Star trek: the animated series has cool aliens (the blakeyrat is watching star trek thread)
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and let the wars begin....
MU HU HU HUHUHU AHA HA HA HA HA !
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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.
Mrs Columbo would've been the wife of the guy Peter Falk played, probably. I never liked Columbo much.
Harry was probably the best of the wooden actors. The Doctor was great in this series and I liked him--mostly--in Stargate, too, where his character grew over time.
I think Voyager was the first Star Trek to completely use CGI for space shots.
If so, they failed to use it to much benefit--all the space shots were just like all the other shows--oh, look, here's the thing slowly moving in an arc. Ok, there were a few battles, now that I think of it, that they did a better job, but I don't think the CGI people really grokked the capabilities of the medium the way the Babylon 5 people did.
I was talking more about Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner
I'll give you Spiner, with the caveat that, like a Vulcan, he was limited by the character ("I love looking for life forms!" cracked me up, I'll admit), but Stewart always seemed like someone took an actual Shakespearean actor and put him in an ill-fitting uniform. He wasn't bad but I don't think his background fit the show.
DS9 was always physical except in the finale
The Dominion war's ramp-up storyline bored me so I didn't see much of the last few seasons. When I finish Voyager I'll go back and watch DS9 through. And then I'll finish Enterprise, which I've seen almost all of Season one, almost none of two, most of three, except the end, and about the last two episodes of four.
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My problem is the blatant hypocrisy of the character, I guess
Agreed. I didn't think her acting was well-done, but I hate all her high-and-mighty holier-than-thou principles she ignores.
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and let the wars begin....
Ironically it's not working.
In fact there's entire layers of irony.
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but Stewart always seemed like someone took an actual Shakespearean actor and put him in an ill-fitting uniform.
Stewart was in Dune and in that awful space vampire movie with all the nudity, Lifeforce. Just to ground you a little bit.
EDIT: he was also in that excellent adaptation of Frankenstein that TNT made in like 2002 or whenever. Guy's kind of all over the map. He's like a slightly-more-talented John Rhys-Davies, a guy who'll do Lord of the Rings on Monday, then do a chupacabra movie for Sci-Fi Network on Tuesday.
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I'll give you Spiner, with the caveat that, like a Vulcan, he was limited by the character ("I love looking for life forms!" cracked me up, I'll admit),
He seems limited, but when he's doing Dr. Soong and Lore it's clear the guy knows how to act.
Stewart always seemed like someone took an actual Shakespearean actor and put him in an ill-fitting uniform. He wasn't bad but I don't think his background fit the show.
My only complaint about him was he was a Frenchman with a strong British accent.
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In fact there's entire layers of irony.
yes, but see even if it's not an all out war we're discussing Star Trek!
Speaking of which, i seem to recall that Star Trek Enterprise was officially retconned to be a holodeck simulation because of the vast majority of the fans flat out refusing to accept it as canon
true? not true? (never made it past about a third of the way into season 2 of that show)
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He seems limited, but when he's doing Dr. Soong and Lore it's clear the guy knows how to act.
Lore is fantastic. And scary.
@mott555 said:My only complaint about him was he was a Frenchman with a strong British accent.
Who drank Earl Grey tea
Yeah he was the least French guy ever.
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Stewart was in Dune
and for the record, of all the movie adaptations of that book, that one was the best by far, and closest to what actually happens in the book (it's not terribly good mind you, but enjoyable and at least a hundred times better than any of the other adaptations)
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If so, they failed to use it to much benefit--all the space shots were just like all the other shows--oh, look, here's the thing slowly moving in an arc. Ok, there were a few battles, now that I think of it, that they did a better job, but I don't think the CGI people really grokked the capabilities of the medium the way the Babylon 5 people did.
I don't think it's fair to compare Babylon 5 to Voyager. The B5 team was excellent and they also had a single guy who wrote everything and was meticulous about internal consistency (except for the movies). Voyager was like most of the crew came from TNG's junior varsity benchwarming squad.
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Speaking of which, i seem to recall that Star Trek Enterprise was officially retconned to be a holodeck simulation because of the vast majority of the fans flat out refusing to accept it as canon
Not true BUT.
It's terrible terrible finale takes place on a holodeck.
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Not true BUT.
fair enough, I'm going to continut to pretend it is though, because DAMN that was an awful excuse for a ST show.
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I think my favorite adaptation is the miniseries for Children of Dune. They did little things like try to show the characters playing cheops (Not well, but at least they tried!).
Horrible acting. But I liked it. It's the best we'll ever get.
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Voyager was like most of the crew came from TNG's junior varsity benchwarming squad.
Exactly. DS9 got the benefit of "leftover" Next Gen characters and writers, Voyager due to its setting and reputation basically didn't even have that option. (Although they did still cram in Barkley, and Troi in a few episodes.)
fair enough, I'm going to continut to pretend it is though, because DAMN that was an awful excuse for a ST show.
It gets... I won't say "better", but I will say "a hell of a lot more fun" in the last season.
The finale was basically an hour-long "we hate our viewers" exercise though. First of all, because the entire thing is about this great speech Archer gives that creates the foundation for the Federation-- the end of the episode, he gets up on the podium, opens his mouth and-- it cuts away before we get to HEAR THE ACTUAL SPEECH THE ENTIRE EPISODE IS ABOUT! WTF!!!
BTW my issue with Data is he'd been in Starfleet for like 22 years when TNG starts, and he still has trouble with things like "handshakes". Seriously? Even the goddamned aliens on Third Rock from the Sun started figuring shit out quicker than you, Data. And that was a SITCOM!
Also, nobody on the show is like, "seriously? You went through 8 years at Starfleet Academy and you never learned what a practical joke was? Seriously?" Starfleet Academy must be the most boring school in the universe.
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Voyager was like most of the crew came from TNG's junior varsity benchwarming squad.
as far as the writers.... they mostly did....
the good episoides where when the good writers from TNG were taking a break and wrote VOY.
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Stewart was in Dune and in that awful space vampire movie with all the nudity, Lifeforce. Just to ground you a little bit.
I know--well, I didn't know about Lifeforce. I didn't say he was a bad actor, though--I just thought the character he portrayed wasn't right for the milieu.
I regularly felt like Picard thought he was on a stage, bellowing[1] out his lines, and it didn't ring true to me. See the footnote for mostly why.
[1] I don't mean that in a bad way, but compare him to, say, any OTHER Star Trek Captain when addressing a new species on the main viewscreen.
[Spiner] seems limited, but when he's doing Dr. Soong and Lore it's clear the guy knows how to act.
Oh, I know--that's why I threw in the "life forms" reference. He was passably funny in that one episode of Big Bang Theory, except for the "I'm desperate" bit.
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, i seem to recall that Star Trek Enterprise was officially retconned to be a holodeck
No idea if that's true, although what you might be mixing up is that the last episode was done as Riker and Troi watching a Holodeck simulation or recording.
I thought Enterprise was one of the better series because they jettisoned a lot of the PC crap that hamstrung the previous three series.
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I don't think it's fair to compare Babylon 5 to Voyager.
I probably should have said this, but I wasn't trying to do that, except to point out that mostly the Voyager team didn't come close to making best use of CGI.
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BTW my issue with Data is he'd been in Starfleet for like 22 years when TNG starts, and he still has trouble with things like "handshakes". Seriously? Even the goddamned aliens on Third Rock from the Sun started figuring shit out quicker than you, Data. And that was a SITCOM!
That's an obnoxious trope. Look how the people in Sliders never seemed to figure out how to lay low until they figured how the one way the world of the week was different from their Earth. Every week they get caught flatfooted.
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No idea if that's true, although what you might be mixing up is that the last episode was done as Riker and Troi watching a Holodeck simulation or recording.
Ok; here's the deal:
The running joke in Enterprise is that the ship has an excellent chef that makes great food (this is pre-replicators) and everybody else in Starfleet is always trying to get Archer's chef re-assigned to their own ships/bases/whatever. However, we the audience never see or hear the chef. That's the running joke. Hilarious, huh? No, it's super-lame, but whatever.
In the finale, it's "revealed" that Riker as a hobby likes to role-play that he's the chef aboard Enterprise NX-01. In a holodeck. It could kind of almost be seen as a retcon "you know that chef joke? it's because it's Riker in his holodeck the whole time!" but it certainly isn't intended as one because that's way more clever than the writers of this series are capable of.
It's also completely contrary to EVERYTHING we know about Riker. He role-plays as a chef? Not, like, in a jazz club in the 30s, but in the 2100s? Seriously? No way. Not Riker. I could see Sisko doing that, but Riker? Crazytalk.
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It's also completely contrary to EVERYTHING we know about Riker. He role-plays as a chef? Not, like, in a jazz club in the 30s, but in the 2100s? Seriously? No way. Not Riker.
Well, by the end of TNG he certainly looks like he could be a chef who samples way too much of his own food.
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I thought Enterprise was one of the better series because they jettisoned a lot of the PC crap that hamstrung the previous three series.
Enterprise had a lot of potential but was held back by poor writing. I believe it was the same crew that did Voyager and they tried slightly harder this time.
They shouldn't have called the ship Enterprise. TOS always gives the impression that the Enterprise is just another Starfleet ship and neither it nor Kirk are anything special. Then they saved the world over and over again in the movies and the Enterprise became Starfleet's flagship, which is why they kept making more and more Enterprises and by TNG it was THE ship. But Enterprise (the series) totally mucks with that concept and doesn't fit in.
Then there's the makeup/aging/timeline. They have all these flashbacks to Archer's earlier years yet he looks exactly the same age. Then the final episode is some 10 years after the show ends and he looks exactly the same age. The other series at least attempted to change the actor's apparent age using makeup, and it makes it more believable and also easier to figure out the rough timeline.
Then the aliens. The Ferengi and humans had never met prior to TNG, so let's have a Ferengi episode in Enterprise! Same with the Borg! Not only that, but the Enterprise crew actually defeats the Borg despite them being such a tough enemy a few hundred years later! The Romulans were very enigmatic and had little-to-no contact with the Federation during TOS, so we'd better sprinkle Romulans throughout the prequel series too.
The series started with a Cold War Space Race feel, but they totally abandoned that in order to do a long-term DS9-style war arc. And the transporter is so dangerous it's only allowed to use it on nonliving items, so let's transport the crew with it in like every other episode! And phasers don't exist yet but they have something that looks and acts exactly like phasers!
And that final episode...how that got approved is way beyond me. My guess is they all quit caring and just slapped something together. [spoiler]And Trip's death is the most unnecessary and forced thing I've ever seen ever.[/spoiler]
Conclusion: The writing crew was composed of squirrels with ADHD.
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Was the thing you spoilered the time they [spoiler]cloned him[/spoiler] or something else? As I said upthread I missed a bunch of the show and haven't gotten around to rewatching it yet. (I started Voyager in June and I'm not quite done with season 3....)
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No. I probably shouldn't have spoilered it because nobody likes the finale anyway, but just in case anyone somehow starts watching that episode and doesn't quit caring 7 minutes in....
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Snort. You can PM me if you want. This particular spoiler won't bother me. I DID see part of the finale, FWIW, mostly the last few minutes.
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Enterprise had a lot of potential but was held back by poor writing.
But in the last season when they KNEW they were being cancelled, they were all "fuck it, doodz, let's do EVERYTHING WE WANTED, let's have a goddamned 3-part Star Trek episode that plays like a James Bond movie complete with secret laser base on Mars! Let's bring in Dr Soong even though he won't be born for like 50 years and put him in a story that makes no goddamned sense but has sexy kung-fu chicks! Let's finally write down that bullshit fan-fic about how Klingons had ridges, then lost them, then regained them! Fuck it ALL!"
Then the aliens. The Ferengi and humans had never met prior to TNG, so let's have a Ferengi episode in Enterprise! Same with the Borg! Not only that, but the Enterprise crew actually defeats the Borg despite them being such a tough enemy a few hundred years later!
That was awful.
You're not even missing the missed potential: the premise is that it's a Star Trek show BEFORE they have things like "shields" or "transporters" or "replicators", but the lazy-ass writers had them using the so-called cargo transporter to solve problems by FUCKING EPISODE 5. I mean, fuck, Voyager forgot about its premise too, but it lasted LONGER THAN 5 EPISODES!
And phasers don't exist yet but they have something that looks and acts exactly like phasers!
Right and instead of shields they have "magnetic hull armor" or some shit, which works EXACTLY LIKE SHIELDS, including needing to recharge when depleted. Why bother throwing away the Star Trek staples if you're going to introduce identical replacements for them!?
Conclusion: The writing crew was composed of squirrels with ADHD.
It certainly made Voyager look better in comparison.
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(I started Voyager in June and I'm not quite done with season 3....)
Speaking of cloning and Voyager, there's two Voyager episodes involving a giant planet-sized intelligence cloning the ship and crew-- and the second of those is TRAGIC AS FUCK (and has a great, shocking, twist-ending. Or rather twist-third-act.) It's definitely a great, great, great episode.
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Speaking of cloning and Voyager, there's two Voyager episodes involving a giant planet-sized intelligence cloning the ship and crew-- and the second of those is TRAGIC AS FUCK (and has a great, shocking, twist-ending. Or rather twist-third-act.) It's definitely a great, great, great episode.
I assume you don't mean the early episode where [spoiler]Harry gets killed and replaced by his doppelganger[/spoiler] because I don't remember an alien doing it. I'm sure I'll run into it--I assume you're talking about a two-parter, not the same idea used two different times--eventually.
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It's an unofficial two-parter with several episodes between them.
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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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It's an unofficial two-parter with several episodes between them.
Hmm. I have no idea which episodes you guys are talking about. You don't mean the Year of Hell storyline, do you?
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Nope. I just skimmed the episode list and didn't see it at first glance.
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I'm sure I'll run into it--I assume you're talking about a two-parter, not the same idea used two different times--eventually.
It's not really a 2-parter. Kind of. You really need to see both, it's driving me nuts talking about the second part without giving spoilers. I've already given enough spoilers to ruin the experience of watching the second "part" blind.
Hmm. I have no idea which episodes you guys are talking about. You don't mean the Year of Hell storyline, do you?
The problem is just telling you the second episode is a sequel to the first episode is kind of a spoiler.
We're trying to be nice and not spoil it, but it's one of those things where it's hard to talk about it AT ALL without spoiling it.
It is a great episode, though, and you'll know it when you see it.
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Also, nobody on the show is like, "seriously? You went through 8 years at Starfleet Academy and you never learned what a practical joke was? Seriously?" Starfleet Academy must be the most boring school in the universe.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (if considered in any way canon) definitely showed that there was was banter, but it was mostly serious.
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Since we're in the Star Trek mode:
Why, oh why, are Starfleet power systems so bloody fragile? You'd think someone would have figured out that, you know, redundant power systems and protective relays were a good idea long before then!
Makes me wonder what'd happen if someone laid into Voyager with a few heavy energy neutralizers...those things hurt, and not in a good way, either.
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Why, oh why, are Starfleet power systems so bloody fragile?
I like how like the Galaxy class can both eject the engine core, and has hundreds of escape pods. Why would you need or want both?
BTW my favorite Star Trek Next Gen technology is the "structural integrity field". Which is basically an entire force-field system designed specifically to keep the structure of the ship from bending out-of-shape!!! They need technologies to keep their ships just instantly tearing themselves apart.
Makes me wonder what'd happen if someone laid into Voyager with a few heavy energy neutralizers...those things hurt, and not in a good way, either.
Interestingly, an episode of The Animated Series uses that idea. The Klingons have a beam that does that as a secret weapon, but it turns out it's only effective against one ship at a time so it's not a huge disturbance in the balance of power.
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Why, oh why, are Starfleet power systems so bloody fragile?
Remember what I said upthread? Assume TV show writers have, as a group, never held a real blue-collar job. Plus, to answer your specific complaint a bit more specifically, a shower of sparks and bunch of pieces of foam thrown across the room are dramatic or something. Nobody ever asks why there's something that would power a refrigerator or car starter motor buried behind every goddamn display screen, or where they get the raw materials to be constantly replacing them. (Yes, I know, Voyager was always stopping to scrounge supplies...).
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Why would you need or want both?
For situations where the ship's, say, going to crash but not kaboom? I realize the saucer section separation's a different answer, but imagine they're orbiting a planet and something blows up the core, but not enough to blow up the entire ship. And, uh, the saucer section got welded onto the secondary hull, or something, too. And, uh, the transporters broke.
Ok, there's no good reason for it.
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And, uh, the transporters broke.
While we're Star Rantin', keep track of all the times the transporters stop working due to-- something? Computer virus, loss of power, whatever. Then remember each shuttle carries its own completely-independently-powered transporter. Then remember each ship carries at least 4 shuttles.
Then you've ruined like half of all Next Gen-era shows. Considering pretty much every episode starts with them coming up with some bullshit explanation of why they can't use the transporter to just instantly solve the conflict.
(At least old school Star Trek didn't have transporters in the shuttles, so there was real danger if its transporter was out of order.)
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I like how like the Titanic can both seal a breach with watertight doors, and has 20 lifeboats. Why would you need or want both?
FTFY
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FTFY
As FrostCat mentioned, on the Galaxy-class, the entire saucer section is the lifeboat. It can even land on a planet, in theory, except if Troi is driving.
That scene in First Contact with the hundreds of escape pods was just dumb.
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Then you've ruined like half of all Next Gen-era shows.
Sure, one big problem going right back to the very first episode of TOS almost was they invented all this super-powerful stuff that eliminated all their plots.
It's why K-9 on the old Doctor Who always ran out of battery power. Don't give people in your show tools that eliminate all the hackneyed plots everyone else has already used.
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And best yet is that taken to its logical conclusion, the transporter ought to be able to fix nearly any situation, especially if detailed records-keeping is required which is hinted at in several episodes in several series.
Of course that would be boring if every episode had instant medical revivals by replacing organs with data retrieved from transporter records, etc. Though Neelix with holographic lungs was a ridiculous abuse of this whole concept.
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It's why K-9 on the old Doctor Who always ran out of battery power. Don't give people in your show tools that eliminate all the hackneyed plots everyone else has already used.
Nah; it's like a Superman story, you have to change the equation. Superman's never in any personal danger (at least in good Superman stories), the conflict is in whether he can rescue everybody else.
That's why the good Star Trek stories aren't about technology, they're about personal conflicts, they're about philosophical conflicts (if Neelix and Tuvok get combined into a single person, is separating that person back-out considered murder?)
That's also why Deep Space 9 is:
- The best show, and
- Got significantly worse as they spent more and more time on the Defiant
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As FrostCat mentioned, on the Galaxy-class, the entire saucer section is the lifeboat. It can even land on a planet, in theory, except if Troi is driving.
Actually, while it was never mentioned in the TOS episodes, the 1701 no bloody a, b, c, or d, could do that, except it was catastrophic and there wasn't a way to put the two pieces back together except "a year in space dock." In some pictures, you can see wedge-shaped gores on the underside of the saucer: those were landing gear.
In fact 1701 full stop was also supposed to be able to land, like Voyager could, but they realized that would "take up half of every episode" if they did it, so they scrapped the idea. (This is from one of those "making of..." books in the 70s.)
That scene in First Contact with the hundreds of escape pods was just dumb.
The pods would be a LOT easier to hide than the entire saucer section, if your intention was--which it was--to land and stay out of history.
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The pods would be a LOT easier to hide than the entire saucer section, if your intention was--which it was--to land and stay out of history.
That's not even in the first TEN THOUSAND design goals for a Galaxy-class starship, if you happen to be building one.
EDIT: although it's hilarious to visualize, say, a F-35 engineer thinking, "ok now if this plane got transported back to 1934, is it easy to disguise?"
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Nah; it's like a Superman story, you have to change the equation. Superman's never in any personal danger (at least in good Superman stories), the conflict is in whether he can rescue everybody else.
That's why the good Star Trek stories aren't about technology, they're about personal conflicts, they're about philosophical conflicts (if Neelix and Tuvok get combined into a single person, is separating that person back-out considered murder?)
Well, I'll point out that there weren't all that many good episodes, because most of them were about technology. Look at how many episodes revolve around "we can't rescue the guy on the ground." That's why the transporter was always breaking, or couldn't be used because [excuse of the week]. That's what I meant with my comparison to Dr. Who--they had the same problem. K-9 could pretty much destroy any alien, so they had to have his battery run down so they would be able to have conflict.
As far as the Neelix/Tuvok split thing, I was really pissed with the ending of the episode, because I thought it was murder. That's another thing I dislike about Janeway; what she did there was almost literally a God complex.
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As FrostCat mentioned, on the Galaxy-class, the entire saucer section is the lifeboat.
@Memory Alpha said:On the Galaxy-class, saucer separation was primarily designed as a way for the civilian and nonessential crew complement to escape in the saucer section, while the senior staff and essential personnel engaged a threat or entered a potentially dangerous situation in the stardrive section. When a starship was required to separate, due to these circumstances, the separation command was issued by the commanding officer from the main bridge. The commanding officer, along with most of the senior staff, then transferred to the battle bridge on the stardrive section via a dedicated emergency turbolift, while a junior officer was typically left in command of the saucer module. The saucer was almost always given the directive to seek safety by retreating to a starbase or other allied territory. (TNG: "Encounter at Farpoint", "The Arsenal of Freedom")
What does your crew do when ship's blowing up and you don't have the saucer section.
I realize I'm just being pedantic now.
Also I'm going to assume that all the escape pods were on the saucer section to begin with.
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That's not even in the first TEN THOUSAND design goals for a Galaxy-class starship, if you happen to be building one.
No, but it gives you an in-canon reason to do it, doesn't it? That's all I meant. If you asked the writers, they'd probably agree it belonged on the list of design goals, though, I bet, because they were mainly idiots.
EDIT: although it's hilarious to visualize, say, a F-35 engineer thinking, "ok now if this plane got transported back to 1934, is it easy to disguise?"
Heh. It'd be a lot easier to break up, at least.
