The Star Trek Thread, 3.0

VOY: "Prophesy"

Hell, at least this episode has an interesting alien species for a change.

VOY: "The Void"

Voyager in the Phantom Zone. I enjoyed the episode, it had kind of a retro vibe to it, especially with the mute Void aliens.

The Void struck me as the money saving episode, all the lack of light and whatnot. Beyond that Jonathan Del Arco, Hugh from TNG, sans Borg outfit for once. God it's dull.

VOY: "Workforce"

The first part. I was entertained. It was better than I had expected.

VOY: "Workforce, Part II"

I was entertained, but I didn't buy Janeway telling her alien boyfriend he couldn't stay on Voyager.

8 more episodes until I'm out of the woods. 7 I haven't seen. Then it's on to TAS and I've seen all of Trek and I can return to watching more movies.

But I do intend to revisit ENT and TNG. ENT I may speed through a little, but TNG will be slower.

VOY: "Human Error"

A good Seven episode.

And now 7 left.

Dang. You're really throwing a marathon huh, and just to get it over with once and for all. I might have trouble watching the remaining VOY seasons once DS9's run is finished...

I might resume my Trek run in July.

VOY: "Q2"

It was okay. Bye bye, Q.

6 left.

VOY: "Author, Author"

Quite liked this one, though I wonder what the rights are for the people who bought the original program before it was recalled. I wonder if George Lucas will use this episode as precedent to recall the original trilogy theatrical version DVDs that I own.

On to the Final Five.

VOY: "Friendship One"

Sucks to be Joe Carey.

A decent episode. A nice idea. But that idea has a technical flaw.

The Friendship 1 was launched in 2067 and it's top speed couldn't have been much higher than warp 1, so it could never have reached the Delta Quadrant.

Oops.

Also, if Starfleet was in contact with it until 2248, wouldn't it have relayed information back to them, and wouldn't they have extensive knowlegde of that part of space?

Also, the firing of torpodoes into the atmosphere is a bit of an easy fix for nuclear holocaust.

This should have been a S1 episode of ENT. Replace the ill-advised "Terra Nova" with a revised version of this.

4 more.

VOY: "Natural Law"

Ugh.

At this point in DS9, a guilt-ridden Damar prepares to lead a revolution on his homeworld. Dr. Bashir discovers that Section 31 is trying to commit genocide. Worf kills Gowron, becoming the Chancellor of the Klingon Empire, but gives the honor to Martok.

On VOYAGER, Tom takes a driving ed class and Chakotay throws hand signals at a bunch of mutes in a jungle.

:roll:

3 to go.

VOY: "Homestead"

Okay episode, but how did these Talaxians cross the Delta Quadrant and not be able to defend an asteroid? Seriously, it's a glaring question.

Good riddance to Neelix. I rest assured in the knowledge that with Neelix leading these Talaxians that they are good and truly fucked.

2 episodes to go. I've seen "Endgame", so there is only one live-action Star Trek episode that I have not seen yet.

VOY: "Renaissance Man"

That was at least entertaining.

Well, I've seen every episode of VOYAGER, and every live-action episode of Trek.

VOY: "Endgame"

"Find the truth of your story and you won't need all those tricks. I don't know how things are done across the Eastern Sea, but here poets have become lazy; they rely on manipulation to move their audience. It wasn't always that way."

Well, it's not terrible. It actually has a decent story with the older Janeway. Sadly, she's the only one who really has an interesting story in this episode.

I feel no swell of emotion at their return, only at being done with VOYAGER. Tomorrow I'll rent NEMESHIT.

Their return should have been like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgaWmIdxU_4#t=3m30s

Followed by what happened in BSG's "Revelations" before the PLANET OF THE APES ending.

TAS: "Beyond the Farthest Star"

Kinda groovy to see Kirk and his super friends in the 70's. Interesting episode. An okay use of the 24 minutes. Weird to see animated Trek, and weird to Trek where the story is compressed into half the time.

I liked the design of the alien ship. Ripped from the pages of a 70's comic book. ...I would imagine.

The Alan Dean Foster ST LOG novelizations of TAS are sometimes of interest. They are increasingly expanded, and a few of them are practically novel sized.

Watch MAGIKS OF MEGAS 2 and TFF back to back if you dare.

TAS: "Yesteryear"

Transcends the bounds of animation. It just tells a great story.

And how refreshing the 23rd century is.

I dug TAS primarily because the writers really took advantage of the freedom animation allowed them (even then, that had some too), instead of typically having Kirk and co casually walking down in some studio backlot at Burbank. Given the limitations of their animation process (the cheap Hanna-Barbera style) and always clocking in at 24 mins, I take my hat off for the Trek folks for doing what they could with the format.

Only real distracting thing was that it took awhile for Shatner and Kelly to find their groove in voice acting, as they're pretty dry in the early episodes. Nimoy gets away with it anyway, since Spock is for the most part dry.

TAS was always awesome for me because for a long time I didn't know it existed, so discovering it was like discovering 22 new episodes of TOS. I never minded the animation, it's only the occasionally bad writing that's aggravating, but it's never much worse than season 3 and I'll take badly written TOS over badly written VOY any day. It's just great to have those characters back.

Your marathon through season 7 of VOY does not make me eager to venture into it. "Author, Author" is a great episode, despite ripping off "Measure of a Man", but otherwise? Ugh.

You can really tell they just had no intent for wrapping up the series. It's all last minute BS.

Also, I would say the Freindship One probe, if it was launched to fly in a Delta Quadranty direction, would be probably in or just clearing Romulan space at the time of the episode in question.

It would've been around the location of Romulus in 2248 when they lost contact.

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

I'll take badly written TOS over badly written VOY any day. It's just great to have those characters back.

Absolutely. I don't think I've done a ranking since whenever the hell that was, but here it is.

DS9
TOS
TNG
TAS
ENT
VOY

I was tempted to place TAS below TOS but besides "Yesteryear" and a few, it doesn't have the same amount of classics as TNG. ENT goes below it primarily because it took too long for it to really get going and it's too bad it ended prematurely.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun watching TAS last year. Now that it's on Netflix Instant I might just watch that before I resume my airdate-DS9/VOY run.

I think "Friendship One" would have made a great ENT S1 episode because it would have been a more recent nuclear holocaust and be a rude awakening for the crew.

I'm currently suffering through NEMESHIT which, despite a REMARKABLY bad first 20 minutes, is shaping up to be at least better than NUTREK in several ways.

It really says something I don't think I even remembered to watch it until I was watching "Endgame". It was like, "Oh yeah."

I like the score. Not top drawer Goldsmith, but better than the bland audio slush from NUTREK.

It does worry me that it's lead by two people involved in SKYFALL. But Baird is an excellent editor. Whatever might be wrong with CR, it's damn well edited.

I get the sense that NEMESHIT wants to be high opera like WRATH OF KHAN, but it's so flaccid.

Just wish Dina Meyer was playing a human to show off her hotness.

The Trek movies have as of late been suffering from a similar dilemma to the Bond movies. The recent Treks have all been too obviously trying to be WRATH OF KHAN, while Bond movies always claim to be trying to be FRWL.

The bigger problem for me is that the TNG movies feel like TV movies. Gawd, NEMESHIT is so boring. Shit is blowing up on my TV, and I don't care. About 30 minutes left, thank the Lords of Kobol.

The one thing I give NUTREK is that it has energy.

I've banged on about my opinions countless times. Suffice it to say, what Trek needs is to be on TV with a good creative team who have good ideas and some balls. I just want good storytelling with some cool ideas. You won't get that from AOK*.

*Abrams, Orci, Colonel Kurtzman

Worf just said the Romulans fought with honor.

Hahahahaha.

2:57 - Bye bye, Branson!

2:57 - Riker is walking around a set from ALIEN RESURRECTION.

When did Star Trek lose all hope for the future?

Well, I'll give NUTREK that as well.

2:59 - Oh shit, Deanna's driving.

Why the fuck didn't Shinzon just go into reverse?

And how many Enterprise crew members did Picard just fucking kill with his stunt?

Oh, NOW Shinzon thinks to go into reverse!

Does the E have a Ten Forward? Hope Guinan wasn't in there!

Wait, so Riker and Viceroy Guy are on Deck 29 (of a 24 deck ship) and the Viceroy just fell to his death?

Oh noes! It's the green shit!

Jean-Luc Picard is John McClane!

SuperData!