Seen Star Trek

[ducati_EL34]

Originally Posted by SPL db

Which Patrick Stewart did with the utmost perfection (IMO).

Scott

Patrick Stewart was not the problem. It was Picard the character. Janeway was more a man than Picard!

Fotno spake thusly:

"I find Picard a much more well rounded and rewarding character, which allowed the writers more room to work and develop. As much as I enjoy TOS, the writers only had a limited amount of space to work within Kirk's character structure, simply because Kirk was defined early on as such a hard-charging womanizer."

The TOS writers were hamstrung mostly by a shoestring budget. It is amazing the show even lasted three seasons.

Are you telling me that a GOOD writer could not develop Kirk's character more? I find that idea, absurd. With TOS lasting only three seasons, TNG had four more seasons to develop their story lines. They also had more creative freedom as well. Let's keep things in perspecitve.

[fotno]

I refer you to the following, quoted from earlier in this very thread:

Originally Posted by fotno

Moderators Note:

There's nothing wrong with having an opinion of this film pro or con. Surely there will be diverging viewpoints about any film, and there's nothing wrong with that. However, take care to be respectful of others when doing so.

[ducati_EL34]

Originally Posted by fotno

I refer you to the following, quoted from earlier in this very thread:

That is agreeable, but, I was talking about a writer's ability. I did not realize that was being disrespectful. My apologies to you sir.

[ec1st]

Originally Posted by ducati_EL34

Forget the plot of the pilot episode, most have. However the story line change was this; according to the pilot episode earth fought a nuclear war. This was not the case of the TOS history. Earth fought a Eugenics war (Space Seed), but, not a planet wide nuclear war.

Spock in Omega Glory says .to Kirk, "this planet fought the nuclear war that your planet avoided."

Interesting contradictions, these. Star Trek is a great wide franchise, begun and fleshed out by many people. I am sure that under pressure to keep a steady flow of workable screenplays in the pipeline that a busload of background trivialities got scrambled. I'll restate: Star Trek is not perfect. It is something you have to like for what it could have been had it been born perfect.

Now that the subject has been brought up, I have my own favorite trivia contradiction. (Before I get too far along with this I should warn that I have my own naming system for Trek movies IV through VI based on Trek III's title The Search For Spock. Trek IV becomes The Search For Whales, Trek V becomes The Search For God, and Trek VI becomes The Search For Peace. I have nothing for Trek VII because when Kirk disappeared nobody went looking for him.)

Anyway, in Trek V: The Search For God, the Enterprise ended up in the center of the galaxy actually looking for God, only to find a malevolent creature imprisoned there looking for a means of escape. Few people remember that in the 1970s animated series story The Magicks Of Megas-Tu the Enterprise went to the center of the galaxy and there discovered a race of half-goat half-men creatures all capable of feats of magic.

The imperfections are there if you want to dig deep enough in the grand faux universe of Star Trek.

[ducati_EL34]

Originally Posted by ec1st

Interesting contradictions, these. Star Trek is a great wide franchise, begun and fleshed out by many people. I am sure that under pressure to keep a steady flow of workable screenplays in the pipeline that a busload of background trivialities got scrambled. I'll restate: Star Trek is not perfect. It is something you have to like for what it could have been had it been born perfect.

If roddenberry wrote the pilot, then shame on him. For him to have been a visionary, to make that blunder, he must have lost his vision.

No show is pefect, but, he had plenty of time between the end of TOS and TNG to come up with something better than that awful plot device.

If Brannan and Braga wrote that mess, then shame on them for not reading up on trek history. Maybe they were lazy and took the easy way out.

A nuclear war has been over done in Sci-Fi. What Roddenberry did in TOS with Space Seed was refreshing. I think Enterprise did a good job expounding upon that story, with Brent Spiner playing Dr. Sung's(?) grandfather.

[ec1st]

Trek history is further fleshed out, for better or worse, in the novels the Trek overseers authorize for publication. In reading some of those I have learned that the V'ger satellite from Trek I was actually intercepted by the Borg before Q's playful introduction to them and sent back to gather information about the Federation for possible conquest. There was another which established that Trelane, Squire of Gothos, was actually Q's nephew. Of course these items do not become part of the TV/film Trek universe. From the little I have read on the storyline submission process, prospective outside-the-system writers have to remember a few things. (1) Remember, you are borrowing characters from someone else's universe. (2) Subject those characters to a solvable problem. (3) Scare the hell out of them during the story. (4) Back them out of the problem without changing anything.

One further contradiction. There was an original series episode where an alien enhanced Enterprise was driven to Warp 13 to break through the galaxy rim's energy barrier. TNG later established Warp 10 as the highest possible speed achievable with that technology. As has been said, the logic bugs are out there.

[ducati_EL34]

Originally Posted by ec1st

One further contradiction. There was an original series episode where an alien enhanced Enterprise was driven to Warp 13 to break through the galaxy rim's energy barrier. TNG later established Warp 10 as the highest possible speed achievable with that technology. As has been said, the logic bugs are out there.

Well maybe TNG was right based on the knowledge of TOS era engineers, but, what happened to transwarp drive???

[mech986]

Originally Posted by ducati_EL34

Forget the plot of the pilot episode, most have. However the story line change was this; according to the pilot episode earth fought a nuclear war. This was not the case of the TOS history. Earth fought a Eugenics war (Space Seed), but, not a planet wide nuclear war.

Spock in Omega Glory says to Kirk, "this planet fought the nuclear war that your planet avoided."

First Contact reinforces this change by Riker stating that 250,000,000 people died in Earth's nuclear war.


Yes TNG was better after Roddenberry let go of the show. Well that and after Will Wheaton was jettisoned from the cast.

Please review "The Omega Glory" again. The actual quotes are:

Kirk: "Yangs...Yanks...Yankees!

Spock: "Komhs....Communists? The parallel is almost too close, Captain. It would mean they fought the war your Earth avoided. In this case, the Asiatics won and took over this planet"
- Transcibed from the Episode I just watched

There is no specific mention of nuclear war here, on Omega IV or on Earth. The references for Earth, in the context of 1960's world views, may be interpreted (my emphasis), as the Cold War and the escalation of that war into armed conflict between the West and Communism. If we avoided that war as stated, it can be interpreted that, at least between the West and Communism in the later mid to late 20th Century, no major armed conflict erupted (Roddenberry's hope for the "future").

McCoy's mention in this same episode about Biological Warfare in the 1990's has an eerie prescience (Anthrax scares, possible vectors like SARS, Botulism, Ebola, even HIV and the like), suggesting that conflicts continued to happen.

The Eugenics Wars erupted along ideological issues with genetic manipulation and genetic engineering, again beginning in the 1990's (again prescient in regards to DNA technology, cloning, Human Genome mapping, etc. in the 90's and this decade). Some 30 million people died in this "war" although it was not clear how they were destroyed. The Memory Alpha page refers to "bombed" out of existence.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Eugenics_Wars

There is no mention of East vs. West, Yanks-Comm's in this context. Indeed, the Eugenics Wars were fleshed out in later series as Augmented genetically ("Superior") vs. non-augmented. The war was documented as occurring in though the mid to late 1990's, possibly lasting in to the 2000's.


The Nuclear Wars occurred as an aftermath of the Eugenics Wars, when a multitude of conflicts arose and many world governments were destroyed. Parts of those conflicts included "Eco-Terrorists" like Colonel Green (From TOS: The Savage Curtain, referred to by Spock in TOS: Bread and Circuses, and ENT: In A Mirror Darkly, Part II) whose inital attacks in 2026 was acknowledged as the beginning of WW III. This set the stage for Nuclear War to whomever had access to the weapons (not seemingly from country governments but more from terrorists, tyrants and military commanders who gained access to all the stockpiled weapons of the 20th century - sounds frighteningly familiar to today??).

The Radiation sickened populace that Colonel Green exterminated strongly suggests nuclear war, or at least "dirty bomb" type technology.
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Phillip_Green

Yes, the subsequent events of WW III from 2026 to 2053 are mostly fleshed out in later Star Trek vehicles like ST:First Contact, ST:TNG, and ST:ENT. But much of the foundations or story "sparks" come from statements first used in ST:TOS. Subsequent writers and producers have tried to envision the "future" through filling in the "history", thus giving more substance and storyline to the show.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/World_War_III

I think most writers, including Braga, and Berman, and others, did a good job balancing writing entertainment with staying reasonably true to the "future history" that TOS first established or suggested, and then they fleshed them out. We (collectively the fans) might have wanted to do it differently, but that's what they (writers, produceres, and, yes, the studio) decided to put out and generally accepted as "canon".

As for Roddenberry, well, it was his vision that established the tenets of Star Trek, and when he wrote or outlined the pilot, that was in the midst of the Reagan ERA with the Cold War escalating further. It was not a hard stretch to again outline how humanity would have sank deeper into oblivion (Nuclear War, narcotic controlled soldiers, genocidal wars - much of this is happening now or may happen - frightening isn't it, so his vision is not far off). He used Q to bring all of humanity's failures into focus, and re-establish the Star Trek theme that Humanity eventually conquered that and evolved for the better.

One other thing. "Brannon and Braga". His name is Brannon Braga, and he was writing a lot with Rick Berman. I suspect you are referring to Berman and Braga in regards to the writing?

BTW, Brannon Braga, since starting in 1993 on TNG as a story editor, worked his way up into head writer, producer and Exec. Producer for Star Trek series and movies. Of course, not everything he's done is critically acclaimed but much of it is interesting and does reflect a solid knowledge and understanding of the ST universe. He has since gone on to do great work on the series 24.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0103804/

EDIT: so essentially, even though there was not a specific mention of nuclear war in TOS's future, it did not specifically exclude it.

Regards,

Bart, EMH

[ducati_EL34]

Originally Posted by mech986

EDIT: so essentially, even though there was not a specific mention of nuclear war in TOS's future, it did not specifically exclude it.

Regards,

Bart, EMH

Thanks for filling in some of the gaps. I still have a problem with their version of trek history.

In Space Seed, kirk says to spock, something along the lines of, "i wonder why there is no mention of this flight (DY-100) in the history tapes?" Spock replies, "Captain, would you let a war weary population know that 30 of their supermen are missing?"

Now if there was a full scale nuke war with a side order of Eugenics and Bio warfare, and for dessert they will be having a total collapse of governments, oh and the check comes to 250,000,000 dead, do you think spock would have used the phrase "war weary"? I don't.

Oh and if did happen as the TNG episode says, do you think the remnants of civilization would care about 30 supermen blasting off into space? I think the answer is, "no".

Then there are a couple of other episodes, where they go back in time, circa 1969, and no mention amoung themselves about this upcoming devestation? In fact why was there never any mention of this planet wide nuke war in TOS? Something like that is bound to have come up at some point. you don't forget something like that. We have people today, who still debate the cause of the The Great War, and that pales in comparison...

Now on to the TNG pilot episode. If as you say Roddenberry is writing the pilot with the Reagan era and nuclear buildup in mind. Too bad! Roddenberry has already written his trek history in TOS. He can not change it, just to suit his political whims.

I do not have a problem with a tactical nukes being used. In fact I never ruled that out in the first place.

I am not referencing anything from Enterprise, Voyager, or DS9. That would be revisionist history, if Farpoint is indeed a blunder. I am speaking strictly from a TOS reference.

Then there is the Warp capable Phoenix in First Contact. How was he suppose to return to earth, once he made the maiden voyage. Seems to me, he is asking a lot of an converted ICBM...

[ec1st]

Here's where the fun really starts. It's easy to criticize from the home recliner when a writer puts a little spin into a story that interrupts one's suspension of disbelief. So consider this: just how easy is it to create a workable and interesting Trek story?

A show of virtual hands, please... How many have ever tried to write a piece of Trek fan fiction?

[ducati_EL34]

Originally Posted by ec1st

Here's where the fun really starts. It's easy to criticize from the home recliner when a writer puts a little spin into a story that interrupts one's suspension of disbelief. So consider this: just how easy is it to create a workable and interesting Trek story?

A show of virtual hands, please... How many have ever tried to write a piece of Trek fan fiction?

Sure, writing a story that has a compelling plot is hard. Well except for people like Jane Austin, Charles Dickens, et al...

I am not a writer, however, these people are writers. They should get to know the history of the show, and write in accordance with that history.

[stereofisher]

Originally Posted by Kegger

Picard was also the captain I was most fond of and connected with incidentally..

Patrick Steward took a bit of getting used to as captain. Turned out to be good choice. Next Generation was good as were the movies. Enterprise had two flaws. One casting Scott Bakula as the captain was a poor choice. I could not believe he got the part. Two, puttting it on a crappy network(Paramont)with poor ratings did help the show. It actually got better in the last 2 years. On any other network with an audience Enterprise might have succeded.

The new film was a hoot. Loved the whole thing. Some questioned the Corvette scene. It was funny. The cast was cool. They nailed Scotty and MaCoy. Kirk and Spock were right on too. Will try to see it again. Will buy it on DVD. And I dont buy movies. As an old time Trekie I was not dissappointed. Good stuff.

Eric