-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
The General Star Trek Thread of Earl Grey Tea, Baseball, and KHHHAAAANNNN
- Thread starter The Librarian
- Start date
Escape Goat
Member
Instead of watching Voyager and Enterprise I suggest watching SFDebris.com reviews of the episodes. 
Yeah the screenshots I have seen of season 2 are a disaster. I can understand its too much work on a short schedule for it al to be done in house. But jesus CBS at least have standards that must be met. The way they have it the odd seasons will look fantastic while even looking like ass
Instead of watching Voyager and Enterprise I suggest watching SFDebris.com reviews of the episodes.
Those are pretty good. I enjoy watching people tear the shit out of plot holes.
Sir_Crocodile
Member
Personally I hated DS9-R, although a lot of people seem to like it.
I stopped reading when they timeskipped a few years to catch up with TNG & Titan, and gave sisko a spine removal
Also, andorian reproductive crisis is a thing, and a terrible thing at that
If you want to read some decent trek books, I'd recommend:
The Final Reflection(TOS) by John M. Ford - The best star trek book there is(though no longer in any way consistant with on screen trek).
Where Sea Meets Sky(pike) by Jerry Oltion
Federation(TOS,TNG), by Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens.
Yesterday's Son/Time for Yesterday(TOS) by Ann C Crispin
First Frontier(TOS) by Diane Carey
Spock's World(TOS) by Diane Duane
Doctor's Orders(TOS) by Diane Duane
Masks(TNG) by John Vornholt
Q-Squared(TNG) by Peter David
Imzadi(TNG) by Peter David
A Rock and a Hard Place(TNG) by Peter David
Dark Mirror(TNG) by Diane Duane
Intellivore(TNG) by Diane Duane
Possession(TNG) by J.M. Dillard and Kathleen O'malley
Objective: Bajor(DS9) by John Peel
The 34th rule(DS9) by David R George & Armin Shimmerman
A Stitch in time(DS9) by Andrew J Robinson
The first 14 New Frontier books by Peter David
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
Voyager and Enterprise should both be watched, at least once. Voyager could occasionally be brilliant (not very often), and Enterprise made it to "good" a few times as well.
doubleplusgood
Member
Instead of watching Voyager and Enterprise I suggest watching SFDebris.com reviews of the episodes.
Hahaha, I watched some of the Enterprise reviews, brilliant. That said, I still think that Enterprise gets pretty okay, just too bad it took too long before it gets there.
Sir_Crocodile
Member
firehawk12
Subete no aware
...what?
Ah yeah, that's what the Calhoun books are called. Did they finally end that?
Gary Whitta
Member
Irish space gypsies! So awesome.
Also I never thought I'd hear myself say this but i don't hate Pulaski as much as a I remember. I think i always disliked her because she had such a cheesy and borderline racist attitude toward Data but she got over that pretty quickly. It's still obvious what a a failed attempt to recapture McCoy she is though.
Also I never thought I'd hear myself say this but i don't hate Pulaski as much as a I remember. I think i always disliked her because she had such a cheesy and borderline racist attitude toward Data but she got over that pretty quickly. It's still obvious what a a failed attempt to recapture McCoy she is though.
Sir_Crocodile
Member
Rough Beasts of Empire
No, Peter David was midway through an arc when his contract ran out, and pocket books trek editor hasn't renewed it yet.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Given that they admit that Data = new Vulcun character in phase 2 and Pulaski is basically Bones, I don't think they tried to recapture it more than they were just recycling it.
What does that have to do with his spine though? lol
Ah, weird. It seems dickish to leave it hanging like that, but I suppose he must have some kind of deal where no one is allowed to write Calhoun books so I suppose that series will just be stuck in a standstill forever.
Sir_Crocodile
Member
The book basically makes sisko a deadbeat dad and changes his character from the series
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Oooooh, metaphorical spine?
I've been suggesting this since Jurrasic Park got announced. Either that or an Alpha Protocol style game.
But you have to make it less linear than Walking Dead in that I can walk around the entire interior of the ship. or at least the parts that had sets built
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Doesn't Namco own the game rights at the moment?
Sir_Crocodile
Member
yup
Sorry, should have provided context given that the physical loss did actually happen to worf
firehawk12
Subete no aware
I'm actually curious to hear how they could ruin Sisko's character after the whole prophet thing.
Well, for what it's worth, they do look great - crappy effects in S2 notwithstanding. I like the documentary, but that's probably not that useful if you're just a casual fan or watching it for the first time.
Damn, they're still $30 a piece? I bought the full series pack in the green and silver container for $70 one time. Best purchase I ever made. Holding out for another brilliant sale on the blus. The reports of bad effects on the S2 group is oftputting.
I watched the whole thing years ago on TV but I never watched it as much as DS9 or VOY.
Here (New Zealand) they are. Man $70 for all 7 series would be awesome! What's wrong with the effects in S2? Not touched up at all or done badly?
TAJ
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Done badly.
Maybe they hope remastering it means making it good.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Honestly, it's very easy to see why TNG fans would prefer VOY over DS9. Star Trek represented the last gasp of episodic science fiction.
Davey Cakes
Member
As a big fan of TNG and DS9, I feel so hesitant to ever watch Voyager. On the inside, I want to give it a shot, but peoples' reactions are so mixed. I don't want the investment to be a waste of time.
davepoobond
you can't put a price on sparks
I think what you'll get is a different kind of TNG. Voyager is more like "just another ship in the fleet" that just happened to have "special circumstances."
They're not all super heroes like the cast of TNG but they do have unique skillsets that "compliment" each other. Overall you'll get more good to interesting episodes than terrible to bad episodes. But, if you go in expecting the worst, you'll come out ahead in the end.
if you can appreciate that the writers just wanted to do TNG again without fucking with DS9 or any of the TNG movies, and not care about how they always seem to repair their ship and never run out of resources/power, its a lot more enjoyable.
Do you like TNG? It's like that but dumber and with worse characters.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
On that note, does anyone else think the one Ron Moore episode of Voyager was horrible, or is that just me? lol
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
Wiki says he did two. I thought "Survival Instinct" was an alright episode. "Barge of the Dead" was pretty silly though.
davepoobond
you can't put a price on sparks
which was it?
edit: question answered above.
I don't remember Survival Instinct. Barge of the Dead was pretty dumb, but considering the extreme lack of anything Klingon on a show with "a" Klingon it was a nice breather.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
I had no idea he did Survival Instinct. Huh, go figure.
I was thinking of Barge of the Dead in particular. It's the one with what is essentially the Klingon afterlife.
You know, I just don't think I ever really got over how Voyager completely botched an amazing premise: Starfleet and Maquis on the same ship, trying to get back from the other side of the galaxy.
Then everybody's bros by the end of the first episode, the whole Maquis crew is wearing Starfleet uniforms, and Chakotay is threatening to throw his own people in the brig for even suggesting they take the ship. (Not to mention the only person who suggested it
.)Weren't these the people who hated the Federation, because the Federation abandoned them? Outside of like four episodes, there wasn't even any reason for half the crew to be Maquis.
Then everybody's bros by the end of the first episode, the whole Maquis crew is wearing Starfleet uniforms, and Chakotay is threatening to throw his own people in the brig for even suggesting they take the ship. (Not to mention the only person who suggested it
turned out to be a villain
I really enjoyed watching SFDebris' review of the last episode of S1, "Learning Curve".
One of the former Maquis fixes something because it's broken. And Tuvok/Janeway's main concern is not that a ridiculously impractical Voyager design flaw is breaking down, threatening the safety of the ship and the lives of everyone on board, but that somebody actually did something constructive without being told to.
So Janeway decides not to try and understand differing viewpoints or meet unwilling slave labor halfway, but to "help" these unfortunate souls reach 100% Federation-approval. And not by giving them Starfleet training and education, oh no, but by having Tuvok send them on grueling death marches with the artificial gravity turned up to eleven. They do this until the former Maquis have learned the valuable lesson of "Shut the fuck up and don't think, just do exactly what you're told."
And seven years later, the show casually mentions that the blue guy's responsibility on the ship for the last seven years has been scrubbing plasma conduits, a job so reviled that humans elsewhere dumped it on holograms, and were given shit for doing something so immoral.
Let us not forget the premise of actually being stuck in the middle of nowhere, Janeway having to deal with deciding to choose people across the galaxy she didn't know instead of taking her crew home, the possibility of not making it or losing people along the way. Instead it kind of just got shrugged off and ignored as they went along.
Then there's the ship always looking brand new, I know it comes down to budget but they had like 1 episode iirc think where they dealt with having to worry about supplies and rationing, then that disappeared off too. Enterprise did it somewhat where slowly over the episodes the ship got into worse and worse disrepair during the Xindi arc, I think Voyager could have been the best Star Trek show if they had actually taken the premise further, it had a lot of potential but never actually did anything with it.
And then theres the ending, they finally get home and we get 5 seconds of them flying towards earth and that is it, after 7 years of watching the show form start to finish I expected more, disappointing to say the least.
Sir_Crocodile
Member
For me it was most notable as the first trek series where the captain was a genocidal mass murderer
SpoonyBard
Banned
Well, everyone seemed to like when Sisko was acting bad ass. They just put it one step further with Janeway.
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
Except at least it made sense when it was Sisko. Janeway's reasons were often nonsensical.
Well, except that one time Sisko destroyed a planet's atmosphere...
Sir_Crocodile
Member
Sisko always did it for the good of the federation, the above mentioned "for the uniform" was the blurriest the line ever really got for him
Janeway always did it for her own reasons. Tuvix was selfish, Endgame was monsterously selfish, etc
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
I'd argue Endgame was one of the few times that Janeway's motivations made sense.
I seriously believe that season 3 of Enterprise did a better job with the "lone Starfleet ship" premise than the entire seven seasons of Voyager. They run into problems unique to that area of space and choose how to deal or not deal with them. They search for information about what they need to find in one episode, which leads directly to something they find one or two episodes down the line, which gets them closer, where they search for more information, etc. Most importantly, when their ass gets kicked, it STAYS kicked. They got a big damned hole blown in the hull, and they didn't have any way to fix it so it STAYED un-fixed for something like 8 episodes, until they got back to Earth. Also, when people died they actually acted like it mattered to them for more than fifteen minutes.
Sir_Crocodile
Member
changing an infinite number of lives because a few of her friends died/went insane makes sense?
GameplayWhore
Member
Nerds have a thing for HD titties.
I really, really love episodes where they go "okay, let's just go batshit crazy for a while" or "keep the audience guessing, but don't worry about making sense"*. Parallels, C&E, All Good Things, even subpar material like Genesis**.
As others have said, they took TOS/TNG's "Stereotypes… In… SPAAAAACE" formula, made it even less subtle, and focused way too much on the elements of TNG that weren't really that awesome (early on, a constant hunt for space anomalies that do random stupid things because Science Is Magic). As long as you accept that the show ignores its incredibly promising premise† pretty much from the beginning, only visiting the idea during sweeps and season finalés, you'll be able to enjoy it.
Enterprise had its faults (AARGHSOBORING!!!), but I agree that it most certainly at least paid lip service to its basic show overarcing plot. It did a lot (a lot) of little things wrong, but even with its basic premise of being "out there" for the first time, it really did feel like they were winging it, being faced with situations which would have been easily handled a century or two later but in this earlier time having a harder time overcoming them.
I think I need to watch Season Xindi again. I'm starting to feel like I gave it an unfair appraisal last time.
* That latter one is tricky — as soon as an episode goes above a certain level of taking itself seriously, continuity and causality in the plot becomes of paramount importance to me.
** So I forgot the episode's title but somehow remembered "Barclay's Protomorphosis Syndrome"
† A Starfleet crew and a group of anti-Federation renegades trapped in a remote area with dwindling resources with little to no chance of finding home. Then in episode 2 they all start hugging and somebody develops offscreen an instant battle damage regeneration machine that can even rebuild exploded shuttlecrafts.
(edit: whoops, forgot to paste in the footnotes!)