The Star Trek Thread, Phase II

I think the tv version is weaksauce.

The way they messed with the Goldsmith theme made it seem weak,but it still has elements of the grandness that was TMP, and that is also totally at odds with the TNG visuals.

To tell the truth, I don't think I ever got a visual that was in keeping with what I WANTED to see playing against the TMP theme -- which was basically the Enterprise carving up an enemy fleet in several lengthy sweeping shots. Think a slightly more dignified version of how the Falcon moves during the JEDI end battle.

There's a lot of discussion on the trek sites about the BLURAY of TNG and how it is being done ... I'm kinda interested from a tech standpoint, especially if they really do go back to the original film elements of miniatures and recomp them at higher resolution. They had a really hard time using the stock shots from FARPOINT that turn up in GENERATIONS because the film elements were already so worn out in 1994, so I imagine this is going to be a huge hassle no matter how they go about it.

I notice throughout TNG McCartney NEVER uses the TMP theme at all. Instead he's continues using the rejected theme he wrote known as the Picard theme. I always thought that was an odd choice and he would stick with that method all the way to GENERATIONS completely missing the show's theme. Ron Jones was the only composer utilizing the TMP theme, mostly in S1. While he does a good job with it he tended to overuse the theme in that season so I thought he definitely got better and creative when he started writing his own material during the 2-4 seasons, instead of ending an episode with another variation of the TMP theme we get nice music like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opcHlxgWBK4#t=3m38s

But I yeah, unless he's scoring an show helmed by Rob Bowman a lot of the footage doesn't match the bombastic music.

Yeah, I like that part that you linked to. It stuck out to me when I watch "Q Who" a couple months back.

Oh man, speaking of misuse of the TMP theme -- my least favourite part of "Encounter at Farpoint" is the half-hour, insanely slow saucer sep/reconnect sequence scored by possible the loudest and most obnoxious version of that theme.

"Peak Performance"

Good old fun. Should have been the finale, having Data gain confidence in himself. It's been a good season for the android.

"Shades of Gray"

It's so sad. You can see Diana Muldaur is trying her best to elevate this dog of an episode.

For all the shit that has been going on behind the scenes it seems fitting that this episode represents the end of that era.

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

Oh man, speaking of misuse of the TMP theme -- my least favourite part of "Encounter at Farpoint" is the half-hour, insanely slow saucer sep/reconnect sequence scored by possible the loudest and most obnoxious version of that theme.

And that's especially because it was basically tacked on. McCarthy wrote something else but the producers decided to slap on the TNG theme instead and it just does not fit with the moment there. I haven't tried watching the scene with the original music yet, so I dunno how that might have been.

At least the Writer's Guild Strike of 88 enabled "The Cage" to finally be aired.

Meanwhile, I worked out with my Trekkie friends that the Okudas got the calendar year of every single TOS feature film wrong in their Encyclopedia/Chronology, even based on their own dating system and reasoning.

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

At least the Writer's Guild Strike of 88 enabled "The Cage" to finally be aired.

Meanwhile, I worked out with my Trekkie friends that the Okudas got the calendar year of every single TOS feature film wrong in their Encyclopedia/Chronology, even based on their own dating system and reasoning.

Let's hear it. :)

TMP - I say 2273. Sounds right to me.
TWOK is generally established as 2285. Now it's March 2285 if you take Kirk's birthdate as canon. So that makes TSFS and TVH 2285 as well. TVH is only three months after TSFS, and I don't see why it has to be 2286. TFF is more iffy if I recall. He gave Scotty weeks to repair the piece of shit Ent-A, and it doesn't sound like they had a long tour of duty. Seems the thing was a piece of shit from the start, implying that TVH's victorious ending wasn't so much. So I'd put that in 2285 as well. Not 2287.

That leaves TUC. I think 2293 works. Bones said he'd been with the Enterprise crew for 27 years or some such. Works with the date 2266, even though Bones had spent some years out of the service.

But I'm sure Sykes' notes are more extensive.

RE: trevanien on the TMP theme. I never heard it as right for a battle sequence like you describe. Sounds more fitting for noble exploration and the like. Too stately for battle, IMHO.

And the saucer sequence in FARPOINT is crap. One of the more crap things in that episode probably, so it's gotta be pretty damn crap.

Oh yeah, TAS is on Instant. Didn't know if that was known.

Well, first up, we take as a given that the five year mission (TOS and TAS) is 2265-2270, established definitively after much speculation in a VOYAGER episode of all things.

So, movie by movie

THE MOTION PICTURE
Okuda date: 2271 (check your Encyclopedias!)
My date: 2273
Okuda reasoning: Refit of Enterprise was 18 months.
My reasoning: Okay, this Okuda date is pretty much debunked. Nobody thinks TMP is in 2271 anymore, not even Memory Alpha. While Scotty does say the Enterprise has been in refit for 18 months, on many occasions Kirk is said to have been Chief of Operations and not logged a star hour in 2 and a half years, and Spock has spent 2.8 years on Vulcan. So, 2273 is my (and now the generally accepted) date for TMP.

THE WRATH OF KHAN
Okuda date: 2285
My date: March 22nd, 2283
Okuda reasoning: I have never understood why the Okuda's placed TWOK in 2285. Apparently it's based on McCoy's bottle of Romulan Ale from 2283, which he tells Kirk "takes a while to ferment." Apparently a while is 2 years. That's about it.
My reasoning: Well, straight up, other than the Ale year, everyone in the damn movie keeps repeating that "Space Seed" was 15 years ago, and "Space Seed" is generally accepted to have taken place in 2267. That gets us to 2282, but because of the Ale we know it has to be at least 2283, and we know it's Kirk's birthday so March 22, 2283 -- we'll assume we just haven't hit the 16th anniversary of "Space Seed" yet and that everyone is rounding down. Now, two great things come from the movie being 2283 -- the best is that it means that this is Kirk's 50TH birthday, not his 52nd. In my mind it makes way more sense if Kirk is morose about his 50th -- I always thought 52 was an odd age to obsess over. Also, if we accept the generally accepted notion that there is another 5-year Kirk mission after TMP, that gives us 2273-2278, then the Enterprise is transformed into a training vessel and command given to Spock, and a four year Academy term gives us upperclassmen taking the Kobayashi Maru scenario in... 2283.

THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK
Okuda date: 2285
My date: April, 2283
Okuda reasoning: A few weeks after TWOK
My reasoning: A few weeks after TWOK

THE VOYAGE HOME
Okuda date: 2286
My date: July, 2283
Okuda reasoning: This one is silly -- basically it's just for the cute factor that we KNOW they go back to 1986, so this makes it an even 300 years. Which is stupid because...
My reasoning: The movie flat out tells us it's been three months since TSFS, and that was only a few weeks after TWOK in March, so it can't possibly be the next year. So it's still 2283.

THE FINAL FRONTIER
Okuda date: 2287
My date: September, 2283
Okuda reasoning: Apparently making the gap between TVH (2286 to them) and TUC (2293 to them) less huge. I can see no other reason for thinking that after TWELVE MONTHS Scotty still can't get the Alpha running.
My reasoning: Okay, so there's one important thing to understand about the Alpha -- like the second Defiant, it's another ship renamed, the USS Yorktown, damaged by the Probe in TVH, was repaired and repainted to be the Alpha to honour the command crew's efforts. This isn't said in the movies, but it is in the background production materials, and explains why there are so many bugs in the thing and why its decommisioned such a short time later. Now, in the movie, Kirk says he gave Scotty 3 weeks to work out the bugs. So it's been at least that long, suggesting August -- but we know it's September because of the Yosemite scenes, so clearly Scotty's now taken a little bit more time. Either way, 3 weeks does not transform into twelve months.

THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY
Okuda date: 2293
My date: 2292
Okuda reasoning: The Ent-B is commissioned in 2293 (firmly established in GEN), the Ent-A having been decommisioned some time earlier.
My reasoning: This one is splitting a bit of hairs, but yeah McCoy says he's been on the ship for 27 years, and his first episode has a 2265 stardate, rendering 2292 (although the Okudas place "Corbomite" in 2266 to make the math line-up, reasoning that only "Where No Man" is 2265 and that an entire year of the 5-year mission was a refit, which is silly). Another reason 2292 works is that Sulu says he's been Captain for 3 years, giving us 2289, and then we have five years and some change for a classic five year mission for the Ent-A with Sulu, taking us back to 2283 and Trek V. This also gives breathing room of about a year between Ent-A and Ent-B which the Okuda's don't give.

So yes, basically what you've said above, only not taking the arbitrary 2285 year for granted and splitting some hairs on TUC.

Having worked on the 24th century shows, almost everything the Okudas say in that range is accurate, but they we basically just guessing and conjecturing on a lot of TOS stuff and got sloppy, and it shows.

Ok, Geek Time.

- The Romulan Ale. It is a problematic issue. Really the only one in placing TWOK. They may have been thinking the 2290's for all we know.

-The anniversary of "Space Seed". I think 15 years is just a shorthand number for both the writer(s) and the character(s). I don't think that point should be taken too literally.

-Kirk's 50th. That's my favorite reason for you placing TWOK in 2283. That's a real, legitimate reason based on shit that's important. That's not an attack on how you handled the Ale and "Space Seed" issues, but those things are about minor details.

Back to the Ale, maybe they picked 2283 because it placed the film just a little more into the future than their (the filmmakers) point in the century. If that makes any sense. Wish they'd picked a different number. It's the only thing that makes placing this film a problem.

-Good point about the repairs in TFF.

-TUC. I like 2292. The short time between the Ent-A's decommisioning and the Ent-B's launch always bothered me. Though I can see it that the Enterprise-B had been intended to be a different ship.

-A year-long refit during the classic five-year mission? I hadn't heard that one before. That's retarded. I take "Where No Man Has Gone Before" as taking place in 2265, and "The Corbomite Manuever" as taking place in 2266. I just accept that there was a gap between them of some months that wasn't chronicled on the show. In that time, McCoy joined the crew. But it seems he's been around there for a while already in CORBOMITE, at least long enough for he and Kirk to have already struck up a friendship.

To get nerdier, I do see WNMHGB as being one of the earliest missions of the five-year mission. If not the first one. Maybe the first major one.

And Kirk frakked Dr. Noel around Christmas '65. Lucky basterd.

Oh yeah, what about Kirk in GEN telling that lady that he was returning to Starfleet.

IIRC in the commentary Moore meant for that scene to take place sometime between TMP and TWOK. Kirk mentions that moment in his life was "nine years ago", so going by 2293 that would place it 2284, a year before Okuda's "TWOK is in 85".

That would also mean Kirk's dog Butler died in 2286 cuz he said "he's been dead seven years".

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier


Mike: "The New Three Stooges!"
Kevin: "Yeah. Moe, Cranky and Hammy."

1989 was a shaky year for Trek. Embarrassing flick. Ambitious, but boy does it just fall flat on its face. Even if Shatner didn't have the restrictions he faced I doubt this would have come up to par with the previous four films. Anyway, enough with the bad noise.

Love the campfire scene sans "Row Row Row Your Boat". The cosmic thoughts scene. Pretty much any Trinity scene that isn't facepalm inducing. Laurence Luckinbill is very charismatic and convincing, is there anything notable he did outside of Trek? He's an actor I'd like to see in something else.

1. The Wrath of Khan
2. The Voyage Home
3. The Search for Spock
4. The Motion Picture
5. The Final Frontier

I haven't seen it, but Luckinbill and Cliff Gorman are both supposed to be really good in THE BOYS IN THE BAND. And Luckinbill's work as LBJ in a TV thing is how he landed Sybok.

I just don't understand why they didn't give him the Vulcan bangs. I've never even seen that issue discussed, but it is distracting as hell.

The moment when Kirk says 'you're mad' and Sybok says 'am I?' is really good, probably LL's best moment, but still it makes me think of how awesome Connery would have been if they'd been able to keep him from doing Indy 3 instead of Trek. Klaus Maria Brandauer and Max Von Sydow are the other two people I'd heard were candidates but cost too much. Brandauer could have been a crazy insane fun Vulcan, but as much as I adore Von Sydow, I don't like it when he plays 'up' (Conan.)

Really? I love it when Sydow does that -- his cameo in Conan is one of my all-time favourite moments.

I feel like Connery would have been too distracting in the role, it would have been too "stunt" and I don't know if I could've bought Connery as a "son of Sarek". Brandauer would've been delightfully insane though, I think I definitely would've enjoyed that.

Post Season Follow-Up:

Ones I enjoyed the most, for various reasons:

Where Silence Has Lease
Elementary, Dear Data
A Matter of Honor
The Measure of a Man
Pen Pals
Q Who
Up the Long Ladder
The Emissary
Peak Performance

Ones that bored me to tears:

The Child
The Outrageous Okona
The Dauphin
The Royale
Samaritan Snare
Manhunt
Shades of Gray

Then the rest ranges between the extremes.

A step in the right direction but too many blunders to join the ranks of the middle seasons. Moving on...


"Evolution"

A pretty good season opener for TNG that is not following a cliffhanger. The nanite story comes off like a rehash of "Home Soil" with the beings taking control of the ship but I think it's done better here than it was in S1.

The manner of bringing back Dr. Crusher is flimsy. In the S2 opener it was explained that she got promoted to head of Starfleet Medical. So, she decided to return as the CMO of the Enterprise? Right. Even Piller knows well it's a dumb idea and tries to avoid the subject by only mentioning that she was at Starfleet Medical, never that she was head of it nor why she returned at all. Flimsy, but that's how it is just so Piller could get it out of he way and move on.

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

Really? I love it when Sydow does that -- his cameo in Conan is one of my all-time favourite moments.

Maybe it is the way the beard looks on him, but it seems like Father Xmas has a debilitating disease when I see CONAN -- weird, because I don't have problems with anybody else in the movie, when I suppose I should be laughing at the surfer guy or Big Ben Davidson.) Between CONAN and NSNA, I really get the 'cash the check' feeling, which seems like an epic betrayal given Von Sydow's epic talent. Oddly, I don't see that in DUNE -- but then again, I get the impression nearly everybody knocked themselves out for Lynch with their professionalism on that one.

For me, max volume for Max is probably when he realized Barbara Hershey is seeing another guy in HANNAH ... it's also one of the very few impressions I can do credibly, so maybe that is part of why I appreciate it.

The stuff I've heard about his method suggests he is like Meryl Streep, that he can repeat his performance on a technical and artistic level like motion control, altering specific thing while retaining all the stuff that is approved from the previous take. It's the kind of thing that scares me, because I can't even imagine being in the same room with that kind of talent without the force of it knocking me off my feet. (just seeing some of the 8min of Downey doing the "i'm the guy playing the guy" variations in TROPIC THUNDER was enough to make me eject the disc, it made my brain burn to see him be able to work like that over and over.)

Sykes Journeys Through the Delta Quadrant (VOY Season 4 Reviews)

"Living Witness"
A good, classic style, Trek episode. Shades of "Planet of the Apes", and with an element of "alternate Voyager" that Brannon Braga loves to do, but still admirably done. The idea of the Doctor's backup module is a bit of a contrivance, but it enables a good story about revisionist history. It's a story well told, centred around interesting ideas. That alone makes it a successful VOY episode.
# of Crew: 134 Total -- 118 Starfleet, 13 Maquis, 3 Civilians
# of Shuttles: 1
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: 10
# of Gel Packs: 46
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 61,995.9 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 10

"Demon"
Unlike this episode, which was pointless. Aggressively pointless. Basically a mystery for 40 minutes, then four minutes of explanation, and then a nothing ending. I mean, WHAT? We just COPIED THE WHOLE CREW? Who does that? The whole hour is just an aggressive barrage of stupid, like a second or third season episode. What a waste. It's only redeeming feature is the new "assertive" Kim, a development which I'm sure will be immediately forgotten.
# of Crew: 134 Total -- 118 Starfleet, 13 Maquis, 3 Civilians
# of Shuttles: 1
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: 10
# of Gel Packs: 46
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 61,953.4 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 10

"Living Witness" was one of the standouts for me.

"The Ensigns of Command"

Another good Data episode. Yeah, the Sheliak pretty much are Tholians but it's still cool to see non-humanoid species crop up in TNG, despite the obvious reuse of the freighter ship from TSFS. I thought the guy who played the leader of the colonists was very awful in a lot of his delivery, then I go on MA and learn all his lines were dubbed by someone else because he sounded too much like John Wayne or something. Can't say the dubbing helped.

Also, one of my favorite moments:



"The Survivors"

Pretty good. One thing that struck me was how the characters really became less of idiots like in early episodes especially S1. Here he figures it out logically. John Anderson makes a very good guest here and plays it on the right level.

"Who Watches the Watchers"

Besides the awful small moment where Picard asks why Crusher didn't let Ray Wise die, everything is pretty much superb. One of the better Prime Directive episodes.

Yeah, all three of those episodes are great. S3 is a big improvement on S1 and 2 right off the bat. The issue you're talking about with characters being idiots and not figuring out the obvious was my largest S1 problem. "The Survivor" always felt very Classic Trek to me, and in retrospect it's a little out of place with the way the TNG universe is portrayed, but its still very good. And yeah, "Who Watches the Watchers" and "First Contact" are maybe the quintessential TNG Prime Directive episodes.

I wish 'negotiation picard style' was usually carried out as it is at the end of MENAGE A TROIS.

Even though PEN PALS looks at the PD in a different way, that is the one I usually think of. Mainly because they ALL know they are going off the deep end once Data plays the sound of the little girl's voice for them.

My major issue with TNG era PD is the whole warp-capable thing. The only way a civilization can show its worthiness is through a use of tech? Sounds like a tech advisor for the show is advising the Federation rather than a philosopher or working scientist, a combo of which would probably be needed in order to make anything like a PD work (assuming it could, which I don't believe for a minute.)

Also, wouldn't the Ferengi just go in and poach all the pre-warp worlds? We wouldn't be allowed to interfere with them, and then afterward, would we even be able to go in and make a contact of our own, since the people there would KNOW of ETs? Or would we still have to wait for them to discover (or buy) warp drive?

I think the warp thing makes sense from the point of view that if the point of the PD is to avoid interfering with primitive cultures, well, once they have FTL they'll be finding you anyways and know of aliens and so on anyways, so no sense avoiding them now, right? If there's gonna be an arbitrary line, (and there kinda has to be), its a reasonable one. I do get your point however, about the weirdness of the fact that the Ferengi aren't gonna abide by it and screw people over, and that's how you get guys like the Pakleds, but I mean the point is you'd know you hadn't been the one fucking them up, I guess?

I still think it's astonishing that the Ferengi weren't seen until 2364. I smell Section 31 involvement. Aren't there theories about Zek not wanting contact with the Feds? I see it as a Fed coverup more than a Ferengi one. Ferengi could hope to make a fortune from some interstellar government that doesn't appear to have individual companies. Think of the contracting opportunities. Would make a Ferengi's ears tingle.

As for the PD. Ward drive is the sensible threshold. Or maybe major interplanetary travel within their solar system.

Having ENT name drop them in "Dear Doctor" really made it more complicated. I dunno, I'd just ignore the whole issue like how the writers completely ignored the aspect of the Romulans having a cloaking device in "Minefield" in subsequent episodes. Like how "Threshold" never happened. I can sort of buy "Acquisition" (lol) since they claimed to be very far from home and no name dropping is around, flimsy but it sorta works (and it was an enjoyable episode anyway, oddly! I blame Combs).

Doesn't the NX-01 have cameras?


........Yep.