So what do you guys like about Star Trek?

[angelfromanotherpin]

It's a damn shame it never touched TNG because I would love me some Evil Picard.

There was a novel, Dark Mirror, that I read several years ago and remember as being not terrible. Two things in particular have stuck with me: the chilling quotes from mirror-universe Shakespeare, and that when Picard puts on his counterpart's uniform... it requires no adjustment.

[Wesley Street]

There was a novel, Dark Mirror, that I read several years ago and remember as being not terrible. Two things in particular have stuck with me: the chilling quotes from mirror-universe Shakespeare, and that when Picard puts on his counterpart's uniform... it requires no adjustment.

I remember reading that during the height of my Trek-fandom years; 1994 or so. Yes, the alternate ending to The Merchant of Venice, where Shylock gets his actual pound of flesh and Picard being too terrified to open the King James Bible, were both memorable. Dark Mirror really was one of the better Trek novels to be released as the build-up was slow and very subtle, with agents of the Mirror Universe quietly infiltrating ours and replacing their counterparts. It felt like a novel that had actually been thought through, not a slap-dash attempt at a media tie-in.

When DS9 came along with the post-Terran Empire Klingon-Cardassian Alliance, all hope for that kind of story making it to the actual TV series was gone.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I've been watching some Voyager lately and while I have to say that while the show isn't very good, it's still rather entertaining because the cast has some good chemistry and are overall likable sorts. Likable in a 'bunch of slightly-crazy people stuck on a deserted island way', but likable nonetheless.

I can't help but wonder how much better this show could've been if it had less stupid and contrived writing. I mean, Spirit Folk is one of the worst episodes I have ever seen on television in terms of being Not-Stupid but I still enjoyed it on some perverse level.

[Starmaker]

Picard being too terrified to open the King James Bible

So what was in it, sunshine, lollipops and rainbows?

[CatharzGodfoot]

Picard being too terrified to open the King James Bible

So what was in it, sunshine, lollipops and rainbows?

I'd just like to point out that many anti-Christians claim that this is a story in which a guy who abuses his fuck slave (to the point that she runs away) offers her up to a rape gang to save his own ass, and then murders her and pranks mails a bunch of towns with her dismembered body--but that isn't really the case.

In `actuality`, the fuck slave died from being gang raped and then locked out of the house. The Levite only chopped her into pieces and mailed her around to show how pissed off he was by the wanton destruction of his property, much as a teabagger might send boxes of tea to representatives.

[Crissa]

I might point out that Dark Mirror is one of the major story lines in the background of Star Trek Online.

As an MMO, it has dealt with the 'you can't change the universe' by making the universe constantly dangerous instead of you ever winning for a prolonged period.

-Crissa

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'd just like to point out that many anti-Christians claim that this is a story in which a guy who abuses his fuck slave (to the point that she runs away) offers her up to a rape gang to save his own ass, and then murders her and pranks mails a bunch of towns with her dismembered body--but that isn't really the case.

Sounds like a fusion of the stories of Jepthah and Lot.

[Lago PARANOIA]

You know, the episode Chain of Command really confuses me.

The episode seems to be trying to make Jellico look like a total prick, but all of his decisions turn out to be correct. And not just correct in a coincidental way, but in a way that's just common sense. I mean, what's with Geordi and Riker whining about running drills and moving Engineering crew to Security? It's not like the ship is preparing for an attack by Cardas--OH WAIT.

[Username17]

You know, the episode Chain of Command really confuses me.

The episode seems to be trying to make Jellico look like a total prick, but all of his decisions turn out to be correct. And not just correct in a coincidental way, but in a way that's just common sense. I mean, what's with Geordi and Riker whining about running drills and moving Engineering crew to Security? It's not like the ship is preparing for an attack by Cardas--OH WAIT.

The point is that the demands of morale and the demands of management are both real. Taking engineers off duty to go play soldier while doing an extensive overhaul on the warp core was reckless. It strained the confidence of his underlings and jeopardized the completion of the task.

At the end of the day, they had important shit to do, even if it turned out that the mission was a failure before it started because it was a trap. Jellico was right to make big demands, but he was wrong to not make concessions to the crew's comfort zones and standard operating procedures. It's a deep rumination on the need for and difficulties of management. And a quite effective one at that.

But honestly, the only reason anyone cares about Chains of Command Part 1 is because the conclusion is a deep rumination on the effectiveness of torture and the morality of incarceration. And it's probably the best episode of Star Trek Next Gen. Even though it was apparently made for budget reasons, because the three lights episode was very cheap to film.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Wow, just watched TNG: Birthright and that was one of the most offensive things that I've ever seen on television.

I hope they got a lot of angry letters for that one.

[Ganbare Gincun]

In `actuality`, the fuck slave died from being gang raped and then locked out of the house. The Levite only chopped her into pieces and mailed her around to show how pissed off he was by the wanton destruction of his property, much as a teabagger might send boxes of tea to representatives.

Oh, well, it all makes sense no- WAIT, WHAT?

[Wesley Street]

Wow, just watched TNG: Birthright and that was one of the most offensive things that I've ever seen on television.

If Birthright ruffled your feathers, avoid DS9: The Emperor's New Cloak and DS9: Profit and Lace at all costs.

[8one6]

Wow, just watched TNG: Birthright and that was one of the most offensive things that I've ever seen on television.

If Birthright ruffled your feathers, avoid DS9: The Emperor's New Cloak and DS9: Profit and Lace at all costs.

It just proves that I’m one of the few people who enjoyed all of the ferengi episodes.
/I’m a lurker, I’ll go back to lurking now.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Why do people hate Ferengi so much? Granted, their introduction into TNG was pretty ridiculous (the Neutral Zone I think?), but Quark is pretty awesome. Is it because they're strawmen capitalists? Or that they look like goblins?

I've been watching Star Trek on YouTube mostly because I don't have any money. So I've been watching them out of order, mostly focusing on TNG and TOS (since that entire series is up).

I haven't seen much DS9 yet other than In the Pale Moonlight but I have to pretty much agree with the assessment of where the shows rank. TNG to me is a mixture of So Bad It's Good and Genuine Awesome (like the Indiana Jones movies) and VOY is straight out So Bad It's Good since the characters are the only thing that redeems this series. TOS is just solid entertainment to me--for some reason, I find the bad special effects of TOS less comical than TNG's random 80's shit like having a fucking therapist on the bridge. ENT is excruciating, though. There is so much goddamn padding in that series that I can't stand it. Broken Bow did not need to be a two-partner, for instance.

By the way, why didn't they just make Troi a commissar rather than a real officer? It'd make total sense given her role on the ship and the fact that she doesn't do any fucking thing. She doesn't have to be an insane WH40K commissar, but one based on a real Soviet officer where they're concerned about morale and whether military officers are behaving properly in outer space.

[Username17]

The initial Ferengi episodes were excruciating. It wasn't until later that they were portrayed in a sympathetic light.

Anyway, why the flip out over Birthright? I remember it as just being overly long and not really going anywhere. Certainly not as offensive as any of the Ferengi episodes where people flip out about whether females wear clothes.

-Username17

[Wesley Street]

By the way, why didn't they just make Troi a commissar rather than a real officer? It'd make total sense given her role on the ship and the fact that she doesn't do any fucking thing. She doesn't have to be an insane WH40K commissar, but one based on a real Soviet officer where they're concerned about morale and whether military officers are behaving properly in outer space.

Because that would undercut Gene Roddenberry's directive that Starfleet is more akin to NASA than the US Navy. Heavy on the exploration and discovery, ixnay on war (unless it's to show how very bad and primitive war is). However later writers realized that having characters stand around and agree with each other made for a boring show and that the popularity of the movies showed that viewers liked watching crap blow up and have the protagonists shoot phasers.

DS9 introduced an attempted coup d'tat by Starfleet during the early days of the Dominion War as well as defining a divide between ubermensch officers like Dr. Bashier and everyman enlisted like Chief O'Brien. Aside from the occasional crewman, the lowest rungs were populated by ensigns. It was also during this time that Starfleet was actually referred to as a military organization by the Federation President.

Troi was there to give out the hugs, have psychic premonitions, and wear ass-hugging body-suits... until Jellico told her to put on some pants. Roddenberry even wanted Troi to have three tits but his producers had the guts to say "no."

ST: VOY, despite being ST:TNG Lite on an episode-by-episode basis, eliminated the whole counselor idea, along with civilians-on-the-ship (which I kinda liked), and took a more TOS approach. However the scripts were dire and potentially interesting characters like Tuvok became set decorations. Even Janeway got pushed to the background behind 7-of-9.

I found the "the mirror universe is populated by hawt lesbians and they make out in public and breathe all over each other and it's so hawt" to be waaaay more offensive than some sort of weird racial commentary involving Romulans and Klingons.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I just had a fairly disturbing thought.

What if the Kazon in ST: VOY were an attempt to port over a WH40K mentality over towards the Star Trek universe and put it into a faction? Granted, VOY sucked at everything they got their hands on (like Q and the Borg) so it didn't go over too well, but there are just too many similarities to dismiss my hypothesis out of hand.

However later writers realized that having characters stand around and agree with each other made for a boring show and that the popularity of the movies showed that viewers liked watching crap blow up and have the protagonists shoot phasers.

A fair number of Star-Trek fans (the AVGN, confusedmatthew, scifidebris, apparently RedLetterMedia from what I heard secondhand, firstTVdrama) claim that this mentality led to the downfall of the series. Opinions?

I found the "the mirror universe is populated by hawt lesbians and they make out in public and breathe all over each other and it's so hawt" to be waaaay more offensive than some sort of weird racial commentary involving Romulans and Klingons.

I haven't seen Enterprise, if that's what you're referring to. But that seems like typical fare for the series.

Unexpected made me particularly steamed, especially since Star Trek people like to crow about how progressive their show is. I mean, Broken Bow left me kind of feeling cold at the outset (Trip being a dolt, T'Pol being a snobby nitwit, and Starfleet's incompetence being played for comedy) but I was willing to give it another chance. I mean, Where No Man Has Gone Before was pretty lame and Encounter At Farpoint was just flat-out embarrassing but the other episode ended up being better.

But Unexpected was just fucking insulting. I mean, laughing at rape and then blaming the victim? Honestly.

[Zinegata]

Ergh... Crossover writers have thought about having 40K and Star Trek collide before. And the concensus is that the result will be something akin to graphic pedophilia, with Star Trek playing the role of the kid .

I never liked Star Trek much due to the extreme anti-military bent of the Federation, particularly when you realize that Star Fleet is in fact supposedly a military organization tasked with defending the Federation. DS9 is good primarily because it demonstrates how massively painful (and sometimes suicidal) such an attitude can breed, while TOS and Voyager are mainly enjoyable because they don't preach so much and are more of "Adventures in SPACE".

[Username17]

What if the Kazon in ST: VOY were an attempt to port over a WH40K mentality over towards the Star Trek universe and put it into a faction?

The Kazon are not 40Kish in any way. They are just a bunch of losers. The idea was to show how Federation tech is really good or something, but it just ended up being shitty.

I haven't seen Enterprise

Enterprise is really bad. They can't keep a theme together. They can't put two interesting episodes back to back. And worst of all: their metaplots suck donkey balls.

All they had to do was pile on origin stories for every fucking Federation group ever mentioned into normal Star Trek Episodes, and people would have loved it. But they had to do that Temporal Coldwar bullshit that no one cared about.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

After being prompted to by a few ST episode guides, I think I just saw two Voyager episodes even worse than Threshold.

Spirit Folk and the Q and the Grey.

But like I said, when Voyager is awful it's awful in a cheesy B-movie way where even though the franchise is getting murdered you can't help but smile. When Enterprise is awful it's just embarrassing.

[Wesley Street]

A fair number of Star-Trek fans (the AVGN, confusedmatthew, scifidebris, apparently RedLetterMedia from what I heard secondhand, firstTVdrama) claim that this mentality led to the downfall of the series. Opinions?

I agree with their opinions. Star Trek doesn't do pure action well as the underlying premise is exploration, not conquest and survival (which is where VOY failed in my eyes as it SHOULD have been about survival, like BSG). This may be due to the minimal budgets that the original series had to work with and scenes of dialog were cheaper to film than SFX laden combat. But it also set a precedent and tone that was mentally engaging and defied the Buck Rogers/Captain Cody/space rangers-sentiments of earlier serials and shows. I found that some of the best episodes of TNG were the low-budget bottle episodes that were filmed completely on one set with little to no SFX, like "Data's Day."

When TNG came to the big screen it had a bigger budget. Mo' money meant mo' problems (it had to get casual and non-viewers into the theaters to turn a profit). Even the best CGI isn't going to make debates in conference rooms over abortion/homosexuality/war/whatever more interesting to people who grew up on the samurai tales meets the Battle of Britain that is Star Wars. When Trek is forced into the Star Wars/Flash Gordon mold it becomes a dumb action movie and wastes the skills of actors who have perfected emoting and giving dramatic speeches. Shatner, Nimoy and Stewart were all Shakespearean actors. Sirtis did British tele-plays. Spiner was a comedy, sitcom actor. Michael Dorn did soaps. Gates McFadden was a theater producer, puppeteer and dancer. With the exception of cowboy actor DeForrest Kelly, none of those people have the Eastwood-grit to convincingly gun down a group of Borg. The Klingons were a warrior race but the fighting was usually laughable and robotic. They were more interesting shouting about honor like angry Scotsmen.

I love action movies but trying to paste Trek over one looks. Really. Dumb.

I haven't seen Enterprise, if that's what you're referring to. But that seems like typical fare for the series.

It was DS9 that pulled that with the first Mirror Universe episode (evil Kira breathing all over her duplicate) and the last Mirror Universe episode (mirror Dax and mirror Lela making out in celebration for taking down the Klingon-Cardassian alliance). The Mirror Enterprise episode was actually pretty cool with its alternate opening credits and whatnot though it was pure continuity and homage porn.

[Username17]

The problem with Enterprise is that the alternate opening credits where everything is warlike is the highlight of the entire show. That was literally their best joke and their most engaging plotline. And it's basically just "What if we all wore black hats and chewed the scenery for a bit?"

-Username17

[Zinegata]

Aside from the fact that most later Trek shows depict the Federation as mind-numbingly anti-military (which can be jarring once you have an action/combat arc), the people writing the action sequences and doing the cinematography/choreography for them are simply retards.

I mean, take a look at the final shoot out in the film Nemesis. Summarized as follows:

* Captain Picard beams over to the enemy ship (... Okay).
* Picard, armed only with a phaser rifle and shooting from the hip, guns down about a dozen enemy crewmen solo (... WTF?!).
* Just before he reaches the enemy Captain, he decides to use his phase rifle as a club and breaks it (... *facepalm*).
* They then engage in hand to hand combat, and the enemy Captain dies by running into a pointy metal stick that Picard puts in front of him (Idiot).
* The enemy Captain then compounds his injury by dragging hilariously himself further into the pointy metal stick, instead of just say, pulling himself out, getting a gun, and shooting Picard (Fucking Idiot!)

And this is the penultimate fight scene of a big-budget Star Trek film. They could have made Sylvester Stallone in his prime play Picard and Arnie in his prime play the enemy captain, but there would have been no fucking way to save this writing and cinematography mess.

Now, I'm not saying that most of the fight scenes in TNG, Voyager, or DS9 are worse. But they frankly aren't much better and a shoot out in CSI is frankly more technically impressive than anything ST has done in a long, long while.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Picard in the films is an entirely different character than Picard in the TV series. The transition is from a very reasonable person to a gung-ho action hero, and it would be incredibly jarring if Patrick Stewart didn't have the acting chops to obfuscate it as well as he does.

[Maxus]

Picard in the films is an entirely different character than Picard in the TV series. The transition is from a very reasonable person to a gung-ho action hero, and it would be incredibly jarring if Patrick Stewart didn't have the acting chops to obfuscate it as well as he does.

Patrick Stewart is one of the reasons I ever watched Star Trek as a kid. I like Captain Picard.

But Stewart himself is a really awesome man. He gave an interview/review about Galaxy Quest when the came out, and his answer was "I was initially skeptical, but some friends told me I had to go see it. So I went. No one in the movie theater laughed harder than I did. That was a spot-on look at Star Trek, its fans, and how it'd play out if we really did all get abducted by an alien species."