Amph [NERRRD] Observations, rhetorical questions, comments & 58 Years of Star Trek (General Thread)

Star Trek Thread Index:
-Discovery ("Let's Fly!")
-Strange New Worlds ("Hit it.")
-Section 31 (TBD)
-Lower Decks ("Warp Me!")
-Prodigy ("Go Fast.")
-Picard ("Engage!")
-Starfleet Academy (TBD)

-For Enterprise, The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and the first ten films (TOS/TNG), use this general thread. However, you can still find the SFAF Archive Thread for Voyager here for reference purposes.

Kelvin Timeline Films:
-Untitled Prequel Film (XV?)
-Star Trek 2009 (XI) (SFAF Archive Thread)
-Star Trek Into Dartkness (XII)
-Star Trek Beyond (XIII)
-"Star Trek 4" (XIV?)

Misc:
-To Boldly Go Where Many Geeks Have Gone Before (Episode-By-Episode Thread)


****************ORIGINAL OPENING POST FOLLOWS***************

(post tagged as spoiler to make it collapsible)

Spoiler

So I spent a little money and got all 7 seasons on DVD (for a good price). I don't particularly enjoy many of the episodes from seasons 1 and 2, but just having 3-7 would be weird. Anyway, watching episodes randomly and out of order has brought new things to light and reminded me of others.

1. Dr. Crusher/Gates McFadden reminds me of my mom way too much. That would mean I'm Wesley, which is fine as long as I get to date a young Ashley Judd.

2. Riker is an even bigger horndog than I had believed. He constantly flirts with the hot female junior officers in Ten Forward and on the bridge while on duty. He even HolfHulEUb4[/media] to hit on Data's daughter.

3. Pointy sideburns!

4. Those ****ing Excelsior,

[image=http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/0/05/USS_Excelsior.jpg]

Miranda (plus the very similar-looking Soyuz),

[image=http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/0/05/USS_Reliant.jpg]

and Oberth-class ships. They're nearly 100 years old during TNG (reused models from the first six movies) yet the damned things are still apparently the backbone of Starfleet even during the later Dominion War where they basically get slaughtered every time they're seen on screen. Admirals inexplicably use Excelsiors as their flagships in lieu of the much more advanced, much bigger, much more powerful Nebula and Galaxy classes, deciding to give command of those behemoths to lowly captains instead. I understand budget constraints, but ILM had three modern classes to use (I guess the Galaxy shouldn't count because the Enterprise-D had to be unique or something).

5. Why is the therapist the most unstable member of the senior staff by far? She had insane mood swings (because she's an "empath") throughout the first couple seasons which more-or-less resulted in her crying and wailing all the time. But when she temporarily lost her abilities, she flipped the **** out even though nothing else changed. Yeah, the point was that it was like going blind to her, but isn't the shrink supposed to know how to deal with that stuff better than laypeople? Whoopi Goldberg could out-counsel her any day. When the centuries-old bartender can do your job better, I think it's time for a career change.

6. Picard is horrible with women. I think the only good one he landed was that piano player who left after she nearly got killed on planet whatever. Otherwise he either falls for the most evil, manipulative ***** around or doesn't make a move on the woman he's constantly pining for (Crusher) because of some huge guilt complex regarding the death of her husband.

7. La Forge has even worse luck. Poor nerdy guy.

8. 13eDfrMgFQM[/media] is a goldmine of awesome facepalms.

9. I love that Gene Roddenberry gave Trek an atheistic bent and the producers continued that tradition after his death. "Who Watches the Watchers" is particularly blatant and entertaining.

10. Gul Dukat from DS9 was in the first ever Cardassian episode... or at least the actor was. I didn't know that.


More nerdy nonsense may follow.

 

Quark was the first Ferengi* ever seen too.


*Actually not the same character, just the same actor, Armin Shimmerman.

 

Did you notice The Devil playing one of the atheist Proto-Vulcan, Mintakans?

 

That's probably because the Dominion is awesome more than anything else.

Victory is Life!

You can tell that when Gene was making TOS, he wanted to go full on atheistic, but the network held him back.

Particularly evident in "Who Mourns for Adonis". The entire episode is undercut by:

""I can give life or death. What else does mankind demand of its gods?"
"Mankind has no need for gods. We find The One quite adequate."

- Apollo and Kirk

The whole point of the episode is how humanity grew beyond its Gods, but apparently the Christian god doesn't count?

 

Yeah, I can imagine how CBS would've been nervous about exposing a 1960's television audience to a hardcore atheist's imagination.

11. Ronald D. Moore (later of DS9 and the reimagined BSG) got his start on TNG. I've found that although he was considered the Klingon guy, he (co-)wrote some of my favorite episodes... which were not really Klingon eps.

 

I just re-watched that a little while ago, and that line made me cringe.

 

Enterprise-B type > original Excelsior

[image=http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/e/e7/USS_Enterprise-B_in_drydock.jpg]

Hmph.

 

Fixed.

TMP is too long, but it's still fun.

 

It still amazes me how Starfleet let so many civilians on those Galaxy class ships, especially after seeing at least three of them blow up.

 

Obscure trivia fact, somewhat regarding ST:TNG- One of Johnathan Frakes' first acting jobs was dressing up as Captain America for Marvel Comics, appearing at store openings and the like.

 

I don't about Yamato, but Odyssey had offloaded its civilians before being destroyed (and obviously Enterprise's crew and passengers survived in the saucer section). Surely the numerous Galaxies that fought the Dominion didn't have civilians aboard. I wonder what they did with all that extra room.



Yeah, in theory its nice to have your family along but you don't want them getting killed by Romulans or forehead-aliens-of-the-week. There were countless times in TNG where civilians were not only in danger but were the primary targets. Stupid Starfleet.

 

The idea of so many civilians on those ships became more and more absurd as threats to Starfleet grew throughout the run of TNG and DS9.

You'd think it would justify at least one or two smaller attack ships to escort the Enterprise, being the flagship and all.

Oh yeah, and the DS9 Technical Manual explained how Starfleet stripped the big ships of all unessentials for use in the Dominion War, but I forget the specifics.

 

Maybe a couple Mirandas. They're basically the starship equivalent of redshirts.

 

I love the series and wish to own it someday.

I will enjoy follwoing this to see what observations are had.

 

12. The segments with the TNG cast are some of the best Family Guy ever.

 

You know, it's always bothered me that the part of the ship the civilians are supposed to go to for their safety in the event of separation, the saucer, is the part that doesn't have warp drive. What good is that supposed to do them in a hostile situation if they can't flee? Also, I could be remembering this wrong, but I'm pretty sure in the TNG era there were no battles at warp speed. Ships dropped out of warp to attack. It was only around ENT or so that the writers decided that warp speed firefights should be possible. Ergo the part of the ship the civilians are on needs warp drive way more than the section that'll go into battle.

 

I remember the Enterprise and a Borg cube fighting at warp. And I pretty much agree about the saucer section; maybe Starfleet didn't trust civilians to handle warp drive.

 

I think the separation idea was just for warp core failures.

Part of that reasoning comes from some production notes I read somewhere where someone (I forget who) wanted to put the bridge in the middle of the saucer section where it would be more secure. Roddenberry argued the ship would be armed enough to stop all attacks on the exposed bridge at the top. So they left it there.

The saucer section does have its own torpedo tube, plus plenty of phasers. Maybe they were confident enough it would hold off all attacks until help arrived.

But yeah, while the Galaxy looks amazing, it's far from a practicle design.

 

What I find hard to believe is the following -

Kirk and his crew spend 97% of their time encountering omnipotent aliens who usually are on the verge of destroying them because humanity is violent and savage.

Now, at this time, the Federation is pretty much the nicest place there is, especially when the other interstellar empires are viewed for what they are - all looking to murder each other and piss in the Federation's cheerios.

Why the hell didn't these omnipotent superbeings wipe out, say, I dunno: the Borg, the Dominion, the Klingons, the Romulans, etc etc etc who are all pretty horrible.

 

They're not all that horrible. The Klingons became allies and the Romulans kept to themselves most of the time.

And the Dominion, well, what did the Federation expect when it discovered a shortcut to the Gamma Quadrant and started acting like it was their playground. Did they not bother to check whose flag was there first?

 

I heard the reason they didn't do saucer separation much after the pilot was because it slowed down storytelling, not to mention expensive as heck special-effects wise.

 

E_B_B, don't forget about how humanity has a wide variety of diverse cultures, whereas each alien race has one and only one. OK, sometimes two, if they need to have an episode where the humans come in and fix things.

 

Vash is hot.

 

That's probably why Kirk got so much hot alien tail. The females must have been really frustrated sexually.