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

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Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

That DICK! posted:

bringing back the Star Trek Quote of the Day

"Why did you decide to go to the stars in the first place" - Guinan

"Well you see, my mother was insane and rather than putting her onto an asteroid insane asylum with an equally insane mad psychologist who experiments on people as you did in the 23rd century, my dad Baltar decided to just let it ride and see where it went. She hung herself while in a manic delusion in front of me. I suppressed this and instead imagined her surviving as an old, tea drinking woman and was unable to form stable, long term relationships or friendships for the next 80 years until I died. Then a robot version of me learned to love.

Oh and she was really into astronomy."

# ¿ Dec 31, 2022 18:24

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 09:28

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

Inner Light's civilization's plan also doesn't work if it's not a humanoid, heterosexual, mammalian, sexually reproducing with only 2 genders, male finding the flute. If a lesbian Horta found the flute, or a Medusan, the preprogrammed storyline would go off the rails. Though it would be hilarious to watch, and "Inner Light Probe Fails" would probably make for a great LDS bit.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2023 09:19

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

Here's a question for ya, crossed my mind randomly today:

In Star Trek IV, in universe, the Whale Probe signal noises were ran through an audio processor by Spock and determined to be whale song.

Were they actual whale song recordings ran through 1980s audio fx machines, or just synth gibberish?

# ¿ Jan 4, 2023 01:24

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

nine-gear crow posted:

Andromeda and EFC were both loving wild in their own respective regards. Like, Earth: Final Conflict somehow ran for five years only had one consistent main cast member for all five of those season. And how Andromeda was happening right in the middle of Kevin Sorbo's death spiral into becoming a massive rear end in a top hat chud and he basically stole control over the show away from the original creators to make the show all about how awesome Dylan Hunt was instead of whatever bonkers space opera story they were originally trying to tell.

Andromeda's first season was great, as was the build up to it.

This was an entirely new IP, a new universe, and they went all in. Before it was even on the air, they had a huge wiki-like website, and encyclopedia with lore, history going back thousands of years, a timeline, info on all the races, poo poo it took ST and SW decades to pull together. And that was before they blew it all up and DISCO'd it to 1000 years later and everything had gone post apocalyptic.

They started strong, and like DISCO could have gotten several seasons out of the concept of going from world to world, visiting various hosed up, cut off places that were once part of a peaceful galactic government that went to poo poo. Warlords, Mad Max stuff, theocracies, utopias, etc. But they wrapped it up way too fast, like DISCO.

The characters were strong and likeable, the technology was different enough to be interesting. And even after they dropped the premise they had one amazing episode a few years later where they imagined an alternate timeline where the XO who betrayed Dylan Hunt and started the war ended up going to the future instead and trying to be the hero of the story instead which was some pretty amazing writing and ballsy to do.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2023 04:05

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

Powered Descent posted:

Early in season 2, they had Captain Pike make a point of learning the name of everyone on the bridge crew, and all the fans were so happy that the rest of the ensemble crew were finally coming into their own, and then... yeah...

Good old Octopus Head!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPAwkliBd-s&ab_channel=Ryan%27sEdits

# ¿ Jan 17, 2023 07:56

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

LividLiquid posted:

gently caress off.

Since you have an SA account, I'm sure you don't live under an actual rock and have figured out over the last few years that "politics" is literally "which people do we consider to be people."

If somebody in something I enjoy feels that rather a lot of people aren't, it will affect my enjoyment of their work and it should affect yours too.

Yes the gently caress we do. You don't ignore when somebody is doing harm because they once poured you a good cup of coffee. Entertainment shouldn't be any different.

LividLiquid posted:

What is the acceptable range to respond, then? If I call you a loser fuckface rear end in a top hat and you don't see it for two pages, do I win?

You must be a blast at parties. Please tell us what we're allowed to like and what the correct political opinion is on every topic, Commissar.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2023 09:25

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

This is gonna be some wacky story where Q or aliens or a holodeck malfunction turns them all into talking dogs, isn't it?

# ¿ Jan 21, 2023 09:28

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

Brawnfire posted:

I'd like to read alternate treks. That sounds cool.

Yeah, some definitely tread in the weird space where canon and history and character backstory hadn't been fleshed out, especially the 70s and 80s ones. Where you didn't even know what year TOS was set in, or who Jim Kirk's father was, or what the Klingons were supposed to be. Quality is a mixed bag. Some are licensed fanfiction, others are great but ultimately decanonized "What Ifs?" since nothing that isn't on screen is real. Star Trek has had that rule all along, so the more the shared universe run of novels went on a few years ago, the more their stuff was decanonized by the endless prequel series, which is no doubt why they gave up on it. Which is too bad, because some of their really original ideas, like the Vanguard series, were great.

I mean hell, as we see in Strange New Worlds and Discovery, even aired onscreen Star Trek is no longer canon. At this point it's safe to say half of TOS is apocryphial, and the new writers are not bound to even slightly be constrained in their storytelling by it. You can try to handwave it as "different timeline causing small changes," but Admiral Pike's different Monster Maroon is proof the TOS movies are next on the continuity chopping block. What probably happened was the writer wanted him to wear the II-VI uniform, but the costume designer chafed at having to be constrained by 40 year old movies and was told to do what she wanted. I guarantee you if a Monster Maroon is shown again on a time travel or flashback sequence in a future episode of live action Trek like Picard, DISCO, or Untitled In Development Michelle Yeoh Section 31 Show, it will be the Pike version.

TNG and the rest of the Berman era shows will be next.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2023 18:59

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

Twincityhacker posted:

Considering the amount of retconing Bergman era shows did to TOS, other era shows, and their own previous episodes, I think it will be fine.

I've been watching TNG, I'm up to season three and:

They've outright stated that "oh, no one has every run into these space things before" when there was a TOS episode about it. Twice.

Had a cryosleeper Kilngon ship, for a war with the Federation that couldn't have happened for the timeline given between TOS, the TOS movies, and TNG.

Had an episode about the Federation openly genetically enginering humans, which DS9 emphizes is very illegal.

I think "the costume for alternate timeline Pike not being movie accurate" is a minor problem that canon will survive.

Not just the costuming, but the sets (pretty much the entire interiors of the Enterprise) but probably a lot of story elements too. SNW is better but I bet if you looked there were many things mentioned in Discovery that retconned TOS.

If you don't care, you don't care. And I think everyone has their elements of "what I can accept." I love SNW and just have to accept that in Pike's era the velour uniforms were never worn, Spock always had a secret human sister, Sickbay and the crew quarters were massive, transporters can beam contact lenses onto eyeballs, the Gorn weren't unknown by the time of Arena, Tribbles weren't unknown to the Enterprise crew by the time they went to K-7, Robert April was an Admiral (not a Commodore--unless he gets busted down in rank like Kirk before he retires), etc.

You might think that's stupid, but if a future Trek show starts blowing out major elements of TNG or DS9, more people will care. But it's also hard to justify to a roomful of writers on a modern show unconnected with 90s Trek why they need to be constrained by a 40 year old show developed in the 80s.

We're lucky on Doctor Who RTD is coming back. If he wasn't, you can bet it would have been throwing away a lot of the New Series world building he and Moffat did and we'd have some weird new stuff like Doctor Who's father Ulysses and his brother The Master. Or making the Morbius Doctors canon and having the Doctor be from another universe and 300 secret pre-Hartnell incarn--oh poo poo :negative:

# ¿ Jan 29, 2023 21:30

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

nine-gear crow posted:

https://twitter.com/jazzleberrywhy/status/1619383408010072064

So it turns out he has, in fact, already seen everything

You know how at some conventions people have the actors read speeches and stuff? I would pay oodles of $$ to hear Patrick Stewart say this out loud.

Seemlar posted:

I remember that being one of the best old novels and a better Warp Drive origins story than First Contact ended up going with. I guess the only downside of that era before they turned the novels into an ongoing EU style thing is they had a few tics that tended to repeat a bit, like being overly referential and playing the "TOS and TNG, together at last... sike! They didn't quite meet, so the timeline and temporal laws are intact " card

Yeah, and while a lot of the villain was recycled into the Reeves-Stevens script for the penultimate episodes of Enterprise as Paxton, the one from the novel was an epic, Khan level character.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2023 01:56

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

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

I watched TNG, where Klingons were turned into TOS Romulans, and not once did I think they were not Klingons or that some shattering of canon had happened. They were Klingons. So seeing people think series are de-legitimized because the Klingons are different again, or Captain Pike has different fabric on his uniform, or the Enterprise is 20% larger on some blueprint that doesn't matter to anything actually in the show does not change that I'm watching something that takes place at the exact same time as older Trek did.

I care about the Discovery having a turbolift dimension precisely as much as I do the Enterprise-E gaining and losing two decks every other movie, or that time the Enterprise-A had 78 decks so they could fly through a turbolift shaft dramatically.

Continuity is something that can add depth, by being able to call back on a large body of work. And the minute those details become bindings, you absolutely should bend or ignore them.

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 :argh:

). 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.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2023 04:33

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

Big Mean Jerk posted:

Maybe this is just me being blas� 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.

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"

Anything further is alternate universe territory

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.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2023 08:47

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

MikeJF posted:

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.

Counterpoint: the Bus Punk grabbed his neck when Seven yelled at him, seemingly remembering the treatment he got from Spock, who never would have went back in time if the Confederacy future occurred. :colbert:

(I know I'm reaching, but I'm also trying to remember if the "rules" of time travel and branching timelines in Star Trek work this way--but besides knowing the lore, if there's anyone who knows time travel it's Matalas so... :shrug:

)

# ¿ Jan 31, 2023 13:48

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

Prurient Squid posted:

Starfleet should have a rank like Ensign of the Fleet who is stationed at Starfleet command and represents the experience of the lower officer level for official purposes.

There's already a strong candidate for this position.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2023 03:29

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

No Dignity posted:

Whoa, they got Admiral Robocop and the Winkies guy for the finale?

I still want them to get Peter Weller back for SNW as the Prime Version of Admiral Marcus. Could flip the script and make him seem bad but turn out to be good without the influence of the Narada incursion. Also do a twofer and have him direct.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2023 15:17

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

Zaroff posted:

I think I read somewhere that it was always going to be the Season 4 finale irrelevant of the cancellation, and when Enterprise was cancelled it was retooled to be a finale.

According to Berman on the Shuttlepod One podcast with Trinner and Keating, they were surprised by the cancellation and had to scramble to wrap up 3 seasons of story into one ep to end it. The whole framing device with Riker was designed to move the exposition along.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2023 03:25

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

bull3964 posted:

It was TMP, they showed up again in ST:VI when a potato pot was murdered.

ST:III had the security officers in the puffy felt baseball caps which had Sulu just humiliating them with his stylish leather cape.

Geordi is absolutely going to Sulu's tailor for his custom flag uniform...

https://twitter.com/MicaBurton/status/1625567332306386945

# ¿ Feb 16, 2023 04:36

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

Tiberius Christ posted:

All I wanted was a stargazer series with capt rios, biggest crime of trek history

I think this may have taken the top spot in my book away from "Lyndsay Ballard."

Der Kyhe posted:

Because of reasons and regulations at Paramount/CBS the shows are not allowed to overlap at all, unless specifically given permission to do so.

EDIT: Lower Decks visiting DS9 was considered a "breakthrough" by the show runner, and while I think it relied a bit too much on the "look we are at Deep Space 9!!!" it gives you an idea on how strict they are on controlling cross-overs.

nine-gear crow posted:

One of the VFX artists working on Picard tried to slip a couple of California-classes and Parliament-classes into the fleet shots from Picard Season 3 and some pencil necked producer and/or censor spotted them and forced them to delete them because of some arcane legal rights bullshit thing that would involve CBS having to sue itself or something, either way the explanation was they were not legally allowed to put in stuff from one Star Trek show as cameo in another Star Trek show.

Not to be a dick, but is there anyplace this appears online from semi-official sources? Because it sounds like a lot of that Doomcock level "25% different" stuff that was never proven to be true about the early DISCO designs and the Kelvinverse pre-remerger.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2023 02:30

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

MikeJF posted:

There's a lot of speculation about why they pulled the Cali and Parliament and nobody has any idea what the reason is.

My best guess is that the non-cartoon appearance of the ships hasn't been established yet, and they're not gonna let some rando artist do that in the background. There's going to be meetings and approvals and designers from multiple shows involved to sign off on the photorealistic look.

that would be a very bad outcome, actually - for some reason the STO models for the ships look... well, the Parliament looks bad, and the Cali looks awful. I think someone decided going from cartoon to game meant they could add detail and change the proportions and it's just really really bad.

E: show Cali:

Game Cali:

It's weird, normally their models are really well done. The Cali model used on-screen for the cartoon is pretty high-detail now, you'd have thought they'd use that as a base. (If it ever does come to live-action I would assume that'll be what happens)

When you have the infinite budget and high res graphics of a modern game and still use the 2 Foot Model...

No Dignity posted:

Why is every Bolian in existence a doughy middle aged man?

Why is every doughy middle aged human man a normal sexy Bolian? :colbert:

# ¿ Feb 23, 2023 07:25

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

skasion posted:

It all sounds the same if you�re speaking Klingonee

Klingots?

I remember like 8 Star Trek threads ago I was making that Enterprise reference and somebody got offended about me being racist to Klingons or something. :allears:

Good times!

Hollismason posted:

I'm very easy to please. It takes a lot for me to watch something and just really not like it.

I haven't watched yet because I'm waiting to get together with some people to watch it. I see the 1500 new posts in the other thread and don't know if that means it's real good or real bad... :ohdear:

# ¿ Feb 24, 2023 10:34

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

Hollismason posted:

"You mean your not going to be naked at your own wedding!"

I love Deanna being outraged over that detail.

Classic Roddenberry!

Hollismason posted:

Its bullshit that in this episode Geordi says that the guest should really see the dolphins but we never get to see the dolphins either. Hell just one scene in Cetacian ops

Even Roddenberry wouldn't show that level of horniness on tv...

# ¿ Mar 3, 2023 02:29

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

Arivia posted:

why do robots have GENDER

Gender is a mechanical construct.

:tipshat:

Thanks folks, I'll show myself out!

# ¿ Mar 7, 2023 01:32

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:

TOS spent two/two and a half years building this (mostly well earned) reputation for bring a progressive show.....only to utterly ruin it in season three with patronizing, sexist stereotypes and opinions about hippies that probably sounded like it came straight from the late 1960s establishment. It's jarring how conservative a lot of third season stuff ends up after being pretty progressive - for its time - up to that point.

Ninja e: Credit where it's due, though - Spock understanding the Way To Eden hippies better than most of the rest of the crew kinda makes a weird bit of sense to me.

This makes me think if Tarantino had written a Star Trek movie, it probably would have been a riff on this...and based on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Cinema Speculation, it would have been 2 two hours of slamming hippies.

Quentin Tarantino REALLY hates hippies.

Also for your amusement and eludification:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PK-2FOyvyU&ab_channel=LAZARUSART

I don't normally go in for steampunk, and I'm not sure why the AI made everyone old, but dammed if some of those aren't cool, especially the alien designs.

Astroman fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Mar 10, 2023

# ¿ Mar 10, 2023 06:54

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

All this talk puts me in a mood of "We really need a sci-fi show set on an O'Neil Cylinder."

The stories you could tell on a setting like this are endless, and we have the vfx tech to pull it off realistically.

Of course in the era of "Modern TV" it would have to have some gimmick or overarching plot to the point where the setting became meaningless background. It would be daring in it's own way though to have a show that was just wide eyed optimism and futurism of "humans living in space" and have their travails and adaptations ne the focus of the plot.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2023 08:29

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

zoux posted:

I agree with this article on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of Move Along Home

That's what I meant about being struck by how confident the show was from day one, it understood its cast and characters (Julian less so) and was trying to do something different from TNG, whereas TNG spent a lot of its first season trying to emulate TOS. Some early TNG is unwatchable, but even in the lesser DS9 episodes, there's some subplot or character interaction that makes it worth watching. I was kind of dreading slogging through seasons 1 and 2 of DS9 and that's what kept me putting it off, but it is way, way better than I recall.

I'm about through season 3 and I've noticed a pattern in the episodes I've enjoyed less: Meridian, Melora, Second Sight - these are all romance-of-the-week episodes. Do yall think these are bad episodes as well or am I just biased against Trek love stories?

I get what you're saying about DS9 not emulating TOS early on like TNG, but Move Along Home itself is TOS as gently caress.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2023 00:13

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

Prurient Squid posted:

The Nazis win WW2 and create a Nazi space empire. Then a rogue admiral sets up an experiment to recreate America.

"America was good in theory, it just was implemented badly mein F�hrer".

Imagining now this was happening concurrently elsewhere in space during the 5 minutes Kirk and Co spend in the alternate Nazis Win Timeline of City On The Edge Of Forever...

# ¿ Mar 19, 2023 14:54

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

Wee Bairns posted:

Lofton is the spitting image of Brooks these days too, he really looks like he could be his son irl.

Related, Marina Sirtis looks uncannily like TNG era Majel these days, especially in that last episode.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2023 12:54

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

skasion posted:

Because that�s how the McQuarrie Enterprise design from Planet of the Titans looked.

A better question is why they felt like this design was appropriate to cannibalize for the centerpiece of their show, since Discovery has nothing to do with Planet of the Titans, and the whole reason why McQuarrie�s design looks like this was to facilitate TNG-style saucer-separation action, which the Disco doesn�t do.

Despite disliking it at first, I came to like the original gold Discovery. From some angles it looks really sleek and fast. Would I have preferred something a little more TOS? Sure, but in the end I liked it.

Hard pass on the refit color scheme however.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2023 00:23

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

While a 31st century show featuring Tilly isn't something I'm excited for, the setting does give some opportunities. For example, we can see more Dadmiral. Perhaps Visiting Adjunct Professor of Engineering Jett Reno. And if I may be so bold, while I think Saru was a better captain than Michael and should have gotten Discovery, he would make an awesome Academy Instructor.

The "16 year old" thing worries me though, that they might try to make it Sexy High School In Space. Also it makes no sense. Every sentient species matures at the same rate? Maybe a Horta is like Yoda's species and they are babies for 100 years. And it guess it sucks to be an Ocampan, they'd be dead before hitting your arbitrary Alpha Quadrant Hyooman age minimum.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2023 02:28

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 09:28

Astroman: Apr 8, 2001

Sash! posted:

Also I dare you to say anything on TV other than "pinkskin."

Shran: "You pinkskins are all the same!'

Travis: :stare:

Lincoln posted:

So I�m watching Wrath of Khan yesterday, and when he says, �Let them eat static,� I thought, is there any � say, 18-year-old � that would understand the reference to static?

It works on a meta level too, since presumably any of Khan's 20th century followers would get it, but since they are all dead and his current gang are their kids raised on Ceti Alpha V, the people who hear him wouldn't get the reference, and neither would Kirk or any of the 23rd century folks.

In fact, living with Khan would be confusing as hell, as he would just be constantly spewing 70s-90s pop culture references and ancient literary allusions and the kids would have zero clue what he was talking about. If Harve Bennett's Khan series gets off the ground maybe they will explore this.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2023 08:14

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

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