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Phy posted:I stopped reading the novels well before they committed to having any sort of ongoing continuity within them, but I do remember this big crossover event between all four of the "shows" (ie TOS thru Voyager) where the Alpha Quadrant was being threatened by Devils Oh wow, I had forgotten about these books! I read them too back in the day. It was called "INVASION!" or something like that. The DS9 one was the best (not surprising), mostly because it followed a part of the story that was off to the side of the so-so main "devil aliens" arc. But yeah, it's like they gave four writers half an hour to sketch out a general idea of what was supposed to happen and then forbade all collaboration until everything was published.
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Jan 30, 2023 21:00
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Phy posted:I stopped reading the novels well before they committed to having any sort of ongoing continuity within them, but I do remember this big crossover event between all four of the "shows" (ie TOS thru Voyager) where the Alpha Quadrant was being threatened by Devils Yeah, the Invasion! crossover, which were some of the first Trek books I read, too. I think it was the first time they tried anything like it, and the rough edges showed. The TOS book was methodical and contemplative, with the somewhat stereotypical (even then) theme of "we're getting along, do we have to be enemies? welp, guess so" and then mutual respect at the end; the TNG book was more threat and action but also more cartoonish horror imagery; the DS9 book doesn't even have them face off with the Furies, they deal with time-travel stuff that gives them answers about what drove them out of the Alpha Quadrant; the VOY book is awful, mostly a lovely sequel to/remake of the TNG book but with the added bonus of coming off like the author* knew nothing (Tuvok claims to have been on the Excelsior decades before it was built, and there's a scene where Harry jumps out of his seat and jabs the helm controls because it's faster than telling Tom to move, which makes sense if you're imagining TNG where Ops was next to the helm and Data was superfast, but Harry would have had to dive across the bridge). Overall, no, not a great series, though I did still enjoy the DS9 book the last time I reread it. * Remember a few pages ago where I mentioned a book with a shuttle named the "Nameme?" Same author.
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Jan 30, 2023 21:07
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Phy posted:I do remember the Diane Duane books being good, and I liked that she brought a Horta crewmember onto the ship. In my later teens I read this book by her about wizards who were cats. This was an idea which sounded potentially terminally embarrassing to a 16 year old in the late 90s, but I read it anyway on the grounds that she was the Good Trek Novel Author and I trusted her not to gently caress it up, and she didn't That cat wizards series is legitimately very good, has a bunch of cool ideas, and some great characters. It's highly recommended. They're also on sale at her webstore, $2.50 each. https://ebooks.direct/collections/customer-favorites/products/the-book-of-night-with-moon
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Jan 30, 2023 21:08
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Phy posted:And the coolest looking ship is the Excelsior, but I do have a thing for Tapedeck Moderne or whatever the hell you call the aesthetic of 1980s Japanese-made consumer goods Cassette futurism?
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Jan 30, 2023 21:11
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mllaneza posted:That cat wizards series is legitimately very good, has a bunch of cool ideas, and some great characters. It's highly recommended. All her Wizards books are good, and she actually went back and rewrote some bits of them (mainly the third, I think) to address some things that were insensitive and problematic. She's a good egg in addition to being a good author.
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Jan 30, 2023 21:11
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MikeJF posted:Cassette futurism? That's the one. If it looks like a minidisc player hosed a third gen Supra I'm here for it mllaneza posted:That cat wizards series is legitimately very good, has a bunch of cool ideas, and some great characters. It's highly recommended. Huh. Might have to check out the other ones. I know I sounded harsh there but that's a reflection of my issues at the time, the book itself was good and I reread it a few times. Phy fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Jan 30, 2023 |
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Jan 30, 2023 21:17
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I liked the Pasteur, looking like the inspiration for the PSMove controllers
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Jan 30, 2023 21:32
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CPColin posted:I liked the Pasteur, looking like the inspiration for the PSMove controllers
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Jan 30, 2023 23:40
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V-Men posted:What I really miss is Birth of the Federation Horribly balanced and the AI was so bad but full of charm for sure
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Jan 31, 2023 00:55
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disaster pastor posted:the VOY book is awful, mostly a lovely sequel to/remake of the TNG book but with the added bonus of coming off like the author* knew nothing (Tuvok claims to have been on the Excelsior decades before it was built, and there's a scene where Harry jumps out of his seat and jabs the helm controls because it's faster than telling Tom to move, which makes sense if you're imagining TNG where Ops was next to the helm and Data was superfast, but Harry would have had to dive across the bridge). Overall, no, not a great series, though I did still enjoy the DS9 book the last time I reread it. If I'm remembering the series correctly, that Voyager entry also had an incredibly obnoxious afterword by the author that was basically him gassing up Star Trek and taking potshots at other sci-fi franchises. Real rich when you just wrote a bad book for a franchise that at the time was circling the drain.
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Jan 31, 2023 01:13
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Mooseontheloose posted:Horribly balanced and the AI was so bad but full of charm for sure A good version of it would be a hole I never dig out of. As it is I played the gently caress out of it. The Star Trek mod for Stellaris is very good but doesn't scratch the same itch.
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Jan 31, 2023 01:28
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There's still an active community around BotF, easy enough to find community resources including tons of mods and fixes to make it run on modern systems.
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Jan 31, 2023 01:43
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Knormal posted:The secondary hull should be the other way around i figured if the drawbridge was down you'd want it protected by the main cannon
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Jan 31, 2023 03:26
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Tom Guycot posted:Lower Decks is absolutely worth it. Not every joke lands, it can be reference heavy handed at times, and like the post above says the first part of season one was rough enough I was almost put off the show for good (I found Mariner unbearable at first), but by season two and then on to season 3 its absolutely my favorite of any of new star trek. peanut humper is really funny she should have her own spin off
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Jan 31, 2023 03:50
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Bring back Short Treks just to do Peanut Hamper in live action
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Jan 31, 2023 04:03
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disaster pastor posted:the VOY book is awful, mostly a lovely sequel to/remake of the TNG book but with the added bonus of coming off like the author* knew nothing (Tuvok claims to have been on the Excelsior decades before it was built, and there's a scene where Harry jumps out of his seat and jabs the helm controls because it's faster than telling Tom to move, which makes sense if you're imagining TNG where Ops was next to the helm and Data was superfast, but Harry would have had to dive across the bridge). The Voyager book also, I think, had the problem of being one of the first Voyager novels - it came out while the first season was still airing. So I suspect most of the errors were because the author had, at most, seen the pilot and read a couple of early scripts. Not the best choice to make the Voyager novel the grand finale of the series. And, yeah, the whole series seemed really badly planned out - they all had sequel hooks that the next book then didn't bother picking up on, and the choice to make the TOS novel the one where the crew make the most effort to negotiate a peace leads to the weird progression where the baddies start off sympathetic and fleshed out and become more and more one-dimensionally evil as the series goes on.
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Jan 31, 2023 04:21
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Seemlar posted:No, it's that people who "don't care" understand they're watching entertainment that has been made over a period of time spanning decades, and that naturally brings changes both creatively and practically, and these differences don't matter OK, so you would no problem watching a movie about, say WWI where they are wearing WWII uniforms and firing modern 21st century weapons, as long as it's said to be "taking place at the same time"? And to some other posts on the topic---I've been posting in these threads for over 20 years, and I think I've been around enough to not be known as an Overlord/Quartering style chud who sees some grand "25% different/woke Trek" conspiracy. I have been bitching about continuity since Enterprise debuted in 2001 (and they had viewscreens  ). But I've also watched every minute of Star Trek since, and cheerlead a lot of it. Hell, I've been pretty drat fair to Discovery.I just really am not hot on changing the looks of things or established lore to make it cooler or because they're too lazy to listen to the person they pay to look up poo poo on Memory Alpha and vet scripts. And I really can't see them slavishly replicating Berman era Trek, say, 20 years from now. Hell, peep the other thread, they erased Berman from Trek history on the Titan plaque.
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Jan 31, 2023 04:33
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MrMojok posted:What is the best-looking ship of all time? If we can go outside of Star Trek, for me, it's the Shadow "battlecrab." B5's effects had a resolution not much bigger than a 90s gif and they still managed to pull off a design that spoke to "menace" and "fear" immediately without a second glance, and without being simple. If we're only counting Star Trek then my darkhorse nom is the Ferengi Marauder. That might be just the Star Control Ilrath design that's scratching an itch in my brain, but I still love it.
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Jan 31, 2023 04:40
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Whats the best Doctor episode of Voyager because Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy is pretty high up there.
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Jan 31, 2023 04:42
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Hollismason posted:Whats the best Doctor episode of Voyager because Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy is pretty high up there. That could be the one. Or maybe it's Message in a Bottle or Living Witness.
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Jan 31, 2023 04:48
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I watched that Undiscovered Country movie and it was a good time. There could be worse sendoffs for the TOS crew than that. And along the way we learned a little something about ourselves.
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Jan 31, 2023 04:50
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Hollismason posted:Whats the best Doctor episode of Voyager because Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy is pretty high up there. If you ignore that the next episode is Bride of Chaotica! (for continuity purposes, not quality) then Latent Image is really good.
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Jan 31, 2023 05:33
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Kibayasu posted:If you ignore that the next episode is Bride of Chaotica! (for continuity purposes, not quality) then Latent Image is really good. Never ignore Bride of Chaotica!
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Jan 31, 2023 05:56
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Astroman posted:I just really am not hot on changing the looks of things or established lore to make it cooler or because they're too lazy to listen to the person they pay to look up poo poo on Memory Alpha and vet scripts. And I really can't see them slavishly replicating Berman era Trek, say, 20 years from now. Hell, peep the other thread, they erased Berman from Trek history on the Titan plaque. Oh no, they didn't put the sexist homophobe's name on the plaque that's not going to be readable onscreen that's in the show he's not associated with. It's just like 1984!
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Jan 31, 2023 06:09
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Ups_rail posted:peanut humper is really funny she should have her own spin off I wouldn't go that far. She's a fun, funny character who's a good villain because she's not so much Epic Evil as just a basic self-centered bitch. She's even willing to help others if it's not too inconvenient for her. That said, the one episode that focused on her in the last season tested the limits of my tolerance for her. A guest spot a couple times a season would be okay but I don't think I'd watch a whole series focused on her.
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Jan 31, 2023 06:22
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Astroman posted:OK, so you would no problem watching a movie about, say WWI where they are wearing WWII uniforms and firing modern 21st century weapons, as long as it's said to be "taking place at the same time"? Everyone has a line for acceptable changes to things they enjoy and I always think people who complain about people complaining about changes are being a bit unfair. Lots of people complained about the klingon re-design in discovery, after an established look that had been pretty consistent since 1979, and lots of people thought those people were complaining too much when the design already changed once before between TOS and TMP. Everyone would have a point where its too much for them personally though, I mean they could have re-designed Vulcan's for discovery to be CGI jar jar binks looking reptiles and that would be perfectly valid but would probably cause a lot of the later group to start complaining as well and say thats different for some reason. I don't know, personally, I think if you're going to take place in a world thats been established you're better off only changing what needs to be changed, like cheap plywood sets and jolly rancher buttons that just fit in the budget of a mid 1960's network television show. Really, that sort of thing mostly only applies to TOS stuff though, by the time of the movies and TNG they had production design and costumes of a high enough quality that changing the basic designs isn't usually to fix budgetary shortcomings, but for the sake of changing it itself. I think a good example is the Andorians, because ENT did a wonderful job bringing them back, and with a big budget and modern tech. They had the makeup teams at their peak by then that could have done any crazy design they wanted, but all they did was make the antenna motorized to move with their mood and it looked brilliant. Then they redid them for the modern shows and, well it wasn't to correct technical deficiencies because the look they ended up with was easily within what ENT could have done if they wanted to, just another latex alien of the week, but simply because they wanted to make it different to be different. They don't look bad or anything mind you, but they also don't look any better than jeffery combs with his antenna waving around. What was the point in the end? Or LCARS being a wonderful forward thinking contextual touchscreen display (that was genuinely functional to use if that VR bridge commander game is any indication  ) as well as visually striking and unique, only to be basically gone by the time of Picard for generic looking holographic barf. If Disney had done their new star wars films and radically changed the look of Darth Vader and stuff for Rogue One just because "eh the original was from the 70's, its weird to slavishly hold to an old design when we can do something new" it would just be a weird choice that no one would like, and bring to question why they even bought the rights to it.Honestly this is why TOS was best left to cheeky fun short visits, and not all these seasons and shows set there. You have to update such cheap and bare bones sets for a modern show, but at the same time when you go too far and loose the flavor of it, you run the risk of it no longer looking like what its meant to be. This is one of the biggest strengths lower decks has as well, its the only new trek show that looks like its actually a star trek show unambiguously. It certainly doesn't hamper my ability to enjoy SNW (which outside of the unforgivable butchering of the Gorn has been great), but it does make it feel a lot less connected to "Star Trek" as a series than something like lower decks.
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Jan 31, 2023 07:02
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Tom Guycot posted:(which outside of the unforgivable butchering of the Gorn has been great) Yes, "butchering" the Gorn by making them much more interesting, how dare they
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Jan 31, 2023 07:26
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Astroman posted:OK, so you would no problem watching a movie about, say WWI where they are wearing WWII uniforms and firing modern 21st century weapons, as long as it's said to be "taking place at the same time"? Maybe this is just me being blasé about the practice of updating established aesthetics for modern media, but this is not at all how I see it. It’s more akin to, say, how a tv show made in 1968 would have done WW2 GI uniforms compared to a tv show made in 2023 depicting the same uniform. The show being made in 1968 probably only has access to whatever was already on hand and owned by the studio or various prop shops, and possibly has the ability for their in-house production folks to make one or two Hero uniforms that’ll be used in close-ups, etc. The show being made in 2023 has a team that can literally scour the internet for all sorts of images, films, even original clothing patterns in order to fully replicate that uniform or find an existing copy to purchase or rent. Not to mention things like 3D printers existing, meaning you can replicate minute details and accessories for very little cost, things that wouldn’t even have been visible on a broadcast in 1968 that the 1968 team probably wouldn’t have bothered with to save time and budget. This is not a knock on the hypothetical 1968 team by any means. They’re doing incredible work with limited resources, but the 2023 team can do the same or more with far less work and far more ease. The Enterprise still looks like the Enterprise, the uniforms still look like the TOS uniforms, everything’s just a bit more detailed and in-focus simply because of the nature of making a show in 2023 that’ll be seen and streamed in HD or higher.
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Jan 31, 2023 07:55
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ashpanash posted:Yes, "butchering" the Gorn by making them much more interesting, how dare they The whole thing with the Gorn was they were these monstrous looking alien beasts who must be as horrible as their appearance, except, oh wait, they're not monsters, they're just people who were defending themselves, who felt they were under attack by the Federation in their territory. The point was not judging a book by its cover, and having an open mind. Now they really are literal xenomorph brutal monsters who feed poor unwitting people live to their young, and on top of that the Brave Crew of the Enterprise spent an episode trying to escape and murder an infant. Thats so incredibly hosed up. Could you imagine if the DS9 crew just bashed in that baby jem'hadar's skull when it became angry and violent? Or that episode of ENT where they find a ship of baby insectoid xindi where Archer makes the great point when the crew wants to leave them to die "would you still want to if it was a ship of infant humanoids?" (even if he was starting to get effected by hormone spores or whatever). Knowing now what the Gorn apparently are, Kirk should have 100% murdered that loving Gorn and his ship then, because they're psycho monsters and letting them live is a mistake. Its beyond out of character for star fleet crews to go around murdering sentient children instead of trying to capture it, returning it to its people, anything but murder. Its hard to express how un-star trek that felt, and it wasn't even for some great episode either, just a cheap as poo poo aliens ripoff that was the worst episode of the season.
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Jan 31, 2023 08:01
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The problem with the Turbo Lift Dimension isn't that it's not part of previous lore, the problem with it is that it's extremely loving stupid even taken on its own merits.
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Jan 31, 2023 08:12
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You can reason with one guy in a big dumb rubber suit and you can reason with Hugh, but you can't reason with the TNG Borg collectively. Everything you mentioned was, to me anyway, just saying "yeah these guys are a lot more interesting now, they bring up a lot more questions and quandaries."
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Jan 31, 2023 08:13
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Big Mean Jerk posted:The Enterprise still looks like the Enterprise, the uniforms still look like the TOS uniforms, everything’s just a bit more detailed and in-focus simply because of the nature of making a show in 2023 that’ll be seen and streamed in HD or higher. I vehemently disagree with this and this is actually my major problem with the updated looks of things in the modern prequels, they aren't just the old stuff but in HD clarity, there's substantial aesthetic differences that are basically visual nails on a chalkboard to me. Like Tom Guycot said with the Andorian makeup, there's change just for the sake of change, and I agree that the entire endeavor of setting more things in that era was a huge creative misstep if they never intended to do it justice. ashpanash posted:You can reason with one guy in a big dumb rubber suit and you can reason with Hugh, but you can't reason with the TNG Borg collectively. Hard men making hard choices: a lot more interesting now
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Jan 31, 2023 08:18
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This is the Enterprise "more detailed and in focus" Anything further is alternate universe territory 
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Jan 31, 2023 08:30
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Star Trek: Hard men and rubbers
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Jan 31, 2023 08:31
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ashpanash posted:You can reason with one guy in a big dumb rubber suit and you can reason with Hugh, but you can't reason with the TNG Borg collectively. I won't fault anyone if they like it, nor wish to come off judgemental and snippy over a TV show, but its just that, to me ripping off Alien makes them as interesting as a million low budget 80's xenomorph knock-off critters, whereas the original incarnation was fascinating as a "who really is the monster?" thing. Plus I just hate the idea of Star Fleet heroes murdering children, its so hosed up. TNG had more compassion for the crystalline entity and that thing was a global genocidal monster.
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Jan 31, 2023 08:32
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Big Mean Jerk posted:Maybe this is just me being blasé about the practice of updating established aesthetics for modern media, but this is not at all how I see it. It’s more akin to, say, how a tv show made in 1968 would have done WW2 GI uniforms compared to a tv show made in 2023 depicting the same uniform. I get your point but this is a bad example, because the show in 1968 probably had access to actual WWII uniforms.  McSpanky posted:This is the Enterprise "more detailed and in focus" Goddrat that is sexy. Also a point brought up in the other thread proves what I'm saying here about how TNG is slowly becoming fair game for retcons and "not letting one line in a 40 year old show get in the way of our writers telling a story"--they changed the entire origin story of how Picard met Guinan and completely ignored Time's Arrow, probably because the writers hadn't seen it.
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Jan 31, 2023 08:47
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Edit: not worth the argument
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Jan 31, 2023 08:54
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Big Mean Jerk posted:Edit: not worth the argument Malice, stupidity, attribute, never, various prepositions--assemble in your preferred order.
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Jan 31, 2023 09:01
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Astroman posted:they changed the entire origin story of how Picard met Guinan and completely ignored Time's Arrow, probably because the writers hadn't seen it. They knew, Guinan in the alt didn't know Picard because Confederacy Picard never went back in time. That was the writing intention, at least. For all that he flubbed the writing, Matalis does know his lore. Even if he has wierd ideas about how ship lineages work.
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Jan 31, 2023 09:16
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Hollismason posted:Whats the best Doctor episode of Voyager because Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy is pretty high up there. Latent Image is definitely my favorite. It has superb character development, a solid good mystery, and an ending that kind of has a lasting effect.
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Jan 31, 2023 10:18
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