this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
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TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name
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Re-route power to the shields, emit a tachyon pulse through the deflector, and post all the nonsense you want. Within reason of course.
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I've heard it described as "competence porn".
I've always thought of competence porn as something more like Suits or House M.D, where the entire point is to see cool smart people doing call smart things and vicariously feel cool and smart yourself by watching them do it. In Star Trek, the crew's competence seems incidental, but at least to me it doesn't feel like the point of the episodes is to show off how competent people are - it usually seems like either some sort of philosophical enquiry, a straightforward action/suspense, interpersonal drama, or some combination of them. So while competence does feature in the stories, I feel like it's handled with a lot more depth and realism than straight up pornography of competence. Star Trek is like competence erotica~
TNG is the epitome of competence porn. With the exception of Barclay, everyone is pretty much extremely capable at all times except when the plot includes some space shenanigans that make them less so, like turning into kids or losing your psychic powers.
Barclay seemed to be very competent albeit unsure of himself while also nobody believing in his abilities.
Didn't Barclay do some impossibly smart things to help Voyager?
That was my favorite character arc in Voyager. Barclay redeeming himself for all of the wild shit he did in TNG by sticking up to his superiors and pretty much getting kicked out of Starfleet in the interim.
Yeah he had the misunderstood savant role in Voy. He single handledly developed intra-galactic communication.
Yeah he even had to go behind Adm Paris's back to do so
No
Mariner’s uniform makes it look like she has a giraffe neck.
What? They're also all abnormally competent.