The Star Trek Thread, 3.0

He also narrated the first Star Wars trailer.

I thought that was Orson Welles? Or maybe I am thinking the first Star Trek trailer.

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

I thought that was Orson Welles? Or maybe I am thinking the first Star Trek trailer.

First Trek teaser was Welles.


"Now give me my F***IN' money."

F***IN' FINISHIN' VOYAGER

"Homestead"
This episode has a lot of stupid things in it. The Talaxian colony 50,911.5ly from home. That they got there within 22 years (Warp 9.89 without stopping). The fact that they've settled on an asteroid owned by someone else after settling on other planets owned by someone else as if there were no uninhabited planets within all that space. The fact that everyone overlooks the simplest solution: The miners wanna mine, the Talaxians already have an intricate tunnel complex throughout -- rather than blowing them up, pay them to mine for you. Then everyone keeps acting like this is a Prime Directive issue, when it's really clearly not. Then there's the chronological snafu of making it April 5, 2378 suddenly when it should be Nov 14, 2377 according to the stardate system.
But, y'know what? Whatever. Neelix gets a good episode to go out on, an end to his character arc, and some closure and a nice goodbye. That's better than anyone else on this show gets, and it means we get a couple of hours without Neelix, too. That might make it the best episode of VOY by default.
# of Crew: 124 Total -- 106 Starfleet, 12 Maquis, 3 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -5
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -65
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 24,088.5 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 12
B'Elanna has been pregnant: 201 days

"Renaissance Man"
This episode was actually really good. It's clever, the characters are super-competent, Tuvok is awesome, the Doc gets to do a bunch of awesome stuff that he should always have been able to do but never did, and at the end of the day it's not ridiculously stupid (although the initial con ruse seems that way when the episode is pretending the con is real). I really liked this episode. But THIS is the second-to-last show? Really? At least the Doc's fake death scene gives him a chance to say a bunch of stuff to the crew that gives a feeling of mini closure. But of course he's fine. VOY reset. But oh well, a good episode is a good episode (and one last holo-episode for a season full of 'em!)
# of Crew: 124 Total -- 106 Starfleet, 12 Maquis, 3 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -5
# of Warp Cores: 1
# of Photon Torpedoes: -65
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 24,059.4 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 12
B'Elanna has been pregnant: 209 days

"Endgame"
Okay, we all know why this episode is super stupid. The time travel makes no sense, there's no closure for anybody at the end, the tech upgrades make Voyager super OP, why does Admiral Janeway choose this lost opportunity to get home and not any others (especially the Ferengi wormhole incident)? Why is Tuvok's illness, Chakotay's death, Seven's death, etc. the motivation to ruin an entire timeline and everyone else's lives all of a sudden? How did Seven not recognize that it was a transwarp hub? Why doesn't the Borg Queen just assimilate everybody the first sign of trouble (she doesn't need to interrogate people if she just assimilates them!) Remember when the Borg were undefeatable and un-negotiable? Not to mention the shitty storytelling and filmmaking decision to cut back and forth between the future and the present continuously until Janeway arrives in our timeline. Sloppy. Etc. Etc. Etc.
But what's especially aggravating is how easily all the problems could be solved. I can even buy why it's THIS moment she goes back to and none of the others -- a friend pointed out that it's a point when the crew is at their most happy -- Neelix has his happy ending, Kes is a hyperevolved life-form, Seven and Chakotay are beginnng their romance, Tom and B'Elanna are about to have their baby -- ultimately you don't wanna wipe out too much of the journey because if they went back, say, with the Caretaker Array at the start, then Neelix would still be trading garbage, Kes would be getting raped by the Kazon, Chakotay and B'Elanna would be in Federation prison along with Tom, etc. etc. So I get it. And she can't wait too long after this point or Tuvok's condition (which also comes out of nowhere and should've been alluded to in earlier episodes) would be untreatable already. So, imagine this:
We start in the future, same shit, same dumb story (I'm fixing the episode, I can't make it high art). But Janeway gets the device without a hitch -- no Doc seeing Tuvok, seeing Reg, warning Kim, fight with Klingons, convincing Kim because at the end of the day NONE OF THAT MATTERS because she succeeds! There's no real tension for it. It doesn't matter because all of these characters are gonna be wiped from the timeline. We just need to see that Voyager got back, get a hint of their lives since, and most importantly, see how things are bad (Tuvok's first illness scene does that fine, as does Chakotay grave scene). So bam, the future scenes are much shorter. Admiral Janeway travels back in time. THEN! We're in the present, everything's the same (including the damn Chakotay/Seven romance because ultimately my only problem with that is that they should've fucking built up to it -- it comes out of so much nowhere). Admiral Janeway shows up.
But the transwarp hub ISN'T the Borg's. Because when you think about it, it breaks the Borg. We see that the hub network can take them ANYWHERE nearly INSTANTLY, including the Dominion AND 1ly away from Earth! It's not consistent with ANYTHING we've seen of how the Borg travel up to this point. Yeah, their ships are fast, but why haven't they used this thing to conquer EVERYTHING so far? Why weren't the Borg fucking up the Jem'Hadar? Why aren't they constantly launching Cubes at Earth?
So, instead, the hub is run by some group of friendly aliens that we befriend, and Admiral Janeway didn't know about when she was Captain Janeway (Voyager scanned the nebula, didn't detect the hub, kept going, but Future Janeway knows because these aliens will have made contact with the Feds in the years since Voyager's return). But! The Borg have discovered the hub! And the crew then decide to fuck about risking Voyager to help the aliens DEFEND the hub from the Borg because otherwise if the Borg get access it risks all the above shit I just said the Borg could do with the hub the episode already gives them. This is then Admiral Janeway's conflict with Captain Janeway about selfishness vs. heroism, because in the episode as it stands it's clear the Hub isn't a big deal (since the Borg haven't used it to fuck everybody) and so Captain Janeway comes off as stupidly reckless (again). Also, in this new scenario, our villains are trying to do something villainous, and we're risking our way home to stop them! As opposed to risking our way home to shit on some people who aren't actually doing anything in the story -- yeah, those people are the Borg, but as it stands the Queen's villainous scheme is "don't get blown up by these guys."
So the moral quandary is that Janeway realizes the hub is too powerful to let stand -- even if we defeat THESE Borg, they will keep coming as long as the hub exists. So we convince the aliens to destroy it to save themselves and the galaxy, and the jeopardy is can we destroy the hub, defeat the Borg, and get through in time to get home?
I think Admiral Janeway can still use the pathogen to kill the Borg by sacrificing herself. I like that bit, because we've been talking about killing the Borg that way since "I, Borg" and it's good to finally do it -- and I like that it straight up takes the Borg out of the equation -- you can argue that after "Endgame" they are dead, which is good because they've been beaten into the ground and no longer useful as villains.
Then we make it home, and because we cut all that faffing about in the future, we can have SOME FUCKING CLOSURE.
And it doesn't have to be a big never-ending Return of the King thing. It can be like a "Wire" style montage of short, simple scenes:
The Doc and Reg hug, see Zimmerman again, who's just fine, thank you.
Kim shows up at his parents' doorstep, wearing LIEUTENANT's pips, hug.
Chakotay and B'Elanna at an official hearing are cleared of all charges, as are all the other Maquis, in light of their service to Voyager.
At another official hearing Janeway is cleared, promoted and given medals.
Seven introduces Chakotay to that aunt, she calls her "Annika" and so does Chakotay.
Tom meets his father. They look at one another. Then, B'Elanna and the newborn emerge from behind Tom, Admiral Paris is overwhelmed with joy. Admiral Paris: "I'm proud of you."
The crew and other Starfleet officials, all in dress uniform, standing in front of the Voyager, landed at the Presidio. They toast the ship and her crew. Then, old Admiral Janeway, same time period we started, looking at a holo-image of that day, happy. The End.
It would take like ten minutes if that, which you would easily get by eliminating the dumb Doc/Tuvok, Doc/Reg, Janeway/Klingons, Janeway/Kim, Kim/Klingons shit in the future period.
***FINAL STATS***
# of Crew: 124 Total -- 106 Starfleet, 12 Maquis, 3 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -5
# of Warp Cores: 1
# of Photon Torpedoes: -71
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 0 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 12
B'Elanna has been pregnant: 239 days

I'm so fucking glad to be done that. Disapointed we didn't lose more crew, but -71 torpedoes is pretty F***IN funny.

Now on to NEMESHIT. Zod, why couldn't there be something GOOD to look forward to at the end of my chronological Trek? Even if I follow Ambassador Spock back in time, I just end up at STINO. Trek is a Hollow Franchise -- ends with a whimper.

Quality of DS9, graphed:


Quality of VOY, graphed:


Best Episodes of VOY:
"Prime Factors"
This one was well written, superbly acted, with fine execution. A stand-out of the first season thus far.
"Death Wish"
Probably one of the all time, classic, must-see top ten for sures.
"Alliances"
The episode explores these themes not only with intelligence, but with drama and excitement -- although to be honest it gets points just for exploring them at all, since VOY ignores its own premise so often.
"Scorpion, Part I"
The first genuinely exciting, tension-filled episode of VOY. Ever. After three years we finally get a good balance of action, excitement, tension, plot, character and drama.
"Message in a Bottle"
One of my all-time favourite episodes
"Blink of an Eye"
Probably one of the all-time best VOYAGER episodes ever done, a truly worthy addition to Star Trek, in my opinion.
"Muse"
A good send-off for Menosky.

Worst Episodes of VOY:
"Twisted"
This episode was TERRIBLE. I don't know if I've ever been so BORED watching Star Trek. Characters wander around for an hour, then defeat the problem by doing NOTHING.
"Threshold"
What I can I say about "Threshold" that hasn't already been said? Nothing here is worthwhile. The whole thing can be unequivocably shoved out the airlock.
"Sacred Ground"
This episode was frustrating, trite, and stupid.
"Coda"
Ugh. What the frak was this supposed to be? Terrible show.
"Fury"
This is, without a doubt, the worst episode of Star Trek: Voyager I've ever seen. This episode is just stupid on all levels and makes so little sense I got a headache. This episode is dumb.

Agreed with that list, also really dug whole thing with Tuvok in "Prime Factors". One of the few times the show did something interesting with the characters. Watching an episode like that early on the show would fool you that the rest of the series might churn out something as good. But we were SO WRONG. Then after the awhile it's as if the writers forgot that Tuvok and Janeway are supposed to have a friendship that lasted for many years.

I probably would include "Living Witness" in my top VOY list.


And so, the Gorn are turned into Star Wars monsters: http://www.startrek.com/article/gorn-aplenty-in-star-trek-the-video-game

Apparently the appearance of the Gorn in ENT is totally forgotten.

The Shatner is 82 today



We reach.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/william-shatner-photo_n_2925359.html

Python wrote:

And so, the Gorn are turned into Star Wars monsters: http://www.startrek.com/article/gorn-aplenty-in-star-trek-the-video-game

Apparently the appearance of the Gorn in ENT is totally forgotten.

Ugh, that's hideous!

http://news.yahoo.com/irs-calls-star-trek-parody-video-mistake-231924664--politics.html

When I read the article title, I assumed the mistake was having TOS character wear TNG uniforms. That's how much of a geek I am.

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

Now on to NEMESHIT. Zod, why couldn't there be something GOOD to look forward to at the end of my chronological Trek? Even if I follow Ambassador Spock back in time, I just end up at STINO. Trek is a Hollow Franchise -- ends with a whimper.

There is always S4 of ENT, minus "These Are the Voyages..."

But not chronological, sadly.

The White Tuxedo wrote:

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

Now on to NEMESHIT. Zod, why couldn't there be something GOOD to look forward to at the end of my chronological Trek? Even if I follow Ambassador Spock back in time, I just end up at STINO. Trek is a Hollow Franchise -- ends with a whimper.

There is always S4 of ENT, minus "These Are the Voyages..."

I've almost made my peace with TATV just because, while it is shit, it allows me to justify calling all of ENTERPRISE a wildly inaccurate "historical drama" entertainment holonovel that Riker and Troi just mistook for documentary, thus allowing me to write off most of the series and make up my own headcanon.

Best way to work that is say that the Enterprise episodes that Riker watched were ones when Berman and Braga ran as showrunners, while the Manny Coto S4 is historically accurate.

Even though it deals with the whole "Vulcans not being Vulcans" thing.

Yeah, my own headcanon is more interesting. They really fucked up with the Vulcans.

I only take TOS/TNG/DS9 seriously. And the films, though I'd rather ignore V and the NextGen ones.

It's amazing how much of an incompetent ass Archer starts off as and when a new showrunner is brought in he suddenly achieves common sense and becomes likable.

The first couple of acts in NEMESIS aren't actually bad. There are some good ideas in the script. Takes a while for the thing to really go off the rails. It's almost refreshingly good after seven seasons of VOY, and mindbogglingly intelligent compared to STINO. And I've never considered NEMESIS a "smart" movie. It reminds me of Gates McFadden's comment that a "writer's cut" would be preferable to a "director's cut". There are problems in the writing sure -- many of which stem from Logan's admittance that he dropped out of fandom around S5 of TNG, which explains why characters like Wesley and Worf are suddenly back in uniform, and references to DS9 and the Dominion War tertiary at best (although at least there, which is somwhat admirable). I noticed that going back simply what is SAID in the script, nothing actually indicates the Remans are a seperate species, which makes me wonder if Logan had simply intended them as second-class citizen Romulans living on the other planet as slave miners and so on, and that they became Nosferatu monsters when the production team started in and thought it would look cool to visually distinguish them, etc.

Anyways, full thoughts and a proper review to come later.

Goes off the rails for me once the mind rape happens.

Python wrote:

Goes off the rails for me once the mind rape happens.

Although the dune buggy action scene is an early bad sign.

Not just a sign of how the film would turn out, but how the next films do as well.

It's sort've like watching an old-school blues band filled with 40-50 year olds try to play to a Bieber crowd.

Although I have a theory that if they had just let Voyager end in 2001 and not done Enterprise at all, maybe Nemesis would have done better. But everyone was just franchise fatigued, even the diehards. I remember feeling the same way and I was 12! I had only been into Trek for five years!

I was sorta the same with the shows, though I still looked forward to the film. I saw it with my cousin and found it so underwhelming that I told him that we should just go home and watch both The Wrath of Khan and First Contact, to show him what Nemesis failed to be exactly.

My fellow Trekkie friends and I at the time where really into the Romulans and the Tal Shiar so the idea of a Romulan centric movie was really cool for us. We were totally psyched up about it -- so yeah, it was a big disappointment. The movie starts really cool and mysterious and interesting, I think, and it has these hints of promise, but once Data and Picard are flying around corridors shooting dudes with a fighter I was aggravated, and even then I was pissed off at the shot of Tom Hardy as Young Picard with no hair!! What the fuck? And the whole ending with Data/B-4 was such an obvious TWOK rip-off and the whole ending felt like a waste. Although I will admit that at least ripping off Spock's return allowed us to get the awesome Captain Data of the Enterprise-E in the Countdown comic series -- which was actually pretty good and does a decent job of tying NEMESIS to STINO, as well as working in the Star Trek Online game that was coming out at the time and even putting in some elements from the "All Good Things" future.

And the Remans pissed me off from the moment I saw them -- I was totally spoiler free going in other than knowing it was about Romulans, because I was 12 and my only real Trek source was startrek.com. And the Remans were (and are) such an out of nowhere totally unprecedented addition to the canon, and never really addressed as to what the fuck they are in the movie itself, that it bothered me the whole way through. I don't object to the idea, but introducing an idea like that to a species after 40 years of storytelling and no hint is bullshit.

I remember my expectations being more in line with TUC, that this would be TNG's grand finale and it didn't come anywhere close, going out in a whimper instead of a bang. Once the reports of bad box office came in (performing even lower than TFF) I knew it was over.

Python wrote:

I remember my expectations being more in line with TUC, that this would be TNG's grand finale and it didn't come anywhere close, going out in a whimper instead of a bang. Once the reports of bad box office came in (performing even lower than TFF) I knew it was over.

TFF at least doubled it's budget. Nemesis made just $7 million more than it cost to make, which was $60 million.

But yes, it was no kind of grand finale. That's why the ending is so fucked -- because it feels like a film uncertain of whether it's a final TNG movie or not -- it leaves things open for a sequel, and then even cut things like Crusher leaving the Enterprise which would've helped it feel more like an ending.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mxkpgpl3_1E