Amph [NERRRD] Observations, rhetorical questions, comments & 55 Years of Star Trek (General Thread)

Plenty of time to change the name back.

 

His eyes opened!

 

It works with the various retcons to when the Borg were encountered before "Q-Who" that popped up over the years: the El Aurians (Guinan's people who were destroyed by the Borg) being picked up by the Enterprise B and the Borg back in season 1 were tearing up chunks of the neutral zone before they encountered the Enterprise in the Delta Quadrant, and the whole encounter with the Borg in Enterprise's "Regeneration". The ways I see it the Borg were always lurking at the fringes, the Hansens were just unfortunately fell into that fringe (the dad describes searching for them as "sensor ghosts and rumours"). Q just sped the whole damn thing up (and possible even saved them because they knew the Borg were out there this time.)

 

So I was watching DS9's "Soldiers of the Empire" last night. It's pretty much convinced me we need another series with more Klingons.



"MAHK-CHA!"

 

I like how the Klingons evolved from the simplistic allegory for the Soviet Union to a more complex, well-rounded species that values honor. I wouldn't mind having a drink with a Klingon warrior, although I may not like what they order for me.

 

Well, apparently they really go to town when they drink. Think about the episode where they went undercover where it was more of a test of endurance than anything, and then the episode when Worf came to DS9 to uncover what the Klingons were doing and when he was drinking with that family friend they headbutted as if it was normal. Sounds like good times actually.

 

Yeah, that was one of the best things that TNG did. They turned the Klingons from a simple enemy into one of Star Trek's bedrock cultures.

 

I got to Apocalypse Rising on my DS9 re-watch today and even though I'm no fan of the Klingons, seeing Sisko embrace the role was a real treat. I guess hanging around with Dax all those years paid off.

Very glad they decided to keep JG Hertzler around as well because of this episode. Martok is one of the better characters in the later seasons, would've been a far worse show without him in it. He really added a lot to Worf's character, almost as much as his relationship with Dax.

 

Martok is awesome. The fun part is, I think if you look at the Rommies & Klingons in TOS, the Klingons seem to be more schemers and the Rommies value honour and duty. That continues in the TOS flicks pretty much too but TNG era flipped that aspect to each species. I think "Undiscovered Country" has an aspect of Klingons valuing honour, at least in Chancellor Gorkon, but they're fairly conniving in that too through Chang.

Chang is also amazing too but that's a given because it's freakin Christopher Plumer. Fun fact, Christopher Plummer requested his forehead ridges be toned down to be more "human like" in appearance. Thanks to the handy Augment Virus retcon in Enterprise, the changing attitude / looks of the Klingons make (very convoluted) sense. Also since Enterprise is still canon in the JJ-verse, that to me explains the somewhat wonky looking unmasked Klingon in "Into Darkness". In that timeline, they kinda fixed it, kinda sorta.

 

I think Worf said it best when someone said that hiding in cloak wasn't very honorable, his response was that what mattered was the honor in victory. I would have to figure out the episode, because I can't remember at the moment.

 

I'll echo others here and agree that Martok was fantastic. His comments about love and marriage in "You are Cordially Invited" were hilarious.

 

I watched Renegades on Youtube last night. Meh. If they make more episodes, I'll probably watch them once when I have time to kill, then forget them.

 

Enterprise did have the premise of being the series that would explore the tensions between Humans, Klingons, and Romulans. Sadly, they spent a good deal of their time on a Time War. The series opener, Broken Bow, set the foundations for what could have been the series long story of Earth and Kronos.

 

The Xindi stuff in S3 was an interesting experiment in a season-long arc but I kinda wish the show had done more Alpha Quadrant origins stuff overall. It's still there, though, especially in Season 4 when Manny Coto took over mostly. I think the through-line of the Vulcans being jerks in S1 to being enlightened by the S4 Vulcan / Romulan arc was good (and if the series had gone on, they'd hit the Romulan War in the timeline). The Temporal Cold War had it's moments. Well, at the start, Broken Bow is a pretty great pilot and them being the impetus behind the Xindi attack was an interesting twist, but it ended with space nazis. Which was kind of awesome/awful. (Factoid, I think either Berman or Braga admitted on Twitter that the end identity of Future Guy would have been Archer himself. Which woulda been yabuwha?)

the next Star Trek series better take longer than 2 seasons with only sporadic bursts of gold in there, it's been like that for 4 series in a row. Hit the ground running for the first time since the 60s, dammit Trek.

 

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with a 13-episode first season to get things established, and try to get the good stuff in earlier on. I honestly can't believe the first season of TNG got 26 episodes or whatever it was, and there was what, one decent episode, maybe two? But that was a different era in TV.

 

Yeah. It was a completely different mindset. Everything had to be totally episodic and self-contained. JMS has a really hard time pitching Babylon 5 to the networks because nobody believed that the viewer would have the patience to wait for a plot thread from Season 1 to be resolved in season 4.

 

I like Star Trek way better as an episodic show instead of giant arcs. DS9 is a fun outlier to that rule and managed to pull it off - the fact they were in a single area really lent itself to that - but I think the "Wagon train to the stars" classic Trek format really does work with single, self-contained stories with sociopolitical thematic resonance. Or just wacky stuff like Kirk fighting flying pancakes or Klingons vs. Holographic Nazis or whatever.

 

Well, I'm not saying that Star Trek has to be as tightly integrated as Game of Thrones or Battlestar, but there should be some carry over from one episode to the next, and there usually isn't any, DS9 aside. Voyager in particular falls down in this area. There are some episodes, where the ship takes a real beating, almost to the point of structural failure in The Killing Game and Year of Hell, but the ship looks completely pristine again at the end of the episode. That was something I really appreciated about Battlestar. Battlestar had a somewhat similar premise to Voyager, in that it was about a fleet of starships operating without their logistical support chain, and the ships gradually got more and more beaten up as the series went on because everything was constantly running out and breaking down. And don't start with me on the Delta Flyer.

 

I like a mix the best for Star Trek. TNG later on was a good example of largely being episodic, but they had story arcs that they returned to and continued each season. And like Chancellor_Ewok, I'd say a show like Voyager definitely needed to be way more serialized.

 

Yah I think mid to late TNG era nailed it when it comes to standalone / serialization. There's an overall arc across seasons for various plotlines but mostly the shows are done in one or at most two parters. Voyager was almost willfully ignorant of it's own need to have a continuing storyline but it was still there. They did have character arcs for some, Seven, the Doctor, Tom & B'Elana, carry across the seasons. Which does kind of make sense, they kept going thataway so they couldn't really drag plot along with them, only if some characters made small increments of change.

 

Voyager nearly worked. It was so close to being outstanding it was frustrating. The show had great characters, an excellent setting, fantastic ship, and an overall daring concept. This series really had everything it needed to make it a worthy successor/compliment to DS9. But, the downfall was in the execution. While Caretaker did what it needed to as a means of establishing premise and setting, it also cut and packaged itself too neatly. Former terrorists? No problems - give them senior ranks. Former convict who served time for pilot related deaths? Give this man a seat at the helm. Chief Medical Officer dead? That's fine, EMH is ready to go where its only flaws are that he cannot leave the sickbay nor have personal/human subroutines (all of which he gets in a fairly short time).

Imagine the character development that could have been had Voyager spent at least half of its first season seeing the marginalised crew members (ex-Marquis) trying to earn their stripes again, only to be belittled by their colleagues. Chakotay could spend the season applying for a senior role, only to be mistrusted throughout the season. Meanwhile, Torres' overall attitude holds her back form having any senior authority. As for the Doctor, his software is flawed from system damage following the ship damage from the badlands. By the end of the season, we see that technical issues have been overcome and the lesser officers have gained their positions on the ship. Best of all, the portrayal of this doesn't even need to be dark or "adult". Berman and Braga could have captured the wide audience they were appealing to by simply having some bona fide drama that was relevant to the core mission of Voyager.

But, instead we go through the motions: not one, but TWO members of crew follow the Data-style of character development where they are trying to find their humanity (Doctor and Seven), the ship is nearly always in perfect condition, the aliens get to a point where they stop feeling alien, and the Borg...if you can believe it...are sleep inducing. Yes, the same villain that were the cause of nightmares.

 

Yeah, it doesn't need to be really grimdark like Battlestar, but there needs to be a stronger sense of progression in the storytelling. Something on the level of Stargate would have been fine. There's a sense from season to season that the SGC is gradually winning its war against the Goa'uld and generally becoming more and more capable in the process. We never really saw that in Voyager.