Star trek: the animated series has cool aliens (the blakeyrat is watching star trek thread)
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Diggin' blue eye bird man there. He's just hanging around, on a Federation mission, tricordering the shit out of that planet. Look at him. Tapping away on that fucking tricorder with his bird-claws. Like a fucking boss. Working with the bride of Frankenstein there like it ain't no thang.
No fuck, man. I'm bleeping too.
Oh shit he actually is voiced later in the episode. He sounds like a middle-aged insurance salesman. The best voice for a bird-man.
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Have you seen M'Ress, the three-eyed dude, or the Kzinti yet?
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Here, free avatar for someone:
Have you seen M'Ress,
Believe it or not, this is the first time I've watched The Animated Series. I knew there was a cat-girl from, you know, Internet.
the three-eyed dude
No not yet. There's a three armed dude who replaces Chekov, though, that guy's pretty badass.
or the Kzinti yet?
Again, I know this exists, but I haven't yet gotten to it.
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There's a three armed dude who replaces Chekov
Oh, that's who I meant--I wrote the wrong thing somehow.
Again, I know this exists, but I haven't yet gotten to it.
I must have seen at least some of these not too many years after they came out, but I don't remember more than a few disconnected images.
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If you love TOS, you should watch these. It's only one season, but very well put together.
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Yeah the animation's cheap, but no worse than any other cartoon at the time. And they got like 85% of the original cast, so that's pretty badass. I'm diggin' it.
EDIT: also like the episode with the bird-man, they go back to the Guardian of Forever computer and just flat-out use the damned thing. It's not just a plot device, it's actually a thing that exists in a universe they can go back to and use again if they want. Huh!
Also I spent way too long getting the text right on that avatar, so I'm using it myself, fuck all y'all.
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Guardian of Forever [...] It's not just a plot device, it's actually a thing that exists in a universe they can go back to and use again if they want. Huh!
It was used at least once in the novels, although that one involved McCoy calling Spock a sly son of a gun, so maybe you were better off not reading it.
Also I spent way too long getting the text right on that avatar, so I'm using it myself, fuck all y'all.
Well, now I want to use it, and one thing this site and meta.d taught me is that it's OK for more than one person to use the same avatar!
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Oh man in episode 4, the men get hijacked by space sirens and Uhura totally takes charge and kicks ass. Space sirens.
EDIT: Kirk almost dies because he hides in a big urn and then it starts raining and it fills with water and he can't climb back out, lol.
Wait what? The red shirt doesn't die? But... but... this is old-school Star Trek. Why did they BRING a red shirt if he survives the entire mission!?
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I remember watching the animated series when I was in high school. Only sporadically, though. It was on at something like 7 o'clock Saturday morning; I have never (willingly) been a morning person, and especially on Saturday mornings — not even for Star Trek.
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Hey look, being animated they can actually animate the shield effect on ships.
Or some guy at Filmation fucked-up the masking and they didn't care enough to redo it, either way.
Digging the aliens on this show, but I think they went too far when they replaced Kirk:
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Oooh yeah, Kirk always hooks up with the alien hotties:
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Ok here's the cat chick:
I guess they use her when Nichelle Nichols isn't available? I don't really get it, since Nichols did a bunch of these episodes herself...
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Yeah the animation's cheap, but no worse than any other cartoon at the time. And they got like 85% of the original cast, so that's pretty badass. I'm diggin' it.
EDIT: also like the episode with the bird-man, they go back to the Guardian of Forever computer and just flat-out use the damned thing. It's not just a plot device, it's actually a thing that exists in a universe they can go back to and use again if they want. Huh!
Guardian of Forever is also used in the YouTube mashup "Star Trek VS Batman", after the Joker and Catwoman take over the Enterprise and basically phaser a bunch of 20th-century cities on Earth into oblivion.
They got most of the original cast back for the animated series, true, but all guest characters seem to be voiced by either Majel Barrett or James Doohan.
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Digging the aliens on this show, but I think they went too far when they replaced Kirk:
Is that a TNG tribble?
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Is that a TNG tribble?
I don't even know what you mean! The only tribbles in TNG were in that Deep Space 9 episode where they go back in time, because in canon the Klingons wiped every tribble out and they were extinct by TNG era.
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TNG <> DS9
or more specifically:
DS9 >> TNG > Voyager ~= TOS >>>> (repeated G64 times) >> Enterprise
haven't watched enough of the animated series to see where it falls on that scale
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Deep Space 9 is a TNG show. It takes place in "The Next Generation" era. The Enterprise 1701-D visits it. Worf becomes a regular in later seasons. Arguing otherwise is crazytalk.
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TNG, Voyager, and DS9 all take place at about the same time.
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Right. Trivia time!!!!! Kira Nerys in DS9 was originally supposed to be Ensign Ro from Next Generation, but the actress didn't want to commit to a full-time Star Trek role.
More trivia time!!!!! B'Elanna Torres on Voyager was also intended for Ensign Ro from Next Generation (remember Ro joins the rebel group that Voyager's crew has to get along with at the end of Next Generation), but, again, the actress didn't want to commit.
Weird. Usually actors jump at opportunities for steady work. And everybody loved Ro. (For the same reason everybody loved Barkley, she wasn't just another mamby-pamby 'yes sir' everybody get along boring Starfleet officer.)
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Deep Space 9 is a TNG show. It takes place in "The Next Generation" era. The Enterprise 1701-D visits it. Worf becomes a regular in later seasons. Arguing otherwise is crazytalk.
i was arguing awesomness ranking, not era generations.
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Then I do not understand the purpose of your post at all, or why it's a reply to the tribble thing!
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i am weird and capricious, and possibly was angling to start a holy war about which series was better than which?
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My ranking is TOS > TNG = DS9 > Enterprise > Voyager. There's just something about the old-school cheesiness and fun of TOS that was lost in later series.
Enterprise sucked but only because it didn't feel like Star Trek, I enjoyed some of the writing. Voyager sucked because the writers couldn't write and the actors couldn't act but at least it felt like Star Trek. If they stood on their own with no relation to Star Trek, Enterprise comes out ahead. Jeffrey Combs as a semi-regular helps too.
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Why would you put the correct order if you want to start a war? :P
Sticking Voyager at number 1 "cos Janeway rules!" is a good way to start one ;)
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Well your little chart isn't precise enough. Voyager was a really crappy show, but when it had good episodes, they were really good episodes. (You just had to wade through a lot of dreck to get to the 4-5 good episodes a season.) Tuvix and Mortal Coil are great enough episodes to, alone, support their entire seasons. I'm not kidding. Mortal Coil might be one of the best Star Trek episodes ever.
DS9 was probably the best series averaged-out, but it's really poor first and last seasons kind of ruin the experience. Especially the awful last season-- the show ends with them fighting literal demons? WTF.
TNG everybody knows the story about, awful first and second season (it's a miracle they were renewed!) and then it picked up to be great until the last season which had a lot of stinker episodes.
In all of the TNG-era shows, bottle episodes are inexplicably great. Think about the above-mentioned Tuvix and Mortal Coil from Voyager, the comedy episode from DS9 with the self-sealing stem-bolts, In A Pale Moonlight and Duet were bottle episodes. Lower Decks from TNG, etc. It's so weird.
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Since you mentioned Mortal Coil, which I haven't seen (it turns out I missed out on a lot of Voyager, probably because the PC-ness of TNG eventually got to me), I'll mention, since I'm slowly going through the show (I'm almost done with Season 3 currently--the last episode I've seen is the one where Neelix was on that space station and ran into an old friend who almost got the two of them thrown in jail), Sacred Ground, which is sort of the reverse, spiritually, of Mortal Coil. The ending was in some ways telegraphed but I really enjoyed watching Janeway waste her time. The end was, admittedly, a bit of a disappointment similar to the ending of Feeling Pinkie Keen ("science can't explain why Pinkie's weird, but that's OK!"), but the journey was fun.
Neelix, in retrospect, was a great character. I think they wanted him for comic relief or something, but a lot of episodes revolved around him, and he was a much deeper person than most of the crew thought.
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Neelix, in retrospect, was a great character. I think they wanted him for comic relief or something, but a lot of episodes revolved around him, and he was a much deeper person than most of the crew thought.
I don't get the Neelix hate ONE BIT. I think it stems from 2 things:
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He was very annoying in his first like 2-3 appearances. By the time of the space station episode you mention, he was perfectly fine.
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He was inexplicably dating a woman WAY out of his league. WAY out. But he had the advantage that she was young and naive and had never left her planet before Neelix met her, so it still kind of makes sense a bit.
BTW that space station episode you mention brings up a very important logic point which the writers of that show completely missed-- if the Voyager can travel at warp 9.6 or whatever (and it cruises at like 9.2, IIRC), and the Kazon have original series-esque ships that cap out at like warp 7, max-- how is it possible that the Kazon are on their tail for like 5 solid years? Voyager should have outrun all of Kazon space in a matter of months, max. (Even more ridiculous: it's the same Kazon ship harassing them 5 years later.) I mean they do have a couple episodes where they have to stop and making extended repairs or whatever, but still. (Then again, the Voyager is kind of a clunky prototype ship, so maybe that's the point-- Voyager launched half-baked and so the Kazon can catch them? A couple throwaway lines of dialog could have fixed all of this.)
Also, "launching a half-baked ship with the expectation it'll be a short mission then getting stuck on an important mission" is a plot-point they used in BOTH of the first two Star Trek movies. Now that I think about. "The computers use bio-engineered neural gel!" "What's the advantage over the previous computers?" "Uh. They're just as slow, but now the bio-gel can get attacked by viruses?" "Great improvement!" Or the ridiculous thing about how the Voyager has two warp cores (supposedly) and bits of the ship are powered by one even if the other is offline. But they can never rewire the second one to power anything other than the holodecks-- hmm!!!
That said, as lame as the Kazon were, they're still better than some of the later recurring villains on Voyager.
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Since you mentioned Mortal Coil, which I haven't seen
I AM TALKING ABOUT STAR TREKZ
A lot of Star Trek episodes are extremely entertaining, but very few of them really hug at the heartstrings. We're talking like, The Inner Light, DS9's The Visitor or Duet (again), or Voyager's Mortal Coil.
I dunno; maybe it has something to do with where my life was when that episode was first aired, but I think Mortal Coil is the best of these.
(Interestingly, I re-watched the entire original series, and none of the episodes really tugged at the heartstrings in that way. I mean, there's the famous The City on the Edge of Forever and the one where Kirk spends like 10 months with amnesia and starts a family on that Native American planet, but nothing like what the TNG-era shows were able to do.
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Yeah, even for Star Trek, Voyager was full of explanations that don't make sense.
I believe the gel packs could do something faster than the computers, which struck me as ridiculous; the computer cores are the size of buildings, but a quart-sized zip-loc bag is faster?
I always thought the Kazon following for so long was ridiculous, but I now operate under the assumption that nearly all TV show and movie writers are idiots who have never held a real job or obtained any kind of college degree that wasn't in grievance-group studies or basket-weaving. The upshot is, the show's still stupid, but now I can at least say "aww, the writers're trying their best, bless their hearts."
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I AM TALKING ABOUT STAR TREKZ
Huh? You mentioned one specific episode that I didn't remember the name of so I looked it up and that made me remember a similarly-themed one. I didn't have anything to say about the other episodes you also mentioned.
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Yeah, even for Star Trek, Voyager was full of explanations that don't make sense.
Obligatory:
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Yeah, even for Star Trek, Voyager was full of explanations that don't make sense.
It's more that the writers didn't keep a bible, and also didn't watch their own show. There's an article that outlines how many shuttlecraft they lose (it's something like... 33? I can't remember. It's about an order-of-magnitude more than the number of shuttlecraft a ship with a crew of 120 would be carrying in the first place. Remember, the Voyager is a lot tinier than a Galaxy Class, and a Galaxy Class only carried like 6.)
Or the number of photon torpedos they fire-- it was supposedly a plot-point that they only had X (I think about 40?) and no way to resupply them. Then through the course of the show they fire more than they have with no comment as to how. (I read somewhere that they carefully accounted for torpedos in the first two seasons then just kind of gave up later.)
The whole "second warp drive" excuse was just a idiotic plot point so they could be "suffering" from energy deficits and the writers could still pen super-lazy holodeck episodes. "The holodeck power supply can't be plugged into the rest of the ship! Somehow! Whatever, who cares!"
In fact, "whatever, who cares" seems to be kind of the motto of Voyager. Everything from them forgetting their own plot-points (aren't the Marquis and Starfleet crews supposed to have... conflict?) to their tolerance of Beltram's awful acting and refusal to fire a guy who obviously just Did. Not. Give. A. Shit. to a legendary degree (even in Mortal Coil he's barely trying), to their lack of any kind of long-term plotting or planning.
Still, they had 3-5 good episodes a season. Somehow.
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Or the number of photon torpedos they fire-- it was supposedly a plot-point that they only had X (I think about 40?) and no way to resupply them.
When I started rewatching it this summer I specifically watched it for that line and couldn't find it.
I remember it because I watched the first episode at the MIT Media Lab with Richard Stallman in the room. That guy always struck me as, well, let's say permanently befuddled.
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IIRC they even went through multiple Delta Flyers! I wish I could remember the site but I'd stumbled on a website that analyzed Star Trek vessels and Voyager was the worst (EDIT: Actually the Klingon Birds of Prey were the worst, but we're talking about the shows and not the movies). Dimensionally, the Delta Flyer couldn't even fit within the engineering section, yet somehow they had room for it and several shuttlecraft inside the shuttlebay.
I remember the torpedo thing too.
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When I started rewatching it this summer I specifically watched it for that line and couldn't find it.
It's like in the second or third episode, I honestly can't remember. I'm sure 100 people have made a YouTube-- in fact, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIGxMENwq1k And to be fair to the writers, they do keep track up until like the last 2 seasons.
Richard Stallman in the room.
What part of his disgusting greasy body was he snacking from?
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IIRC they even went through multiple Delta Flyers!
Well they could demonstrably build a Delta Flyer using their replicators. So replacing it kind of makes sense. Kind of.
There's never any like drop-in line of dialog saying the same about the normal shuttles, but who knows. Maybe they replicate a new shuttle every week.
Dimensionally, the Delta Flyer couldn't even fit within the engineering section, yet somehow they had room for it and several shuttlecraft inside the shuttlebay.
Yeah; Delta Flyer was like roughly the size of a DS9 runabout. But DS9 had those big heli-pad things to keep runabouts on.
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Beltram's awful acting
I thought almost all of them were awful actors, but the guy who played Paris was really bad too.
refusal to fire a guy who obviously just Did. Not. Give. A. Shit. to a legendary degree
Still talking about Beltran, or someone else? Not only was his acting bad in general, but he played a shitty Indian. <monotone>Oh, my people are so spiritual</monotone>.
The episode where Janeway slammed Kirk's era for being a bunch of cowboys made me howl. This, from a person who would violate the Prime Directive six times before breakfast?
Speaking of not caring, hey, whatever happened to her and Paris' lizard kids? Oh, that's right, the crew abandoned them. Hope that our future lizard selves grow up faster than present-day humans! And then don't get me started on Treknobabble, which I think reached its apotheosis in Voyager.
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but the guy who played Paris was really bad too.
Really? I liked him. Charismatic.
ADDITIONAL TRIVIA:
Paris was supposed to be the disgraced cadet who did the dangerous maneuver at Starfleet Academy and almost got Wil Wheaton killed in that one episode of TNG (which is why he was in prison at the beginning of Voyager.) The producers, however, found if they used that character's name they'd have to pay royalties on it due to some writer's guild legality bullshit, so they made a "new" character with the same actor and a nearly-identical personality. Who was Paris.
Still talking about Beltran, or someone else? Not only was his acting bad in general, but he played a shitty Indian. <monotone>Oh, my people are so spiritual</monotone>.
Oh yeah. There's no doubt the character was badly-written. But his acting was... well he deserved a badly-written character. Guy was awful.
Chick who played Dax was awful in the first couple of DS9 seasons but she eventually improved. Troi in Next Gen started pretty rough, too. Beltram was awful from episode one to the finale. Guy did not give a shit.
Speaking of not caring, hey, whatever happened to her and Paris' lizard kids? Oh, that's right, the crew abandoned them.
That episode was erased from everybody's memory. I don't know what you're talking about.
BTW the "if you go warp 10 you see everything in the universe" plot-point? Even in the ORIGINAL SERIES in the 60s they go warp 10 on more than one occasion with nothing weird happening. They completely ret-conned every Star Trek back to like the first episode to write that awful space-lizard-baby plot.
Had good makeup effects though.
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I thought almost all of them were bad actors, with Neelix and Tuvok being the exceptions. Tuvok wasn't a great actor either, but playing a Vulcan is easy so I cut him some slack.
Janeway in particular was annoying. She tried too hard to act, and failed miserably.
Eventually I got used to them, until I saw a TNG episode again and was blown away by their acting and drama skills. By comparison, Voyager is like a bunch of regular people having a conversation at the dining table.
BTW the "if you go warp 10 you see everything in the universe" plot-point? Even in the ORIGINAL SERIES in the 60s they go warp 10 on more than one occasion with nothing weird happening. They completely ret-conned every Star Trek back to like the first episode to write that awful space-lizard-baby plot.
I don't think it's ever mentioned in the shows, but I've read the theory at the warp scale was completely redesigned after TOS. The old warp scale had no limit, the new warp scale was some strange exponential thing with an asymptote at warp 10 that can't be reached except both TNG and Voyager did.
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It's like in the second or third episode, I honestly can't remember.
I'm almost positive it was the second one, but like I said, I was watching for it and must have missed it. It's only one grain of sand in a mound of it, though.
What part of his disgusting greasy body was he snacking from?
Ha, I don't think any.
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I thought almost all of them were bad actors,
Dude. Kate Mulgrew, who had headed like 4 series before Voyager? Who was Ms. Columbo? Robert Picardo? Tim Russ? You're insane. Voyager had a much better cast than it deserved. Tim Russ is da man.
Do you understand she was Mrs. Columbo?!
Eventually I got used to them, until I saw a TNG episode again and was blown away by their acting and drama skills.
Yeah well Troi was hired due to "sexy", and she had a really rough first few years. Ditto that with Dax. Tasha Yar's actress was AWFUL but then she left the show and it turned out she never really gave a shit or tried.
The actresses Voyager hired to be sexy, Jeri Ryan and Jennifer Lien, were actually legit actresses. The episode where Jeri Ryan plays the WWII lounge singer was a terrible episode, but goddamned, woman can perform.
The old warp scale had no limit, the new warp scale was some strange exponential thing with an asymptote at warp 10 that can't be reached except both TNG and Voyager did.
But TNG established ships going warp 13 no problem before Voyager even existed. I mean, arguably it was a future time-travel thing, but still.
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but the guy who played Paris was really bad too.
Really? I liked him. Charismatic.
Oh, both things can be true. Most of the people on that show spoke their lines pretty woodenly. But Paris had some passion underneath the wood, I guess.
I mean, watch Paris, Chakotay, Janeway, Kes "emote", then watch, say, the Doctor and Neelix. The former bunch are mostly reading lines, the latter two are actually acting. This is all IMO, of course.
Oh, and another thing--weren't they still using physical models for space shots, instead of CGI like Babylon 5 had been done? The space shots were always really lame compared to, say, any scene in B5 with a Star Fury, that were capable of rotating in place and going off in a different direction.
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That episode was erased from everybody's memory. I don't know what you're talking about.
I know it was even more or less officially retconned away, but there's an exemption for griping about it, as far as I'm concerned.
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By comparison, Voyager is like a bunch of regular people having a conversation at the dining table.
Pfft. They wish they were that animated. They're like a bunch of middle schoolers reciting Shakespeare at the dinner table. While holding logs.
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I don't think it's ever mentioned in the shows, but I've read the theory at the warp scale was completely redesigned after TOS. The old warp scale had no limit, the new warp scale was some strange exponential thing with an asymptote at warp 10 that can't be reached except both TNG and Voyager did.
It was never mentioned in the shows, but it was mentioned in magazines, interviews, and the like. They had a reason but I vaguely remember it was some kind of copout.
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Do you understand she was Mrs. Columbo?!
I have no idea who Mrs. Columbo is.
Robert Picardo was great, probably the best actor in the series, but somehow I totally forgot about him. It's been a while since I watched Voyager. Janeway, Chakotay, Paris, Kes, Harry...I thought all of them were awful. Tuvok was adequate. Neelix, the Doctor, and Seven were great.
Oh, and another thing--weren't they still using physical models for space shots, instead of CGI like Babylon 5 had been done? The space shots were always really lame compared to, say, any scene in B5 with a Star Fury, that were capable of rotating in place and going off in a different direction.
I think Voyager was the first Star Trek to completely use CGI for space shots.
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Kate Mulgrew, who had headed like 4 series before Voyager?
My problem is the blatant hypocrisy of the character, I guess, as I mentioned above. Thinking about it some more, she did act better than Chakotay and the like, but there was a lot of shitty dialog that didn't help.
Paris I mostly liked, so when he had bad dialog and bad delivery, it grated.
I bet Neelix was intended to be some sort of Wesley/Jar Jar-type of character and the writers fucked up in a good way.
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Yeah well Troi was hired due to "sexy", and she had a really rough first few years. Ditto that with Dax. Tasha Yar's actress was AWFUL but then she left the show and it turned out she never really gave a shit or tried.
Troi was awful. I was talking more about Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner, their acting was so good it outshines everyone else. And Levar Burton and Michael Dorn too, though TNG Worf was probably pretty easy to play, he didn't become a well-developed character until DS9.
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Oh, and another thing--weren't they still using physical models for space shots,
No; Voyager is all CGI. They built a physical model, but either never used or, or used it in the pilot and nowhere else (I honestly don't remember.)
This was to avoid the awkward DS9 situation where the Defiant would GROSSLY change appearance based on whether the show was using the CGI model (which was terrible) or the physical model. The CGI model might have been "worse" (arguably) when the show started, but it's better to have consistent visuals than good ones.
Any crappiness in Voyager's effects is due to lack of vision/creativity/budget, not lack of technology. You also have to remember those kinds of shot are also a stylistic choice-- that's just what space shots in Star Trek media look like. That stylistic choice didn't get shaken-up until (I'd argue) new Battlestar Galactica, and even then, only when following fighters. The capital ships used the same Star Trek-style composition.
DS9 was the only series which mixed both types. And even there-- DS9 (the actual station) was always physical except in the finale where they used a CGI model for that pan-out shot. Defiant switched between the two, sometimes in the same episode.
I know it was even more or less officially retconned away,
There's a line in a very late Voyager episode where Paris goes, "warp 10? I've never traveled warp 10" and basically winks at the camera.
Harry...I thought all of them were awful.
Harry was ok, they just never gave him anything to do. The show itself lampshaded this later on, believe it or not.
My problem is the blatant hypocrisy of the character, I guess, as I mentioned above.
Well, keep in mind, they didn't keep any kind of writer's bible as far as anybody can tell.
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Harry was ok, they just never gave him anything to do. The show itself lampshaded this later on, believe it or not.
Yeah, and didn't he stay an Ensign through the entire series? WTF. Good luck getting any job advancement after staying at the lowest rank for seven years. Even Paris got promoted (and demoted), and he was a constant troublemaker.
