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Let's talk about Star Trek
Original Rufus
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I've recently got my girlfriend into Next Generation, so I've had the chance to go back and sift through some of the better episodes of the series' run. To look at some of the show's highpoints is to look at a few of sci-fi's high points, and its hard to imagine ever seeing the franchise at quite that peak ever again.
But, that having been said, let's talk about the past, present and future of Trek.
Speaking of both the past and the future, word is Shatner is all pissed off at the notion that the producers of Trek XI have yet to offer him a camero.
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Also, my favorite series was Voyager, which I know a lot of people don't agree with, but it was SOOO good. My ex gf actually got me started on it, and we watched the entire series together. Good times.
TNG is good as well. I could not stand the OS, and DS9 was decent, at least what I saw. I have never seen an episode of Enterprise, and would kind of like to, even though I heard it wasn't any good.
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Then, they need a series that goes back to being a social commentary rather than "how long until someone comes up with a way to reconfigure the deflector shield to save the ship this time?"-type stories, with an added overall arc story.
What keeps Star Trek popular is the philosophy. It paints a future that's more than space wars and cool tech, but a point in human evolution we can only hope to aspire to.
Oh, and has anybody watched those documentaries called Trekkies? Great insight into the Trek culture, both positive and, well, weird.
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I almost wonder if Star Trek is even necessary at this point. We've got a total of ten years, 3 seasons of TOS and 7 of NextGen, with which social commentary has been levied. Unless we want more alien/holideck/disaster of the week business, I can't imagine how many more bridges we've got to cross.
I'd say some of that commentary is dated. There would be ways to update the premise with new knowledge and questions.
For example, I thought in many cases the Doctor on Voyager was an adequate adaptation of Data's growth. It had a very familiar structure, but the Doctor faced a relatively different set of challenges and questions.
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I loved the epsiode where they beamed him to treat his creator who loathed that Doctor program
I think the worst offense is the poor Ferengi. For legendary thieves and traders, I don't think I ever saw them come out ahead.
Ah. Here. Warning, PDF. PDF, and controversy. I'm 100% behind the proposal, too bad it won't fly.
Will he settle for any other kind of sports car?
Also I badly need to finish watching the TNG DVDs. I got up to season 5 and then I stopped.
It was the only Trek that had actual fucking balls. DS9 had some fantastic arcs going on because... well... they weren't going anywhere, and characters/stories had an opportunity to develop.
TNG was great, but it was a precursor to something better: DS9.
Also, fuck the Borg cuz:
Also:
Edit:
Even better reason to watch DS9, and realize how lame the Enterprise is... pulse fucking laser cannons:
Ng Security Industries, Inc.
PRERELEASE VERSION-NOT FOR FIELD USE - DO NOT TEST IN A POPULATED AREA
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On the one hand, some of the coolest cosmic-scale TNG stories would seem silly or out of place done in DS9's more laid-back, naturalistic style - on the other hand, watching DS9 it's hard not to wonder why the Enterprise crew can't swoop in, save the day and beat the Jem'Hadar in one episode (two tops). It just gives me a migraine case of cognitive dissonance, like if someone said Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica took place in the same universe.
Both shows have dated - in retrospect, TNG is really steeped in an 80s self-help/yuppie mindset, and I find early seasons of DS9 nigh-unwatchable due to pacing and direction that was leaden for the 90s, much less now - but I feel like their heart was in the right place, unlike their successors.
And that, to me, is the real issue: growing up with the OG movies and Next Generation tends to color my view of what "Trek" should be, but I'm more than open to a new approach, so long as they get the fundamentals right: good writing, good acting, all the rest of it. A lot of people seem to take the tack that Voyager was bad because it wasn't in the Federation, or that Enterprise was bad because it screwed with continuity - nah, they were just bad because of the things that make most TV bad, namely lazy writing and lousy acting.
Wouldn't that make an awesome setting for a movie? Star Trek was originally about moral conflicts and the people of the day, and that's the stuff people most remember about it. You could easily take the above and make a fantastic story about the detachment of modern warfare, how we fight unseen enemies who are always out there and never really understood. How we fight virtual wars that are hype, media, explosions, boom boom on space, without ever seeing the personal conflicts of the day.
Perhaps the central plot could resolve around some critical elements leading to the battle of Charon, and just for irony purposes you could have a Romulan on board the ship pretending to be a Vulcan, but without the crew ever realizing it. You can see say, this sort of detachment as he realizes friends, families the like, people he cares about are dying and losing this war, but that humanity has become detached. In essence instead of the Alien being 'the Other' that is traditional sci-fi cliche, it becomes reversed, and we're attached to him instead of the crew.
No, fuck that, instead you get "What if they cloned Picard, then we gave him a bio-weapon that turned people to stone?"
actually, the best trek wasn't even the filmed stuff. Peter David did a fantastic novel-series with almost no connection to the main arcs.
'course, most of the rest of the non-film stuff is glorified fanfiction. I kind of gave up by about 2000.
Kira was a ball of fire. Sexy.
Amen. Which makes Enterprise's post-4th season cancellation somewhat disappointing, since the 4th season had halfway decent production with some pretty good writing - to echo Cat a little, they imported some of the novel writers and voila, good story arcs with respect for canon.
The tragedy about Enterprise is that it had the opportunity for some artistic integrity and old fashioned social commentary. It could have been 4 seasons of foreign relations gone awry/understanding an unknown enemy themes with alot of cool continuity building for the fans.
Oh well.
My favorite epsiodes include "In the Pale Moonlight", where Sisko is forced to make a decision that practically saves the Federation, but will haunt him all his days), "Past Tense", where Sisko, Dax, O'Brien, and Bashir travel to the past where the US has put up "Sanctuary Districts" to cloister homeless people from the socially accepted, and "Far Beyond the Stars" where Sisko experiences a vision where he is a black sci-fi writer who struggles against the racism in 1950's America.
And like many people, I actually think that a reboot of Star Trek, akin to what they did to Battlestar Galactica, will breathe some fresh life into the franchise. I'm afraid to say that they should make it more like DS9, for fear of being labeled as a fanboy, but you know what? They really should. Put Ronald D. Moore on it, stat. He wrote some of the best episodes of TNG and DS9, and guess what? He's a writer for Battlestar Galactica, arguably the best sci-fi show on TV today.
The ending was a bit crap, but then I was expecting it to be. Can't say I've watched much Trek after that (Voyager largely killed my interest).
"New Frontier" right? That series was awesome.
Peter David's a weird guy. He's a great author, but does all his good work (AFAIK) in tie-in books.
I think that's one of the best ideas that came out of BSG. Set down rules for what it can and can't do and fuck how it actually works.
You mess with the dolphin, you get the nose.
Enterprise fell into the trap of trying to grittify Trek while missing why DS9 did it in the first place. It missed the social commentary (that is even more important now than it was in the TNG/DS9 era) and made everything pretty bleak. "Hey guys, wouldn't it be cool if Vulcans were total dicks for no reason? And how about if the Federation doesn't really exist and everyone pretty much hates/fears humanity?" Bleh. That's what other sci-fi does, and they do it better because they've been doing it longer. Grim and gritty occasionally works for Trek (see The Borg and Dominion Wars), but it works because it's the exception, not the rule. The Dominion War wouldn't have been nearly as effective an arc if it, say, would have started on episode 3 or 4 of DS9. I did always wander at what the hell the Enterprise was up to during the War, but some book series answered that question well (if I remember right, it was mostly "while the rest of the Federation deals with these guys, us and a few others still have to keep watch for the Borg").
A new movie makes me happy, but I must confess i've not heard anything about it. Judging by the poster, it's set in the TOS era, but will it be a reboot of some kind or what?
You know Enterprise was a prequel, right? It's addressed pretty often in the movies and series that it took a couple hundred years after the vulcans landed to get all the problems worked out.
No, I didn't know it was a prequel. I am an idiot, you see, and perhaps partially retarded and failed to notice every time they established it was before Kirk. I believe I was punching myself in the face every time it was brought up.
Of course I damn well know it's a prequel, but that doesn't change that it wasn't Trek. I get grim and gritty, I play Warhammer for fuck's sake, but Enterprise just showed that a real grim and gritty Trek series just doesn't work. Maybe if the whole thing had been set in the alternate universe where humanity's evil it could have worked out better, but at that point why even call it Trek at all? Enterprise was passable as generic sci-fi and a total waste of time as a Star Trek show.
Wish I could remember the name of it.
What happened in it?
Also: what are your favorite episodes?
Off the top of my head, in no particular order:
- "I, Borg" (TNG)
- "The City on the Edge of Forever" (TOS)
- "The Magnificent Ferengi" (DS9) and pretty much every DS9 Ferengi episode
- "Yesterday's Enterprise" (TNG)
- "E2" (Ent)