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

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Astroman posted:

I hate that episode with the fury of a thousand suns.

If that had been a main character, Janeway would have mowed down the entire Delta Quadrant to save her and bring her back. Instead, she's like "eh, whatever" and lets one of her crew go off to become an alien for REASONS. A crewmember whose dead body was hijacked by an alien race and brought back with all her memories intact.

"Dear Ensign Mary Sue's Mother,

I regret to inform you that your daughter died in the line of duty. She was brought back to life by some aliens, but we decided to let them keep her. Them's the breaks I guess!

Captain Kathryn Janeway, Commanding Officer, USS Voyager"

Janeway doesn't give a poo poo about any non-main-cast crewperson. Poor Joe Carey almost made it to the end of the series (only for his epitaph from Janeway to be "Turns out exploring the galaxy isn't worth risking a single life. Welp, on we go in our exploration vessel!"), but when Future Janeway comes back in time in 'Endgame' does she arrive a week or so earlier to warn her past self that he's about to die needlessly at the hands of some stupid whiny assholes? Nope, it's all about Seven!

# ¿ Jul 6, 2016 09:03

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 13:41

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

TMP had to call in two new VFX teams to get the movie finished in time, which now is par for the course and why you get so many VFX company credits, but back then represented practically the entire industry - ILM at that time was being rebuilt solely to make Empire. Douglas Trumbull did the Enterprise and V'ger stuff, while John Dykstra did the Klingon battle and I think the wormhole. It's worth getting the Cinefex app to read the old issues about TMP (and VFX of that era in general), because it's far more interesting seeing how much of a struggle it was to get anything on screen in the days of motion control and photochemical bluescreen than "we shot live elements on a green stage with motion-tracking markers and comped them together on a PC".

# ¿ Jul 12, 2016 22:49

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Timby posted:

If you want to read something incredibly in-depth about TMP's production -- I mean so in-depth it makes the Cinefex articles look like broad abstracts -- pick up Return to Tomorrow: The Production of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Preston Neal Jones was given unfettered access to everyone involved, and the book covers literally everything: Pre-production and writing, filming, and the third section is like 100+ pages of ultra-detailed information about all the VFX work. Like, there will be six paragraphs about how a single two-second shot was accomplished. It was originally intended as a cover story for CFQ, they killed the story, and then last year Jones decided to release his entire manuscript.

God loving drat it, I was just about to order this when I saw that postage to the UK costs more than the book itself. And it's not a cheap book!

# ¿ Jul 14, 2016 15:44

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

If Kirk's that bored by his job, I guess in the JJ timeline the Enterprise didn't get to do all the stuff that happened for three years in the Prime timeline. Shame, as I'd kind of hoped there'd be a quick roundup in the opening credits of giant green hands, half-black and half-white guys, tribbles falling on Kirk's head, etc.

The Narada's arrival also turned the Yorktown from a starship into a starbase, apparently.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2016 09:04

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

I was surprisingly unbothered by the Discovery reveal. Having seen a shitload of godawful TOS-era fan designs pop up on Pinterest lately, literally Connie saucer-engineering-nacelles slapped together in different configurations, seeing something different makes a nice change.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2016 09:26

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Gammatron 64 posted:

"Discovery" isn't exactly a good name for a warship.

The Royal Navy's Flower-class vessels gave the world the warships HMS Pansy, Daffodil, Buttercup and Geranium, amongst others. (Other RN vessels with odd names include HMS Spanker, HMS Cockchafer and HMS Black Joke. All of which should be starships, or at least Culture vessels.)

# ¿ Jul 26, 2016 16:01

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Berman and Braga were also complacent as gently caress, especially for the first two years. They thought they could keep churning out the same poo poo they'd been doing for years (literally, considering the number of scripts that recycled episodes from previous shows) and people would still watch. Remember how their stock response to questions about how things were going was "We're all very pleased"? It's easy to be pleased when you get paid handsomely for minimum effort.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2016 00:11

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Paradoxish posted:

Captain Dumbass believed his temporary field commission gave him actual, real authority and Nog seemed to believe that too since he started immediately respecting the chain of command, even before he was all the way on board as part of the crew. No one would have recognized Nog as having authority over them.

This is basically how Kirk gets and keeps command in the new films. Because the writers are either dumbasses who believe that someone being told "you're in charge until I get back" means they instantly get promoted from (ungraduated) cadet to captain and stay there, or are contemptuous enough of their audience to think they believe that.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 20:43

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

HIJK posted:

It's a sad day when the staff feels threatened by a composer.

Not so much the staff, more Rick "aural wallpaper" Berman.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2016 22:40

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Didn't Gene have some 'rules' for Federation starship design that boiled down to "nacelles always in pairs, nothing between them, nothing in front of the Bussard scoops, bridge on top of the saucer"?

They got pretty good results from them...

# ¿ Aug 12, 2016 23:47

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Tunicate posted:

Not as bad as the medical ethics on Enterprise.

If I'd been a crewman on the NX-01, I wouldn't have wanted Phlox sticking his loving eels all over me, that's for sure. And 'Dear Doctor' showed him as Space Mengele, letting billions die from a disease for which he had the cure just because he thought another species was more deserving of their lebensraum. And Archer allowed him to do it!

Small Strange Bird fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Aug 17, 2016

# ¿ Aug 17, 2016 21:03

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

armoredgorilla posted:

Is... is this a put on?

Like Riker's sideburns?

# ¿ Aug 19, 2016 16:14

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Rhyno posted:

No, Belana says the antimatter was being pulled between them.

Was there ever a commentary on this episode?

Voyager never got any commentary even in its own Companion. The DS9 one was loving amazing, absolutely filled with interviews, behind the scenes info, even the writers and cast calling themselves out for sub-par episodes. The Voyager Companion, on the other hand, is pretty much just episode summaries with no insight or analysis of the show's production. Other than the book about the show's initial creation, that Ron Moore interview is the only meaty thing I've read about the backstage stuff.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2016 08:52

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Michael Piller apparently really didn't like that "Piller Filler" became a standard term for script-padding technobabble.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 20:14

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Cojawfee posted:

Welcome to Vulcan, the planet of 44 people.

Well, in the JJ timeline it's even fewer...

# ¿ Sep 8, 2016 23:16

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Cojawfee posted:

The Naked Time is a great episode because it starts with a guy totally defeating his own bio suit by taking his glove off and putting his ungloved hand inside his helmet to smell it.

Must have been a favourite episode of the crew of the Prometheus.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2016 07:21

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Kin posted:

Was there ever a Trek story where the current cast 'caught up' to an older generation of traveller moving at a slower speed due to their limited technology when they left Earth?

It seems familiar but i don't know if it's from Trek or not.

One of David Gerrold's early story pitches had the Enterprise catching up with a generation ship where the crew had forgotten their mission and even that they were on a spaceship, splitting into two warring tribes with one elite group controlling the bridge and the downtrodden lower-deck workers the engines. Neither could get anywhere until Kirk forced them to cooperate.

I suppose 'For The World Is Hollow...' used a similar premise and 'The Cloud Minders' (which Gerrold worked on, but basically disowned after it was rewritten by someone else) took the idea of elite vs workers. It's far from unique, though, as Space: 1999 did something much the same ('Mission of the Darians') a few years later. Or maybe they read Gerrold's book and pinched the idea, who knows?

# ¿ Sep 14, 2016 13:06

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Fister Roboto posted:

The cold open for "Violations" is so bad. It ends with some dude looking to the side while sinister music plays. Why is sinister music playing? He hasn't even done anything! This is going to be a bad episode, isn't it?

Enterprise really forgot that the teaser is supposed to tease, to show the viewer something that will catch their attention enough to watch the whole episode. Instead we got things like this (real example):

quote:

MAYWEATHER is reading a book. In zero gravity, sure, but he's still just reading a book.

SOMEONE ON COMMS: Ensign Mayweather, report to the bridge.

MAYWEATHER: On my way.

"It's been a long road..."

# ¿ Sep 19, 2016 21:06

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

MorgaineDax posted:

http://www.startrek.com/article/revised-expanded-trek-encyclopedia-out-oct-18

NEW EXPANDED STAR TREK ENCYCLOPEDIA!

BUT IT'S $150!

So they made it official that the JJ Enterprise is way bigger than a Galaxy-class, huh? I thought that was just ILM embiggening it to make the shuttlebay fit inside and then the guy at Ex Astris Scientia turbo-nerding to work out the exact size from screencaps.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2016 22:19

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

MikeJF posted:

If you've never seen, the original concept art for the Kelvin (then called the Iowa):

I've seen that before, but it looks so much better (and makes more sense) than what we got in the movie. If the Narada's arrival is where the timelines diverged, then everything before it should be in keeping with TOS, dammit!

# ¿ Sep 21, 2016 11:11

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

nerdman42 posted:

I remember seeing some thinkpiece article about how JJ movies don't last in the mind once your out of the theater. You have a good time there, but nothing sticks.

I don't know if I buy it, but the idea is out there.

Going back a few pages because it's the first chance I've had to read the thread in a week, but I've been thinking exactly this lately. JJ Abrams is basically a salesman who follows the old advertising mantra "sell the sizzle, not the steak". All his projects are the same; they're sizzle with no steak, nice shiny surfaces with nothing beneath them, like his beloved Mystery Box schtick. They're fun enough to watch in the moment, but as soon as they're done, if you haven't already forgotten them you start going "wait a minute..." and realise you've been had. And by then it's too late, because he's already got your money.

Hmm. JJ Abrams. PT Barnum. Hmm...

# ¿ Oct 4, 2016 21:16

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

showbiz_liz posted:

I liked her. She wasn't super exciting, but it was cool to have a chill, competent, no-nonsense woman hanging around, and while they maybe could have done more with the Trill concept I always thought it was super cool.

That was really the "problem" with Jadzia, in that they came up with a cool concept (or rather adapted it from TNG) that ultimately didn't really offer that many story opportunities. Yes, she's really a wise old being in a young body - okay, and...? She was a perfectly decent character in herself, but DS9 had three much stronger 'outsider' characters in Kira, Odo and Quark (and Garak, and Rom, and Nog, and...)

VOY had the same issue with Kes [ha! My iPhone autocorrected her name to AIDS :wtc:

] and Neelix. What did they bring to the table for story opportunities that any of the human/Starfleet characters couldn't?

# ¿ Oct 5, 2016 21:05

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Knormal posted:

But really it should just be a Daedalus.

Nah, it should have been the Bonaventure from TAS!

# ¿ Oct 26, 2016 07:25

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

I'd say the arrival of Akiva 'Batman & Robin/Lost In Space' Goldsman is more worrying.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2016 08:33

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Been reading The 50 Year Mission, and got to the part about 'The Letter' that Roddenberry wrote to Shatner and Nimoy (and Kelley to a lesser extent) when they were having their big feud about who was the real star of the show. I'd heard of it - I think David Gerrold mentioned it in one of his books - but never read any extracts before, because it had been kept confidential until now.

Holy poo poo. Roddenberry didn't hold back, did he? :stare:

# ¿ Nov 4, 2016 13:50

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Mister Kingdom posted:

Visit to a Weird Planet

And then someone did Visit To A Weird Planet, Revisited where Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley find themselves on the real Enterprise in the middle of an interplanetary crisis and have to get through it without revealing themselves as actors.

It'd make a great movie!

# ¿ Dec 15, 2016 21:30

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Tighclops posted:

When they remembered to add colour and blinky lights in the last season it brightened the sets right up

I object to the NX-01 consisting of miles and miles of corridor, moreso than the Enterprise D

I got to visit the set of Enterprise when I was working as a journalist (they were shooting 'The Communicator'), and the main thing I remember of it was that it was a literal maze. Apparently in TNG and VOY the directors complained that they couldn't do long 'walk and talk' scenes, so they decided to redress that to the nth degree. It would be entirely possible to get lost in it, because while a lot of the walls were 'wild' and could be lifted up on cables so the cameras could shoot through them, you couldn't move them from inside. So if you were shooting in the transporter room, say, you had to go through sickbay or whatever to reach it.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2017 00:10

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Farmer Crack-rear end posted:

"Can you clear that image up, Lieutenant?"
"Sorry, sir, they appear to be using something similar to an ancient Earth codec called RealMedia. There's nothing I can do on our end."

The aliens from 'The Chase' also included code for a Universal Video Codec in all humanoid DNA.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2017 22:22

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Baronjutter posted:

What is that adorable box ship at the start?

It's a ship that, since this is an official Star Trek promo, makes TAS canon again! :toot:

# ¿ Jan 4, 2017 22:20

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

The impression I've got about Avery Brooks from various DS9 behind-the-scenes stories is that he was super-serious about his work, very intense, and really didn't put up with any poo poo. So he'd probably come across as very stand-offish and intimidating if you weren't on his wavelength.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2017 23:20

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Wheat Loaf posted:

I like Voyager a lot better than Enterprise.

I don't know anyone who doesn't. Voyager was reheated TNG; Enterprise was reheated Voyager. Basically, the idiot 'clone of a clone' from Multiplicity.

Plus, Voyager at least had the Doctor and Seven (and Tuvok, in his more sarcastic moments) as strong, watchable characters. Enterprise's leads were the blandest bunch imaginable, just Mad-Libs remixes of characters from previous shows. Wow, the Deep South guy who's the captain's old friend is now the engineer, not the doctor! The Vulcan science officer is now the woman in a catsuit! Holy poo poo!

# ¿ Jan 28, 2017 19:55

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

WampaLord posted:

This is exactly what happened with Lost too. Lost Season 1 is loving amazing.

I was addicted to the first season of Lost, right up until the cliffhanger ending. Then for some reason it clicked that they were never going to give decent answers to any of the big questions, just more questions, and I never watched another episode.

(I also agreed with Charlie Brooker that the survival adventures on freaky polar bear island were far more interesting to watch than any of the flashbacks.)

# ¿ Feb 3, 2017 20:10

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Kind of reminds me of the final season of Charmed.

"We've been told to cut the budget. Fire all the male regular cast members."
"Uh... but one of them is both the husband of one of the heroines and the father of her children, and also the literal angel who connects them to the higher powers of the universe and heals them when they get near-fatally wounded as happens on a regular basis?"
"...okay, come up with some bullshit reason why he can't be there for half the episodes."
[Leo is frozen in ice for some bullshit reason]

# ¿ Feb 5, 2017 20:50

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Ehh, they just haven't put the wigs on yet. Wevs.

(Anyway, the TMP Cornish Pastie-head Klingons were almost as different from the ST3-onwards Klingons as from the TOS Klingons, so it's no big deal. Just like RAAAR, the spaceship has a triangle in it, WORST STAR TREK EVER 0/10!)

# ¿ Feb 12, 2017 22:33

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

I always liked the way that the holodeck apparently projected an ever-so-slightly-larger monochrome version of everybody around themselves in Captain Proton.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2017 22:36

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Blade_of_tyshalle posted:

Why would you think this is what happens? Easier, I think, to just slap a filter over people's eyes.

Because it's funnier. (And if the B/W filter was just over people's eyes, we the audience should still have seen them in colour. Unless the computer thought of that and put a filter over the TV camera too. But then the Doctor wouldn't have been in colour when he first came in, and aaabueblnwgffgwjwk)

# ¿ Feb 14, 2017 21:23

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Duckbag posted:

Yeah, there's no camera or audience on the holodeck. You might as well ask, "how come I can see Hamlet and Ophelia from all the way over here, shouldn't there be a fourth wall in the way?" Congratulations, you have just discovered the distinction between objective and subjective storytelling.

HOLY loving poo poo! All these years making sarcastic comments on an internet comedy forum and I never realised! Thank god you were here to explain this to me! :v:

# ¿ Feb 15, 2017 21:38

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

'That Which Survives' is good fun if only for Spock being a deadpan sarcastic cock to the entire crew.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2017 20:44

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

mllaneza posted:

The Gold Key comics were wonderful. The artist had very... limited references to work from.

A British comic of the 70s reprinted the Gold Key stuff at two pages per week. The one where animals were turned into screaming tree monsters terrified me as a kid - though even at that age, I still wondered "Wait, the Enterprise is a spaceship - so how did those drifting space spores get into the ventilation system?"

Also, apparently McCoy had a room full of experimental lab animals. :stare:

Edit: apparently the spores were so powerful that they seeped through the hull. Uh-huh. Also, despite some of the plants being intelligent, Kirk decides that every square inch of the planet's surface has to be razed by phaser fire to destroy every last speck of vegetation. "To seek out new life, and new civilisations... and burn those motherfuckers to ash!"

Small Strange Bird fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Mar 14, 2017

# ¿ Mar 14, 2017 17:03

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 13:41

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

There was a holodeck-in-everything-but-name in TAS ('Practical Joker'), and that's good enough for me!

# ¿ Mar 21, 2017 14:27

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