The General Star Trek Thread of Earl Grey Tea, Baseball, and KHHHAAAANNNN

firehawk12 said:
There's the TNG Starfleet Academy series:
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Secret_of_the_Lizard_People
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Mystery_of_the_Missing_Crew
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Loyalties
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Deceptions

I have no idea what the books are like though. The series is only notable for the Peter David books where he basically created half the cast of the New Frontier series.
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They're pretty standard YA licensed junk; the one I enjoyed most was the Geordi LaForge Capture the Flag one. I read the first 9 or 10.
 
http://deadline.com/2015/03/harve-bennett-dies-star-trek-movie-producer-1201387026/

Did everyone forget that Harve Bennett (the producer of Treks II through V) passed away recently? He actually passed away two days before Nimoy but it wasn't mentioned to the public until the 5th. Wrath of Khan is still my favourite Trek movie. TSoS and TVH are both pretty good. TFF is terribly, but I won't blame him for that.

So Death wanted to reap the celebrity triple on Trek alumni apparently.
 
Mr. Pointy said:
http://deadline.com/2015/03/harve-bennett-dies-star-trek-movie-producer-1201387026/

Did everyone forget that Harve Bennett (the producer of Treks II through V) passed away recently? He actually passed away two days before Nimoy but it wasn't mentioned to the public until the 5th. Wrath of Khan is still my favourite Trek movie. TSoS and TVH are both pretty good. TFF is terribly, but I won't blame him for that.

So Death wanted to reap the celebrity triple on Trek alumni apparently.
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Ah, didn't see he'd died before. He definitely had a major impact on the quality of the TOS movies. I dunno what he thought about the JJ Abrams Trek movie—in many ways the issues of Kirk and Spock becoming friends, and racial prejudices, were key themes of the Starfleet Academy movie he wanted to do (and ended up leaving before STVI because they wouldn't let him do it.)
 
Mr. Pointy said:
http://deadline.com/2015/03/harve-bennett-dies-star-trek-movie-producer-1201387026/

Did everyone forget that Harve Bennett (the producer of Treks II through V) passed away recently? He actually passed away two days before Nimoy but it wasn't mentioned to the public until the 5th. Wrath of Khan is still my favourite Trek movie. TSoS and TVH are both pretty good. TFF is terribly, but I won't blame him for that.

So Death wanted to reap the celebrity triple on Trek alumni apparently.
Click to expand...

We also lost Maurice Hurley who was a writer/producer on TNG during seasons 1&2
 
I paid my respects to Leonard Nimoy in Star Trek Online.
8C49681DC39EBE8572E8487B8FAD76054BEA73EE
 
Fuchsdh said:
I've always really liked the idea of the Prime Directive, and felt like it never got adequately used for dramatic purposes. Because in general, I totally agree with the idea that you shouldn't dick around with another culture, especially if you're more advanced, because you can't really figure out what damage you might do and there are issues of cultural hegemony. At the same time, at what point does "let them die" turn less into high-minded morals and more a way to escape the greater responsibility your power in the universe requires? Is it worth sacrificing life in the present because you don't know what that will do to the future?

I think the debate in fan discussions gets turned into a "I like this character" or "Do you believe in God?" crap. SF Debris' video on the subject is flawed along these lines. (Although I do like his point that what's "natural" is a pretty crappy defense for anything.)

"Pen Pals" is kind of funny because Picard folds like a cheap suit as soon as he hears the voice of the kid, but then again I guess that's sort of illustrating the point; it's easy to say "don't interfere" if they're all faceless people and not a scared child.
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I like the idea of a Prime Directive, but the way TNG implements it is just all sorts of bad.

TNG episode Homeward comes to mind. One of the reasons I just can't get behind Picard as one of the great Captains. Truly a coward on the inside.
 
Alcibiades said:
I like the idea of a Prime Directive, but the way TNG implements it is just all sorts of bad.

TNG episode Homeward comes to mind. One of the reasons I just can't get behind Picard as one of the great Captains. Truly a coward on the inside.
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Coward? That's an odd and seemingly non-sequitor characterization. It has nothing to do with fear or bravery but it's about your value system. If you view a civilization as a living entity of its own, than you have to allow it to develop its own sense of autonomy, and pick up its own bruises along the way. Now, it's ok to disagree with this, and say that individual lives are worth more than preserving a civilization's track record of independence. But it happens to be the belief system followed by Starfleet (and the UFP) and one that Picard wholeheartedly buys into.
 
Battersea Power Station said:
Coward? That's an odd and seemingly non-sequitor characterization. It has nothing to do with fear or bravery but it's about your value system. If you view a civilization as a living entity of its own, than you have to allow it to develop its own sense of autonomy, and pick up its own bruises along the way. Now, it's ok to disagree with this, and say that individual lives are worth more than preserving a civilization's track record of independence. But it happens to be the belief system followed by Starfleet (and the UFP) and one that Picard wholeheartedly buys into.
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Yeah I like the IDEA of the prime directive, and there is something to be said for not contaminating cultures or giving certain species advantages they didn't come up with on their own. And when it comes to time travel one should attempt to keep the timeline intact.

But in Homeworld, Picard watches smugly while an entire population is killed and that's OK? At that point the Prime Directive is just an excuse to sit by and do nothing to help when it is not convenient. Helping a culture survive would have been the right thing to do in that situation and proves the Prime Directive is a sham when followed 100% to the letter.

I actually like Picard but this one episode and specifically his application of the Prime Directive taint his entire character for me. It's OK to be hardheaded but in Homeworld he basically comes off as a monster with no emotions.
 
The Prime Directive is a fine concept, but too often Trek writers used it as an excuse to create conflict.

Secretly deflecting an asteroid that would destroy a planet? Always justifiable.
Coming in and space-magicking away a hundred years of pollution on a pre-warp planet? Avoid.
 
Sir Fragula said:
The Prime Directive is a fine concept, but too often Trek writers used it as an excuse to create conflict.

Secretly deflecting an asteroid that would destroy a planet? Always justifiable.
Coming in and space-magicking away a hundred years of pollution on a pre-warp planet? Avoid.
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When did they do the latter?

I've always thought it's much easier to justify the Prime Directive when it comes down to interplanetary conflict, but even there you can argue that absolving yourself a moral quandary because interference might have unintended consequences is still not justifiable. It also gets into a question of perspective—if I do thing X and it has good consequences for 100 years but bad consequences after that, was X "right"? Likewise, human history is filled with great men and women who were truly horrible and barbaric and caused the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands of people, but created the modern world we live in (the Khans, Roman Caesers, etc.) Travel 1000 years away from the slaughtering, and we might be more willing to accept those figures as the grist for the sausage, as it were.

Interestingly enough from what we see of the future Starfleet where time travel is a thing, it seems that "c'est la vie" is the operating policy—so it doesn't matter if you broke the Prime Directive, you did what you did and the future isn't going to try and change that ("No, Kirk, you have to stop yourself from saving the whales!"). It also reminds me a lot of Pastwatch, which I thought was a rather poor Orson Card novel overall but one that had some interesting elements to it—like the idea that our timeline, where the Europeans dominated the Americas, came about because people from the future, for the best of intentions, altered the past to avoid a world where American peoples conquered Europe instead.
 
Alcibiades said:
I actually like Picard but this one episode and specifically his application of the Prime Directive taint his entire character for me. It's OK to be hardheaded but in Homeworld he basically comes off as a monster with no emotions.
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Picard had built up a lot of character currency over the course of the series. The Measure of a Man and The Offspring alone give him the moral benefit of the doubt.
 
Alcibiades said:
Yeah I like the IDEA of the prime directive, and there is something to be said for not contaminating cultures or giving certain species advantages they didn't come up with on their own. And when it comes to time travel one should attempt to keep the timeline intact.

But in Homeworld, Picard watches smugly while an entire population is killed and that's OK? At that point the Prime Directive is just an excuse to sit by and do nothing to help when it is not convenient. Helping a culture survive would have been the right thing to do in that situation and proves the Prime Directive is a sham when followed 100% to the letter.

I actually like Picard but this one episode and specifically his application of the Prime Directive taint his entire character for me. It's OK to be hardheaded but in Homeworld he basically comes off as a monster with no emotions.
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Is that really what they did in that episode? For some reason I remember it as just a small group that got killed. Yeah, allowing a whole civ. to be extinguished sounds dumb, especially since it won't provide any "evolutionary" or cultural value to either those people or others in the galaxy.
 
I just finished watching Enterprise yesterday, finally catching up on every single movie and episode of Star Trek. That's probably why I came on here to comment on something.

SeventhSon said:
Picard had built up a lot of character currency over the course of the series. The Measure of a Man and The Offspring alone give him the moral benefit of the doubt.
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Yeah Picard had done some pretty great things and I don't normally mind seeing Picard's flaws in full display (First Contact movie).

I don't even know why I brought it up but I just worked myself up over that one moment in that one episode because it seemed really out of line even for Picard.

Battersea Power Station said:
Is that really what they did in that episode? For some reason I remember it as just a small group that got killed. Yeah, allowing a whole civ. to be extinguished sounds dumb, especially since it won't provide any "evolutionary" or cultural value to either those people or others in the galaxy.
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Yeah I think I'm gonna decide to go with the "pretend this episode doesn't exist" reaction from now on. There are few things I'd do that with but no sense in getting worked up over one scene from one episode.

AND WOOPS - the episode is called Homeward.
 
The only thing good about Homeward is Worf's foster brother is Paulie from Goodfellas.

Michael Piller recycled some of the episode in Insurrection.
 
SeventhSon said:
The only thing good about Homeward is Worf's foster brother is Paulie from Goodfellas.

Michael Piller recycled some of the episode in Insurrection.
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If we're talking about some Star Trek where I cannot get behind the moral quandary at all, Insurrection is it. I shed not a tear about Starfleet's plan.
 
Fuchsdh said:
If we're talking about some Star Trek where I cannot get behind the moral quandary at all, Insurrection is it. I shed not a tear about Starfleet's plan.
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I don't remember Insurrection all that well. Why did they have to move all the people off of the planet? Couldn't they have just said "hey you guys live where you live and we'll set up a little place over here where people can stay temporarily?"

It was only like 300 people, right?
 
Htown said:
I don't remember Insurrection all that well. Why did they have to move all the people off of the planet? Couldn't they have just said "hey you guys live where you live and we'll set up a little place over here where people can stay temporarily?"

It was only like 300 people, right?
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The problem was that in order to harness the special radiation or whatnot that surrounded the planet, they'd essentially render the planet uninhabitable. So moving them was a requirement.

But all of Picard's outrage doesn't make much sense in the situation. It literally is as simple a question as "do you believe in the concept of eminent domain?" If no, okay, I understand your complaint. But if you do... that's all the Federation and Son'a were doing, albeit on a planetary scale.

The Ba'ku weren't native to the planet; they weren't a pre-warp civilization; and they're horrendous dicks (the whole reason the Son'a had to leave was that the Ba'ku wanted to be Space Amish and apparently couldn't abide technology on the same damn planet as them.) There's no compelling reason why relocating them is bad. Sure, the Son'a are slaveowning jerks too, but the technology involved is basically good for everyone.
 
Battersea Power Station said:
Is that really what they did in that episode? For some reason I remember it as just a small group that got killed. Yeah, allowing a whole civ. to be extinguished sounds dumb, especially since it won't provide any "evolutionary" or cultural value to either those people or others in the galaxy.
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Yep. Worf's brother was assigned to observe and study this civilization, and then a random catastrophe threatened to wipe them all out. Worf's brother yelled "run to the caves" (buying them some time), sent a distress signal, and waited for Federation help to arrive. Worf's brother might have only saved one village out of an entire planet.

Then Picard tells him that he refuses to help these people, because death is better than a contaminated culture, and Worf's brother was wrong to yell "run to the caves", because even that warning contaminated them.

The Picard-ordered solution is, leave those people in the cave to die, while you stand on your bridge, salute, and say "This hurts me more than it does you, and I respect your unwilling sacrifice."

Then Worf's brother beams the survivors up to the holodeck, with a plan to relocate them to a safe planet without disturbing them, and Picard is all "Damn you for making this my problem." Picard was completely willing to let them all die (through deliberate inaction), but he's not willing to pull the trigger himself.
 
TOS Season 1 Kirk is probably more professional than later Trek ended up portraying him as. He certainly comports himself better than Archer. Who, speaking of which, would have probably got himself smushed by Gary Mitchell if he was in the same situation.

Scotty always filled in perfectly as captain when the situation arose.
 
kess said:
TOS Season 1 Kirk is probably more professional than later Trek ended up portraying him as. He certainly comports himself better than Archer. Who, speaking of which, would have probably got himself smushed by Gary Mitchell if he was in the same situation.

Scotty always filled in perfectly as captain when the situation arose.
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I really liked one of the Pocket Books, Kobayashi Maru, because it had Scotty originally trying out for Command before switching to Engineering (what he really wanted to do). He basically survives the scenario "legit" longer than anyone by trying out these increasingly outlandish technical solutions.

Chekov is involved in some Hunger-Games type scenario on a planet.

And I think they did Kirk more justice in the novel than in the film; he reprograms the scenario to be beatable, not easy; he basically uses his bravado to get the Klingons to help and them tricks them into leaving. A bit better than the "eh I activated the cheat modes!" thing they did in the film.
 
Escape Goat said:
Scotty was killed by that probe that thought Kirk was his creator. He also reduced Uhura to a first grade reading level.
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but then he came out fine then?

also Chekov is lucky to become a "regular" despite not being on the first season I take it?

also why was Scotty's actor against appearing in the futurama ep?
 
Chakotay, Sulu and Uhura really were just glorified extras until the films. The show was firmly the Kirk, Spock and McCoy show, with special guest star, Scotty.

Given that I was disappointed that the Abrams films didn't take the chance to create some new characters. Stick with the core three and Scotty. Introduce some new characters. Totally beholden to Trek canon. Introduce the other three in later films.
 
Man the original cast are dwindling in numbers, I feel bad.

Everyone in TNG and DS9 era are healthy though right?
 
According to the sources I've seen, Doohan just said no through his agent. Who knows if he personally had an issue with it or his agent just thought it would make fun of him (along the lines of The Simpsons' "god I'm so fat!")
 
Boss Doggie said:
Man the original cast are dwindling in numbers, I feel bad.

Everyone in TNG and DS9 era are healthy though right?
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Dr Pulaski and Picard have to be two of the oldest cast members (76 and 74 respectively). Stewart is clearly very active still but Muldaur's IMDB page lists her last project as being voice work for Batman TAS back in the early 90s. 70s doesn't mean people become invalids but health can deteriorate quickly and suddenly. Nimoy was 83 when he died but then you have people like Betty White who is doing TV at 93.
 
Escape Goat said:
Dr Pulaski and Picard have to be two of the oldest cast members (76 and 74 respectively). Stewart is clearly very active still but Muldaur's IMDB page lists her last project as being voice work for Batman TAS back in the early 90s. 70s doesn't mean people become invalids but health can deteriorate quickly and suddenly. Nimoy was 83 when he died but then you have people like Betty White who is doing TV at 93.
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Shatner is 84 and still fairly active.
 
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