10 Forward. the ultimate place on E to discuss Star Trek!

Started by Golden Spider, June 12, 2015, 12:17:40 AM

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Golden Spider

From TOS to the horrible canon-ruining Into Darkness. this is the place for any and every trek talk. so come one and all. let Guinan serve you some prune juice and talk about Trek
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CutiebyNight

Howdy everyone! I really like TNG and TOS, but will admit to not knowing zip about anything during or past DS9. I guess you could say that I am a 'casual trekkie'. Ahem, anywho.

Not sure I would call Into Darkness cannon ruining. More just uninspired and lazy.

Golden Spider

Quote from: CutiebyNight on June 12, 2015, 12:20:25 AM
Not sure I would call Into Darkness cannon ruining. More just uninspired and lazy.

Welcome! nope it was definitely canon ruining, took Wrath of Kahn and perverted it horribly
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Golden Spider

I mean given how they set up the same exact story in wrath of Kahn and wrath of Kahn have a much better and much more meaningful ending. To me into darkness just had a sense on heating a dead horse and that movie was aimed at Hollywood and not all the hardcore trek fans that 2009 attempted to appease
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Ryven

Quote from: Goldenrod666 on June 12, 2015, 12:27:15 AM
Welcome! nope it was definitely canon ruining, took Wrath of Kahn and perverted it horribly

Given that the entire new series is supposed to be in an alternate time-line, I had no problem with what they did with it.  I actually enjoyed it.  That is, of course, my opinion.

CutiebyNight

See, I consider the Abrams films to be pretty much their own thing. The reason I disliked Into Darkness wasn't because I considered it to be cannon ruining (I would say First Contact does that whole deal way worse), but simply because I didn't think it was an entertaining film. It was predictable and by the numbers.

But, I will also argue that at least half of the Star Trek films released to this day are rather dreadful, all of the TNG films included. I'd take Into Darkness over Generation or Insurrection.

Ryven


Golden Spider

Quote from: Ryven on June 12, 2015, 12:34:45 AM
Given that the entire new series is supposed to be in an alternate time-line, I had no problem with what they did with it.  I actually enjoyed it.  That is, of course, my opinion.

I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it. It just ticks me off so much how they tried to rip off the heartbreaking ending of WOK and then was like "nope lol everything's fine"
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Golden Spider

Quote from: Ryven on June 12, 2015, 12:45:05 AM
This.  So much this.

I haven't really seen any of the TNG films except for that first one.. Generations? And honestly o kept getting so distracted I think I've turned it on on Netflix like 10 times thinking I haven't seen it yet only to go. Oh wait yes I have.
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slytherindoctor

#9
So as far as DS9 was concerned, it did everything you said Voyager did, only it actually did it and didn't shy away from it. It was a continuing show week after week where things actually mattered and had consequence down the road. They didn't get to fly away into the sunset at the end of the episode, they had to deal with the consequences of their actions.

DS9 had a strongly tight nit group of characters. Every character was interesting. It had secondary characters that had more interesting personalities and character arcs then many of the other shows' main characters. Harry Kim? Who's that? Garek, Nog, Martok, Winn, Dukat, Weyoun, Kassidy, or Dumar had more character in their little pinky then him.

Speaking of DS9's secondary characters, the show had some of the greatest villains ever written on tv, much less Star Trek. Everyone loves Dukat, and he is a brilliant character, but everyone always overlooks Winn. She is one of my favorite villains ever, because she goes through a very sympathetic arc wavering between Sisko and Dukat. And it's ultimately her own unchecked ambition that turns out to be her tragic flaw.

DS9 stepped outside of the Trek box and wasn't afraid of showing conflict between characters, Starfleet officers don't not very nice things, or anything darker about the Federation. It was, very much so, the anti-Trek show in that it refused to conform to Roddenberry's ideals and it was better for it. Roddenberry's utopia always had several massive holes in it, and DS9 was not afraid to poke through them and see how people would really behave.

As for Voyager, well, there are quite a few reasons it went wrong. It's a tragic story really. The show had a really good premise: that of a ship trapped thousands of light years from home with almost no chance of getting back. They had really good actors. Indeed, if Voyager had aimed a little higher with its average baseline it would have been much better: say Muse (which amusingly enough was a direct parody of Voyager by itself), Equinox, Workforce, The Void, Timeless, Blink of an Eye, Pathfinder, Author, Author, Lifeline, or my personal favorite Voyager episode: Living Witness. There were several ways it went wrong and you can tell from episode 1 where it started.

The show wanted to be a TNG clone, there's no doubt about that. Voyager has been called TNG lite by many a fan because of how much it wanted to get into that episodic conflict of the week swing of things. The reason for this was obvious: DS9 was not a commercial sucess, but TNG made a ton of cash. So they opted for the episodic monster of the week show rather then the continuing conflict show.

Now there's nothing inherently wrong with an episodic monster of the week show, but in order for us, the audience, to care about what's going on with these characters they still have to have character development. They have to change from who they are to someone else over the course of the show. But Voyager is absolutely terrified of change. Even characters who change don't actually change. They're artificially forced not to. I remember a season 7 episode, Human Error. Seven might be experiencing a weird reaction on Voyager: character development. She might be changing into a different person instead of the one note character she ended up being played as. But no, she was forced to remain as she was by a Borg implant we'd never heard of before that was made up on the spot to keep her from changing. Can we not have this one little bit of character development so close to the end of the show? Are you really so terrified of stepping out of that box for just one tiny moment?

The characters are the same by the end of the show that they were at the beginning. Harry Kim is still a wide-eyed ensign (who can never be promoted), acting like he's fresh out of the academy, despite having gone through so much crap throughout the show. It's very clear in Endgame that Harry has not changed a bit in the alternate future. Tuvok is still the "Vulcan Guy cliche"TM, Janeway is still just as psychopathic as she always was (sorry, this is a running joke on SF Debris :P), Tom Paris still only has two character traits: loving to fly fast ships and kissing hot girls, Seven is still the Borg lady who will never grow up, and The Doctor is still cheerfully alergic to typical human behavior. And, of course, Neelix is still really annoying and bad at cooking. Seriously, his cooking once almost destroyed the ship. And he made Tuvok want to murder him and Tuvok did over and over again in the Holodeck. No really, look those things up, they actually happened. "Get the cheese to sickbay," indeed.

Interestingly enough, one of the only characters with development was Barclay. He underwent a very interesting character arc during his episodes on the show where he was able to start to get over his holo-addiction and he doesn't even stutter anymore in the alternate future.

Again, one of the main reasons for this was executive meddling. The network wanted to play it extremely safe and keep every episode self-contained and keep the characters acting as cliches rather then people. But I think another reason was down to Rick Berman. The man was increadibly conservative when it came to Star Trek. He was personally hand picked by Roddenberry to "watch over" the franchise and it showed. Voyager and Enterprise stagnated, until he and Braga left in ENT season 4, of course.

And that's another good point. Brannon Braga was a hack writer. That is, he only had a couple of good stories in them and then he repeated them over and over again. Braga had demonstrated that he really could write in TNG. But when he was made showrunner it was clear that he couldn't handle it and ended up making lame story after lame story.

The show barely used its premise at all. Indeed, as I said, right from the start you see how it's going to ignore all of that. In the first episode, right when you see those Maquis in Federation uniforms, you know this story is going nowhere. I would have loved to see some of the conflict from DS9 on Voyager. I specifically would have loved to see some sort of mutiny. I would have loved to see more conflict between the Maquis and Federation people then just a throwaway episode at the end of season 1. But no. Chakotay went nowhere and the Maquis disappeared into the aether. The show wouldn't allow conflict between the characters because TNG didn't do that, TNG made a ton of money, we must copy TNG.

Speaking of not using the premise, the ship was almost always restocked and resupplied with an endless supply of energy, dilithium, and shuttles. Seriously, they had so many shuttles that those shuttles must have had miniature shuttles in them. The shuttle crash was so overused on that show it was ridiculous. You'd think that they wouldn't have an endless supply of resources being so far from home. Indeed, they had to put them into a formless black void to even use this premise at all in the episode The Void, and they made an amazing story to boot where they made a little mini-Federation, something they should have been doing from the start.

Ron Moore, who worked on DS9 extensively and later showran BSG, wrote quite a bit about Voyager and what he thought went wrong with it. And since I really like Ron Moore's work both on Star Trek and on BSG, I agreed with quite a bit of what he had to say. Mostly that the management was bad.
http://www.lcarscom.net/rdm1000118.htm

BSG, funilly enough, feels like the anti-Voyager. It feels like Moore's response to Voyager as it could have been rather then what it was. And it was a really damn good show. So there you go.

slytherindoctor

Oh, and I love First Contact. Easily the best Trek movie. It establishes the beginning of how it all started, how could you not love that? :P

CutiebyNight

Generations is incredibly bland even if you were to judge it by television standards. The only TNG movie worth watching all the way through would be First Contact, and I'm not even one of its fans. I'm not in agreement with slytherindoctor however in terms of its quality. There are a lot of little things in the movie that bother me in terms of how they rewrite parts of Picard's character in the way he deals with the Borg in order to up the drama. Just left me feeling 'meh'.

I love four of the six original movies, which is actually a pretty decent sum now that I think about it.

Star Trek V is... probably my least favorite by a considerable amount.

slytherindoctor

Quote from: CutiebyNight on June 12, 2015, 01:04:01 AM
Generations is incredibly bland even if you were to judge it by television standards. The only TNG movie worth watching all the way through would be First Contact, and I'm not even one of its fans. I'm not in agreement with slytherindoctor however in terms of its quality. There are a lot of little things in the movie that bother me in terms of how they rewrite parts of Picard's character in the way he deals with the Borg in order to up the drama. Just left me feeling 'meh'.

I love four of the six original movies, which is actually a pretty decent sum now that I think about it.

Star Trek V is... probably my least favorite by a considerable amount.

I don't think they took Picard out of character at all. It makes considerable sense that having been assimilated by the Borg and knowing what that was like would make him hate the Borg all the more and, indeed, want to do everything he could to prevent everyone else from being assimilated. It takes a lot for him to get worked up over things, but it makes sense that the Borg would get him worked up.

Golden Spider

Quote from: slytherindoctor on June 12, 2015, 01:08:55 AM
I don't think they took Picard out of character at all. It makes considerable sense that having been assimilated by the Borg and knowing what that was like would make him hate the Borg all the more and, indeed, want to do everything he could to prevent everyone else from being assimilated. It takes a lot for him to get worked up over things, but it makes sense that the Borg would get him worked up.

I think you are getting the First Contact movie confused with the Wolf 359 episode and arc where they first meet the borg, isnt that when he's assimilated.


but enough on first contact. Star trek does a marvelous job on wrapping up it's series. TNG Voyager, DS9 even Ent all those last episodes were top notch. and even if the time travel is overused it's used well, and always manages to stay interesting. and slyth on character development in voyager, you can see it. but its slight. just like character development in real life
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slytherindoctor

Quote from: Goldenrod666 on June 12, 2015, 01:23:14 AM
I think you are getting the First Contact movie confused with the Wolf 359 episode and arc where they first meet the borg, isnt that when he's assimilated.

The Best of Both Worlds is where he's assimilated yes. But First Contact use that theme of his assimilation heaviliy throughout the movie to show his hatred of the Borg.

Quotebut enough on first contact. Star trek does a marvelous job on wrapping up it's series. TNG Voyager, DS9 even Ent all those last episodes were top notch. and even if the time travel is overused it's used well, and always manages to stay interesting. and slyth on character development in voyager, you can see it. but its slight. just like character development in real life

For the most part yes although Endgame was a little lackluster compared to TNG and DS9's finales. And, of course, These Are The Voyages is increadibly bad. It's so bad there's a novel that retcons it. Enterprise season 4 was really good because Berman and Braga stepped away from the franchise. But they came back and wrote the final episode, which was really bad. The true Enterprise series finale was actually really good though, the two parter before that episode: Demons/Terra Prime. That was a really good story.

Cold Heritage

Thank you, fellow Elliquiyan, and have a wonderful day.

mia h

Quote from: Cold Heritage on June 13, 2015, 12:05:39 AM
Weyoun is the best.
Well second best, everyone knows simple Cardassian taliors are the best people.  ;D
If found acting like an idiot, apply Gibbs-slap to reboot system.

CutiebyNight

A simple question to ask the community forming around here... what is your least favorite episode of Trek and why?

I'm gonna steal Spock's Brain before anyone says it. It does have points for sheer unintentional hilarity.

mia h

Quote from: CutiebyNight on June 13, 2015, 04:12:20 PM
A simple question to ask the community forming around here... what is your least favorite episode of Trek and why?

Well, Voyager.
Paris & Janeway as lizards.
The ship being disabled by cheese.
....

The best episode of Voyager was the last one, because it was the last one.
If found acting like an idiot, apply Gibbs-slap to reboot system.

slytherindoctor

Quote from: CutiebyNight on June 13, 2015, 04:12:20 PM
A simple question to ask the community forming around here... what is your least favorite episode of Trek and why?

I'm gonna steal Spock's Brain before anyone says it. It does have points for sheer unintentional hilarity.

There are way way too many horrible episodes. Spock's Brain isn't even all that horrible by comparrison to some of the worst. It's more so bad it's good really then just straight up bad. Episodes that come immediately to mind as worst include Justice, Angel One, When the Bough Breaks, Shades of Grey, Profit and Lace, "Get the Cheese to Sickbay!," Threshold. Curiously, Voyager doesn't really have that many so bad it's horrible episodes. Most of the episodes are just painfully average TNG copies. Threshold kind of straddles the line between so bad it's good and so bad it's horrible. It can occasionally be pretty hilarious, but then Tom's tongue falls out.

But Enterprise has the absolute worst episode, imo. A Night in Sickbay. This is the episode in which Archer thinks that his dog getting fresh air is more important then the well being of his ship. It's the one that solidifies Archer's position as the most idiotic person to ever captain a starship. I really could not recommend it highly enough. I've seen it several times and couldn't stop laughing every time. I'd have to say A Night in Sickbay is the worst Star Trek episode of all time.

I'd also like to ask which episode is your favorite. I'll go ahead and say mine is In the Pale Moonlight. I could talk for hours about how good that one is. I've seen it at least a dozen times.

Quote from: mia h on June 13, 2015, 04:38:26 PM
Well, Voyager.
Paris & Janeway as lizards.
The ship being disabled by cheese.
....

The best episode of Voyager was the last one, because it was the last one.

If I could like this about a million times I could. Unfortunately there is no like button on this website. D:

CutiebyNight

I'm really terrible with titles, but the one where the crew go onto the holodeck as Robin Hood and his merry men is one of my all-time favorites. Really, anything to do with the holodeck I've always really enjoyed. They're never the most thought-provoking of episodes, but it's great to see the crew chill out for a bit... when the holodeck doesn't find a way of almost killing them.

Trouble with Tribbles, because tribbles are adorable and I want one. Just one. No more than that.

I think from my picks here, it's probably painfully obvious that I'm not the most hardcore of Trekkers.

mia h

Well it's hard to disagree with In the Pale Moonlight as one of the best episodes, although with Trials & Tribble-ations and Relics are pretty good because of how they interact with the orignal series. And then there's Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang with holodeck heist. Hmm. I'm noticing a DS9 theme developing here.
If found acting like an idiot, apply Gibbs-slap to reboot system.

mia h

Oh and before I forget and because this seems like the perfect place to do and slytherindoctor seems to be too polite to do it :

Shamless plug for the Star Trek game that's just getting started https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=230704.msg1133360

;D
If found acting like an idiot, apply Gibbs-slap to reboot system.

slytherindoctor

Quote from: mia h on June 14, 2015, 02:04:54 AM
Well it's hard to disagree with In the Pale Moonlight as one of the best episodes, although with Trials & Tribble-ations and Relics are pretty good because of how they interact with the orignal series. And then there's Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang with holodeck heist. Hmm. I'm noticing a DS9 theme developing here.

Trials and Badda-Bing are just fun episodes. They're a lot of fun to watch and get involved in their worlds, but they're not "greatest Star Trek episode ever" material. DS9 has plenty more candidates for that position though: The Visitor, Inquisition, Far Beyond the Stars, Duet, Waltz. I mean, that barely scratches the surface of all the increadibly good DS9 episodes, but those just stand out as some of the greatest Star Trek episodes of all time. There's nothing wrong with "fun episodes," but they can't compare to these sorts of things. Although Far Beyond the Stars does get a little corny with Avery Brooks's overacting: "IT'S REEEAAAALLLL!!!!! I CREATED IT!!!! IT'S REEEEAAAAALLLL!!!!!!!"

I was never actually a big fan of Relics, to be fair. The episode just seemed to me to be all nostalgia, no substance.