DrForester
Kills Photobucket
I liked Jake and Nog's subplot throughout the series. Little tough in S1 since they were younger, but I think it worked.
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The General Star Trek Thread of Earl Grey Tea, Baseball, and KHHHAAAANNNN
- Thread starter The Librarian
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I liked Jake and Nog's subplot throughout the series. Little tough in S1 since they were younger, but I think it worked.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
The early seasons are weird because of it being stuck in TNG mode. Lots of random issue of the week episodes like the girl in the wheelchair who doesn't want to be cured of her gravity sickness.
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
The b-plot in Progress with them trying to trade away self-sealing stem bolts was pretty amusingPlus those things became a running gag.
Just wrote up a piece on the episode
The Cost of Change: Star Trek Deep Space Nine's Progress
Good read. Kira was an excellent character. While she wasn't the Captain, I really do think that as far as a female lead goes, she was everything right that the writers with Janeway did wrong.
She was the star in the early seasons for sure. Once the show found itself and other characters emerged, she faded a bit into the background, but her character (plus Visitor) was already rock solid so it wasn't a huge deal. Plus her final arc was bar none the best for out of the main cast.
Not only is she a Federation diplomat but she's also involved in her planet's ruling caste...so....
weemadarthur
Member
Starfleet does have policies.
But neither of those people are Starfleet, and Sisko can't do a dang thing. Picard couldn't either.
dragonyeuw
Member
There must be some kind of 'inter-galactic' law/regulations keeping order though, right? I mean that's like some random person committing murder, but you can't arrest or prosecute them because they fall outside Starfleet.
weemadarthur
Member
Local laws apply inside territories claimed by various political powers. That's why O'Brien was convicted in the cardassian courts.
But Odo's problem was generally his refusal to communicate clearly. So his friends default to "it sure is funny to watch him squirm".
Forbes is a great actress as well, so I'm sure she would have been more than fine, but I have trouble envisioning her embracing the lighter and campier side of things like Visitor occasionally did. Her Ro was also mostly broody and sullen, and there are soooo many of those types of characters on TV.
weemadarthur
Member
Today I watched Insurrection.
It was overall kinda meh, but one bit stuck with me. The proposed naming of a well used contrail device as "The Riker Maneuver". I mean, cadets lit their own contrails years before this movie, but in a cool pattern. What would make this different? Although I can see lighting your own fart being called Riker Maneuver.
It was overall kinda meh, but one bit stuck with me. The proposed naming of a well used contrail device as "The Riker Maneuver". I mean, cadets lit their own contrails years before this movie, but in a cool pattern. What would make this different? Although I can see lighting your own fart being called Riker Maneuver.
Riker was clearly jealous of the Picard manoeuvre, so they named one after him to shut him up
Just think, we nearly had that stupid scene in First Contact instead.
(Reading the early scripts for First Contact it has to be one of the most obviously improved scripts by rewrites. It's just a mess throughout.)
firehawk12
Subete no aware
She did fine with the episode where they phased through walls or whatever.
It's funny because the book continuity just wrote her back in.
------
Anyway, as I watch through DS9, I'm struck by small niggles that bothered me the first time around but that I just completely forgot about until now.
Episodes where someone from the main cast gets involved with a guest star always end with the relationship failing in some manner that is both definitive and neatly wrapped up in a bow.
Any episode involving time travel always ends up resetting the table at the end, making the entire episode itself pointless and forgettable outside of the novelty of being able to tell a science fiction story. This includes Children of Time and The Visitor.
DS9 tried to make the alien species seem less hegemonic by trying to introduce the politics into both the Cardassian and Bajoran storylines, but for the most part one single member of an alien species represented an entire species.
The whole enlisted vs officer thing is a complete mess. They tried to introduce the idea that the enlisted did all the trash jobs that officers would never want to do, but then you see officers serving coffee to the bridge crew of the Defiant and realize it doesn't really matter.
Speaking of, the Defiant ended up feeling like such a copout because they just couldn't figure out how to tell any stories without having a starship on hand. Rather than fully embrace the space station or Bajor concept, you'll get random bottle episodes where the ship plays an important part of the plot.
They had to keep finding reasons to stop the transporters from working in order to try to tell cliche 20th century war stories instead of trying to think about how war would work in a context where people can be anywhere at anytime AND where a ship could simply nuke a planet from orbit.
This also applied to the space battles where it's nonsensical to just have giant fleets smash into each other on relatively flat planes of battle. The idea of a "blockade" in space makes absolutely no sense. They also tried to make the Defiant seem like a submarine or a WW2 ship at times by having things like Nog repeat Sisko's commands and relay them to other sections of the ship.
They tried to expand on the the concept of an economy in a future where you could simply replicate anything, but it just seemed strange. For example, Quark's cousin is a weapons broker, but why would you need to sell thousands of rifles when you could just sell the design and have someone replicate it? It's not even clear what Quark actually sells to people either, or where Federation personnel would get Latinum in the first place in order to buy things from Quark (that he just pulls out of the replicator anyway).
The Klingon honor stuff got tiring after a while, and in some ways I think Worf regressed from the TNG version of his character during his time on DS9. It's weird that I would find the Ferrengi episodes to be much more interesting than the Klingon ones. There's only so many "honor" and "Qapla" episodes that you can watch before it gets boring.
I'm at Season 6, so I haven't gotten to Ezri yet... but I hated her at the time and I'm wondering if I'll feel the same now after all these years. I still think it was shitty of them to kill her off just because the actress found another job, when they could just have "Pulaski'ed" her and brought her back from time to time (like in the finale).
I still don't know if there's ever been a definitive answer to the JMS plagiarism charges, but there are so many similarities to B5 that feel impossible to ignore. Odo and Quark are basically G'Kar and Londo. The Bajoran crap feels like it's taking elements of the Minbari, but not as well developed. The fact that they "stole" the B5 actor to be the Admiral during the Homefront two-parter seemed like a shit move, and seeing him again just reminded me of that "fiasco" and how annoyed JMS was at the time.
Of course most of these are minor nitpicky complaints and I'm still enjoying revisiting the series (I've skipped a few episodes, like all the dumb mirror universe ones). I kind of want to start watching Voyager again, but I don't know if I can handle Janeway being a mother to a baby Q or whatever the fuck happened during the last few seasons of the show.
weemadarthur
Member
I can buy a flight stick control device, but not having one as an option until the E doesn't seem very plausible. Surely a partly mechanical flight stick handles more intuitively than a touchscreen arc where you first need to specify whether you're adjusting pitch or yaw? No wonder Galaxy Quest is so high on the list of best Star Trek movies. "This episode was badly written!"
Inquisitive_Ghost
Member
"I see you managed to get your shirt off" gets me every time. I've seen random TOS episodes before, but I've been slowly watching them in order lately, and in ~10 episodes, Kirk's managed to get his shirt torn or removed in ~50% of them so far.
Eh, she was more calm and accepting of fate than funny in that episode.
Did it also swing the other way around? Things you appreciate more now than before? I think picking up on new things good or bad after such a long time is pretty normal.
One-off romances are a staple in Trek, for obvious reasons. Sisko provides one of the few exceptions.
High concept episodes have that inherent problem, I think. They don't translate well to long-term ramifications. Look at Picard and Inner Light - all he gets is one followup in Lessons after living a second life as another person. So it's not really restricted to DS9. That said, Far Beyond the Stars had implications beyond its concept, even though it's not strictly time travelling. And Children of Time did provide some new character revelations for Odo and Kira.
Martok is different than Worf is different than Kor is different than Gowron.
Kira is different than Winn is different than Bareil is different than Li Nalas than Jaro. Not great but it's not for the lack of political viewpoints.
Garak is different than Dukat is different than Dumar is different than Rusot is different than Ghemor is different than Tain.
Quark is different than Rom is different than Nog is different than Brunt is different than Zek.
Even the Jem Hadar have different personalities, but are obviously limited.
Romulans all suck and Vulcans are bigots so you maaaaay have a point.
I mean it's pretty hard to do more given the size of the supporting cast, plus the guest actors
Yeah that's dumb. Starfleet is weird.
People didn't seem to want Bajor or station-centred shows, unfortunately. I like them myself, but unfortunately I'm in the minority. They did a good job rebooting the series, all things considering.
Yeah that's Trek for you. I do think they explicitly were focused on the message that war sucks vs. hey these are more crazy tech ways to kill people. The former is more relatable. One of my favourite episodes is Nor the Battle to the Strong, and that has the crazy transporter jam. The story is awesome nonetheless.
Yeah space battles have always been bad in Trek. At least DS9 did minefields right and had a bit of frantic fighting (a few of the battles in Season 6 have the Klingons actually swooping in from above AFAIK)
I try not to think about the Federation post-scarcity economy.
I liked that Worf came into the show as a bit of a lost soul. His regression, as you put it, is interesting to me. Someone did a character study on Worf which explores how he is so unKlingon yet embodies the most Klingon ideals. Maybe it's Chuck over at SFDebris.. it's pretty good.
I am neutral on the Ezri thing myself, as Jadzia was always the weakest and least compelling character on the show, so I don't care either way. I think the concept of an unsuitable Trill, but they really didn't devote enough time to flesh out Ezri. Not that they should have either, because she doesn't deserve the spotlight over better, more developed characters. It would have been funny if after Garak told her off in "AfterImage" she just leaves and never comes back haha.
I'm sure there was influence, but Odo and Quark are very different characters that have very different motivations and do very different things than their BS5 counterparts, aside from banter? Bajorans are nothing like the Minbari. I had no idea they poached actors from BS5, Leyton sucked anyways.
Crossover, the first mirror episode is actually pretty good, but yeah the rest are complete camp. Luckily I have no such compunction to revisit Voyager. Have fun with that.
weemadarthur
Member
Yes, all tv shows ever. It gets annoying.
Agreed. But so many fans find them important that this is likely a personality conflict. I guess I don't mind episodes existing for klingon fans, but I sure as hell skip them. Especially Sons and Daughters. Why the hell is Alexander brought back to be a complete failure and clown? Yuck.
True, but try reading some Tom Clancy. After the third book of trying to remember the difference between Tim from the CIA and Tom from the FBI, you'd pay good money to have them merged into Tam who represents all American Acronyms.
Maybe that's why I never could figure out the rank system. It makes no sense!
They did try though. DS9 has a fleet actually nuke a planet from space, it just doesn't do any good because the targets had already moved to a new address.
There are always boarding parties so they can showcase the hand to hand combat skills.
I just watched some TOS episodes and it's much worse back there in the timeline. It seems to be related to the level of familiarity and comfort with space travel. TOS is still an astronaut/hostile environment feel, while TNG is totally ready to fly a city around the galaxy without worrying where the next meal will come from.
Well I thought Ezri was very interesting as a character, because she actually dealt with real issues caused by joining.
She refused to be a mommy and was left to babysit an adolescent Q. Apparently we are supposed to believe that Janeway will teach it better ethics than its daddy will, so it's good for the universe that they had some quality time? I just glanced through the voyager episode synopses and couldn't find a single one I wanted to watch.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Yeah, I actually liked Kai Wynn pre-Season 6/7 before she goes crazy and starts having sex with Dukat. She was a simple minded and ambitious, but she wasn't necessarily evil until the Pah Wraith stuff started to happen.
Similarly flawed Humanity, even if it was a betrayal of the "Utopian" vision, introduced some grey into the idea of the Federation. That said, I don't remember if the Section 31 storyline goes anywhere.
I ended up really liking Kira more than I remember. Of course Nana Visitor played her a bit one note at times - whenever she was angry it'd always be the same kind of emoting/shouting - but I think she has the most interesting arc of the series. The two episodes with her Cardassian "Father" are quite good, particularly because it forces her to re-examine her own identity.
Similarly, I looked forward to the Jake and Nog stories. I mean they usually only had small parts, outside of the two or three episodes where they are part of the "A" story, but they provided a nice "civilian" entry to the Star Trek universe. Same with Quark and Rom, actually.
Garak was as good as I remember him being, although he never really gets as dark as they probably wanted him to be.
The random mentions of Morn going wild were amusing. He's an example of the soft continuity that the show had throughout. I know that Berman was the one who forced them to introduce episodic stories against Behr's and Moore's wishes, but for a show that had wacky adventure episodes mashed into the continuity of the Dominion war.
They tried to have recurring "secondary" characters. So the first season had that Bajoran girl that hung out with O'Brien a lot who turned out to be one of Wynn's lackeys. There was Nunez, who was in a few episodes before he died trying to capture the Jemhadar ship. And of course Michael Eddington. I wish they did that more - and perhaps even made a couple of the senior staff rotate in and out as part of ongoing stories as well.
I forgot that the Defiant had this whole Romulan conceit - I think I was more excited at the prospect of having a Romulan crew member than I remember, but of course that died as fast as it was introduced.
This is probably just for me, but I tried trying to see if there were any hints of Bashir's genetically engineered nature in the early seasons and of course there weren't any. It was funny because there's an episode where he has the chance to "cure" a woman who can't walk because she grew up on a low gravity environment and you'd think that his past would come up there but nope. Still, it made me pay more attention to him than I probably would have otherwise.
Yeah, same with Ziyal and Garak (although we know how that ended) and Kira and Shakaar/Borial.
They tried to have a little continuity by having Jake write "Anslem" in the normal timeline, but that's about it. I know Voyager had some of these types of time travel reset episodes as well, as did Enterprise, and while they are sort of fun "what if" type episodes, the fact that you know everything will go back to the way things were is kind of annoying.
It was nice having the Odo thing linger after Children of Time, but the revelation of his love for her doesn't really go anywhere until way into season 6.
Yeah, but all Klingons and Cardassians and whatever have their racial traits that define them. Even humans in the future are the same. I'd rather they take the time to be more subtle about it - and it'd be as easy as having the characters not refer to an entire species in their casual dialog.
Well, better than having runabouts I guess.
I mean on the one hand I liked the episode, on the other hand it's just a standard war story that you could set during WW2 or Vietnam or even the Afghan/Iraq war and it wouldn't feel out of place. But if we're being realistic about it, every battle would just involve drone pilots sitting on Earth piloting automated ships and androids instead of people running around with phasers and "hoppers" on the ground.
The 1 v 1 battles in the franchise are okay, since it doesn't really matter where the ships are in relation to each other. I don't know if large scale battles make sense in this universe though.
I still don't get why people would even have service or retail jobs.
I think I preferred the Worf who had a good relationship with Alexander and was dating Troi to the one we ended up with in DS9. But I can see someone finding him interesting in this context. I don't know if Worf came aboard because of the Klingon fetish the show had or if there were any other viable options - it would have been kind of neat to have "Tom" Riker join the cast, if not Data.
I think some of the Trill "mythology" episodes that she got were okay, and I like that she was the "fun" one. Although admittedly, perhaps part of why I like her so much is that my teen self had a huge crush on her. lol
I was thinking more of their relationship - how they are basically antagonists who end up having a shared respect for each other and ultimately become friends. Quark softens in the same way as Londo as the series progressed.
At least there's only one more for me to skip. lol
I want to believe there are some interesting Voyager episodes. Of course the only one I really remember is the one with Andy Dick.
Yeah, pretty much.
I find it hilarious that the one and only episode that Ron Moore wrote for Voyager when he switched over was yet another stupid Klingon mythology episode. I'm just kind of tired of them as a race because they're so inflexible and only really have one personality type (QAPLAAAAAAA!). I get that they're cool and their "honor-first" philosophy is probably as appealing as the whole Jedi thing, but I kind of wish they were more than that.
"Military guy", "Intelligence guy", "Civilian guy". Those are basically the three types of DS9 characters.
The problem stems from TOS using American naval ranks and no one bothered to change it.Maybe that's why I never could figure out the rank system. It makes no sense!
(Although I don't get why they changed the Red so that it became Command instead of Engineering)
I might not have gotten to that episode yet, but when there are weapons that can destroy all life on the planet by stripping the planet's atmosphere (as featured in TNG), anything else seems a bit... small by comparison.
Although TOS also had the scientific mandate, the fact that they were hostile with both Klingons and Romulans (because of the Cold War allegory) made it feel more like a military ship than anything. And since it was more clearly based on the Navy at the time, it really felt as if it was a warship first and a science ship second... like if they took an American warship and sprinkled a few scientists on board.
I think I would have been okay with Ezri if she wasn't Dax. The fact that she was meant to literally replace the old character was really annoying to me at the time.
I can't believe they tried to have Q politics and have Q try to "woo" Janeway. All the Q episodes on Voyager made some of the early Q episodes on TNG look good by comparison. lol
I think the idea that Roddenberry was going for at the time was something along the lines of "what if we put all this military energy (aka the military-industrial complex) into exploration instead, and it comes out a bit literal: Soldiers exploring.
But I think TOS gets a bad rap here. Most of the episodes *are* about exploration and diplomacy. There's 3 romulan episodes and 7 klingon episodes in the whole run. Otherwise 'military' adversaries are found in the process of exploring, and the resolution usually involves something other than actually winning a battle.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Oh sure, it's not all fighting of course. I see it as a lot of cold war standoffs and proxy wars. Like that Tribble episode that DS9 "remade" had Klingons trying to sabotage a grain storage thing... and I can't remember why they were doing it, but I assume it was to disrupt Federation plans.
Of course the fact that Enterprise-D is full of families and is a luxury/cruise ship doesn't help with the impression people have of TOS.
----
I thought of a couple more niggles with DS9:
The Enterprise never shows up. The books have them doing things during the war, but it's odd that it's never even mentioned, particularly when she's the flagship.
The Federation seems so unprepared, and while I understand that the Federation isn't about war, the fact that they developed the Defiant shows that they were interested in creating more war ships. Of course I'm sure the writers just wanted an arc where the Federation was on its heels, but you'd figure if they kept developing Borg killing technology they wouldn't have any problems with the Dominion. (Also it seems strange that by exposing themselves to the Alpha Quadrant, the Founders are basically encouraging the Borg to find them because I'm sure they'd be happy to assimilate some of them and be able to start changing forms).
Another bit of retconning that seemed to happen is that instead of the Dominion being the "anti-Federation" with the Founders forcing solids to join them at gunpoint, later on they made it seem like every single species in the Dominion was created in a lab to serve the Founders in a specific function. Of course in the end all we got were the Jemhadar and Vorta and they didn't really have a reason to have other races.
They also forgot or just retconned the fact that Dukat had a Cardassian family that "left" him before Ziyal. Whoops.
Literally the only lab created species are the Jemhadar and the Vorta. Everyone else are 'welcomed' in in much the same way the Cardassians are.
There weren't any hints because Bashir being genetically-engineered wasn't a thing until they thought of it, but there is one episode, season 3's "Distant Voices".
Bashir is confronted by a telepathic invader, and not only is Bashir the first human to ever survive such an attack, but the attacker taunts Bashir in his mind, pointing out that he loved tennis and was good enough to have been a world-class contender, until he suddenly dropped the sport like a rock because his parents wanted him to stop. And how on his Starfleet Medical exam, he was about to ace the test with a perfect score until he deliberately got an easy question wrong, allowing his rival to pass him, taking the "safe" position of #2 in his class.
The telepathic attacker's conclusion was that Bashir was a quitter, obviously, and this was decided on as the best angle for an attack against Bashir's mind. But in hindsight, Bashir gave up tennis, a game he loved, because he was juicing. If he ever seriously won at tennis, closer examination would have proved that he had an unfair and illegal physical advantage. And they previously established that Bashir wanted DS9 while his rival wanted a Starship posting, so while in the end they both got what they wanted, it burned him up inside to know that the only reason he got DS9 was because his rival didn't want it. He wanted to reach out and take the position he really wanted, not to accept someone else's sloppy seconds, and he was upset with himself for being unable to do that. Which doesn't fit with a man who deliberately threw the test, because he "couldn't take the pressure" of scoring 100% on an exam.
It fits beautifully with Bashir as a man who could win easily, but constantly has to take care that he doesn't win too much, doesn't stand out from the crowd, doesn't draw suspicion. The psychic attacker was wrong about Bashir. He gave Bashir's memories a quick glance and thought he had him figured out, but he didn't look deep enough, didn't see the real Bashir, and that failure dulled his attack. Combined with Bashir's superhuman mental and physical abilities, and it becomes less surprising that Bashir was the first person to ever survive such an attack.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Yeah, I know, there was that "trading and manufacturing" species... the Karema I think. But we just don't see any other members of the Dominion, and it makes you wonder why they bother subjugating solids at all.
Oh you're right. This episode seems like such a happy accident, but it totally fits with his backstory.
Just finished up a mini-Trek movie splurge. Some thoughts...
Most underrated film: Search for Spock, even if the first half is much better than the second (especially the scenes of Vulcan).
Best Ending to a Trek Film: The Voyage Home (starting from the shuttle pod going through spacedock to the end warp drive).
"All Good Things..." - written to be a movie, just on TV. If we were allowed to include it in our movie rankings, this would be my #1. Q's final scenes were some of his finest, and the ending was a subtly emotional one.
Most underrated film: Search for Spock, even if the first half is much better than the second (especially the scenes of Vulcan).
Best Ending to a Trek Film: The Voyage Home (starting from the shuttle pod going through spacedock to the end warp drive).
"All Good Things..." - written to be a movie, just on TV. If we were allowed to include it in our movie rankings, this would be my #1. Q's final scenes were some of his finest, and the ending was a subtly emotional one.
It really would have been interesting to see how the fandom would see TNG and the TNG movies differently if "All Good Things" had been the movie instead of Generations, like was intended at one point.
Regarding the "time reset" episodes, I actually really like them. I don't think there's anything wrong with mashing the reset button because you get to see scenarios or interactions or different facets of a character; "Year of Hell", "Yesterday's Enterprise" and "Course Oblivion" are some of my favorite episodes, and they all play with the poignancy of not knowing something of consequence happened, which always felt like an unexplored side of Star Trekchances are in the far future even these derring-do exploits of our main characters are probably going to be forgotten or warped beyond all recognition, and the only episode that even attempts to grapple with that is "Living Witness".
I do agree that the lack of continuity with the time episodes is where their weakness comes through, though. "The Inner Light" should have basically been a core element of Picard going forward, but we get a single episode and it's never brought up again. The strength of an episode like "Children of Time" is that "nothing changed" but everything changed for the characters, with the realization of what Dax was capable of to Odo and Kira's relationship, but again that doesn't really ever come up again besides the gut punches of the episode (given Kira and Odo's relationship arc it actually comes off as a stupid soap opera twist, rather than something that was important to their development.)
And finally there is the matter of getting too familiar with a given set of plots. Braga loves time travel, and he's pretty good at it, but leaning on it so heavily starts feeling like you're limiting the show (take the first season of Voyager, for examplein the first two episodes after the premiere one is a time travel episode and one is a "weird space anomaly" episode, and those crowd out the character-building moments.)
The problem with the TNG movies (aside from the train wreck that is Nemesis) is that they felt like long TV episodes. Generations and Insurrection are both solid if you thought of them as feature length episodes, they're just not movie worthy.
Hell, Insurrection is probably one of my more favourite TNG movies.
Can you explain what you mean? I know the "long episode of the TV show" is a common complaint, but I just really don't understand what that means. They've got bigger budgets than any episode (except for Star Trek V I guess) in look and feel, with notable exceptions (the captain's logs in III and GEN) they don't use any of the time-saving mechanics of the shows...
It's not a complaint for me, it's why I prefer them
It's more that it's not focused enough for the standard movie watcher, not got significant stakes tc,
It's hard to explain.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
It's more in terms of the scope and type of story I guess.
I think the real difference is that the time between TOS and the TOS movies was so long that when the old cast got reunited for the movies, everything felt different and bigger. New sets, new uniforms, bigger stories (Spock dying!). The TNG movies were happening as DS9 and Voyager were in full swing, and there wasn't really anything special about them that you couldn't get from watching one of the other shows.
biggersmaller
Banned
But...but Picard wouldn't have any fist fights on catwalks in that movie!
Henchmen21
Banned
Imo Trek Died when Roddenberry died.
Speaking of, just remembered that the 25th of his death is approaching.
Speaking of, just remembered that the 25th of his death is approaching.
Really?
I mean he was obviously the spark that set the whole thing off, but let's not pretend that he was anything but a HUGELY negative influence from the end of TOS onward.
He wasn't, though. He had his ideas about Trek, and some of them were great, and some of them were bad, and some of them were fine but unnecessarily limiting for the writers. The whole "Roddenberry was cancer to Trek!" shit is the same dumbass sentiment as Berman and Braga were all that was wrong with Trek, that Trek died with Roddenberry, etc. It's distilling complex individuals and the realities of TV production down to bogeymen to demonize.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
I don't think I liked Siege of AR-558 as much as I thought I would, mostly because it felt like a contrivance to have a Vietnam-era war story in the Star Trek universe. Starfleet sends a hundred guys to guard this really important communications array that they have been trying to study for 5 months and doesn't bother relieving them or sending reinforcements for "reasons". Meanwhile the Jemhadar, for some reason, don't just glass the planet and simply rebuild a new communications array somewhere else. Or just release some kind of biological virus to wipe out all organic life. Or whatever.
funkystudent
Member
Watched The Cage for the first time in 20 years.
Didn't realise Majel Barrett went back that far with Trek.
Didn't realise Majel Barrett went back that far with Trek.
It would certainly hurt the show, because I doubt they could have replaced it with a better finale. How about the theaters? If it stayed exactly the same but with better effects (no added scenes aka fight scenes), it'd likely be adored by Trek fans and shunned by non-Trek fans for having almost no action and this weird character called Q.
These are excellent points. I can't really expand on anything there.
whatevermort
Member
I left reading the Altman/Gross 50 Year Mission volume one with an overwhelming sense that GR was a horrible man who really wasn't very talented at all. Doesn't seem like anybody respected him, his creative ideas weren't even close to being the things that have made Trek last, and his proclivity for telling his female assistants about his sex life was just deeply unpleasant.
So I found out that there will be a big Star Trek convention in October in Birmingham, deciding over whether to buy a general admission ticket or one of the special packages and which cast member to take pictures with (Jonathan Frakes, Terry Farrell and George Takei are a lockdown at the very least).
Anyone ever been to one of these or something like this? What are the parties like? Do you get any opportunities to talk to the cast members in them?
http://destinationstartrek.com/
Anyone ever been to one of these or something like this? What are the parties like? Do you get any opportunities to talk to the cast members in them?
http://destinationstartrek.com/
JonnyDBrit
Member
So, getting back into STO, decided to start again after I went to my old character and realised they'd gone and overhauled the galactic map. In turn, decided to start anew with a Starfleet character (25th century rather than 23rd), to see if they'd changed the earlier missions and the like.
Imagine my surprise in starting not in the midst of a Borg attack, but graduating from the academy only to be ambushed by Klingons, who
. Actually feels kinda neat, compared to the 'literally the entire senior staff but you got wiped out' approach, though I do slightly wonder why a graduate was made the first officer to begin with. Also liking the use of cutscenes and the like, though the voice acting ranges from alright to absolutely forced,
Imagine my surprise in starting not in the midst of a Borg attack, but graduating from the academy only to be ambushed by Klingons, who
pull a Nero and kill your Captain
firehawk12
Subete no aware
The weird thing is that the 23rd century thing was a limited event and doing it gave you a special set of quests that only people from the 23rd century could do. Mostly just random collectathon quests that appear during the normal misisons, but they unlock bonuses.
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I'm on the home stretch of DS9 and I really hate what happened with the stupid Pah Wraith stuff. I just skip the scenes where Dukat and Wynn show up now.
Just a dry run for Moore's BSG religion nonsense!
JonnyDBrit
Member
Oh. That's... mildly disappointing, that it's an option at character creation made it seem like it was effectively its own campaign. Well, will probably check it out at some stage either way.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Yeah, you start off in the TOS era and run around in a couple of TOS episodes with some cameos from the original cast (most of which is based on clips from the show, but they got Chekov to come back I guess and hired a replacement for Scotty). After awhile, your ship is destroyed but right before you die you are transported by Daniels - yes, the one from Enterprise - into the future and rejoin Starfleet there.
I have no idea if you can still do it now... Reddit was saying that it was over soon, and I have no idea if that meant that you can't access it any more or if you can't get the bonuses.
IS STARBUCK THE EMISSARY??!?!
JonnyDBrit
Member
Well, got through the next main part of the tutorial: Vega. Borg are still there and fucking things up... but hoo boy is it more effective and intro to the whole thing than the original version was.
Like, they actually sell this whole 'Borg Invasion = Worst thing possible' atmosphere, as you see just ship after ship warping in. When you get back up to your ship from the planet and the Borg have just... swept across the surface. Its Starfleet's nightmare scenario, realised.
I'm hooked again.
Like, they actually sell this whole 'Borg Invasion = Worst thing possible' atmosphere, as you see just ship after ship warping in. When you get back up to your ship from the planet and the Borg have just... swept across the surface. Its Starfleet's nightmare scenario, realised.
I'm hooked again.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Finished DS9.
I think What You Leave Behind is probably the most "satisfying" finale inasmuch as it has a proper denouement and feels like the end of a story. All Good Things is close in that it book ends the series, but it doesn't really feel like an ending, particularly since they decided to do the movie was so soon after. Either way, it makes you wonder what the fuck they were thinking with Endgame. It would be as if they ended DS9 with the fleet entering Cardassian orbit.
The one big problem with the finale is the omission of Jadzia in the final montage. Reading the Wikia, it seems to have come down to a money issue for the finale, since Farrell let them use her voice earlier in the season where Ezri remembers Jadzia's love for Worf and decides to rescue him on her own. It feels like they should have found a way to accommodate her appearing in the finale, but what can you do.
(Apparently Farrell was at the wrap party, so she was still around at the very least.)
I'm not sure what to think of Avery Brooks as an actor. I'm assuming he comes from a theater background, because he emotes and projects quite emphatically - this is particularly the case in an episode like In The Pale Moonlight, where he records a personal log and has to talk into the "camera" (this bothers me about the personal logs, since where is the "camera" that records these things situated?) and he goes all in when he's talking about how he had to compromise himself to get the Romulans into the war. Of course, Patrick Stewart also comes from a theater background and he's able to be more subtle - even when he's being tortured in Chains of Command.
I wrote my MA thesis on the representation of race in Star Trek and I totally forgot about the fact that DS9 is the only Star Trek show that actively acknowledges the human history of racism (well, maybe TOS does as well, but I can't remember). I'm quite sure it's the only time in all of Star Trek where a character uses the word "nigger" and Sisko's reluctance to enter Vic's world and pretend that racism didn't exist feels like a good "soft criticism" of Trek's view of race and how it ignores the issue entirely (which is problematic now if only because of how it actively avoided LBGTQ issues).
I didn't hate Ezri as much as I thought I would, although the Ezri/Worf stuff was just painful. Funny enough they managed to give her two solo episodes, one dealing with Ezri and one dealing with Dax - and since they were forced to compromise by having normal episodes before the epic 10 part finale, they did make some good use of the time to try to make Ezri a distinct character. I still feel it's a copout that they replaced Dax with basically another Dax, when I think they should have just introduced a completely different character.
(Speaking of, the "Dax" episode involved her hunting down a serial killer who used a gun that could transport bullets after they were fired... which begs the question, why wouldn't you just transport something directly into your victim and kill them that way? Why bother with a gun at all at that point?)
Section 31 ended up being interesting, but they don't really resolve the story arc. Yes, Sloan kills himself so that arc ends, but the open question about whether or not humanity (since there's absolutely no indication that any aliens are a part of this) is this compromised creature that is willing to use biological warfare in order to win a war isn't really addressed. You get the discussion between Ross an Bashir about the death of the Romulan ambassador, but the conversation just ends with Ross telling Bashir to go away. I feel like the story had to just have one more note to end it completely - either Bashir ends up replacing Sloan as a Section 31 agent, but promises to try to be the one who keeps them in line, or the entire conspiracy is exposed and Ross is put on trial. As it is, it just dangles and left for the book authors to deal with.
I ended up liking Damar, and the short time Garak spends with Mila before she's killed made Mila's death a tragic one. It put a face to the fact that 800 million Cardassians died (a number which is so big that it's literally unimaginable). I guess Garak ends up being a leader who helps rebuild Cardassia? But as the only survivor that we know, we see that he's basically lost everything and literally has to start over. But the fact that his exile was based on the fact that he let Bajorans escape may be a sign of hope for the Cardassian people.
A corollary is that I wish Discovery was a 25th century show that dealt with the aftermath of the war and showed us what the universe was like after all that devastation. I think the books got silly with the Romulans creating an "anti-Federation" with various other species and 7000 Borg cubes invading Federation space, so I don't think I'd care if something came and replaced all that - the same way that the new Star Wars movies are just throwing out the book canon.
There was a bit of fluff in the final season, again probably due to the mandate to have non-war stories to fill out the season. The two that stand out as completely unnecessary are Take me Out to the Holosuite and Chrysalis. The others at least have some more concrete ties to the war story or previous character arcs. The Vulcan baseball episode did make me think about how interesting it would be to see a "Sybok"-like Vulcan (one that is emotional and has no reservations about showing that emotion).
As I mentioned earlier, the Pah Wraith stuff was just terrible and felt like a distraction. I think it also ruined two of the more interesting characters, turning them both into dumb villains, and the whole thing felt tacked out so that there was a reason why Sisko had to be the Emissary. I think when they did the Emissary thing, they wanted to have a touch of "Star Wars" by having Sisko be "the chosen one" but in the end it just went nowhere. The green screen in the final battle also looked particularly bad.
Speaking of, they seemed really proud of the fact that they used a CG DS9 for the final shot - which probably could only exist in CG because they pull away from the station into a star field (I still would have liked to the see that Benny Russell ending). But wow, all the CG looks really dated now. People complain about how B5's CG looks terrible, but DS9's CG doesn't look all that much better.
I have some mixed feelings about DS9 - having watched TNG earlier in the summer, I do still think TNG is my personal favourite over DS9, but I can appreciate what they were trying to do. I think TNG just had the stronger "science fiction" stories, while obviously DS9's main appeal is its semi-serialized nature and its darker tone. I think DS9 is great, and I had some pangs of nostalgia as I remembered the experience of watching some of these episodes as a teenager, but I think I overall prefer TNG's "optimism". Hopefully Discovery offers a decent compromise - a serialized story, but one where not a single phaser is fired or torpedo launched. Just 13 episodes of a ship out in space seeking out new life and new civilizations.
Anyway... on to Voyager. But I'm thinking of skipping the first 2 seasons to just get past the shitty Kazon/Seska storyline.
I think What You Leave Behind is probably the most "satisfying" finale inasmuch as it has a proper denouement and feels like the end of a story. All Good Things is close in that it book ends the series, but it doesn't really feel like an ending, particularly since they decided to do the movie was so soon after. Either way, it makes you wonder what the fuck they were thinking with Endgame. It would be as if they ended DS9 with the fleet entering Cardassian orbit.
The one big problem with the finale is the omission of Jadzia in the final montage. Reading the Wikia, it seems to have come down to a money issue for the finale, since Farrell let them use her voice earlier in the season where Ezri remembers Jadzia's love for Worf and decides to rescue him on her own. It feels like they should have found a way to accommodate her appearing in the finale, but what can you do.
(Apparently Farrell was at the wrap party, so she was still around at the very least.)
I'm not sure what to think of Avery Brooks as an actor. I'm assuming he comes from a theater background, because he emotes and projects quite emphatically - this is particularly the case in an episode like In The Pale Moonlight, where he records a personal log and has to talk into the "camera" (this bothers me about the personal logs, since where is the "camera" that records these things situated?) and he goes all in when he's talking about how he had to compromise himself to get the Romulans into the war. Of course, Patrick Stewart also comes from a theater background and he's able to be more subtle - even when he's being tortured in Chains of Command.
I wrote my MA thesis on the representation of race in Star Trek and I totally forgot about the fact that DS9 is the only Star Trek show that actively acknowledges the human history of racism (well, maybe TOS does as well, but I can't remember). I'm quite sure it's the only time in all of Star Trek where a character uses the word "nigger" and Sisko's reluctance to enter Vic's world and pretend that racism didn't exist feels like a good "soft criticism" of Trek's view of race and how it ignores the issue entirely (which is problematic now if only because of how it actively avoided LBGTQ issues).
I didn't hate Ezri as much as I thought I would, although the Ezri/Worf stuff was just painful. Funny enough they managed to give her two solo episodes, one dealing with Ezri and one dealing with Dax - and since they were forced to compromise by having normal episodes before the epic 10 part finale, they did make some good use of the time to try to make Ezri a distinct character. I still feel it's a copout that they replaced Dax with basically another Dax, when I think they should have just introduced a completely different character.
(Speaking of, the "Dax" episode involved her hunting down a serial killer who used a gun that could transport bullets after they were fired... which begs the question, why wouldn't you just transport something directly into your victim and kill them that way? Why bother with a gun at all at that point?)
Section 31 ended up being interesting, but they don't really resolve the story arc. Yes, Sloan kills himself so that arc ends, but the open question about whether or not humanity (since there's absolutely no indication that any aliens are a part of this) is this compromised creature that is willing to use biological warfare in order to win a war isn't really addressed. You get the discussion between Ross an Bashir about the death of the Romulan ambassador, but the conversation just ends with Ross telling Bashir to go away. I feel like the story had to just have one more note to end it completely - either Bashir ends up replacing Sloan as a Section 31 agent, but promises to try to be the one who keeps them in line, or the entire conspiracy is exposed and Ross is put on trial. As it is, it just dangles and left for the book authors to deal with.
I ended up liking Damar, and the short time Garak spends with Mila before she's killed made Mila's death a tragic one. It put a face to the fact that 800 million Cardassians died (a number which is so big that it's literally unimaginable). I guess Garak ends up being a leader who helps rebuild Cardassia? But as the only survivor that we know, we see that he's basically lost everything and literally has to start over. But the fact that his exile was based on the fact that he let Bajorans escape may be a sign of hope for the Cardassian people.
A corollary is that I wish Discovery was a 25th century show that dealt with the aftermath of the war and showed us what the universe was like after all that devastation. I think the books got silly with the Romulans creating an "anti-Federation" with various other species and 7000 Borg cubes invading Federation space, so I don't think I'd care if something came and replaced all that - the same way that the new Star Wars movies are just throwing out the book canon.
There was a bit of fluff in the final season, again probably due to the mandate to have non-war stories to fill out the season. The two that stand out as completely unnecessary are Take me Out to the Holosuite and Chrysalis. The others at least have some more concrete ties to the war story or previous character arcs. The Vulcan baseball episode did make me think about how interesting it would be to see a "Sybok"-like Vulcan (one that is emotional and has no reservations about showing that emotion).
As I mentioned earlier, the Pah Wraith stuff was just terrible and felt like a distraction. I think it also ruined two of the more interesting characters, turning them both into dumb villains, and the whole thing felt tacked out so that there was a reason why Sisko had to be the Emissary. I think when they did the Emissary thing, they wanted to have a touch of "Star Wars" by having Sisko be "the chosen one" but in the end it just went nowhere. The green screen in the final battle also looked particularly bad.
Speaking of, they seemed really proud of the fact that they used a CG DS9 for the final shot - which probably could only exist in CG because they pull away from the station into a star field (I still would have liked to the see that Benny Russell ending). But wow, all the CG looks really dated now. People complain about how B5's CG looks terrible, but DS9's CG doesn't look all that much better.
I have some mixed feelings about DS9 - having watched TNG earlier in the summer, I do still think TNG is my personal favourite over DS9, but I can appreciate what they were trying to do. I think TNG just had the stronger "science fiction" stories, while obviously DS9's main appeal is its semi-serialized nature and its darker tone. I think DS9 is great, and I had some pangs of nostalgia as I remembered the experience of watching some of these episodes as a teenager, but I think I overall prefer TNG's "optimism". Hopefully Discovery offers a decent compromise - a serialized story, but one where not a single phaser is fired or torpedo launched. Just 13 episodes of a ship out in space seeking out new life and new civilizations.
Anyway... on to Voyager. But I'm thinking of skipping the first 2 seasons to just get past the shitty Kazon/Seska storyline.
If you kill with a transporter, forensics would be able to tell that you killed with a transporter. It's a known quantity. They would quickly tech-tech a solution.
If you kill with a gun and a transported bullet (as opposed to the common weapon, a phaser), you create a "locked room mystery". Instead of looking for a transporter, your plainly-obvious "gun" evidence has investigators scrambling for the old-fashioned "gun" rulebook, which you're not playing by. It's an excellent misdirection.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
But... Miles figured it out anyway, so it's not it was that hard to figure out. And Sisko immediately recognised the weapon.
Besides, presumably you could just beam a blood clot into someone's heart and make it look like a heart attack or something.
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Starting Voyager, I assume I'll be disappointed by the fact that the crew don't react to perhaps millions of people dying from the Dominion war and the Maquis crew members in particular reacting to the fact that the Cardassians wiped out all their friends and destroyed all their colonies.
Edit - although to be fair, I guess no one on DS9 cared that a starship vanished from the Badlands. lol