Star Trek thread of going to familiar places and beyond

[D3RANG3D]

this looks absolute fucking trash 

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

AY DIOS MIO!

[killamajig]

Star Trek

rap music starts
"Now ladies lets get infomation."

dialog
"You're a bad bitch."

[D3RANG3D]

[D3RANG3D]

[D3RANG3D]

[chronovore]

https://imgur.com/ipbNmDF

[chronovore]

[D3RANG3D]

[D3RANG3D]

https://home.otoy.com/unification/

[D3RANG3D]

[Uncle]

"And they ask me all the time, ‘Which decision would you make, or do you think was was the right decision?’ And I tell them, ‘Yeah. It was the right decision.’ I can say it from my perspective… the character is a father and he has children, and he is going to go on and survive and live and and reproduce. The Tuvix character cannot, and it's only one of a species, and that's it. And Neelix's character is also part of her crew, and she has responsibility to them. So she has to make that decision. This was an accident, and she has to rectify it. And that's it, and a lot of people, sometimes they don't agree with that. But that episode, people are very passionate about having made that decision, and I always tell them, I said, ‘The very last shot in that entire episode is Kate walking down the hall when she leaves the medical bay and we've been returned. She walks out the door and she doesn't say a word, but you can see it on her face. She's absolutely devastated, by what she had to do.’ And that again is a lesson, because in people's real lives, they may be faced with that situation where they have to make a very difficult decision." - Tim Russ (Tuvok) to Wil Wheaton, Ready Room (aired 3/30/23)


I've seen it argued that the episode is poorer for not even beginning to examine things from a more utilitarian angle, the idea that two people in different specialized roles are more efficient than one, and if they kept in mind the premise of voyager being a desperate ragtag band limping back home with whatever resources are available to them, then yeah, two would be more important than one

although then you must ask...if that's a valid perspective, maybe three or four would be better than two, can we just pretend that the transporter had merged original tuvok into two people and perform the reversion process yet again, and now have two voks? just keep going, make more and more crew members

[benji]

People's problem with that episode is that they don't want Starfleet officers to have to make actual choices. Tim understands that Tuvix has no claim over Tuvok and Neelix to existence, but everyone who thinks it's controversial believes he does for some reason. Kirk and Picard would have always found some clever out where everyone wins. They forget that early Voyager was about Janeway making actual tough decisions like Sisko, it was only after the show completely dropped the entire premise of the show that Janeway became an absolute villain. It doesn't help that many of the writers were awful and kept writing garbage.

In the very first episode Janeway strands them in the Delta Quadrant because Voyager can't hold off the Kazon from taking the Caretakers Array. Seven's conspiracy theory later makes sense in the context of what the show became, where Voyager wasn't outmatched and never had any struggles and was fine the next week. With that Voyager she definitely should have shot down the Kazon and regenerated all their torpedoes and shuttles by the next episode. (Which wouldn't have been necessary because they could have used the Array to send themselves home.)

One reason when Enterprise gets put into the Expanse it works better is not only the better writing but because you've seen two years of "normal" Archer by that point. You can see the change in his decision making. Same thing for Sisko who steps up a level when real challenges come, we've spent time seeing him handle lesser decisions. Janeway never had that and the writers had no clue how to write any characters at all, so the show largely makes no sense if you try to take it seriously.

One of the issues is that they were afraid of allowing Janeway to look weak, being the first "female captain" and all, even though she was in an unprecedented situation with a thrown together crew on her first command. So instead she comes off as stubborn and unreasonable. Seven is the best character on the show simply because she's allowed to question the others, this even fixes parts of a number of the other characters by allowing them to have conflict with another crew member even if it's purely only with Seven. Torres, for example, isn't allowed to actually seethe at anyone until Seven comes along. Even though she's not only half-Klingon she's Maquis, not Starfleet. Except she falls in line along with everyone else and they're one big happy family until then. And by the time Seven comes along the ship itself is no longer having any struggles, it's turned into TNG.

Nobody on the show even ever questions Janeway's initial decision to grant the Maquis equal rank, when they would have all been willing to kill everyone on Voyager if they stayed in the Alpha Quadrant. Chakotay's status as number one makes some sense in that it represents the Maquis and it's a mostly harmless position, but this didn't mean all the rest of them, nor Tom Paris, needed to be granted senior status over who knows how many Starfleet officers who had only made the mistake of joining the ship and surviving the trip to the Delta Quadrant. It's not represented on the show but you could argue the fact that everyone acquiesced to this decision, and Chakotay was always a pushover, is what turns Janeway into the tyrant she becomes since she has essentially zero proper advisors except sometimes Tuvok and later Seven.

This also affects the Equinox plot later on because: 1.) Voyager's done far worse things and 2.) She actually punishes those crew members for their pasts when they join Voyager unlike the Maquis.

[chronovore]

I am watching ST: Voyager with the help of my biggest trek-fan friend's episode guide. The first episode is substantially better than I remembered, though the Voyager ship crew who are killed off would have been more dramatically served if they hadn't all been killed in the initial jump to the Gamma Quadrant. 

The crew is more interesting than I remembered as well. Tom Paris really should have been kept as the TNG character where that actor was introduced to Trek. Yeah, I know it was usage rights or paying some money, but fucking hell, this was Paramount Network's flagship. Just pay some money to the creator. Why is that hard? Roddenberry wrote unused lyrics to the Star Trek theme so he could receive a few coins. Just pay the money. 

The JETREL episode was pretty heavyhanded, clearly an atomic bomb analog, with survivors guilt and Oppenheimer catchphrase re-use. I liked it. 


Having re-watched Enterprise s4 as well, I was reminded how miserable the series finale is. A friend turned me on to the ENT novels, in particular The Good That Men Do, which retcons the events shown into a much larger picture, in line with the other continuity-heavy s4 episodes which ran 2-3 episodes each. Really good.

[Eric Cartman]

this looks absolute fucking trash

Reviews seem to indicate that this is absolute fucking trash

[Alpacx]

this looks absolute fucking trash

Reviews seem to indicate that this is absolute fucking trash

IGN gave it 2/10!

[killamajig]

[MMaRsu]

[Borealis]

Will Section 31 finally open more eyes to the absolute hack that is Alex Kurtzman?

For one, the better stuff like SNW and Lower Decks barely have him involved. 

Wish it would, but like Rich says, it's been obvious for a while now and those executives don't care.

[killamajig]

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

[HeavenIsAPlaceOnEarth]

I read chronovore's post the other day and when trying to remember how the theme song for Star Trek went I got the theme from The Love Boat stuck in my head. And now whenever I see this thread it happens again.

I've also had Star Trekkin' in my head at times lately, but I have no reason to think it's related.

[Potato]

My hardcore Trekkie mate's review of Section 31. 

Worst piece of shit I've ever seen.

Didn't finish it 

[killamajig]

I was thinking about how New Trek is all dark now and not like the Utopia of the Gene Roddenberry or next generation era. I wonder if it's because the younger generations can't picture a future Utopia at all. So much doomerism and gloom, they can't even picture in their mind what a Utopia is.

Or the Trek writers are from Resetera and refuse to acknowledge a better future is possible.

[benji]

The hilarious thing is that's exactly what they said they were getting away from both with the Abrams reboot and then with the Kurtzman garbage. They were getting back to Trek being "fun" again. But everything's fucking terrible in both versions it's just that all the characters seem oblivious to it and the plots rarely seem to recognize it either.

And none of the "darkness" comes from anything plausible to the setting like DS9 or The Undiscovered Country, it's just stupid shit.

[Potato]

New Trek suffers from the same writing problem that most video games and American movies do. 

All conflict is resolved with a gun or the threat of a gun. 

I'm not a fan of Star Trek by any means, but I watched a lot of the OG series and occasional Next Generation episodes etc and diplomatic solutions were common. 

I can't recall any New Trek episodes I watched that didn't end up being resolved in an action scene. 

It's like the idiots writing it have never seen an episode.

[Boredfrom]

I remember watching some DS9 when I was a teenager, specifically remember the section 31 stuff. I remember that it was treated like the imperfection of the Federation and something that shouldn’t be lauded.

Watching that clip were Kurtzman says “the Federation will not exist without groups like Section 31” sounds like missing the point of those episodes and it sounds even more stupid when his conception of Section 31 is SUICIDE SQUAD!!

[Tucker's Law]

I remember watching some DS9 when I was a teenager, specifically remember the section 31 stuff. I remember that it was treated like the imperfection of the Federation and something that shouldn’t be lauded.

Watching that clip were Kurtzman says “the Federation will not exist without groups like Section 31” sounds like missing the point of those episodes and it sounds even more stupid when his conception of Section 31 is SUICIDE SQUAD!!

Philosophically, s31 is a tragic failure for Starfleet, and for those that even become aware of it Section 31 stands as a failure; a reminder that even Starfleet cannot fully adhere to their own principles.  Of course the Kurtzman era of Trek would woefully misunderstand it, as they can't even understand the very basics of Trek in general.

Absolute garbage the whole lot of it, and the sooner it's killed absolutely the better

[chronovore]

Yeah, ST:ENT has it right - both in the TV series and at least one novel: the portion of Starfleet's charter that allows for unfettered action if Starfleet itself faces an existential threat, while understandable, leads to slippery slope arguments. America holds an idealized version of itself at the forefront of its mind, but we also had the CIA self-funding operations in Central and South America. Pre-emptive foreign interference because there's a potential existential threat is the slipperiest of slopes. 

And then I am reminded of Iain M. Banks' CULTURE novels, where it is a technocracy run by sentient, benevolent AIs — and the Culture will utterly destabilize and undermine other civilizations preemptively if the AI thinks that civ is gonna be a problem. 

So I'm torn.

[Polident]

I believe it was a post- Roddenberry concept. DS9 as a whole is. And even in his time, rotten bureaucracy in the federation was regular.

But I liked it in DS9 for involving Bashir. It plays well against his character.

[Eric Cartman]

the section 31 stuff thematically was a nice extension beyong bashirs Bond obsession, going further into what realpolitik and espionage is about than his interactions with garak who represented 'real' tradecraft and pragmatism vs the naive hollywood espionage ideas bashir had.

Also - at least in the beginning - it was very unclear to what extent section 31 was a real thing that was actually even a starfleet operation, vs just some dude doing shit of his own volition.

[Eric Cartman]

basically the whole section 31 thing could have easily been steven heck in alpha protocol