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

Code of Honor
Threshold
Mudd's Women


Oh wait...

 

Huh, both are Picard centric alternate lifetime stories. Wish that good Captain Picard had something else in his life?

 

They're also some of the best writing in the entire series though, which is more important to me.

 

http://www.vulture.com/2017/04/cbs-all-access-good-fight-star-trek.html

Oh look... sounds like it might be delayed again...

 

Well tell you more about the show, when we get closer to release it..... but even we don't know when that will be.


The more that comes out regarding Discovery, the more I think it's going to fail.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

The show is straight up being shot right now so I don't think it's as if we're never going to see it. But I would not be surprised if that gets moved to January 2018 (basically a year past when was it's 1st originally announced release date). I remain optimistic it'll be ready by September. But 13 Star Trek episodes, with probably more VFX work than any of the other series previously, would probably take awhile to get under the gun because CBS All Access likes a "every episode a week" release structure. (which, personally, I am also okay with because I rarely if ever binge watch Netflix shows, I honestly watch 'em 1 a week anyway)

 

hahha, I knew it would happen but Trekkies trolling at Star Wars Celebration

http://trekmovie.com/2017/04/16/pet...back-as-trekkies-troll-star-wars-celebration/

 

*sigh* here we go again

 

It helps if you read the whole thing in a Trump-voice...

 

So I'm watching Voyager again (final season), and I still think it's a pretty good show. Yes, it has some awful episodes among its 7 seasons, but so does every other ST series, and I find the characters likeable and the relationships strong.

And here comes my (likely) unpopular opinion, I think Voyager's best episodes are better than DS9's best episodes. Voyager was very good at telling high concept science-fiction stories (versus the more military focus, especially in later seasons, of DS9). Episodes like 'Blink of an Eye' (the one where a civilisation evolves on a planet looking up a Voyager in their sky), 'Distant Origin' (the one with the dinosaurs from earth), and 'Living Witness' (the one where the doctor is recreated on a planet centuries ahead of when Voyager left it) are right up there with the best that Trek ever had to offer.

 

DS9 became more about exploring the themes and the characters and the politics rather than high-concept sci-fi.

And Voyager had serious problems that DS9 lacked. A big example is that DS9 stuck to its premise and whatever changes it needed (e.g., adding the Defiant) were done believably. Voyager on the other hand never really tried to portray what would happen to a Starfleet vessel that was cut off from conventional means of resupply and repair. It loved hitting the reset button as TNG did, but TNG had an underlying in-universe reason for being able to do that. Voyager's characters especially early on even pointed out the problems with resources. Egregious examples include the seemingly infinite supply of shuttlecraft and photon torpedoes; the finite supply and difficulty of manufacture were mentioned on the show and later ignored.



This sort of sloppy writing was characteristic of Voyager's entire run-- and infected everything from continuity to characterizations (e.g., Janeway was wildly inconsistent the whole time). I agree that there are some great episodes, but they're the exception rather than the rule and they're easily outnumbered by the quality DS9 and TNG eps.

 

Darth Guy, agreed. Voyager as it is is a fun watch, for the most part, but the way Voyager was pitched to the networks and described to fans was a lot more like Battlestar or SGU, in that everything is constantly running out and breaking down. That's a great premise for a Star Trek series. Instead we got Tom and B'elanna building a completely new class of shuttlecraft from the deck up in the space of a single episode. If they had wanted explore the Delta Quadrant without having to deal with potential continuity issues, then an approach along the lines of SGA would have worked much, much better.

 

Aren't they on a starship that can replicate virtually anything? And isn't it heavily implied that they're collecting and trading for resources offscreen the whole journey? It's a fair point though, and while I don't think it really counts as a serious problem, I'd argue that Voyager at least seemed to recognise and fixe the general lack of continuity before it ended, as the final season seems especially continuous.

As for DS9, I unfortunately don't remember much of it looking back after all this time (other than war and battles), and I've since seen Babylon 5 do the characters, themes and politics thing so much better. I guess the kind of Trek that it did isn't what I like most out of the general concept.

 

Well, there is sort of a narrative arc to Voyager, in that they get about ten thousand lightyears closer to the Alpha Quadrant with every season, and the MIDAS Array gave them more or less regular contact with Starfleet starting in season 5. By season 7, Voyager was close enough to the Alpha Quadrant that Starfleet tasked several deep range starships to rendezvous with Voyager, which would have occurred in about a decade, but where the continuity issues come is with things like Voyager's load out of photon torpedoes. The Intrepid class is supposed have compliment of 32 and Voyager fires about three times that number over the course of the series. On top of that Janeway spefically states that there's no way to replace them once they're gone, and that's in addition the ship always looking complete pristine at the end of the episode, no matter how heavy the pounding she recieves.

 

I think lazy writing really did in the series. I mean, more than any other Trek series they had the perfect setting to have tons of recurring characters (at least they did change alien species every now and then after a big jump). DS9 had Rom, Nog, Leeta, Winn, etc. show up many many times over the years, gradually gaining in importance (Damar in particular has a huge jump in importance and character development). Voyager got lazy by season four and instead shifted most of the focus to Seven of Nine and Janeway. Fortunately the Doctor held on, because the Doctor was awesome. Ok, that's a generalization, but when they have episodes like Fury (ruining Kes' character) or even bring back Carey after seven years just to kill him off, well, I have no idea what the writers were thinking. Even the Starfleet/Marquis thing was brought up in a late season (6?) only to be dropped again, of course.

Voyager had good episodes, here and there, but the reset button and neglect of most of the characters was just a sad waste. I remember Timeless gave Harry a lot to do, and the actor pulled it off, yet they never had another good Harry episode (he was never even promoted, compared to Tom being demoted then promoted back to Lieutenant). Though honestly I think the Doctor episodes were usually the best (Living Witness, Lifeline, Message in a Bottle was really fun and Starfleet finally found out they were alive). Well, bringing back Barclay was fun too.

The resource problem was annoying too. Earlier seasons tried to make that a focus, but they gave up on that after a while. Or maybe magical Borg tech from their resident drone allowed them to make more torpedoes, she was usually the answer to any and everything.

One of the nice things was them eventually having regular contact with Starfleet. Though Endgame was still a bad finale, but aside from that, at the rate they were going they would have made it home in only a decade, way better than the original 70 year journey they expected.

 

Well, to be fair, Jeri Ryan was very well cast as Seven and most of the Seven-centred episodes are very, very good, so I don't hold that against them, but there were definetly missed opportunities. The Starfleet/Maquis "conflict" was one of them, and it was resolved in one episode very early in season 1 and never really brought up again, aside from a couple of throwaway lines from Chakotay and B'elanna when they find out that Sisko wiped out the Maquis.

 

I thought it was Cardassians/Dominion that wiped out the Maquis?

 

I stand corrected. According to Memory Alpha, it was the Cardassians and the Dominion, not Stafleet. Maybe I'm misremembering Sisko's conflict with Eddington.

 

It's rather out of character for Starfleet to massacre an opponent.

 

Sisko had a grudge against the Maquis (mainly after Eddington) but yeah, it was the Cardassians' new allies that quickly ended the Maquis. That kind of tension was a bit of a subplot in early seasons, but after a few seasons everyone just blended into one boring Starfleet crew (later seasons Torres was usually more upset about her Klingon heritage or Paris). I remember their first official update from Starfleet brought up the Maquis issue again, showing it wasn't completely forgotten, but then it was ignored again of course.

And I know the actress can act, and there are other obvious reasons she had so much screentime, and she is a great character, but just wish it wasn't at the expense of everyone else. Not that everyone else was all that great, but there was potential. The Doctor is the only one who came close to getting as much development as Seven over the years.

 

Unless Section 31 is involved.

 

Ordinarily, yes that would be very out of character for a Federation starship captain, but don't forget that Sisko was willing to assassinate a Romulan senator and pin it on the Dominion.

 

I vaguely remember something about Sisko using biological weapons on a Maquis outpost, but I don't know if that was a bluff or not...