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Community Forums => General Chat => Movies & TV => Topic started by: NWR_insanolord on May 23, 2019, 03:58:37 PM

Title: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on May 23, 2019, 03:58:37 PM
I've been a little hesitant to start a Star Trek thread given how some of the recent discussions of it in other recent threads have gone, but the release of the first teaser for the new Star Trek: Picard series made me do it.



https://youtu.be/f3om4V_-Y0Q


The series will take place post-Nemesis and will involve a story related to the destruction of Romulus, which was the event that led to the time travel that created the timeline the recent JJ Abrams Star Trek movies took place in. After a long stretch of prequels, Star Trek will be moving forward though not to the degree season 3 of Discovery seems to be.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on May 23, 2019, 06:05:28 PM
Not sure how to feel about Picard, since we still don't know what kind of series it will be from that teaser.

Speaking of prequels, though, this came across my Youtube feed this morning and looks quite impressive. It's a Star Trek Enterprise fan film of all things. I'm kind of shocked that Paramount hasn't taken this down. Looks fairly legit.

Unfortunately, the video quality seems to be kind of...****.


There's always Axanar, too, the fan film apparently so good and so professional that Paramount immediately moved to kill it and any future fan films.

Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: UncleBob on May 23, 2019, 07:07:17 PM
Or the film that was trying to make money off Paramount IP instead of just being a fan film.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on May 23, 2019, 07:48:40 PM
Or the film that was trying to make money off Paramount IP instead of just being a fan film.

Well, that's certainly the lawyers' perspective. I would point out, though, that if that's what Paramount actually thought, they'd have shut down the kickstarter when the creators put it up. After all, they were soliciting money for a property they didn't own and the kickstarter was very public.

I find it telling that I didn't see word about Paramount trying to shut it down until Prelude to Axanar released and the general reception was that it "was better than the trash that Paramount was officially releasing under the Star Trek name (the Abrams movies and Discovery)." And then Paramount went out to release a series of demands on fan films to prevent ones from being made again that could compete with the quality level of an official release.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: UncleBob on May 23, 2019, 08:16:17 PM
Your timelines are a bit mixed up.

Also, Alex Peters is the one that repeatedly went to Paramount and asked them to set fan film guidelines.  Then cried when he didn't like them.

If Mr. Peters is such an  amazing, quality professional, I assume I can view some of his other, original and creative works, along with their awards and accolades somewhere?
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on May 23, 2019, 08:21:22 PM
Your timelines are a bit mixed up.

Perhaps. Honestly, I only know the Axanar story from bits and pieces. It wasn't something I really followed, though apparently they're still making the damn thing...somehow. I mainly know of it from the outcry over the revised fan guidelines that happened on Youtube a few years back, guidelines that seem to make it impossible to tell a decent story (given the IIRC 10-15 minute running time limit).

Anyway, like I said I was mainly just surprised to see an Enterprise fan film pop up in my feed this morning, as one of the few fans of Enterprise.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: Adrock on May 23, 2019, 08:26:45 PM
Forever ago, when I was a freshman in college, I read an essay about how authorities in some city discouraged vandalism. They knew certain young people were spending days spray painting huge murals but waited until the individuals finished the project before having someone paint over it. The young people weren’t charged or anything. Their “punishment” was having their art which they spent days on unceremoniously covered in plain white paint.

Point being, I can see Paramount or X company deterring unauthorized use of its IP by waiting until the fan film(s) is finished (or nearly finished) before dropping the cease and desist hammer. It may be shitty, but it’s kind of a good strategy. Occupy the creators of the fan film for years so they’re busy and can’t regroup to try again then kill it late in the game which may deter other people from trying in the future.

Then again, maybe these companies should pull a (specific) Sega. Christian Whitehead’s engine used for a fan game and porting old Sonic games to mobile was so good Sega was just like, “Fine, make us a real one.” And now, we have Sonic Mania.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: UncleBob on May 23, 2019, 08:29:42 PM
Before you go making snide attacks regarding a subject, it might be useful to read up a bit on it first.

It seems, really, regardless of the guidelines in writing , Paramount's stance is about the same.  They've allowed (as in, not stopped, not that they've officially given their blessing) many other works to go forward that violate many of the guidelines they put in place.

I don't think the quality of Peters' work had anything to do with how all of that went down.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: ShyGuy on May 23, 2019, 09:23:11 PM
He looks so old... :(
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: Adrock on May 23, 2019, 10:32:18 PM
He looks so old... :(

BNM isn’t clicking into this thread.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: Adrock on May 26, 2019, 12:20:21 AM
Is Star Trek: Picard supposed to be a 10-episode limited series? Or is this intended to be the first season should it be popular enough?
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on May 26, 2019, 01:59:26 AM
I don't think it's intentionally limited, this is going to be the first season.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on June 03, 2019, 04:57:16 AM
Picard is going to at best be embarrassing mess. It's made by the same yahoos as STD.

Word has it STD cost double of GoT to make at $10 million per episode. Their fault for not spending any money on story writers and good show runners that could keep things under control.

Merchandisers have fled so CBS/BR are shouldering the most of the cost of both shows. Netflix is out with Amazon paying well below what CBS wanted and almost blinking themselves which would have meant no international distributor or way to spread the cost.

Is Star Trek: Picard supposed to be a 10-episode limited series? Or is this intended to be the first season should it be popular enough?

See above. Picard is pretty much a Hail Mary. While under normal circumstances I wouldn't expect it to last more than one season, if it is anything like STD it will get a second season for being to big to fail. 10 Episodes also makes it more likely to happen as it is a much smaller commitment.

More I hear about Bragaa and co more respect I have for them. They produced some of the greatest Trek and the worse, you can't produce that many episodes without some real stinkers. But they always kept it on the tracks avoiding complete continuous train wreaks. On budget, on schedule, not pissing on the fans or blaming them for their bad work.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on June 03, 2019, 05:18:25 AM
Berman and Braga were terrible and anything good in Star Trek in that era came despite them. Don't let your hatred for the current state of Star Trek delude you into thinking they were good for the franchise. 
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on June 03, 2019, 05:54:45 AM
When you produce and are involved in that many episodes the law of averages will catch up to you. 600+ bloody episodes, take that in.

My respect is mostly seemingly simple things like keeping on budget, the feel etc under control and shielding the show from the higher ups by being producers. When you watched one of their Treks it felt Trek. It also meant if things go wrong it was on them and I never ever heard them blaming the fans for bad work. Obviously they are part of a team but they took the hits like a champ.

Story wise they did need to vet their writers/stories more and you know use the premise. I definitely can't say they did JJ levels of damage to Trek. Sure they have Threshold but they never produced continuous seasons worth of Threshold level quality "Stuff". It was an inevitable slow decline as that fuel tank was a vacuum by then.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: UncleBob on June 03, 2019, 09:59:59 AM
From the stories about how Berman treated people, especially women, I don't care how great of a job he did on Star Trek, the man deserves zero respect.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: Plugabugz on June 03, 2019, 04:25:15 PM
Berman and Braga were terrible and anything good in Star Trek in that era came despite them. Don't let your hatred for the current state of Star Trek delude you into thinking they were good for the franchise. 

Those two were, indirectly, the reason for DS9 being what it is.

After TNG and Voyager, DS9 almost made a deliberate attempt to go as far away from that as possible. It shows.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on June 03, 2019, 06:18:04 PM
Berman and Braga were terrible and anything good in Star Trek in that era came despite them. Don't let your hatred for the current state of Star Trek delude you into thinking they were good for the franchise.

OK, look...Berman & Braga weren't great for the franchise once Voyager and Enterprise came around, but from everything I understand having watching SFDebris' TNG videos, they and Michael Pillar pretty much saved TNG from Gene Roddenberry's continual attempts to ruin it. I don't know about the personal aspect regarding women, but this is the first time I've ever heard of such an issue.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on June 03, 2019, 06:36:43 PM
Berman and Braga were terrible and anything good in Star Trek in that era came despite them. Don't let your hatred for the current state of Star Trek delude you into thinking they were good for the franchise. 

Those two were, indirectly, the reason for DS9 being what it is.

After TNG and Voyager, DS9 almost made a deliberate attempt to go as far away from that as possible. It shows.

They greenlit the show, but DS9 was what it was because of Ira Behr and Ron Moore. I guess you could give Berman credit for not meddling in it too much (though he definitely did some) if you were being really generous.


Berman and Braga were terrible and anything good in Star Trek in that era came despite them. Don't let your hatred for the current state of Star Trek delude you into thinking they were good for the franchise.

OK, look...Berman & Braga weren't great for the franchise once Voyager and Enterprise came around, but from everything I understand having watching SFDebris' TNG videos, they and Michael Pillar pretty much saved TNG from Gene Roddenberry's continual attempts to ruin it. I don't know about the personal aspect regarding women, but this is the first time I've ever heard of such an issue.

Yes, early on he was one of the people who helped contain Roddenberry's bad ideas, but once the franchise was in his hands he was the one holding it back.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: UncleBob on June 03, 2019, 09:06:37 PM
Berman and Braga were terrible and anything good in Star Trek in that era came despite them. Don't let your hatred for the current state of Star Trek delude you into thinking they were good for the franchise.

OK, look...Berman & Braga weren't great for the franchise once Voyager and Enterprise came around, but from everything I understand having watching SFDebris' TNG videos, they and Michael Pillar pretty much saved TNG from Gene Roddenberry's continual attempts to ruin it. I don't know about the personal aspect regarding women, but this is the first time I've ever heard of such an issue.

https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/525q85/terry_farrells_departure_has_anybody_else_heard/

Do some googling and you'll find many others who had issues with him.  Wil Wheaton and Garrett Wang are two who have been pretty public about the way he treated cast and crew.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on June 27, 2019, 09:04:00 PM
Michael Chabon Named Showrunner of Star Trek: Picard

https://deadline.com/2019/06/michael-chabon-showrunner-star-trek-picard-cbs-all-access-series-1202638580/

He'd been on the staff for a long time, but until now there had been no public announcement of a showrunner. He's won a Pulitzer, a Hugo, and a Nebula, as well as work in films like Spider-Man 2, so this seems like it could be pretty good.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on June 28, 2019, 09:49:29 PM
Red Letter Media released their long-awaited take-down of Star Trek Discovery Season 2.


I've said it before, but Star Trek Discovery clearly wasn't made for dedicated Trek fans like me, so I'm content not watching it. That being said, it's a lot of fun watching a pair of clearly very dedicated Star Trek fans continually tear it down in hilarious manner (and I don't get the impression that they're altogether nitpicking it).
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on June 28, 2019, 10:18:00 PM
Discovery is a different kind of show, but I don't think it's accurate at all to say it's not for dedicated fans. Again, I'll compare it do Deep Space 9, which was very controversial at the time among Star Trek fans because of its differences from previous shows, but I've talked to plenty of die-hard Star Trek fans who are enjoying Discovery, especially in season 2.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on June 29, 2019, 05:49:34 AM
You don't need to nitpick STD, it's that bad and dumb. STD has had 2 seasons of what is basically LOST level junk. It's really bad TV and the only show that actively insults the viewer for daring to watch it. It's different take alright, that take is bad. Stop trying to equate it to DS9 as that was inherently good at it's core from the start. STD wishes it was controversial, it would be a massive step up from abysmal.

STD doesn't and can't stand on it's own. Take out the Trek branding and ask yourself if you would still watch it. Do you feel in anyway you are obligated to watch?

Do you know how fucked up you sound saying that this "Star Trek" wasn't made for the Trek audience in mind? Why bother with the Trek name if you are not going to write Trek. Imagine if Peter Jackson response to excuse how bad the Hobbit turned out was "it wasn't made for LotR fans" or any other show with an established audience.

RLM have barely scratched the surface with just the script and they stopped because it's literally painful with Mike constantly trying to derail. They could rip it apart for days on end.

YUM YUM.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: ThePerm on June 29, 2019, 11:21:01 PM
You don't need to nitpick STD, it's that bad and dumb. STD has had 2 seasons of what is basically LOST level junk. It's really bad TV and the only show that actively insults the viewer for daring to watch it. It's different take alright, that take is bad. Stop trying to equate it to DS9 as that was inherently good at it's core from the start. STD wishes it was controversial, it would be a massive step up from abysmal.

STD doesn't and can't stand on it's own. Take out the Trek branding and ask yourself if you would still watch it. Do you feel in anyway you are obligated to watch?

Do you know how fucked up you sound saying that this "Star Trek" wasn't made for the Trek audience in mind? Why bother with the Trek name if you are not going to write Trek. Imagine if Peter Jackson response to excuse how bad the Hobbit turned out was "it wasn't made for LotR fans" or any other show with an established audience.

RLM have barely scratched the surface with just the script and they stopped because it's literally painful with Mike constantly trying to derail. They could rip it apart for days on end.

YUM YUM.

Star Trek 2011 isn't made for the Trek audience for a reason. Some people are new Trekkies. When it came out I had only recently gotten into TOS. I had watched TNG DS9 and Voyager, but they rarely played TOS on TV between the late 80s and 2011 at least in the US. My only exposure to TOS was the movies and the cartoon which had aired on Nickelodeon in the 80s. It was only a recent luxury to be able to stream TOS. Before you had to get it on VHS and DVD to watch it.

The logic between making a new Star Trek show with the original characters must have been similar to making Batman 1989. There had been a TV show before and some movies based on the shows, but not an original movie produced in a contemporary era. Not exactly the same thing, but similar.  I can't hate on new Star Trek. It is a different thing. It's a different breed made for it's era. It will be replaced in the future by another version. Similar to different James Bonds. Roger Moore is my favorite era. Some eras will be better than others.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on June 30, 2019, 03:57:42 PM
The thing is if you are not going to make Trek why name it as such? We know why, it's nothing but branding, 100% vapid nonsense. Remove the brand and what do you have left?

Another problem is that they insist not only that this is Trek, it's the Roddenberry continuity which is such a blatant lie it's insulting, something they still insist on to this day. Do they really think so little of people? As bad as the 2009 movies onwards are it actually did the whole Batman/James Bond thing where it was it's own continuity. Trekies care about continuity, good stories with people like Mike be able to tell you every little contradiction while having fun doing it, if you are going to hop on that horse you better be on top of your game.

No one questions the credentials of a Batman/JB as bad it might be because they are still recognisable as what they are, the core is still there, the creator's understood/ared enough to have that. It's not just a Walter PPK, the name 007, a suit, car. Trek isn't just warp drives, phasers. Orville understands this deeply, that's why it's the new real Trek.

Branding is how they suckered Netflix for the entirety of the first season. They knew the gig is up when they turned down the Picard show. Think about that. Trek has gotten so bad that even Netflix turned it down and you would think a Picard show would be free money. Imagine Star Wars or MCU movie not making money, not selling toys because it got that bad.... *Solo*

They could have avoided a lot of this had they not lied and kept lying. Not insulting and blaming others, coming up with absurd excuses would be a good move. It wouldn't have saved them from making a z-grade abysmal stuff, but they wouldn't have people encouraging and looking to forward to it's failure.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on June 30, 2019, 05:29:56 PM
Just because you don't want it to be part of the main canon doesn't make that a lie. There are still people who insist Enterprise took place in some other timeline, and just like you they're wrong.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on June 30, 2019, 08:06:45 PM
Just as much as they insist that it is main canon there are two seasons of evidence that prove that they are lying.

Even if you remove the canon objection it is still the terrible, terrible TV that under normal circumstances would have been cancelled. There is absolutely no dancing around this. Strip way the branding, put it into it's own timeline, doesn't change it's abysmal quality, it doesn't get any less trek because it contained no trek to start with. Given the amount of magic they use it would qualify more as a fantasy with tech colours than anything sci-fi adjacent.

RLM could have gone on for day like that without nitpicking as it is absolutely not required, they will want to die at the end, it's really that bad.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: ThePerm on July 01, 2019, 02:00:17 AM
Look at Batman

You got
Batman 66
Batman TAS
Batman 89 and 2
Batman Forever and Batman and Robin
The Dark Knight Trilogy
Snyderverse

To some extant they all got the same characters and story-lines and some continuity with each other. They're  all Batman. Whether Bela Lugosi or Daniel Day Lewis play the same famed vampire on stage it's still Dracula.

Whether Irving Berlin or Taco sing Puttin' on the Ritz it is the same song. Even with an additional rocking Moog synth. Manhunter and Red Dragon are the same movie with different actors. Many don't know Anthony Hopkins was not the first to play Hannibal Lecter.

Just because there is some variation doesn't mean it isn't some incarnation of the same thing.

Star Trek is "people on a spaceship" at its simplest level. The show was supposed to be Wagon Train in Space. Maybe there is some continuity issues but that is what happens when you don't wipe the 50 year slate clean like in any other franchise. I haven''t seen Discovery yet, but it looks like hot garbage from afar. I can't knock it legitimately though because I haven't seen it. Still, there will be a better Star Trek show in the future. I expect there to be some issues with a franchise with a 12 year lapse. I'm sure not everything in this show is bad though. They're not going to please everyone.  I can't wait for the PlayStation 6 version of the show.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on July 01, 2019, 03:03:26 AM
The continuity issues with STD are severely undersold and can't be blamed on the legacy material. They made far too many obvious choices and mistakes that preclude it from existing in OG canon. It's so broken it's near impossible to fit it into the JJ/Kelvin timeline. It's not even internally consistent with itself smashing it's own continuity.

They tried to eat all the cakes with their fists and have them too. All they have now are smashed cakes and none of it in their bellies. The faster they fail, the better as it would have a chance to fall into far more competent and caring hands. Preserve what little dignity remains.

Batman works fine because they firewall themselves, if it fails it's "Your Batman sucks lol" not, "You polluted Batman with radioactive toxic waste". Snyder didn't insist his Batman is the same as Batman TAS or Adam West. If he did you would call him out on it.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on July 01, 2019, 03:30:37 AM
Again, it's not that hard to reconcile Discovery with the rest of canon, you just don't want to. You act like not always being completely consistent with what came before or within a series isn't something that was true of every previous Star Trek series as well. Fans have been having to come up with their own explanations for how all this fits together for over 50 years. If discrepancies in continuity bother you that much I'm not sure how you ever became a Star Trek fan.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on July 02, 2019, 01:02:04 PM
Ok, you explain how it can reconcile with canon without resorting to magic or inserting anything that wasn't on screen or contradicting itself. I dare you. Kurtzman didn't try, he said it was too hard and gave up.

Remember this is a show that can't keep itself coherent even in a given scene on occasions that are far too frequent. They can't even make up their mind what the hell vok/tyler even is. Before you even get to see the ship it's going off the WTF cliff in episode one with walking a signal in the sand in a sand storm, there are so many things wrong with just that one scene. This is what you get when you hire the guy who did LOST.

I even went as far as looking at the show without continuity or the brand factored in. It's garbage through and through. That's why I keep saying if it wasn't for the name what's left? Terrible show is terrible, trek or no trek. It isn't even sci-fi, it's straight up fantasy with technology paint. In the RLM video they point out plenty of deal breakers that don't involve trek, the failures are absolute basic level stuff. Go ahead and watch it. Be entertained by their very real pain. They barely needed any effort, it's was like punch babies.

Every show will have some continuity problems, a good show will try to minimise these to an acceptable level so the viewer can maintain that suspension of disbelief. STD doesn't even try.

When you shatter your own continuity and have basic story structure this bad, lie, blame/insult the viewer, betray your characters, abuse the legacy, offer nothing of substance in any show people will get pissed off. There is no bridge big enough to span that gap they made. Look at every big show that has gone down in flames or are continuing to burn. They share these factors.

If you watch the show because it has Star Trek in the name you're a sucker.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: UncleBob on July 02, 2019, 01:28:57 PM
>Ok, you explain how it can reconcile with canon without resorting to magic or inserting anything that wasn't on screen or contradicting itself.

Pretend it is anytime before November, 1994.

Reconcile the differences between TOS and TNG/DS9 Klingons without resorting to magic or inserting anything that wasn't on screen or contradicting itself.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on July 02, 2019, 02:48:42 PM
>Ok, you explain how it can reconcile with canon without resorting to magic or inserting anything that wasn't on screen or contradicting itself.

Pretend it is anytime before November, 1994.

Reconcile the differences between TOS and TNG/DS9 Klingons without resorting to magic or inserting anything that wasn't on screen or contradicting itself.
LOL. WTF. That's not even an answer.

You can't and don't. It not a gotcha if that's what you are thinking.

The high quality of the shows made it not matter that much, you accepted they were Klingons because of the culture which got built upon from TOS, through the movies all the way to Voyager was constant enough.

The in show answer is Worf is too embarrassed to talk about it and some virus.

STD Kilngon are of a completely different culture, the different look made that even more apparent. Of all the STD breaks typical of you pick the absolutely shallowest. Speaks volumes.

Address one of the issues found in the RLM video. I will let you pick. The show is stupid enough as it is without involving canon. Don't say I didn't give you a chance. Actually you don't have a chance. RLM tried and couldn't build that bridge.

I bet you are going to keep throwing canon questions at me without addressing the true fundamental problem with STD being a **** show. RLM had boiled it down for you. I will keep saying it, trek or no trek STD is a bad show. Had it not had Trek in the title no one would have given it a ****.

Kurtzman has lied to everyone for 2 seasons already, I have to say you're committed.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: UncleBob on July 02, 2019, 03:06:57 PM
>The in show answer is Worf is too embarrassed to talk about it and some virus.

Not before November 1994, when the shows addressed it.

>Of all the STD breaks typical of you pick the absolutely shallowest. Speaks volumes.

Actually, I haven't seen a single episode of Discovery.  Not interested in subbing to another streaming service for a single show.

I didn't pick anything about Discovery to discuss.  I picked a huge continuity difference between ToS and TNG/DS9 and asked you to explain it using the same criteria you demanded.  The fact that you absolutely failed and deflected speaks volumes.

You're willing to overlook issues with the other shows because you like them.  And that's fine.

But to attack people who like this show because of the same issues you're overlooking... ehhh...
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on July 02, 2019, 03:16:55 PM
>Ok, you explain how it can reconcile with canon without resorting to magic or inserting anything that wasn't on screen or contradicting itself.

Pretend it is anytime before November, 1994.

Reconcile the differences between TOS and TNG/DS9 Klingons without resorting to magic or inserting anything that wasn't on screen or contradicting itself.

DS9 actually did handwaive it a few years later in 1996 in Trials & Tribble-ations. "Yes, they are Klingons, and it is a long story, one we do not share with outsiders."

Also, the Klingon makeup is technically a continuity flub of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979, one that every Trek after it just kept using. It's not specifically a continuity error of TNG or DS9.  ;)
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: UncleBob on July 02, 2019, 03:26:33 PM
>DS9 actually did handwaive it a few years later in 1996 in Trials & Tribble-ations. "Yes, they are Klingons, and it is a long story, one we do not share with outsiders."

And expanded on later in Enterprise.

Continuity issues can be explained by story telling if the show decides to address it - even in a series ten years later.  And we accept it and it's not a big deal.

>Also, the Klingon makeup is technically a continuity flub of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979, one that every Trek after it just kept using. It's not specifically a continuity error of TNG or DS9.  ;)

I guess, as I expanded on in the other reply, "between ToS and TNG/DS9" would cover TMP.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on July 02, 2019, 03:48:13 PM
>DS9 actually did handwaive it a few years later in 1996 in Trials & Tribble-ations. "Yes, they are Klingons, and it is a long story, one we do not share with outsiders."

And expanded on later in Enterprise.

Continuity issues can be explained by story telling if the show decides to address it - even in a series ten years later.  And we accept it and it's not a big deal.

Funny you should bring up Enterprise considering that show's continuity problems early on are part of the reason why people stopped watching it. I still remember the endless complaining about the Borg, Ferengi, Romulans, out-of-character Vulcans, and bumpy-headed Klingons until Many Coto took over and tried to address them.

Enterprise only "expanded" upon the Klingon makeup issue because Berman & Braga broke continuity by using bumpy-headed Klingons in the 1st place.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on July 02, 2019, 04:23:49 PM
I told you the in show explanations, I don't know why you said I didn't answer the question. I agree with Broodwars the explanation is handwave af. Got a joke out of Worf which is something.

Enterprise is extreme broken mess but is recognisably Trekish even if you striped away all the iconography. It's an ok show to watch if you put it into a box and punted it into another universe.

If you haven't watched STD why bother defending it. The Klingon look was the go to defence, completely ignoring the far more important cultural aspect hence shallow. If you pointed to a Maori doing the haka saying that is a Scotsman no one would believe you.

The problems with STD isn't just canon. I ignore canon as part of a test(I do this for every franchise) as to whether it stands up on it's own, not just a name some one slapped on to make a quick buck. It makes more than enough of it's own mistakes to be a case study in failure.

The whole thing is like they threw darts at post it notes, lined them up and called it job done.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: UncleBob on July 02, 2019, 04:35:03 PM
>Enterprise only "expanded" upon the Klingon makeup issue because Berman & Braga broke continuity by using bumpy-headed Klingons in the 1st place.

You mean they broke continuity,  then actually crafted a story to explain the break.  Neat.

Every major Star Trek as far back as I can remember (i.e.: everything but TNG's launch - and I bet that's no exception   aside from the lack of internet forums for fans to lose their cool on), fans complained about how whatever the flavor of NuTrek was, it wasn't their Star Trek because it was too different.  It changed too much. blah blah blah.

I guess that is bound to happen when consumers get emotionally invested in consuming media instead of remembering that they're just consumers buying a product.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: UncleBob on July 02, 2019, 04:47:02 PM
>I told you the in show explanations, I don't know why you said I didn't answer the question. I

No, you didn't.

>The in show answer is Worf is too embarrassed to talk about it and some virus.

You used something introduced to the franchise 15 years after the break of continuity was made.  We don't have 15 years of additional Star Trek post-Discovery to use.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on July 02, 2019, 04:51:10 PM
You mean they broke continuity,  then actually crafted a story to explain the break.  Neat.

Every major Star Trek as far back as I can remember (i.e.: everything but TNG's launch - and I bet that's no exception   aside from the lack of internet forums for fans to lose their cool on), fans complained about how whatever the flavor of NuTrek was, it wasn't their Star Trek because it was too different.  It changed too much. blah blah blah.

I guess that is bound to happen when players get emotionally invested in consuming media instead of remembering tht they're just consumers buying a product.

Sorry, but you walked right into this one. :P

(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSz18oPn0b_v4rf-qszB6-lKCh_ytt2X06C5-HvkzUflASL8Wz2)

As someone who enjoyed Enterprise and did stick around to see Many Coto attempt to fix the show's continuity problems, I do agree with the spirit of what you're saying, though.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: UncleBob on July 02, 2019, 04:54:07 PM
>Sorry, but you walked right into this one. :P

No need to apologize at all.  It's a long running point I've been making in several threads now.  We are consumers of products.

If you don't like the product, that's fine.  But attacking people who do because it isn't the product you wanted... ehhh..

(Not *you*, personally, just generally speaking)
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on July 02, 2019, 06:07:19 PM
What are you on about? Enterprise in relation to canon is totally fucked. How did you miss the whole "Put in a box and punt it into another universe" part? Sort out your selective reading.

I simply relayed what they did in show in regards to the Klingon, question answered. I even agreed it was a handwave.

You can't argue some other show retcon this in the past and thus STD will be retcon in some magic future thus it is ok to be broken now.

If you had watched STD or even the RLM video you will know how fucked it is. Come back after. 2 seasons and it's as fucked as ever. If you are waiting for STD to be sorted out say hi to the Heat Death of the universe for me.

When you make product you get STD. If all you're doing is making it just for money it's going to fail. People know a cash grab when they see one. You can't shove something out with a name on in and expect people to buy it. Solo has Star Wars in it's name and it flopped.

Creators ultimately need that emotional investment as that what keeps viewers coming back to give you more money. You betray that you are going to get fucked up.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on July 02, 2019, 06:22:48 PM
What are you on about? Enterprise in relation to canon is totally fucked.

Not really, no. Granted, it's LAZY writing (one of many issues with early series Enterprise), but the Romulans and Ferengi were never named so continuity was preserved. Hell, the Romulans were never even seen, just their mines.

They resolved the continuity issue with the Klingon foreheads and asshole Vulcans within the show, and you can argue that the Borg were always headed to Earth because they received the signal from the First Contact Borg in Enterprise's Borg episode. Q just gave Picard a sneak peek at what was already coming in Q Who? The Borg were awfully fast to arrive on the Romulan border after those events (there was a minor background plot thread in Season 3 TNG of bases disappearing on the Romulan border).

Yeah, that last one's a retcon, but honestly it kind of fixes a plot hole in TNG so I'm OK with it.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: UncleBob on July 02, 2019, 06:41:11 PM
>I simply relayed what they did in show in regards to the Klingon, question answered.

15 years later... Which is kinda the point.

Seriously, at this point, it seems like you enjoy consuming media that you don't enjoy (or media about media you don't enjoy) just so you can go online and crap over all those who do.

"This science fiction soap opera fantasy world isn't exactly like it was when I was ten!  Therefore, no one should enjoy it."
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on July 02, 2019, 07:30:37 PM
I pulled the eject handle first episode of season 2, I couldn't squeeze blood out of that stone. I watched season 1 out of morbid curiosity and to see if I could get some laughs. I am not going to watch Picard, another legacy character for the meat grinder "product". Others can watch that and relay their pain for my amusement.

>I simply relayed what they did in show in regards to the Klingon, question answered.

15 years later... Which is kinda the point.
That wasn't your point, your point was it's might get retcon later therefore it's ok to be broken now no matter how far in the future this potential retcon is.

You seriously don't understand how bad STD is. It's impossible retcon hard enough for it to work. No matter how much you think it's a canon issue removing it doesn't change how bad it is. The problems are wayyyyy beyond that. It's own continuity, characters, motivations, you name it, it's broken. Not lazy, broken, throwing **** on the wall to see what sticks. The only thing going for it is that it looks expensive which it is last heard was $10 million an episode, 2x as high as GoT.

There is no point talking to you any more unless you at least see the RLM video for a glimpse of the badness. Otherwise you have no idea what you are talking about.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: UncleBob on July 02, 2019, 08:09:58 PM
I absolutely agree with you.  There is zero point in us discussing Discovery until I've at least watched it.  A friend has the Blurays he's offered to loan me, I just haven't taken the time.

But, you'll notice I haven't tried to defend the show (outside of addressing your specific point about continuity issues).   Frankly, if I had seem the show and thought it was the best television show to hit the air ever, I probably still wouldn't defend it.  You don't like it.  You don't like the characters, the plot, whatever - that's absolutely fine and I am okay with that.  Because that's subjective based off your experiences and I cannot possibly judge something the same way as you and it'd be folly to try.

What I can do is point out that there are those who do enjoy the show.  And no matter how much you hate it, no matter how much you want to pretend it isn't Star Trek, your personal distaste for the show does not trump someone else's positive opinions towards the show.  You don't have to like it.  You can scream it from the rooftops.  But being a jerk to those who do like it, insinuating that they're just not as refined as you.... yeah.  That ainxt it, m'boyo
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on July 03, 2019, 03:03:13 AM
If you want the full experience go right ahead. Warning was given. RLM would have saved you a lot of pain and suffering.

Arguing subjectivity is a dead end wash. A show has objective standards that it has to meet. A logically leads to B that causes C not Z happens because the writer needed it to. Character does E not R because this is who they are not because plothole. Conversations that don't sound like people are having a collective stroke. Spiderman wearing a bat suit isn't Batman no matter what the writer says. Can a person see what is happening on screen? How well edited is it?

I can like a bad show but I am not going to tell someone else that it is good because I like it. I am not going to tell you DC is Marvel because the writer slapped the name on it.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on July 10, 2019, 08:47:45 PM
Breaking News: Jean-Luc Picard has a dog.

(https://i.imgur.com/vvZ2OYL.jpg)
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: ThePerm on July 10, 2019, 09:57:36 PM
He does have a vinyard. Does he have any idea whats going on? Doesn't he have a neurodegenerative disease, or was that Ryker?
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on July 10, 2019, 10:14:48 PM
The degenerative disease was only seen in the alternate future in the TNG finale, so it's not clear if that was a real thing or just something Q threw in there.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on July 11, 2019, 12:48:24 AM
Is he a wine bootlegger? Is All Good Things nothing but Picard getting himself and his dog blind drunk?

Wine: The Grapes of Wrath.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: ThePerm on July 11, 2019, 01:30:39 AM
It was mentioned somewhere that Picard had a vinyard when he retired. I don't remember where.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on July 11, 2019, 01:35:46 AM
La Forge shows up to look after Picard from time to time and he is in a vineyard(Paris?) when that happens. That scene last 30 seconds, a scene Picard seems to be entirely banking on. Picard wasn't the Captain of the Flagship of the UFP, he has always being a wine maker and drinks nothing else, not even water let alone Tea, Earl Grey, Hot.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: ThePerm on July 11, 2019, 01:41:34 AM
There's also that he's French and it's lost on us because the Universal Translators gives him a delightful British accent.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on July 11, 2019, 01:45:05 AM
iirc this is also the same vineyard that his nephew and extended(?) family burned to death in.

I can't stop laughing.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on July 11, 2019, 01:47:11 AM
I don't know why you think it's funny, him being the last living Picard hit him pretty hard and it's easy to imagine him wanting to carry on the family's legacy. His regrets about his family were a major part of the plot of Generations.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on July 11, 2019, 01:53:41 AM
It was something horrible.

When re-contextualised to this marketing campaign that is nothing but this vineyard you can't help but laugh. It's almost like they don't know a thing about Star Trek or Picard other than he was in a  Vineyard in the last episode in what was a possible future(Q) instead of the final idea that Picard has free will and the his future wasn't destined to be a forgetful old man when he joins the card game.

It tries really hard to forget who or what Picard is.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: King of Twitch on July 11, 2019, 01:56:44 AM
He's living up retirement with wine testing, hating on his Luddite family members, working as a greeter at the local terraforming conventions, keeping tabs on his android black market dealer neighbors, and dogsitting for Q. How is this not the best show ever?
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on July 11, 2019, 01:58:21 AM
It's not a marketing campaign, it's a fucking teaser image. It's not trying hard to do anything. The premise of the show involves him having left Starfleet years before, possibly having something to do with the Romulan crisis, and what else is an elderly retired Picard going to do but go back to his family vineyard? But no, you've already made up your mind that it's terrible without having seen any of it and are trying to justify that based on nothing.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on July 11, 2019, 02:15:32 AM
One of the points of the end of All Good Things is that he doesn't have end up at the vineyard, to continue to explore the galaxy. The reason he was at the vineyard is because of time induced brain rot.

The first teaser literally opens up like a wine commercial. New poster: Vineyard again. *AT ST AT ST*

Also a teaser is not part of a marketing campaign?? Is this fan art for a show that doesn't exist?
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on July 11, 2019, 02:49:27 AM
It seems pretty clear there was some sort of falling out between Picard and Starflert that caused him to walk away. He could still be exploring space, but he made a conscious decision not to. And it's not like the show is set at the vineyard and about him making wine, it's just where he was before he got pulled back into another adventure.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: UncleBob on July 11, 2019, 09:22:18 AM
But, the poster!

All things are terrible because of a poster!
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on July 11, 2019, 03:19:09 PM
One of the points of the end of All Good Things is that he doesn't have end up at the vineyard, to continue to explore the galaxy. The reason he was at the vineyard is because of time induced brain rot.

The first teaser literally opens up like a wine commercial. New poster: Vineyard again. *AT ST AT ST*

Also a teaser is not part of a marketing campaign?? Is this fan art for a show that doesn't exist?

Jesus Christ...it's a fucking POSTER based on the iconography most associated with "old Picard." Not everything is an indication of CBS' cluelessness/disdain for Star Trek lore and fandom. I'll remind you that in the last film Picard was in, he threw out the Prime Directive because he wanted to re-enact Mad Max on a dune buggy. Star Trek lore is hardly sacred.

The poster looks fine. I'll reserve my judgement for a real trailer.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: Plugabugz on July 11, 2019, 03:51:28 PM
It seems pretty clear there was some sort of falling out between Picard and Starflert that caused him to walk away. He could still be exploring space, but he made a conscious decision not to. And it's not like the show is set at the vineyard and about him making wine, it's just where he was before he got pulled back into another adventure.

Quoting this alone because of Starflert.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: UncleBob on July 11, 2019, 05:19:09 PM
Quote from: broodwars
I'll remind you that in the last film Picard was in, he threw out the Prime Directive because he wanted to re-enact Mad Max on a dune buggy.

I've had a running theory that everything post-Generations has occured within the Nexus and is just the Nexus fulfilling his desires. He wanted to leave the Nexus and save the day.  Boom, he's released and stops the baddie in a big action-adventure.  He has some reverence for the former Captain of the USS Enterprise and his research on the Nexus surely brought his thoughts about Kirk to the foreground.  Boom, he gets to team up with him, displaced from time!  He loves history and archeology.  Boom, he's thrust back to one of the most pivotal moments in mankind's development.  He has some serious issues with the Borg.  Boom, he gets to defeat them in a grand, explosive moment.  He wants to ride a dune buggy on the surface of a desert planet, Boom, he's riding a dune buggy.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on July 11, 2019, 10:15:44 PM
But if someone had the ability to enact any of their wildest fantasies, what could possibly make them pick Insurrection?
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: UncleBob on July 11, 2019, 10:26:44 PM
Not all Enterprise adventures can be super exciting.

The Nexus knows that Picard will never be truly happy unless he believes he is free.  Thus, he occasionally has some lackluster missions.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: Spak-Spang on July 19, 2019, 09:47:29 PM
Quote from: broodwars
I'll remind you that in the last film Picard was in, he threw out the Prime Directive because he wanted to re-enact Mad Max on a dune buggy.

I've had a running theory that everything post-Generations has occured within the Nexus and is just the Nexus fulfilling his desires. He wanted to leave the Nexus and save the day.  Boom, he's released and stops the baddie in a big action-adventure.  He has some reverence for the former Captain of the USS Enterprise and his research on the Nexus surely brought his thoughts about Kirk to the foreground.  Boom, he gets to team up with him, displaced from time!  He loves history and archeology.  Boom, he's thrust back to one of the most pivotal moments in mankind's development.  He has some serious issues with the Borg.  Boom, he gets to defeat them in a grand, explosive moment.  He wants to ride a dune buggy on the surface of a desert planet, Boom, he's riding a dune buggy.

That would be a pretty cool story to tell.  And then have someone pull Picard out of the Nexus, and the world he believed in was not right.  If you were in a heaven of your own making being pulled out into the real world again, would you be able to adjust?
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: UncleBob on July 19, 2019, 10:23:38 PM
Think about it... you just spent 50 years in the Nexus, thinking you'd been released five decades ago, then someone comes and pulls you out...

Would you even believe them?  Or would you convince yourself you were *still* in the Nexus?  I mean, for it to be believable, you have to grow old - and the Nexus can only pull that Insurrection damaging trick so many times before you get suspicious.  So, when you age 50 more years, the Nexus is all "Oh, no, lol... here, you're free this time.  wink wink.  ****.  I wasn't supposed to say wink.  Sorry.  New to this.  You're free now.  Promise."
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on July 20, 2019, 04:38:06 PM
Well, we have a trailer now for Star Trek: Picard and...well...I'm not sure what I think of it, except that it looks like Red Letter Media seems to have totally called what Picard would end up being.  :rolleyes:

We have references to moments and characters from TNG and Voyager, the reappearance of the Borg, and yet another galactic threat that only Picard can resolve...probably by turning his ship into giant boxing gloves to punch the Borg Cubes to death.  :P

The trailer doesn't look terrible, but it's not inspiring confidence either.

https://www.startrek.com/news/brent-spiner-jeri-ryan-jonathan-frakes-return-star-trek-picard-sdcc-hall-h (https://www.startrek.com/news/brent-spiner-jeri-ryan-jonathan-frakes-return-star-trek-picard-sdcc-hall-h)
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: Shorty McNostril on July 20, 2019, 05:21:24 PM
*drool*  Jeri Ryan.....

I'm certainly intrigued about the series.  I'm far from a trekkie.  The only series I've ever seen is Enterprise which I enjoyed enough.  I have seen the Next Generation movies quite some time ago so I'd be going into this largely ignorant of the happenings of Picard's captainship.  I have picked up various highlights though because the missus watches them all (including the horrific 60s series) on an annual basis.  I'll probably give it a go, though a lot of the references to events and stuff will no doubt be lost on me.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on July 20, 2019, 05:27:48 PM
*drool*  Jeri Ryan.....

I'm certainly intrigued about the series.  I'm far from a trekkie.  The only series I've ever seen is Enterprise which I enjoyed enough.  I have seen the Next Generation movies quite some time ago so I'd be going into this largely ignorant of the happenings of Picard's captainship.  I have picked up various highlights though because the missus watches them all (including the horrific 60s series) on an annual basis.  I'll probably give it a go, though a lot of the references to events and stuff will no doubt be lost on me.

Yeah, if the trailer's any indication, there could be some deep continuity cuts, like the "Captain Picard Day" banner from TNG's 7th season episode "The Pegasus", which Trek just likes to reference for some strange reason.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: ShyGuy on July 21, 2019, 01:29:02 AM
Data has the mumps!
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: Shorty McNostril on July 21, 2019, 02:18:38 AM
Must be layering on that make-up nice and thick to cover all the wrinkles lol.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on August 06, 2019, 01:23:45 PM
CBS has confirmed that Picard will be a "hybrid" of STD and Next Generation.

Well, there went my hopes of this thing being salvageable. They swear that means it'll have the writing of Next Gen with the budget of Discovery, but they haven't proven that level of writing so far with their stewardship of Star Trek.

https://boundingintocomics.com/2019/08/05/cbs-exec-confirms-star-trek-picard-will-be-hybrid-of-discovery-and-the-next-generation (https://boundingintocomics.com/2019/08/05/cbs-exec-confirms-star-trek-picard-will-be-hybrid-of-discovery-and-the-next-generation)
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on August 06, 2019, 09:05:35 PM
I would have hoped they'd be aiming for better writing than TNG, as that really wasn't a strong point of that series. Sure, the high points were great, but there was so much mediocrity and very little character development outside of Picard and Data.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on August 07, 2019, 03:24:17 AM
TNG was made to be completely episodic, the characters weren't meant to develop. They were fully formed at the start of the show, same till the end. It's only till the movies do they get some YMMV(Dune buggy) development. Picard goes through some serious **** yet is completely fine the next episode. Four lights, living a lifetime in a day, locutus. Data never used the emotion chip because that would outright break the episodic format.

They do have some casually linked episodes like Data's/Lore/origin arc which being an emotionless android means he doesn't change, Leah Barhams doesn't stay on the ship, Moriarty gets trapped in a cube universe, Barclay doesn't appear often enough to matter getting more development in Voyager. Picard, Riker, Troi, Crusher, Worf doesn't change one bit. They reset every time. As much as Voyager is a the known reset button show mostly by ignoring it's premise, it's has far more serialisation.

TNG's writing is perfectly fine. Your misunderstanding of what the show is and the 90's TV production ethos is throwing you off target. Shows then aimmed for syndication. To do this TNG is a procedural, monster appears, spacehole, holodeck does weird thing, alien possession in a self contained episodes with static characters are much easier to write can produce an arbitrary number of episodes.

Soft/Serialised shows like Babylon 5, Stargate/DS9 format were the exceptions. Prestige TV wasn't really a concept, they made for TV miniseries, direct to video which are movies of sorts made on a TV budget.

UK/AUS/NZ and Animé are different favouring much shorter, planned out shows or the other extreme which shows that go one forever which are much rarer in American productions due to different budgeting structure. Coronation street, Doctor Who, Neighbours, Shortland street, Conan. The vast majority of Animé is serialised. In Coronation street you could be on the show until you died irl decades later.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: UncleBob on August 07, 2019, 05:30:16 AM
>Picard goes through some serious **** yet is completely fine the next episode. Four lights, living a lifetime in a day, locutus.

In defense of TNG, the next episode after Locutus, Picard isn't better, he literally has a complete breakdown and considers leaving Starfleet.  It's the episode after *that* where he's all better.

But the S4E2 is a great episode.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: ThePerm on August 13, 2019, 04:40:13 PM
CBS and Viacom have/are apparently just merged(again) this hour. So this triggers some new interesting things for Star Trek.

Part of the reason Star Trek has been so weird lately is because there is a separation between CBS OG Star Trek and Paramount Star Trek with the same characters.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: Spak-Spang on August 14, 2019, 07:07:28 AM
I think when they needed to and COULD bring character development they did.  But the series was episodic, however, I do feel that the characters did grow. Were their giant arcs where the characters changed for the entire series.  NO.  But, seriously, that doesn't happen regularly in real life for adults either.  But if you take what the characters went through, as a combination of their character and keep it in the background you can kinda see true character development.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on September 03, 2019, 05:27:36 AM
I finally got a chance to sit down and watch What We Left Behind, the documentary about Deep Space 9 from last year, and now I wish I'd done this a lot sooner. It's really incredible, a look behind the scenes and at the memories of the cast and crew. If you're a fan of the show I can't recommend it highly enough. And the parts where the cast are reading hate mail from the time about how the show wasn't Star Trek and all the characters were awful really reminded me of parts of this thread.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on September 03, 2019, 02:15:55 PM
Big difference is that DS9 is good.

Hated the hell out of Kai Winn, but I was meant to.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on September 03, 2019, 06:15:10 PM
That's not what a lot of people thought at the time.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on September 03, 2019, 06:33:12 PM
I tried to watch Voyager up through the end of the 2nd season (where I gave up on the show), but I basically skipped Trek TV from the end of TNG to the beginning of Enterprise. It's part of the reason why I like Enterprise: I didn't have a decade of Star Trek fatigue to spoil the mood.

I didn't see DS9 until it was out on DVD, and it's...fine. I respect it a lot for what it did to stand apart from other Trek series (and, IMO, pulled off better than Babylon 5 did), and if it got a proper BluRay release I'd pick it up. However, as much as I respect it, to me it's a show that took 4 seasons to get to the goddamn point and another 2 for anything to actually HAPPEN. It's such a slow burn, and the non-Dominion episodes are tired, standard Trek and usually terrible. But maybe I only feel that way because I didn't see it when it aired, and the ONE thing I ever heard about show was "Oh man! Just wait for the Dominion War!"

Yeah, "wait" is certainly the thing you'll be doing, alright.

I like DS9, but I only "love" seasons 6 & 7. But man, what a couple of seasons those were.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on September 03, 2019, 06:58:27 PM
I'd love to see a remastered Bluray release of DS9. Part of the documentary was one of the battle scenes from Sacrifice of Angels, where they're trying to punch through the Cardassian and Dominion fleet and retake the station before they deactivate the minefield, redone in modern CG, and it's just stunning.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: ThePerm on September 03, 2019, 07:01:39 PM
They still crop dogs ears in the future?
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on September 03, 2019, 07:07:04 PM
I'd love to see a remastered Bluray release of DS9. Part of the documentary was one of the battle scenes from Sacrifice of Angels, where they're trying to punch through the Cardassian and Dominion fleet and retake the station before they deactivate the minefield, redone in modern CG, and it's just stunning.

Unfortunately, the TNG BluRay restoration project was apparently incredibly expensive and sold poorly since we'd already been fleeced once for the extremely expensive DVDs. I believe Paramount came out and said that DS9 would be even more expensive to restore and would sell even worse, so they weren't bothering.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on September 03, 2019, 07:09:35 PM
Yeah, I heard that as well. More expensive to produce and a less popular show. That's a shame, because it could really use it.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: ThePerm on September 03, 2019, 08:03:08 PM
I think if they sold Voyager and DS9 as a bundle it would sell pretty well.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on September 03, 2019, 08:51:50 PM
I can definitely see why you might drop Voyager as by 2nd season if not sooner it ignores the premise on and off, mostly off. Janeway is good but a lot of the characters history do get abandoned or used somewhat embarrassingly. Kes was terrible and I am indifferent to Nelix. Kicks into high gear when 7 of 9 comes in and Doctor becomes something more. 7 of 9 signalled the end of static characters and re-engagement with the premise.

When there was a bad episode everything pre-2009 it was usually not because it was badly constructed on a basic level like not being able to keep it straight within a scene, an act or the entire episode. It would be some lazy "Warp Particles" or have a bad or boring or reheated premise.

DS9 from the get go had very diverse and distinct characters that kept true to themselves that evolved over time naturally. Who didn't enjoy Dulkat chew the scenery, Miles must suffer episodes, Keiko the worse wife, Quark side deals, Basheir's snottiness and his later entanglements, hating on Winn, Kira finding her independence from her troubled past, Odo's history and sparing with Quark, Solaon. Worf awkwardness when reconnecting with being Klingon. Sisko shouting, unique relationship with Dax and his annoyance of being the Emissary while openly exploiting it to deal with the BS.

STD has none of that, it's just LOST. The entire crew can die in a fire.

Unfortunately, the TNG BluRay restoration project was apparently incredibly expensive and sold poorly since we'd already been fleeced once for the extremely expensive DVDs. I believe Paramount came out and said that DS9 would be even more expensive to restore and would sell even worse, so they weren't bothering.
Definitely picked the the wrong one to remaster first between the two as they thought the $$$ was endless and TNG VFX didn't matter where in DS 9 where there is far more reason to update.

less popular show.
At the time yes as had to deal with TNG at it's peak and later competition with Voyager leading to too much of a good thing. DS9 inverts is years later as the long shadow of TNG faded and the depth of the show became more apparent along with it's realism when dealing with issues. I watched both as a teen, TNG is easier to digest, it's not as satisfying as DS9 or TOS when dealing with said issues when viewed with increased maturity. If you asked me back then I would have said TNG far admittedly shallow or over weighted reasons.

It comes down to whether you want the safe formula of TNG or DS9's dynamic realism.

If there this is anything to go by DS9 only really needs rescan, 16:9 and cleaning. As much as I hate, loath CBS for raw absolute incompetent and malice money would be given.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR7oewdXp7w
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on September 03, 2019, 09:03:18 PM
That alone would be an improvement, but here's the redone CG from What We Left Behind:


https://youtu.be/AbO2MqWPoQM

I'd love to see the whole Dominion War that way.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on September 03, 2019, 09:13:10 PM
Definitely picked the the wrong one to remaster first between the two as they thought the $$$ was endless and TNG VFX didn't matter where in DS 9 where there is far more reason to update.

Yeah, no. Because the original effects were shot on video (as opposed to the actors being shot on film), they rebuilt all the TNG effects from scratch and even fixed a ton of continuity problems the original run had like shooting phasers from the deflector dish, etc. Unfortunately, they also "fixed" a lot of easter eggs where viewscreens originally referenced Muppet history instead of character history because "no one's going to see it" in the original broadcast era.

Yeah, TNG had far, FAR fewer space battles, but it was still an effects-laden show that had to be completely overhauled for High Definition. It is also LEAGUES more popular than DS9 ever was, and was by far the easier sell for such an expensive project. DS9 also had the effects on video, so they'd have had to do the same thing there for a "lesser" show. They didn't get the effects in an easier-to-remaster matter until Voyager switched to CG.

Paramount probably could have made the HD remastering project sell if they hadn't sold the goddamn DVD sets for these shows for $100 - $150 a season. And if I remember correctly, the TNG BluRay Seasons were individually just as expensive the 2nd time around. They poisoned the well.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on September 03, 2019, 09:16:14 PM
The last two seasons of DS9 had their effects done in CG too, but of course the level of CG available now goes well beyond what you could do on a TV budget in the 90s.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on September 03, 2019, 09:59:48 PM
The CG feels, incomplete, off. It's like they picked incomplete texture material and shadows too soft to be in space. It's more of a videogame cut scene. The problems really stand out when you compare it with the models.

DS9 also used film and was safe for 16:9 unlike TNG. They used used models also shot on film the vast majority of the time over laid with CGI phasers etc which could do with some work although I wouldn't advocate for wholesale CGI replacement if model source material was available. While redoing every VFX shot with CG would be more consistent across the show, the model are too awesome to sideline.

I said TNG's special effects didn't matter much to the show, it was comparatively unimportant to what was happening. You didn't watch TNG for being pretty given how meh the action is regardless of fidelity. Firing on the Borg was lame even back then. There are a couple stand outs like exploding the Enterprise and the alien admiral.

Modernising TOS effects was eh, losing all it's charm.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on September 11, 2019, 04:50:30 AM
LOL STD drove off the only legit writer they ever had. Everyone there should be ashamed. He was probably the only person they had who had the slimiest chances of turning that around if you subscribe to "First 1-2 season are always rough".

The irony is too much. Right down to having an episode titled "Context is for kings".
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on September 11, 2019, 05:46:04 AM
My god, how sad must your life be if this is what you choose to do with your time?
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on September 11, 2019, 06:00:36 AM
I doesn't take much time to read an article and this popped up in general entertainment news. The news come to you these days and you can take less than 10 seconds to get what you want.

Do you really think I hit up google, type in Star Trek to find the next bit of **** show to laugh at. If you do this more power to you. I am a bit disappointed you keep making so many bad assumptions about other people.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on September 11, 2019, 07:06:34 AM
I doesn't take much time to read an article and this popped up in general entertainment news. The news come to you these days and you can take less than 10 seconds to get what you want.

Do you really think I hit up google, type in Star Trek to find the next bit of **** show to laugh at. If you do this more power to you. I am a bit disappointed you keep making so many bad assumptions about other people.

You didn't post a link to the article.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on September 11, 2019, 12:26:54 PM
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/walter-mosley-quits-star-trek-discovery-using-n-word-writers-room-1237489

NYT is the original but behind paywall.

Kareem Abdul Jabbar pretty good take on it. Yes the former basket baller now writer.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/kareem-abdul-jabbar-who-decides-who-s-allowed-say-n-word-1238332
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: UncleBob on September 11, 2019, 04:33:21 PM
I hate Justin Beiber*.  Therefore, I go out of my way to read articles that I see about him.

*I don't really hate Beiber, I don't know a thing about him and couldn't name a song if asked.  He just came up in discussion in a meeting today.

Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: ShyGuy on October 05, 2019, 06:50:11 PM
https://youtu.be/FySrgrKJguE

Dang it, they pulled the Riker card and now I'm getting all the feels!
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on December 09, 2019, 04:25:37 AM
It’s been a tough week for Star Trek. First Dorothy Fontana, a pioneering writer and one of the most influential people in shaping early Star Trek, died. Then today Rene Auberjonois passed away as well. Odo was one of the best characters on the best Star Trek series, and his portrayal of him was perfect, and especially impressive given all the makeup he had to give it through.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on May 16, 2020, 02:58:43 AM
At the risk of kicking this hornets nest of a thread, today CBS All Access announced a new upcoming Star Trek series on the service that's obviously failing miserably with them, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Ethan Peck, Rebecca Romijn, and Anson Mount will reprise their roles as Spock, Number One, and Captain Christopher Pike from season 2 of Discovery in what's meant to be a more traditional Star Trek series set on the Enterprise 10 years before Kirk took command. Anson Mount's Pike was one of the best parts of that season of Discovery, and this type of show had been rumored for some time, so I'm happy to see it confirmed.

https://news.avclub.com/anson-mount-rebecca-romijn-and-ethan-peck-lead-new-st-1843483391
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on May 16, 2020, 07:02:35 AM
lol Kurtzman and Goldsman. Abandon all hope who ye enter.

Pike is an example of mediocrity going a long way in a dumpster fire. It's DOA even if actually gets made. Announcing is cheap.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on May 16, 2020, 09:36:06 AM
Announcing an expensive new SciFi series right now is a pretty big risk, especially after Picard & Discovery Season 2 seem to have been near-universally derided by the Trek fanbase.

As for me, I didn't watch the 1st 2 NuTrek series, and while a more traditional Trek series does appeal to me...I just don't care about the adventures of this crew. At best, they would have an even bigger continuity problem than Enterprise had of trying to surprise the audience with new and amazing things...that just so happened to never be mentioned ever again. At least Enterprise had a bigger time window & existing lore to mask the issue.

Honestly, I think the only way I could be interested in modern Trek again is if they wiped the events of Picard and Star Trek '09 from continuity and set a new series post-TNG/DS9.

I also just have no interest in CBS All Access in general, and considering they're apparently restructuring the service it seems that's a somewhat widespread problem.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on May 16, 2020, 09:58:26 AM
On the subject of new Trek shows, I'm surprised that CBS hasn't made a series yet about the one event in Star Trek history that's been an albatross around its neck since the beginning; the fucking Eugenics Wars. It's a huge, world-changing event eventually leading to the birth of the Federation...that the entirety of Star Trek just keeps its head down & walks quickly past. As the 90s series kept doing episodes sent in *Current Year*, this just got increasingly ridiculous since the stories always took place before the Eugenics Wars. Even First Contact didn't really want to talk about them, and that was set immediately after them.

It made sense why the 90s shows didn't want to address it, as the franchise is supposed to be optimistic. However, given CBS' murder & explosion boner in modern Trek, why not just bite the bullet & finally tell the story of the Eugenics Wars?
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: Spak-Spang on May 16, 2020, 10:11:28 AM
I think the obvious answer is Eugenics is such an evil and disgusting thing, nobody wants to touch it.  It is probably why the Wars were called that to begin with...lets add the two worst things we can think of together...Eugenics and War.  Is there any clues on what the wars were supposed to be about?  I mean the only things I can think of...is a war to either A) Purify the universe with a supreme alien species be it Romulan or Human or another alien species...heck it would be really surprising if if it was Vulcan...a single supreme alien species is only logical.  I agree, Trek should never go backwards, as interesting as characters like Pike could be...you can't put any of them at risk when you know how they die in the original timeline.  It just isn't exciting...its like watching Obi-won duel in Episode 1...you know he can't die. 

I do think a short series telling how about a War and then how the Federation was able to smooth out the ridges and make a functioning optimistic universe that is the Star Trek Universe would be interesting.  Almost as interesting as a series set in the future where that hopeful federation was destroyed and people are trying to rebuild back to that ideal but the world and trust is too fundamentally broken to go back there. 

I love the Trek Universe, but to me it died after Deep Space Nine. 
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on May 16, 2020, 10:44:20 AM
The short version of the Eugenics War is that it's essentially where Kahn came from. There was a race on Earth to develop a superior version of humanity, followed by those Augmented humans going to war with the rest of humanity. The war devastated the Earth, leading to its condition in First Contact. This war is why human augmentation was outlawed by the Federation, which is why Bashir had so many problems on DS9.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on May 16, 2020, 05:01:21 PM
Wrong war Spak Spang.

The Eugenics War is pre-warp Earth. It's Khan's origin story, a story already told. No aliens, no Federation. The Federation wasn't really a thing till the end of Enterprise. The only reason to touch it is if you have a death pewpew boner which the current "Creators" have a very hard one for. iirc that is not WW3 that leads to First Contact.

It's a bad idea to go there not because of the subject matter, it's another prequel based off a handful of lines. They have a very high difficulty and the current team sure as hell can't make it work. The Clairece Sterling pilot is said to be super bad and you know all the unending dire af "Trek".

I do not know where they got the money from for Pike. Viacom is facing serious debt issues which would have been manageable for not the Chinese nasty. CBS All Access is facing a heavy duty retooling/re-branding very soon possibly dumping Pike into Limbo. Maybe this is another Star Wars situation with someone going on a fishing expedition. No way they are getting money from Viacom. Who is the sucker this time?

Oh for those thinking this is some sort of return to Trek, Pike is holding a gun. We come in peace shoot to kill.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on May 16, 2020, 07:05:03 PM
Announcing an expensive new SciFi series right now is a pretty big risk, especially after Picard & Discovery Season 2 seem to have been near-universally derided by the Trek fanbase.

Don’t let the internet echo chamber trick you into coming to this conclusion. Yes, a very vocal segment of the fan base doesn’t like them, but there are a lot of people who did too.

Oh for those thinking this is some sort of return to Trek, Pike is holding a gun. We come in peace shoot to kill.

Right, they never once carried guns in the earlier shows. Classic oohhboy, reading way too much into minor things because he’s predisposed to hating this.

As for the Eugenics Wars, there’s a great pair of novels by Greg Cox that do a really good job of fitting them into real world history. A miniseries type of thing using them as a framework could be cool.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on May 16, 2020, 07:46:17 PM
Yeah, the complaint about Pike carrying around a phaser seems rather silly, considering they're standard equipment in ever Trek series & movie. There are many reasons to find this new series suspect, but that one's just looking for something to hate.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: Spak-Spang on May 16, 2020, 10:45:57 PM
Thanks for the information.  Yeah, that sounds boring and uninteresting.  I was taking a guess because I didn't know much of the lore around that.  Basically it sounds like Star Trek's version of the Clone Wars...it can be left with no explanation and be fine as a historical event. 

Well, I think TOS always had guns because of the potential of hostility on planets and they are still an army.  I think Next Generation did a better job since Phasers didn't look like guns (Then again they might in that universe) So when carrying them it didn't seem like they had weapons.  If my memory serves there were many away team parties that never carried weapons with them, and that really fits in with Star Trek. 
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on May 17, 2020, 03:08:21 AM
So you are telling me to ignore the gun in the very first bit of media we get from a team that is infamous for pewpew. There is a Face Eating Leopard Party you might be interested in voting for.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on May 17, 2020, 04:10:40 AM
I'm sure I could find countless promo images for every Star Trek series with one of the main characters holding a phaser. Reading that much into that is just silly, but I guess I should expect that from you.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on May 17, 2020, 08:46:15 AM
Ran your little poster experiment. Well what do you know! The posters reflect what is in the movie! It's like they are related. Lets make it fun.

Contain violence?

TMP: No
Khan: Yes
Spock: Yes
Voyage home: No
Final: No (People on horse violent?)
Undiscovered: Yes

The marketing media is inextricably interlinked as they are there to see the contents. So yeah, meta Checkov's gun.

Lets continue.

Generations: No
First Contact: No (Resistance is Futile and ominous count?)
Insurrection: No (Evil face?)
Nemesis: Yes (Knife)

2009: 50/50 First poster isn't, Violent poster is on first row on google search
Darkness: Yes
Beyond: Yes

Then add team pew pew body of work and the conclusion is foregone. It's like you are telling me Michael Bay isn't going to do explosions when there clearly is an explosion on the poster. Come. on.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on May 17, 2020, 09:20:28 AM
OK, let's draw this experiment out to something more practical: the original TV series promos. No BMM Links because I'm having to do this on my phone.

Here's the official promotional trailer for the very 1st episode of TOS. My...are those phasers I see?


What about TNG? Yep, I see ships firing at each other and phasers actually bring fired as well as carried.


DS9's turn. Well, no phasers, but we have tons of ships shooting at each other and blowing up, hand to hand combat, and explosions.


Voyager's turn. Surprisingly tame considering the most bloodthirsty captain in Starfleet is on board. But yes, we still have phasers & ships firing at each other.


Finally, Enterprise. Yep, we've got phasers, and they're being fired.


It's almost like phasers & ship combat are a common staple of Star Trek promotional work, regardless of how bloodthirsty & explosion-happy the series itself is.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on May 17, 2020, 10:54:29 AM
You are comparing Trailers to Posters. That is out of scope.

Also of course they are going to show the action bit in a trailer. If there is comedic violence in a comedy they are going to show that. Trailers can run an arbitrary amount of time so out of sheer probability you are going to have some violence. Even Orville Trailer plays to this.

You wouldn't blink an eye to the action shown to old Trek you knew it wasn't hapless pewpew BOOM kill everything. Team pewpew is nothing but pewpew and has yet to prove themselves otherwise. How many episodes, body count, how many different series does it take to show Trek is nothing but a marketing label to them? Nobody would read anything into the gun if not for the expectations they themselves built up.

Hence Face Eating Leopard Party.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: Kairon on May 17, 2020, 11:49:50 AM
I'm not a big trekkie but all this hubbub around Pike and Number One actually had me doing research and I discovered the original "The Cage" pilot for ToS that wasn't accepted and actually centered on those characters. I found a version and watched and, huh, I really liked it! Hopefully basing a new show around those characters bears fruit.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on May 17, 2020, 12:35:38 PM
You are going to be so disappointed.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: UncleBob on May 17, 2020, 04:31:53 PM
Speaking of disappointment, don't fall for the bait, guys,
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on May 17, 2020, 05:14:50 PM
Speaking of bait, how was Picard? There sure was an unspeakable amount of excitement! Such quality! Surely they won't destroy such an iconic character? right? RIGHT!?

It's ok, you can say where it bad touch you. People finally accepted that for Star Wars.

On the bright side we will get another year of entertaining leaks.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on May 17, 2020, 05:35:26 PM
To be honest Picard didn’t really grab me. I didn’t hate it, and I didn’t think it destroyed his character by any means, but I’m way more interested in Discovery season 3 than Picard season 2.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: Spak-Spang on May 17, 2020, 09:34:42 PM
The point is Star Trek has always been an adventure show. So there is always a threat or a mystery and danger. The point isn’t the fighting. The point is the overall world is a hopeful positive future where mankind has surpassed many of the more trivial problems for survival and peace. Now we only have these real specific threats and problems.  But the overall quality of life is pretty stable in the Federation. 
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on May 18, 2020, 02:33:44 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfQdf93e63I&t=616s

19:15 - 20:15

Rich Evans nailed as always. I actual tear up a little. "Stop shitting on Star Trek man".

Youtube automatic transcribe so it's a bit off:

Quote
Star Trek has always done political

415
00:19:19,049 --> 00:19:24,649
analogies let's talk about that but they

416
00:19:21,779 --> 00:19:24,649
have done it in a way

417
00:19:25,150 --> 00:19:32,240
they did it in a way where you still had

418
00:19:28,369 --> 00:19:34,519
your optimistic future I always I always

419
00:19:32,240 --> 00:19:37,700
loved that optimistic future about Star

420
00:19:34,519 --> 00:19:39,589
Trek I always have my favorite fucking

421
00:19:37,700 --> 00:19:41,360
moment in Star Trek I don't I've told

422
00:19:39,589 --> 00:19:43,309
we've done like five of these Star Trek

423
00:19:41,359 --> 00:19:46,189
reviews stop me if I've talked about

424
00:19:43,309 --> 00:19:49,159
this before but this the Abraham Lincoln

425
00:19:46,190 --> 00:19:50,720
space episode as corny as that is but

426
00:19:49,160 --> 00:19:53,660
you have Abraham Lincoln other bridge

427
00:19:50,720 --> 00:19:58,400
the enterprise and he uses an outdated

428
00:19:53,660 --> 00:20:01,580
offensive term a charming negress to her

429
00:19:58,400 --> 00:20:03,530
horror to her and and Lincoln even even

430
00:20:01,579 --> 00:20:08,179
faked space Lincoln being a kind man

431
00:20:03,529 --> 00:20:10,849
looks to her and apologizes Oh forgive

432
00:20:08,180 --> 00:20:12,769
me my dear I know that in my time some

433
00:20:10,849 --> 00:20:16,969
use that term as a description of

434
00:20:12,769 --> 00:20:19,309
property and a hora is utterly confused

435
00:20:16,970 --> 00:20:21,380
by this for a moment and then she

436
00:20:19,309 --> 00:20:23,740
realizes what happened and she laughs

437
00:20:21,380 --> 00:20:28,220
and it's a beautiful fucking moment

438
00:20:23,740 --> 00:20:32,359
because starts the Federation humanity

439
00:20:28,220 --> 00:20:34,309
is so good in the future racism is so

440
00:20:32,359 --> 00:20:36,769
dead she doesn't even know to be

441
00:20:34,309 --> 00:20:39,230
offended by that the foolishness of my

442
00:20:36,769 --> 00:20:41,569
century had me apologizing where no

443
00:20:39,230 --> 00:20:44,539
offense was given we've each learned to

444
00:20:41,569 --> 00:20:46,819
be delighted with what we are and it's

445
00:20:44,539 --> 00:20:48,950
it's such a thing of the past that it's

446
00:20:46,819 --> 00:20:51,079
forgotten it's completely it's

447
00:20:48,950 --> 00:20:53,090
completely forgotten about it's this

448
00:20:51,079 --> 00:20:56,059
wonderful bright vision of a humanity

449
00:20:53,089 --> 00:20:57,740
that that made it it's something we can

450
00:20:56,059 --> 00:21:00,379
look forward to it since fucking it's

451
00:20:57,740 --> 00:21:02,529
inspiring to me and now we're coming

452
00:21:00,380 --> 00:21:05,300
along and they're a bunch of fuckin

453
00:21:02,529 --> 00:21:09,139
fuckin xenophobes and racist and ****

454
00:21:05,299 --> 00:21:14,750
bad **** that stop **** that Star Trek
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on May 18, 2020, 03:15:05 AM
Star Trek at its core is optimistic but that doesn't mean every little bit of it has to be. Some of the best and most memorable moments of Trek are very dark and cynical. If you were to ask fans to name their favorite Star Trek episodes one of the highest vote getters would be In The Pale Moonlight, which doesn't paint Starfleet or the Federation in a much better light than Picard did.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on May 18, 2020, 04:19:02 AM
You... you haven't watched Picard or actually know anything about it do you.. There is no excuse to what they did in Picard.

Pale Moonlight is good as it is a extremely well written powerful character driven episode exploring that moral space rather than the whole Federation becoming this crapsack world where FOX news somehow exists. There is this massive lead up, it isn't there for shock value. The Federation is losing and I have to sell my soul to save it not just materially but it's soul as well. I consume this sin, drink freely from this poisoned chalice so the Federation ideals can continue.

Every time someone throws out DS9 to justify Kurtzman, everything post 2009, I only see someone who never understood why DS9 worked. Rich actually addresses part of this straight afterwards. To add to that, despite the grittiness, the hope of that future is still there. I think it's something of a mistake to call it gritty, more a sense of adventure, being on the edge of known space where your ideals are tested against others. The crew continues to carry those ideals in this dirty environment, that hope. They get called out on it by Quark among many other characters with their ideals, ideals that are valid from their perspective. Nog and Rom, polar opposites embraces and sacrifices for them in the face of the strongest protests.

It's not that the Federation is false. DS9 acknowledges that it's not something that is achieved, it is a continued work, requiring maintenance and protection. Much like the rights we enjoy today we have to be vigilant to those who seek to tear them down whether they be worker, race, health or sexual rights.

Picard doesn't even pay lip service to that. Every little thing it brings up is twisted, misconstrue, exploits, then abandoned to fake progressive credentials. It undermines itself at every turn and it is sickening to think Picard somehow represents the Trek ideals or progressiveness when it doesn't. The same goes for STD and no doubt Pike.

That is not even touching on to how god awfully written it is even if you were to excuse the whole "Trek" thing. Look at this, how is this level of writing acceptable:


If that is not written by a hack I don't know what is. Something as basic as blowing something up.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on May 18, 2020, 04:28:31 AM
I disagree with your interpretation, so obviously I don't know anything about it. This is really the core of the problem we've had with this thread, where you act like your opinion is objective truth, and anyone who sees things differently is stupid and doesn't understand what it really is.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on May 18, 2020, 04:57:28 AM
Feel free to make an actual counter argument.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on May 18, 2020, 05:30:07 AM
What's the point? We clearly just fundamentally disagree about this, nothing's going to change that. I never should have posted about this, I should have known this would be the result.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: Plugabugz on May 18, 2020, 09:37:39 AM
I haven't watched Picard yet, but Anson Mount was great as Pike. He came off as capable, warm and approachable.

Curious to see how this turns out.

Also, this just makes me sad for the Stargate franchise.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: oohhboy on May 18, 2020, 04:49:33 PM
Was what was in Picard the Federation or just something with it's name? You make the claim of this core optimism but it has none. Despite being in a existential galactic war I would chose to live in DS9 that rather than Picard. In DS9 there is a Federation to fight for and I wouldn't have to put up with Fox News.

I miss Stargate. Lots of fun. Even SGU was starting to lighten up. That web/mini series was pretty good.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on May 18, 2020, 06:19:45 PM
On a side note, I never did get around to watching my TNG BluRays. Recently picked up the TOS BluRays on sale. I hope to get around to watching them soon. I've only ever seen a handful of episodes of TOS (namely Trouble With Tribbles, The Menagerie, A Piece of the Action, & The City on the Edge of Forever), mainly because I find TOS really hard to watch with its unintentionally cheesy acting & laughable special effects. My appreciation for TOS has always come from the movies.

The BluRays fix one of those issues, so I'm willing to give that show a shot again sometime.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on May 18, 2020, 09:44:25 PM
Timely: the long-awaited Plinkett review of Star Trek Picard.


BMM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwF1iri1GjQ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwF1iri1GjQ)
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: Khushrenada on May 19, 2020, 06:32:43 PM
Last year, around spring time or so, I started watching Star Trek Discovery Season 2. Got about 6 episodes before I stopped. There were just so many things about it that irked me from the direction, the writing and the characters. Started watching Homeland Season 6 (which is not great. Worst season of that show but better than Discovery.) Watched Homeland Season 7. Watched all of Barry. Actually went back and watched all Veep. I stopped watching Veep after the third episode back when it first aired but always kind of followed along some of the story line from reviews and it seemed to get more interesting as it went on. Watched the 3rd season of True Detective. Watched half the series of The Goldbergs. Kept up with watching Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Survivor, The Amazing Race, Tosh.0, Brooklyn Nine Nine, The Good Place, Rick & Morty, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. Started watching the Goldbergs spin-off Schooled and have seen its first two seasons now. Watched Season 4 of Mr. Robot (absolutely inspired. Probably the best show I watched in this time frame.). Watched the 5th season Better Call Saul. Watched all episodes of the British series Prime Suspect. Saw the first (and possibly only) season of HBO's Watchmen. Finally watched the last couple episodes of season 6 and then all of Season 7 for Voyager. Finally completed that series last month during the Good Friday long weekend. There's probably a bit more I'm forgetting in that not to mention movies I've watched and games I've played.

But since I completed Voyager, I figured why not go and finish Discovery Season 2? There were only 8 episodes to go and then I'd have basically seen all of Trek now aside from a large chunk of the original series and the latest Picard series that has started. (I guess there is an Animated Trek based on the original but no one seems to care or count that as any important Trek.)

What. A. Mistake.

Even though I had moved on to all that better programming (and yes, everything I listed above is better than STD), I was still mildly curious about the mystery it had started building of the red angel and the seven signals. But, as the saying goes, curiosity killed the cat and I should have known better instead of giving this show the benefit of the doubt which I only gave it because of Lorca from Season 1. That mystery unfolded terribly and, by the end, it has basically killed any interest I have in this new era of Trek. I had thought about checking out Picard but forget it. Star Trek is clearly done.

I had thought about starting a thread on Discovery just to start bagging on it but I figured there wasn't much point as oohhboy's pretty much got that on lockdown. I suppose I'd sum it up as this. When watching Voyager, you could see how TV still struggled with incorporating early CGI. It got better by Enterprise's time. CGI was used sparingly so the shows had to rely more on keeping people entertained by the dialogue and ideas. Now the graphics have gotten to movie blockbuster quality and have taken over so that everything can be whiz-bang AMAZING action and the dialogue between characters has decreased in quality to move things all in a perfunctory manner while any deep issues or questions raised during the series are barely explored or are treated like that is a homage to past Trek series. Like the people behind are saying to the fans, remember in past shows how the crew would go to a foreign planet and get in a tricky situation? Look we did that quickly in an episode as well. We're still the same Trek as before because we paid that thing lip service. Sure, the old series would explore the issues or conundrums they faced on those missions but who's got time to think when we can show spaceships go BOOOM!? The effects have now taken over and it is a hollow shell of what the series was meant to be and the direction it had followed for decades through multiple series up until now.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: Spak-Spang on May 20, 2020, 01:35:03 AM
A Treky friend of mine Swears that the Animated Star Trek may be the best TOS Trek there is.  It is lean and cuts the stories down to essentials, and I think it is voiced by the original cast.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on May 20, 2020, 04:05:51 AM
I haven't watched that much of the animated series, but it had some neat ideas. They really embraced the format, doing some things with alien crewmembers that would have been tough to pull off even with the effects budget of something like Discovery.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: Plugabugz on May 20, 2020, 12:16:50 PM
I had thought about starting a thread on Discovery just to start bagging on it but I figured there wasn't much point as oohhboy's pretty much got that on lockdown. I suppose I'd sum it up as this. When watching Voyager, you could see how TV still struggled with incorporating early CGI. It got better by Enterprise's time. CGI was used sparingly so the shows had to rely more on keeping people entertained by the dialogue and ideas. Now the graphics have gotten to movie blockbuster quality and have taken over so that everything can be whiz-bang AMAZING action and the dialogue between characters has decreased in quality to move things all in a perfunctory manner while any deep issues or questions raised during the series are barely explored or are treated like that is a homage to past Trek series. Like the people behind are saying to the fans, remember in past shows how the crew would go to a foreign planet and get in a tricky situation? Look we did that quickly in an episode as well. We're still the same Trek as before because we paid that thing lip service. Sure, the old series would explore the issues or conundrums they faced on those missions but who's got time to think when we can show spaceships go BOOOM!? The effects have now taken over and it is a hollow shell of what the series was meant to be and the direction it had followed for decades through multiple series up until now.

This is something i coined for Stargate Atlantis (more than 10 years ago?!) as "blow stuff up wowzy". The show would use this tactic almost like a setpiece in the Uncharted series, most notably accidentally blowing up an entire solar system, instead of the character growth underpinning things like SG1 did. It was still fun to watch but the wowzy was very much a well it went back to repeatedly.

Compare to say, Doctor Who's Listen or Heaven Sent which was solely Capaldi's doctor (and Steven Moffat reminding that he is actually a good writer).

Also, DS9's visuals and sets has aged far better than Voyager's did.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: Shorty McNostril on May 22, 2020, 08:31:15 AM
I didn't mind Picard. No real desire to watch it again but I didn't hate it. And the stunning Jeri Ryan didn't hurt either. I'll watch season 2.

Watching through Discovery S2 now. I got a little bored through S1 and dropped off after episode three I think, but I heard good things about season two so I figured I'd start there. I'm quite enjoying it. Really liking Pike. Looks beautiful. Definitely finishing this season off and unless something terrible knocks it down between now and the finale I'll be looking forward to S3 and this new show that got announced a few days ago.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: pokepal148 on October 24, 2020, 04:10:18 AM
So where's the best place to start if I am interested in possibly getting into Star Trek?
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on October 24, 2020, 04:22:32 AM
You'd probably be best off looking for some curated lists of the best episodes of the original series and The Next Generation. Both those series have some great high points but can be pretty hit or miss.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on October 24, 2020, 06:11:17 AM
You'd probably be best off looking for some curated lists of the best episodes of the original series and The Next Generation. Both those series have some great high points but can be pretty hit or miss.

Alternatively, I'd recommend watching a few of the movies, most notably the Genesis Saga (Star Treks 2-4); Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country; or Star Trek: First Contact. The movies are better if you're familiar with the TV series and previous events, but you don't have to have seen them 1st (no, not even Khan, given that the writer hadn't, either).
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on January 30, 2021, 09:48:20 PM
After recently completing a gauntlet of really long games over the last 4 months, I thought I'd take a break from gaming for a while and finally get to something I've always meant to do but never got around to: actually watching Star Trek: TOS.

I've seen the occasional episode on TV re-runs before (namely City on the Edge of Forever, Trouble With Tribbles, and A Piece of the Action), so it's not like I'm complete unfamiliar with TOS, but I came into Trek with TNG. Most of my experience with Kirk and the gang is with the (far superior) movies. Incidentally, I am watching these via the BluRays with the new effects.

The ordering on the BluRays is...weird. I know that CBS will often place Star Trek episodes on the disc in production order, but I have a really hard time believing that "The Man Trap" and "Charlie X" predated "Where No Man Has Gone Before", which was the show's (2nd) pilot. It's especially weird because WNMHGB doesn't have McCoy or Scotty; all the characters wear these absolutely ridiculous sweaters; and the terminology is all weird (everyone talks about "Earth bases"; "Earth ships"; etc. instead of "Federation ships"; "Starbases"; etc.). There's also an analogy made with money that is just absolutely bizarre considering the Federation doesn't HAVE money.

So far, I've made it up to partway through "Mudd's Women", and the show's been pretty mixed-to-bad so far. I was prepared for goofy stuff. I was prepared for hammy acting. What I wasn't prepared for was all the padding. Later Treks would get criticized for not being able to squeeze their stories into the shorter 40-44 minute run times, but it's hard to argue that TOS was any better at 50 minute episodes when there's just so much WASTED time. I understand that this was the era of variety shows & whatnot, but the stories in these episodes will often just STOP for random musical numbers; random conversation; or long panning shots of NOTHING GOING ON.

I know that the best this show has to offer is before me and every Trek show has taken a while to get rolling, but this has been a hard sit so far and not for the reasons I was expecting. I was kinda expecting compelling sci-fi wrapped in sheer goofiness, and instead it's just been kinda...boring.

I will say this, though: the BluRay restoration is quite lovely, and while the CG Enterprise & planets look hilariously fake...it's TOS. Everything looks hilariously fake. It works nicely. I also really appreciate the re-recorded music and updates to a lot of the matte paintings. I do want to strangle the people who designed the BluRays, though, for not providing a "Play All" feature, which has been an issue with EVERY Star Trek home video release.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on January 30, 2021, 10:26:10 PM
Where No Man Has Gone Before was the second pilot, but The Man Trap was the first episode actually aired, so they must be in that order. And yeah, a lot of the world building happened on the fly, so there's plenty of seemingly contradictory stuff being thrown around especially early on.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on January 30, 2021, 10:54:59 PM
Where No Man Has Gone Before was the second pilot, but The Man Trap was the first episode actually aired, so they must be in that order. And yeah, a lot of the world building happened on the fly, so there's plenty of seemingly contradictory stuff being thrown around especially early on.

Indeed. I just finished Mudd's Women and Kirk enters negotiation with the miners advising that he'd been "authorized to pay a suitable price" (or some such language) for the "Lithium crystals". Harry Mudd also referred to jewels and gold as things currently having value, so that's weird. I know this is before replicators, so rarity is still a thing that can happen. It's just weird since later Trek will make it abundantly clear that money hasn't existed in human society since the Eugenics Wars.

Something that I forgot to mention before is how strange the Captain's Logs are in this show. It's tradition in Star Trek for the show to use these as short-hand exposition to the audience and to cover events between scenes. TOS uses them to recap things currently going on to the audience that the audience watching would be aware of...but not the characters giving the log at the time of the narration. For instance, in the Naked Time, Kirk talks about the infection spreading onboard the ship before they even know there IS an infection. Again, it's just weird.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on February 01, 2021, 09:54:55 PM
Just finished The Menagerie - Parts 1 & 2 and The Corbomite Maneuver, which are probably the first quality episodes of TOS Season 1. Compelling concept, good writing, smooth pacing, competent execution.

"Miri" is quite possibly one of the worst episodes of Star Trek I've ever seen, from its nonsensical setup to its idiotic premise. It's certainly up there with the most annoying episodes of the franchise.

I know the purpose of The Menagerie was to salvage a scrapped pilot, but TBH I kinda like Pike's crew better than Kirk's as of this point in TOS. His Navigator kinda reminded me of Tucker from Enterprise. I would have liked to see more "flashback episodes" feature their antics. They could certainly pull off those silly sweaters better than Kirk could.  I know that Discovery & the new Pike series is going to do stuff with this era of Star Trek, but the response to Discovery & Picard doesn't make me hopeful about that.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: Spak-Spang on February 02, 2021, 04:54:01 AM
My friend has a podcast that discusses Star Trek and faith.  If you guys are interested, he started the series with Lower Decks and went through Discovery Season 3...now he is in free wheeling through Star Trek.  He is kinda an original crew scholar of sorts.  The podcast is called The Gospel According to Star Trek.  And I know it sounds stuff, but it is really just two guys geeking out about Star Trek.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on November 11, 2022, 07:01:54 PM
So yeah, reviving this old thread.

Haven't been in much of a gaming mood lately, so I started watching Star Trek: Voyager on Paramount +, a show I originally abandoned back when it was airing at the conclusion of Season 2. And boy have I heard plenty about it courtesy of SF Debris.

Granted, I'm very early in Season 1 (Episode 5: "The Cloud"), but is it weird to say this show is better than I remembered? In a lot of ways, it reminds me of Enterprise's 1st season: people like to hate on it, but it's actually pretty decent when taken on its own merits. It probably helps that I'm entering this show again with very low expectations, helped a great deal by what passes for Star Trek now.

It certainly helps that in these early episodes, there's at least an attempt to give characters like Chakotay and Paris a slight edge and humor to them. Janeway at least seems to have something approximating a character arc with her starting off rather distant from the crew. Harry Kim has nothing to do, and that will never change. Robert Picardo steals every scene he's in as The Doctor (no, not THAT one).

It is very concerning, though, that the 1st 2 episodes after the Pilot involve time travel and spacial anomalies, something I've heard Voyager is particularly bad about abusing.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: NWR_insanolord on November 11, 2022, 10:11:51 PM
I'm currently finishing up a rewatch of Deep Space 9, and I'm not sure whether I want to go to Voyager or Enterprise next.

I also want to say I recently started Lower Decks and I'm really liking that.
Title: Re: Star Trek
Post by: broodwars on December 17, 2022, 09:53:45 AM
Been slowly working my way through Seasons 1 & 2 of Voyager, and have now started Season 3, so I'm now passed the point in the show where I originally stopped watching it (which was Basics - Part 1, the Season 2 finale).

In general, I thought Season 1 was very similar to the much-maligned Enterprise Season 1: fine on its own merits. The characters still have a bit of edge to them, and there's some good character work. It's also surprisingly short at 16 episodes. I'm guessing Voyager was a mid-season replacement, because all the other seasons are standard Trek length.

Season 2 is where I started skipping or fast-forwarding through episodes, because oh my fucking god there are some boring and terrible episodes this season. And a good many of them prominently feature Neelix. I feel sorry for Ethan Phillips, because I know he CAN act and he CAN have good episodes like Season 1's "Jetrel". He's just saddled with this insufferable jealousy routine as part of the even-more-insufferable Paris/Kes/Neelix love triangle.

Season 2 features some of the worst episodes of Trek ever filmed, and that's saying something when we have Seasons 1 & 2 of TNG and Season 3 of TOS: the infamous "Threshold" (where Paris invents an engine that can go infinite speed, leading to him mutating into a salamander and fucking a mutated Janeway), "Elogium" (Kes goes into heat, a prelude to an equally-bad Enterprise episode with the same premise), and "Innocence" (which is both boring and incredibly stupid).

On the other hand, it also has some fantastic episodes like "Death Wish" (where Voyager finds a Q who wants to die, but John DeLancie Q shows up to try to stop it) and"The Thaw" (where the cast finds a family of colonists trapped in a computer world run by an incarnation of Fear). It also features the first actual multi-episode story arc with the Kazon, even if it does end in a rather anticlimatic fashion.

Overall, Voyager Season 2 reminds me a lot of TNG Season 2: a few great episodes, a few awful episodes, and a lot of bland episodes.

Then Season 3 starts off with "Flashback", which just pissed me off since Star Trek 6 is one of my favorite Trek movies and the episode keeps playing "Keep away" with the Star Trek 6 re-enactments in favor of a truly awful and nonsensical Voyager plot.