Classic Star Trek Megathread: Waves and waves of jambalaya

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > Classic Star Trek Megathread: Waves and waves of jambalaya

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

ruddiger posted:

Did that one orphan changeling that Odo ran into flying around in outer space ever get to rejoin the great link? Was there any follow up on that guy in any other trek media?

He shows up in the books, and without getting into the bullshit the novelverse did to the Link I'll just leave it at he and Odo hang out a bunch as fellow outsiders.

Cross-Section posted:

That Star Trek: Borg inclusion

Ha, I wondered what that was from. I thought it was the guy's LARP group or something, but I should have known LARPers would have never been in period-inaccurate uniforms.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2023 03:00

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 10:50

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

zoux posted:

Frengis went WOKE

Quark in an oversized MFGA hat

# ¿ Jun 6, 2023 20:10

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

Atlas Hugged posted:

For Morn, it's not that I see him in Quark's a lot. I mean specifically, he's a background character walking around the promenade on a loop with the other extras. Him being a barfly and in shots at Quark's is fine and we've already established that about his character by the end of season 1. My point is more that as a random alien extra walking around the promenade, it wouldn't be so obvious that it was the same dude walking in the same direction in SD, but in HD he's clearly on a track and in the scene because they want the promenade to look diverse and lively.

Maybe you're just racist and think all Lurians look the same?

# ¿ Jun 7, 2023 08:58

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

FlamingLiberal posted:

A new Star Trek strategy game was announced, Star Trek Infinite. It's from Paradox that makes great strategy games.

From the teaser it looks like at minimum you will get to choose between Federation, Romulan, Cardassian, and Klingon factions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3cM3Rsh7lQ

Opened the link, saw the Borg cube, sighed.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2023 02:21

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

HD DAD posted:

Should have just not involved Stewart and made Picard about the rest of the cast trying to locate him for 3 seasons, and then in the finale reveal that he�s been dead for ages and/or got his soul spliced into a new cast member.

Star Trek: Waiting for Godot

# ¿ Jun 9, 2023 16:45

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

There's one thing Enterprise has going for it that Voyager can't compete with: It's shorter.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2023 01:49

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

Remember that aired just a couple months after the final episode of TNG, when we were still all in peak mourning for the show. That was and remains one of the biggest oh poo poo moments in Trek.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2023 08:10

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

My vote for worst Voyager episode goes to the one where Janeway's ancestor hangs out in the midwest on New Year's Eve 1999. Just absolutely a bunch of nothing.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2023 07:13

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

HD DAD posted:

I�m pretty sure this is the only time in the duration of Voyager they thought something out that far ahead. Lol

Early Voyager seemed much more willing to set up ongoing plot threads, you've got that, the Maquis tension that never materialized, actual recurring non-Borg adversaries in the Kazon and Viidians, and then by like mid season 2 they dropped all of it.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2023 21:44

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

I always figured the blue spoon was makeup and never even considered some Cardassians might just... be blue there.

Atlas Hugged posted:

Why didn't Tom just like grow a full beard in and then shave it off? Seems less risky than you know prosthetics that could fall off his face when drinking.

Because you can't be the evil version of a Star Trek character without a goatee, and there's no sink and mirror on the Defiant's bridge.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2023 02:52

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

FlamingLiberal posted:

I will say that I rolled my eyes when they released the initial character info for SNW and they had a Noonien-Singh in the cast. Thankfully they have handled that well.

I just realized I don't think I've heard anyone on the show refer to her as Lt. Noonien-Singh wiht any regularity, they all just call her La'an. Seems like the the writers didn't think all the way through introducing a character with a really long name.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2023 22:22

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

Powered Descent posted:

Once you've seen The Menagerie, you've seen everything you really need to of The Cage. There are a few scenes that were cut for time but none of them really matter. Check it out if you're in a 100%-completionist mood; otherwise, skip it.

Does The Menagerie include the line where Spock shouts "The women!" with really weird delivery? That's the single part from The Cage that sticks with me the most.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZLNfO19r20

# ¿ Aug 20, 2023 08:12

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

From what I remember from the old Star Trek design books, yes the original idea was that the warp engines were dangerous because they were putting out huge amounts of energy and you wanted to have them far away from where everyone was spending most of their time. Beyond that there wasn't much thought into any of their workings, that was all developed from what was shown on screen by the fandom in the 70's. Paired engines were supposed to be a thing, but I don't think it was official you couldn't have anything in between them, that I think was something the fandom came up with based on the grill markings on the insides of the original nacelles looking like maybe it was something that could transmit energy between them. And that idea's been contradicted by lots of things on screen since then.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2023 05:42

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

MikeJF posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ApBlFpYHNE

https://twitter.com/howieeday/status/1463492178391363593?t=zMHi4poVfoVvHymeghgU1g&s=19

I have some questions about how they're supposed to dock to that airlock on the side.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2023 19:50

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

MikeJF posted:

The travel pod dock?

Oh yeah, I'm too used to the extending docking bridges of NuTrek. That or I blocked the 20 minute pod sequence in TMP out of my memory.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2023 06:17

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

zoux posted:

Oh, that's not a tube, it's a cloaca, through which weapons, cargo, personnel, and ordinance can pass freely.

*Q'loaca

# ¿ Aug 22, 2023 20:32

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

There was also the Traveler, kind of half way there.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2023 01:55

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

bull3964 posted:

The Defiant is actually even worse.

You can SEE the external doors of the airlock while the Defiant is "docked."

I propose on DS9 on the other side of the big gear doors is a transporter room, and they're always just beaming over to those "docked" ships.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2023 08:18

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

The weirdest thing about The Loss to me is that apparently Troi is the ship's only counselor. You'd assume she's have like, assistants or something that would be better people to talk to and actually trained in this kind of thing, but apparently nope, just the other senior staff and Guinan.

# ¿ Aug 27, 2023 03:02

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

The whole Uhura thing is one of those aspects of TOS where I think you just have to ignore the literal words they said onscreen and go with the "something like this happened" vague canon interpretation, otherwise yeah, Uhura flat-out died, some new person with no connection to anything that happened before is running around in her body, and worst of all no one on the ship seems to care. I just file it away with all the extremely sexist lines the characters drop from time to time.

MikeJF posted:

Earth to Mars would require a little over ten thousand relays, all of which would basically have to be little ships that would have to constantly thrust to maintain a line between the two, they couldn't just sit in a natural orbit. DS9 is a lot further from Bajor, and they don't exactly have the best industrial base in the Alpha Quadrant.

To quote H2G2: 'Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.'

Also remember that the transporter is supposed to be sending a literal matter stream containing the person, not just a radio or subspace signal with their information. At that distance there'd presumably be an unacceptable risk of signal loss due to random passing space rock getting in the way, or solar flare, or whatever.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2023 02:37

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

Eighties ZomCom posted:

Catspaw is a fine Halloween episode.

It literally was created as one.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Catspaw_(episode)

quote:

Although this was the first episode of TOS Season 2 in production (filmed in early May 1967), it did not premiere until the week of Halloween, 1967. It was, in fact, written in a Halloween-type theme for just that reason. This episode also remains to date the only Star Trek production produced as a "holiday special" type episode.

# ¿ Aug 29, 2023 21:14

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

Penitent posted:

I'm surprised they didn't try to auction those off.

Probably because they were taken down in between seasons 4 and 5, so no one was thinking of the end-show auction dollar signs at the time.

They do look hilariously lovely in high quality though. Maybe they let one of the Enterprise's classrooms make them as a project.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2023 00:26

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

Eighties ZomCom posted:

It would be kind of funny if it was implying that there was no afterlife for Talaxians, what with the B'elanna's Sto'Vo'kor episode and everything.

Neelix is pretty without honor, so it does track.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2023 01:53

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

I know this is the classic thread so I'll spoil this for people who don't want to get worked up about something stupid, but Picard established that the 2024 Europa mission that was the focus of the second season found a sentient microbe on Europa that eats pollution so it eventually fixed everything back on Earth.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2023 04:41

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

Nessus posted:

What I would do if I was Trek King is write the Klingons as having had a post-atomic horror like Earth did, but Earth got contacted by the Vulcans and got a little uplifting along the way. (This also seems like a good reason if you're like 'but there's no way that (insert modern earth problem) could have been resolved!' -- the Vulcans broke the logjam. How? Very well, thanks.)

The Klingons didn't. They crawled out to space on their own. Perhaps they were lucky enough to have a few settlement candidates in the area, but their culture was strongly marked by a Mad Max period.

The ancient Klingons were canonically conquered by a race called the Hur'q, I've always figured that's where they got advanced technology from. And from the apocrypha section on that Memory Alpha page apparently a lot of non-canon stuff's been built off that idea.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2023 06:14

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

skasion posted:

TAS was released as a Saturday morning cartoon and won an Emmy for best kid show. I agree they weren�t particularly trying to write a dumbed-down show or �kiddie Trek� but they kind of ended up doing so, if only because they had no way at that time to market a cartoon to grownups.

I would guess a lot of people in the 70's literally had no idea there was a Satan-themed episode since they weren't watching cartoons. In prime time back then you were either watching Star Trek or whatever was airing on the literally two other channels so Spock's ears probably reached a much wider audience. The only adults watching TAS would have been Trek fans, who would have been much more accepting of things like that.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2023 05:17

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

I don't mind Masks, it's TOS as gently caress. I wouldn't say it's a great episode, but I don't think of it as a series low point like most seem to.

I think I'm the only one that feels that way though.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2023 00:43

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

MikeJF posted:

My fanwank is that there's specialised hardware running the EMH that they can't recreate with their resources at hand. (The mobile emitter can do it trivially because 29th century)

I can buy that the EMH PC can only run one copy of his program at a time, but it never made sense to me that they for some reason had to move his program back and forth between sickbay and the mobile emitter. He's a program, they should have been able to just copy him and run two instances on separate hardware at that point. The only thing I can think is that he's DRMed and they have to copy his license file between systems for the program to start.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2023 02:40

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

I always thought they should have just bumped up Leeta to full cast to get their requisite second female rather than trying to cram in Ezri. I even like Ezri better than Jadzia, but her whole arc was just so rushed and took up valuable final season loose thread wrap-up time. I'm not entirely sure what plotlines Leeta could have done to get screentime in every episode, but I'm sure they could have come up with something.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2023 07:24

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

They made one TNG movie and one extended-length epilogue episode they accidentally aired in theaters before that.

Then the crew of the Enterprise-D died on the way back to their home ~~planet~~ time.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2023 02:10

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

Boxturret posted:

Killed off the kid needlessly and led to 30 years of debates about why smoke detectors don't exist in the 24th century, truly the worst.

If there's one thing that Picard Season 2 did to help canon, it solidified that Picard's family were idiot full-time Victorian cosplayers who would be just the type to be down to die in a fire like their great ancestor Pierre Picard did back in 1784 rather than put a computer in their house.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2023 03:06

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

Phy posted:

Was Defiant the first Trek ship to really indulge in the swoopy dynamic WWII Fighter Plane visual vocabulary? Because right choice in that specific case to sell what a weirdo it is, imo, but after that having your immense multi-deck ships scoot around like fighters is a very hard toy to put back in the box

Aside from that though I always did love the Enterprise-D's linear phaser arrays. Gets you that visual power buildup in a unique way.

Yeah, DS9 usually did it right with the Defiant and the little Peregrine-class and Jem'Hadar fighters zipping around all the big slow capital ships. Voyager and First Contact feels like where they started having "small" starships that were still 15+ stories tall zipping around big Borg cubes and Voth city ships, and then it just kept going from there.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2023 07:52

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

BonHair posted:

Vulcans are also supposed to be mysterious and, in a sense, superior to humans, which makes it harder to write compelling lore. If their society is truly better and more enlightened than ours, it's hard for one of us to imagine it basically. But Klingons are just big angry dudes, no problem writing that. And also more fun.

I think Vulcan society would also probably be pretty boring to watch. Mostly just lots of Vulcans sitting around in endless debates. The ritual battles to the death are presumably very limited compared to the Klingons.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2023 02:45

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

Pwnstar posted:

Kirk is attacked by his old bully who cackles and dances around to jaunty music.

With all the various young Kirk iterations over the last 15 years, it's an absolute tragedy Finnegan has never shown up again. Played exactly the same way.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2023 06:39

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

Any of you from the UK don't get to be talking about how weird root beer is when you come from a country that sells Dandelion and Burdock.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2023 05:13

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

MikeJF posted:

Yeah but she definitely makes him poo poo himself before he dies

She didn't even need to either she just did it for the sake of it

I don't remember this part of the Tuvix episode.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2023 01:58

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

Senor Tron posted:

Fake edit: have we ever seen evidence that a federation starship can actually reach relativistic speeds without warp field fuckery and the like? I believe it's even a thing with impulse engines that they do stuff to reduce the mass of the ship.

Star Trek does everything it can to avoid relativistic effects because of all the plot problems it can cause, full impulse is supposed to be 1/4 light speed so you'd definitely get some time dilation over enough distance. I'm pretty sure they've never explained anything about impulse on screen but using a warp field to eliminate time effects definitely sounds like something a tech manual would have come up with.

# ¿ Nov 27, 2023 03:11

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

Powered Descent posted:

So, a 1960s hippie would be able to comprehend (and re-create!) 29th-century technology that's based on subspace and transtators and isolinear circuitry and bilateral kelilactrals because he has the "terms" from... uh... transistor radios? Maaaaaybe something as advanced as the Apollo Guidance Computer, since he was like a slacker nerd genius?

You know what, forget Benjamin Franklin, give that iPad to Henry Starling in the 60s. That's less than 50 years difference and he still couldn't have done poo poo to reverse engineer it.

It's not the device, it's the contents. Drop an iPad off at IBM HQ in 1950 they're not going to be able to do anything beyond play Candy Crush, drop off an iPad with a full offline copy of Wikipedia and the timeline's going to change.

MikeJF posted:

Remote desktop?

I don't think I've seen that episode since the 90's, but that was my assumption. That Ed Begley Jr.'s office PC was going to be some iteration of the 29th century device and beyond what he'd introduced to the public.

# ¿ Nov 27, 2023 04:11

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

Atlas Hugged posted:

It's not really worth dragging this out. If that's satisfactory for you, sure. I'm not going to tell you not to like it or that you have to internalize my quibbles with the episode. It's not satisfactory for me is all.

I mean, end of the day, it is still Voyager.

8one6 posted:

I get your point but you're really underestimating some of the engineering wizards of the era.
A quick trip to Wikipedia says the electron microscope was developed in the 20s and 30s so that should let them figure out the basic structures on the chip. By the 1950s an engineer at IBM (or better yet Bell Labs) will have enough know how to at least tease out the basics of what's going on in the iPad. They're not going to immediately be able to replicate things like the processor or memory, but there are enough discreet bits on the motherboard that a steady hand with a soldering iron will give them plenty of examples to use the jumpstart the development of circuit boards or act as a solid road map to integrated circuit design.

Yeah I was thinking after I posted that IBM was a bad example versus some rando guy. A company with IBM's resources and basic understanding of computer principles probably would be able to figure some stuff out, even if they had to destroy the chips in the process.

# ¿ Nov 27, 2023 05:16

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 10:50

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

The wrong time self-destruct function is the technological descendant of the warp core ejection system.

# ¿ Nov 27, 2023 05:28

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