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17th Century fleets weren't all frigates and ships of the line. They'd also use smaller and more maneuverable ships like galleys, cutters, sloops and corvettes for boarding, raiding, flanking, and interdiction. They were useful for navigating in harbors and other tight quarters, mounting surprise attacks, running messages and supplies, and filling out the line in battles and blockades. If the Galaxy class is equivalent to a first rate ship of the line and most of the other big ships we see are lower rated line ships or frigates, then something a bit smaller like the Defiant would probably be somewhere in the sloop/corvette range at the very smallest, but is probably closer to something like a brig or small frigate. Shuttles are obviously a ship's boats, and runabouts and those Peregrine fighters seem roughly equivalent to a 6-10 gun cutter, a type of vessel that was in common use throughout the age of sail.
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Aug 18, 2016 09:12
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HORATIO HORNBLOWER posted:Who cares about the technology? Not the writers that's for sure. The implications of it all were problematic as hell dating back to The Cage. No reboot or prequel or alternate universe can change the fact that technology in Trek is always exactly as magical as the plot (and the production constraints) requires it to be, no more and no less. The original continuity deserves to be continued because DS9 left it in such a fascinating place. The Romulans and the Federation allied with each other for the first time in their centuries-long history. What happens with that? Does the detente with the Dominion hold? Does Bajor join the Federation? What does the Klingon empire look like under Martok's rule? Will the Cardassians rebuild? What does post-occupation Betazed look like? Will those that lived through the war spend the rest of their lives looking for changelings behind every tree? How does Ferengi society adapt? There are zillions of interesting stories to tell in this universe and there's no inherit reason to let the technobabble get in the way of doing it. There just isn't the will. But here's the thing - Romulus is destroyed in the 24th century Prime timeline (post DS9) via supernova due to Spock not being quick enough. So now in the Prime timeline you've got a scarce people ala the Vulcans in the Kelvin timeline. So that makes things interesting as well. Which is fun for all sorts of different reasons. So you've got a decimated people in the Cardassians and Romulans. Do the Klingons turn again? Do the others turn to small cell terrorism? Is the Dominion still a threat and everyone bands together under one banner? I do like this concept. CaveGrinch fucked around with this message at 09:30 on Aug 18, 2016 |
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Aug 18, 2016 09:24
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Are the Romulans necessarily concentrated on Romulus? Vulcan's just one world but the Romulans have a huge empire, surely there are a lot of them not on Romulus. It's a blow but I don't see why it'd be equivalent. I really wish they had gone ahead with having the Romulan on DS9. I can't imagine how they ever thought there was nothing to do with that character and dropped it. I appreciate Moore realizing how dumb that was in retrospect but man what a missed opportunity.
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Aug 18, 2016 09:34
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Other Romulans off on other planets are irrelevant. It's like if Washington DC and New York both just disappeared off the face of the planet. Devastating to the world and utterly ruinous to the US. Just because every Romulan man, woman, and child didn't die doesn't mean they aren't totally hosed.
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Aug 18, 2016 09:48
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WickedHate posted:Other Romulans off on other planets are irrelevant. It's like if Washington DC and New York both just disappeared off the face of the planet. Devastating to the world and utterly ruinous to the US. Just because every Romulan man, woman, and child didn't die doesn't mean they aren't totally hosed.
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Aug 18, 2016 09:50
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How do you know? They're not even from Romulus, they immigrated there in the not too distant past. We know virtually nothing about the organization of the empire, it may not even be the most populated planet. If they're really sticking to the Roman Empire theme, Rome itself wasn't terribly important for the latter half of Roman history.
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Aug 18, 2016 09:52
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Grand Fromage posted:How do you know? They're not even from Romulus, they immigrated there in the not too distant past. We know virtually nothing about the organization of the empire, it may not even be the most populated planet. If they're really sticking to the Roman Empire theme, Rome itself wasn't terribly important for the latter half of Roman history.
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Aug 18, 2016 10:05
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I mean you guys could be right but they really haven't told us anything about how the empire works in the show. It's wide open for them to do whatever they want with it. Most interesting would probably be the empire fragmenting. I could see a faction doing a Praxis thing and making peace with the Federation, an extremist faction, factions of the other races that the Romulans presumably control, etc.
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Aug 18, 2016 10:13
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Well, what I'm arguing isn't that the empire was annihilated and Romulans are now extinct, just had their poo poo pushed in so sufficiently that they can't lick their wounds and go back to business as usual. Extremist/peaceful split is what STO did with it.
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Aug 18, 2016 10:17
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There's also the question of how much notice they had for the supernova. No way could they evacuate the whole planet, but there's a good chance the senate and upper leadership got out of there in time. The real question is how this would affect their foreign policy. They seemed like they might be on their way to becoming the preeminent power after DS9, but now that their empire is crippled (and presumably rife with internal strife), the question of expansion vs. isolation becomes even more fraught. Will they turn inward again and just focus on holding their borders or will they open up and ask their neighbors for help? Will they seek to regain power through expansion? What about the all the territory they took (back) from the Dominion/Cardassians. Will they be able to hold that, or will their weakness open the door for uprising? What about the Klingons, how long before they turn on their ancient enemies once they're too weak to defend themselves? What would the Feds do then? There are just so many great story possibilities and it's a shame we won't get to see how it all turns out for a while yet, if ever. I'm really looking forward to that DS9 documentary. The talk of getting all the writers together to brainstorm "season 8" sounds rad as hell.
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Aug 18, 2016 10:19
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Duckbag posted:I'm really looking forward to that DS9 documentary. The talk of getting all the writers together to brainstorm "season 8" sounds rad as hell. Whoa you can't just drop this without some details.
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Aug 18, 2016 10:23
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Post-DS9 I get, but DS9 itself ended so definitively, I have no idea how you could possibly continue it. It had a good run and all together is a self contained story.
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Aug 18, 2016 10:26
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They knew they were ending and wrapped it up though. I remember them talking about how they thought the show was still very much in its stride and could've gone on longer if they weren't being forced to end by the seven season convention.
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Aug 18, 2016 10:29
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Here it is It was already linked a few pages back, but the gist of it is that Ira Steven Behr interviewed a bunch of old ds9 alums -- pretty much everyone except Avery Brooks. The two of them apparently are still on good terms. Brooks just didn't want to do it. Supposedly, twenty years later they were finally able to pin down what DS9 was "about." The coolest part though is probably that Behr got the core writing team back together, made them rewatch the last episode, and then started asking them what they thought should happen next.
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Aug 18, 2016 10:31
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All that a potential season 8 or 9 meant was more pain and suffering for O'Brien. The poor guy.
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Aug 18, 2016 10:31
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Ezri aside, what we got was perfectly serviceable. It didn't feel rushed or cut short. It just feels pointless to wonder about how hypothetically, the Dominion War could have totally been stretched out with another season or two.
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Aug 18, 2016 10:35
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It'll be interesting to see what they think. I don't know if you need to stretch the war at all, there's plenty to explore in the consequences. That was one thing B5 did well, they had a good amount of episodes getting into what happens next once the big war's over.
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Aug 18, 2016 10:40
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There's no reason that they'd have had to continue the Dominion War. It sort of took over the show in the last few years, but they did several seasons without a big war and many of the best episodes are from that era. They could always do stories about rebuilding Cardassia, the establishment of a new DMZ, uneasy relations with the Romulans and Klingons and so on, or actually start exploring again. The bigger issue is they sent Sisko into the wormhole. I suspect that if they'd had another season to wrap things up, they would have pushed the Pah Wraith good vs. evil apotheosis stuff further on and given the Dominion war a little more time to breathe. I know a lot of you hated the whole Dukat/Kai Winn subplot, but I think the big problems with it were that it didn't get a lot of screen time and really had very little to do with what was going on the rest of the time. Likewise, the resolutions to the Klingon, Ferengi, and Ezri subplots ended pretty abruptly. I know it's silly to say that they just didn't have enough time given how much goofy filler there is even in season 7, but I can easily see how they could have filled another half season or so just be fleshing out the existing story threads. It still probably would have been better than the last season of TNG.
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Aug 18, 2016 10:52
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I am okay with Star Trek having starfighters because starfighters are the coolest thing ever. Do they make practical sense? No. But a lot of poo poo in Star Trek doesn't make practical sense if you think about it. Unfortunately, the only starfighters that the Federation were shown to have are Peregrine fighters from DS9, which are pretty ugly and no where near as cool as X-Wings or Colonial Vipers.
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Aug 18, 2016 13:10
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Holy smokes, look at this thing I stumbled upon. http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/A_Gutted_World
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Aug 18, 2016 14:08
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The only thing more I'd want from the Dominion War would be a closer look at the Breen and the Breen Confederacy.
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Aug 18, 2016 14:11
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CobiWann posted:The only thing more I'd want from the Dominion War would be a closer look at the Breen and the Breen Confederacy. Turns out they're just disguises. 
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Aug 18, 2016 14:15
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The Breen are all secretly hot babes, fuckin' called it. My oddly specific fetish is validated.
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Aug 18, 2016 14:28
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armoredgorilla posted:Holy smokes, look at this thing I stumbled upon. This is pretty cool, but I don't get Sisko being Worf's second officer. I always thought he was given DS9 as an out of the way pity command to last him a bit till he retires, because of the whole "traumatized by Wolf 359" thing.
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Aug 18, 2016 14:32
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CobiWann posted:The only thing more I'd want from the Dominion War would be a closer look at the Breen and the Breen Confederacy.
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Aug 18, 2016 14:43
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WickedHate posted:This is pretty cool, but I don't get Sisko being Worf's second officer. I always thought he was given DS9 as an out of the way pity command to last him a bit till he retires, because of the whole "traumatized by Wolf 359" thing. I've read it, the justification was that Sisko had been building the Defiant instead of commanding DS9, so he was assigned to it because he knew its systems best. It's not a particularly good story - at least, I didn't enjoy it. It's one of those "What if?" stories that just uses the alternate universe as an excuse to kill off as many main characters as possible. A pity, since I really liked the initial setup of "What if the Bajoran occupation never ended?", but then it just becomes "And then the Changelings take over this planet! And then they kill all these people! And then this planet explodes!"
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Aug 18, 2016 14:44
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Angry Salami posted:I've read it, the justification was that Sisko had been building the Defiant instead of commanding DS9, so he was assigned to it because he knew its systems best. He built the Defiant before coming to DS9 - that's part of the show. It's what he was doing between Wolf 359 and DS9.
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Aug 18, 2016 14:47
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FlamingLiberal posted:The novels establish that the Breen are a group of separate species that all wear those same outfits as some kind of forced equality. Their government is a police state. I don't remember offhand what the explanation was for why they ended up coming together. Is this the Typhon Pact line?
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Aug 18, 2016 14:50
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CobiWann posted:Is this the Typhon Pact line? It's all been one big continuity for a decade or so, hasn't it? Excluding things like the Shatnerverse.
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Aug 18, 2016 14:57
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The most notable 'revelation' about a Trek race I recall from the books was that Andorians had 4 genders. Of course, they didn't do much with it, as to make it 'make sense' with what we saw on screen they had to essentially fit human sexual dimorphism, so there were 2 types of dude and 2 types of lady, basically.
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Aug 18, 2016 15:14
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That's a lot of ways to have pairings that some factions consider abominations.
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Aug 18, 2016 15:17
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CobiWann posted:Is this the Typhon Pact line?
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Aug 18, 2016 15:26
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The only unfinished thing about DS9 is the original premise of the show. Sisko was sent to DS9 to make sure Bajor was ready to join the federation, and they never actually join the federation, just kind of get pushed into bed with them by the Dominion War.
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Aug 18, 2016 15:31
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Eh, they're literally moments away from doing it before Sisko crashes the signing ceremony and prophecies that they should put it off until after the war. It was a done deal. They should've thrown it into the epilogue scene, though. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 15:37 on Aug 18, 2016 |
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Aug 18, 2016 15:33
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Data Graham posted:That's a lot of ways to have pairings that some factions consider abominations. Well, they also did a Denobulan-style thing where the normal practice was for quartets instead of couples. It was a whole thing with Kira's new... science officer, I think, on DS9, where his whole group of spouses came to the station to take him home.
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Aug 18, 2016 15:38
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So, I finished the Gene Roddenberry book. The way he treated DC Fontanna, and his first wife and their daughters, was really loving abhorrent! And Majel, jeez, she was kind of a major oval office too. Fontana becoming a writer in Gene's words: She's his secretary and he promotes her on the spot from a hundred dollars to a thousand to be a story editor. She is overcome with womanly emotion and starts crying, because she's "frightened by the show". How it actually happened: She resigned as his secretary, where she made 300$+overtime, to pursue a writing career. And then when TNG rolls around, he wants her to write scripts for him with his name on them, and makes up lies about how she owes him because people threatened to resign if he let her work on the series(this did not happen). When she refuses, she gets put in a lovely office as punishment and Gene gets mad about no one else being "a team player". Gene also blatantly presented the idea for Geordie being blind as his own right after someone else submitted it. Meanwhile his own contributions were four breasted nymphomaniac hermaphrodite Troi, and Wesley Crusher as a "yoda-ish midget". Oh, and he stole the credit for The Menagerie, threw a temper tantrum because he felt the Hugo Awards were unfair to him, didn't attend the awards because he was embarrassed by the lashing he got from other people for his tantrum, and as a result missed out on being there to accept the award he won. For the Menagerie. Which he did not write. Sorry if this post is too  , I just kind of want to punch his ghost in the balls right now.
WickedHate fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Aug 18, 2016 |
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Aug 18, 2016 18:16
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Grand Fromage posted:I mean you guys could be right but they really haven't told us anything about how the empire works in the show. It's wide open for them to do whatever they want with it. Most interesting would probably be the empire fragmenting. I could see a faction doing a Praxis thing and making peace with the Federation, an extremist faction, factions of the other races that the Romulans presumably control, etc. Speaking of Praxis, was it ever mentioned in TNG onwards? In VI they say that the Klingon empire had 50 years to live but I don't remember any of that being mentioned in the series. Was the whole peace treaty thing retconned to the Kitomer Massacre or something?
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Aug 18, 2016 18:33
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I'm pretty sure Praxis was just used as the catalyst for reproachment. The Khitomer Massacre, while taking place at the place where the accords were signed, was a different event that was its own catalyst for the Federation/Klingon alliance. Edit: lol, i just read the Memory Alpha entry for Khitomer which led me to this summary: The Khitomer Accords were signed at the Khitomer Conference at Camp Khitomer on the planet Khitomer. Thwomp fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Aug 18, 2016 |
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Aug 18, 2016 18:50
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EvilTaytoMan posted:Speaking of Praxis, was it ever mentioned in TNG onwards? In VI they say that the Klingon empire had 50 years to live but I don't remember any of that being mentioned in the series. Was the whole peace treaty thing retconned to the Kitomer Massacre or something? Praxis was mentioned in the Voyager flashback-to-ST6 episode. I think the 'fifty years to live' thing was basically "...if they don't make any other changes and just keep pouring everything into their military." The Federation President also mentions evacuation of the Klingon homeworld, but we don't know what actually happened there; maybe they developed some new technology that allowed them to reclaim the planet's environment without having to evacuate everyone. Or maybe the Klingon homeworld is largely empty by TNG, except for a capital city that's propped up by sheer force of technology. Or maybe the initial estimates of environmental damage were overly pessimistic. We don't know.
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Aug 18, 2016 18:50
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Gammatron 64 posted:I am okay with Star Trek having starfighters because starfighters are the coolest thing ever. Do they make practical sense? No. But a lot of poo poo in Star Trek doesn't make practical sense if you think about it. Everyone else has starfighters. Can we not have one setting where starfighters aren't king?
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Aug 18, 2016 18:58
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