|
Astroman posted:He kinda lost me when the Captain is casually having an affair with the first officer. The gay stuff was like, whatever, but even Kirk didn't casually gently caress his subordinates (except in the Mirror Universe). I'm not going to read more than a couple pages of some dudes ugly rear end Star Trek webcomic but the first couple pages gave me the impression that this is set during the Romulan war. That's like 100 years before TOS, which is plenty of time for sexual mores and military behavioral norms to change quite a lot.
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2016 15:04
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 02:28 |
|
|
remusclaw posted:The only guy in Star Trek to ever make a big deal about fraternization was that notorious stick in the mud, Picard. While he was engaging in it. Other than that, you have got Illia and her vow of chastity, but Star Trek has otherwise come across as a time where people have dalliances and romances with each other when they feel like it. Riker and Troi certainly had on again periods in the midst of their normal off again's. Troi and Worf were together as well. Kirk flirted with anyone in a skirt. Worf married Jadzia. Bashir chased Jadzia for a while too. No one seems to care about chain of command and sex. Except Picard. And only when it comes to his own things. I rewatched TMP the other night and wow, that vow of chastity line seriously comes out of pretty much loving nowhere and is never referenced again. I'm sure it made sense in some draft or other, or maybe it's supposed to have been delivered as flirtatious banter or something, but man is that a nonsensical line as it stands.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2016 20:07
|
|
|
Also, lmbo at Vger choosing to remake Ilia as a dumbass Mr Data version of herself but wearing a raincoat and platform heels
|
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2016 20:12
|
|
|
I actually think the second half of the movie is a lot stronger than the first, because instead of an incomprehensible mishmash of discarded concepts from Phase II, plot torture to get the same old crew back on the shiny new ship, and mumbling captains logs about how many days they have left till the movie needs to be in theaters, they focus in on the real strength of the movie, its psychedelic quality as a spacey audiovisual experience full of beautiful giant clouds and wormholes and planets and macroarchitecture and loud spooky noises and strident synthesizers. *cuts to ten minute scene of decker trying to teach a woman powered by an 8086 to play space checkers*
|
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2016 20:18
|
|
|
Dirty posted:The "raincoat" is interesting. When she appears in the sonic shower (yeah, I went years thinking it was a pointless disco cabinet) Kirk presses a button and the raincoat, presumably a dressing gown type thing, just appears on her. Now... what exactly was the deal there? Is there technology in starfleet to dress you? So, at least you can't blame V'ger for that. Given Roddenberry, I would guess he wanted her to be adamically nude but couldn't think of a way to sell the studio on it, so just put her in the sexiest clothes he could think of.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 27, 2016 12:24
|
|
|
Gammatron 64 posted:The Motion Picture and Search for Spock aren't terrible. Besides, you kind of have to watch the Search for Spock between Wrath of Khan and Voyager Home so you're not wondering why in the hell they have a Klingon Bird of Prey instead of the Enterprise all of a sudden. TMP and ST3 are both pretty bad movies but in completely different senses. TMP is bad because it's an unruly mess of half-baked ideas and plot threads tacked on to some genuinely great effects sequences. ST3 is lacking in dramatic tension because it's obvious from the get go that they're going to find Spock, but has some pretty memorable moments. I'd have a hard time quoting anything much from either movie, but both are a lot better at capturing the TOS feel than any of the TNG movies are at capturing the feel of TNG, for example. Gammatron 64 posted:I can kinda respect the prequels for what they tried to do. I feel like the basic idea behind the story of the prequels is a good and decent one. It's just that... well, George Lucas sucks at writing and directing so they wound up as huge disasterpieces. So, I feel like the prequels had a lot of cool ideas and art design, it's just that the execution was botched in a spectacular manner. Kylo is nerd bait. He's a socially awkward white man with no friends, estranged from his family, who obsesses over the events of the original trilogy and cosplays as Darth Vader. He's obsessed with the original trilogy yet hates it too. He's there to appeal to Star Wars fans who feel embittered and betrayed at the direction the franchise took, in much the same way as Finn is there to appeal to random moviegoers who are like "uh so is this the one with Captain Kirk?" and Rey is there to appeal to kids who are just there for the uncritical enjoyment of the power fantasy of the hero's journey, which is why she can do literally anything the plot demands. As for the plot itself it's supposed to be a recap pretty much. I don't think the movie could care less about the political subtext from the original/prequel trilogies, it's a Star Wars movie about how audiences relate to Star Wars.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 28, 2016 21:08
|
|
|
OneThousandMonkeys posted:I've always felt that Kylo is directly making fun of those people, not appealing to them. But not everyone watching may be able to tell the difference. What's the difference? Mocking attention is still attention. It doesn't matter whether the movie sanctifies his actions or character, just that he's there and that potential buyers of tickets and merch will identify with him.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 28, 2016 21:15
|
|
|
Gonz posted:The future is going to suck if we do away with pro sports and TV shows and movies and replace them all with theatrical plays and violin concertos. We'll always have Parrises Squares
|
|
#
¿
Sep 29, 2016 12:06
|
|
|
MrJacobs posted:How is a cool TOS esq throwback not awesome? The Nazi episode in TOS is stupid and boring, and its only redeeming characteristic is Nimoy's line about how Kirk makes a good Nazi. The Nazi episode in Voyager is stupid but relatively good fun by Voyager's standards. The Nazi episode in Enterprise is stupid and boring, and what's worse like the whole TCW plot line is a nothing story. There's no drama to it because it's immediately apparently from the fact that this is a prequel show that the TCW didn't change anything, and from the fact that nobody ever referenced such a thing happening before the show that it's not significant in explaining events in the other shows. There's no stakes and no drama, only Nazis and rehashed ideas. Star Trek has some things to say about authoritarian government and racism, but when it comes to literal Nazis it should probably leave it in the writer's room trashcan.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2016 15:43
|
|
|
FilthyImp posted:I enjoy it as a nice slice of, like, Old SciFi (the kind that foresees you reading a NewsTape at breakfast while the compuhome databanks click and whirr in the garage and the atomic car is being spun up). It does address a kind of interesting question, where the Hitlerguy had to impose strict rule to prevent these idiots from genociding themselves or ruining the planet or some such. But then it get away from him and GoebbelsHimmler drugs him and uses him as a figurehead and, whoops, turns out this poo poo really isn't justified because it can get way, way out of control real easy. I can't imagine there was anything much more to Patterns of Force than "hey, we have these Nazi uniforms we can use for cheap, knock yourselves out". It doesn't engage with the concept beyond a surface level, it's comic book level analysis of Nazi state. I agree that it's got some entertainment value as a retrofuturism thing but realistically speaking, I don't expect an hour long tv show about spacemen to be able to tackle the problem of Naziism and I would prefer if they didn't try. Fwiw it's also pretty jarring to me to hear Spock repeat the myth that Third Reich was some super efficient form of government that woulda coulda shoulda been perfectly fine if not for its insistence on persecuting those darn Jews.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2016 16:57
|
|
|
FilthyImp posted:I think it makes an argument about how fascism is easy (and easy for people to bend to their ambitions), and that just Because It Works isn't justification enough to use it. Oh Omega Glory is batshit insane, no argument there. But I'd rather watch it than Patterns of Force because it takes the essential ludicrousness of the parallel earth concept way further without a hint of awareness that this is completely absurd. The worst thing I can say about Patterns of Force is that it's relatively sober with its material (as it probably should be) without really having anything to say or do about it. They should probably have combined the two episodes so that just as the nazis make peace with Zeon, the Yangs and the Kohms show up, nuke the poo poo out of them, and fight the Cold War over their planet.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2016 18:10
|
|
|
Gammatron 64 posted:You know, I never quite thought of it, but they rarely ever go into how the civilian end of the Federation is run and it seems like Starfleet Captains and Admirals make all the big decisions.I think the last time we ever see the head of state of the Federation was in Star Trek VI. There's a token alien president of the Federation on earth when martial law is declared in DS9.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 4, 2016 19:20
|
|
|
Jadzia could have been a perfectly fine character if they had any ideas about what her character conflicts would be, or if the actress had been more than intermittently convincing. Her main gimmick of having past lives as an alien slug is only relevant to two or three episodes and it's no coincidence that they're the more memorable ones centered on her. She doesn't really look comfortable with her material most of the time until her relationship with Worf develops. Ezri is a better character concept because there's conflict built into the character. She wasn't ready to take the symbiont and didn't even really want it, she just had to and now she has to deal with it. The execution isn't great, but the idea is there. With Jadzia it wasn't there to begin with. There's the potential for an idea about how whether Sisko's friendship with Curzon really carries over to Jadzia, what it means to be possessed by an alien slug at all, and how you can possibly maintain your identity in the situation that a joined Trill is in -- but none of that potential is ever explored until Ezri shows up.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 5, 2016 21:29
|
|
|
I liked Dr M'Benga
|
|
#
¿
Oct 7, 2016 01:12
|
|
|
Cojawfee posted:Seems like every time Bones has to do anything related t Spock's health he says something along the lines of "I wish I knew anything about vulcan physiology to help him." You'd think there would be knowledge of Vulcans 200 years after meeting them. Especially since Bones has spent so much time around Spock. You'd think he would take some readings while Spock appears to be healthy to get a baseline. It's just McCoy being racist. The ship does have a expert in Vulcan physiology, Dr M'Benga, but he only shows up in like two episodes and the writers rarely remembered his existence.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 8, 2016 14:26
|
|
|
Drone posted:Been out of the temporal causality loop for a bit. Do we know anything new about the upcoming Trek series in the last couple of months? Last I saw was the really ugly-lookin' ship reveal this summer around the time Beyond came out. They pushed back the premiere to May because the production isn't starting until next month.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 11, 2016 17:35
|
|
|
Timby posted:As I recall, Avery Brooks was very uncomfortable with the idea of Sisko just going "peace out" at his pregnant wife and asked for some substantial rewrites. I mean, the subtext is unhappy but I don't really have a problem with Sisko leaving Starfleet and humanity behind to go join the Prophets. It's something neither Kirk nor Picard would ever have done and that's what makes it interesting. I didn't find it unbelievable that Sisko would do it either, he's been struggling for several years with his importance as a religious figure and was never a perfect Starfleet martinet to begin with. He's a vulnerable figure who sometimes makes difficult personal choices that don't leave everyone or himself happy. But he has to live with it. That's why he's a good protagonist. But I do think the pah-wraiths are the weakest link of the plot of the show as a whole. What the hell is their problem? So there's two types of godlike energy beings in the Bajor system locked in ancient conflict, the one type doesn't like the other -- why not? Seriously, none of the dick things they do make sense at all because we have no concept of what could possibly motivate them. We don't even have a clear sense that they have motivations for their actions at all, they are just villainous and made of evil red energy. That's okay if lazy, as long as it's a one-off thing, oh no the bad alien has possessed the chief's wife, will anyone notice before she starts wearing his skin? But it's absolutely foolish if you plan on making them the big endgame villain that Sisko must sacrifice himself to stop. I think an interesting tack to take would have been: why are the pah-wraiths so bad that the Bajorans must never ever allow them to be summoned out of the necronomicon, when the prophets blithely stayed in their wormhole doing gently caress all while Cardassians invaded the planet and unleashed a holocaust upon its inhabitants? In what sense can these guys claim to be "of Bajor" when they didn't lift a finger to defend it? I don't want to get invested in defending the evil space ghosts but it's very un-Trek to me that they never even explore the motivations of their enemies here. Dealing with assholish godlike energy beings in some other way than "push them back into literal hell" is what the show should be about.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 16, 2016 00:54
|
|
|
thexerox123 posted:Weren't they supposed to have been kicked out of the celestial temple by the prophets, and imprisoned in the fire caves? Depending on what tradition you look at, he committed some variant on being insufficiently humble before God and his creation. But that doesn't really wash with the prophets, they don't seem to have moral concepts like humility and I'm not sure they even created Bajor or the Bajorans. Part of the plot hole here is that the prophets are so spacey it's hard to imagine how they could possibly have a malign aspect at all. They don't seem to have any obvious motivations, questions of motive hardly even make sense because they don't experience cause and effect in a normal way. When Sisko meets them, they're all like "what is time? What is this suffering? You exist here  ". It's possible to reimagine this in a kind of Lovecraftian light, where the "evil" prophets would be similarly remote from humanoid experience, but so much so that they just don't care about the death and destruction their natural behaviors will cause to lesser beings. But this isn't how the pah-wraiths are portrayed, they're shown to possess humans and undertake pointlessly cruel, malicious, and violent actions. That's a giant gulf of behavior between these guys and the other guys they're supposed to be sort of like, and the show only ever explores it in a circular manner. Why are they assholes? Because they're in the fire caves and must be kept there. But why are they in the caves? Well, because they're assholes of course. It's the failure of the show to engage with it on any deeper level that I find unsatisfying.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 16, 2016 03:31
|
|
|
Cojawfee posted:Where do I put my cyber shits? Something Awful
|
|
#
¿
Oct 19, 2016 16:11
|
|
|
turn left hillary!! noo posted:This is the problem with post-First Contact Borg in a nutshell. They shouldn't have "commanders" or even communicate vocally. Even in Best of Both Worlds they had Locutus watching the attack on a viewscreen. I realize this was probably due to production limitations, but the Borg as a hivemind really went off the rails very quickly. Locutus isn't a commander, he's a mouthpiece, as his name implies. He's the unit through which the Borg is making its demands known to Starfleet. But yeah nobody cared about writing some kind of hive mind, evil bald lady would make a better weekly villain anyway, right?
|
|
#
¿
Oct 20, 2016 19:47
|
|
|
Frionnel posted:I always tought Locutus was a pun on locust because of the whole hive/insectoid theme in the borg idk guys It's Latin for "spoken"
|
|
#
¿
Oct 21, 2016 17:28
|
|
|
Mister Kingdom posted:Watching "The Enterprise Incident" on BBCA and it's a dramatic change from the previous week's "Spock's Brain". All time peak Shatner moment in this episode. I'LL.....KILL YOU!!
|
|
#
¿
Oct 22, 2016 15:06
|
|
|
ENT should have doubled down on something. Anything. The big problem with the show is that it tries on a lot of hats, but doesn't want to buy one. It's sort of a prequel about the birth of the Federation, but oh hang on let's put some fanservice from the sequels there like the Borg and Ferengi and " gently caress Enterprise. Jonathan W Archer would have been a much better show. Drink-Mix Man posted:I think the thing that makes the show uncomfortable to watch for me is witnessing Scott Bakula basically struggling to figure out what the gently caress he is supposed to be doing practically every single moment. I really sense him discovering on camera that the writers didn't know what to do with his character the entire run. Basically this, but for everyone involved with the production instead of just Scott Bakula. skasion fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Oct 24, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Oct 24, 2016 19:52
|
|
|
Pretty sure the thread called this
|
|
#
¿
Oct 27, 2016 00:10
|
|
|
Big Mean Jerk posted:The DS9 cast kinda reminds me of the TOS cast, minus most of the decade-long grudges. Yeah, because nobody on the cast was as big a shithead as Shat.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 31, 2016 23:56
|
|
|
Networks are risk averse. If Discovery is somehow a big hit they'll be only too eager to stump for spinoffs, but as yet it's new expensive and might go nowhere, so there's no enthusiasm about the bottom line.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 2, 2016 14:22
|
|
|
A Geordie is a person from the environs of Newcastle. They have silly accents (think the fox in Plague Dogs if you ever read that) and a reputation for being drunks. I can't say this has ever occurred to me in the context of Trek, it's probably a joke on someone's part but Geordi is about as far from being a Geordie as it is possible to be.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 3, 2016 12:05
|
|
|
Duckbag posted:Trek names in general are interesting because they vary from strongly suggestive (ie Deanna Troi = Diana Troy) to really arbitrary. Like, "Montgomery Scott" is about as subtle as a kick in the head, but why do Kirk, McCoy, and Kyle also have Scottish names? Why does Spock have the same name as a famous child psychologist? What was Roddenberry's deal with all those "k" sounds anyway? Of course, it beats calling the captain "April." I was watching the old German show Raumpatrouille last night and weirdly enough the maverick captain on that show also has a Scottish name full of k sounds, Cliff Allister McLane. Stop consonants like that have a kind of dramatic clashing effect which suits bold space rangers pretty well I guess.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 4, 2016 15:05
|
|
|
Zonko_T.M. posted:That's Arcturian Megagrass, it has unique properties that eliminate pollutants from the atmosphere and promotes good health and is the primary ingredient in synthijuana. Synthijuana lol. Looks like skunk, smells like skunk, but will never make you high 
|
|
#
¿
Nov 6, 2016 00:48
|
|
|
Perfect Roddenboring TNG people wouldn't have had any trouble with that episode of TOS where a freaky space skull teleports them to the Old West
|
|
#
¿
Nov 6, 2016 14:20
|
|
|
The Deadly Years sucks, it's slow as balls and the aging makeup jobs are almost across the board terrible. I would prefer to watch any other Trek episode with magic aging bullshit. Even Counter Clock Incident
|
|
#
¿
Nov 14, 2016 04:53
|
|
|
I think there's probably some kind of cultural shift at work there with regards to the level of pathos that is expected from sci-fi. They didn't expect people to take TOS as seriously as some of the later shows take themselves, which is pretty understandable given how goofy a show it is. Raumpatrouille is the same way, they may have fallen foul of hostile energy beings and nearly abandoned their crewmates to a miserable death but by the end of the episode they're all having a laugh and the stick-up-rear end secret policewoman is inviting the captain out for drinks. The only even roughly contemporary sci-fi I can think of that doesn't have similar sense of fun is Forbidden Planet though I'm sure someone better versed in old movies than I can think of something different. After Star Wars which, for all its comic moments, treats the basic concepts of space opera with complete seriousness, people's expectations probably changed quite a bit towards how much characters in sci-fi should be able to kick back and have a laugh about their adventures. Though TNG does it a couple times if I recall.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 14, 2016 17:14
|
|
|
Farmer Crack-rear end posted:A lot of it is probably writers and/or producers not wanting to end on a downer note. If every episode ends with the cast sharing haunted looks and ominous music, the series could start to get depressing. I would also wonder if networks in the 60s encouraged shows to perk the viewer up at the end, to try and keep them happily watching for another hour. Definitely, this is part of the cultural difference I'm referring to. People were less willing to accept a show which has a downer every week. Now shows like Game of Thrones pull millions of viewers. Farmer Crack-rear end posted:That said, TOS sometimes made a point of having Kirk point out at the end that someone didn't make it. Catspaw comes to mind: "Not an illusion; Jackson didn't make it." Yeah, but on the other hand the whole thing is a Halloween gag episode.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 14, 2016 19:17
|
|
|
Dicky mouse posted:So if you guys love janeway so much let me ask you this As long as he stays far from the people I'm boning, a-koo-chee-moya
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2016 00:50
|
|
|
FuturePastNow posted:So the Asian captain will get a Chinese-name ship because we wouldn't want to confuse the audience. It's just marketing poo poo to China because producer dogma says everyone needs to market poo poo to China now. Just even clumsier than usual. Not sure what sort of show this is going to be if multiple starships are going to be hanging around regularly.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 24, 2016 15:03
|
|
|
Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Well, he's descended from a guy named Muhammad, not necessarily the Last Prophet. He's descended from Muhammad Ahmad ibn Abd Allah al-Mahdi, who did indeed claim descent from the prophet Muhammad. Whether there was any truth to the claim is certainly not verifiable, but there's nothing innately improbable about it, there's an absolute gently caress ton of sayyids out there.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 27, 2016 14:18
|
|
|
Nebakenezzer posted:"My ship, whom I love like a woman, is disabled." Oh lord. I hear Bashir's into that
|
|
#
¿
Nov 28, 2016 21:50
|
|
|
Nessus posted:Yeah, there is absolutely no way anything like this would be distributed equitably and fairly even if we did have a great moral awakening in the near future. Even if the upgrade package didn't do much (and at least in Trek, becoming an Ubermensch doesn't seem to make you an insurmountable unthinkable elite mega-being beyond the ken of the unspliced, merely very smart and clever), it would probably become a tool for massive elitism. I wouldn't go so far to say that Trek writers think it's bad to be smart, but there's quite a lot of Trek to the thematic effect that reason pushes us away from true humanity. Every Trek show has a character who is more logical, rational, scientific, and intellectual than the rest, but struggles to interact with others socially and is alienated, sometimes very literally, from a normal emotional life. In fact that kind of semi-sympathetic, semi-mocking portrayal of an obligatory aspie character is probably one of the most consistent attributes of the franchise because it's guaranteed to resonate with sci-fi fans. Or even stepping away from that, there's plenty of episodes to the effect that perfection and knowledge are good, but human error is better -- TOS is most blatant about it with Kirk constantly talking down godlike energy beings and supercomputers with good homespun human common sense. It's not that it portrays smartness as being bad, but that it draws a dichotomy between reason and passion and generally comes down on the side of passion.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 2, 2016 00:38
|
|
|
I don't think that McCoy is meant to be passion above reason. He's a doctor, not a crystal healer. Empirical observation and reasoning are his business, for all that he's personally hot tempered and conservative he isn't normally an irrational figure. Spock is a superb scientist, but it's directly because he thinks, or attempts to think, without human feeling that his intellect is superior. If anything Kirk is the over-passionate one.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 2, 2016 00:49
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 02:28 |
|
|
The_Doctor posted:Voyager never really had a science officer till 7of9, did it? Seven isn't the science officer. Yeah she does all the plot required sciency poo poo, but her actual job is just astrometrics. Maybe with Janeway being the captain they figured they didn't need one. TNG doesn't really have a card-carrying science officer either, though in practice Data winds up doing the plot required sciency poo poo.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 7, 2016 15:35
|
|