Although I think theres been enough time between shows that Id be willing to watch a new series, if the premise was good enough.
I sort of wonder what Trek has left to accomplish, artistically. I mean, basically all of Next Generation was a purified, concentrated version of the original series - exploring various ethical problems common to us in an allegory-filled future. We had seven years of that, plus three more series that tried to achieve the same damned thing, albeit with various levels of commitment to the "copy next gen" mentality.
I would watch a "Lower Decks" style show, though - stories focused on the every day, working types aboard a starship, and how they get to experience the insane, awe-inspiring adventures of the senior staff.
Although I think theres been enough time between shows that Id be willing to watch a new series, if the premise was good enough.
I sort of wonder what Trek has left to accomplish, artistically. I mean, basically all of Next Generation was a purified, concentrated version of the original series - exploring various ethical problems common to us in an allegory-filled future. We had seven years of that, plus three more series that tried to achieve the same damned thing, albeit with various levels of commitment to the "copy next gen" mentality.
I would watch a "Lower Decks" style show, though - stories focused on the every day, working types aboard a starship, and how they get to experience the insane, awe-inspiring adventures of the senior staff.
Id watch a West Wing equivalent, or a show about people living on a newly colonized world or something. Or a show that focused on a different species (Romulans maybe?).
No, Voyager launched with something obscene like 18 million viewers, ENT did about 12.5 on its premiere.
Yep. Even the good ST shows had massive dropoff as they went along.
That's expected of just about every TV show. Most lose viewers as the seasons go on, unless something big, game changing, and very popular is introduced. It's not really indicative of anything.
What is indicative is the slide for all series.
Correlation doesn't imply causation.
Look closer at the graph. It's just an analysis of Nielson ratings, which are determined by opt in families and are prone to all sorts of different biases. Which means it isn't exactly an unbiased or entirely accurate source of information compared to the preferred, and much more accurate methods. A simple random sample of the viewership of a region would be better, if we had the data for that. Sadly, Nielson ratings don't account for that, because no-one wants to spend the money, time, or effort, to develop and maintain a near perfect sampling system. Hell, we can't even keep the Nielson ratings up to date from year to year in terms of means of getting an accurate report, without a huge amount of politics and money involved in it.
Nielson ratings also didn't measure things outside of the home or conventional means measurements of a populace's viewing habits either, until the last few years, like online viewing or viewing outside of the TV used at home. As technology advanced, you can damn well bet that contributed to what appears to be a downturn for many shows. And there's some reporting issues with some of their methods (The "diary method".) that they used at certain points, that adversely influence things as well.
Nor does that take into account many other things that influence the report of viewings. Like time-shifted shows, or the placement of the shows in time between each other, along with channel. Which is firmly established to effect viewership levels.
Second of all, you're telling me that as a long running series went on, groups of people might, over the course of a decade or more, opt not to watch the show thinking any number of things (It's the same as TNG! It's the same as DS9/VOY! The series jumped the shark at ____.)? I am shocked. Shocked I tell you, that people might develop preconceived notions about a given form of media that might determine whether or not they continue to watch it, irregardless of the facts.
I mean, it's not like this doesn't happen to other series too.
That's not to say that the movies didn't have an effect on things. But to imply that they were one of the key aspects of the downfall of the TV series is a bit crazy. Or that Voyager was the death knell of the series. I've also yet to meet someone who equates the movies, which have a vastly different tone then the TV series, to the TV series.
Enterprise went off the air in 2005, streaming and the like weren't the market changers they are now. There was a marked quality drop in Star Trek and a well known loss of viewers that can't be handwaved away.
That's funny, because I remember the call for Nielson ratings to start taking into account OOH viewer ratings prior to 2005. And according to wikipedia, they only started to consider doing it in 2005.
In 2005, Nielsen announced plans to incorporate viewing by away-from-home college students into its sample. Internet TV viewing is another rapidly growing market for which Nielsen Ratings fail to account for viewer impact. Apple iTunes, atomfilms, Hulu, YouTube, and some of the networks' own websites (e.g., ABC.com, CBS.com) provide full-length web-based programming, either subscription-based or ad-supported. Though web sites can already track popularity of a site and the referring page, they can't track viewer demographics. To both track this and expand their market research offerings, Nielsen purchased NetRatings in 2007.[16]
You seem to think i'm hand-waving it away. Yes, the quality of the shows dropped, and yes it probably adversely affected the viewership of later ones past DS9. My point was (Which Dresden insistently denied.) that it didn't really start to hurt the future of the series until about half-way through ENT's life-time. As your own graph even shows. That was the point where it was just a constant downward curve.
I'm saying your means of justifying your beliefs are really out of whack with the realities of how the system you're using as a metric works. You're taking it as a whole, without analyzing what the data infers. Nor did you give any information as to how the data was collated, which makes it wholly unreliable by itself anyways.
1.) It's not my graph
2.) You are waaaaaaaaaaaaay overestimating how much I care about ratings. I was just pointing out that it's an interesting movement, since the drop starts before TNG went off the air for DS9, which was the early 90s. It's an interesting pattern was all I was saying.
3.) You give a lot of good info, but are kind of a giant dick about it.
I'm just explaining things. It gets a bit annoying to have to repeat yourself, then explain yourself again in detail after people try to dismiss you without any reasoning behind it. I was explaining why that graph is all kinds of messed up for the purposes of showing a trend of popularity in the shows. Sorry if I came off like a dick.
And there's plenty of places to go from DS9 (The last show, chronologically.). It's just that they need to be less ToS, and focus more on the new state of the universe while doing the usual monster/crisis of the week antics.
The books mostly do this, and it works out great. Feels very Trek, without being re-hashes of older episodes.
Archonex on
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
No worries. I too think there's a lot that can be done with Star Trek.
Hell, we need some sci-fi that reminds us about good stuff. The genre's too hurgle burgle death and taxes lately. I want some space fun!
Although I think theres been enough time between shows that Id be willing to watch a new series, if the premise was good enough.
I sort of wonder what Trek has left to accomplish, artistically. I mean, basically all of Next Generation was a purified, concentrated version of the original series - exploring various ethical problems common to us in an allegory-filled future. We had seven years of that, plus three more series that tried to achieve the same damned thing, albeit with various levels of commitment to the "copy next gen" mentality.
I would watch a "Lower Decks" style show, though - stories focused on the every day, working types aboard a starship, and how they get to experience the insane, awe-inspiring adventures of the senior staff.
There's plenty for Trek to cover. All it takes is for a good talent behind the scenes and the willingness to be imaginative with the source material.
They don't have to be limited to TOS for Trek like the movies are doing now. The EU is a gold mine for new stories or tv series.
T'Pol being half-Romulan had potential. I do agree her being unable to control her emotions was the wrong way to go with the idea. IIRC Romulans are identical to Vulcans, or close enough. The main difference is they don't hold back their emotions. Not being raised in the Romulan Empire T'Pol should not have that emotional flaw since she's had Vulcan "training" to contain her emotional state. The juicy stuff for this revelation would be on the political side. The Vulcan government would suspect she's a deep cover spy, and the Romulans could use her heritage to convince her into joining them.
Saavik was also half-Romulan. She did pretty darn well
The EU is wretched dreck and somehow makes Star Wars EU look neat and orderly.
What? No, it isn't.
Yeah, no kidding. It's one of the few licensed EU's that most people agree is pretty awesome all around.
Doesn't mean there aren't a few stinkers here and there, but you aren't seeing the sort of crap that Star Wars was pushing out by the series for a long time before things reached critical mass, and they did some internal restructuring.
It helps that instead of taking the "this is why this COMMON PEBBLE was integral to the defeat of Vader" sort of approach to continuity porn, they focus more on things on a grand scale, too. Which lets them nuance things on the character end of things by having someone be counter-culture without it looking hackneyed. Or creating sub-cultures like the whole "Vulcans that embrace emotions" and "Vulcans tend to be biased towards letting people who aren't all logical speak for their species on a large scale" sort of deal.
Look up the Orion Syndicate on memory beta for instance. The established canon for them is like 40 pages long, altogether. And even includes things like Enterprise's creepy shit as being non-canon (With a point by point explanation on why B&B were hacks/all the creepy shit in Enterprise with them is a load of crap.).
The EU in Star Trek is far more sane for that reason. Unlike in Star Wars, where if someone makes a stinker or does some fucking retarded, the writers aren't forced to work around it. They can turn around, point out why something on the later TV shows is fucking retarded, and have it rendered non-canon if it violates every iota of common sense and established history. Or they can find a decent work-around to it that doesn't require an ass-pull of the Force.
Contrast that with some of the shit that Star Wars EU writers have pulled lately, to where they had to devote an entire series to cleaning up Traviss's shit through their canon methodology. The guys writing those portions of that series must hate Traviss with the burning hatred of a thousand suns (Or are basking in schaeudenfraude at the moment, given how much of a bitch it was she was rumored to be towards the other writers. She had a habit of stealing characters and completely re-writing them off the cuff to make her Mando's look godlike by comparison.) at the moment.
Although I think theres been enough time between shows that Id be willing to watch a new series, if the premise was good enough.
I sort of wonder what Trek has left to accomplish, artistically. I mean, basically all of Next Generation was a purified, concentrated version of the original series - exploring various ethical problems common to us in an allegory-filled future. We had seven years of that, plus three more series that tried to achieve the same damned thing, albeit with various levels of commitment to the "copy next gen" mentality.
I would watch a "Lower Decks" style show, though - stories focused on the every day, working types aboard a starship, and how they get to experience the insane, awe-inspiring adventures of the senior staff.
One of my favorite TNG episodes was the Lower Deck one, with the four lower-ranked buddies in ten forward talking about their ambitions and goals.
Every show so far has featured the top of the command ladder of a Starship or Space Station. Focusing more on the smaller folk who don't get to make the big decisions, and how they have to cope with extremely dangerous situations (3-5 times a week if you're on the Enterprise-D) they have little to no control over.
I'd also watch a Starfleet Academy show, provided they make it for an adult audience. And I don't mean that in the sense of excessive use of sexytimes. A reasonable amount, sure. But not The Real World: Starfleet.
Above all, make it more about character growth and development. The premises of Voyager and Enterprise were both really strong for this sort of show, I think: it's a shame they turned out how they did.
I'd like a Star Trek where one of the endless spacial anomalies that starships seem to run into comes along and just ruins the ship entirely, forcing them to move into a new one. It's maybe just a Voyager thing, but in half the episodes it's like "The hull is buckling!" but somehow the hull and the ship is always fine at the end. I think there was one episode where there was a thing running right through the ship which was buggering up all their systems with, like, no ultimate consequence at all.
Gone.
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Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
So what you want is basically Voyager done right?
Doesn't even need to be on the other side of the galaxy; fuck up the warp drive enough and you've got a hulk acting as a mothership for the shuttles. What say you all, star trek limited to warp two?
In fact, Voyager started out with a ready-made weird anomaly perfectly suited for this; the Badlands. Start there, chase the Maquis for an episode or two, let the ship get fucked up on the far side of the zone, make up some subspace interference to block long range contact, and suddenly you have a Starfleet ship forced to treat with its enemies to survive.
Would make an awesome miniseries I think.
Here's a fun thought exercise: Your dream team. Who, from all the characters across all of Trek, would you handpick to man a new ship?
Captain: Picard
First Officer: Sisko
Science/Ops Officer: Spock
Navigation/Pilot: Ro Laren
Security Chief/Tactical Officer: Reed
Medical Officer: The EMH
Chief Engineer: Scotty
Transporter Chief: O'Brien
I'll probably revise this at some point because it feels incomplete, but that's my first thoughts on the matter. Mainly because Picard/Sisko could make a good cop/bad cop arrangement.
Although I think theres been enough time between shows that Id be willing to watch a new series, if the premise was good enough.
I sort of wonder what Trek has left to accomplish, artistically. I mean, basically all of Next Generation was a purified, concentrated version of the original series - exploring various ethical problems common to us in an allegory-filled future. We had seven years of that, plus three more series that tried to achieve the same damned thing, albeit with various levels of commitment to the "copy next gen" mentality.
I would watch a "Lower Decks" style show, though - stories focused on the every day, working types aboard a starship, and how they get to experience the insane, awe-inspiring adventures of the senior staff.
One of my favorite TNG episodes was the Lower Deck one, with the four lower-ranked buddies in ten forward talking about their ambitions and goals.
Every show so far has featured the top of the command ladder of a Starship or Space Station. Focusing more on the smaller folk who don't get to make the big decisions, and how they have to cope with extremely dangerous situations (3-5 times a week if you're on the Enterprise-D) they have little to no control over.
I'd also watch a Starfleet Academy show, provided they make it for an adult audience. And I don't mean that in the sense of excessive use of sexytimes. A reasonable amount, sure. But not The Real World: Starfleet.
Above all, make it more about character growth and development. The premises of Voyager and Enterprise were both really strong for this sort of show, I think: it's a shame they turned out how they did.
Another reason the Trek EU is superior is it scope and variety. Unlike Star Wars it isn't focussed on specific protagonists (Luke/Leia/Han) for major events, with several series for established and new protagonists. Each series tends to have large ensemble casts and they're not afraid to go all crazy with it since they're not limited to live action budgets.
The cross-overs with each series is awesome, too. While I haven't read the Destiny mini-series yet I haven't seen anything that ties a few series successfully like that in novel form before.
I'm glad Voyager and Enterprise are treated well in the EU.
It's true what Traviss did with continuity and characters. She is talented, unfortunately she seriously needs to be reigned in by editors. As a huge Boba Fett fan even I was getting sick of the fanwanking she was giving him and the Mando's.
If they did a show about the lower-downs it'd be good if they were shown struggling to get holodeck time due to their lack of holodeck privileges. The senior staff we see are in there all the time - how do the 100+ other crew members fit in?
If they did a show about the lower-downs it'd be good if they were shown struggling to get holodeck time due to their lack of holodeck privileges. The senior staff we see are in there all the time - how do the 100+ other crew members fit in?
Maybe there's like a series of holoclosets that can similate a 10x10 room and nothing else.
Here's a fun thought exercise: Your dream team. Who, from all the characters across all of Trek, would you handpick to man a new ship?
Captain: Picard
First Officer: Sisko
Science/Ops Officer: Spock
Navigation/Pilot: Ro Laren
Security Chief/Tactical Officer: Reed
Medical Officer: The EMH
Chief Engineer: Scotty
Transporter Chief: O'Brien
I'll probably revise this at some point because it feels incomplete, but that's my first thoughts on the matter. Mainly because Picard/Sisko could make a good cop/bad cop arrangement.
Security Chief and Tactical Officer should really be two different people. One guy to calibrate the phasors(Worf) and another to handle actual ship security(Garibaldi).
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Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
I would switch Sisko and Picard, but only because Sisko would solve things more entertainingly
Here's a fun thought exercise: Your dream team. Who, from all the characters across all of Trek, would you handpick to man a new ship?
Captain: Picard
First Officer: Sisko
Science/Ops Officer: Spock
Navigation/Pilot: Ro Laren
Security Chief/Tactical Officer: Reed
Medical Officer: The EMH
Chief Engineer: Scotty
Transporter Chief: O'Brien
I'll probably revise this at some point because it feels incomplete, but that's my first thoughts on the matter. Mainly because Picard/Sisko could make a good cop/bad cop arrangement.
Security Chief and Tactical Officer should really be two different people. One guy to calibrate the phasors(Worf) and another to handle actual ship security(Garibaldi).
Is there a Garibaldi in Trek? The only one I'm aware of is from Babylon 5.
Here's a fun thought exercise: Your dream team. Who, from all the characters across all of Trek, would you handpick to man a new ship?
Captain: Picard
First Officer: Sisko
Science/Ops Officer: Spock
Navigation/Pilot: Ro Laren
Security Chief/Tactical Officer: Reed
Medical Officer: The EMH
Chief Engineer: Scotty
Transporter Chief: O'Brien
I'll probably revise this at some point because it feels incomplete, but that's my first thoughts on the matter. Mainly because Picard/Sisko could make a good cop/bad cop arrangement.
Sounds fun.
Captain: Kirk - Can kick ass in a fight, can be clever when he needs to, and routinely kills god-beings. Q won't be stopping in every week to put everyone in tights as he wouldn't have survived the first encounter.
First Officer: Spock - What's a Kirk without his Spock. The pair simply works too well together.
Science/Ops: Data - A walking super computer is a little too handy to leave home, plus he can pitch in at engineering. Just need to make sure he doesn't take over the ship.
Navigation/Pilot: Dax - She piloted the Defiant... it counts. I considered Paris, but many lifetimes of experience, science skills, the ability to kick-ass while having a nice one, wins out.
Security Chief: Odo - Actually good at his job and is the best infiltrator you could ever have.
Tactical Officer: Worf - He only gets his ass kicked when he's Security, but he fires phasers like a pro.
Medical Officer: Bashir - Tough one here. EMH may be a better character, but Bashir is a highly moral super-genius and possibly the best doctor when it actually comes to medicine (hard to judge though). While bringing McCoy to complete the trio may be tempting he's easily the worst when it comes to medicine; I mean he barely knows Spock's anatomy and he's part of the crew, any sick alien that comes on board is fucked.
Chief Engineer: Scotty - The man can fix anything at 1/4 the time as he estimated; he's just that damn good. O'Brien is a really close second. It's really kind of a coin toss, maybe could manage a transporter accident that combines them into some kind of Scottish/Irish freak of Engineering greatness.
Tactical Officer: Natasha Yar - Drugs make you feel good. Worf is a close second because A: Zero respect and B: Without Riker/Picard to reign him in, I see him shooting till he doesn't have to ask questions later.
Medical Officer: Doctor Phlox - The Sci-fi apothecary with a high degree of moral ambiguity.
Chief Engineer: Geordi LaForge - Without Data, Geordi seems like he'd be fairly worthless. He very rarely has the big idea, he goes "Oh yeah, that'd work" whenever someone else has it.
Here's a fun thought exercise: Your dream team. Who, from all the characters across all of Trek, would you handpick to man a new ship?
Captain: Picard
First Officer: Sisko
Science/Ops Officer: Spock
Navigation/Pilot: Ro Laren
Security Chief/Tactical Officer: Reed
Medical Officer: The EMH
Chief Engineer: Scotty
Transporter Chief: O'Brien
I'll probably revise this at some point because it feels incomplete, but that's my first thoughts on the matter. Mainly because Picard/Sisko could make a good cop/bad cop arrangement.
Security Chief and Tactical Officer should really be two different people. One guy to calibrate the phasors(Worf) and another to handle actual ship security(Garibaldi).
Is there a Garibaldi in Trek? The only one I'm aware of is from Babylon 5.
No, but I've called Babylon 5 "the best Star Trek" before and almost meant it. He should make it on the dream team anyway.
Now, for the big question. Mysterious dispenser of wisdom:
Garak, Guinan, or Kosh?
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Here's a fun thought exercise: Your dream team. Who, from all the characters across all of Trek, would you handpick to man a new ship?
Captain: Picard
First Officer: Sisko
Science/Ops Officer: Spock
Navigation/Pilot: Ro Laren
Security Chief/Tactical Officer: Reed
Medical Officer: The EMH
Chief Engineer: Scotty
Transporter Chief: O'Brien
I'll probably revise this at some point because it feels incomplete, but that's my first thoughts on the matter. Mainly because Picard/Sisko could make a good cop/bad cop arrangement.
Security Chief and Tactical Officer should really be two different people. One guy to calibrate the phasors(Worf) and another to handle actual ship security(Garibaldi).
Is there a Garibaldi in Trek? The only one I'm aware of is from Babylon 5.
No, but I've called Babylon 5 "the best Star Trek" before and almost meant it. He should make it on the dream team anyway.
Now, for the big question. Mysterious dispenser of wisdom:
Garak, Guinan, or Kosh?
Chakotay. He would also take the "Someone Must Suffer" ball away from O'Brien.
Here's a fun thought exercise: Your dream team. Who, from all the characters across all of Trek, would you handpick to man a new ship?
Captain: Picard
First Officer: Sisko
Science/Ops Officer: Spock
Navigation/Pilot: Ro Laren
Security Chief/Tactical Officer: Reed
Medical Officer: The EMH
Chief Engineer: Scotty
Transporter Chief: O'Brien
I'll probably revise this at some point because it feels incomplete, but that's my first thoughts on the matter. Mainly because Picard/Sisko could make a good cop/bad cop arrangement.
Security Chief and Tactical Officer should really be two different people. One guy to calibrate the phasors(Worf) and another to handle actual ship security(Garibaldi).
Is there a Garibaldi in Trek? The only one I'm aware of is from Babylon 5.
No, but I've called Babylon 5 "the best Star Trek" before and almost meant it. He should make it on the dream team anyway.
Now, for the big question. Mysterious dispenser of wisdom:
Garak, Guinan, or Kosh?
Kosh is superior with wisdom, but Garak is sneakier, charismatic and a tailor. Decisions, decisions.
Here's a fun thought exercise: Your dream team. Who, from all the characters across all of Trek, would you handpick to man a new ship?
Captain: Picard
First Officer: Sisko
Science/Ops Officer: Spock
Navigation/Pilot: Ro Laren
Security Chief/Tactical Officer: Reed
Medical Officer: The EMH
Chief Engineer: Scotty
Transporter Chief: O'Brien
I'll probably revise this at some point because it feels incomplete, but that's my first thoughts on the matter. Mainly because Picard/Sisko could make a good cop/bad cop arrangement.
Security Chief and Tactical Officer should really be two different people. One guy to calibrate the phasors(Worf) and another to handle actual ship security(Garibaldi).
Is there a Garibaldi in Trek? The only one I'm aware of is from Babylon 5.
No, but I've called Babylon 5 "the best Star Trek" before and almost meant it. He should make it on the dream team anyway.
Now, for the big question. Mysterious dispenser of wisdom:
Garak, Guinan, or Kosh?
Guinan. She'll also give you a beer while dispensing the wisdom.
Here's a fun thought exercise: Your dream team. Who, from all the characters across all of Trek, would you handpick to man a new ship?
Captain: Picard
First Officer: Sisko
Science/Ops Officer: Spock
Navigation/Pilot: Ro Laren
Security Chief/Tactical Officer: Reed
Medical Officer: The EMH
Chief Engineer: Scotty
Transporter Chief: O'Brien
I'll probably revise this at some point because it feels incomplete, but that's my first thoughts on the matter. Mainly because Picard/Sisko could make a good cop/bad cop arrangement.
Security Chief and Tactical Officer should really be two different people. One guy to calibrate the phasors(Worf) and another to handle actual ship security(Garibaldi).
Is there a Garibaldi in Trek? The only one I'm aware of is from Babylon 5.
No, but I've called Babylon 5 "the best Star Trek" before and almost meant it. He should make it on the dream team anyway.
Now, for the big question. Mysterious dispenser of wisdom:
Garak, Guinan, or Kosh?
Guinan. She'll also give you a beer while dispensing the wisdom.
Yeah, but every ship has a bartender you can get a beer from. Personally, I'd worry about the reputation of our ship if it got around that the man in charge was constantly getting useful advice from the bartender. May just be me though.
Now Garak though, that's where I'd want my mysterious wisdom to come from. Sure, you can't trust him as far as you can throw him, but he's a trained operative of the Obsidian Order. Granted, it's probably not much better for your captain to be getting mission critical advice from the tailor...
Still, either option would be better then taking advice from a mysterious alien being that you don't even know what it looks like who's just hanging around to see if you do something interesting. The advice from Garak or Guinan would be substantially clearer too. In Kosh's favor though, I'd be interested in seeing him square off against Q.
So is the consensus that Garak has the best wisdom, Guinan is the best at dispensing, and Kosh is the most mysterious?
Pretty much.
Garak's wisdom is always wrapped in lies and nonsense, but he still has a real-world answer, and everyone knows who he is.
Guinan's wisdom is always straightforward, but stops short of an actionable plan, and everyone knows who she is.
Kosh's wisdom is muddled nonsense, occasionally wrong, but nobody even knows what he looks like. (most of the time)
All I'm saying is that when Sheridan went to Kosh and asked for help, he was soundly ignored or given some cryptic riddle. When he finally demanded help, Kosh wound up dead due to an invisible giant bug infestation on B5. After that, planets started getting obliterated. Not exactly the result he was hoping for.
When Picard went to Guinan and asked for help, Picard got a drink and a cryptic half assed answer that only made sense after the situation was resolved. In the end she may have provided a tip, but it was always up to the tip recipient to figure out what had to be done and do it.
When Sisko went to Garak for help, the Romulans came into the war at the cost of one Romulan Senator, one criminal, and the self respect of one starfleet officer. Garak went behind Sisko's back to get crap done, and crap got done.
So really it comes down to whether you want an adviser or a problem solver.
Guinan is kind of like the horoscope writers for newspapers: vague enough to plausibly be applied to whatever outcome happens. With a sprinkling of common sense.
Tactical Officer: Natasha Yar - Drugs make you feel good. Worf is a close second because A: Zero respect and B: Without Riker/Picard to reign him in, I see him shooting till he doesn't have to ask questions later.
Medical Officer: Doctor Phlox - The Sci-fi apothecary with a high degree of moral ambiguity.
Chief Engineer: Geordi LaForge - Without Data, Geordi seems like he'd be fairly worthless. He very rarely has the big idea, he goes "Oh yeah, that'd work" whenever someone else has it.
Seeing Chu'lak and what he would do literally made me laugh uproariously for a solid 5 minutes.
I think we could easily fit both Guinan and Garak in. TNG had that barber guy who was always talking. Surely they could use a good tailor whose prattle was much more useful.
Quark would be harder, but maybe we could take the morale officer position from VOY, and give it to someone who knows how to actually increase morale. ie, decent food, booze, Dabo!, and interactive pornographic holosuite programs.
Guinan could be a damn mental ninja at times. Her shtick is to dole out the perfect combination of practical and mystical advice, being perfectly understandable but also forcing you to think, and then letting you come to the natural conclusion yourself, rather than just telling you what to do. Like that bit with her in the episode where Data's rights were on trial.
Guinan: Wouldn't it be nice? A whole race of disposable men to do the grunt work.
Picard: :!: You're talking about slavery!
Guinan: Now I didn't say that word.
Picard: Shuddup, I gots me a trial to win.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
Here's a fun thought exercise: Your dream team. Who, from all the characters across all of Trek, would you handpick to man a new ship?
Captain: Picard
First Officer: Sisko
Science/Ops Officer: Spock
Navigation/Pilot: Ro Laren
Security Chief/Tactical Officer: Reed
Medical Officer: The EMH
Chief Engineer: Scotty
Transporter Chief: O'Brien
I'll probably revise this at some point because it feels incomplete, but that's my first thoughts on the matter. Mainly because Picard/Sisko could make a good cop/bad cop arrangement.
Captain: Sisko
First Officer: Jadzia Dax
Science/Ops Officer: Data
Navigation/Pilot: Ro Laren
Security Chief/Tactical Officer: Worf
Medical Officer: Bashir and the EMH
Chief Engineer: Scotty
Transporter Chief: O'Brien
So we get stiff once in a while. So we have a little fun. What’s wrong with that? This is a free country, isn’t it? I can take my panda any place I want to. And if I wanna buy it a drink, that’s my business.
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I sort of wonder what Trek has left to accomplish, artistically. I mean, basically all of Next Generation was a purified, concentrated version of the original series - exploring various ethical problems common to us in an allegory-filled future. We had seven years of that, plus three more series that tried to achieve the same damned thing, albeit with various levels of commitment to the "copy next gen" mentality.
I would watch a "Lower Decks" style show, though - stories focused on the every day, working types aboard a starship, and how they get to experience the insane, awe-inspiring adventures of the senior staff.
Id watch a West Wing equivalent, or a show about people living on a newly colonized world or something. Or a show that focused on a different species (Romulans maybe?).
I'm just explaining things. It gets a bit annoying to have to repeat yourself, then explain yourself again in detail after people try to dismiss you without any reasoning behind it. I was explaining why that graph is all kinds of messed up for the purposes of showing a trend of popularity in the shows. Sorry if I came off like a dick.
And there's plenty of places to go from DS9 (The last show, chronologically.). It's just that they need to be less ToS, and focus more on the new state of the universe while doing the usual monster/crisis of the week antics.
The books mostly do this, and it works out great. Feels very Trek, without being re-hashes of older episodes.
Hell, we need some sci-fi that reminds us about good stuff. The genre's too hurgle burgle death and taxes lately. I want some space fun!
There's plenty for Trek to cover. All it takes is for a good talent behind the scenes and the willingness to be imaginative with the source material.
They don't have to be limited to TOS for Trek like the movies are doing now. The EU is a gold mine for new stories or tv series.
What? No, it isn't.
Saavik was also half-Romulan. She did pretty darn well
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Yeah, no kidding. It's one of the few licensed EU's that most people agree is pretty awesome all around.
Doesn't mean there aren't a few stinkers here and there, but you aren't seeing the sort of crap that Star Wars was pushing out by the series for a long time before things reached critical mass, and they did some internal restructuring.
It helps that instead of taking the "this is why this COMMON PEBBLE was integral to the defeat of Vader" sort of approach to continuity porn, they focus more on things on a grand scale, too. Which lets them nuance things on the character end of things by having someone be counter-culture without it looking hackneyed. Or creating sub-cultures like the whole "Vulcans that embrace emotions" and "Vulcans tend to be biased towards letting people who aren't all logical speak for their species on a large scale" sort of deal.
Look up the Orion Syndicate on memory beta for instance. The established canon for them is like 40 pages long, altogether. And even includes things like Enterprise's creepy shit as being non-canon (With a point by point explanation on why B&B were hacks/all the creepy shit in Enterprise with them is a load of crap.).
The EU in Star Trek is far more sane for that reason. Unlike in Star Wars, where if someone makes a stinker or does some fucking retarded, the writers aren't forced to work around it. They can turn around, point out why something on the later TV shows is fucking retarded, and have it rendered non-canon if it violates every iota of common sense and established history. Or they can find a decent work-around to it that doesn't require an ass-pull of the Force.
Contrast that with some of the shit that Star Wars EU writers have pulled lately, to where they had to devote an entire series to cleaning up Traviss's shit through their canon methodology. The guys writing those portions of that series must hate Traviss with the burning hatred of a thousand suns (Or are basking in schaeudenfraude at the moment, given how much of a bitch it was she was rumored to be towards the other writers. She had a habit of stealing characters and completely re-writing them off the cuff to make her Mando's look godlike by comparison.) at the moment.
One of my favorite TNG episodes was the Lower Deck one, with the four lower-ranked buddies in ten forward talking about their ambitions and goals.
Every show so far has featured the top of the command ladder of a Starship or Space Station. Focusing more on the smaller folk who don't get to make the big decisions, and how they have to cope with extremely dangerous situations (3-5 times a week if you're on the Enterprise-D) they have little to no control over.
I'd also watch a Starfleet Academy show, provided they make it for an adult audience. And I don't mean that in the sense of excessive use of sexytimes. A reasonable amount, sure. But not The Real World: Starfleet.
Above all, make it more about character growth and development. The premises of Voyager and Enterprise were both really strong for this sort of show, I think: it's a shame they turned out how they did.
Doesn't even need to be on the other side of the galaxy; fuck up the warp drive enough and you've got a hulk acting as a mothership for the shuttles. What say you all, star trek limited to warp two?
In fact, Voyager started out with a ready-made weird anomaly perfectly suited for this; the Badlands. Start there, chase the Maquis for an episode or two, let the ship get fucked up on the far side of the zone, make up some subspace interference to block long range contact, and suddenly you have a Starfleet ship forced to treat with its enemies to survive.
Would make an awesome miniseries I think.
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Captain: Picard
First Officer: Sisko
Science/Ops Officer: Spock
Navigation/Pilot: Ro Laren
Security Chief/Tactical Officer: Reed
Medical Officer: The EMH
Chief Engineer: Scotty
Transporter Chief: O'Brien
I'll probably revise this at some point because it feels incomplete, but that's my first thoughts on the matter. Mainly because Picard/Sisko could make a good cop/bad cop arrangement.
Another reason the Trek EU is superior is it scope and variety. Unlike Star Wars it isn't focussed on specific protagonists (Luke/Leia/Han) for major events, with several series for established and new protagonists. Each series tends to have large ensemble casts and they're not afraid to go all crazy with it since they're not limited to live action budgets.
The cross-overs with each series is awesome, too. While I haven't read the Destiny mini-series yet I haven't seen anything that ties a few series successfully like that in novel form before.
I'm glad Voyager and Enterprise are treated well in the EU.
It's true what Traviss did with continuity and characters. She is talented, unfortunately she seriously needs to be reigned in by editors. As a huge Boba Fett fan even I was getting sick of the fanwanking she was giving him and the Mando's.
edit: Meant to reply to Archonex.
Maybe there's like a series of holoclosets that can similate a 10x10 room and nothing else.
Security Chief and Tactical Officer should really be two different people. One guy to calibrate the phasors(Worf) and another to handle actual ship security(Garibaldi).
Is there a Garibaldi in Trek? The only one I'm aware of is from Babylon 5.
Sounds fun.
Captain: Kirk - Can kick ass in a fight, can be clever when he needs to, and routinely kills god-beings. Q won't be stopping in every week to put everyone in tights as he wouldn't have survived the first encounter.
First Officer: Spock - What's a Kirk without his Spock. The pair simply works too well together.
Science/Ops: Data - A walking super computer is a little too handy to leave home, plus he can pitch in at engineering. Just need to make sure he doesn't take over the ship.
Navigation/Pilot: Dax - She piloted the Defiant... it counts. I considered Paris, but many lifetimes of experience, science skills, the ability to kick-ass while having a nice one, wins out.
Security Chief: Odo - Actually good at his job and is the best infiltrator you could ever have.
Tactical Officer: Worf - He only gets his ass kicked when he's Security, but he fires phasers like a pro.
Medical Officer: Bashir - Tough one here. EMH may be a better character, but Bashir is a highly moral super-genius and possibly the best doctor when it actually comes to medicine (hard to judge though). While bringing McCoy to complete the trio may be tempting he's easily the worst when it comes to medicine; I mean he barely knows Spock's anatomy and he's part of the crew, any sick alien that comes on board is fucked.
Chief Engineer: Scotty - The man can fix anything at 1/4 the time as he estimated; he's just that damn good. O'Brien is a really close second. It's really kind of a coin toss, maybe could manage a transporter accident that combines them into some kind of Scottish/Irish freak of Engineering greatness.
Captain: Archer - Outside of a reality where "Following your heart" is a good idea, he will quickly lead his crew to ruin by ignoring their advice.
First Officer: Chakotay - Would feed into Archer's bullshit, make entire crew go on spirit quests.
Science/Ops: Chu'lak - MURDER MURDER MURDER MURDER.
Navigation/Pilot: Ensign Haskel - He should be the "Kenny" of this crew, dying every episode.
Security Chief: Chekov - Thick accent, alcoholic, overly excitable.
Tactical Officer: Natasha Yar - Drugs make you feel good. Worf is a close second because A: Zero respect and B: Without Riker/Picard to reign him in, I see him shooting till he doesn't have to ask questions later.
Medical Officer: Doctor Phlox - The Sci-fi apothecary with a high degree of moral ambiguity.
Chief Engineer: Geordi LaForge - Without Data, Geordi seems like he'd be fairly worthless. He very rarely has the big idea, he goes "Oh yeah, that'd work" whenever someone else has it.
No, but I've called Babylon 5 "the best Star Trek" before and almost meant it. He should make it on the dream team anyway.
Now, for the big question. Mysterious dispenser of wisdom:
Garak, Guinan, or Kosh?
Chakotay. He would also take the "Someone Must Suffer" ball away from O'Brien.
Kosh is superior with wisdom, but Garak is sneakier, charismatic and a tailor. Decisions, decisions.
Guinan. She'll also give you a beer while dispensing the wisdom.
Yeah, but every ship has a bartender you can get a beer from. Personally, I'd worry about the reputation of our ship if it got around that the man in charge was constantly getting useful advice from the bartender. May just be me though.
Now Garak though, that's where I'd want my mysterious wisdom to come from. Sure, you can't trust him as far as you can throw him, but he's a trained operative of the Obsidian Order. Granted, it's probably not much better for your captain to be getting mission critical advice from the tailor...
Still, either option would be better then taking advice from a mysterious alien being that you don't even know what it looks like who's just hanging around to see if you do something interesting. The advice from Garak or Guinan would be substantially clearer too. In Kosh's favor though, I'd be interested in seeing him square off against Q.
Q would get bored very quickly, since Kosh wouldn't play his games.
At least old Kosh. New "Kosh" would probably try to force choke him and get turned into a newt.
Pretty much.
Garak's wisdom is always wrapped in lies and nonsense, but he still has a real-world answer, and everyone knows who he is.
Guinan's wisdom is always straightforward, but stops short of an actionable plan, and everyone knows who she is.
Kosh's wisdom is muddled nonsense, occasionally wrong, but nobody even knows what he looks like. (most of the time)
It won't be sweet, it won't be pretty, but it's still decent coffee like liquid at reasonable prices.
When Picard went to Guinan and asked for help, Picard got a drink and a cryptic half assed answer that only made sense after the situation was resolved. In the end she may have provided a tip, but it was always up to the tip recipient to figure out what had to be done and do it.
When Sisko went to Garak for help, the Romulans came into the war at the cost of one Romulan Senator, one criminal, and the self respect of one starfleet officer. Garak went behind Sisko's back to get crap done, and crap got done.
I know who I'd want to ask for help.
Guinan is kind of like the horoscope writers for newspapers: vague enough to plausibly be applied to whatever outcome happens. With a sprinkling of common sense.
Seeing Chu'lak and what he would do literally made me laugh uproariously for a solid 5 minutes.
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Quark would be harder, but maybe we could take the morale officer position from VOY, and give it to someone who knows how to actually increase morale. ie, decent food, booze, Dabo!, and interactive pornographic holosuite programs.
whenever i want advice i go to neelix
he has such wide array of knowledge from engineering to medicine to tactics
To leadership
Guinan: Wouldn't it be nice? A whole race of disposable men to do the grunt work.
Picard: :!: You're talking about slavery!
Guinan: Now I didn't say that word.
Picard: Shuddup, I gots me a trial to win.
Captain: Sisko
First Officer: Jadzia Dax
Science/Ops Officer: Data
Navigation/Pilot: Ro Laren
Security Chief/Tactical Officer: Worf
Medical Officer: Bashir and the EMH
Chief Engineer: Scotty
Transporter Chief: O'Brien