Dalek and Warcry's Endless Star Trek Thread

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Post by inflatable dalek »

So a new Trek TV series is coming to CBS' online subscription service (in America anyway, I suspect it'll actually wind up with a good chance of making it to TV in this country, Trek always used to do well for Sky) in January 2017, from Orci and Kurtsman. With the X Files this January it looks like that's the month for inevitably crushing disappointments.
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

Oh, right, yeah. Star Trek gets yet another ****ing tv series while Carnivale sits in unfinished limbo.

Also, fairly certain I locked this thread.
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Post by Heinrad »

To briefly jump back a little:

The in-Universe stated reason, if I remember correctly, as to why we only have NCC-1701 Enterprise around as the "Enterprise"/Constitution class that gets a refit/overhaul is that by the end of Kirk's 5 year mission, Enterprise was the only Constitution class crusier left in service, all the others having been destroyed or so badly damaged that repair and refit would have been pointless as they were obsolete.

With Enterprise, they could just build on pre-existing hulls.

I'm not entirely sure if they were thinking before Search for Spock came out that there would be more ships shown or not, because I got the impression from Mr. Scott's Guide To The Enterprise that NCC-1701 was going to be like CVN-65, the only one of her kind in the currently active fleet. It would make sense, because the Miranda class(or whatever class Reliant was) certainly seemed capable of matching what Enterprise was capable of. Then ILM got to vent their frustrations on the massive prop model, and the U.S.S. Tai-Ho got a name change and a new command crew.

I suppose it all depends on how big a gap there is between TMP and TWOK. By the end of the 5 year mission, all of the new Constitution class cruisers may well have looked like the post refit Enterprise, and by the time TWOK happens, Excelsior's about to fly, taking the Constitution class' role in the fleet if the ship works out. It does kind of say something that in TMP, Enterprise is basically a brand new ship, the pride of the fleet(so much so that the Enterprise emblem is now the fleet-wide emblem), and by TWOK she's practically mothballed, only used on cadet cruises.

Unless they've changed it digitally, each ship in TOS was supposed to have it's own, individual emblem on the uniform shirts. But given the fact that the only one we see with any regularity is the Enterprise arrowhead, I can see why the change happened.
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Post by Tetsuro »

Warcry wrote: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.
I suppose you could interpret his poker skills as a part of how he made it to commander in such a short notice; he was no stranger to taking risks, and he knew exactly when was a good time to take them. Then again, while he lashes out at his subordinates when they go over his head, it's difficult to imagine he never did that himself.
Warcry wrote: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. :(
Well there's always the Diamond Select Toys one, but 1701-D in particular seems to fetch absurd amounts of money in the aftermarket, while on the flipside I got a vintage Playmates one, unapplied stickers and all, for like 40-50 dollars shipped, and that's international shipping. I guess the DST has killed the demand for the vintage toy - their Voyager in the other hand is like £180 on ebay.
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Post by Cyberstrike nTo »

Heinrad wrote:I suppose it all depends on how big a gap there is between TMP and TWOK. By the end of the 5 year mission, all of the new Constitution class cruisers may well have looked like the post refit Enterprise, and by the time TWOK happens, Excelsior's about to fly, taking the Constitution class' role in the fleet if the ship works out. It does kind of say something that in TMP, Enterprise is basically a brand new ship, the pride of the fleet(so much so that the Enterprise emblem is now the fleet-wide emblem), and by TWOK she's practically mothballed, only used on cadet cruises.


There was a 5-issue Marvel comic book series (I honestly don't remember the name of the series because the Marvel/Paramount Star Trek comics were a mess in their own right) that was supposed to be the "bridge" between when TMP ended and TWOK began and it stated that 5 years took place between the first two movies.

The basic reason why the ship was kept because it's the same model and Paramount didn't want to spend any more money on any Star Trek film than had to on it, I mean hell they even use some of the very same footage from TMP in TWOK in space dock scene. People forget that while TWOK is a great movie it looks and feels like a glorified TV movie than a theatrical film which was problem with movies 2-6, and 9. For all their faults TMP, First Contact, Nemesis and Abrams' abortions do feel like major feature films. The rest look and feel like anywhere from below to above average TV or direct-to-video movies.
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Post by Heinrad »

A 5 year gap doesn't really seem to work, though. The gap between TOS and TMP is supposed to be 18 months, and I think Kahn was on Ceti Alpha Five for, what, ten to fifteen years?

That being said, the only way for there too be more of the post refit look Constitution class ships(I think at one point they were even referred to as Constitution II) would be if the original Constitution class was already being phased out by the newer look ships possibly even before the start of Kirk's 5 year mission. That being said, a couple of close calls on the going to war front may have gotten Starfleet to expand it's shipbuilding program.

We'd have a lot fewer headaches on this front if Roddenberry had simply used his Klingon explanation for the refit. "It always looked like that. There must have been something wrong with your TV."
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Post by Tetsuro »

I just assumed that after TOS, they finished their five year mission (that's two years), went on another five year mission (no idea where I got this impression though) after that (probably a hiatus of indeterminate length between them), then there was probably that 18 month gap you mentioned, and finally, another five year mission after TMP.

Yes, I know I'm probably making up half of this, but it's not like the comics adhere to canon all that well anyway - especially since there were several issues taking place after TWOK but then STIII takes place after far too short a period after it for any of those comic stories to actually fit in, even if they tried to restore the status quo to best of their ability.
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Post by Warcry »

inflatable dalek wrote: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.
I know the set you mean! The box claims that they snap together with no need to glue or paint them, but I can speak from experience when I say that they look pretty shitty if you do that. And they're pretty small for painting small details, at least for a hamhands like me.

I did manage to make the larger Enterprise-C model I built look really good, though it's at least twice as big.
inflatable dalek wrote:Especially considering he's a proper officer in this timeline, Star Fleet is drafting children. That's dark.
Well, he would have been 18 at the time, so it's not totally insane. Assuming Starfleet was at war for a while, you could assume that they were hard enough up for officers that they would have accepted the kid the first time he applied for early admission in season 1. Add in a rushed schedule that saw him out the door as quickly as Nog in DS9, and it just about lines up without being too crazy.
inflatable dalek wrote: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 dunno, I think it would have been okay for what amounted to only one or two lines at the end of the episode.
inflatable dalek wrote:I do wish they'd edited out the "I'm going to have sex with you later" look Kirk gives Sisko though.
Nah, Kirk totally would have boned him if he'd gotten the chance.
inflatable dalek wrote: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.
Never thought of this before, but yeah. Surely he'd be the equivalent of a sentient Intel 486, in today's terms?
inflatable dalek wrote: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),
Was that the one with Alex Trebek?
inflatable dalek wrote:He's probably been too busy with the raping thing to pay attention to human behaviour.
I suppose that could explain why he gave up on being a captain. Less time for sex crimes when you're in charge of a starship...
inflatable dalek wrote: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'm forgiving enough of them blowing up Yamato, since TNG was more or less in the same boat as TOS at that point. They could have blown up a movie-era ship instead I suppose, but it wouldn't have had as much impact as a TNG-era one and at the time there was only one of those. And Odyssey, as you say, was a pretty blatant "they'd have killed the Enterprise!" move.

I was very happy to see the class treated with more respect during the Dominion War battles, where they basically steamroll over anything in their way.
inflatable dalek wrote: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.
That actually makes a huge amount of sense. They totally should have!
inflatable dalek wrote: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.
But even by the movie era, Kirk and Spock at least seem to be considered pretty damned legendary. So if Picard's crew is going to earn the same level of notoriety, we probably would have started to see some of that by the time Nemesis rolled around, and we don't. Honestly, Sisko and Janeway are liable to be way more famous both within Starfleet circles and without considering what they did in their own series. Especially since BOBW is probably the only thing that the Enterprise-D is known for among the general public and only a few years later civilians are dismissively calling it "the Borg scare".
inflatable dalek wrote: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.
Yeah, same here. It was a pretty wild swing in personality, but it made the character so much better that it's hard to complain. Especially when you can easily justify it with "Jadzia was a cold fish who loosened up as she grew more integrated with the freewheeling Dax".
inflatable dalek wrote: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").
I'm a big fan of Ezri as well, and I thought she got some great character episodes in spite of only being on the show for a year. But I'd imagine she gets a lot of flak for being a last-minute replacement for a popular character.

Honestly, it's a shame they didn't get the idea to have a replacement Dax a season or two sooner. I also like both, but it would have been nice to see more of the "replacement" version.
Cyberstrike nTo wrote: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.
Nah, the Borg (and Cybermen, really) are just zombies prettied up for sci-fi. It's an idea as old as time.
inflatable dalek wrote:So a new Trek TV series is coming to CBS' online subscription service (in America anyway, I suspect it'll actually wind up with a good chance of making it to TV in this country, Trek always used to do well for Sky) in January 2017, from Orci and Kurtsman. With the X Files this January it looks like that's the month for inevitably crushing disappointments.
Yeah, I saw that and thought about the same thing you did.

I also thought "this is going to be one of the most pirated TV shows of all time, isn't it?" Trying to keep a popular series like Star Trek off of broadcast TV isn't going to get many people to buy your subscription who wouldn't have already, but it'll definitely get them to circumvent giving you money entirely.

Do we know if the movie cast will be in it? I was assuming it would be a DS9/Voyager-style spinoff, but I suppose if they're really invested in their streaming service they might invest enough cash to pay their actors and make a TV miniseries.
Heinrad wrote:The in-Universe stated reason, if I remember correctly, as to why we only have NCC-1701 Enterprise around as the "Enterprise"/Constitution class that gets a refit/overhaul is that by the end of Kirk's 5 year mission, Enterprise was the only Constitution class crusier left in service, all the others having been destroyed or so badly damaged that repair and refit would have been pointless as they were obsolete.
I don't think this was ever shown or said on-screen, actually, though the assumption that Kirk was the first captain to ever brink a Connie back from their five-year mission intact certainly showed up in the books. But then, that would also imply that Pike and April never did it either, so even if the other ships were shot to hell some of them might have gotten the same refit.
Heinrad wrote:It would make sense, because the Miranda class(or whatever class Reliant was) certainly seemed capable of matching what Enterprise was capable of. Then ILM got to vent their frustrations on the massive prop model, and the U.S.S. Tai-Ho got a name change and a new command crew.
Wasn't Reliant considered a dilapidated old scow by the time it was destroyed, though? I seem to recall reading that in the TWOK novelization anyway, though I don't think it made it on-screen.
Tetsuro wrote:Well there's always the Diamond Select Toys one, but 1701-D in particular seems to fetch absurd amounts of money in the aftermarket, while on the flipside I got a vintage Playmates one, unapplied stickers and all, for like 40-50 dollars shipped, and that's international shipping. I guess the DST has killed the demand for the vintage toy - their Voyager in the other hand is like £180 on ebay.
This reminds me...I need to replace a few of my old Playmates Trek toys. Data and Geordi at least, so that I can have a complete TNG crew.

Did anyone else collect them back in the 90s? For about three years they were my favourite thing ever. I must have had about forty of the things, including the TOS and TNG main casts, a bunch of secondary characters like Barclay and O'Brien, different uniform variants, random aliens and four or five Borg. Though ironically I never got into collecting the DS9 ones...I think I only ever got Kira, Dax and Dukat.
Cyberstrike nTo wrote:For all their faults TMP, First Contact, Nemesis and Abrams' abortions do feel like major feature films. The rest look and feel like anywhere from below to above average TV or direct-to-video movies.
I can't argue with this. Regardless of how good they actually are, none of the other Trek films look like something they couldn't have done on a TV budget. I actually rewatched Generations and First Contact over the weekend due to this thread, and the differences between the two were pretty stark.
Heinrad wrote:A 5 year gap doesn't really seem to work, though. The gap between TOS and TMP is supposed to be 18 months, and I think Kahn was on Ceti Alpha Five for, what, ten to fifteen years?
I think the (current...) official dates for the 5-year mission was 2264-2269, with TMP somewhere around 2271-2273 and TWOK not happening until 2285. Though I've never liked that dating, because I always figured that...
Tetsuro wrote:I just assumed that after TOS, they finished their five year mission (that's two years), went on another five year mission (no idea where I got this impression though) after that (probably a hiatus of indeterminate length between them), then there was probably that 18 month gap you mentioned, and finally, another five year mission after TMP.
...this happened, because it's the only way all the old novels and comics make any sense. And also because everyone on the crew is clearly a decade older than the last time we saw them, so TMP being only a couple years after Turnabout Intruder really stretches credulity.
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Post by Heinrad »

I guess I know what I'm watching this weekend. TMP on Blu-Ray.

Great Bird of the Galaxy, protect me. Then again, maybe not.

I never got the impression during TWOK that Reliant is supposed to be an old rust bucket. The class it bears the most resemblance to is the tug out of the first Star Trek Technical Manual, and I don't think the tug had much in the way or armament. I know in the first Starfleet Command computer game, that class worked a lot better than the Constitution class did, because it was faster and more maneuverable. At least for me at any rate.

I always liked DC's first run of Star Trek over the later run they did. And their mad scramble leading up to TVH.... I can see the meeting now....

Paramount honcho: By the way, guys, here's the script for the next Trek movie.

DC editorial: -reads the script- Oh, crap. Where'd we put Spock and his ship again? And now we have to get Kirk off the Excelsior? And hope we didn't leave the Bird of Prey in the Mirror Universe, and reconcile the fact that Kirk's already been put on trial by the Federation for stealing the Enterprise...... Couldn't you guys have just done a trilogy and been done with it?

Other than the weirdness that hit the book when TVH came out, and once they got writers who were either fans of Star Trek or at the very least had a passing knowledge of the show, it was a great book. It even gave us the Honorable Kobry, the oldest Klingon in history.

Yeah, okay, we had to wait for The TNG book Strike Zone for him to show up, but still....
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Post by Warcry »

Heinrad wrote:I guess I know what I'm watching this weekend. TMP on Blu-Ray.
Don't even joke about that. You might tempt me to do the same. :(
Heinrad wrote:I never got the impression during TWOK that Reliant is supposed to be an old rust bucket.
I knew I'd read it somewhere! Google Books to the rescue:

Image

Considering the way the movie novelizations are written, I'd imagine that bit of characterization came from an earlier draft of the script and just never made it on-screen. It's a sensible characterization, though, since the Miranda-class is built from the same components at the Constitution refit (and a relatively even match in a fight) and by TWOK that's seemingly not top-of-the-line anymore. Though what is is a bit of an open question, since the Excelsior is still years away from entering full-time service, let alone any other ships of the class. Maybe it was the Constellation-class? Giving it four warp nacelles instead of the usual two might have been a short-term attempt to brute-force a solution with old tech until the next generation of ships -- Excelsior and presumably some smaller classes based on the same tech (though we literally only saw one, ever, in the Centaur) --were ready to take over the front-line role that the Enterprise was apparently no longer good enough for.
Heinrad wrote:The class it bears the most resemblance to is the tug out of the first Star Trek Technical Manual, and I don't think the tug had much in the way or armament.
The old manuals seem to show a version of Starfleet that never made it into any of the official stuff, which is sort of a shame because the wider array of ship classes that they showed off really did make TOS Starfleet seem like a real organization and not a couple dozen ships bouncing aimlessly from star to star. Unfortunately the new ship designs were pretty lazy, often just Enterprise with parts added or removed.

Honestly, I always figured the fact that the sometimes-low rank of the Enterprise XO's (Spock was only a Lt. Commander for most of the first season, and "Number One" was only a Lieutenant in The Cage) reflected the fact that the Constitution-class wasn't the biggest, baddest ship in the Federation's arsenal, but simply the kind best-suited to long-term space exploration.
Heinrad wrote:It even gave us the Honorable Kobry, the oldest Klingon in history.

Yeah, okay, we had to wait for The TNG book Strike Zone for him to show up, but still....
Wasn't he the Klingon ambassador dwarf? I only vaguely remember that book other than that it had Kreel in it.
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Post by Sades »

Warcry wrote: Did anyone else collect them back in the 90s? For about three years they were my favourite thing ever. I must have had about forty of the things, including the TOS and TNG main casts, a bunch of secondary characters like Barclay and O'Brien, different uniform variants, random aliens and four or five Borg. Though ironically I never got into collecting the DS9 ones...I think I only ever got Kira, Dax and Dukat.

MEEE TOOOOOO. Though I never really got many aliens. Just the main bridge people and some alt costumes. Had the transporter, prop toys, ships, etc.

I was into the models at one point. I did the big 1701-D that had all the detailed paint apps and decals and stuff and got a Klingon ship, a Romulan ship and DS9 along the way.

I used to have a binder full of the collector's cards. I even had a bunch of the little chip bag cards from back in the day... there might be a couple of those floating around somewhere.
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Post by Tetsuro »

Unfortunately the basic electronic 1701-D was the only Playmates Trek toy I had, and even then saying I had it as a "kid" is stretching it because I was in middle school by the time I got it; bought it at a gift shop of this Star Trek display touring Europe sometime around '99 or '00.

...that was actually the first one I had - I foolishly sold it years later to buy the DST 1701-E which turned out to be a piece of junk (the power switch didn't work properly, I couldn't get it off the demo mode and eventually the other nacelle stopped lighting up), and I sold that too - and I think it was early this year I finally bought that 50 dollar Playmates D I mentioned.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

The Reliant clearly isn't a better ship that the Enterprise, it has to cheat to get its initial advantage after all.
Warcry wrote:I know the set you mean! The box claims that they snap together with no need to glue or paint them, but I can speak from experience when I say that they look pretty shitty if you do that. And they're pretty small for painting small details, at least for a hamhands like me.
Yeah, I shall probably avoid it then. Though the original at least has the advantage of not being hugely detailed to start with anyway.
Nah, Kirk totally would have boned him if he'd gotten the chance.
He was probably thinking "Where's the totty that usually brings me the form to sign?".

It's a great gag, but it is odd that, considering the relatively small crew, Kirk wouldn't spot an imposter on his bridge straight away, especially as he'd presumably take note of short term assignments in case they're hot.

It was cheeky of Sisko to go back in time another couple of weeks to the end of Mirror Mirror to find the best moment as well.

Was that the one with Alex Trebek?
That's another good example (though the Trebek joke fails entirely in the UK), but I'm thinking of the vampire town (or is it?!?!) one.

I suppose that could explain why he gave up on being a captain. Less time for sex crimes when you're in charge of a starship...
Kirk managed both at the same time, Riker's just not trying.

That actually makes a huge amount of sense. They totally should have!
I do think it's a shame none of the directors cuts are on the blu rays considering you could easily fit two versions of the film onto each disc. I know TMP has the problem that none of the new effects were in HD and the original masters are lost and thus impossible to re-render (at least cheaply), but if they had the original cut and the TV cut on there I think they could get away with a third not entirely HD version. Sort of like that Donner cut of Superman II, you couldn't sell it on a blu ray by itself but it makes a nice complement to the original film.

Yeah, same here. It was a pretty wild swing in personality, but it made the character so much better that it's hard to complain. Especially when you can easily justify it with "Jadzia was a cold fish who loosened up as she grew more integrated with the freewheeling Dax".
I always just assumed the symbiont just overwhelmed and destroyed her original personality. Seriously, those things are evil (note how when John Glover gets Dax it doesn't use its influence to make him hand it back, the slug doesn't care as long as it has thumbs!) and no wonder the books made them the Conspiracy bugs.

I'm a big fan of Ezri as well, and I thought she got some great character episodes in spite of only being on the show for a year. But I'd imagine she gets a lot of flak for being a last-minute replacement for a popular character.
Yeah, the one with her brother was a bit poo, but I liked the SUPER gun one and she was generally a fun bubbly character.

My real problem with the last season is the characters fall into their little cliques and don't really act as a group any more. Bashir in mostly defined in terms of Ezri and O'Brien, O'Brien in terms of Bashir, Worf with Ezri, Kira with Odo... I think Ezri herself and Quark are the only ones to get decent regular interaction with the rest of the cast. When they're all there at the bar in the last episode it's genuinely hard to think what, say, Sisko and Bashir would ever talk about socially.

Yeah, I saw that and thought about the same thing you did.

I also thought "this is going to be one of the most pirated TV shows of all time, isn't it?" Trying to keep a popular series like Star Trek off of broadcast TV isn't going to get many people to buy your subscription who wouldn't have already, but it'll definitely get them to circumvent giving you money entirely.

Do we know if the movie cast will be in it? I was assuming it would be a DS9/Voyager-style spinoff, but I suppose if they're really invested in their streaming service they might invest enough cash to pay their actors and make a TV miniseries.
The press release said all new characters, I'd guess in the movie Universe as they'll almost certainly be reusing props, sets and costumes and it would allow attention grabbing guest spots from Pegg or whoever.

If they've any sense they'll make the episodes available to buy by themselves, at least with Netflix or Amazon Prime you're getting a platform for the product of pretty much every TV and film maker. Is anyone going to want to sign up for just CBS stuff? I'm certainly not going to pump for the blu ray until I've seen enough to be sure it's not New Voyager.

Though it's not as ground-breaking as what they did with TNG (as streaming only TV shows are already very much a successful thing) it is an experiment for the franchise in the same way going into first run syndication was, so hopefully it'll play out as well for them.
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Post by Warcry »

Sades wrote:MEEE TOOOOOO. Though I never really got many aliens. Just the main bridge people and some alt costumes. Had the transporter, prop toys, ships, etc.
How did I forget the transporter! Damn, I think that might have been one of my favourite Christmases ever (up there with Powermaster Prime and the year I got all the TNG main cast in one go, anyway). I need to get some C batteries and make sure mine still works!

Now I need to rack my memory to see if I can recall all the characters that I had!

There was the TOS main seven. The seven TNG main cast plus Wesley (I know I wanted to add Yar and Pulaski, but I don't think I ever saw one). And then a few uniform variations (Wesley in his cadet outfit for sure, Troi in uniform, and a couple different Geordis because I kept losing/breaking his visor...). O'Brien (in TNG gear), Dax and Kira from DS9. Sela, Dukat, Locutus and three Borg drones on the antagonist side. A few randoms like Barclay and Mordock, though I'm drawing a blank on who else there might have been. So I guess around thirty altogether?

Also had a Klingon Vor'cha cruiser, the Generations version of the Enterprise-D and some of the roleplay stuff (a phaser, a tricorder, a Klingon disruptor). I always thought it was hilarious how big and bulky the toy version of the TNG communicator was, and it's even more hilarious now that we could probably fit a functional (if stripped-down) cell phone inside of something the size of the on-screen prop nowadays.
Sades wrote:I was into the models at one point. I did the big 1701-D that had all the detailed paint apps and decals and stuff and got a Klingon ship, a Romulan ship and DS9 along the way.
I built my fair share of them as well, though I was only ever happy with the Reliant and TOS Enterprise I'd built in the end. Sadly they don't really seem to be made to stand the test of time, at least not when a kid's handling them, and the paints that my dad and I used yellowed pretty badly too.

Come to think of it, I'd really like to track down a replacement for one or both of them. They were pretty gorgeous.
Tetsuro wrote:...that was actually the first one I had - I foolishly sold it years later to buy the DST 1701-E which turned out to be a piece of junk (the power switch didn't work properly, I couldn't get it off the demo mode and eventually the other nacelle stopped lighting up), and I sold that too - and I think it was early this year I finally bought that 50 dollar Playmates D I mentioned.
Shame that the -E isn't any good. I've never quite come around to thinking of the Sovereign-class as "Enterprise" for whatever reason (I guess it just isn't all that memorable a part of the three movies it's in) but I do like the design and wouldn't have minded owning one.

On a similar track, wouldn't First Contact have been more impactful if it was the familiar 1701-D that was getting slowly assimilated out from under our heroes and not some new ship that we'd never had a chance to get to know? They could even have trashed her to the point where she'd need to be replaced, allowing them to introduce the -E in Insurrection (and maybe giving that film a bit more buzz to help at the box office).
inflatable dalek wrote:The Reliant clearly isn't a better ship that the Enterprise, it has to cheat to get its initial advantage after all.
I agree that the fight in TWOK is no indication of superiority, but the Reliant might actually have an advantage in firepower even without the ambush. She's got saucer-mounted phaser banks in most (if not all) of the same spots as Enterprise, plus the four extras on the "rollbar" and twice as many torpedo tubes. Even if she can't bring to bear more fire in a particular direction at once, Reliant would seem to have way fewer blind spots.
inflatable dalek wrote:Yeah, I shall probably avoid it then. Though the original at least has the advantage of not being hugely detailed to start with anyway.
That's true, but (assuming it's the set I'm thinking of, anyway) the original 1701 is so small that even some of that detail is missing from the molding.
inflatable dalek wrote:It's a great gag, but it is odd that, considering the relatively small crew, Kirk wouldn't spot an imposter on his bridge straight away, especially as he'd presumably take note of short term assignments in case they're hot.
That's not a bad point, actually. Sure, the Enterprise carried 430 crew, but probably only 50 or so of those were officers. And I've always assumed that the "five year mission" line meant that the crew was aboard for the long haul, so turnover would have been few and far between.

Also, considering the halfassed paranoia that Starfleet exhibits in the movie era, I like to think that any goateed black man who showed up on a starship would have been immediately DNA-tested to make sure he wasn't actually a Klingon.
inflatable dalek wrote:That's another good example (though the Trebek joke fails entirely in the UK), but I'm thinking of the vampire town (or is it?!?!) one.
I'd entirely forgotten about that one too. Probably because I haven't seen the show since it went off the air.
inflatable dalek wrote:Kirk managed both at the same time, Riker's just not trying.
Now, now, I don't think Kirk ever managed to successfully rape anyone. He was too busy brooding about how much he wished he could have sex with the Enterprise.
inflatable dalek wrote:I always just assumed the symbiont just overwhelmed and destroyed her original personality. Seriously, those things are evil (note how when John Glover gets Dax it doesn't use its influence to make him hand it back, the slug doesn't care as long as it has thumbs!) and no wonder the books made them the Conspiracy bugs.
You're not wrong. The Trill symbionts seem to show almost zero concern for the lives of their hosts, and there's a lot of good proof to back up the "they're evil" hypothesis going all the way back to The Host when Odan and Beverly raped Will Riker all the way up until Dax selfishly agreed to bond with an unwilling, untrained Ezri to save its own life.

A lot of early-years DS9 stuff seems to treat them as if they're empty vessels that serve no purpose but collecting the memories of their hosts, but TNG and late DS9 make it seem like the slugs are more than likely the dominant partner in the arrangement, with the host basically selling their souls for a chance at immortality.
inflatable dalek wrote:Yeah, the one with her brother was a bit poo, but I liked the SUPER gun one and she was generally a fun bubbly character.
That, plus as an outsider (quasi-, anyway) she was able to give the main crew a different perspective that just wasn't possible considering how close they'd grown. In particular, her willingness to call bullshit on the Klingon honour fantasyland that Worf lived in was spectacular and something nobody else would be willing to do since they'd all spent so long either humouring it or actively living it.
inflatable dalek wrote:My real problem with the last season is the characters fall into their little cliques and don't really act as a group any more. Bashir in mostly defined in terms of Ezri and O'Brien, O'Brien in terms of Bashir, Worf with Ezri, Kira with Odo... I think Ezri herself and Quark are the only ones to get decent regular interaction with the rest of the cast. When they're all there at the bar in the last episode it's genuinely hard to think what, say, Sisko and Bashir would ever talk about socially.
That's one of the reasons why I enjoyed the baseball episode. It might be the only time that season that showed the entire crew actually enjoying themselves as a group. Also enjoyed Bashir and Admiral Ross randomly going on a trip together...

Speaking of season 7...was Jake actually in it? I can't actually recall him doing anything other than playing baseball and staring out the window in the final scene.
inflatable dalek wrote:The press release said all new characters, I'd guess in the movie Universe as they'll almost certainly be reusing props, sets and costumes and it would allow attention grabbing guest spots from Pegg or whoever.
Yeah, I'd be stunned if it wasn't movieverse. I can't see them doing an original universe TV show while the films are so popular. Although Michael Dorn is still apparently pushing to play Captain Worf as the lead in his own show, and lord knows I'd love to see that.

Also, I always thought a Sulu-on-the-Excelsior show would have been fun after Voyager ended, especially since the producers went "backwards" anyway for Enterprise. Sadly, the time for that has long since passed. :(
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Post by Tetsuro »

Warcry wrote:On a similar track, wouldn't First Contact have been more impactful if it was the familiar 1701-D that was getting slowly assimilated out from under our heroes and not some new ship that we'd never had a chance to get to know? They could even have trashed her to the point where she'd need to be replaced, allowing them to introduce the -E in Insurrection (and maybe giving that film a bit more buzz to help at the box office).
Well it probably would've been a more dignified end than the one it actually got, that's for sure.

At least there would be less "ha ha, Troi crashed the Enterprise" jokes from the peanut gallery.
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Post by Heinrad »

The books did put forward the idea that Kirk was the only one to bring his ship back, but I always put it in context of things were getting more dangerous/the Romulans started putting in more appearances/just general wear and tear on aging hulls. The "Big E", the Enterprise that really got the U.S. Navy rolling in having ships named Enterprise in the active fleet, was almost 9 years old when she was decommissioned, because of advances in ship design.

And this was the most honored aircraft carrier in the fleet.

For those wondering, the next Enterprise will be a Ford class supercarrier, CVN-80. The class ship, the Gerald R. Ford, launches next year. No clue how long it takes to build one of these, but the Navy's survived 3 years so far without an active Enterprise, I guess a few more won't hurt.

So, watching TMP, and one of the extras cleared a few things up. A lot of scripts and ideas that were supposed to be in Phase II wound up getting recycled into TNG. Also, Roddenberry and Livingston(screenplay writer) were doing their best to drive Robert Wise mad. I'm guessing not on purpose, but his day apparently started with Wise all bright eyed and full of energy, and at the end of the day he'd be shaking his head wondering how 35 years in film had led to this mess.

It's a miracle it's watchable, from the sounds of it.

And it is watchable. It's not bad. Wise gets good performances out of everybody, the special effects survived the transition to hi-def, the uniforms still suck(it looks like they raided the Buck Rogers wardrobe trailer), but the big problem is still the pacing. It's too much like the episode "The Changling". The concepts are much higher flying than the episode was, but V'Ger's not that different from Nomad.

That being said, given how much money we've given Michael Bay for special effects extravaganzas, you'd think I wouldn't mind all of the effects shots. But while they are beautiful..... they're dull.

In terms of a time gap, TMP happens 2 1/2 years after the end of Kirk's mission.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Warcry wrote: Shame that the -E isn't any good. I've never quite come around to thinking of the Sovereign-class as "Enterprise" for whatever reason (I guess it just isn't all that memorable a part of the three movies it's in) but I do like the design and wouldn't have minded owning one.
Yeah, it's probably about as bland as the Trek look can get. I genuinely don't think the CGI in Insurrection helped, they clearly didn't have the budget to go all digital yet (and I think the only bit of the film that couldn't have been done as well with models was the duelling shuttles in the atmosphere. If they'd actually used the new technology to go fully nuts with the more three dimensional space battles you can do how rough it looks now would be more forgiveable) and the ship becomes a much duller, flatter grey than it was in First Contact.

Only being in three films (and going from "The best ship in the fleet" to "I shall spare your quaint vessel") didn't help it cement itself either, it's easy to forget it's the Enterprise Picard commanded longest, even ignoring what the books did after. I know the A only did two films properly, but I think most of us regard that and the refit as the same.
On a similar track, wouldn't First Contact have been more impactful if it was the familiar 1701-D that was getting slowly assimilated out from under our heroes and not some new ship that we'd never had a chance to get to know? They could even have trashed her to the point where she'd need to be replaced, allowing them to introduce the -E in Insurrection (and maybe giving that film a bit more buzz to help at the box office).
Oh yes. I know there are dull practical real world reasons for destroying the D even beyond everyone working on the show hating the design by the end of the series (ironically the problem of getting the model into positions where it wouldn't look crazy top heavy would have been solved once they made the switch to CGI and weren't dependent on the side mount and the affects of gravity): The sets were going to be destroyed to make room for Voyager anyway so she might as well go out with a bang.

Though it ended up a shit bang.

Ideally I'd have finished Generations with the D intact but badly damaged and in need of an overhaul. So in FC you have the refitted D; allowing for new sets and even some overhauling of the outside look if they'd wanted.

Then as you say, there'd have been enough emotional attachment to the ship to make those scenes even more horrific (though the film does make great play of the fact that Picard has just lost one baby and his determination not to lose another adds to his behaviour in the movie).

I agree that the fight in TWOK is no indication of superiority, but the Reliant might actually have an advantage in firepower even without the ambush. She's got saucer-mounted phaser banks in most (if not all) of the same spots as Enterprise, plus the four extras on the "rollbar" and twice as many torpedo tubes. Even if she can't bring to bear more fire in a particular direction at once, Reliant would seem to have way fewer blind spots.
That does make her seem a bit overpowered for a science mission (which is I think 98.99% of what we saw that class do) and frankly Star Fleet would have been bonkers to trust Chekov as first officer on a ship that could do actual harm to anything.

That's not a bad point, actually. Sure, the Enterprise carried 430 crew, but probably only 50 or so of those were officers. And I've always assumed that the "five year mission" line meant that the crew was aboard for the long haul, so turnover would have been few and far between.
I always love that line about "Packing them in", even with more extras than the original series could afford those corridors are still nice and spacious.
Now, now, I don't think Kirk ever managed to successfully rape anyone. He was too busy brooding about how much he wished he could have sex with the Enterprise.
Though God knows what being told in The Enemy Within that his "I like to rape women" side was essential to his ability to command did to him. Especially as the woman evil Kirk nearly raped is told she wanted it really. By Spock of all people. Was Rung the ship's counsellor?

That, plus as an outsider (quasi-, anyway) she was able to give the main crew a different perspective that just wasn't possible considering how close they'd grown. In particular, her willingness to call bullshit on the Klingon honour fantasyland that Worf lived in was spectacular and something nobody else would be willing to do since they'd all spent so long either humouring it or actively living it.
Yeah, that and the whole handling of Worf as he sorted out Gowron and crowned his second chancellor was very neatly done in the last season.

Then Nemesis came and did a big turd on the whole thing.
That's one of the reasons why I enjoyed the baseball episode. It might be the only time that season that showed the entire crew actually enjoying themselves as a group. Also enjoyed Bashir and Admiral Ross randomly going on a trip together...
Considering it's about baseball the baseball episode is great fun isn't it? I love O'Brien getting slowly pissed on scotch flavoured chewing gum.
Speaking of season 7...was Jake actually in it? I can't actually recall him doing anything other than playing baseball and staring out the window in the final scene.
The odd result of successful character development, they'd logically placed him into a job where he was basically irrelevant to the show. Something of a shame as he was the only Trek kid who was actually any good. Poor old Andrew Robinson is in the bulk of season 7 and has to make do at being a guest star!

Yeah, I'd be stunned if it wasn't movieverse. I can't see them doing an original universe TV show while the films are so popular. Although Michael Dorn is still apparently pushing to play Captain Worf as the lead in his own show, and lord knows I'd love to see that.
It's slightly sad to see some of the TNG cast getting as desperate as Takei has been for years about coming back to the franchise. Dorn however I can see being one of the ones who could cameo in the new series--the precedent has been set with Colonel Worf (and all those Soong's as well I suppose) to have him play his own great grandfather. General Mohg or somesuch.
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Post by Warcry »

So I've been thinking...what exactly is Data's job, anyway? He's "operations officer", but what does that entail? I remember some episode "Lower Decks, maybe?) when one of the junior staff said that they spent an entire shift at the post finding lost cats, and the boilerplate "managing the ship's resources" line doesn't actually tell us anything. Likewise, he's the ship's second officer but doesn't seem to have any actual responsibilities associated with the position. He never takes part in the crew evaluations (that seems to be Riker and Troi's job) and never deals with complaints from junior crew. He's no more likely to take command of the bridge than Geordi, Crusher or Troi in any given episode, and he rarely seems to take a leadership role in away missions. And unlike the chief engineer, security chief or CMO, he doesn't actually seem to have any staff reporting to him (he didn't even have any say in who got promoted to junior ops officer positions!) He seems to have even less to do than Chekov (Mr. "My job is like Sulu's, but more boring" himself) did in TOS.

I guess that's why he had so much free time to playact as science officer, which he definitely was not.
Tetsuro wrote:At least there would be less "ha ha, Troi crashed the Enterprise" jokes from the peanut gallery.
Nah, they could have had the same plot for Generations up to that point, given the writers their "crash the ship" porn and everything. Just have Picard go back a few extra days earlier (you know, early enough to make sure his family didn't die in a fire...) so that the crash would be undone, since the Enterprise would have showed up at Amigosa a few days earlier, arrested Soran for possessing terrorist weapons with minimal fuss and returned the trilithium to the Romulans.

Wow, was that a nonsense movie...
Heinrad wrote:The books did put forward the idea that Kirk was the only one to bring his ship back, but I always put it in context of things were getting more dangerous/the Romulans started putting in more appearances/just general wear and tear on aging hulls. The "Big E", the Enterprise that really got the U.S. Navy rolling in having ships named Enterprise in the active fleet, was almost 9 years old when she was decommissioned, because of advances in ship design.

And this was the most honored aircraft carrier in the fleet.
Yeah, sometimes obsolete is obsolete and there's just nothing you can do about it. If memory serves, the WWII-vintage carriers got retired quickly because they wanted to move to an exclusively nuclear-powered carrier fleet. On the other hand, her successor was in service for 50 years and the new one is liable to be around for just as long. I don't think the wartime ships were necessarily built to last, though.

I do suspect that the Enterprise-A met with a similar fate as the wartime carrier -- technology outpaced it faster than expected and there just wasn't any use keeping ships like her in service. The Excelsiors were bigger, faster and more durable, and the Connies just didn't have the versatility to adapt to a back-rack support role like the Mirandas.
Heinrad wrote:For those wondering, the next Enterprise will be a Ford class supercarrier, CVN-80. The class ship, the Gerald R. Ford, launches next year. No clue how long it takes to build one of these, but the Navy's survived 3 years so far without an active Enterprise, I guess a few more won't hurt.
The new Enterprise is not scheduled to launch until 2025, I think, and with the way military appropriations go the odds are it'll take longer than that even.
Heinrad wrote:So, watching TMP, and one of the extras cleared a few things up. A lot of scripts and ideas that were supposed to be in Phase II wound up getting recycled into TNG.
Yep. Even as far as character concepts go, they recycled a lot. Riker=Decker, Troi= Ilia, Data was lifted from the unsold pilot of a totally different Roddenberry series, and there may have been one or two others that I'm not remembering right now.
inflatable dalek wrote:Only being in three films (and going from "The best ship in the fleet" to "I shall spare your quaint vessel") didn't help it cement itself either, it's easy to forget it's the Enterprise Picard commanded longest, even ignoring what the books did after.
Picard's career really is stagnant, isn't it? 22 years captaining the Stargazer, then eight floating around in various desk jobs, then 16+ commanding two Enterprises. He hasn't been promoted in 46 years, the poor SOB!

And to think we complained about Riker's career trajectory being unrealistic...
inflatable dalek wrote:I know the A only did two films properly, but I think most of us regard that and the refit as the same.
I'd imagine that most of the general public doesn't even remember that they're different ships, in spite of the first one blowing up on-screen. There probably would have been the same lack of impact if they'd gone ahead with the original idea of making the -E another Galaxy-class.
inflatable dalek wrote:The sets were going to be destroyed to make room for Voyager anyway so she might as well go out with a bang.
On the other hand, they needed to build entirely new sets for the Enterprise-E a year or two later (and kept them for, what, six years?), so I'm not entirely sure that excuse really flies.

I think the bigger problem is that they were terrified that the sets would look low-quality and/or dated on the big screen. And those worries weren't unfounded, really. The sets were terribly 1980s, just like the original series was terribly 1960s. There's a nostalgic feel to them now, but at the same time there's still a sense of "LOL they carpeted the walls!"

DS9 and Voyager gave their sets a more industrial/military feel, and I don't think it's unrelated that they've aged a lot better in spite of being pretty old themselves by now.
inflatable dalek wrote:Ideally I'd have finished Generations with the D intact but badly damaged and in need of an overhaul. So in FC you have the refitted D; allowing for new sets and even some overhauling of the outside look if they'd wanted.
I would have gone this route myself. Although I'm pretty attached to the graceful exterior of 1701-D, I think they could have definitely improved the interiors without making them unrecognizable.
inflatable dalek wrote:Then as you say, there'd have been enough emotional attachment to the ship to make those scenes even more horrific (though the film does make great play of the fact that Picard has just lost one baby and his determination not to lose another adds to his behaviour in the movie).
Unfortunately Picard showed a terrible lack of concern at coming home to find his ship utterly destroyed in the previous movie. He was even all "eh, they'll make another" when Riker dares to be actually sad.

Though I suppose if you were to ask him, his "real" ship would be the Stargazer since he commanded her for over two decades.
inflatable dalek wrote:That does make her seem a bit overpowered for a science mission (which is I think 98.99% of what we saw that class do) and frankly Star Fleet would have been bonkers to trust Chekov as first officer on a ship that could do actual harm to anything.
Which I suppose raises the question of how exactly Chekov of all people got promoted to XO on starship but the more experienced Uhura and Sulu were stuck shepherding cadets and playacting in training simulators. Though I suppose Sulu can't complain since he made captain and Chekov didn't.

And to be fair, we saw a lot of Miranda-class ships serve as cannon fodder in TNG/DS9 too, so they're not just for science. In fact, the swappable "rollbar" modules are supposed to make the class adaptable to all sorts of different mission profiles.
inflatable dalek wrote:Then Nemesis came and did a big turd on the whole thing.
What are you talking about? Worf and Geordi weren't in that movie. :glance:
inflatable dalek wrote:Considering it's about baseball the baseball episode is great fun isn't it? I love O'Brien getting slowly pissed on scotch flavoured chewing gum.
Screw you, baseball is awesome!

Yeah, they did a pretty good job of making it accessible even to foreign savages who've never played the sport.
inflatable dalek wrote:The odd result of successful character development, they'd logically placed him into a job where he was basically irrelevant to the show. Something of a shame as he was the only Trek kid who was actually any good. Poor old Andrew Robinson is in the bulk of season 7 and has to make do at being a guest star!
I've heard they actually offered to make Robinson main cast later on in the series, but he said no (presumably because guest stars get paid more per appearance, so the "promotion" could have meant more work for the same pay). Honestly he, Casey Biggs and Jeffrey Combs all probably deserved to be listed in the main cast in the last couple seasons. But they could have sent Jake off to live on Earth after the war started and I probably wouldn't have even noticed.
inflatable dalek wrote:It's slightly sad to see some of the TNG cast getting as desperate as Takei has been for years about coming back to the franchise. Dorn however I can see being one of the ones who could cameo in the new series--the precedent has been set with Colonel Worf (and all those Soong's as well I suppose) to have him play his own great grandfather. General Mohg or somesuch.
Honestly I can't imagine any of them are desperate, since they can all make a good living doing nothing but the convention circuit for the rest of their lives. But I get what you mean...most of them really didn't have careers in front of the camera after they left Trek. Stewart being the obvious exception.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Warcry wrote:So I've been thinking...what exactly is Data's job, anyway? He's "operations officer", but what does that entail? I remember some episode "Lower Decks, maybe?) when one of the junior staff said that they spent an entire shift at the post finding lost cats, and the boilerplate "managing the ship's resources" line doesn't actually tell us anything. Likewise, he's the ship's second officer but doesn't seem to have any actual responsibilities associated with the position. He never takes part in the crew evaluations (that seems to be Riker and Troi's job) and never deals with complaints from junior crew. He's no more likely to take command of the bridge than Geordi, Crusher or Troi in any given episode, and he rarely seems to take a leadership role in away missions. And unlike the chief engineer, security chief or CMO, he doesn't actually seem to have any staff reporting to him (he didn't even have any say in who got promoted to junior ops officer positions!) He seems to have even less to do than Chekov (Mr. "My job is like Sulu's, but more boring" himself) did in TOS.

I guess that's why he had so much free time to playact as science officer, which he definitely was not.
He was originally supposed to be science officer (and sit in the third seat in the centre, I think someone realised that without a place on the bridge Troi basically wouldn't be in the show. Then he was supposed to be walking about the rear consoles like Worf does in season 1), but make up and costume tests showed the gold skin and the blue uniform didn't mesh well together visually so they made up a new position for him.

Why they just didn't change the colour of science (after all, you could argue it's as close to engineering as it is to medical) when they mucked about with some of the other colours in relation to the original series I'm not sure.

Sadly that make up test isn't on the blu rays, but there are some hilarious ones on there, including Geordi in a bling visor.

Science officer is an obvious omission from the D's senior staff, with the whole exploration angle you'd have thought they'd have been more likely to make it than Dax on DS9.

Then again, whoever replaced her as science officer didn't get to be senior staff, but suddenly the psychiatrist did. I guess Sisko was just getting his mate on staff meetings (plus, when was the last time Jadzia did something science-ey before she died anyway?).

Actually, did we ever see another Operations Officer? Was Harry Kim one? Jesus, that is a shit job. Poor old Data.

Nah, they could have had the same plot for Generations up to that point, given the writers their "crash the ship" porn and everything. Just have Picard go back a few extra days earlier (you know, early enough to make sure his family didn't die in a fire...) so that the crash would be undone, since the Enterprise would have showed up at Amigosa a few days earlier, arrested Soran for possessing terrorist weapons with minimal fuss and returned the trilithium to the Romulans.
I've seen people genuinely argue that Picard doesn't save his family because he's of strong moral character and wouldn't break the temporal Prime Directive. I'm not sure how that squares with trying to change history to stop a sun exploding. You think he'd try and do both. Once he's saved his family all he actually needs to do is refuse Soran permission to go back to the observatory and, once he's sent Geordi and Data over and gotten the proof of wrong doing, lock him up. He wouldn't even have to reveal to the potentially confuse the others by mentioning time travel!

Though of course, the episode of the series right before this has him cheerfully giving his entire crew knowledge of their future so they can make a better one and them taking it at face value.

What's especially daft is, the moment he actually chooses to go back to is probably the single worst moment he could have picked. "I'd like to be stuck under than rock getting shot at again!"

Maybe he could even point out to Soran that he (and Kirk, and the other refugees Scotty didn't rescue. And Guinan's ghost or whatever that was) got into the Nexus in the first place by flying into it on a ship, so just ignore Data and do that again. Or even just jump in a space suit and float in rather than blowing up a bloody planet.

Wow, was that a nonsense movie...
Lucky they learnt that lesson.

Ah.

Bugger.

Yep. Even as far as character concepts go, they recycled a lot. Riker=Decker, Troi= Ilia, Data was lifted from the unsold pilot of a totally different Roddenberry series, and there may have been one or two others that I'm not remembering right now.
The Questor Tapes is out on DVD here, I keep meaning to give it a watch to see how much of Data was recycled beyond the "Robot" idea. Plus him being played by Robert "Ratchet" Foxworth is good fun.

Interesting fact: Nimoy was originally cast a Questor and--after initially being wary of playing a weird alien guy again--came to really dig the whole trying to become human and find his origin idea. And was then niffed when he was let go by Roddenberry with little explanation, adding to their 70's long rift.
Picard's career really is stagnant, isn't it? 22 years captaining the Stargazer, then eight floating around in various desk jobs, then 16+ commanding two Enterprises. He hasn't been promoted in 46 years, the poor SOB!
Presumably he had a ship inbetween, I think him mentioning running away very fast in it from the Cardassians during the war in The Wounded is about the only clue we get.

Though to be fair, Ron Moore thought the same as you and specifically wrote that line about having to assume command following the death of the captain so as to say he wasn't four pips on the same ship for two decades solid (oddly a similar idea was in the original show bible as part of the explanation for Picard helping to create the "Captain's don't go on away missions" rule, but that was dropped quickly and Moore didn't know about it).

Hmm, just hanging about and wating for the Captain to die so you can take over? He really was an inspiration to Riker...

The main thing I don't like about the E is the bridge. It feels very ill defined in comparison to any of the others, I don't really have a clue what any of the stations do, and the slightly relaxed layout of the consoles means it feels a bit slapdash (Riker and Troi and to slightly face Picard at all times? There's an ego).

The only other bridge that comes as close to not quite working is Voyager. Having one centre seat works. Having three centre seats works. Two, especially two that a little off centre, doesn't work.

Unfortunately Picard showed a terrible lack of concern at coming home to find his ship utterly destroyed in the previous movie. He was even all "eh, they'll make another" when Riker dares to be actually sad.
Ah, but he's learnt that death is a natural part of life we shouldn't be scared of and should accept and embrace our mortality!

A speech he's giving to a man who has just been resurrected from the dead (and indeed now never died in the first place) by Picard.
Which I suppose raises the question of how exactly Chekov of all people got promoted to XO on starship but the more experienced Uhura and Sulu were stuck shepherding cadets and playacting in training simulators. Though I suppose Sulu can't complain since he made captain and Chekov didn't.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was a bit of a FU to Takei and his constant campaigning to be a captain. "OK, OK, we'll put a line in about how you've been promoted to captain (let's hope said line doesn't wind up being cut out in a way that really pisses you off even more at Bill Shatner)... oh, and we'll make Chekov a First Officer and give him an entire major subplot based around that".

What are you talking about? Worf and Geordi weren't in that movie. :glance:
No, Geordi's eyes were. We established that much earlier.

Screw you, baseball is awesome!

Yeah, they did a pretty good job of making it accessible even to foreign savages who've never played the sport.
Hey, I was really good at rounders when I was six. NBL level man!

I've heard they actually offered to make Robinson main cast later on in the series, but he said no (presumably because guest stars get paid more per appearance, so the "promotion" could have meant more work for the same pay). Honestly he, Casey Biggs and Jeffrey Combs all probably deserved to be listed in the main cast in the last couple seasons. But they could have sent Jake off to live on Earth after the war started and I probably wouldn't have even noticed.
Interesting, I'd read the higher ups nixed the idea for cost reasons. Nog probably deserved to be a regular as well (and as actual Star Fleet it would have been easier to write him into every episode as well). It's amazing that in comparison Token on Enterprise got to be a regular for four seasons.
REVIISITATION: THE HOLE TRUTH
STARSCREAM GOES TO PIECES IN MY LOOK AT INFILTRATION #6!
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inflatable dalek
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Oh, and I've certainly shared this before at some point over the years, but how awesome is the trailer we used to have at the start of every Trek video in the UK?:



"I guess we weren't sufficiently... entertaining".

It also comes from a happier world with no Voyager or Enterprise in it.
REVIISITATION: THE HOLE TRUTH
STARSCREAM GOES TO PIECES IN MY LOOK AT INFILTRATION #6!
PLUS: BUY THE BOOKS!
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