Dalek and Warcry's Endless Star Trek Thread

[inflatable dalek]

I guess people just can't get their head around Ronny Cox not being a bastard.

[Warcry]

I always thought it was a shame that for the last season the original "Prophets speak through the appearance of suspiciously appropriate people" idea was dropped for "The Prophets speak through the form of Sisko's played by a bad actress mother".

Didn't notice that at the time, but you're right. It made the Prophet segments way less mind-trippy.

I guess the Prophets thought their words would seem more important if they came from someone Sisko saw as an authority figure/loved one? If so that means they understand linear thinking way more than they let on...

Thankfully the show never flat out said it, but the general fan assumption used to be that the Prophets were the future evolved form of the Bajorans ("We are of Bajor").

I've never heard of that before. It's a silly theory and I'm glad the show steered clear of it.

In slight mitigation, according to The Companion they did consult whatever the representative body of Native American culture is in America (I forget the exact name, King of the Indians? Sadie?) and were assured "Indian" was OK to use, but were asked to change to script so it wasn't a specific tribe featured in the episode.

I don't think the word was any more polite twenty years ago than it is now, really (I'd put it on par with "coloured", insofar is it comes across as old-timey and dismissive but not explicitly racist). But then I'm looking at it from a Canadian perspective and I really have no idea if things are different in the US.

I suppose I can understand the latter, if they spoke to a lobby group that represents multiple tribes, but I think it makes it really hard for anyone who's actually met any Aboriginal folk to take the message at all seriously. I mean there's only about 200,000 Aboriginals in Manitoba and even that relatively small number is divided into at least five different groups with wildly different cultures and histories. Across the whole continent you'd be talking about dozens of different groups, if not hundreds. It's hard to get across the "we treated these folks poorly" message when you're simultaneously playing the "all them brown folk are the same" card.

Yeah, O'Brien from season 3 onwards is a slightly younger replacement from a defunct timeline who watched the original die.

Yeah, at first I thought of the clone that some aliens made of him and sent back as an assassin.

I picked up the costumes of Star Trek hardback last week, and there's a publicity picture of Saavik in there I'd not seen before where she's managing to work the Mountie uniform very well.

Yeah, it's easy to forget how much of a looker Kirstie Alley was back in those days. She was also quite a good actress...I don't think the character or the film series ever truly recovered from replacing her.

It actually got a bit silly how many species the Enterprise and DS9 crews run into (I don't know if Voyager and Enterprise carried it on, the last example I can think of is The Adversary) the Federation had been at war with in recent memory--sometimes even the life of the series--but hadn't been mentioned before. The Cardassians were the only ones to stick.

Are there really that many? The Cardassians, Tzenkethi and Talarians are the only ones that come to mind off-hand. Or did they have a war with the Sheliac too before signing the insanely complex and technical treaty with them?

And also, there are a lot of different degrees of "war". Not every one of the Federation's conflicts needs to be the Dominion War, just like not every one of our wars are WWII.
Both of our countries are involved in a few right now in places like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, but the conflicts are so low-intensity that I'm sure a lot of people are totally unaware of them. I'm sure it's even easier to miss stuff like that when your country covers hundreds of star systems rather than a small chunk of land on a single planet. And, hell, the huge scale of the thing only makes it more likely that the Federation would get embroiled in a lot of (to them) small and insignificant conflicts out on the fringes.

It would actually make sense for Data to have gone through the academy quickly considering his intelligence, speed and the fact he can study 24 hours a day (and surely they must have courses of different duration for more intelligent species like Vulcans? Or very short lived ones like Kes who would be almost dead by the time she graduated?), though I suppose with the whole "Desire to be human" thing he'd have probably insisted on the long road.

Actually, I'd argue that the Academy is just as much about teaching the cadets to operate in Starfleet's quasi-military culture as it is about book-learning. And while Data could absorb information super-quick, I think he would have needed to spend those four years learning about the social aspects of the job rather than the technical ones.

Re: short-lived species, I suspect Starfleet would simply have pointed them towards the noncom training programs (which as per Simon Tarses, let you get out into space a lot sooner at the cost of not having the amount of education that an officer needs).

Crusher of course manages to get her oar in though. "I have to get ready for all the casualties you're about to send me", I bet he was already thinking of getting Pulaski back.

I would have cheered even harder for him if he'd done that. Pulaski was so much more fun than Crusher ever was. Though it also seems like she got as much to do in one season as Crusher did across six...

Yeah, and to be fair to Geordi, he at least handles his grievance properly (complaining to Riker as the guy who has to deal with personnel issues), he doesn't actually start almost crying in front of the captain. How can Riker not have a handle on the idea of "Plausible deniability" missions?

Obviously he's bought into Picard's transparently silly "Starfleet isn't a military" propaganda and developed a strong aversion to doing anything to actually defend the Federation. The Enterprise is their toy to use for explorationy fun, dammit!

I got through a few books of Vanguard and gave up, TBH... even though I was reading it over an extended period, it seemed to be repeating itself quite a lot.

The first books did get a bit repetitive if you don't like the general idea of the Shedai or the political nature of the story, but after that it shot off in totally unexpected directions and really kept my attention. I liked it because it was willing to actually pay off on the plotlines that Trek TV could only tease (like actually drumming a lead character out of Starfleet when he commits a court-martial offense). Also it was nice to see some TOS-era fiction that isn't dedicated to showing just how awesome Kirk and co. is...

Seekers is actually more my speed, though -- it follows the crews of a couple of the ships from Vanguard, but it's more of a straight-ahead exploration story without the geopolitics or eldritch horrors.

Of the new stuff, I thoroughly enjoyed DTI, don't mind a bit of Titan, quite enjoyed the Destiny arc putting a lid on a series of increasingly fanfic-ish Borg stories (such as Before Dishonor, which was PAD as well) and the Typhon Pact / DS9 / Voyager stuff hasn't thrown up anything of particular interest from what I've read and can remember. I like that there's some advancement, but would rather have had more of the Nan Bacco era politics than another fill-in entry around Andor going nuts or slipstream technology.

Titan lost me really early on, because the Martin/Mangels duo have all the subtlety of a bag of hammers and their idea of "show how the Federation's diversity makes it stronger" was to have characters get into out-of-character monologues about it constantly.

I avoided most of the Borg masturbation, though I did read Destiny and wasn't super impressed (I agree with you that it was good to put an end to all that). Typhon Pact, etc, didn't do too much to recapture me either, because so many of the characters have drifted off in nonsensical directions (Sisko comes back, then abandons his family and Bajor! Ro is captain of DS9! Kira is a Vedek!) and so many parts of the on-screen stories were undone (Data isn't dead anymore! Neither is Trip! Oh, and the last episode of Enterprise never happened!) to please a vocal minority of fans. It's like once Pocket had free reign to do whatever they wanted in the old universe, they fell into a comics-industry trap of trying to make every book an even with huge, shocking swerves instead of just telling solid stories.

I did love the initial DS9 relaunch books, but to be honest the line had run out of steam a while before the decision to take everything post-Destiny finally put it out of its' misery. The run from Avatar to Unity was amazing though, and tied up all of the nagging loose ends that the series left behind. I also loved the Andorian culture that the series built up, though it's very difficult to reconcile with the one that we saw on Enterprise and later books often struggle to blend the two. The new characters were great too -- Shar and Vaughn actually managed to become a couple of my favourite Trek characters ever, not an easy thing to do when they've never appeared on-screen in anything.

I'm not a Voyager fan, but I thought the first couple post-Destiny Voyager books were fantastic and I really liked seeing the crew have to deal with the fallout of losing their captain to the Borg. I'm not at all a fan of them bringing her back from the dead, though, and pretty much lost interest after that.

Articles of the Federation was one of my favourite sci-fi books ever, Trek or not, and it's a real shame that we're never going to get another Bacco-centered political thriller again.

[Denyer]

Mmm, Articles is up there as one of a handful of books I can dip into at any point and read forwards or backwards. It's the Federation we hardly ever get to see as more than wallpaper.

One that surprised me favourably, considering I got it remaindered from a pound shop and it's a game tie-in, was The Needs of the Many. Trek doesn't often do news or interview style narratives, and the Sisko framing gives it a coherent thread.

[inflatable dalek]

I don't think the word was any more polite twenty years ago than it is now, really (I'd put it on par with "coloured", insofar is it comes across as old-timey and dismissive but not explicitly racist). But then I'm looking at it from a Canadian perspective and I really have no idea if things are different in the US.

I suppose I can understand the latter, if they spoke to a lobby group that represents multiple tribes, but I think it makes it really hard for anyone who's actually met any Aboriginal folk to take the message at all seriously. I mean there's only about 200,000 Aboriginals in Manitoba and even that relatively small number is divided into at least five different groups with wildly different cultures and histories. Across the whole continent you'd be talking about dozens of different groups, if not hundreds. It's hard to get across the "we treated these folks poorly" message when you're simultaneously playing the "all them brown folk are the same" card.

Also, don't forget how it's Picard (the non-American in the group) who is made to feel guilty about the actions of his ancestors. And who needs North American history explained to him by Troi at one point.

Yeah, it's easy to forget how much of a looker Kirstie Alley was back in those days. She was also quite a good actress...I don't think the character or the film series ever truly recovered from replacing her.

Yeah, it's a shame the status quo is God thing came into effect. Curtis' Saavik was one of many Vulcans where the actor managed to confuse "Emotionless" with "Plank of wood" (mind, I saw her in a pre-Trek Knight Rider a few months ago and she almost made the Hoff look like an actor in it, so that may not have been a conscious choice).

Shame she didn't come back for VI as planned (or that they didn't just have Kim Catrall be Saavik 3, notably bringing Curtis back doesn't seem to have been on anyone's radar) so that twist might have been slightly less obvious.

Are there really that many? The Cardassians, Tzenkethi and Talarians are the only ones that come to mind off-hand. Or did they have a war with the Sheliac too before signing the insanely complex and technical treaty with them?

Sheliac as well IIRC. It may not seem a lot, but the entire aesthetic of TNG is clearly based on the Federation being in a long period of peace and stability (else dragging their families about and the general cruise ship in space feel really makes no sense), having all these bush fires doesn't really fit in with the feel of the show.

quote]
I would have cheered even harder for him if he'd done that. Pulaski was so much more fun than Crusher ever was. Though it also seems like she got as much to do in one season as Crusher did across six...[/quote]

Never got the Pulaski hate a lot of fandom has. Her arc with Data is a reaaaaaaally obvious one: That she'll initially dislike him and then come to respect and even love him. It's so clearly signposted all the "She's so mean to Data!" stuff seems silly. Especially as it's resolved early in the season, they clearly get on fine after Elementary, Dear Data (Fact: Geordi makes a better Watson with his strange James Mason impression than Martin Freeman).

Obviously he's bought into Picard's transparently silly "Starfleet isn't a military" propaganda and developed a strong aversion to doing anything to actually defend the Federation. The Enterprise is their toy to use for explorationy fun, dammit!

And also for him to bang chicks who wind up nearly taking over the Federation.

Jellico would probably have made him get into better shape as well. It's easy to joke about the weight gain, but Riker actually seems quite unhealthy in the later seasons. The odd walk gets odder and there's a bit in Silicon Avatar where he's clearly struggling to carry one of the colonists (more oddly Data also seems to be struggling when he has to take over, as if he's not really a super robot but a human actor with a bad back. Hmmm).

Though oddly he looks much slimmer in Generations when he switches to the DS9 uniform, despite it not fitting properly (being forced to wear Avery Brooks' costume despite Frakes being a giant. Poor old Levar Burton is having to wear O'Brien's as well. Guess who were the only two actors to get specially made versions of the jumpsuits for the film?).

[Warcry]

So it turns out that our "how long was Data in Starfleet" question was answered on-screen in Datalore.

One of Data's first assignments after he graduated Starfleet Academy was aboard the USS Trieste. (TNG: "Clues") He spent three years as an ensign and twelve as a lieutenant before being promoted to lieutenant commander in 2360. (TNG: "Datalore") In 2364, he was assigned to the USS Enterprise-D as its second officer.

So apparently he was in Starfleet even longer than I'd thought, and he actually graduated from the Academy twelve years before Riker. It makes me wonder what kind of assignments he had before the Enterprise, to both rise so slowly and still be thought of highly enough to get the assignment as second officer.

Also Riker was something of a hotshot, apparently. He'd actually graduated at the same time as Geordi and only had seven years of experience by the time the series started. That doesn't really add up to me, given the job that he has and all the experiences he's said to have gone through. Also apparently Riker is almost a decade younger than the man playing him, which almost-but-not-quite works when he's a babyfaced skinny dude in season one. But by the time the finale rolls around he's the oldest-looking 35 year old in the galaxy.

One that surprised me favourably, considering I got it remaindered from a pound shop and it's a game tie-in, was The Needs of the Many. Trek doesn't often do news or interview style narratives, and the Sisko framing gives it a coherent thread.

I've heard mixed reviews on that one, though part of the flak is probably that (as an ST:O tie-in) it doesn't follow the novel continuity that most of its' target market are familiar with. Considering where that continuity has gone in the last decade, though, that's not a bad thing.

On the other hand, it has that tool Martin's name on the cover, so I can't imagine spending more than $1 or so on it...

Also, don't forget how it's Picard (the non-American in the group) who is made to feel guilty about the actions of his ancestors. And who needs North American history explained to him by Troi at one point.

Yeah, you'd think if they were going to guilt-trip anyone on the crew it'd be Riker, since he's the only person on the senior staff who's actually from North America. The connection that they drummed up for Picard was tenuous at best. Not to mention how silly it was that the colonists knew about it. I mean, how many people can tell you who their ancestors were and what they were doing in the 1700s now, let alone four hundred years in the future? Most branches of my family tree can't be traced much father back than the mid-1800s.

Yeah, it's a shame the status quo is God thing came into effect. Curtis' Saavik was one of many Vulcans where the actor managed to confuse "Emotionless" with "Plank of wood" (mind, I saw her in a pre-Trek Knight Rider a few months ago and she almost made the Hoff look like an actor in it, so that may not have been a conscious choice).

Yeah, Robin Curtis wasn't great. She managed to make a Romulan equally wooden in TNG, didn't she?

Shame she didn't come back for VI as planned (or that they didn't just have Kim Catrall be Saavik 3, notably bringing Curtis back doesn't seem to have been on anyone's radar) so that twist might have been slightly less obvious.

Agreed, it's a shame they didn't go in either of those directions. Random Vulcan Girl #2 is basically the same character, minus the audience's connection to Saavik.

Sheliac as well IIRC. It may not seem a lot, but the entire aesthetic of TNG is clearly based on the Federation being in a long period of peace and stability (else dragging their families about and the general cruise ship in space feel really makes no sense), having all these bush fires doesn't really fit in with the feel of the show.

That's a fair assessment, especially when you consider the state of Starfleet at the time. The backbone of the fleet was the 2280s-vintage Excelsior, Constellation, Oberth and Miranda-class designs, and there seemed to have been very little design work or shipbuilding done between them and the Galaxy and Nebula classes in the 2360s.

The only design we actually see in service that debuted between those two generations was the Ambassador-class, and those seem to be relatively thin on the ground (a shame since they're the prettiest Starfleet ship design ever). A handful of others are mentioned but only ever seen as debris in the Wolf 359 ship graveyard, like the New Orleans-class, so they must have been equally (if not more) rare. The impression it leaves me with was that the Federation felt secure enough in their position that they were happy to leave the bulk of their defence duties to a collection of eight decade old relics while only adding a modest number of modern designs every once in a while.

It wasn't until the Borg and Dominion became real threats that the Federation actually seemed to put much effort into modernizing their fleet, although to be fair once it became a priority they really put themselves into it. We saw a bunch of new classes of starship make their debut within a couple years. The Defiant and Intrepid classes were both brand-new with they showed up in DS9 and Voyager respectively, and First Contact debuted the Sovereign, Akira, Steamrunner and Saber classes. By the time the Dominion War kicked off, all six classes were a common sight on the battlefield (though the show was understandably reluctant to have too many copies of "hero" ships popping up unless they were plot-relevant), so they must have built hundreds of new starships in a matter of years.

Of course, after a century of intense cold war with the Klingons, Romulans and Tholians, it's not hard to see why the Federation would see the occasional border dust-up with these second-tier races as nothing to worry about.

Actually, the most telling thing is that, in the midst of/right after those wars with the Cardassians, Tzenkethi and Sheliac, the only aliens that the Federation seemed to actually be worried about were the Ferengi. Who they hadn't even met yet, and who were exactly no threat at all. It certainly gives me the impression that they could have easily rolled over the races that were bothering them, even with their geriatric fleet, if they'd actually had any interest in conquest.

Never got the Pulaski hate a lot of fandom has. Her arc with Data is a reaaaaaaally obvious one: That she'll initially dislike him and then come to respect and even love him. It's so clearly signposted all the "She's so mean to Data!" stuff seems silly. Especially as it's resolved early in the season, they clearly get on fine after Elementary, Dear Data (Fact: Geordi makes a better Watson with his strange James Mason impression than Martin Freeman).

Yeah, the Pulaski/Data stuff was obviously meant to echo Bones/Spock, with the obvious difference that Pulaski was shown as being wrong because it wasn't the 60s anymore. And like you say, it's resolved quickly and they both move on from it.

I was actually surprised on rewatch that they'd only done the Holmes thing twice, because it made such a huge impression on me. Spiner and Burton both did a great job at it.

Jellico would probably have made him get into better shape as well. It's easy to joke about the weight gain, but Riker actually seems quite unhealthy in the later seasons. The odd walk gets odder and there's a bit in Silicon Avatar where he's clearly struggling to carry one of the colonists (more oddly Data also seems to be struggling when he has to take over, as if he's not really a super robot but a human actor with a bad back. Hmmm).

I know people (like me!) tend to joke about him being old and fat in the later seasons, but I don't think I ever quite realized how much weight Frakes put on between seasons 2 and 3 until recently. I think he looked a ton better with the more...bearlike physique in the middle seasons, but that's definitely a part of why he suddenly started looking his age. And yeah, like you say he'd packed on even more pounds by the time the last couple years rolled around.

You'd think Starfleet would have physical fitness requirements for starship duty, no? I mean if you want to get fat while you're working at a desk in San Francisco that's one thing, but if you're on front-line duty leading away teams you really should have to be in shape. Though this is the same organization that sent a starship crewed entirely by pensioners out to make peace with the Klingons, so...

Though oddly he looks much slimmer in Generations when he switches to the DS9 uniform, despite it not fitting properly (being forced to wear Avery Brooks' costume despite Frakes being a giant. Poor old Levar Burton is having to wear O'Brien's as well. Guess who were the only two actors to get specially made versions of the jumpsuits for the film?).

Not Sirtis and McFadden, since they apparently refused to wear the DS9 outfits at all since they were unflattering (funny, since Terry Ferrell looked great in hers...).

The fact that Riker's uniform jacket sleeves only come down to his elbows is downright hilarious, but I can't for the life of me figure out why the producers thought that was a good look. I mean, shit, couldn't you just keep him in the TNG outfit the whole time? What gets me, though, is that they didn't have at least one uniform in their inventory that fit him. I mean, they've got to have a ton on-hand in different sizes for the extras to wear, right? And they didn't have a single one in Extra Large?

Geordi fit his just fine in spite of it not being tailored for him, I thought.

Speaking of Geordi, was there ever any reason given for the move from the Visor to "artificial eye" contacts? Was it because of the trouble they had filming the thing for the big screen in Generations, or did Burton just finally get sick of wearing it after eight years?

I was also sort of confused with how he grew normal eyes in Insurrection, only to be back to the machine ones again in Nemesis. I'm not entirely sure why or how they would have "un-healed" themselves. Or, for that matter, why they couldn't have just cloned him working eyes in the first place. Or a new heart for Picard.

[inflatable dalek]

Also Riker was something of a hotshot, apparently. He'd actually graduated at the same time as Geordi and only had seven years of experience by the time the series started. That doesn't really add up to me, given the job that he has and all the experiences he's said to have gone through. Also apparently Riker is almost a decade younger than the man playing him, which almost-but-not-quite works when he's a babyfaced skinny dude in season one. But by the time the finale rolls around he's the oldest-looking 35 year old in the galaxy.

Blimey, I knew Picard was about a decade older than Stewart, but I didn't know Riker went the other way. Alaska must have some hard living if he was only in his twenties in season 1.

I wonder if Data spent a lot of time on Aquiel style one or two man deep space assignments with a lot of monotonous routine? He'd seem suited to it and would explain his lack of social development, plus you never really hear anything about his prior crews ulike Picard, Riker and Geordi.

Yeah, you'd think if they were going to guilt-trip anyone on the crew it'd be Riker, since he's the only person on the senior staff who's actually from North America. The connection that they drummed up for Picard was tenuous at best. Not to mention how silly it was that the colonists knew about it. I mean, how many people can tell you who their ancestors were and what they were doing in the 1700s now, let alone four hundred years in the future? Most branches of my family tree can't be traced much father back than the mid-1800s.

Plus Picard, who was all "Holding Worf accountable for the crimes of his Dad is a dick move" is genuinely remorseful and feels responsibility. I always suspect Old Indian guy was just playing him.

That's a fair assessment, especially when you consider the state of Starfleet at the time. The backbone of the fleet was the 2280s-vintage Excelsior, Constellation, Oberth and Miranda-class designs, and there seemed to have been very little design work or shipbuilding done between them and the Galaxy and Nebula classes in the 2360s.

Mind, them keeping the same basic shape and class designations doesn't mean there weren't drastic changes to the designs as they went along. An Enterprise B style Excelsior (and isn't it odd how we went all the way to the fourth season of DS9 without seeing one of those in the 24th century? Killing Kirk must have really put a dampener on enthusiasm for the extra fins) could hold its own against the only year and a bit old dedicated warship Defiant so it's presumably more modern than it looks.

The only design we actually see in service that debuted between those two generations was the Ambassador-class, and those seem to be relatively thin on the ground (a shame since they're the prettiest Starfleet ship design ever). A handful of others are mentioned but only ever seen as debris in the Wolf 359 ship graveyard, like the New Orleans-class, so they must have been equally (if not more) rare. The impression it leaves me with was that the Federation felt secure enough in their position that they were happy to leave the bulk of their defence duties to a collection of eight decade old relics while only adding a modest number of modern designs every once in a while.

Is the Nebula not supposed to be an interim class as well? I know we don't see it until well into the run of TNG but the look of the one Data took over in Redemption made it feel like an older ship to me.

It wasn't until the Borg and Dominion became real threats that the Federation actually seemed to put much effort into modernizing their fleet, although to be fair once it became a priority they really put themselves into it. We saw a bunch of new classes of starship make their debut within a couple years. The Defiant and Intrepid classes were both brand-new with they showed up in DS9 and Voyager respectively, and First Contact debuted the Sovereign, Akira, Steamrunner and Saber classes. By the time the Dominion War kicked off, all six classes were a common sight on the battlefield (though the show was understandably reluctant to have too many copies of "hero" ships popping up unless they were plot-relevant), so they must have built hundreds of new starships in a matter of years.

It's especially impressive considering it took years to build the Enterprise D, Starfleet must have been really slacking.

Actually, the most telling thing is that, in the midst of/right after those wars with the Cardassians, Tzenkethi and Sheliac, the only aliens that the Federation seemed to actually be worried about were the Ferengi. Who they hadn't even met yet, and who were exactly no threat at all. It certainly gives me the impression that they could have easily rolled over the races that were bothering them, even with their geriatric fleet, if they'd actually had any interest in conquest.

Of course, by the time those other races started showing up the Ferengi backstory was well on the way to being retconned so they'd been around and known for years (I think there's even a Voyager episode with a line about them visiting Wall Street before the end of capitalism).

There's actually a fairly persuasive theory that the timeline doesn't go back quite the same at the end of Yesterday's Enterprise (it works that originally the Romulan's involvement wasn't know, but whatever the C did upon its return meant this was exposed), which fans used to use to explain things like how the 50 year silence of the Romulans just sort of got forgotten. Maybe that affected things like the Ferengi and the smaller wars as well?

I was actually surprised on rewatch that they'd only done the Holmes thing twice, because it made such a huge impression on me. Spiner and Burton both did a great job at it.

They got into legal trouble with the Doyle estate and it took four years to sort it out and get permission to use the characters again.

Data really is a crap Sherlock Holmes fan though, he clearly has only read as far as The Final Problem from the way he thinks Moriarty killed Holmes!

Not Sirtis and McFadden, since they apparently refused to wear the DS9 outfits at all since they were unflattering (funny, since Terry Ferrell looked great in hers...).

Interesting, I'd always thought that was a producer choice to keep them in the tighter one-piece uniform throughout.

The fact that Riker's uniform jacket sleeves only come down to his elbows is downright hilarious, but I can't for the life of me figure out why the producers thought that was a good look. I mean, shit, couldn't you just keep him in the TNG outfit the whole time? What gets me, though, is that they didn't have at least one uniform in their inventory that fit him. I mean, they've got to have a ton on-hand in different sizes for the extras to wear, right? And they didn't have a single one in Extra Large?

It might be that was the closest "Hero" uniform they had, the extras costumes are often less detailed/well made (though it'd be hard to do that with DS9 jumpsuit). If only they hadn't wasted money making a load of new uniforms they never used.

The uniform thing in Generations is really odd. Defenders say that Star Fleet has two uniform types and wearing both on the same ship makes sense and is more like real navies. Which is fine, but completely at odds with the rest of Trek where everyone on the same ship wears the same uniform at all times.

it actually looks like they're in the middle of changing over to the new regular uniform (something backed up by Voayger using it. Was DS9 trying out the look before it was rolled out fleetwide? Mind, DS9 continued to use the TNG outfits for "Not We" officers) and everyone doesn't quite manage to start wearing it on the same day.

Speaking of Geordi, was there ever any reason given for the move from the Visor to "artificial eye" contacts? Was it because of the trouble they had filming the thing for the big screen in Generations, or did Burton just finally get sick of wearing it after eight years?

Burton had been working to get rid of the visor since at least season 2 (there's a couple of scenes with Pulaski establishing they could do it just in case the producers decided to agree), he hated not being able to use his eyes. Though you can see his normal pupils through it in at least one scene in Generations, so that may have factored into as well.

In fiction, the general assumption is the Klingons managing to put a bug on it leading to the destruction of the ship was the last straw after things like The Mind's Eye and Star Fleet told him to bloody well upgrade or get out.

The fact he could always be rendered helpless with a good slap to the face was always a bit of a design flaw anyway, especially with the number of intruders who made it to engineering and would start throwing him about.

I always though it was odd that, with the full range of special sight the visor gave him, the thing didn't have a setting for "Normal" sight as well. Even something as simple as a 1980's TV picture would probably be more useful than seeing the entire spectrum all the time.

I was also sort of confused with how he grew normal eyes in Insurrection, only to be back to the machine ones again in Nemesis. I'm not entirely sure why or how they would have "un-healed" themselves. Or, for that matter, why they couldn't have just cloned him working eyes in the first place. Or a new heart for Picard.

Did Geordi not have his normal eyes still in Nemesis? It says a lot about his role that I've never noticed they went back to the implants...

[Warcry]

Blimey, I knew Picard was about a decade older than Stewart, but I didn't know Riker went the other way. Alaska must have some hard living if he was only in his twenties in season 1.

I was shocked when I found out how young Patrick Stewart was at the start of TNG. As a youngster I figured him for, like, sixty and the poor man wasn't even fifty yet. But then he didn't age a day for two decades, so I suppose he won out in the end.

I wonder if Data spent a lot of time on Aquiel style one or two man deep space assignments with a lot of monotonous routine? He'd seem suited to it and would explain his lack of social development, plus you never really hear anything about his prior crews ulike Picard, Riker and Geordi.

I could see him being suited for that, and crucially not trying to get out of that duty like a human officer would. But we're also told that he spend a lot of time on the Trieste when he was younger, so he wasn't entirely isolated the whole time.

Plus Picard, who was all "Holding Worf accountable for the crimes of his Dad is a dick move" is genuinely remorseful and feels responsibility. I always suspect Old Indian guy was just playing him.

Oh, he was definitely playing him. Picard usually wouldn't have been vulnerable to that sort of manipulation, but he was already so uncomfortable about forcing the colonists from their homes that he left himself uncharacteristically open to it.

Mind, them keeping the same basic shape and class designations doesn't mean there weren't drastic changes to the designs as they went along. An Enterprise B style Excelsior (and isn't it odd how we went all the way to the fourth season of DS9 without seeing one of those in the 24th century? Killing Kirk must have really put a dampener on enthusiasm for the extra fins) could hold its own against the only year and a bit old dedicated warship Defiant so it's presumably more modern than it looks.

You picked a perfect example to illustrate, actually -- the Lakota spent the time between dropping Sisko and Odo off at Earth and fighting the Defiant in drydock getting outfitted with new tactical systems (including quantum torpedoes). I'd imagine the Movie-vintage ships had gone through several cycles of upgrades over the decades, though the base hardware doesn't seem to have changed too much. The biggest changes we saw were the different weapons pods that the Miranda-class ships carried, nowhere near the complete teardown-and-rebuild that the first Enterprise got before the movie era (after, what, 25 years in service?).

Though both ships were pulling their punches in that battle, what with not wanting to murder their fellow officers, so it's hard to draw too much of a conclusion from it.

Is the Nebula not supposed to be an interim class as well? I know we don't see it until well into the run of TNG but the look of the one Data took over in Redemption made it feel like an older ship to me.

Well, looks-wise it definitely comes off as a contemporary to the Galaxy-class. The saucer, deflector and nacelles are all but identical. If it was meant to be an older design, those probably would have been patterned after the Enterprise-C instead. Bits of barely-seen info like the ships' dedication plaques also seem to indicate that they were built around the same time as their larger counterparts (notably, the one that Data commanded was apparently only built the year before, sinking my long-held "Picard's fleet were ships that were damaged at Wolf 359" theory).

It's especially impressive considering it took years to build the Enterprise D, Starfleet must have been really slacking.

You'd have to imagine that the smaller ships took a lot less time to build, though. They could probably slap a Defiant together in a couple months' time, build a new Intrepid-class inside a year, etc. The bigger ships would naturally take a bit longer. Notably, behind-the-scenes info at the time of First Contact said that the Enterprise-E had been under construction since before the TV show ended, under another name, and only had "Enterprise" slapped on at the last minute after they foolishly let Troi drive the old one.

(On a similar note, I hope Brazilians hadn't been lobbying Starfleet command to name a ship "Sao Paulo" for very long...)

Actually, all the new ships they built for the war probably goes a long way to explain the quick promotions for folks like Nog. Not only were they losing experienced officers in battle, but with so many new ships rolling off the lines they had to promote junior officers to fill all of the newly-available command positions.

Though what always breaks my immersion with that line of thought is the Enterprise crew. Starfleet's hippy "do what makes you happy" attitude towards promotions surely would have been put aside when the future of the Federation was at stake, so why didn't they forcibly promote Riker, Data and maybe Geordi as well into positions where their experience would have been more valuable? Riker should have been put into command of his own ship even if they had to staple him to the captain's chair to keep him there, and Data's android brain should have been put to use in the war office analysing Dominion fleet movements (La Forge, I'd imagine, would become Picard's XO in that scenario). I mean, shit, they had science officer Jadzia Dax commanding a warship, so obviously they were hard up for experienced hands.

Of course, by the time those other races started showing up the Ferengi backstory was well on the way to being retconned so they'd been around and known for years (I think there's even a Voyager episode with a line about them visiting Wall Street before the end of capitalism).

Yeah, it certainly got to seem like the Ferengi had known Hu-mons for a lot longer than humans knew them. Picard and co. didn't even know what they looked like!

It's a shame actually...as much as I love the comedy ultra-capitalist Ferengi that DS9 gave us, the idea of a powerful alien empire that the Federation only knew through rumour was an interesting one. Seeing Starfleet and the Ferengi expanding into the same regions of space, building towards a first contact confrontation that neither of them really wanted but both knew were inevitable, would have been cool.

You know, if the Ferengi had been treated with any respect at all by the writers. How much crack must Gene have been smoking to think they would have been taken seriously as an adversary?

Interesting, I'd always thought that was a producer choice to keep them in the tighter one-piece uniform throughout.

That's what I would have thought, but no, from what I read it was the ladies' choice.

It might be that was the closest "Hero" uniform they had, the extras costumes are often less detailed/well made (though it'd be hard to do that with DS9 jumpsuit). If only they hadn't wasted money making a load of new uniforms they never used.

Did they ever say why they didn't use them? I'm actually quite fond of that look...they're like a blending of the TNG and TWOK designs. They're more "dress uniform" than "everyday attire", but it would have been nice to see them at some point.

The uniform thing in Generations is really odd. Defenders say that Star Fleet has two uniform types and wearing both on the same ship makes sense and is more like real navies. Which is fine, but completely at odds with the rest of Trek where everyone on the same ship wears the same uniform at all times.

it actually looks like they're in the middle of changing over to the new regular uniform (something backed up by Voayger using it. Was DS9 trying out the look before it was rolled out fleetwide? Mind, DS9 continued to use the TNG outfits for "Not We" officers) and everyone doesn't quite manage to start wearing it on the same day.

I always figured that the TNG outfit was Starfleet's more formal variant, while the DS9 one was the "hard work, roll up your sleeves" attire. We do see something like that in the TOS films and early TNG, I think, with engineering crews sometimes wearing what looks like a futuristic utility jumpsuit. I figured that the DS9 crew just wore the more relaxed outfit all the time because they were out on the frontier and nobody cared. But Picard and co. were the super-important flagship constantly meeting new people and acting as a diplomatic face for the Federation, and the captain probably didn't want them doing that in their pajamas.

Burton had been working to get rid of the visor since at least season 2 (there's a couple of scenes with Pulaski establishing they could do it just in case the producers decided to agree), he hated not being able to use his eyes. Though you can see his normal pupils through it in at least one scene in Generations, so that may have factored into as well.

Yeah, the thing looked ridiculously uncomfortable and apparently caused some pretty serious headaches too, so I'm not surprised the actor wanted to get rid of it. And as cool as it looked, it was the farthest from "high-tech" considering Data has fully-functional artificial eyes that actually look like eyes.

The fact he could always be rendered helpless with a good slap to the face was always a bit of a design flaw anyway, especially with the number of intruders who made it to engineering and would start throwing him about.

I always figured he should have had the thing on a lanyard attached to his uniform, or something. All the times that he patted around for it on the ground could easily have been avoided.

I always though it was odd that, with the full range of special sight the visor gave him, the thing didn't have a setting for "Normal" sight as well. Even something as simple as a 1980's TV picture would probably be more useful than seeing the entire spectrum all the time.

It's especially silly twenty years on, since we've got better vision prosthetics right now than they apparently will 300 years in the future (albeit still highly experimental).

Did Geordi not have his normal eyes still in Nemesis? It says a lot about his role that I've never noticed they went back to the implants...

I always thought he did, until I read a few books that said he didn't. Then I went back and looked at some screenshots, and it does indeed look like he's got the implants in Nemesis. According to Memory Alpha he knew that he'd loose his eyes again if they stopped the Son'a, but I don't remember anything at all like that in the movie itself and don't feel like dragging out my VCR from the basement and watching the movie on tape to find out.

[Cyberstrike nTo]

Sta Trek: Enterprise-"Stigma" One of my problems with this series was Archer always trying to have the high moral ground with the Vulcans and usually failing miserably at it. Here he does have it. T'Pol has a rare disease that she got mind melding with a Vulcan from an earlier episode and in the Enterprise era mind melding is the more or less the Vulcan version of gay sex (also only a few Vulcans can actually do a mind meld). The disease T'Pol has can only be transmitted by mind melding and if Vulcan High Command finds out she has it she will be relieved of duty and be disgraced. Dr. Plox tries to find out if the Vulcans have any new treatments and the Vulcans aren't willing to talk. Eventually the Vulcans do find out and Archer goes to bat for T'Pol and give the Vulcans a much needed lecture about tolerance and getting over fear. The nice thing about this episode is that while T'Pol stays on the ship, the fear of mind melding isn't resolved and really nobody wins in this episode. I also like T'Pol admitting that she doesn't want sympathy from the Vulcans because some thinks she's a "victim" (one could say she was mind raped by the Vulcan in the earlier episode) and that while she doesn't have the mind melding ablity she does stand up for them. I don't recall any Star Trek episode from any series dealing with this many subjects at one time.
Honorable mentions: "Judgement" and "First Flight"

Star Trek "City On The Edge of Forever" This is arguably the greatest episode of the original series. While navigating some waves in spacetime McCoy accidentally injects himself with a powerful drug that drives him nuts and escapes to a nearby planet Kirk, Spock, and a landing party beam down and subdue him temporarily Kirk and company meet the Guardian of Forever a being that can send them back in time. Kirk comes up with a daring plan go back in time and prevent the accident, unfortunately McCoy recovers and in his drugged out state jumps through the portal and changes history that wipes out the timeline leaving only Kirk, Spock, and the landing party as the only ones left to fix the timeline. So Kirk and Spock go back through time near where McCoy jumped and find themselves in the late 1920s. They find lodgings at a shelter ran by a woman named Edith Keeler (played by Joan Collins) who dreams and talks of a future similar to one where Kirk, Spock, and McCoy all come from. While Kirk woos Edith, she also finds the drug crazed McCoy and nurses him back to health. Of course Kirk falls in love with her and Spock builds a primitive computer to get readings out of his Tricorder and learns of two futures for Edith one where she dies and one where she lives, meets FDR and convinces him not to enter WWII and the Nazis gets the A-Bomb before America does. To put history back on track Edith has die. When Edith reveals to Kirk that she's been taking care of McCoy and the two friends reunite Edith crosses the street to join them and is hit by a truck, while Kirk holds McCoy back. The trio return to the future and find everything is back on track. One of the most dramatic and funniest episodes of Shatner and Collins have great chemistry and you really do believe that Kirk would fall for her. Some of the humor of Kirk trying to tell a cop about Spock's ears and Spock complaining about building a computer out sticks and stones are still funny.
Honorable mentions: "Bread and Circuses" and "The Trouble With Tribbles"

Star Trek: The Next Generation "Best of Both Worlds parts 1 and 2" The Borg make their first real attack against the Federation and Captain Picard is captured and turned into the Borg known as Locutus, and Field Captain Riker has to stop his Captain, mentor, and friend at any cost while dealing with an ambitious young Commander who wants his job. This has to be the greatest cliffhanger in the history of the franchise and while the Borg drones and sets here don't look as scary and/or impressive as they would later on in Star Trek: First Contact and Star Trek: Voyager, the makeup on Patrick Stewart as Locutus is still looks impressive. This is two-parter changed the franchise in so many ways The Battle at Wolf 359 would be a huge part of Sisko's life in DS9, it made the Borg a dangerous foe that would haunt the series for years to come. It showed that Picard had a dark side to his nature. And more importantly it showed that Star Trek: The Next Generation had finally come into it's own as a series. All the cast gave 200% in these two episodes.
Honorable mentions: "The Inner Light" and "Time's Arrow parts 1 and 2"

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine-"The Visitor" For me personally this is the greatest episode of any show of all time. It's been since I first saw it and it still is. Captain Sisko takes his son and the crew on the USS Defiant to see the wormhole do something it only does every 50 years when an energy discharge damages the ship and the Siskos' attempt to save the ship blows Captain Sisko in a pocket dimension and leaves everyone thinking he's dead. His son Jake in his late 20s/early 30s played brilliantly by Tony Todd finds out the truth and devotes the rest of his life to save his father ending when old Jake dies in the future this sends Ben back in time and this time around he stops the accident from happening. This is one of those episodes that hits me like a sledgehammer to face because my mother died and as a result I'm very close to my father and losing him is a constant fear and I like the nice change of the child dying to save a parent. This is Tony Todd's best performance in the Star Trek franchise (he played Worf's brother, an alien hunter on Voyager among others). Cirroc Lofton who was the series regular who played Jake Sisko gives a great performance in his own right.
Honorable mentions: "Trials and Tribb-lations" and "What You Leave Behind parts 1 and 2"

Star Trek: Voyager-"Living Witness" The Doctor is activated on alien world 700 years in the future and finds that the two races that live on this world have a dark view of the crew of Voyager. Janeway's a cruel cold hearted bitch, Chakotay and Kim beat prisoners, and the Doctor is an android that coldly comments war crimes and Seven is Borg drone with her own attack squad under Janeway's command. As the Doctor tells the historian that reactivated him the truth and he begins to see that his entire history might be wrong, but before they can attempt to change the minds of the people on this world simmering racial tensions between the two races boil over into a race riot and the Doctor begs the historian to deactivate him for good and the historian refuses and they both begin to look for the medical tricorder that can prove the Doctor's word. Then hundreds of years later a group of both alien races learn that after the riots the two races began to work out their differences in peace with the Doctor's help and this ushered in a peace of happiness for both of the alien races after spending some time there as the head of their medical unit, the Doctor left to find out the fate of Voyager and see if his friends ever made back it home. This is the closest that Star Trek: Voyager ever did to a "Mirror Universe" story and I have to say "evil" Janeway looked hot with her short hair. I also loved the twist at the end. Including that the Doctor on the alien world was a back-up of his program (or they had a back-up on the ship so either way Robert Picardo wasn't leaving the show). The idea of showing Voyager's effect on the Delta Quadrant in the far future was a cool idea and to me the ending of this episode sums up perfectly what Star Trek is all about.
Honorable mentions: "Infinite Regress" and "Future's End parts 1 and 2"

[inflatable dalek]

Will have to have a think on favourite episodes.

I was shocked when I found out how young Patrick Stewart was at the start of TNG. As a youngster I figured him for, like, sixty and the poor man wasn't even fifty yet. But then he didn't age a day for two decades, so I suppose he won out in the end.

He basically still looks the same now, it's just the way he moves and talks in a much slower (and by the sound of it, denchers) way that gives away the fact he's well into his 70's. It's much the same way that Christopher Lloyd, though looking surprisingly like old Doc Brown when he had the wig on, is clearly much more of a dodgery and forgetful old man than he ever played the character in that Jimmy Kimmel sketch from the middle of the week.

Oh, he was definitely playing him. Picard usually wouldn't have been vulnerable to that sort of manipulation, but he was already so uncomfortable about forcing the colonists from their homes that he left himself uncharacteristically open to it.

Of course, Picard does have an intense sense of family pride (if he can trace his family back to Trafalgar--though why that would be something to be proud of for a French family I've no idea, you'd think the writers' thought he was English--an extra 100 years doesn't mean much), which makes the fact he's hearing about this for the first time and is surprised by it even funnier.

Well, looks-wise it definitely comes off as a contemporary to the Galaxy-class. The saucer, deflector and nacelles are all but identical. If it was meant to be an older design, those probably would have been patterned after the Enterprise-C instead. Bits of barely-seen info like the ships' dedication plaques also seem to indicate that they were built around the same time as their larger counterparts (notably, the one that Data commanded was apparently only built the year before, sinking my long-held "Picard's fleet were ships that were damaged at Wolf 359" theory).

Get you, paying attention to dedication plaques. You nerd.

Modern navy carriers can have a long period of service, the real Enterprise as featured in Star Trek IV was on active duty for 50 years so super advanced starships managing another 30 isn't so far fetched.

I do wonder what happened to the Constitution Class, they're the work horse of Star Fleet during the original series (there's not even a hint of them having another type of large ship), yet they almost completely vanish from the films onwards. The Enterprise herself is only twenty (though if Space Seed was 15 years earlier and The Cage 11 before that it's closer to 30 despite what Admiral man says) when they retire her, which seems positively young for a Federation ship and comes only a few years after a major and expensive refit.

Whilst they'd be pushing it to survive into the TNG era (though even when they were filming The Battle, The Stargazer was going to be one. It's a "Constellation" class because that matched the mouth movement when they redubbed after deciding to kitbash a new ship) you think there'd at least be a lot hanging around Space Dock in the films.

and only had "Enterprise" slapped on at the last minute after they foolishly let Troi drive the old one.

I don't see what was foolish about letting Troi fly. It's not as if there's lots of scared and terrified civillians and children on the saucer section who could do with her help right there and then. And it's not as if the single best pilot on the ship is sat in the captain's chair just a few feet behind her and could easily have just jumped into the seat himself.

(On a similar note, I hope Brazilians hadn't been lobbying Starfleet command to name a ship "Sao Paulo" for very long...)

As powerful as the destruction of the original Defiant was, it's instant replacement with an identical ship (even down to the registration number! Speaking of which, I'd be willing to let the silliness of the "Add a letter to the end of 1701 for each new Enterprise" pass despite it making no sense for any logical registry system if not for the fact the Yamato--and only the first time we saw her--was the only other Federation ship we ever saw do the same despite the constant reuse of ship names) was a pretty bad fumbled moment.

Along with the Breen basically adding nothing to the final arc beyond a new gun either the Cardassians or Dominion could have developed themselves (all those hints and mysteries basically come to nothing. All they contribute is pissing of Damar).

Oh, and the way the two plots of What You Leave Behind don't connect to each other at all so you have oddities like the fact Winn would have to be standing of Dukat's dead body chanting for days whilst she's waiting for the war plot to end.

Yeah, it certainly got to seem like the Ferengi had known Hu-mons for a lot longer than humans knew them. Picard and co. didn't even know what they looked like!

Oddly as contrived and desperate as it was (say no names!), I quite enjoyed the Ferengi episode of Enterprise. I mean, it made Archer look even more of an idiot than usual, but it was fun.

I actually really liked the Borg episode as well. It did something similar to what Doctor Who would do with Daleks when it came back a few years later, restoring the power and threat to a much diminished enemy by just showing how dangerous and scary just a couple (or one in the Dalek case) can be. The fact they quickly assimilate their way up to having a ship nearly the equal of the NX01 and very clearly would have surpassed it if they'd have just a little more time gives them a lot of their teeth back.

It's a shame actually...as much as I love the comedy ultra-capitalist Ferengi that DS9 gave us, the idea of a powerful alien empire that the Federation only knew through rumour was an interesting one. Seeing Starfleet and the Ferengi expanding into the same regions of space, building towards a first contact confrontation that neither of them really wanted but both knew were inevitable, would have been cool.

That's basically what they did again, much more successfully, with the Dominion isn't it? Their pressence is built up slowly over season 2 (amusingly starting with a comedy Ferengi episode).

You know, if the Ferengi had been treated with any respect at all by the writers. How much crack must Gene have been smoking to think they would have been taken seriously as an adversary?

Wasn't he keen on the Ferengi having massive cocks? Says it all really.

Did they ever say why they didn't use them? I'm actually quite fond of that look...they're like a blending of the TNG and TWOK designs. They're more "dress uniform" than "everyday attire", but it would have been nice to see them at some point.

Officially because they thought entirely new uniforms would have been one new thing too many for viewers to cope with. Though I suspect that's just a polite way of avoiding saying "We thought they were awful".

They do seem to have been very worried that the TV uniforms wouldn't stand up on the cinema screen (and you can see the zip in the back a lot more often in HD. Though as they obviously join up on the back anyway even when you can't see the zip I've often wondered how the characters were supposed to put them on without help), much as there was with the sets.

Though I actually really like the lighting in Generations, it's not as ridiculously dark as people say (the bridge isn't as brightly lit as the TV show but equally it's not so dim you can't see what's going on), the really dark sets tend to have a reason (Picard's got the lights off in his ready room and quarters because he's in a sad broody mood) and it's the only part of the film that actually feels like a film.

Though the Enterprise D being so well lit in the space shots does make the odd reuse of a flyby from Encounter At Farpoint stand out all the more.

It's especially silly twenty years on, since we've got better vision prosthetics right now than they apparently will 300 years in the future (albeit still highly experimental).

It's the same with Captain Pike, Stephen Hawking can go on chatshows, Pike has a lightbulb.

I always thought he did, until I read a few books that said he didn't. Then I went back and looked at some screenshots, and it does indeed look like he's got the implants in Nemesis. According to Memory Alpha he knew that he'd loose his eyes again if they stopped the Son'a, but I don't remember anything at all like that in the movie itself and don't feel like dragging out my VCR from the basement and watching the movie on tape to find out.

Wow, that's amazing, I guess Burton must not get a good close up in the whole film then as I've never noticed that. Which is quite poor for a film that is forced to be shot in a lot of tight close ups because they sets aren't big enough to put the camera too far back (it's fun on one of the making of bits on the blu ray to see them trying to force all the panels that make up the walls of the engineering set into the much smaller studio space than the previous two films enjoyed).

[Tetsuro]

According to Memory Alpha he knew that he'd loose his eyes again if they stopped the Son'a, but I don't remember anything at all like that in the movie itself and don't feel like dragging out my VCR from the basement and watching the movie on tape to find out.

Maybe it's just because I'm such a massive nerd (or the fact that Insurrection must've been like the only Trek movie besides Generations I ever had on VHS), but I definitely remember Geordi remarking something about not being able to enjoy his ability to see with what's happening to the Baku at the same time.

[inflatable dalek]

Yeah, he does say "How could I enjoy another sunset if it was at the cost of making these rich white squatters not be able to be arseholes?", but I took it to mean he'd just feel really bad rather than literally never being able to enjoy another sunset.

Maybe he had one of those "Oh no, Professor X is back in a wheelchair!" accidents between films?

[Tetsuro]

but I took it to mean he'd just feel really bad rather than literally never being able to enjoy another sunset.

So did I, but then, Nemesis couldn't even be bothered to remember that Picard hadn't always been bald either.

[Warcry]

Favourite episodes, huh? Okay, I'll play.

I haven't seen TOS in it's entirety in ages, so it's entirely possible I'm forgetting something. But out of the episodes I actually remember my favourite would have to be The Galileo Seven. It's one of the best Spock episodes out there, and Spock is easily my favourite from the show. I also love that we actually got to know a few of the redshirts a bit. The plot on the planet's surface with the funny aliens, along with Spock's struggles to deal with the situation logically, have always made this one super-memorable to me.

The Tholian Web is also really stuck in my head, but I don't think I've actually seen it since I was little so it might actually be terrible (I used to love The Arena when I was little but could barely get through it a couple years ago).

From TNG, there are so many episodes that I love, but paridoxically it's an easy choice. As much as I love episodes like Yesterday's Enterprise, The Best of Both Worlds, Family, The Wounded, Darmok, Chain of Command, Face of the Enemy, The Pegasus, Lower Decks, etc., I don't think any of them quite stand up to The Measure Of A Man. On top of all the philosophical questions about "personhood" that it grapples with (which are super-important in and of themselves), the episode also manages to be the first really good vehicle for Picard the man (as opposed to Picard the steely captain). When I rewatch the series this is always the episode where my opinion of Picard switches from "one dimensional pompous stiff" to "fatherly leader", as I watch him get angrier and angrier over a bigot who's trying to essentially vivisect a member of his family. His reunion with Louvois also helps quite a bit with making him feel like a real person.

Guinan's short scene with Picard is just about the best thing to happen all season, too. I always forget how vital she was to the show's best years until I rewatch an episode with her in it.

Although DS9 is my favourite series, honestly nothing about the show before The Jem'Hadar is memorable to me in the slightest. After that, though, I've got so many favourites it's hard to pick. In general I think the Dominion arc was handled wonderfully and I love a lot of episodes that dealt with it. The first is probably Improbable Cause/The Die Is Cast, which firmly cemented Garak as an important part of the series rather than an occasional guest star. These events were also the point of no return for the over-arching Dominion plot -- once this happened, you knew war was inevitable. In Purgatory's Shadow/By Inferno's Light was great too, introducing the real Martok and making Worf out to be even more badass than he'd ever managed through the whole run of TNG. Call to Arms was a huge shocker, and I remember being super stoked after seeing the closing shot of the huge Federation war fleet at the end. And then then first episode of season six were an even bigger shock, as it slowly sunk in that, no, the status quo wouldn't be restored by the end of the premiere. And then the whole run of episodes after that, up to Sacrifice of Angels, was one hit after another. In the Pale Moonlight is probably the best of the war episodes after that, though Siege of AR-558 was pretty powerful too. And then everything from Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges was intense enough that I nearly died of a heart attack as a kid.

But in spite of all that praise for the Dominion War, my favourite episodes don't really have anything to do with it. Homefront/Paradise Lost use changelings as an excuse, but the story is about something else entirely and it's one of those shows that seem to get more topical every year. It's a fantastic illustration of just how easy it is for a civilized nation to let fear take it to dark places, and I wish it was required viewing for anyone elected to government. But on top of the powerful message it carries it was also damned entertaining thanks to some fantastic acting that made Admiral Leyton, Jaresh-Inyo, Sisko's dad and even Captain Benteen highly memorable characters even though only one of them ever showed up again after this.

For the Uniform is also an enduring favourite, because it illustrates just how different Sisko is from all the other captains in the franchise. I also really like how the episode ends with Sisko saying that all his awful actions were just him "getting into character" to beat Eddington, but makes it clear at the same time that we shouldn't entirely believe that.

Voyager is also hard to choose from, though for different reasons. I was actually super-excited for the show when it started, but even though I was only ten or eleven when it premiered I was quickly disappointed by how the show didn't seem to live up to its premise (in particular I remember being super-excited by what Before and After seemed to promise, only for the later writers to pussy out, make it a two-parter and undo it afterwards). So while there was the occasional good episode scattered throughout the series -- Basics, Scorpion and The Killing Game all come to mind -- I actually think that the pilot, Caretaker, was as good as the series ever got. It set the show off on a very interesting direction, and it's just a shame that the rest of the series didn't follow it.

I'm not sure I can pick anything from Enterprise, though. Although I enjoyed the fourth season, nothing from it really stands out as all that good compared to the rest. Though the fact that I haven't watched it since it first aired probably contributes to that.

He basically still looks the same now, it's just the way he moves and talks in a much slower (and by the sound of it, denchers) way that gives away the fact he's well into his 70's. It's much the same way that Christopher Lloyd, though looking surprisingly like old Doc Brown when he had the wig on, is clearly much more of a dodgery and forgetful old man than he ever played the character in that Jimmy Kimmel sketch from the middle of the week.

He's notably got an old man's jawline and neck now, with some obvious saggy skin (just take a look at his main pic on Wikipedia) but it's amazing how little he's changed since 1987, I agree.

Of course, Picard does have an intense sense of family pride (if he can trace his family back to Trafalgar--though why that would be something to be proud of for a French family I've no idea, you'd think the writers' thought he was English--an extra 100 years doesn't mean much), which makes the fact he's hearing about this for the first time and is surprised by it even funnier.

Maybe by "the Picard who fought at Trafalgar" he meant that one of his uncles got into a fistfight there on vacation?

Get you, paying attention to dedication plaques. You nerd.

Well, to be perfectly honest I had to look it up.

I'm amazed they went to the trouble of making them up for all these one-shot guest ships, though. Nobody would have noticed if they hadn't bothered.

Modern navy carriers can have a long period of service, the real Enterprise as featured in Star Trek IV was on active duty for 50 years so super advanced starships managing another 30 isn't so far fetched.

That's fair enough, though an aircraft carrier isn't the best comparison -- its planes are what do all the fighting, and I'm sure the carrier Enterprise wasn't still flying F-4 Phantoms when they retired her in 2013. They'd be more akin to battleships and destroyers, which sometimes had lifespans that long but not very often.

I'm sure the spaceframes of ships like Lakota or Malinche or Hood were still perfectly serviceable, but considering the advancements that Starfleet made over the decade and a half run from TNG through the end of Voyager, you'd have to think that their basic systems were hopelessly obsolete.

I do wonder what happened to the Constitution Class, they're the work horse of Star Fleet during the original series (there's not even a hint of them having another type of large ship), yet they almost completely vanish from the films onwards. The Enterprise herself is only twenty (though if Space Seed was 15 years earlier and The Cage 11 before that it's closer to 30 despite what Admiral man says) when they retire her, which seems positively young for a Federation ship and comes only a few years after a major and expensive refit.

That admiral was full of it, just based on the TV show. Based on background info, even moreso. After all, Robert April commanded the Enterprise before Pike, and she was apparently first commissioned two decades before the TV show. So she was closer to 40 by the time Search for Spock came along.

As far as what happened to them goes...well, I think it made it into dialogue in the original series that they was only a dozen of them in service, like the background info says. And they lost Constellation, Defiant and Intrepid during the run of the series, as well as potentially Excalibur and Hood as well (depending on how severe the damage from the M5 fiasco was). Even if they built a few more (you'd have to imagine they did, since Enterprise-A was a thing), it seems like the attrition rate for the class was pretty high.

We do see one still in service during TNG, or at least the debris or one after the Borg blew it to bits at Wolf 359. And apparently the Republic that gets mentioned as an Academy training ship in 'Valiant' was the old Constitution class ship as well (I guess it would have to be, since it was so archaic that it hadn't left the solar system in fifty years).

As powerful as the destruction of the original Defiant was, it's instant replacement with an identical ship (even down to the registration number! Speaking of which, I'd be willing to let the silliness of the "Add a letter to the end of 1701 for each new Enterprise" pass despite it making no sense for any logical registry system if not for the fact the Yamato--and only the first time we saw her--was the only other Federation ship we ever saw do the same despite the constant reuse of ship names) was a pretty bad fumbled moment.

I think the new Defiant's registry number was supposed to be different, only they reused a bunch of CGI shots with the old ship's numbers and made things really confusing.

Can't disagree about the Enterprise's registry, either. By that logic the Hood, Excalibur, Defiant, Yorktown, Lexington, Farragut, Intrepid, etc. should all have had their TOS-era registry plus a letter. I mean, heck, by that logic the TOS Enterprise should have been "NX-01-A"...

Along with the Breen basically adding nothing to the final arc beyond a new gun either the Cardassians or Dominion could have developed themselves (all those hints and mysteries basically come to nothing. All they contribute is pissing of Damar).

Yeah, it's a shame that the Breen didn't show up a bit sooner so they could get a bit more development. All they really did was serve as a wedge between the Cardassians and the Dominion. It could have been the Pakleds or Yridians for all it mattered.

I did like the mysteries they wove about them but it was a shame we never saw them resolved (though obviously Kira knows what they look like since she stole one's clothes).

Oh, and the way the two plots of What You Leave Behind don't connect to each other at all so you have oddities like the fact Winn would have to be standing of Dukat's dead body chanting for days whilst she's waiting for the war plot to end.

That did sort of feel like an obligatory "oh shit, we'd better wrap up the Prophets arc too!" storyline, didn't it? It's also disappointing to see Winn go full-on evil instead of her usual brand of self-serving "what's best for me is best for Bajor" justifications.

I actually really liked the Borg episode as well. It did something similar to what Doctor Who would do with Daleks when it came back a few years later, restoring the power and threat to a much diminished enemy by just showing how dangerous and scary just a couple (or one in the Dalek case) can be. The fact they quickly assimilate their way up to having a ship nearly the equal of the NX01 and very clearly would have surpassed it if they'd have just a little more time gives them a lot of their teeth back.

Yeah, that was probably the first really good use of the Borg since the first Voyager episode that featured them. They make great once- or twice-a-show guest baddies, but seeing them defeated five or more times per season really stripped away all of their sense of menace.

That's basically what they did again, much more successfully, with the Dominion isn't it? Their pressence is built up slowly over season 2 (amusingly starting with a comedy Ferengi episode).

I dunno, I think they did too good a job of it in DS9 -- insofar as I didn't even realize they were doing it until I rewatched it again after the fact. I don't know how many people would have picked up on it the first time through.

Wasn't he keen on the Ferengi having massive cocks? Says it all really.

I've never heard that, but it says a lot about latter-day Roddenberry that I don't doubt it at all.

They do seem to have been very worried that the TV uniforms wouldn't stand up on the cinema screen (and you can see the zip in the back a lot more often in HD. Though as they obviously join up on the back anyway even when you can't see the zip I've often wondered how the characters were supposed to put them on without help), much as there was with the sets.

If I remember right, in-universe the jackets zip up the front using Magic Future Fasteners and we're just supposed to pretend the zippers aren't there.

So did I, but then, Nemesis couldn't even be bothered to remember that Picard hadn't always been bald either.

Yeah, I remember that line and took it the same way as you guys, like a "yeah this is great, but nobody else can have it because it belongs to the hippies" rather than "we gotta help the hippies even if it means I lose this". I mean, that's not how biology works. Eyes don't magically go away. If you have them you have them.

[Tetsuro]

I know this should probably go to the toy forum, but why the hell hasn't there been a Voyager toy with pivoting nacelles since the Playmates one? You'd think Diamond Select or even Hot Wheels had tackled that one.

[inflatable dalek]

OK, be amazed at my totally unpredictable favourite episodes!

TOS: City on the Edge of Forever. Insanely packed with plot, lots of great moments and a performance from Shatner that reminds you he actually is a proper actor.

TNG: Yesterday's Enterprise. Probably the best "Dark alternate timeline" story ever done, mainly because it's not about eye-patches and leather costumes but the actual impact on the regulars (Jonathan Frakes in particular is very good as a more argumentative and less trusting in his captain Riker). Plus lots of good world building, some great action and an episode that's a better movie than half the movies.

DS9: It'd probably be unfair to say Trials as that's not a "Proper" DS9 episode really is it?

Probably... A Call to Arms. Second best ever Trek end of season cliffhanger, lots of tension, great lines and a building sense of doom. Love the music as the Dominion board the station as well.

Films: Khan. Nuff said.

Animated: Yesteryear.

And that's my favourite episode from every iteration of Trek ever.

From TNG, there are so many episodes that I love, but paridoxically it's an easy choice. As much as I love episodes like Yesterday's Enterprise, The Best of Both Worlds, Family, The Wounded, Darmok, Chain of Command, Face of the Enemy, The Pegasus, Lower Decks, etc., I don't think any of them quite stand up to The Measure Of A Man. On top of all the philosophical questions about "personhood" that it grapples with (which are super-important in and of themselves), the episode also manages to be the first really good vehicle for Picard the man (as opposed to Picard the steely captain). When I rewatch the series this is always the episode where my opinion of Picard switches from "one dimensional pompous stiff" to "fatherly leader", as I watch him get angrier and angrier over a bigot who's trying to essentially vivisect a member of his family. His reunion with Louvois also helps quite a bit with making him feel like a real person.

It being written by a lawyer helps as well, I'm sure it likely doesn't stand up to genuine scrutiny (it ignores the obvious defence for Data--that Star Fleet accepted his sentience when they let him into the academy. Unless they're in the habit of giving positions to rocks. This was of course before Harry Kim would have signed up--for the drama) but it's clearly had a lot more thought put into than just about any other Trek court case. I especially love that there's an explanation for what is such an important case being handled in such a small way with Data's mates as defence and prosecution.

Compare that to, say, A Matter of Perspective. Where Picard is not only Riker's defendant but also the man who gets to decide if he's extradited or not and it end with them not actually proving Riker didn't commit the murder, just presenting an alternate theory of what happened (which wouldn't be enough under an "Guilty till proven innocent" system).

Plus it's genuinely creepy that, thanks to ever helpful Troi, we know the wife genuinely thinks Riker tried to rape her. Lucky for Billy boy that got swept under the carpet.

Maybe by "the Picard who fought at Trafalgar" he meant that one of his uncles got into a fistfight there on vacation?

based on how well Picard does in fist fights (he had to get an old fat Kirk to help him punch an even older man) the Uncle probably lost as well.

I'm amazed they went to the trouble of making them up for all these one-shot guest ships, though. Nobody would have noticed if they hadn't bothered.

That's the Okuda's for you. Crazy obsessed with detail.

That admiral was full of it, just based on the TV show. Based on background info, even moreso. After all, Robert April commanded the Enterprise before Pike, and she was apparently first commissioned two decades before the TV show. So she was closer to 40 by the time Search for Spock came along.

Of course April is canon, he was in the Animated series wasn't he?

As far as what happened to them goes...well, I think it made it into dialogue in the original series that they was only a dozen of them in service, like the background info says. And they lost Constellation, Defiant and Intrepid during the run of the series, as well as potentially Excalibur and Hood as well (depending on how severe the damage from the M5 fiasco was). Even if they built a few more (you'd have to imagine they did, since Enterprise-A was a thing), it seems like the attrition rate for the class was pretty high.

The Galaxy Class seems similarly accident prone, Star Fleet lost at least three in eight years (and the Enterprise was the only one to manage a saucer separation. So much for that "Keep the civilians safe" feature. I hope the Odyssey at least left the kids back on DS9...), plus at least a couple during the war.

It reminds me of a great bit in the insane Shatner Novel The Return (you know, the one where Kirk can beat Data and Worf in one on one combat, use a holodeck better than Picard and kills all the Borg at the end by himself) where the Romulan villains are talking about what might have happened to Picard after the Enterprise's destruction and one snarks "Star Fleet probably apologies for giving him a substandard ship".

Which is basically what did happen really. "Here, have a new one!".

I think the new Defiant's registry number was supposed to be different, only they reused a bunch of CGI shots with the old ship's numbers and made things really confusing.

Yeah, apparently they wanted a whole new ship (well, exterior anyway, I assume the bridge would have been a redress) but the need to reuse stock shots made for some serious scaling back of ideas.

Can't disagree about the Enterprise's registry, either. By that logic the Hood, Excalibur, Defiant, Yorktown, Lexington, Farragut, Intrepid, etc. should all have had their TOS-era registry plus a letter. I mean, heck, by that logic the TOS Enterprise should have been "NX-01-A"...

Ah, but Archer's Enterprise was an Earth Star Fleet ship, not a Federation Star Fleet ship, so it's not part of the same service and thus not included in the registry thing.

Seriously, that's the reason people trot out for the NX-01 never, ever being mentioned in any of the subsequent shows.

I did like the mysteries they wove about them but it was a shame we never saw them resolved (though obviously Kira knows what they look like since she stole one's clothes).

She did it twice as well! Though someone on another forum suggested she just stole some clothes from the Breen laundrette.

I've never heard that, but it says a lot about latter-day Roddenberry that I don't doubt it at all.

There's that story Ira Steven Behr tells about writing Captain's Holiday, where he went into meet Roddenberry and Gene just focused on Risa and how that should be represented with everyone naked and hugging and kissing in both heterosexual and gay couple in a great big planet wide orgy.

Behr comes out the office, sees Berman and repeats what he's just been told. Berman tells him "Ignore all that, just get Picard laid".

If I remember right, in-universe the jackets zip up the front using Magic Future Fasteners and we're just supposed to pretend the zippers aren't there.

That does make how notable that seem up the back is a bit of a design flaw then.

I know this should probably go to the toy forum, but why the hell hasn't there been a Voyager toy with pivoting nacelles since the Playmates one? You'd think Diamond Select or even Hot Wheels had tackled that one.

Just buy a toilet seat and stick some wings onto it.

[Tetsuro]

Just buy a toilet seat and stick some wings onto it.

If that's a diss on the intrepid class, dem's fightin' words mister.

For some reason I kept recalling the scene in DS9 where the high ranking member of the Bajoran religious order hangs herself in the Promenade happens at the first season finale, so I watched the whole episode wondering when it happens, only for it not to.

...it happened during the Dominion occupation of the station, didn't it?

[Warcry]

I know this should probably go to the toy forum, but why the hell hasn't there been a Voyager toy with pivoting nacelles since the Playmates one? You'd think Diamond Select or even Hot Wheels had tackled that one.

There's a notable lack of good Star Trek ship toys out there in general, right now. Which is a shame because I'd love to grab a few. The stickers have all peeled off of my explodey Generations Enterprise-D and I don't think the electronics work anymore either. I've also lost most of my old model kits to the ravages of time and yellowing.

TNG: Yesterday's Enterprise. Probably the best "Dark alternate timeline" story ever done, mainly because it's not about eye-patches and leather costumes but the actual impact on the regulars (Jonathan Frakes in particular is very good as a more argumentative and less trusting in his captain Riker). Plus lots of good world building, some great action and an episode that's a better movie than half the movies.

Although I love that episode to bits, I can't bring myself to say it's my favourite because there are so many little places where it could have been better. The darker take on the main cast was interesting, as was the starker wartime Enterprise (though I find it hard to believe that the Galaxy-class would have even gotten drawn up in a Federation that had been at the edge of war for decades). I even enjoy seeing Yar again, and in spite of the flak that the actress gets I think she does great here. I just don't think a single episode is enough space for the concept to breathe properly. Your "movie" analogy is great because I think this story would have been fantastic if it had had the extra 40 minutes or so to go more in depth and show how different the crew's lives were from the versions that we knew. We got to see a lot of Picard, Riker and Yar, but how different are Data, Geordi, Beverly and Wesley in this timeline? Where are Troi and Worf (it really was a shame that he wasn't in command of the Klingon ships that attacked at the end of the episode)?

DS9: It'd probably be unfair to say Trials as that's not a "Proper" DS9 episode really is it?

Not really, though it was amazing and I love every second of it.

I wonder if the green-screening they did holds up in HD.

It being written by a lawyer helps as well, I'm sure it likely doesn't stand up to genuine scrutiny (it ignores the obvious defence for Data--that Star Fleet accepted his sentience when they let him into the academy. Unless they're in the habit of giving positions to rocks. This was of course before Harry Kim would have signed up--for the drama)

Well, the Horta did join the Federation eventually, so I suppose they would have to allow rocks in. Though I'm not sure how they'd fit one in the uniform...

You're totally right that it should be a non-issue by then, because as soon as Starfleet accepted his application they tacitly accepted his personhood. Not to mention the fact that you'd presumably have to have your paperwork in order just to apply (the show never touches on 24th-century immigration policy but I can't imagine you can join Starfleet unless you're a citizen or an otherwise-legal resident of a Federation holding like Nog was), which means that Data should have tons of civilian paperwork to back up his argument too. Given that he was "born" on a Federation colony, you'd think the question would be pretty clear-cut. Because either he's a Federation citizen or he's a toaster, and even if he hadn't joined Starfleet how the heck could he live two decades without that being settled? As soon as he applied for an ID card or drivers' license the question would have needed to be answered.

But on its own merits the episode is powerful enough that I don't care about the logic or lack thereof in its' backstory.

Compare that to, say, A Matter of Perspective. Where Picard is not only Riker's defendant but also the man who gets to decide if he's extradited or not and it end with them not actually proving Riker didn't commit the murder, just presenting an alternate theory of what happened (which wouldn't be enough under an "Guilty till proven innocent" system).

I love any episode that uses the holodeck for something beyond childish wish-fulfillment, but even seeing it used in a criminal investigation doesn't make up for the silliness of the premise. To be honest I got the feeling that the whole thing was a bit of a show anyway, because there's no way that Picard was going to hand over his first officer and he'd shown in the past how willing he was to break alien laws to protect his crew when push comes to shove.

Plus it's genuinely creepy that, thanks to ever helpful Troi, we know the wife genuinely thinks Riker tried to rape her. Lucky for Billy boy that got swept under the carpet.

That was truly silly. If this was a different story and the defendant wasn't a main cast member that would have been an effective way to confuse the audience, but what they showed was just so absurdly removed from anything we'd ever seen from Riker. I mean, shit, a big part of Violations was build on the idea that he'd never do something like that. If the story had been "Riker tried to seduce a married man's wife a bit too aggressively", I think people would have bought it as a possibility. Because he totally seems the type to try and revenge-bone the wife of someone who's treating him like garbage. But what they actually did was a step too far to be credible.

Rashomon-style stories only work when all of the possible truths on display are equally credible and self-serving, and TNG's attempt fell flat on it's face by making the wife's and assistant's stories so transparently unbelievable while Riker's seemed like a perfectly normal episode of TNG by comparison.

Of course April is canon, he was in the Animated series wasn't he?

If you say so. I've never had the opportunity to watch TAS.

The Galaxy Class seems similarly accident prone, Star Fleet lost at least three in eight years (and the Enterprise was the only one to manage a saucer separation. So much for that "Keep the civilians safe" feature. I hope the Odyssey at least left the kids back on DS9...), plus at least a couple during the war.

I'm pretty sure they made sure to mention that Odyssey off-loaded their civilians before going through the wormhole, yeah.

Actually, I think the Galaxy-class fares even worse than the Constitutions in that every single one of them to have an important on-screen role wound up destroyed. The crews of Galaxy, Venture and Challenger probably prayed every day that their captains would never get introduced to Sisko or Picard. Not a good start for a class whose ships were supposed to last 100 years. And it's even worse if you believe the background info that says that they only ever built six of them before the war started...

Yeah, apparently they wanted a whole new ship (well, exterior anyway, I assume the bridge would have been a redress) but the need to reuse stock shots made for some serious scaling back of ideas.

The reused CGI shots in the last few episodes of the show really did hurt the attempt to portray it as an epic finale. I guess the budget got axed once they decided it was going to be the end of the line?

Ah, but Archer's Enterprise was an Earth Star Fleet ship, not a Federation Star Fleet ship, so it's not part of the same service and thus not included in the registry thing.

Seriously, that's the reason people trot out for the NX-01 never, ever being mentioned in any of the subsequent shows.

I don't mind the ship not being mentioned, since it was only in service for a few years. I mean, it's not as if they mentioned the Enterprise-B or C outside of the single shows they appeared in. But you'd think Archer himself would have been. Making first contact with dozens of species and becoming president of the Federation should be at least worth a name-drop...

I do think that the fans of the show place a lot more weight on the name "Enterprise" than most people would in-universe. Kirk's ship wasn't treated as anything special at the time, and though he and Spock were definitely famous for their exploits later on, there's nothing on-screen to indicate that there weren't a dozen other, equally-legendary officers from their day. And certainly the ships commanded by Harriman and Garrett didn't seem to be anything special from the snippets we saw. And even the Enterprise-D got more respect for being the "flagship" (whatever that nebulous, inaccurately-applied term even meant) than it did for the name on the hull.

The TNG crew don't seem to have earned the same sort of acclaim as the TOS gang did for their exploits, either. I suppose that's partly due to how much bigger Starfleet is in Picard's day than Kirk's. They built 72,000 ships between Excelsior and Defiant and don't seem to have retired many of them, since we frequently see Excelsior and Miranda-class ships in TNG and DS9 with registries in the 10,000s. We even occasionally see a few below that (I think the Repulse with its' NCC-2544 is the oldest ship we see in TNG).

If that's a diss on the intrepid class, dem's fightin' words mister.

Yeah, I tend to prefer older-style vessels like the Reliant or Excelsior or Enterprise-C, but Voyager was a damned pretty ship. It's easily my favourite of the "modern" designs that debuted in DS9, Voyager and the TNG films.

Even if I've never quite understood what the tilting warp engines were supposed to accomplish.

For some reason I kept recalling the scene in DS9 where the high ranking member of the Bajoran religious order hangs herself in the Promenade happens at the first season finale, so I watched the whole episode wondering when it happens, only for it not to.

...it happened during the Dominion occupation of the station, didn't it?

Yeah, that was during the Dominion arc (and one of its more memorable moments).

Speaking of DS9, I've noticed recently that Terry Ferrell gets a lot of flak and I can't quite figure out why. Dax sucked in the first two seasons but I'd put that more on the writers (who seemed to have no idea what to do with her) than the acting. She could be a bit wooden at first but by the time the middle seasons rolled around and the character had grown a personality, I thought she was fine. Not exceptional, but no worse than half the TNG cast.

[inflatable dalek]

If that's a diss on the intrepid class, dem's fightin' words mister.

It's more of a dis on toilet seats.

There's a notable lack of good Star Trek ship toys out there in general, right now. Which is a shame because I'd love to grab a few. The stickers have all peeled off of my explodey Generations Enterprise-D and I don't think the electronics work anymore either. I've also lost most of my old model kits to the ravages of time and yellowing.

I keep seeing a nice three pack set of the 1701, refit and B in Forbidden Planet and am so tempted. But even though it says it's a simple kit, I suspect I'll still bugger it up.

Wesley

Especially considering he's a proper officer in this timeline, Star Fleet is drafting children. That's dark.

Agreed the D really shouldn't look like that, but I suppose that's a conceit you need to make (along with them all serving on the same ship despite the drastically different history) as they were never going to build all new sets and models for just one episode.

Worf (it really was a shame that he wasn't in command of the Klingon ships that attacked at the end of the episode)?

I'm really glad they didn't go down that obvious parallel Universe EVIL regular route myself. Especially considering how... large Dorn played basically the same thing in DS9 (where he's basically playing 50 Shades of Grey with Garak).

I wonder if the green-screening they did holds up in HD.

The upscale on the TOS set looks fine, even if it's not up to the same level as the full TNG remasters.

I do wish they'd edited out the "I'm going to have sex with you later" look Kirk gives Sisko though.

You're totally right that it should be a non-issue by then, because as soon as Starfleet accepted his application they tacitly accepted his personhood. Not to mention the fact that you'd presumably have to have your paperwork in order just to apply (the show never touches on 24th-century immigration policy but I can't imagine you can join Starfleet unless you're a citizen or an otherwise-legal resident of a Federation holding like Nog was), which means that Data should have tons of civilian paperwork to back up his argument too. Given that he was "born" on a Federation colony, you'd think the question would be pretty clear-cut. Because either he's a Federation citizen or he's a toaster, and even if he hadn't joined Starfleet how the heck could he live two decades without that being settled? As soon as he applied for an ID card or drivers' license the question would have needed to be answered.

Plus, even if he is property, how do Star Fleet own him? Finders keepers? Is there no Soong estate that would have a better claim?

Plus, even if Soong was an ahead of his time genius, Data is over twenty years old at this point. Shouldn't a lot of the technology in him be badly antiquated, or at least easily replicatable, by now? Even if he's constantly been doing software/hardware updates that suggests contemporary Federation tech should be able to match him.

But as you say, who cares?

I love any episode that uses the holodeck for something beyond childish wish-fulfillment, but even seeing it used in a criminal investigation doesn't make up for the silliness of the premise. To be honest I got the feeling that the whole thing was a bit of a show anyway, because there's no way that Picard was going to hand over his first officer and he'd shown in the past how willing he was to break alien laws to protect his crew when push comes to shove.

I really liked that episode as a kid because the different perspectives thing seemed very novel, but yeah, the execution really doesn't stand up.

Rashomon-style stories only work when all of the possible truths on display are equally credible and self-serving, and TNG's attempt fell flat on it's face by making the wife's and assistant's stories so transparently unbelievable while Riker's seemed like a perfectly normal episode of TNG by comparison.

It can work if it's a broad comedy (The X-Files episode Bad Blood is hilarious with Mulder and Scully's drastically different versions of what happened. Though it still has something sweet to say about the characters and how they interact as well), but the differences being so big is as you say just too silly to work as drama. And Riker's made it this long without having noticed different people remember events differently? He needs Troi to explain that to him?

He's probably been too busy with the raping thing to pay attention to human behaviour.

Actually, I think the Galaxy-class fares even worse than the Constitutions in that every single one of them to have an important on-screen role wound up destroyed. The crews of Galaxy, Venture and Challenger probably prayed every day that their captains would never get introduced to Sisko or Picard. Not a good start for a class whose ships were supposed to last 100 years. And it's even worse if you believe the background info that says that they only ever built six of them before the war started...

It is a slightly lazy "This shit just got real" plot device isn't it? Especially in The Jem Hadar where they even cast a Picard looking actor as the captain.

At least when they did it in the original series it was because they didn't have the budget for new ships (I love how all their registry numbers are 1701 mucked about with on the AMT kit).

I don't mind the ship not being mentioned, since it was only in service for a few years. I mean, it's not as if they mentioned the Enterprise-B or C outside of the single shows they appeared in. But you'd think Archer himself would have been. Making first contact with dozens of species and becoming president of the Federation should be at least worth a name-drop...

Well, they did retcon it so a planet called Archer from TNG was named after him.

As for the B and C, they were models in the observation lounge for five years, "No bloody A, B, C or D", "This is the fifth vessel to hold the name..." and so on. Archer must have done something awful at some point (the NX-O1 is in service for ten years as well and actually manages to retire in tact. That's more than most of the others).

I was always surprised when they did the Directors Cut of the first film they didn't CGI Archer's ship in place of that other spaceship in the rec deck.

I do think that the fans of the show place a lot more weight on the name "Enterprise" than most people would in-universe. Kirk's ship wasn't treated as anything special at the time, and though he and Spock were definitely famous for their exploits later on, there's nothing on-screen to indicate that there weren't a dozen other, equally-legendary officers from their day. And certainly the ships commanded by Harriman and Garrett didn't seem to be anything special from the snippets we saw. And even the Enterprise-D got more respect for being the "flagship" (whatever that nebulous, inaccurately-applied term even meant) than it did for the name on the hull.

I always quite liked how Riker doesn't quite remember the plot of The Naked Time, it's something he read in school once and stuck in his mind as a silly image but it's not more than that. Which is of course how most of Kirk's day to day stuff would be remembered (I assume the fact he discovered time travel the same day is still a closely guarded secret as Kirk was the only person we ever saw employ that way of doing it despite it being really easy), who knows everything Nelson ever did?

The TNG crew don't seem to have earned the same sort of acclaim as the TOS gang did for their exploits, either. I suppose that's partly due to how much bigger Starfleet is in Picard's day than Kirk's. They built 72,000 ships between Excelsior and Defiant and don't seem to have retired many of them, since we frequently see Excelsior and Miranda-class ships in TNG and DS9 with registries in the 10,000s. We even occasionally see a few below that (I think the Repulse with its' NCC-2544 is the oldest ship we see in TNG).

We never really got a historical perspective on the D though. Riker seemed to become well known amongst other officers after BOBW, indeed he'd stand a chance of becoming better known to the public than Picard (as a hero anyway, I'm sure the Locutus thing made the news) as that's a high profile public rescuing of the entire planet.

Speaking of DS9, I've noticed recently that Terry Ferrell gets a lot of flak and I can't quite figure out why. Dax sucked in the first two seasons but I'd put that more on the writers (who seemed to have no idea what to do with her) than the acting. She could be a bit wooden at first but by the time the middle seasons rolled around and the character had grown a personality, I thought she was fine. Not exceptional, but no worse than half the TNG cast.

I liked Dax once they ditched her original "Aloof intellectual" characterisation and made her a life loving adventurer, which Ferell is obviously much more comfortable playing.

Actually, I like both Dax's (despite Ezri being portrayed as a potential date for most of the cast rather than a character in her own right half the time), a nice variation on the Time Lord idea (I'm sure it's not coincidence that one of Dax's past hosts was a Leela and Ezri's original surname was pronounced "Tegan").

[Cyberstrike nTo]

Actually, I like both Dax's (despite Ezri being portrayed as a potential date for most of the cast rather than a character in her own right half the time), a nice variation on the Time Lord idea (I'm sure it's not coincidence that one of Dax's past hosts was a Leela and Ezri's original surname was pronounced "Tegan").

Or that Borg are basically a rip-off of the Cybermen. The Cybermen on the current show remind more of the Borg every time they show up now.

[inflatable dalek]

I never bought that the Bog were intentionally ripped off from the Cybermen. Though the art department were clearly fans (though they can't spell "Peter Davison" properly in The Neutral Zone) I've never seen any indication Maurice Hurley was a fan and it's a logical, cheap, place to go once insects with a hive mind proved to be too expensive. Plus the more obviously Cybermen themed ideas ("Assimilation" being the obvious one) only really become established later.

I do enjoy pointing out the Who fans who get smug about the Borg that the Cybermen are a total rip off from the Cybernauts in The Avengers anyway. Though at least Peddler and Davis didn't make it really obvious by giving them a crippled industrialist in a wheelchair as a creator.