All Things Star Trek

[Valka D'Ur]

Yep, I have to wonder which brand of cornflakes they're using for brains, by geoblocking viewers.

But if that's how it's going to be, fine. Pro novels, fan films, and fanfic will keep me busy for years. It would probably take me the better part of a year just to read the print 'zines I've got in my collection at home, never mind the novels I've got but haven't read yet, plus everything online.


CBS/Paramount handled the 50th anniversary very badly. It was basically a <expletive-you> to the fans, at least the first couple of generations who grew up with first-run showings of TOS and TAS and were really looking forward to a special 50th anniversary celebration.

Doctor Who, on the other hand? They did it just right. Nobody was geoblocked from the marathon of special programming, all the surviving Doctors were included in some way (the surviving Classic Doctors in Peter Davison's "The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot" and Paul McGann in the "Night of the Doctor" webisode; he was also very briefly in Davison's film, and Tom Baker as the Caretaker in "Day of the Doctor), and it was treated as the major event it was.

Star Trek's current caretakers, on the other hand? "Meh." They put out another crappy nuTrek movie that had no sense of being any kind of homage to the last 50 years, and said, Okay, you can have a new TV series... just not in the right year to mean anything. Oh, and only Americans can watch it.

 

[warpus]

There's so many potential stories to be told in the Star Trek universe, and yet they're always rehashing the same stuff over and over, and changing the way things look in the process.

DS9 and Voyager were great concepts. A space station! That's different. A ship stranded in the middle of nowhere! Okay, that's way different.

Surely they can think of something else interesting to base a story around other than rehashing the same stuff over and over, doing prequels, etc.

 

[Smellincoffee]

And of course, Voyager was a missed opportunity because the premise didn't truly change the basic setup. It was a prettier version of TNG, essentially, with less effective acting. They still went through torpedos and shuttles with abandon. I think DS9 was the most revolutionary of the modern shows (TNG through to ENT), and not just because of the space station setting. Those long arc-stories weren't repeated in Voyager, and when ENT tried to start those in the fourth season it was a pale imitation.

I wonder if anyone has written a Voyager fanfic that really uses the 'lost ' aspect..

 

[warpus]

Yeah, I wasn't a huge fan of Voyager for the first couple seasons. I hated the way they handled the premise and the way Janeway stranded them in the Delta quadrant. It made me dislike her quite a bit and not be able to relate to her at all. I also hated how easily the two crews became one crew. They missed out on sooo many story angles with the crews mingling together and trying to form one unified crew. It was so cartoony and 2-dimensional the way it was handled. I also didn't like the main baddies (in the first couple seasons), the Kazon or whatever. They were okay, but just seemed like a re-hash of previous baddies from other shows.

Eventually the show redeemed itself in my eyes and we got some good episodes here and there. But yeah, again, I didn't really like the way the Borg were handled and the way the show ended. I liked individual Borg episodes, not all of them, but there were some good ones. But as a whole the show was one big missed opportunity.

But still, they tried something new. Sort of. Why can't they do that again?

 

[Sommerswerd]

I'll +1 with you guys on the missed opportunities with VOY. There was an episode named "Worst Case Scenario" IIRC, that involved a what-if, training simulation program that Tuvok secretly wrote to prepare the crew for the sudden but inevitable betrayal by the Maquis crew... and everyone was "playing" it like a holodeck videogame, because "haha we all used to hate each other but Kumbaya now, woohoo we were so wascawy back then" I remember thinking to myself, "Wow this would have been a really great season-long story arc", instead of one throwaway episode...

Another YUGE missed opportunity was the "Year of Hell"... that was awesome, and should have been a season-long permanent concept, not the time travel cop-out they ended up going with.

Another thing... they should have treated VOY more like the Pirate ship it was... There was an episode called "Living Witness" IIRC where a version of the Doctor ends up marooned in a museum of some world in the future where they have all this anti Voyager propaganda as part of their history. I remember watching that and wishing that they had incorporated some of those themes into the real Voyager storyline and crew, instead of again, just using it as a throwaway concept. That Voyager crew was so badass, and much more like you would expect them to behave given what they were going through.

Finally, on that pirate ship theme... I really wish they had showed the progression of the appearance of the ship as the show progressed... kind of paralleling what the crew was going through... showing how it becomes less and less recognizable as a Federation ship as they suffer irreparable damage and integrate an eclectic assortment of alien tech... which they did, but they only occasionally actually showed it on the ship and they always ended up going back to the default stock image... which I think was a missed opportunity.

All that being said... I loved VOY... it just could have been so much better.

 

[Arakhor]

I was under the impression that Year of Hell was intended to have been a season-long arc, but they didn't have the budget or the political will to do it.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

And of course, Voyager was a missed opportunity because the premise didn't truly change the basic setup. It was a prettier version of TNG, essentially, with less effective acting. They still went through torpedos and shuttles with abandon. I think DS9 was the most revolutionary of the modern shows (TNG through to ENT), and not just because of the space station setting. Those long arc-stories weren't repeated in Voyager, and when ENT tried to start those in the fourth season it was a pale imitation.

I wonder if anyone has written a Voyager fanfic that really uses the 'lost ' aspect..

To address the bolded parts:

I've mentally retconned it that Voyager came equipped with a technological-device version of those little dodecahedron things the Kelvans (from the Andromeda Galaxy in "By Any Other Name") had. Press a button and whatever you aim it at is reduced to miniature form. Press another button and it's restored, fully functional. So Voyager could have had a whole cargo bay full of torpedoes and shuttlecraft, all the size of a tennis ball, stored on shelves, ready to use whenever Chakotay and Tom used up the current supply. Ditto the emergency escape pods, since they used those up at least twice, didn't they? Or maybe I'm thinking of the Year of Hell storyline, which got reset...

If you want long-arc storylines for Voyager, you need to read fanfiction. There's a Canadian fanfic author who goes by the name Alpha Flyer who writes terrific post-Endgame adventure stories, focusing on Tom Paris. He eventually works his way up to Captain of his own ship and uses his "street smarts" (okay, rogue-pilot/criminal background smarts) to carry out some rather dangerous assignments for Admiral Nechayev (one of Picard's least favorite people).

And there are the aforementioned authors who write long, long, LONG story arcs about Chakotay/Seven. A couple of them are over 100 chapters long. One of them is called "The Gift" and reboots the series from pre-"Caretaker". In this version Seven is still Borg, but instead of appearing in Season 3, the idea is that a Borg cube crash lands on Chakotay's home planet, years before he joins the Maquis (for the purpose of this fanfic, Chakotay's age is downgraded considerably, so he's only a few years older than Seven instead of twice as old). Chakotay's father and the local doctor figure out how to remove most of Seven's Borg implants, and Chakotay's family are the ones who teach her how to start recovering her humanity. Chakotay goes off to Starfleet (against his father's wishes), and later quits and joins the Maquis. When the Cardassians attack their home planet, Seven also joins the Maquis.

Fast-forward to "Caretaker" and Seven becomes a member of the crew along with the rest of the Maquis. For most of the time that she's been with Chakotay, they had a sibling sort of relationship, but eventually became lovers. So they're a couple right from the get-go on Voyager, and Seven is assigned to be the ship's Science Officer. The series is basically being rewritten from this premise.

That author has written other C/7 stories (she has some pretty inventive ways of making this pairing happen), and one thing I enjoy about them is that the author does NOT like Janeway (I don't either).

As for the "truly lost" aspect... there was one story I lost track of in which Janeway deliberately refused to go anywhere near the Borg hub in "Endgame". The ship went off in another direction, met different aliens, added some to the crew, and the story carried on. There's a subplot in which Seven finally gets her own quarters (she bluntly told Janeway that it wasn't fair for new alien crewmembers to have their own quarters when she was still stuck in the Cargo Bay) so Janeway tells her to go ahead, pick out some quarters and modify them however she sees fit.

I was under the impression that Year of Hell was intended to have been a season-long arc, but they didn't have the budget or the political will to do it.

Not sure about the "political will" but it was partly budget and partly the suits not having any imagination. In their minds, the TNG formula worked, so don't mess with what works - and Voyager was a combination of TOS and TNG with a female version of Kirk - and they didn't want to make too many changes for fear the audience wouldn't like it.

They did have some valid points about story arcs being problematic in that when a show goes to syndication they are not necessarily shown in order. That's why I've never really had much desire to rewatch most of DS9. Especially in the last couple of seasons, you just can't watch a random episode unless you already know what happened before and after. I might actually have missed one or two episodes... but unless I'm willing to see the entire last season, I can't know for sure. And frankly, I don't care. Bajoran religion just bores me. I don't care about the Founders. I don't give a damn about Klingon politics. I was glad when they killed Jadzia off - should have done that years earlier, because she was just a really smug, unlikable character.

 

[Sommerswerd]

They did have some valid points about story arcs being problematic in that when a show goes to syndication they are not necessarily shown in order. That's why I've never really had much desire to rewatch most of DS9. Especially in the last couple of seasons, you just can't watch a random episode unless you already know what happened before and after. I might actually have missed one or two episodes... but unless I'm willing to see the entire last season, I can't know for sure. And frankly, I don't care. Bajoran religion just bores me. I don't care about the Founders. I don't give a damn about Klingon politics. I was glad when they killed Jadzia off - should have done that years earlier, because she was just a really smug, unlikable character.

That's an interesting point about syndication that I had not thought much about and frankly, one of the things I like about Trek is that so many of the episodes have great stand-alone value/enjoyability. However, surely TNG had some long soft-arcs going on, especially in the latter seasons...

Anyway, about Jadzia... well not Jadzia specifically, but the women of DS9 to me were always a stark example of how strong the show is. Because none of the main female characters were introduced in an "eye-candy" way. They all were presented purely on the merits of their role in the story and their acting. Even Keiko, who I detest, was great at the role she was playing, the brilliant scientist turned bored, annoying wife. Jadzia was believable in her Trekified soft-presentation of Transgender. I really bought her "Dude looks like a lady" or "Lady playing a dude, disguised as a lady, dressed up as a dude" if you prefer. When Sisko called her "Old Man" you could feel a very genuine wink between them... like, "I know you're a dirty old man underneath that pretty lady disguise"

 

[Valka D'Ur]

You're seriously saying that Terry Farrell wasn't intended to be eye candy? It's no secret that her acting skills were so sub-par that she needed extra coaching.

She did an interview once in which she ranted and whined and complained that second and third-tier characters were getting storylines and not enough was being written for her. My reaction is basically, "Well, princess, if you'd been a better actress they would have written better stuff for you."

Honestly, my favorite female DS9 character is Leeta. Or some of the female guest characters. Kassidy Yates was good. I liked Quark and Rom's mother. I found most of the DS9 female characters just... obnoxiously smug.

 

[Sommerswerd]

You're seriously saying that Terry Farrell wasn't intended to be eye candy?

Well, yeah... I mean... are you talking about eye candy for guys or gals? If its eye cany for female viewers that you're talking about, then you've got me dead to rights as I admit I wasn't talking about that... although I had actually considered it in a roundabout way because the Trill species always struck me as an indirect way of challenging traditional notions of sexuality and gender.

However, if you mean eye candy for guys, then no, she's not, sorry. I mean she's pretty, but on behalf of all dudekind I think I can confidently say that an actress simply having a pretty face isn't remotely "eye-candy"... not to guys anyway... we need a little... well a lot more than that for "eye candy" status.

 

[Arakhor]

She has pretty obvious assets, but I found Nicole de Boer (Ezri) to be prettier (she has a nice smile).

 

[Valka D'Ur]

There are some guys who go for the "tall and beautiful" sort, even though the mind that accompanies those traits can be pretty vapid and scatterbrained.

Witness the number of right-wing comments on CBC.ca that Ivanka Trump's qualifications for running for president include "tall and beautiful".

It's good to see that some male Star Trek fans are smarter than that.

 

[Smellincoffee]

To address the bolded parts:
And there are the aforementioned authors who write long, long, LONG story arcs about Chakotay/Seven. A couple of them are over 100 chapters long. One of them is called "The Gift" and reboots the series from pre-"Caretaker". In this version Seven is still Borg, but instead of appearing in Season 3, the idea is that a Borg cube crash lands on Chakotay's home planet, years before he joins the Maquis (for the purpose of this fanfic, Chakotay's age is downgraded considerably, so he's only a few years older than Seven instead of twice as old). Chakotay's father and the local doctor figure out how to remove most of Seven's Borg implants, and Chakotay's family are the ones who teach her how to start recovering her humanity. Chakotay goes off to Starfleet (against his father's wishes), and later quits and joins the Maquis. When the Cardassians attack their home planet, Seven also joins the Maquis..

I think I've found it online. Once I've finished listening to Wil Wheaten's audible production of Masters of Doom (13 hours of Wheaton narrating gaming history!), I'll look into it.

However, if you mean eye candy for guys, then no, she's not, sorry. I mean she's pretty, but on behalf of all dudekind I think I can confidently say that an actress simply having a pretty face isn't remotely "eye-candy"... not to guys anyway... we need a little... well a lot more than that for "eye candy" status.

When I was a kid I though Jadzia was the prettiest, but quickly found Kira more attractive -- physically as well as character-wise. After a while Jadzia seemed like that kid in high school who does odd things just for the reputation of being odd. Ezri was more "cute" than anything else...she was such a vulnerable character until the DS9 relaunch books.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I think I've found it online.

Sorry, I should have included a link. If you mean the story on fanfiction.net by scifiromance, that's the one.

It's been a while since she updated it, but 111 chapters should keep you going for awhile.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Woot! John De Lancie is going to appear in the next episode of Star Trek Continues!

He won't play Q, of course, since Q is a TNG/DS9/Voyager character and Star Trek Continues is strictly TOS. But I'm really looking forward to this.

And a bit sad that there are only going to be 3 more episodes instead of 5...

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Woot! John De Lancie is going to appear in the next episode of Star Trek Continues!

He won't play Q, of course, since Q is a TNG/DS9/Voyager character and Star Trek Continues is strictly TOS. But I'm really looking forward to this.

And a bit sad that there are only going to be 3 more episodes instead of 5...

It isn't like Q and the continuum didn't exist in TOS timeframe. There's no unbreakable rule that says Q never encountered humanity before he ran into Picard.

 

[Arakhor]

Quinn met Riker's American Civil War ancestor after all, so Q entities have certainly encountered humanity, even if John de Lancie's Q hasn't.

 

[Ajidica]

Eh, the only good scenes with Q involved Picard. Their back-and-forth was perfect. Q's scenes with Riker or Sisko were at times painful to watch.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Eh, the only good scenes with Q involved Picard. Their back-and-forth was perfect. Q's scenes with Riker or Sisko were at times painful to watch.

I didn't really like either Riker or Sisko that much. But at least Sisko didn't let Q get away with too much aboard DS9. The Q/Janeway stories were fun (mostly).

 

[EgonSpengler]

I was alerted to the fact that Amazon is selling The Wrath of Khan: The Director's Cut on Blu-Ray for $10. I don't have a Blu-Ray player, but it occurred to me that I don't know if I've ever seen the director's cut. Is it much different?