Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Bryan See on September 05, 2016, 11:19:03 pm
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50 years ago, the first episode of the original Star Trek aired on NBC. Now, Star Trek has celebrated its 50th anniversary.
I'm always a Trekkie, but also admires SpaceX, NASA, Roscosmos, ESA, and other space agencies (including CNSA and Malaysia's ANGKASA) to name a few.
Anyone having the same thoughts on this here?
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I'm always a Trekkie, but also admires SpaceX, NASA, Roscosmos, ESA, and other space agencies (including CNSA and Malaysia's ANGKASA) to name a few.
One of these things is not like the others... :p
Only picking, I see what you're trying to say.
I'm more wondering if they'll do anything besides re-package some series collections on Blu-Ray for an obscene price (knowing that they'll still sell them).
I mean.. New game? New show? Anything new besides Beyond for their 50-year mark?
How about a hotel that is a life-size model of the USS Enterprise, complete with a Star Trek museum etc? Ha. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ka-ching! (Are you listening, CBS / Paramount??)
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There's a new show coming in January.
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How about a hotel that is a life-size model of the USS Enterprise, complete with a Star Trek museum etc? Ha. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ka-ching! (Are you listening, CBS / Paramount??)
As an architect I really have to shout a big no at this, in the odd chance some crazy billionaire is lurking here fishing for ideas.
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After this new fanfilm guidelines that prevents really new star trek stories from fans and the last movies, i think that Star Trek is something like fu***** dead.
Or to speak, it is only a zombie with the same name.
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The last movie was absolutely excellent and it's about to finally return to TV helmed by Bryan Fuller, this is the best outlook Trek has had since Voyager happened.
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Star Trek beyond was excellent? I heard nothing good about it at all so I didn't bother seeing it at the cinema.
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It was probably the best of the reboot films and without a doubt the best Star Trek film of them.
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Interesting. I might have to give it a try.
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It's worth the time, and feels like what TOS would have been if they could have actually afforded it. (Instead we got a lot of silly fistfights.)
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In addition to the movie Star Trek Beyond and the show next year, there is also a project called Build the Enterprise (http://www.buildtheenterprise.org), to build a real-life Starship Enterprise.
However, like the SpaceX's Mars Colonial Transporter, this endeavor has to be realized very soon before something very, very bad happens. As Elon Musk, SpaceX's CEO, warned last year in GQ (http://www.gq.com/story/elon-musk-mars-spacex-tesla-interview):
So I think we need to acknowledge that there's certainly a possibility of a third World War, and if that does occur it could be far worse than anything that's happened before. Let's say nuclear weapons are used. I mean, there could be a very powerful social movement that's anti-technology. There's also growth in religious extremism. Like, I mean, does ISIS grow…?
He does not even mention the growing white supremacy and neo-Nazi movements besides ISIS, nor aware that US Republican candidate for President, Donald Trump is spawning powerful Neo-Luddite movements (aside from white nationalists) or even starting a massive war that prevents any space missions from happening. It is noted that this war is also warned by others as well as, including even Russians working in the US (see A Russian Warning (http://thesaker.is/a-russian-warning/)) and former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who said that it "will be the last" (https://sputniknews.com/world/20160710/1042719574/gorbachev-on-nato-decisions.html).
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In addition to the movie Star Trek Beyond and the show next year, there is also a project called Build the Enterprise (http://www.buildtheenterprise.org), to build a real-life Starship Enterprise.
You do know that that "plan" (heavy airquotes) is unbelievably optimistic and requires, according to its roadmap, several hundred heavy launches to get the material into space and that it doesn't include any funding? Like, this is one guy making a website with tons and tons of words, there's no money being poured into making it happen (not on the scale necessary to pull it off, anyway).
It's a bull**** fantasy, much like your whole immortal russians thing.
However, like the SpaceX's Mars Colonial Transporter, this endeavor has to be realized very soon before something very, very bad happens. As Elon Musk, SpaceX's CEO, warned last year in GQ (http://www.gq.com/story/elon-musk-mars-spacex-tesla-interview):
So I think we need to acknowledge that there's certainly a possibility of a third World War, and if that does occur it could be far worse than anything that's happened before. Let's say nuclear weapons are used. I mean, there could be a very powerful social movement that's anti-technology. There's also growth in religious extremism. Like, I mean, does ISIS grow…?
He does not even mention the growing white supremacy and neo-Nazi movements besides ISIS, nor aware that US Republican candidate for President, Donald Trump is spawning powerful Neo-Luddite movements (aside from white nationalists) or even starting a massive war that prevents any space missions from happening. It is noted that this war is also warned by others as well as, including even Russians working in the US (see A Russian Warning (http://thesaker.is/a-russian-warning/)) and former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who said that it "will be the last" (https://sputniknews.com/world/20160710/1042719574/gorbachev-on-nato-decisions.html).
Yes, a third world war would negatively impact the socioeconomic climate necessary for building a replica of a fictional spaceship in space, which is a terrible thing that must not happen (Grammar intentionally left ambiguous).
Are you ****ing serious? Of all the consequences a new world war would have (assuming that there's going to be one that resembles WW1 and WW2, which is extremely unlikely), the cancellation of a manned mars flight is easily the least important.
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I'm not serious, but I have to agree with The E that this war is not going to happen, at least in the near future. Let me remind you that the current technology for making this possible is well within possibility as of now.
The colonisation of Mars, as well as the colonisation of space, is seen by Musk and others as a moral duty to ensure humanity's survival the same way a USB drive, Memory Crystal Storage drive, and 5D storage drives are meant to preserve data in an event of a computer crash. A Martian colony or a space colony could guarantee mankind survives in case of a debacle that destroys life on Earth. So, let me guess, to paraphrase Elon Musk: "You back up your hard drive. Maybe we should back up life, too?" Perhaps we should back up progress too.
I know global catastrophes take on many forms. We have a very long history of making steady progress. Nevertheless, this progress may be halted in the near future, and chances are high that humanity could regress back to the dark ages as a corollary of extremism, especially with the recent rises of Trump, Brexit, ISIS, white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
And the history of Star Trek where World War 3 does occur, but in the end, humanity ends up surviving. Hope humanity survives, not under some criminal neo-totalitarian fascist government like Putin's Russia.
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The colonisation of Mars, as well as the colonisation of space, is seen by Musk and others as a moral duty to ensure humanity's survival the same way a USB drive, Memory Crystal Storage drive, and 5D storage drives are meant to preserve data in an event of a computer crash. A Martian colony or a space colony could guarantee mankind survives in case of a debacle that destroys life on Earth. So, let me guess, to paraphrase Elon Musk: "You back up your hard drive. Maybe we should back up life, too?" Perhaps we should back up progress too.
*sigh*
Except that we're just barely at a level where we can reasonably run a permanent moon colony. One that can go into failure almost immediately if funding for the weekly supply launches dries up. We're decades away from a permanent Mars colony, and centuries if not millennia away from having a stable, self sustaining colony on another planet. Until then, we're still in an "all eggs in one basket" sort of situation, and given that we are really bad at making plans that are still being run 20 or 30 years in the future (The only institutions that endure that long are all religious in nature, and even they mutate into unrecognizable shapes over a few generations), I wouldn't put my hopes up that we'll ever get to a point where a planetary disaster won't wipe out humanity.
So, bottom line: While space exploration is a good goal, space colonization is a pipe dream. It's something people like Musk can throw money at to their heart's content, but in general, it's better to try to improve our situation here at home than to think of ways of abandoning this planet.
I know global catastrophes take on many forms. We have a very long history of making steady progress. Nevertheless, this progress may be halted in the near future, and chances are high that humanity could regress back to the dark ages as a corollary of extremism, especially with the recent rises of Trump, Brexit, ISIS, white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
These things are hardly a blip. They really do not register as the sort of existential threats you seem to think they are. Yes, they're definitely problems that we have to deal with, but they're not existence threatening for humanity or "progress" as a whole (You seem to conflate social progress with technological progress, and while they are not unrelated, they're not the same thing).
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That's a good suggestion on space exploration, The E.
As for problems that we have to deal with, racism, xenophobia and bigotry are the growing problems facing in our society right now. I've seen a sharp increase in these particularly in UK following the Brexit vote. It's interesting to note there's some parallels to that of the Star Trek universe, the nations' failure to understand the growing necessity of allowing all citizens to contribute into society led to the 2024 riots, I presume. But unlike Star Trek's World War III, I think it doesn't happen, at least in the near future, even with the renewed tensions rising in Ukraine risking a full-scale Russian invasion, not to mention Russia's 2015 military intervention in Syria against ISIS and Islamic fundamentalism in general.
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Are you somehow suggesting that the Star Trek history lore won't come to fruition in our own timeline?
I do wonder, have we been a victim of some kind of timeline incursion that allowed this heresy to happen?
We already have some facts here, like we have no collective memory of Khan and his accolytes' war. Clearly something suspicious must have happened. Perhaps we should ask the Time Cube guy. He must be on to something here, and the timing of his site going down must also necessarily be a clue. An important one.
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There was also the Fermat's last theorem debacle from NG that writers had to retcon in DS9.
Clearly Andrew Wiles is a time traveler...
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It's just the Qs ****ing with us.
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We already have some facts here, like we have no collective memory of Khan and his accolytes' war.
The media distorted it into a thing about some Asian man and some turtles in sewers. Can't trust them, man.
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We already have some facts here, like we have no collective memory of Khan and his accolytes' war.
The media distorted it into a thing about some Asian man and some turtles in sewers. Can't trust them, man.
Exactly.
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Now now what are you two talking about? That's just crazy talk.
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How about a hotel that is a life-size model of the USS Enterprise, complete with a Star Trek museum etc? Ha. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ka-ching! (Are you listening, CBS / Paramount??)
As an architect I really have to shout a big no at this, in the odd chance some crazy billionaire is lurking here fishing for ideas.
Errr.. ok, if the Enterprise isn't conducive to a hotel (seems obvious), then have it "in drydock / construction", and that should work for realism.
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Are you somehow suggesting that the Star Trek history lore won't come to fruition in our own timeline?
I do wonder, have we been a victim of some kind of timeline incursion that allowed this heresy to happen?
We already have some facts here, like we have no collective memory of Khan and his accolytes' war. Clearly something suspicious must have happened. Perhaps we should ask the Time Cube guy. He must be on to something here, and the timing of his site going down must also necessarily be a clue. An important one.
Closer than you think, in the form of NASA's EmDrive and other derivatives of the Cannae drive. The peer-reviewed report on EmDrive should be out in December of this year.
There's no timeline incursion here, and we're not victims. Trump, Brexit, ISIS, and the Ukraine conflict (instigated by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his mafia gang that is the Kremlin) are reminders that the nations of Earth do not understand nor allow the necessities of citizens contributing to society in Star Trek, I think. However, unlike those events in Star Trek, these might threaten to upend our progress we've made for decades.
EDIT: Happy 50th Anniversary of Star Trek, I guess.
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It was probably the best of the reboot films and without a doubt the best Star Trek film of them.
Kind of surprised to hear this, though it did receive pretty glowing reviews. The trailers made it look even further along the BAYSPLOSIONS!!! spectrum than Abrams' films had already trod.
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It's a film about the crew of the Enterprise getting stranded and scattered on a strange and wonderful new world and how they all set out to get back together, understand the place they're in and save each other and everyone else.
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It was probably the best of the reboot films and without a doubt the best Star Trek film of them.
Kind of surprised to hear this, though it did receive pretty glowing reviews. The trailers made it look even further along the BAYSPLOSIONS!!! spectrum than Abrams' films had already trod.
The trailers for Star Trek Beyond were some of the worst trailers I have ever seen, in retrospect. I was fully prepared to write it off entirely after I saw that mega-bull**** cresting wave in space.
To my immense relief, the actual movie made much more sense. It was pretty good.
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The wave in space thing... eh, it's a bit silly, and it all feels very shoehorned in to get the "super cool sequence" that some writer or (probably more likely) coked up studio exec or producer thought up. But they almost make it work, and they certainly make it fun.
Beyond's not flawless, but I thought it was the best of the three reboot movies. Worth seeing for sure.
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How about a hotel that is a life-size model of the USS Enterprise, complete with a Star Trek museum etc? Ha. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ka-ching! (Are you listening, CBS / Paramount??)
Are you referring to this one?
(http://cdn.collider.com/wp-content/uploads/star-trek-uss-enterprise-concept.jpg) (http://collider.com/star-trek-enterprise-vegas/)
Beyond's not flawless, but I thought it was the best of the three reboot movies. Worth seeing for sure.
Also I second this.
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There's no timeline incursion here, and we're not victims.
Unconvinced, citation needed. For instance, look at Jupiter's north pole recent pictures. They are clearly anomalous and hint at a larger truth.
EDIT: Happy 50th Anniversary of Star Trek, I guess.
Live long and prosper.
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I very excited to see many technologies featured in Star Trek coming to reality. However, I think we need to acknowledge that there's certainly a possibility of a Donald Trump presidency, as I see at least two separate new polls which show Trump leads Hillary Clinton, and if Trump wins, it could be far worse than anything that's happened before.
Let's say Trump starts a war, in which nuclear weapons are used. He spawns powerful social movements that's anti-technology, anti-modern, anti-progress and anti-innovation. He orders contract killings of those who oppose him or exchange free ideas. He even rigs future presidential elections, as well as introduce voting reforms to make them such boring and a waste of time. He even turns everything as we know it today unrecognisable, like permanently renaming our planet, our Sun, our galaxy, and our race as well.
Now is the time to act and be very quick about it, because chances are high that we may regress in the near future, and get imprisoned under a criminal neo-totalitarianism controlled by the mafia consisting of murderous bandits, with no future for eternity.
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Let's say Trump starts a war, in which nuclear weapons are used. He spawns powerful social movements that's anti-technology, anti-modern, anti-progress and anti-innovation. He orders contract killings of those who oppose him or exchange free ideas. He even rigs future presidential elections, as well as introduce voting reforms to make them such boring and a waste of time. He even turns everything as we know it today unrecognisable, like permanently renaming our planet, our Sun, our galaxy, and our race as well.
I don't say this often, but you are seriously wrong and really, really need to examine the cognitive biases you have. Preferably with professional help.
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I very excited to see many technologies featured in Star Trek coming to reality. However, I think we need to acknowledge that there's certainly a possibility of a Donald Trump presidency, as I see at least two separate new polls which show Trump leads Hillary Clinton, and if Trump wins, it could be far worse than anything that's happened before.
Let's say Trump starts a war, in which nuclear weapons are used. He spawns powerful social movements that's anti-technology, anti-modern, anti-progress and anti-innovation. He orders contract killings of those who oppose him or exchange free ideas. He even rigs future presidential elections, as well as introduce voting reforms to make them such boring and a waste of time. He even turns everything as we know it today unrecognisable, like permanently renaming our planet, our Sun, our galaxy, and our race as well.
Now is the time to act and be very quick about it, because chances are high that we may regress in the near future, and get imprisoned under a criminal neo-totalitarianism controlled by the mafia consisting of murderous bandits, with no future for eternity.
Ah, so you're saying that there's a high chance we do get to correct our timeline to fit Star Trek's history again?
AWESOME. LETS DOOOOOOO IT.
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There's a thread (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=92492) to the new PAC allowing open letters against Republican candidate for President, Donald Trump. There's a chance to fit into the Star Trek history if you act.
In the meantime, answer this question: Do we need to follow the footsteps of Zefram Cochrane and other figures of Trek history so that humanity will not end up destroying itself as a race, especially due to Trump, ISIS, Putin, Dugin's Eurasianists and the Zika outbreak?
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Anybody else misses judge floro ?
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Compared to Bryan he was flat-out lucid. :D
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Bah you're just jealous of his super-florian swagger
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I'm not convinced that Bryan over there isn't just ****ing with us. Evidence points against it, but there's the odd little glimmer that makes me wonder.
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That glimmer is Poe's Law getting stuck in your eye, methink.
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Still not convinced Bryan isn't some sort of advanced chatbot.
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In any case, "STD" is a really unfortunate acronym for the new series.
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In any case, "STD" is a really unfortunate acronym for the new series.
Good thing they're going with "DSC" instead.
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ST:D is pretty hilarious though
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Also, Star Trek: Beyond was exactly as retarded as the trailers made it out to be, why are people trying to say it wasnt?
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you also like star citizen, you need to adapt to your condition and assume that normal people will make quality judgements in exact opposition to your own
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what beyond really needed was more mocap, immersion and mark hamill
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you also like star citizen, you need to adapt to your condition and assume that normal people will make quality judgements in exact opposition to your own
Star Citizen has nothing to do with this, and it isn't even done yet. I support their attempt to push the envelope about what's possible in a video game as well as their push to bring back space fighter sims.
What Beyond needed was to be about the years of doing interesting space **** that apparently bored the **** out of Kirk. Instead, it's just about some contrived action set pieces and a bunch of **** that doesnt make sense.
The space station was cool though.
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Fortunately you're completely, objectively wrong and Beyond was everything that it needed to be.
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Fortunately you're completely, objectively wrong and Beyond was everything that it needed to be.
I don't get it. What did you like about it?
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It just had so many great character moments and interactions for the whole crew, throughout, and a plot that was great at generating those moments. It was, at heart, a really long, really good Star Trek episode, which is why it baffles me that you think it wasn't. I loved it so much exactly because it broke from the Kirk And Spock Angsty Punching Show that JJTrek was bogged down in.
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It just had so many great character moments and interactions for the whole crew, throughout, and a plot that was great at generating those moments. It was, at heart, a really long, really good Star Trek episode, which is why it baffles me that you think it wasn't. I loved it so much exactly because it broke from the Kirk And Spock Angsty Punching Show that JJTrek was bogged down in.
I just want to ditch the whole JJ-verse and get back to some real Star Trek. The first movie was fine as an intro to 'this is a new timeline but this one is different in various ways and lets see how kirk and spock become friends this time' and is definitely the best one. The next 2 movies have squandered any potential for it to develop into any serious scifi kind of franchise. This is Action Blockbuster Trek until that stops making money.
It feels like JJ-verse doesnt even take place in "space" but most of that is down to their complete lack of understanding about "space" what it is, how big it is, what kinds of things you might find there, what its rules are, etc. It came through in the new Star Wars too but i don't expect Star Wars to do as well as Star Trek when it comes to grounding anything.
Sure Dr McCoy told a bunch of good funny jokes, but that can't save a movie that has almost no point. The villain just needed to chill out and smoke a joint and watch Gundam Wing.
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I just want to ditch the whole JJ-verse and get back to some real Star Trek.
Okay so here's your proscribed watching list so you get your **** sorted out about what TOS actually was.
II and VI of the movies plus Balance of Terror and The Doomsday Machine to remind you what TOS wanted to do but didn't have the effects to really back up a lot of the time.
A half dozen times Kirk had a fistfight because it was the only action the show could actually afford.
Whom Gods Destroy, The Omega Glory, Errand of Mercy, and Turnabout Intruder to remind you what kind of villains TOS had.
Who Mourns For Adonis and the TNG-era openings so you get the references.
Finally, five hours of being beaten with the Frozen Trout of Justice for suggesting this was not the finest episode of The Original Series ever made.
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No, I'm not confused about what Star Trek was. I'm concerned about what Star Trek will be going forward. I've watched all the star trek except the animated one. If they keep barreling forward with this dumb Trek, they may never make it to their Next Generation that might actually be good.
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The new series is set in the prime timeline for god's sake.
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Also lol @ the idea that 'dumb trek' is something JJ invented when we had ten years of systemically, dryly dumb Voyager and Enterprise to kill the series before him.
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Also lol @ the idea that 'dumb trek' is something JJ invented when we had ten years of systemically, dryly dumb Voyager and Enterprise to kill the series before him.
And Nemesis, but still. When you wipe your universe you have a chance to start over and make something better.
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It feels like JJ-verse doesnt even take place in "space" but most of that is down to their complete lack of understanding about "space" what it is, how big it is, what kinds of things you might find there, what its rules are, etc. It came through in the new Star Wars too but i don't expect Star Wars to do as well as Star Trek when it comes to grounding anything.
I do have to say, it's been amazing to see how profoundly lacking in any sense of geography the JJ films were. Old movies at least had a sense of territory, of depth, of time, of impenetrableness to some specie's space. Even the Whales movie, the campiest of them all, created some territorial crescendo until the Big Dumb Object reached Earth. Not anymore! Now we can have things that are simultaneously at the border and just really close to planet Earth, going to Klingon's capital world is just like teleporting to it no biggie, etc.
If they would be able to at least recreate this spatial depth, then marvelous simple things like actual discovery, adventure and this thing about going to "where no man has gone before" become meaningful again, almost magically. I'd be fine with just that.
But I guess that in our current world where things are immediate and there's no depth to Earth's territory anymore, film makers have also forgotten about this quality in Star Trekkian verse.
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JJ Abrams is terrible at dealing with scale.
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JJ Abrams is terrible at dealing with scale.
Yeah, it's not as if the latest Star Wars doesn't suffer from it as well. That last arc almost reads as if the entire galactic struggle is being fought on the same solar system.
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Beyond handled scale significantly better than JJ could ever hope to (comprehend, much less apply). Especially the scale of the Enterprise, considering it's a ship designed to contain hundreds of crew for years on end.
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It really rankles that Beyond is getting tarred with the same brush as JJTrek when it fixed so many of the problems with it.
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No, I'm not confused about what Star Trek was.
Yes, you are. Otherwise you would understand that this is really very much TOS given a budget and some decent writing, not whatever you think it actually is, and certainly not a close relative of the first two movies like you're arguing.
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It really rankles that Beyond is getting tarred with the same brush as JJTrek when it fixed so many of the problems with it.
Other than "hey, there's a nebula, hey, we got through it in a minute, hey there's a planet" and the reverse when the baddie left it. Rankles a bit that the Federation would build a giant deep-space facility with millions of inhabitants on the doormat of a chunk of space nobody ever bothered exploring.
So yeah, even in Beyond - which I really liked - the new Trek movies have abysmal scaling, which is all the more glaring as I've just finished re-watching all of TNG, DS9 (still Best Trek, though I prefer TNG crew), and am working my way through Voyager now, all of which do scale pretty damn well.
But let's face it, no Star Trek has been remotely as good as Babylon 5 when it comes to scale.
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Voyager[...]all of which do scale pretty damn well.
:wtf:
I suppose if you just mean "relative scale within the span of a single episode", then maybe, but they had absolutely no consistency.
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Also lol @ the idea that 'dumb trek' is something JJ invented when we had ten years of systemically, dryly dumb Voyager and Enterprise to kill the series before him.
I may have something of a soft spot for Voyager regardless of objective quality, but I stand firm in my belief that the final season of Enterprise was some of the best Trek ever produced.
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I've watched all Star Trek asides from Enterprise and I must say that I really tried. I mean, I really really tried. But after enduring bad episode after terrible episode after horrible episode from season 1 and 2 in Enterprise I finally figured that sadomasochism wasn't my thing. You really endorse season 4 that much?
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Also lol @ the idea that 'dumb trek' is something JJ invented when we had ten years of systemically, dryly dumb Voyager and Enterprise to kill the series before him.
I may have something of a soft spot for Voyager regardless of objective quality, but I stand firm in my belief that the final season of Enterprise was some of the best Trek ever produced.
Yes, i like ENT's 4th season also very much, for me it is also one of the best seasons in trek history.
Because it was a prequel finally... that leads to all the other series. This was, what i expected from this series from the beginning.
But also i think, that Voyager was a good TNG successor. I liked it much more than Deep Space Nine.
But like any other newer Trek series, it get well only from season 3 onwards. I never liked the first two seasons of VOY, TNG, DSN and ENT. Even they still have some good episodes.
But all the series getting better and better after that. Even the peak was often a few seasons before the ending. I remember a very good 4th and 5th season of TNG and VOY, which were the best seasons for me personally.
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VOY only begins to be interesting when 7 of 9 gets on board. Because ahhh, she was an interesting concept character. Yeah. That was it. :nervous:
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7 of 9? Is she formerly a human named Annika Hansen?
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But also i think, that Voyager was a good TNG successor. I liked it much more than Deep Space Nine.
You have just given yourself away as an alien infiltrator, because no human could possibly think Voyager was superior to Deep Space Nine.
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The better Deep Space Nine played in another Universe and was named Babylon 5 ;)
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The better Deep Space Nine played in another Universe and was named Babylon 5 ;)
You get no points for recognizing that Babylon 5 is superior when you think that Voyager was better than Deep Space Nine. Sorry, alien infiltrator, but you can't distract us that easily!
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VOY is a completely different beast to DS9. DS9 takes ST positive tropes and twists them to almost-BSG gritty like grey landscapes. VOY tries to keep TNG's positivity in both a plot and a time where it simply didn't fit anymore. I understand people being enamored with TNG's positivity and holding VOY as its flag carrier, but it doesn't quite work. DS9 tried to go into the grey mud as best as it could and it did come up with brilliant moments. Then again, we have the whole prophecy arc, which will tarnish it forever in my brain. A similar stupidity would befall BSG later on.
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Like in Caprica and Blood & Chrome. Ronald D. Moore was a writer in Star Trek before BSG and Outlander.
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Voyager is terrible television, terribly written. When it was good, when somebody who knew what they were doing and had a consistent vision of the cast was in charge, you got things like Scorpion and Living Witness, episodes that deserve to stand in the best of Trek. When it was bad, you got Threshold and Tattoo and Twisted, episodes that were insultingly terrible and tarnished all other Star Trek merely by existing. And when it was average, you were watching Season 1 of TNG in all its incoherent, annoying, arrogant glory.
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Yep. 100% with you there. And yet I couldn't help myself but watch it. I guess I *am* a masochist.
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Thing is, with Star Trek post-TOS is that none of the shows found their feet until at least season 3. Rewatching the first two seasons of TNG was physically painful at times, even if the TNG crew remains my favourite cast of Star Trek characters. By season 3, they had it right and TNG has the distinction of keeping a consistent "average" in quality across episodes. There were some bad, and some brilliant, but most were of a reasonably high average quality.
DS9's first two season were also not very good. They tried an arc, and foreshadowed the Dominion, but they get no points for that as Babylon 5 did it at the same time and did it far better (at least, to the end of season 4 of B5). But again, with seasons 3 and the addition of the Defiant, DS9 finally got legs. While it was also of high average quality, it never quite managed to be as even as TNG. It did have far more absolutely brilliant episodes than TNG, but it had a lot of pretty irrelevant ones as well.
Voyager... well, as I said I'm rewatching it now so I'll have a better idea in a few weeks, but it truly does suffer from some awful technobabbly writing that gets in the way of what could otherwise be a pretty decent show. It also lacks the consistency of its predecessors, and its quality average looks more line a sine wave shifted slightly below the 0 on the Y-axis. Kate Mulgrew is quite compelling as a captain, but her supporting cast is not of the quality that TNG/DS9 had. Voyager is especially annoying as it started as a Trek with an OBVIOUS series-spanning arc, and they botched it. Horribly. Beyond horribly. This is especially tragic given that they had an example of a sci-fi series with a planned arc to look to as an example of how to do it right.
Enterprise I quit watching after season 2. The show was an atrocity. Star Trek was always at its worst when it invokes time travel plots (note to science fiction writers: stop writing time travel. It's lazy, tired, overdone, and is done badly far more often than it is done well. Don't. Do. It.). Enterprise was a whole ****ing series set in a horrible time travel plot. I may - may - consider watching season 4 since I have heard good things about it, but in general I'm skeptical.
I dearly hope that Discovery turns out well. Space-oriented science fiction on television hasn't been very good for years, and even then sci-fi on TV has been pretty lacking as of late. Since the demise of Fringe (which I enjoyed, though I grant the final season was a hot mess) there hasn't been much. Even Doctor Who lost my interest since Matt's departure.
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I've read some synopsis on season 4 enterprise. First few episodes are really facepalmworthy material-wise.
So the first two episodes are "Go back to World War 2 Earth! With a twist!" - I love when Star Trek goes original like this.
There's a filler episode afterwards.
And then there's three other episodes that are about a different branch of "augmented" people who steal a ship and go on with a mad plan of theirs.
...
And IIRC, there's a "mirror mirror" double episode somewhere around the end of the series. No, really.
Now, the execution may well compensate for this, but I gotta say, it's hilarious. Just those synopsis of the alledged "best" season of a show shows exactly why it was the last Star Trek show for quite a while. It just didn't have anything interesting to say anymore.
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Also lol @ the idea that 'dumb trek' is something JJ invented when we had ten years of systemically, dryly dumb Voyager and Enterprise to kill the series before him.
I may have something of a soft spot for Voyager regardless of objective quality, but I stand firm in my belief that the final season of Enterprise was some of the best Trek ever produced.
7 + 4 = 11 though so im still right
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The Sisko is the best captain of the best Star Trek show (though that isn't a high bar)
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And what about Picard?
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And what about Picard?
If anyone asks you "Kirk or Picard?" the correct answer is "Sisko."
"Mister Worf! Prepare a Class II Quantum Torpedo and write on it 'Don't **** with The Sisko!'" (http://sfdebris.com/)
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I never got this Sisko love. The guy is completely unhinged and deranged. Emotionally unstable and the actor doesn't even perform all the emotional waves that well.
Picard is by far the best acted star trek captain. He may well be the most boring though, he is mostly one-key. Still, the nuances of his character are played so well he deserves to be the best. By a mile.
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Picard remains my personal favourite, and, I think, the one with the most depth. Sisko is very well-written, however, and a completely different sort of captain with considerable complexity as a character as well. He also has more personal growth through the series than does Picard. I like them both a great deal, albeit for different reasons.
By the way, I'm Picard. (http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2016/09/personality-quiz-which-star-trek-captain-are-you)
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i got sisko but that felt irreverent so i did it again until i got archer (i think stealing the balloon from the child was what clinched it)
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I never got this Sisko love. The guy is completely unhinged and deranged. Emotionally unstable and the actor doesn't even perform all the emotional waves that well.
don't you talk **** about my man Avery Brooks
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I never got this Sisko love. The guy is completely unhinged and deranged. Emotionally unstable and the actor doesn't even perform all the emotional waves that well.
I guess he could look that way by comparison to the TNG cast, most of which is robotic most of the time, but unhinged isn't what I'd call The Sisko. I also disagree about the acting performance too, but that's just my opinion.
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Robotic means being an android, which is Data himself.
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I never got this Sisko love. The guy is completely unhinged and deranged. Emotionally unstable and the actor doesn't even perform all the emotional waves that well.
Sisko is given hard duties and we are allowed to see him struggle with both that and the people around it. He cannot escape them. DS9 is not going around putting out fires, waiting for the next challenge. The challenge is there, a seemingly immutable part of the landscape, and something Sisko deals with every day without pause or rest. Picard is almost inhuman in his relentless calm certitude, has a crew that's been filtered through trying to get on the flagship, and gets to go find a new problem almost every episode rather than let the current one grind him down. In the end this all makes him a bit difficult to relate to as a captain and a leader, though he's imminently likeable as person.
Actually unstable and deranged would be if Eliot Stabler from SVU was a starship captain.
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Yeah if only the actor would be good enough to convey that in a believable way. Instead what we have is a situation wherein Sisko is constantly shouting and half of those times I am almost thinking that it is Sisko himself faking it. An actor faking a fake shout. But no, it's just Avery not being believable himself. Stewart is amazing in this regard: he never lets you off the suspension of disbelief.
Except in the movies. Then again, TNG movies are.... well... TNG movies.
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I don't know about that, I kind of like him.
Stewart chewing the scenery is amusing.
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Yeah that line is totally out of Picard's character. Hate it.
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I don't find it out of character for the situation he is in. He already got assimilated once, and now the Borg are trying to take away his history. He has slowly been getting more and more angry, to the point where he nearly beat the hell out of the corpse of the thoroughly borged Ensign Lynch with a holographic tommygun, then suddenly shifted to cold detachment after Lily stopped him. He clearly is displaying some PTSD level stuff that has surfaced as a result of this conflict. Starfleet Command was correct. Him being involved introduced an unstable element to the situation. The only reason he pulled back from that was because Lily called him on it and did it in a way that got him to LOOK at himself and step back from the precipice. Yes, on its own the scenery chewing spiel he gives about the Borg and drawing the line is out of character, but in context of the film and his experience in The Best of Both Worlds, IMO, it fits. (Mind you, the bit about always falling back is at best confusing, seeing as how the Borg have only entered Federation space overtly once prior to this movie. I think the script writer went OTT there and ignored the established canon.)
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I've watched all Star Trek asides from Enterprise and I must say that I really tried. I mean, I really really tried. But after enduring bad episode after terrible episode after horrible episode from season 1 and 2 in Enterprise I finally figured that sadomasochism wasn't my thing. You really endorse season 4 that much?
Absolutely. Season 3 was far more of a mixed bag, with a pretty ham-fisted overarching metaphor for the Iraq War, and (as you saw) the first episode or two of season 4 was dedicated to wrapping it up in a fashion which I barely remember other than it being profoundly stupid, but after that was some pure gold. There was a new showrunner for that season (Manny Coto, I think), and like Deepstar noted he finally focused on making the show an actual prequel to everything that came after, tying hard into some of the basic concepts of the overall mythos. You may pooh-pooh the summaries you read, but apparently they aren't doing the material justice in any sort. The augment episodes were certainly a thematic homage to Khan and had Brent Spiner doing some great guest work. The Klingon two-parter turned Worf's throw-away joke line from "Trials and Tribble-ation" about the lack of makeup during the TOS era into legitimately-good backstory. There was some quality content in there involving social upheaval on Vulcan, which combined with some Andorian/Tellarite focus later on really started laying the framework for the creation of the Federation. The mirror-universe stuff was nothing if not unabashedly fun, basically reveling in the best sort of TOS cheese. The final two-parter of the season has to be one of the best-executed Trek stories ever, with Peter Weller (Robocop!) turning in a spectacular guest performance. And then...well, then they gave Rick Berman and Brannon Braga the reins for the series finale, which can be kindly described as a steaming pile of garbage that gave more screentime to ****ing Riker and Troi than the actual Enterprise cast.
In the end I think that Enterprise represents a massive missed opportunity, and that final season is proof positive. Had the show started out tackling those sorts of stories, instead of meandering about with time-travel and other sorts of fluff, I think it could have easily been a resounding success.
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In the end I think that Enterprise represents a massive missed opportunity, and that final season is proof positive. Had the show started out tackling those sorts of stories, instead of meandering about with time-travel and other sorts of fluff, I think it could have easily been a resounding success.
Quoting for truth. Both it and Voyager could have been so much better than they were.
Thematically, Entreprise should have been about how the Federation became what it is in the later series, how humanity got its **** together and rallied other species to create this utopian interstellar society we keep getting preached about.
From a story-telling perspective, it was an opportunity to do something different with the tech being shown - no shields, no phasers, no photon torpedoes, transporters being recent tech, no tractor beam. Instead, phasers get installed early, polarised hull plating get treated like shields and photon torpedoes arrive about halfway through the series.
Instead, we got another standard Trek show that had nothing new to show and nothing new to tell...
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All Voyager and Enterprise had to do -- all they had to do -- was to jump on the bandwagon at the time towards more long-form, arc-driven TV drama. Instead Berman and Braga kept the franchise in a creatively bankrupt episodic limbo like it was still 1990, where nothing ever happened and nothing mattered, and drove it into the ground; and Trekkies, eternally oblivious, blamed JJ for ruining Trek.
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I would never even attempt to claim that Abrams "ruined" Trek...hell, if anything, he saved it from almost complete cultural irrelevance outside of sci-fi fandom and a few general pop-culture memes. And everything else aside, the original casting for the films was flat-out inspired; Karl Urban in particular feels like the legitimate reincarnation of DeForest Kelley. What I do regret is that Abrams took Star Trek and turned it into the epitome of a summer popcorn flick, full of shaky-cam shots and ridiculous lens flares and huge action set-pieces and Beastie Boys tracks and explosions and so forth. Those elements aren't bad in and of themselves (well the lens flares maybe), but they're definitely not what made me fall in love with Star Trek in the first place, and there were precious few moments of introspection and philosophy that are central to the classic Trek experience. Going that route may have been what was necessary to save Trek, but it still left part of me wondering if what we got could truly be called Star Trek anymore. (And it's not like Abrams didn't have some pretty colossally stupid moments as well: the mess that was "red matter" for one, and then no so much homaging The Wrath of Khan as aping it wholesale for another.) The reason I'm cautiously optimistic about this new series is that I hope it can provide a more traditional Trek experience.
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Red Matter was a great McGuffin, I don't get why it got so much hate (well I guess I do, nerds want to flex and show off how much they know about black holes).
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Beastie Boys is a fantastic inclusion in Star Trek and I will broker no argument on this subject. Peaceful and post-scarcity doesn't mean boring.
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But let's face it, no Star Trek has been remotely as good as Babylon 5 when it comes to scale.
Fixed that for you. :p
I've read some synopsis on season 4 enterprise. First few episodes are really facepalmworthy material-wise.
So the first two episodes are "Go back to World War 2 Earth! With a twist!" - I love when Star Trek goes original like this.
There's a filler episode afterwards.
And then there's three other episodes that are about a different branch of "augmented" people who steal a ship and go on with a mad plan of theirs.
...
And IIRC, there's a "mirror mirror" double episode somewhere around the end of the series. No, really.
Now, the execution may well compensate for this, but I gotta say, it's hilarious. Just those synopsis of the alledged "best" season of a show shows exactly why it was the last Star Trek show for quite a while. It just didn't have anything interesting to say anymore.
Seriously though. Enterprise seems to be getting a lot of **** on here but as much as it had problems, I never hated it anywhere near as much as Voyager. Season 3 suffered from being uneven but it was an attempt to try to go over to an arc driven story and for that alone it was better than seasons one and two. I actually liked season three best of all because of that, even if some of the episodes were weak, the majority of the season was written by someone other than B&B and it showed.
Unfortunately B&B were given control back for the last episode of the season so after ending the series long arc, we get space Nazi's out of nowhere to set up probably the worst **** in Season 4. But after those two episodes, it looks like someone gave B&B some crayons, sent them to play in the corner and they were no longer a part of the show's writing until they were allowed back to completely **** up the final episode.
As for the mirror universe episodes, they're actually two of the best ones in the show. Like Tribblations in DS9 it's the cast getting to do something very different with their characters and just have some fun with it.
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Red Matter was a great McGuffin, I don't get why it got so much hate (well I guess I do, nerds want to flex and show off how much they know about black holes).
I really didn't have a problem with Red Matter; what bothered me was that the "fastest" ship the Vulcans could send to try and save Romulus had a top speed of... warp 8? Did they really not have access to any Starfleet vessel made within the past, what, 50 years? Or did they rebalance the warp scale, again, and it just so happened that nobody had built anything that could go as fast as the new warp 9?
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Well there was the question of why they made so ****ing much of it.
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I don't even know if it was the red matter itself that was responsible (it's been a few years since I've sat through the movie), but I distinctly remember part of the whole backstory being old Spock talking about "a supernova that could destroy the galaxy" and owwwww my brain.
Beastie Boys is a fantastic inclusion in Star Trek and I will broker no argument on this subject. Peaceful and post-scarcity doesn't mean boring.
Okay, admittedly I should have left them out of it, because little **** Kirk barreling through Iowa in a vintage Corvette blasting Sabotage kicked ass. :D
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Well there was the question of why they made so ****ing much of it.
My fellow Vulcans, we cannot allow the Red Matter Gap to widen.
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I am worried about all the other colors though. What will blue matter even do?
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Blue Matter Matters?
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Red matter was the stuff that would suck up planets and stars and put out the supernova. It took only a drop of the stuff to destroy a planet. So of course the Vulcans went the entirely logical route of making gallons of the stuff.
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To be fair, if your first attempt fails, you'd sure as hell want to have enough material for a second, or a third, and so on. The Manhattan Project didn't limit its amount of usable nuclear material to a few bombs' worth by choice, but because that's literally all they had at the time, even with the gargantuan facilities at Oak Ridge and Hanford.
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Rule 1 of pretty much any physics/chemistry experiment: you can never have enough starting material.
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Are there any more technologies on Star Trek becoming reality? I see warp drive, tricorders, replicators, hypospray, etc. to name a few.
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Are there any more technologies on Star Trek becoming reality? I see warp drive, tricorders, replicators, hypospray, etc. to name a few.
This should be entertaining. Setting aside the fact that tricorder-style instruments and hyposprays are pretty fancy names for pretty basic technology, I wouldn't even begin to call 3D fabrication akin to replicator technology, nor warp drive even a remote possibility at this point.
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Flat screens. When I saw that on TNG I thought these guys were smoking really high pot, how the hell would all the electron beams deflect within that tiny thickness?
Of course, I was like 10-12 when I made that thought, and didn't even dream LCDs would be able to do what they do now.
... I wouldn't even begin to call 3D fabrication akin to replicator technology, ...
That is the very endgame of 3d printing though. Perhaps in a century?
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That is the very endgame of 3d printing though. Perhaps in a century?
Who knows. I wouldn't even begin to try predicting the pace of tech development in that kind of timespan.
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What's wrong with doing that? I mean, it's not as if someone in 2116 will check back on you telling the many ways you went wrong ;)
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You might as well try to predict who will be president of the US in 30 years, you'll be about as accurate.
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That's easy to answer: Kim Kardashian.
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That's easy to answer: Kim Kardashian.
Only if President Yeezy manages to release a good album while in office.
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Are there any more technologies on Star Trek becoming reality? I see warp drive, tricorders, replicators, hypospray, etc. to name a few.
This should be entertaining. Setting aside the fact that tricorder-style instruments and hyposprays are pretty fancy names for pretty basic technology, I wouldn't even begin to call 3D fabrication akin to replicator technology, nor warp drive even a remote possibility at this point.
Back in the day ... we thought those snazzy communicators they had looked really cool, but we'd never get those in reality right? Could never make a phone that small ... and without cables too! :P
Also Tablets ... saw them on Next Generation first! (I believe that was even a point made in one of the Apple/Samsung lawsuits about the ipad. ;-))
You might as well try to predict who will be president of the US in 30 years, you'll be about as accurate.
Well of course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGUNPMPrxvA
:-)
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:lol:
@ 2m 7s:
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You may check out this thread (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=92581.msg1830468#msg1830468) on Gary Johnson calling for humanity to settle on other planets. This is like in Star Trek, you know.
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No it's not.
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It's totes like it. Come on, don't be a bummer, we're about to be visited by Vulcans any day now.
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They would monitor the US election debates from beyond Pluto's orbit, investigate the background of the two primary candidates, then shake their heads in horror, and make a note to quarantine this sector. :headdesk:
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Counter-orbit debris field operation is go.
Logic dictates that we must be Kessler'd.
(Ironically this would be one of the few ways to unite us.)