because he is canonically lucky, and scenes like “what if you miss”.
If you want sexy AI the Culture series can probably knock all competition out of the park. A typical Culture ship is run by / commanded by / is an AI several hundred times more intelligent than any human, with ample time to entertain the fleshy meatbags aboard via avatars, remotes, simulations etc. etc. The tiny fraction of processing power needed for that is basically a rounding error.
When you speak of ship a.I computers my first thik is the Culture series by Iain M. Banks General Systems Vehicle.
Imemse ship operated by multiple artificial intelligences.
But for the voice , I don’t know.
Perhaps beacuse I’m an european.
Ian M.Banks was an UK citizen *, he writes in english and the Culture series is a must read for SF fans.
* he died in 2013.
One episode DID anthropomorphize the Enterprise from TNG to a degree, when it for no known reason it suddenly spontaneously generated nodes throughout the ship that gave it a desire and ability to reproduce. It created something in the Holodeck and once it was born and disappeared into the depths of space the nodes disappeared as well and it went back to normal.
Statistically speaking in order of most likely to buy the farm… Gold, Blue, Red. And honestly 99% of those were ‘just part of the job man, little timmy stepped out of cover/walked into an obvious ambush.’ And TBPH, that trope was maintained except then it was the Red shirts buying. Now, I’ve got some clean up on the lower levels of this ‘lair’ and by levels, I mean the old villainesses root cellar.
p.s. actually this is a union job not contract work. Then hench union looks after older villains and such. Well, you know. More like looking after an elderly neighbor kind of thing. (and to quietly safety their residences because of old gear) And being a hench, it’s not just bad guys. ;)