Star Trek: *hits blunt* The higher, the fewerrrrrr

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > Star Trek: *hits blunt* The higher, the fewerrrrrr

Orv: May 4, 2011

Nebakenezzer posted:

A dumb question: why is the Romulian warbird like 3x the size of the Enterprise? I admit I was not looking very closely at the time, but I always assumed they were around the same size:

Warbirds are always presented as physically imposing to the Enterprise in TNG, usually by having them cloak directly next to it and slightly above, so they look bigger. And I think they probably are at least a little bigger. I doubt it's that much bigger, because as noted sci-fi ship comparison charts are generally put together from inconsistent sources at best.

# ? Jul 27, 2017 22:29

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# ? May 16, 2024 02:31

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

cheetah7071 posted:

What led you to believe that because Borg resemble Zombies in some respects, they therefore must be 100% identical to them in all ways?

An objective understanding of the Borg. Borg are Space Robot Zombies. You get bit, whatever you were before is gone.

I mean, it's not as if First Contact brought up Borg As Zombies thing a billion times.

WampaLord posted:

Except when they undid it for Picard, of course.

Reading is a skill, but for those who lack that skill, I did point out that Picard's situation involved a) an existing character, b) a not-locked-down depiction of the Borg at the time*, and c) he wouldn't have been 'fixed' if the contract negotiations weren't resolved.

Picard's case is special and unique. He wasn't Borged. He was Locutus.

* Remember, Crusher said it'd be a case of micro-surgery, which is flat out wrong in later depictions.

# ? Jul 27, 2017 22:29

Gonz: Dec 22, 2009; "Jesus, did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me?"

Seven of Nine was Borged and then un-Borged.

# ? Jul 27, 2017 22:30

Orv: May 4, 2011

Goddamn he is stupid isn't he.

# ? Jul 27, 2017 22:32

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

dont even fink about it posted:

DS9 went some places, by Star Trek standards. It also features Benjamin Sisko the Self-Righteous War Criminal,

Maquis wanted to be treated like a real space nation, guess what happens when space nations start lobbing WMDs?

They got off easy, too - the Cardassians would have probably just performed a general planetary bombardment and wiped out the Maquis populations altogether.

# ? Jul 27, 2017 22:32

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

Gonz posted:

Seven of Nine was Borged and then un-Borged.

No, she's still Borg. Annika was Borged, and Annika never came back.

There was a plot based on the fact that she needs Borg parts to survive that break down, if she has too much emotions. It took another Borg's part (who almost died in the removal) to keep her around.

The outside stuff changed, but she's Borg, and she'll always be Borg.

# ? Jul 27, 2017 22:33

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

MisterBibs posted:

You get bit, whatever you were before is gone.

This is not supported by the text though

Picard was restored. Seven was partially restored, and struggled to reclaim more of her old self. Hugh, while presumably borgified as a baby and thus didn't have a pre-borg personality, did have elements of his pre-borg species restored (such as having an individual ego). In First Contact the writers go out of their way to point out that Picard was in the wrong for just shooting the borgified crew members instead of trying to help them

# ? Jul 27, 2017 22:33

Powered Descent: Jul 13, 2008; We haven't had that spirit here since 1969.

MisterBibs posted:

Voyager, from minute one, was designed with the intent of being TNG2. DS9 was quickly falling down in the ratings after a record-high pilot, and the folks in charge understood that the only chance they had was to go back to the well if they wanted any chance of Trek being successful again.

It failed because by the time Voyager rolled around, the audiences that made TNG so popular were simply done with Trek.

This seems like a good time to trot the ratings graph back out.

# ? Jul 27, 2017 22:37

vermin: Feb 28, 2017; Help, I've turned into a manifestation of mental disorders as viewed through an early 20th century lens sparked by the disparity between man and modern society and I can't get up

Discovery's going to run into the website watermark

# ? Jul 27, 2017 22:38

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

cheetah7071 posted:

Picard was restored.

A cursory look up will explain how Picard's case is objectively, unarguably different. Main Lead, who almost didn't survive, back before Borging was determined to be unfixable.

I'd also encourage you to re-watch First Contact with a more textual eye. There's no wrongness attributed to him killing Borg, the wrongness is based on his desire for revenge. The person who has issues with Picard killing Borg thinks they can be saved, which the person with experience knows they cannot. This is the person who is still Borg enough to hear Borgsound. You can't undo Borging.

MisterBibs fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Jul 27, 2017

# ? Jul 27, 2017 22:40

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

cheetah7071 posted:

I just rewatched Thine Own Self and holy poo poo did they just promote loving Troi higher than Data?

It's a weird artifact of the writers "forgetting" why the medical staff are higher-ranked to begin with. In the US Navy you could, say, have a dentist on an aircraft carrier that holds the rank of Commander - but if the bridge and CIC get scragged by commie missiles, there's no way the dentist is taking command of the ship, because the dentist isn't a line officer.

Honestly, during Disaster, it should have been Ensign Ro who took command of the bridge. But someone decided it'd make a good story to have Troi thrust into command while being unaware of concepts like "if antimatter containment fails, the ship explodes and everyone dies" so they decided "gently caress it, she's got the highest rank, she gets the big chair."

(me, I think it would have been a great time to show that this Starfleet Academy graduate actually does already have some knowledge and training beyond her immediate duties - sort of like Worf's stint as Ops officer during The Most Toys)

# ? Jul 27, 2017 22:42

F_Shit_Fitzgerald: Feb 2, 2017

I wonder whether an explanation for the ease with which Picard was "restored" had to do with the fact that he was Borg for only a short time. Annika (and probably Hugh also) had been Borg for most of her life, so it wasn't so easy to just take out the implants and call it a day.

# ? Jul 27, 2017 22:43

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

Orv posted:

Warbirds are always presented as physically imposing to the Enterprise in TNG, usually by having them cloak directly next to it and slightly above, so they look bigger. And I think they probably are at least a little bigger. I doubt it's that much bigger, because as noted sci-fi ship comparison charts are generally put together from inconsistent sources at best.

They were definitely intended to be substantially larger:

That's a comparison drawn by Andy Probert, who designed both ships.

I don't have a problem with gigantic Warbirds, in part because we don't know how durable they actually are (my suspicion is that a toe-to-toe slugging match between a Galaxy and a Warbird would probably come down to whoever fired first), and also because we don't know how many there are. Maybe the Romulans only have like twenty of them, who knows.

# ? Jul 27, 2017 22:47

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

MisterBibs posted:

A cursory look up will explain how Picard's case is objectively, unarguably different. Main Lead, who almost didn't survive, back before Borging was determined to be unfixable.

"Borg can't be restored, provided you ignore the absolutely inarguable case of a borg being restored, and rationalize away the other borg being partially restored", got it

Like, even if the writers of Best of Both Worlds Part I intended borgification to be irreversible, the writers of Part II came and said "nah, it totally is" and then that's canon now, even if the reason they wrote that was because of contract negotiations

I won't press on the First Contact point because it's been a while and I can't do a line-by-line argument without rewatching it

# ? Jul 27, 2017 22:50

vermin: Feb 28, 2017; Help, I've turned into a manifestation of mental disorders as viewed through an early 20th century lens sparked by the disparity between man and modern society and I can't get up

If I'm reading the romulans correctly, the warbirds are probably mostly empty hallways meant to give the impression that they have a lot going for them

# ? Jul 27, 2017 22:54

shadok: Dec 12, 2004; You tried to destroy it once before, Commodore.
The result was a wrecked ship and a dead crew.; Fun Shoe

Farmer Crack-rear end posted:

I don't have a problem with gigantic Warbirds, in part because we don't know how durable they actually are (my suspicion is that a toe-to-toe slugging match between a Galaxy and a Warbird would probably come down to whoever fired first), and also because we don't know how many there are. Maybe the Romulans only have like twenty of them, who knows.

I always assumed that most of those D'deridex warbirds was fairing and poo poo and that in terms of actual habitable volume they were about comparable to a Galaxy class. Certainly in terms of power, speed, and offensive capability they were shown to be no better to a Galaxy and maybe somewhat inferior (see: "Tin Man").

# ? Jul 27, 2017 22:55

Sash!: Mar 16, 2001

The thing is that you can't help the Borg in most cases. They don't want to be helped and are only interested in harming you. The only option you have is to defend yourself. But no matter how much you defend yourself, they're continually harming others. You can't stop one. You have to stop them all. You might be able to help a survivor here and there, but there's too many and too much danger to try to help the whole situation.

As I recall, they only saved Seven because they ended up stuck with her after they were chased away,being the last survivor of her team.

# ? Jul 27, 2017 22:57

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Sash! posted:

The thing is that you can't help the Borg in most cases. They don't want to be helped and are only interested in harming you. The only option you have is to defend yourself. But no matter how much you defend yourself, they're continually harming others. You can't stop one. You have to stop them all. You might be able to help a survivor here and there, but there's too many and too much danger to try to help the whole situation.

As I recall, they only saved Seven because they ended up stuck with her after they were chased away,being the last survivor of her team.

Yeah absolutely blowing them up is the best response to Borg attacking you most of the time, because saving them is much harder and in the meantime they're busy assimilating you. Saving the borg population as a whole is not plausible with TNG-level tech

# ? Jul 27, 2017 22:59

Baronjutter: Dec 31, 2007; "Tiny Trains"

I like this top down diagram. The real "meat" of a warbird is all in the front, the rest seems mostly just super-structure to hold the warp drives together. The total mass of the front bit on a warbird looks about comparable to the mass of a galaxy class, maybe 10-20% bigger. With slightly worse technology and maybe some large troop-transport focused areas I could see the two classes being on even footing.

I was reading some really spergy articles on trek ships. I miss the old design rule that warp drives had to be able to "see" each other to generate a field.

# ? Jul 27, 2017 23:04

shadok: Dec 12, 2004; You tried to destroy it once before, Commodore.
The result was a wrecked ship and a dead crew.; Fun Shoe

I thought this was the retcon in First Contact that was supposed to explain why Picard could be rescued from the Collective but nobody else could be:

quote:

PICARD: Let him go. He's not the one you want.

BORG QUEEN: Are you offering yourself to us?

PICARD: Offering myself? ...That's it. I remember now. It wasn't enough that you assimilate me. I had to give myself freely to the Borg, ...to you.

BORG QUEEN: You flatter yourself. I've overseen the assimilation of countless millions. You were no different.

PICARD: You're lying. You wanted more than just another Borg drone. You wanted a human being with a mind of his own, who could bridge the gulf between humanity and the Borg. You wanted a counterpart, but I resisted. I fought you.

BORG QUEEN: You can't begin to imagine the life you denied yourself.

PICARD: It's not too late. Locutus could still be with you, just in the way you wanted. An equal. Let Data go and I will take my place at your side, willingly without any resistance.

BORG QUEEN: Such a noble creature. A quality we sometimes lack. We will add your distinctiveness to our own. Welcome home, ...Locutus. ...Data, you are free to go.

Picard could be rescued because he wasn't fully assimilated, or at least not in the usual way where a drone's individual personality was irrevocably destroyed.

Then Voyager came along and pooped all over that.

# ? Jul 27, 2017 23:04

MisterBibs: Jul 17, 2010; dolla dolla
bill y'all; Fun Shoe

cheetah7071 posted:

"Borg can't be restored, provided you ignore the absolutely inarguable case of a borg being restored, and rationalize away the other borg being partially restored", got it

Again, adhere to a more textual eye. Borging can't be fixed. Picard was Borged, but it was partially undone. This, Picard's Borging was unique and has no merit to a discussion on Borging.

I mean, poo poo, Locutus had a name by the Borg Collective. Bright big red THIS IS SPECIAL neon sign.

Kinda beat to this by First Contact explicitly saying it was special. Remember: if what you're talking about is retconned away, you don't cite it.

cheetah7071 posted:

Like, even if the writers of Best of Both Worlds Part I intended borgification to be irreversible, the writers of Part II came and said "nah, it totally is" and then that's canon now, even if the reason they wrote that was because of contract negotiations

Yes, and later writers clarified and defined what the process of assimilation is. Picard's assimilation in BoBW must be viewed via that later-defined prism. You can't undo a Borg Bite.

# ? Jul 27, 2017 23:06

FuturePastNow: May 19, 2014

Farmer Crack-rear end posted:

I don't have a problem with gigantic Warbirds, in part because we don't know how durable they actually are (my suspicion is that a toe-to-toe slugging match between a Galaxy and a Warbird would probably come down to whoever fired first), and also because we don't know how many there are. Maybe the Romulans only have like twenty of them, who knows.

The Voyager episode with the Prometheus actually showed a little battle between Federation ships and warbirds that ended with one warbird getting owned and the rest running away. I don't think the TNG-era Romulans could have cashed the checks their mouths were writing whenever they threatened Picard. Picard didn't know that, though.

# ? Jul 27, 2017 23:12

The Bloop: Jul 5, 2004; by Fluffdaddy

MisterBibs posted:

You can't undo a Borg Bite.

Humans can't make a flying machine.
You can't break the sound barrier.
You can't move FTL.
You can't regrow a kidney with a pill in like three minutes.

# ? Jul 27, 2017 23:16

vermin: Feb 28, 2017; Help, I've turned into a manifestation of mental disorders as viewed through an early 20th century lens sparked by the disparity between man and modern society and I can't get up

I wonder what the technobabble behind that pill was

# ? Jul 27, 2017 23:19

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Even granting that Locutus was a Borg-adjacent being rather than a true Borg because I just don't care enough anymore to belabor the point, I still don't get how you go from "Seven and Hugh were not restored completely to their pre-Borg states instantly" to

MisterBibs posted:

Hugh was as much a "person" as Bub from Day Of The Dead was. Bub was trained to say ullo auhnt uhleeca, Hugh was trained to say its a person.

# ? Jul 27, 2017 23:19

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

Farmer Crack-rear end posted:

They were definitely intended to be substantially larger:

That's a comparison drawn by Andy Probert, who designed both ships.

I don't have a problem with gigantic Warbirds, in part because we don't know how durable they actually are (my suspicion is that a toe-to-toe slugging match between a Galaxy and a Warbird would probably come down to whoever fired first), and also because we don't know how many there are. Maybe the Romulans only have like twenty of them, who knows.

It's a fair point; I guess it's where the practical point of "physical size does not mean better that" collides with "OH YES IT DOES" that WW2 warships have going on

Baronjutter posted:

Because the people who make these ship size charts cherry pick data to decide how big things based on TV shows that were wildly inconsistent with scale in the first place. I mean look at the 3 birds of prey, it's the same physical model.

It's true, saying "All birds of prey are the same model" is just a deal breaker for some people, isn't it?

# ? Jul 27, 2017 23:51

Gaz-L: Jan 28, 2009

Well, also remember that the Warbird is about 80% empty space. In sheer interior volume, it may not be much bigger than the Enterprise.

# ? Jul 27, 2017 23:58

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

vermin posted:

I wonder what the technobabble behind that pill was

I bet it was some kind of standard "give this if you suspect internal organ bruising" tablet, just because Starfleet medical is basically Mercy's healing beam, only we mean it.

Like that's the other setting element making Mr. Bibs wrong here: With the limited exception of Worf (possibly justified by poor information on Klingon medical crap in their databases) and the fact that some stuff seems to require a prosthesis, like Picard's stabbed-to-goo heart, Starfleet medical science is essentially sorcery. Bashir's just making a clone of a guy in an open petri dish in his sickbay at a podunk space station. Nobody finds this remarkable. The Voyager Borg were rehabilitated by an emergency backup computer program, possibly buttressed by some random off-specialty biology guys.

You gonna tell me McCoy or Bashir couldn't have clobbered this problem?

Now if the Bibs point is that being a Borg for any major length of time fundamentally changes your personality from the original entity, sure. But that doesn't mean there isn't a person there.

# ? Jul 28, 2017 00:02

Gaz-L: Jan 28, 2009

Yeah, I don't think anyone's arguing that Seven's personality is drastically different than the woman Annika Hansen would've been had she grown up on Deep Space 42 or whatever in the Alpha Quad, and that that trauma isn't just going to go away, but there's a difference between "being a Borg fundamentally alters someone's psyche, in mostly harmful ways" and "is literally not a people".

# ? Jul 28, 2017 00:19

Regarde Aduck: Oct 19, 2012; c l o u d k i t t e n; Grimey Drawer

Baronjutter posted:

Because the people who make these ship size charts cherry pick data to decide how big things based on TV shows that were wildly inconsistent with scale in the first place. I mean look at the 3 birds of prey, it's the same physical model.

That's a needlessly dismissive way to say they're using extended universe data when making these pictures. Which includes things like the K'vort class literally being an upscaled bird of prey. Like that was its raison d'�tre. And if any show needed extended universe bullshit to fill in the blanks its Star Trek. Remember that according to strict canon, before ds9 the federation had like 5 galaxy class ships in the entire federation (and one blew up), earth had no home fleet apart from some drones launched from mars, and a massive fleet consisted of 30 ships. The original series kept things vague. A wise decision. The TNG writers evidently couldn't handle the scale of the federation and went 'um... there's like 50 ships of 4 classes in the entire federation'. Then the writing got better for ds9 and the federation found 5000 more ships. Earth still had no home fleet or defences lol.

# ? Jul 28, 2017 00:21

Spoeank: Jul 16, 2003; That's a nice set of 11 dynasty points there, it would be a shame if 3 rings were to happen with it

Hey guys I just finished watching Insurrection for the first time since it came out. I gotta tell you guys, watching it with fresh eyes and putting a lot of preconceived notions out of my head...

It's loving terrible in every single aspect, there's not a single redeeming moment lmao

# ? Jul 28, 2017 00:22

Gonz: Dec 22, 2009; "Jesus, did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me?"

F. Murray Abraham deserved so much better than Facelift Alien Antagonist.

# ? Jul 28, 2017 00:34

The_Doctor: Mar 29, 2007; "The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."

New pics! Transporter room looks better on the Discovery if a little neon and bright.

# ? Jul 28, 2017 00:34

Baronjutter: Dec 31, 2007; "Tiny Trains"

Did they finally pay their power bill?

# ? Jul 28, 2017 00:50

Evek: Apr 26, 2002; "It's okay. I wouldn't remember me either."

Keep in mind EW's photo shoots are notoriously bad with lighting so it may look nothing like it actually does in the show.

# ? Jul 28, 2017 01:09

WampaLord: Jan 14, 2010

Evek posted:

Keep in mind EW's photo shoots are notoriously bad with lighting so it may look nothing like it actually does in the show.

Yes, their stills are always always always poo poo. Look at trailers and clips for a real idea of how it will look.

# ? Jul 28, 2017 01:16

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

Spoeank posted:

Hey guys I just finished watching Insurrection for the first time since it came out. I gotta tell you guys, watching it with fresh eyes and putting a lot of preconceived notions out of my head...

It's loving terrible in every single aspect, there's not a single redeeming moment lmao

The drunken Frakes-Sirtis commentary is great

Otherwise :same: