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Big Mean Jerk posted:Modern Trek novels are the most wallpaper paste white bread plot by numbers bores in all of sci-fi lit. The old Trek novels from the 80s, on the other hand, were... well, okay, they were also pretty bad overall. But they were bad in tremendously different ways from book to book, and there was even the occasional good one in the mix. I remember really liking Dreadnought! and Battlestations!.
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Jul 4, 2016 01:04
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Apollodorus posted:Doctor Bashir actually figures prominently into Birthright Part I. He helps Data test out his dream subroutines, and then promises to give him co-author credit when he publishes an academic paper on it. Fun fact: as originally scripted, that was supposed to be Jadzia Dax doing all that. But the filming of Move Along Home was running long and the actress was busy with that, so the show runners did a big search-and-replace on her name in the script and sent Bashir over as a last-second replacement.
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Jul 5, 2016 18:42
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I forget who it was that pointed out that Roddenberry tended to name his characters in a very particular way -- one or two syllables, often featuring the "K" sound. Think about it. Pike, Kirk, Spock, Scott, McCoy, Decker. Picard, Riker, Crusher. These are names that sound like they're coming to kick your rear end. Short, to the point, and they all have a very different sound than a name like "Roddenberry".
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Jul 7, 2016 17:45
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CharlieWhiskey posted:The outside delta stands for Starfleet, the peacekeeping armada of the United Federation of Planets. During TOS, the arrowhead was mostly only seen on the uniforms of Enterprise personnel. Other ships had their own insignias: the Constellation pretzel, the Exeter door-hinge, and perhaps most glorious of all, the Antares butt:   There were exceptions here and there -- for example, in Court Martial Kirk runs into a few guys at the Starbase that he hasn't seen since the academy, and they all have the arrowhead on. The real explanation is that the show runners either forgot about the whole assignment patch thing or just couldn't be bothered to come up with a couple of new ones. For whatever it might be worth, I have a pet theory on this: it wasn't a unique symbol for every ship, but rather there was a set of a dozen or so symbols (each presumably with some kind of history in the Federation) that the Captains could choose from for their command. Pike and Kirk both picked the arrowhead, as did the commander of whatever assignment those Academy buddies of Kirk's were on. No, I haven't the slightest evidence for this, it's just a thing I came up with many years ago. In any case, by the time the movies rolled around, all of Starfleet was using the arrowhead, and kept using it for at least the next century or so. (This is perhaps more plausible in my pet theory: no, Starfleet wasn't honoring JUST the Enterprise; the arrowhead symbol might have been a favorite for a long time.)
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Jul 8, 2016 02:37
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Mister Kingdom posted:I wonder if Starfleet officers get a pension? Since Scotty's not dead, would they have to reinstate his? Ask Ralph Offenhouse how well that sort of plan worked out for him.
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Jul 9, 2016 00:44
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Gammatron 64 posted:And a lot of Trekkies still hate Star Wars. If anything, they should be thankful. My favorite subspecies of that type are the ones who think for some reason that Star Trek is hard science fiction, and look down on all that space fantasy stuff in Star Wars. "The Force? That's just goofy. Ghosts and telekinesis and seeing the future have no place in science fiction. Now let's all watch Wolf in the Fold, Plato's Stepchildren, and Cause and Effect to get the taste of it out of our mouths."
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Jul 11, 2016 20:11
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FlamingLiberal posted:I'm disappointed they scrapped those...it seems to combine the TOS movie uniforms of ST2-6 and the TNG unis. Maybe someone decided they were too reminiscent of the TNG dress uniform, what with the rank pips way out on the front of the shoulder. At least they seem to have actual pants, though. The dress uniforms always looked kind of ridiculous from the waist down, which led directly to decades of unfunny "dress" puns. 
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Jul 13, 2016 03:14
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A Romulan and Geordi indirectly kinda-sorta-not-really address the abortion issue by way of blindness: "How did this happen?" "I was born that way." "And your parents let you live?" "What kind of question is that? Of course they let me live!" "No wonder your race is weak. You waste time and resources on defective children."e: Why yes, I do think kind looks kind of vaguely Vulcan/Romulan.
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Jul 13, 2016 08:15
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:So from that point onward the ships only travel at Warp 5 at most, to set some logistical limits on space travel in the stories. No idea if/when they dropped this. They mentioned it once, like the next week, and then forgot all about it. It's hard to blame them though, it's a tricky thing to make work with a story. A fictional starship can go only two speeds, for story purposes: Fast Enough and Not Fast Enough. The ship will still start the episode pretty close to wherever that week's plot is, and it'll still get to wherever it needs to be at the end to save the day just in the nick of time, and it doesn't really matter what number you stick on the warp factor. At most you could get a few lines of boring dialogue about whether they're going to violate the speed limit to go save the space school bus full of space children that's about to fall off the space bridge. Of COURSE they will. I think the only way to make the warp-drive-environmental-damage thing work as an ongoing plot device would be to make it very immediate and give it real teeth. The damage was discovered just before all hell starts breaking loose. Subspace rifts start opening along heavily-traveled spacelanes. Entire regions of space are hanging by a thread, and cruising through at high warp might rip them wide open, leaving them impassable and even uninhabitable. Going to warp nine for this week's emergency will have very real and very serious and very visible consequences, to entire planets, for centuries. And what if, by chance, Romulan space happens to be in much better shape, warp-damage-wise, than most of the Federation? Some factions in the UFP might start pushing for a war of conquest to claim the "good" space. Maybe the Romulans would try to use the warp damage to pre-emptively fight back -- perhaps intentionally open a bunch of subspace rifts around the Sol system. Would taking the show in that direction have been worth it? Nope, absolutely not. It's a fun little what-if concept, but it's also not really Star Trek anymore. I think they did better to just quietly let it drop.
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Jul 17, 2016 02:58
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armoredgorilla posted:As much as I loved Beyond, the shaky cam during fight sequences was awful  I do appreciate that the in-close quick-cut shaky-cam thing is a valid technique to make action feel more visceral, and it can be very effective when used in moderation. This movie abused its shaky-cam privileges. They seriously needed to pull back and give us a wider shot now and then, both literally and metaphorically. Let us see where the hell we are and what the hell we're looking at, and maybe even let that make it clearer just what the good guys and bad guys are trying to do in this particular scene of running and exploding. Hell, I kept waiting for a decent "beauty pass" of the Franklin -- I was curious about what details distinguish it from the NX class -- but we never even get one of those. But really, these are minor quibbles. Overall I enjoyed myself. There were some great character moments, and I think I may finally be comfortable thinking of the new actors as being "valid" in these old familiar character roles.
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Jul 25, 2016 22:22
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Tighclops posted:I hope you're joking because this is actually pretty much what happened to kill off the classic Lego Space subthemes and if this is true also AHA! GOT YOU! The personal log you actually recorded said "I can never forgive them" and the one you're bringing up now in evidence says "I've never been able to forgive them". This is clear evidence of tampering with the record. Unless you're going to go for that lame "mistake by the moviemakers" route. How do you account for this? DON'T WAIT FOR THE TRANSLATION ANSWER ME NOW
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Jul 26, 2016 04:27
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DeadBonesBrook posted:1) When it is revealed in Star Trek 5 that Sybok is Spock's half brother, is that retconning a piece of established lore from the series/earlier films? Did Spock or Sarek ever outright say that Spock was an only child? I'm pretty sure it had never been mentioned either way.
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Jul 31, 2016 19:05
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Arglebargle III posted:Like they unfreeze Ayn Rand? Far out. No no, Rand Paul.
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Aug 3, 2016 02:21
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MikeJF posted:You forgot shape of the deflector and pylons. But at least it finally showed the Ten-Forward windows. 
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Aug 10, 2016 04:43
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Holy poo poo, I didn't know that. That's a pretty sizable chunk of the movie's budget right there. Did they ever have to spend that kind of money on refurbing the eight-foot refit/A model? Memory Alpha is mostly about in-universe stuff, but the articles on the various shooting models are surprisingly in-depth, particularly for the ones that had starring roles like the Constitution and Galaxy classes. http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Studio_models
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Aug 10, 2016 05:50
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Maybe she's the head of the away team department. Like, when they find a dangerous new planet, they beam down these folks who have "away team" as their entire job description, rather than sending the entire senior staff down to be killed. And maybe she fucks it up badly enough that all the ship captains decide to just do it all themselves, for the next century.
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Aug 11, 2016 02:02
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The_Doctor posted:Now, do they get shore leave like the rest of the crew? Nah, they get offshore leave.
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Aug 17, 2016 09:29
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A similar but less-often-seen problem was starbase inflation. During the original series, it only went up to Starbase 12, I think. During TNG, after someone mentioned Starbase 718 in the first season, they decided that having that many starbases sounded dumb. So word came down that the writers should try to keep them under 500 or so. Which they mostly did, but not always.
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Aug 20, 2016 00:53
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Zurui posted:Valeris' betrayal is a complete blindside in the novelization. She's a POV character for part of it and at no point does it even hint at the idea that she's doing anything but being a good Starfleet officer. Then her betrayal comes around and it makes zero sense with her character. Valeris struggles with being a Vulcan because she was raised on another planet by a dad who gave up logic because the Klingons killed his wife. She was only was exposed to Vulcan ideals as an adult. Like, the motivations are there but she talks about how she's dealt with all that and decided to be Vulcan and then she decides to become part of this conspiracy for...reasons? The story goes that the writers originally wanted to bring back Saavik, and have her be the one to betray the crew. Now THAT would have been shocking. But the powers that be wouldn't let them do it, so they invented Saavik 2.0 and called her Valeris.
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Aug 21, 2016 01:55
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Big Mean Jerk posted:You still run into the problem of the framework relying on viewer's knowledge of an (at that time) 11 year old TNG episode that most people probably don't remember. Pegasus was a pretty good episode, and I can see why they would want to go back to it. But it never really had a hole in it that cried out to be filled retroactively. If it did have such a hole, it probably wouldn't have been a pretty good episode. Doomed from the start...
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Aug 21, 2016 22:40
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Tears In A Vial posted:"I put meatloaf in the oven, and there's turkeys in there now" Fun fact: that's Gene Roddenberry's voice on the intercom, reporting the meatloaf situation to the Captain.
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Aug 22, 2016 07:11
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Duckbag posted:That one Ronald D. Moore interview that seems to have really deeply informed the fan consensus of Voyager If anyone hasn't read it, it's here: http://www.lcarscom.net/rdm1000118.htm The visual design of that website is horrendous, so be prepared to copy-paste the text into something so you can read it without your eyes bleeding. But it's worth it, the man absolutely nails what went wrong with Voyager.
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Aug 22, 2016 19:20
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MrJacobs posted:Also why the gently caress isn't soccer used a major sport more in Star Trek? Why the gently caress is water polo still a sport when humans become "enlightened"? Humanity has progressed beyond petty things like soccer. Now they wear floor mats on their elbows and they... uh... hmm... come to think of it, they never actually explained what you DO in Parrises Squares. But I'm sure it's very enlightened and evolved, whatever it is. 
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Aug 24, 2016 16:42
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Gau posted:I'm reading Spock's World as part of my delve into the bargain bin Star Trek books at my local used bookstore. A major part of the plot so far is centered around how the Enterprise has a BBS - like, not a Space Ship Forum but literally a BBS that they call a BBS and has posts like Usenet. It's hilariously nineties. I read Spock's World back when it first came out but wow, I don't remember any of that. In fact, come to think of it, the only parts of it that I DO remember are the chapters that flash back to various points in Vulcan's history and basically drop a complete short story into the middle of the novel. I remember there was one about the cavevulcan who invented language and tools, and another one about an early spaceship that finds an asteroid full of diamonds, or something like that. I should re-read it at some point. The BBS thing sounds hilarious.
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Aug 28, 2016 03:22
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Cojawfee posted:"What of the Battle of Axanar, Commander?" Yes it is, since TOS. Garth of Izar fought in it. http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Axanar I'm sure it'd be possible to casually dismiss whatever details the fan film people came up with for it, but the event itself (whatever it was) has been canon for a long time.
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Aug 29, 2016 23:23
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WickedHate posted:I'm just saying, if a vulcan crashlanded here tomorrow, they'd find it, ahem, most illogical that our hamburgers do not contain ham. Also, these so-called steamed hams are clearly grilled.
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Aug 31, 2016 17:24
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bull3964 posted:CBS should be airing "The Man Trap" at 8:30pm next Thursday damnit. It's the middle of the goddamn summer, they can afford to take the hour to celebrate history. The funny part is that the orginal series aired on NBC. (Roddenberry and company actually offered it to CBS, who passed because they already had a sci-fi show in development: Lost In Space!) CBS only owns it now because of various corporate mergers and acquisitions that somehow assimilated the remains of Desilu.
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Sep 1, 2016 04:12
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Cojawfee posted:Ensign Sperglord goes over his storage limit of 45 gigaquads. The captain forces him to delete all his Elder Scrolls 45 giant boobs mods. Hey, at least he's stopped clicking on the links in Iconian junk mail.
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Sep 2, 2016 03:18
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Cojawfee posted:In the future, everyone will have belt buckles but no belts. On their feety pajamas in bland pale pastels.
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Sep 3, 2016 05:42
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:It drops off a cliff at season three. I don't know. For all the poo poo Spock's Brain gets, it kinda mostly narratively hangs together, at least if you don't think about the back story too hard. As for The Alternative Factor... man, I still don't even know what the hell happened in that one. Something about an antimatter universe and one of the Lazari is insane and there's like a false-color doorway universe, and they have Spaceman Spiff's little ship, but I don't know what the hell any of it meant or why it happened.
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Sep 4, 2016 04:55
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bull3964 posted:When you die, your ghost merges with all your quantum duplicates, you become one with the collective experience. * Powered Descent spontaneously dies in a random accident  Hello, Powered Descent! I'm the you that got hit by a car, in what you think of as that near-miss when you were fourteen! Hello, Powered Descent! I'm the you that accepted the invitation to go out with that weird girl Jenny and then got hooked on crack with her and died. Hello, Powered Descent! I'm the you that majored in engineering instead of underwater basket weaving and went on to a lifetime of fortune and fame! I died of natural causes on the Mars Colony in 2089! Hello, Powered Descent! I'm the you that went to McDonald's instead of Subway and didn't get killed crossing the street just now!
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Sep 4, 2016 05:15
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Sash! posted:Park them outside, like every time anyone that has ever owned a garage does when they need the garage for something other than car storage? Maybe they stuck the shuttles in the same place that Voyager kept the Delta Flyer and Neelix's ship.
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Sep 6, 2016 16:41
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showbiz_liz posted:What would be some good candidates for this list of Fairly Regular But Good episodes? A few ideas: TOS: Balance of Terror, The Devil In The Dark, A Piece of the Action, The Changeling TNG: Peak Performance, Darmok, Elementary Dear Data, Remember Me In order: a starship battle, a story about learning to communicate, a more lighthearted one, and one where they get to be all clever and figure something out.
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Sep 7, 2016 05:08
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I kept having to stop myself from suggesting episodes where Something Is Mysteriously Different. Things like Yesterday's Enterprise, Living Witness, or especially Parallels. Hell, even Mirror Mirror. They're good episodes, but you won't really appreciate them unless you already know the normal "baseline". I was hesitant to suggest Remember Me because it kind of falls into this category too. But it doesn't really rely on the viewer being that familiar with things, and it comes on gradually enough (and with Beverly's reactions as a guide), that I think you wouldn't be missing anything even if it was the first one you ever saw.
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Sep 7, 2016 05:58
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Big Mean Jerk posted:The model was different for The Cage and WNMHGB, but the intro was done with the normal model. They also shrunk the deflector dish a bit.
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Sep 8, 2016 00:07
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Mortanis posted:Apparently whatever they used to seed the galaxy must contain information that guides single celled organisms along a path toward humanoid shape because there's a lot of evolution between point A and point B, AND contains the data to recreate a convenient hologram explaining this inside a Tricorder, but that's beside the point. They DID try to explain why everything is bipedal humanoid and half-breeds can technically occur. In the even more distant past, an intelligent progenitor planet made it so that every world that formed in the galaxy would have a feature that looked just like the Vazquez Rocks.
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Sep 8, 2016 01:15
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Patrick Stewart says that he had no idea. He showed up for his first convention, and as he was waiting backstage for his very first panel, he asked the con staff "...did anyone show up for this? Is there anyone out there?" seemingly expecting there to be a sad smattering of individuals, rather than a roaring crowd of hundreds. My favorite example of "Star discovers fans" is still none other than William Shatner. He'd been doing conventions for decades, he knew the drill. He arrives, they usher him in, he goes on stage and tells the same five or six anecdotes, the crowd cheers, they usher him out, he gets his money and goes home. And then for one convention he decided to put on a big silly rubber monster mask (so as not to be recognized), and went wandering around the dealers' room and the hotel parties. And he discovered an entire world that he had known nothing about, even though it was centered on him. His* book Get a Life! covers all of this, and is actually a really interesting read. I recommend picking it up if you happen across a copy. * With co-writer Chris Kreski, who was totally a co-writer and not a ghost writer or anything, why would the famous author of TekWar need a ghost writer
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Sep 9, 2016 08:00
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nmx posted:I've never seen this episode, but it sounds worse than Threshold. 2x08, The Changeling. (No, it's not an early appearance of Odo's people.) It's actually a really good episode, but yeah, the part with Uhura's memory is kind of hosed up.
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Sep 10, 2016 19:50
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Astroman posted:I celebrated the 50th by doing something I couldn't do during the previous anniversaries--watch a brand new episode of TOS with Star Trek Continue's "Embracing The Winds." I haven't actually watched one of these fan productions before, so I just now sat down and watched this one on your recommendation. And you know what? It's surprisingly well done. But I have big quibbles. My big problem is that the story is incomplete, in several regards. The way they resolved the main question is a total cop-out, of course. And we, the audience, never even get to hear any details of the incident on Nimbus III. We get the set-up, then a bit of debate among the characters, then... no resolution. Similarly, we never do find out what actually happened to the USS Hood. What caused the original accident, and what the HELL happened where it suddenly all sprang back to life and almost killed Scotty and Uhura? We never actually find out. The character of Scotty doesn't come off looking very good. You can't beam out because the shields have come up? Well, bring them down then! You're an engineer, you're in Main Engineering, there's got to be SOME way to break poo poo! Don't just STAND there! A minor point, and some would disagree, but they misused a musical leitmotif: that's the USS Constellation theme, not a generic dead starship theme. However, I did appreciate the little references, callbacks and and Easter eggs, even if they were spread a little thick. Commodore Wesley, the origin of the prefix code, the Seventh Guarantee, an early use of the deflector dish as a big gun, "perhaps someday a Garrett will command an Enterprise." Also, I laughed out loud when I recognized the computer voice. I had no idea she was involved. 
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Sep 12, 2016 03:02
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Rhyno posted:Somehow I never heard that Shat was living in a trailer or his car. He wasn't destitute or anything, but he was constantly on the road, traveling across the country for a stage show he did after Star Trek ended. Rather than shelling out for hotels, he bought some kind of screwy half-camper half-tent thing that folded up into the back of his pickup truck. He lived in that thing for a few months, maybe a year or so, usually deploying it in the parking lot of whatever theater he was appearing at that week. At least one local kid thought it looked like an Apollo Lunar Module. Shatner tells the whole story in either Star Trek Memories or Star Trek Movie Memories; I don't recall which.
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Sep 13, 2016 04:57
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