SDCC had some new info about the seriel TV series coming out but more importantly it has a title and they showed the new ship: U.S.S. Discovery NCC-1031.
Reminds me of this concept art from the Star Trek Phase 2 show that never happened.
I like the older design style, assuming this series takes place that far back in the ST timeline. It looks very much like a cross between a Klingon and a Federation starship. The music itself certainly also had something of a Klingon tone to it. Makes me curious where they're going with this. Do we have any further info on the show's premise?
Same, unavailable. However, I managed to find a "reaction" video that wasn't some squeaky gimp squealing into the microphone and saw it anyway...hmm.
Not what I was expecting, mainly because that design was rejected for a reason - it looks questionable even by the standards of weird 70's sci-fi. It also makes me wonder why they went with such an outlandish, by Trek standards, design - it has elements that evoke 23rd century style like the Oberth, Constitution Refit, Excelsior etc which fits the rumoured late TOS Movie-era setting, but there's no in-universe reason for a hull & nacelle geometry like that, meaning either whoever chose the design has terrible, awful taste or they wanted something unusual and "unique" to attach some in-universe justification to for other changes/additions.
Christ I hope this isn't another Stargate: Universe.
To be fair, Federation Starship design in general makes little sense. You have to get to the Defiant before seeing a hull that makes sense structurally, and the Voyager before seeing a traditional "saucer" design that isn't completely senseless. EDIT: I've always seen ships like the Enterprise-B and the Enterprise-D as acquired tastes. For their graceful lines, they make 0 sense in terms of construction, and just seem awkward. I got used to them years ago, but later designs like the Nebula, Enterprise-E, Defiant, and Intrepid class ships were all much better.
Of course, I also think STO's starship designs is the one area that has been done excellently and that game largely abandoned the wonkies aspects of Federation ship design, and only revives them occasionally to pay lip service.
Looks like a pretty cool ship to me, recognisably ST, a bit different to what we've seen before. I have high hopes for this series, ST really belongs on TV rather than in the cinema, I reckon.
It is possible that the CGI was just a quick model that they created to get an idea for how the ship should look and the final show will be better animated. Maybe they will figure out how to write Star Trek instead of creating generic action movies with emotional characters that happen to be named Spock.
LordofHats wrote: To be fair, Federation Starship design in general makes little sense. You have to get to the Defiant before seeing a hull that makes sense structurally, and the Voyager before seeing a traditional "saucer" design that isn't completely senseless. EDIT: I've always seen ships like the Enterprise-B and the Enterprise-D as acquired tastes. For their graceful lines, they make 0 sense in terms of construction, and just seem awkward. I got used to them years ago, but later designs like the Nebula, Enterprise-E, Defiant, and Intrepid class ships were all much better.
Of course, I also think STO's starship designs is the one area that has been done excellently and that game largely abandoned the wonkies aspects of Federation ship design, and only revives them occasionally to pay lip service.
Oh aye, it's senseless from an RL perspective, but in-fiction there are reasons for it and reasons why it changed when it did(even though, as you say, the designs really changed because taste in sci-fi aesthetics changed) and if this is meant to be a 23rd century design then in-fiction there's no reason for it to be shaped like that. Which is why I have the horrible suspicion they're going to insert some special snowflake nonsense in to justify a "more modern & gritty" storyline, to put the crew in a situation where most of the screen time is focused on "character drama" like SGU did(so, Star Trek: Lost in Space Because of Our Experimental Warp Drive That Needs a Funny-lookin' Hull Design or the like) - it's cheap to make(mostly internal shots reusing the same interior sets, little need for expensive aliens or battles, few location shoots) and there's a certain brand of sci-fi TV execs out there who seem to believe the only way to do "serious" stories is with a crew of growly po-faced humour-devoid social incompetents that spend most of their screen time squabbling with each other like they're still in high school.
I very much agree with the STO comment - it's a huge shame that game is such a transparent rip-off microtransaction machine, most of the "modern" designs are stunning and I love the shift to the cleaner off-white & almost-black grey scheme. The Odyssey especially is a worthy new Enterprise, I'd watch the gak out of a TV show set aboard that ship.
Yodhrin wrote: The Odyssey especially is a worthy new Enterprise, I'd watch the gak out of a TV show set aboard that ship.
The T6 flagship variants are even better;
Spoiler:
And they actually managed to make the Scimitar looked Romulan, and that's a feat!
God damn it, you're going to make me reinstall the game and dig out my VoiceAttack profiles again(because playing a Star Trek MMO isn't nerdy enough, I have abilities and weapons bound to voice macros so my neighbours can wonder why I'm bellowing "Red Alert! Fire Phasers! Emergency power to shields!" at 2am ).
Well wasn't there a rumor that they want to do different stories each season or something? Kind of like Slasher or American Horror Story, but with Star Trek?
That was the early rumour, but apparently wasn't true. The newer rumour is that it will include more than one crew (so presumably more than one ship), in an ongoing story arc.
If the first teaser for the Star Trek TV series left you gagging for more details, then this huge batch of intel that just arrived should satisfy your Trek thirst.
Talking to press at the Television Critic's Association tour, showrunner Bryan Fuller dropped a massive amount of new information on the show. As rumors have suggested, Star Trek Discovery returns to the franchise roots and takes place in the Prime Universe - not the JJ Abrams-created Kelvin Universe. That's sure to please Trek fans, but that's not even the juiciest bit: it's set a decade before the Five Year Mission depicted in the first TV series.
It's a prequel of sorts, then. It makes sense as the premise is based around an incident and event hinted at in the original series. Speculation has run rampant on what that might be with fans debating the likelihood of the Four Years War or the Romulan War playing a part, but Fuller refused to confirm what that throwback plotline will be. He did however reveal that it will be delivered across a 13-episode serialized season.
“To do this series, we’re telling a much more serialized story, to dig deep into a very tantalizing storyline." That storyline will also be deeply connected to the show's lead character: a female lieutenant commander of the U.S.S. Discovery. "We have a character who’s on a journey, and in order to understand something that is alien, she first has to understand herself.”
Part of the show's mission to branch out farther into new territory will also see a major perspective shift. Previous Trek series focused on the captain as leader, but this time Fuller says the commander will be the star of the show. "To see a character from a different perspective on the starship — one who has a different dynamic relationships with a captain, with subordinates, it gave us richer context.”
He adds that in order to maintain the diversity of the original series, Discovery will "absolutely" include a gay character and "new exciting aliens and also new imagining of existing aliens."
On that note, pre-existing characters from Trek TV aren't being completely ruled out, yet it's important says Fuller for the first season to establish "the greatness" of a fresh cast before any familiar faces return. Who might he be tempted to bring in? Spock's mom. With the promise of more details later this year when the show enters production, it already feels like Fuller is taking the Star Trek brand into a familiar yet fresh direction.
Star Trek Discovery arrives on CBS in January 2017.
The focus on the single lead character concerns me somewhat, as it's one of the things I disliked the most about Enterprise...
One of the strengths of Voyager, DS9 and Next Gen was that wide focus on their crews. While they each had a few crewmembers who got a little more spotlight than others, storylines wandered about and everyone on the crew was developed and had a role.
By contrast, from the little I watched of it, Enterprise had a Captain and a bunch of cardboard cutouts, and it just wasn't interesting.
I'm getting a few whiffs of that same slightly-off smell that came rolling off Stargate Universe in waves. We'll have to see, but between the ship and the single-character focus my optimism is waning fast.
Honestly I'm not even sure how you tell a "traditional" Trek story once you've eliminated both the episodic format and the ensemble cast.
Yodhrin wrote: Honestly I'm not even sure how you tell a "traditional" Trek story once you've eliminated both the episodic format and the ensemble cast.
Ultimately, you do it by telling a good story. Many of the greatest episodes from the various ST series often put a great emphasis on one or two characters, with the others being bit players.
Honestly I'm not even sure how you tell a "traditional" Trek story once you've eliminated both the episodic format and the ensemble cast.
They've described it as a 'novel' in 13 parts. Which can certainly work with the right story and the right cast.
And, hell, even the single character focus can work so long as that single character is at least likeable and/or entertaining... two things Captain Archer was missing, IMO. (And also the big thing missing from SG:U, frankly... ensemble cast, but none of them were remotely likeable...)
SGU did have a likeable guy, though. He died in the first episode. ...you may have a point. In a related note, my wife and I managed to make it through ever single episode of Stargate Atlantis, and they were very careful only to have one likeable character and one interesting character at a time for the first two or three seasons. It's amazing that that and the world building was enough to sustain our interest through such a bland series.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: SGU did have a likeable guy, though. He died in the first episode. ...you may have a point. In a related note, my wife and I managed to make it through ever single episode of Stargate Atlantis, and they were very careful only to have one likeable character and one interesting character at a time for the first two or three seasons. It's amazing that that and the world building was enough to sustain our interest through such a bland series.
Atlantis was basically SG1 with a slightly smaller boner for the US Airforce and military adventurism generally, that plus McKay made it my favourite of the Gates.
Yodhrin wrote: Honestly I'm not even sure how you tell a "traditional" Trek story once you've eliminated both the episodic format and the ensemble cast.
Ultimately, you do it by telling a good story. Many of the greatest episodes from the various ST series often put a great emphasis on one or two characters, with the others being bit players.
Well sure, but those were characters we gave a gak about because we'd gotten to know them as part of the ensemble cast, or were background characters being given a one-off episode to flesh them out a bit. This time we're evidently going to be seeing a new "era", a new ship, a new crew, a new mission, all from the perspective of one main character, right from the beginning and since it's only 13 episodes probably without a break. That runs the risk of them giving us LtCdr Blandy McBlanderson so they can be a cipher for the whole audience, or of them giving us a really strong, distinctive character that doesn't appeal to some viewers leaving them with less of a "way in" to the story. I really do think the semi-episodic format and ensemble cast are pretty essential to maintaining the universality of Trek stories; they don't just give the writers the most options for stories to tell, they provide the audience with the maximum number of ways to engage with those stories.
Honestly I'm not even sure how you tell a "traditional" Trek story once you've eliminated both the episodic format and the ensemble cast.
They've described it as a 'novel' in 13 parts. Which can certainly work with the right story and the right cast.
And, hell, even the single character focus can work so long as that single character is at least likeable and/or entertaining... two things Captain Archer was missing, IMO. (And also the big thing missing from SG:U, frankly... ensemble cast, but none of them were remotely likeable...)
Eh, we'll see. I really enjoy "TV novel"-style shows, and they're evidently de rigeur at the moment, but honestly I could really do with something a bit lighter, that takes less effort to watch and which you can dip in & out of - Star Treks were always my favourite of that style of show, and while I'll take whatever Prime Universe content I can get at this stage, I can't say I wouldn't prefer a full-on, traditional, 20+ episode per-season semi-episodic show.
Mind you, we do have Flash and (for the moment) Agents of Shield for that sort of thing, so perhaps it won't be too big a deal if Trek comes over all HBO srs bznz "proper drama".
I'm not sure about this whole after-Archer-before-Kirk time period. Is that really that interesting of a time period? I'm always wary of prequels and this entire series will now be a prequel. I just don't see why it needs to be a prequel. One of the hooks for Enterprise was that it was pre-Federation so we could see humans Star Trekking it up without the Prime Directive stopping them from getting involved in things. They could get as involved in things as they wanted. Plus we might see the founding of The Federation, which we did.
So what does that leave for STD? The main thing going on at that time would be the infancy of The Federation but from the description of the premise that doesn't sound like that will be a big focus. Not sure it would be that interesting anyway.
I suppose the Klingon War could be going on. I guess we shouldn't be surprised if they go there because of the buzz Axanar generated.
Post-Archer/Pre-Kirk is a really cool period! The Federation is just getting underway in the wake of the Romulan War and there is some kind of major war fought in that period, the one where Garth of Izar (Kirk's boyhood hero) wins some kind of spectacular victory at Axanar. The fan film people, following some old RPG material, make it out to be a Federation-Klingon war but the official timeline is pretty open.
Manchu wrote: Post-Archer/Pre-Kirk is a really cool period! The Federation is just getting underway in the wake of the Romulan War and there is some kind of major war fought in that period, the one where Garth of Izar (Kirk's boyhood hero) wins some kind of spectacular victory at Axanar. The fan film people, following some old RPG material, make it out to be a Federation-Klingon war but the official timeline is pretty open.
Alright, but will they go there? The die-hard trekkies are already wary of a gritty, war-themed series. Could be a damned if you do, damned if you don't problem.
Well I would first and foremost like to see a serial about exploration - but these days TV shows (even web series) need arcs. And conspiracies and wars readily sustain arcs. That's the main reason why DS9 is rated so much higher now than it was a handful of years ago.
DS9 was OK, it didn't really have any more "standout" episodes than any other Trek series but the overarching metaplot did make the less good ones more tolerable to watch. Of course IMO most of the really bad episodes from a Trek perspective came about as a result of that metaplot, so...eh.
Frankly I think a big reason DS9 gets so much praise relative to other Treks is it fits much more easily into the American comfort zone with all the war-heroism and its fairly unrelentingly positive spin on religion. EDIT: And also the change in the Ferengi come to that; comedy-relief hucksters are much more palatable to a broadly-capitalist audience than a deliberate attempt to unsubtly paint capitalism as the barbarity it's considered to be by the Federation.
Yodhrin wrote: American comfort zone with all the war-heroism
I think DS9 has become more relevant since its initial airings in part because it tackled themes of war, and most especially the fear of war, that are more relevant in a post 9/11 America than a pre-9/11 one. But it sure as hell isn't engaging in America's comfort zone. DS9 was quick to abandon the TOS/TNG insistence that the Federation (aka Future Murica) was always right, especially in the middle seasons with the numerous episodes and story arcs questioning the Federations politics and morality (The Maquis, and In the Pale Moonlight to name two episodes, and Section 31 to name an entire story arc). Watching the Home Front/Paradise Lost 2 parter today is like watching a script written after someone looked into the future and looked upon the Patriot Act with terror.
DS9 actually dealt with the theme of war*, something TNG and TOS just glossed over in their own times with the pedantic message of "war sucks."
*I'd argue the over arching theme of DS9 on war isn't about heroism. There's heroes to be sure. Can't have a good story without someone to root for after all, but that wasn't what DS9 emphasized in its episodes. When it came to war DS9's fundamental theme is how it tears at you. How it corrupts the soul and kills you little pieces at a time. And not just you but the idealism you want strive for. DS9 posits a vision of war that is terrifying in how it corrupts you (almost any episode about Kira's time in the Resistance comes back to this). War isn't terrible because it sucks. War is terrible because even when you win you've already lost too much.
fairly unrelentingly positive spin on religion.
I wouldn't go that far. DS9 was discussing religious terrorism a decade before 9/11 even happened (even just terrorism in general).
The reason DS9 is probably rated higher is because people have actually gone back and given it a chance (and probably more than a few new fans have watched it, imo DS9 has aged far better than other ST series). The first two seasons were definitively meh, and with its significant departure from TOS and TNG style explore the stars, a lot of viewers never even gave it a chance. Since syndication and hitting Netflix, I've noticed opinion for the series slowly rising relative to when I was younger and even suggesting DS9 was good (or even great) on the internet was tantamount to Star Trek heresy.
EDIT: And also the change in the Ferengi come to that; comedy-relief hucksters are much more palatable to a broadly-capitalist audience than a deliberate attempt to unsubtly paint capitalism as the barbarity it's considered to be by the Federation.
It's funny, because a DS9 episode directly goes straight to the heart of it, twice even (both by Quark);
It's a very poignant accusation in-universe, both about humanity, and the way the Ferengi were initially portrayed in TNG
Some good points Lordofhats. DS9 was ahead of its time. Even the Changlings could be seen as a commentary on our current fears about how the enemy could amongst us or be any one of us. All of this before 9/11 and the current global jihad.
Yodhrin wrote: American comfort zone with all the war-heroism
I think DS9 has become more relevant since its initial airings in part because it tackled themes of war, and most especially the fear of war, that are more relevant in a post 9/11 America than a pre-9/11 one. But it sure as hell isn't engaging in America's comfort zone. DS9 was quick to abandon the TOS/TNG insistence that the Federation (aka Future Murica) was always right, especially in the middle seasons with the numerous episodes and story arcs questioning the Federations politics and morality (The Maquis, and In the Pale Moonlight to name two episodes, and Section 31 to name an entire story arc). Watching the Home Front/Paradise Lost 2 parter today is like watching a script written after someone looked into the future and looked upon the Patriot Act with terror.
DS9 actually dealt with the theme of war*, something TNG and TOS just glossed over in their own times with the pedantic message of "war sucks."
*I'd argue the over arching theme of DS9 on war isn't about heroism. There's heroes to be sure. Can't have a good story without someone to root for after all, but that wasn't what DS9 emphasized in its episodes. When it came to war DS9's fundamental theme is how it tears at you. How it corrupts the soul and kills you little pieces at a time. And not just you but the idealism you want strive for. DS9 posits a vision of war that is terrifying in how it corrupts you (almost any episode about Kira's time in the Resistance comes back to this). War isn't terrible because it sucks. War is terrible because even when you win you've already lost too much.
I think that's a pretty charitable characterisation; DS9 questions aspects of war, of how it's conducted, but only within the framework where war can be and often is just. It takes pretty much the standard centrist-Liberal line that war can be wrong, but obviously this war that we're waging is right and true and necessary. The Defiant crew holding little ceremonies to celebrate the phaser couplings they've burned out killing enemies, people reacting to Bashir & his enhanced patients' predictions and proposed solution with immediate unthinking rejection, the way the writers went out of their way to subvert the presentation of the Federation as being beyond things like military adventurism and assassination - DS9 made the Federation more like "Future Murica" than any previous Trek did.
To your * remark; And yet in the end, the show always presented that loss as a price worth paying. The Resistance did horrible things to those who fought in it, but the show never presented their fight as anything other than necessary and just. In the Pale Moonlight made great play of Sisko agonising over his decisions in the moment, but Garak is very much the voice of the writer in that story and the argument is made explicitly at the end there; Sisko's self-respect and integrity, and the murder of multiple innocents were worth it to achieve the desired outcome. Time and again the Federation and its officers dump their principles when inconvenient "because war", and in the end it's all explicitly or tacitly justified by the simple fact that they win and face no reprecussions.
fairly unrelentingly positive spin on religion.
I wouldn't go that far. DS9 was discussing religious terrorism a decade before 9/11 even happened (even just terrorism in general).
Discussing religious terrorism doesn't require a negative spin on religion as a whole. I'm talking about the way Kira is used to present that saccharine "fnar fnar, if you had faith you wouldn't need faith to be explained *knowing smug grimace*" rubbish as a get out of jail free card any time one of the show's stories might raise conflicting feelings in a religious viewer, the way faith is presented always as a general social good despite any specific examples to the contrary - any even slightly negative story element concerning religious belief is immediately counteracted with an example of religion also being the reason the "goodie" character is opposed to the negative story element.
The reason DS9 is probably rated higher is because people have actually gone back and given it a chance (and probably more than a few new fans have watched it, imo DS9 has aged far better than other ST series). The first two seasons were definitively meh, and with its significant departure from TOS and TNG style explore the stars, a lot of viewers never even gave it a chance. Since syndication and hitting Netflix, I've noticed opinion for the series slowly rising relative to when I was younger and even suggesting DS9 was good (or even great) on the internet was tantamount to Star Trek heresy.
For myself I got over that fairly quickly and began to enjoy DS9, it's only now as an adult when I go back and watch it that I notice the pro-religion, anti-pacifist undertones and the writers' attempts to subvert the core themes of the franchise; as I "appreciate" DS9 more, my enthusiasm for the show declines.
EDIT: And also the change in the Ferengi come to that; comedy-relief hucksters are much more palatable to a broadly-capitalist audience than a deliberate attempt to unsubtly paint capitalism as the barbarity it's considered to be by the Federation.
It's funny, because a DS9 episode directly goes straight to the heart of it, twice even (both by Quark);
It's a very poignant accusation in-universe, both about humanity, and the way the Ferengi were initially portrayed in TNG
I don't agree. The point of the Ferengi wasn't to make a couple of pat remarks about human greed, it was to be a critique of capitalism as an ideology, to be a constant, on-the-nose, in-your-face condemnation of the very idea of structuring your society around capital inequity and the pursuit of profit by presenting the only in-universe society structured in that way as monstrous and barbaric.
DS9 morphed the Ferengi into, as Quark says there, modern-day-us but if anything a bit more moral, who mostly get used either for comedy or to present a version of centrist-Liberal policy where the worst excesses of capitalism are tamed by modest redistributive reforms. They took a group that was meant to be an argument by counterexample for utopian communitarian postcapitalism and reframed them, intentionally or not, as an argument against that kind of radical change, both by presenting their existing state as not actually that bad, and by intimating in the end that some pretty modest social-democratic reforms was "good enough" to sort them out.
Now obviously you can argue the merit of their original purpose, but it's undeniable they were reframed substantially in a way that made the intended critique of capitalism far more modest and the corresponding urge for change far less urgent and radical.
Yodhrin wrote: - DS9 made the Federation more like "Future Murica" than any previous Trek did.
It's nice and easy to pretend you can avoid war, until you can't just warp speed away from whatever mess you've gotten yourself into at the end of the episode. DS9 subjected the optimistic ideal of the Federation to reality. The show always presented that loss as a price worth paying because that is the reality. However terrible war is, it can't always be avoided. In the same way that the Federation's interactions with the Dominion were defined by a pervasive fear of losing its freedoms and sovereignty, the Dominion's interactions with the Federation were defined by its innate distrust of anything that wasn't safe for the Founders (which the Founders define as everything not themselves). As stated rather bluntly in the episode "The Ship";
"Do you have any gods, Captain Sisko?"
"There are... things I believe in."
"Duty? Starfleet, the Federation? You must be pleased with yourself. You have the ship to take back to them. I hope it was worth it."
"So do I." <Said with a sense of absolute anguish, and realization that however worth it his victory might be, the cost was still too high
That was part of the series message on war. It presents it almost as a Lovecraftian monster. You can't escape it, if anything you'll probably cause it trying, and when it comes you don't have the choice of ignoring the reality anymore.
Time and again the Federation and its officers dump their principles when inconvenient "because war", and in the end it's all explicitly or tacitly justified by the simple fact that they win and face no reprecussions.
I would consider that to more be the weakness of existing as mainstream television than a prevailing theme EDIT: And In the Pale Moonlight is easily the darkest most morally gray episode of any ST series, but the underlying plan of the episodes is brilliant strategically and its message is a serious philosophical question directed right at the famed phrase "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." How far is too far? Garak is not the voice of the author. Sisko is, with Garak merely functioning as the proxy who allows Sisko to retain a sense of moral balance in the wake of what happens in the episode by scheming to remove the outcome of their plot from Sisko's hands.
any even slightly negative story element concerning religious belief is immediately counteracted with an example of religion also being the reason the "goodie" character is opposed to the negative story element.
I could easily say that any slightly positive story element concerning religious belief is immediately counteracted with an example of religion also being the reason the "baddie" character is opposed to the positive story element.
If anything, the series was extremely critical of organized religion (in the form of the Vedek Assembly, and Kai Winn who are presented as obstacles more often than not, and the way the Founders program their minions to Worship them uncritically), and very approving of personal faith (Kira, and Weyoun 6). If your standard for "unrelentingly positive" is "never attempts to show the negatives and positives of belief," then pretty much anything short of Edward Gibbon* is going to qualify.
*I admit it... I really don't have a good reference for this one @_@
The point of the Ferengi wasn't to make a couple of pat remarks about human greed
The point of the Ferengi was from to recreate the dynamic of the Federation and the Klingons from TOS. The Cold War was ending when TNG hit the air, and the dynamic just wouldn't work anymore (plus the Federation was then at peace with the Klingons). The Ferengi are not an attack on Capitalism. They were attack on Wall Street, which in the 1980s was profoundly seen as impossibly greedy and economically reckless. Herbert J. Wright was delegated the task of creating the "new Klingons" by Roddenberry, and that's the social conflict he honed in on; "The Ferengi sprung from the stereotype of agents and lawyers being cutthroat, greedy and wanting only money." The Ferengi are so Flanderized, it's hard to take them seriously as an attack on Capitalism itself. Compare the first mentions of the Ferengi in Encounter at Farpoint Station, where it's suggested they eat other sentient creatures, and then their actual first appearance in The Last Outpost. The entire idea the Ferengi as a serious threat fell apart almost from the get go. Even by the standards of "alien culture defined by a single cultural dynamic" the Ferengi are just kind of ludicrous. I don't think they were ever intended to be comedic when work on them began, but its just impossible to take them seriously.
EDIT EDIT (lots of edits lol): I wanted to hunt this down, but wasn't sure if it would have been edited off of Memory Alpha since I last saw it;
Spoiler:
When the Ferengi made their on-screen debut in "The Last Outpost", the general reaction was disappointment, with many realizing the species was no real substitute for the Klingons. As the TNG producers discovered, the Ferengi didn’t offer much threat. (Star Trek: The Next Generation 365, pp. 36 & 188) Hence, many people (including Ira Steven Behr and Armin Shimerman) consider the introduction of the Ferengi in TNG to be disastrous. Indeed, Shimerman once commented that, by portraying his Ferengi character of Letek as very one-dimensional, he had done a "horrible thing [...] to the Ferengi." (Crew Dossier: Quark, DS9 Season 6 DVD special features) Additionally, Shimerman admitted, "It's one of the great disappointments of my life that it didn't flesh out to be exactly what Gene Roddenberry had wanted it to be." (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 2, Issue 12, p. 54) Behr proclaimed, "Was there ever an alien race on Star Trek that did not work more than the Ferengi when they were introduced? It was a disaster." ("Quark's Story", DS9 Season 2 DVD special features) He elaborated, "I think I'm not saying anything out of school by telling you that the idea of lethal Ferengi was kind of a bust. The Ferengi are not the Klingons or the Romulans. They were minor villians at best." (AOL chat, 1997) Likewise, Wil Wheaton has stated that the Ferengi were "probably the lamest enemy ever introduced in the history of television." [3] Maurice Hurley critiqued, "The Ferengi were just terrible. They were like pests. It was like making a villain out of a housefly." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 21, No. 2, p. 27) Hurley criticized further, "I still think the Ferengi were a waste of time. Goofy. No bushido involved; it was a joke. We had these arguments from the beginning. I was the lone voice screaming in the wilderness. If somebody's interested in gold, they're not much of an adversary. If we can make gold in our replicator–and we can–then it's like sand at the beach in Santa Monica. Who cares? Give 'em all the sand that they want. Get them out of here. They want gold? Here, take a truck load and get out." (Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, pp. 158 & 160) Rick Berman concurred that the Ferengi didn't "measure-up to the level of villainy intended." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 21, No. 2, p. 35) In fact, he believed they had a high "silliness quotient" so they were a "disappointment as a major adversary." (Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, 3rd ed., p. 41) On the other hand, Producer Robert Justman thought the Ferengi worked best when they were first introduced. (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 2, Issue 12, p. 21) Michael Piller remarked, "There's a big difference of opinion about the Ferengi." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 21, No. 2, p. 35) Nonetheless, TNG's audience was disinterested in the notion of Picard regularly having confrontations with a race of cutthroat capitalists. (Star Trek: The Next Generation 365, p. 36)
LoH: DS9 largely reformed the Ferengi by going all in on the absurdity of the idea. As villains they'd never b taken seriously, but as plucky comic relief the stage was set to redeem the Ferengi into something worthwhile.
I'd say Wright missed his mark. The best he was able to conjure up was a parody the many stereotypes about businessmen and finance, and that's what DS9 ran with because it worked better (and they still managed to get in a horde of poignant jabs in at the most absurd aspects of neoliberalism). TNG frankly ran with it to, as no future episodes of the series concerning the Ferengi ever treated them as a serious threat to the Enterprise. Arguably another example of DS9 becoming more relevant over time, because especially in the wake of the 2008 recession, people still really see corporate finance as greedy, economically reckless, and screwing over the little guy. When I say "in-universe jab" I do mean in-universe. Within the world of Star Trek, Quark cuts right at why the Ferengi appear so villainous alongside the noble and ideal Federation, and simultaneously points out that "there are a lot worse things out there than greed."
because the Feregni could be a lot funnier making them a mirror image of the American Guilded Age
The main villains of TNG were the Romulans and subsequently the Borg. I never gave much thought to which IRL social fears they correspond except for the obvious general issues of paranoia in a confident and arguably complacent society as well as the fear of losing one's humanity in the midst of technological advancements. I generally dislike TNG because the Federation is unbearably self-congratulatory. I suppose that is why, at the time, I liked DS9 so much more, long before it started to become relevant (in terms of topical content) and trendy (in terms of character- and arc-driven storytelling).* Whereas the smug TNG crew were overachievers (barring Worf and a few weirdos like poor Barclay) who left a trail of neatly solved problems in their wake, everybody on DS9 was some kind of a loser in one way or another, except maybe Jadzia Dax who in my mind sort of embodied the Federation we saw in TNG. I was not sad to see that character go, naturally. I was happy, conversely, to see Worf join. He got to be more of a person than a prop in DS9. It was weird that they got married.
A cast of flawed characters worked very well in the definitely fallen world of the show. DS9 initially reached back to before the Cold War to the end of WW2 and the American occupation of Europe. The Cardassian occupation of Bajor was time after time after time painted as a stand-in for the Holocaust. In this context, the Bajoran religion had tremendous dramatic potential. Imagine if Yaweh chose George Marshall to be his prophet to the Jewish people in 1946; that's the situation Ben Sisko fell into, except Sisko was hardly as capable or inspired as George Marshall. So, in other words, Sisko was actually a lot more like an actual biblical prophet except that he was, strangely, a gentile. I liked the story of the Federation "sticking its nose in" where the guy they send is actually wracked by doubt and then immediately has this completely unsettling experience that makes his co-workers simultaneously revere, envy, and distrust him but which also, at the end of the day, nets him very little in the way of the leverage he needs to do his job.
*even just a few years ago, mentioning you think DS9 is the best or even second best Trek would at the very least earn you a lecture from Babylon 9 fans
Manchu wrote: *even just a few years ago, mentioning you think DS9 is the best Trek would at least earn you a lecture from Babylon 9 fans
Oh god lets not go there XD Nevermind that both shows ended up in wildly different places presenting completely different universes with only superficial similarities in the early seasons. DS9 and B5 have their own greatness and were worthy science fiction shows.
Nowadays my fav Trek remains TOS but I honestly think that goes on a different shelf, so to speak. Looking over the spin-off shelf, I have really come to love Enterprise in the era of Netflix.
Manchu wrote: Nowadays my fav Trek remains TOS but I honestly think that goes on a different shelf, so to speak. Looking over the spin-off shelf, I have really come to love Enterprise in the era of Netflix.
Really? And I thought I was weird for liking Into Darkness. I do like Enterprise overall except for Archer. I've never heard anyone say its their favorite Trek though.
I don't know who this "Archer" is. I thought the captain of the NX-1 was "I can't believe its not Sisko."
Which was, and remains, the main reason I just struggle to enjoy Enterprise. For a setting filled with possibilities, most of the characters, and episodes felt recycled*. The most original ideas were about the Temporal War, which the writers clearly weren't into until Season 3, and then was abruptly abandoned in Season 4 cause "hey, we finally made this thing interesting, lets dump it with a terrible time travel two parter to end terrible time travel two parters." Then season 4 was okay, save for the still recycled characters.
*Archer is Sisko
Tucker is Scottie
Hoshi/Travis are both Harry Kim
Reed is Worf
Phlox is Neelix
T'Pol starts out like Spock, but of all the characters she probably ended up being the least derivative by the time we hit season 3&4
Archer owes a lot more to Kirk than Sisko - plus he is less, um, professional? than either of them, which is suitable for Starfleet's first captain to "get out there." Archer retains all the enthusiasm and sometimes the naivete of a boy in his role as an explorer, although he has a man's backbone when it comes to the dangerous and/or "do the right thing" moments. As an audience vehicle character, he is more accessible than Kirk. Trip is a great Robin to Archer's Batman.
Malcolm is never faux competent enough to be Worfed; I actually wonder sometimes if the writers had it in for him. He's blustery and blundersome despite wanting and needing to appear cool and professional. He may be the realest of all Star Trek characters, other than the epitome of Average Joe that is Miles O'Brien.
Hoshi and Travis are some of the least interesting characters in Star Trek but they are still more interesting than any character from Voyager. And comapring Phlox to Neelix is totally off base. Phlox is a weird mix of Spock and Bones.
T'Pol is my fav. At first I was worried because maybe all there would be to her is this ravishingly beautiful woman keeping a straight face all the time. But by the end of the series, I was fascinated by how much she had developed, how gradually and subtly she had grown from being a veritable alien, and somewhat one-dimensional for that reason.
If "accessible" is another word for dumb then yes that's Archer. He's an audience vehicle character for a writer that doesn't think much of his audience. Also, Scott Bakula is just a terrible actor.
I could not disagree more with those ... er ... declarations. Bakula does a great job expressing the enthusiasm and conviction thst define Archer. By more accessible, I meant thst he is not as much of a paragon as Kirk. In TOS, it is pretty much a given that Kirk is the best possible captain. In Enterprise, the plots sometimes rely on the audience's uncertainty as to whether Archer is taking the best course. This is fitting as Archer is the trailblazer, and so he has to make more of it up as he goes thann his successors.
Bakula was OK. My issue with the show was instead of a war with the Romulans or the start of Klingon hostilities (which I admit I was REALLY looking forward to), we got time traveling sentient otters, and preying Mantis and gak.
God knows I've watched enough dodgy looking sci-fi over the years, so this ship design does not bother me in the slightest.
However, I'm getting a bad vibe from this.
The last thing we need is another Star Trek series where Captain Perfect and the USS Economy Class, goes from planet to planet, and nothing really happens. I already own TNG series 1
I didn't watch much of Enterprise -- and was never much of a Bakula fan -- but I didn't think he or the Archer character were problems in the series.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: God knows I've watched enough dodgy looking sci-fi over the years, so this ship design does not bother me in the slightest.
However, I'm getting a bad vibe from this.
The last thing we need is another Star Trek series where Captain Perfect and the USS Economy Class, goes from planet to planet, and nothing really happens. I already own TNG series 1
But isn't all the talk pointing to the exact opposite of that? That the season will be about a previously referenced event from before TOS (Romulan War?), and operate in a serial format? That suggests a backdrop of larger-scale events, and a story that's more than episodic planet hopping.
gorgon wrote: I didn't watch much of Enterprise -- and was never much of a Bakula fan -- but I didn't think he or the Archer character were problems in the series.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: God knows I've watched enough dodgy looking sci-fi over the years, so this ship design does not bother me in the slightest.
However, I'm getting a bad vibe from this.
The last thing we need is another Star Trek series where Captain Perfect and the USS Economy Class, goes from planet to planet, and nothing really happens. I already own TNG series 1
But isn't all the talk pointing to the exact opposite of that? That the season will be about a previously referenced event from before TOS (Romulan War?), and operate in a serial format? That suggests a backdrop of larger-scale events, and a story that's more than episodic planet hopping.
The talk is just that - talk. An edgy, episodic story arc set in the Star Trek past appeals to me, but I remember all the talk pre Enterprise about story arcs, edginess etc etc and that turned out to be horsegak!
I agree with you that it wasn't as different as advertised. I think one part of the problem there (executive producers probably being the other part) is that some ST diehards don't want the formula tweaked. I remember all the drama just over Enterprise's opening credits because they didn't show a spaceship zipping past planets to the tune of some orchestral suite.
When your viewing base is that sensitive and conservative, it puts you in a tricky spot. Under ratings pressure, how do you create something fresh to reach new audiences while giving others the more-of-the-same that they crave?
The J.J. Abrams approach was "screw 'em, we're shaking it up and the fanatics will pay to see it anyway because that's what they do." And that resulted a good film that the audiences liked and fanatics gritted their teeth through, a blah film that audiences didn't like and fanatics freaked out about, and a good film that no one went to see. *shrug*
I always remember Ron Moore talking about BSG and how for that show he just did all the things he was never allowed to do on ST.
gorgon wrote: I agree with you that it wasn't as different as advertised. I think one part of the problem there (executive producers probably being the other part) is that some ST diehards don't want the formula tweaked. I remember all the drama just over Enterprise's opening credits because they didn't show a spaceship zipping past planets to the tune of some orchestral suite.
When your viewing base is that sensitive and conservative, it puts you in a tricky spot. Under ratings pressure, how do you create something fresh to reach new audiences while giving others the more-of-the-same that they crave?
The J.J. Abrams approach was "screw 'em, we're shaking it up and the fanatics will pay to see it anyway because that's what they do." And that resulted a good film that the audiences liked and fanatics gritted their teeth through, a blah film that audiences didn't like and fanatics freaked out about, and a good film that no one went to see. *shrug*
I always remember Ron Moore talking about BSG and how for that show he just did all the things he was never allowed to do on ST.
the new trek films are universally awful, but not all the old ones are universally good, this new series, if it turns out to be Enterprise 2.0 will kill star trek on the little screen, if it turns out to be DS9 or next gen 2.0, then it will be good, I'm hoping for more DS9 than next gen though, i thought DS9 was better than next gen due to the story arcs and character development, i don't want planet hoping either.
Neither critics nor audiences thought that any of the new films were awful. Both had good reviews and audience scores. So you're in the minority on that one.
The puzzle with Beyond is why it's not doing box office. Some would say it's because Into Darkness damaged the brand that badly. Again, that seems like a fanatic's viewpoint, because the audiences scores don't point that direction. I tend to think the marketing lacked a hook and let the film down, and that audiences might be a little blockbustered out.
Keep in mind that Into Darkness had a similar effect to The Force Awakens, where people loved it when they were watching it, mostly rated it very highly for the following week, and then over the next year realized what a terrible disappointment it was when they actually thought about the movie.
gorgon wrote: I agree with you that it wasn't as different as advertised. I think one part of the problem there (executive producers probably being the other part) is that some ST diehards don't want the formula tweaked. I remember all the drama just over Enterprise's opening credits because they didn't show a spaceship zipping past planets to the tune of some orchestral suite.
When your viewing base is that sensitive and conservative, it puts you in a tricky spot. Under ratings pressure, how do you create something fresh to reach new audiences while giving others the more-of-the-same that they crave?
The J.J. Abrams approach was "screw 'em, we're shaking it up and the fanatics will pay to see it anyway because that's what they do." And that resulted a good film that the audiences liked and fanatics gritted their teeth through, a blah film that audiences didn't like and fanatics freaked out about, and a good film that no one went to see. *shrug*
I always remember Ron Moore talking about BSG and how for that show he just did all the things he was never allowed to do on ST.
As you know, high quality TV drama is surging ahead these days, leaving cinema in its wake. Viewers want multi-faceted plots, drama, intrigue. The tired old ST formula won't cut in this day and age, and even though you're correct to mention executive pressure, if those executives, and conservative fans, don't take their heads out of the sand, the franchise will die a slow death...
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BobtheInquisitor wrote: Keep in mind that Into Darkness had a similar effect to The Force Awakens, where people loved it when they were watching it, mostly rated it very highly for the following week, and then over the next year realized what a terrible disappointment it was when they actually thought about the movie.
gorgon wrote: I agree with you that it wasn't as different as advertised. I think one part of the problem there (executive producers probably being the other part) is that some ST diehards don't want the formula tweaked. I remember all the drama just over Enterprise's opening credits because they didn't show a spaceship zipping past planets to the tune of some orchestral suite.
When your viewing base is that sensitive and conservative, it puts you in a tricky spot. Under ratings pressure, how do you create something fresh to reach new audiences while giving others the more-of-the-same that they crave?
The J.J. Abrams approach was "screw 'em, we're shaking it up and the fanatics will pay to see it anyway because that's what they do." And that resulted a good film that the audiences liked and fanatics gritted their teeth through, a blah film that audiences didn't like and fanatics freaked out about, and a good film that no one went to see. *shrug*
I always remember Ron Moore talking about BSG and how for that show he just did all the things he was never allowed to do on ST.
the new trek films are universally awful, but not all the old ones are universally good, this new series, if it turns out to be Enterprise 2.0 will kill star trek on the little screen, if it turns out to be DS9 or next gen 2.0, then it will be good, I'm hoping for more DS9 than next gen though, i thought DS9 was better than next gen due to the story arcs and character development, i don't want planet hoping either.
Yeah, DS9 was the bee's knees, and it doesn't get the appreciation it deserves IMO. Some stand out episodes...
gorgon wrote: Neither critics nor audiences thought that any of the new films were awful. Both had good reviews and audience scores. So you're in the minority on that one.
The puzzle with Beyond is why it's not doing box office. Some would say it's because Into Darkness damaged the brand that badly. Again, that seems like a fanatic's viewpoint, because the audiences scores don't point that direction. I tend to think the marketing lacked a hook and let the film down, and that audiences might be a little blockbustered out.
No, I really think its because Beyond isn't that good. It has all these high ratings but word of mouth has been more like "It's ok I guess".
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Manchu wrote: I could not disagree more with those ... er ... declarations. Bakula does a great job expressing the enthusiasm and conviction thst define Archer. By more accessible, I meant thst he is not as much of a paragon as Kirk. In TOS, it is pretty much a given that Kirk is the best possible captain. In Enterprise, the plots sometimes rely on the audience's uncertainty as to whether Archer is taking the best course. This is fitting as Archer is the trailblazer, and so he has to make more of it up as he goes thann his successors.
With your declaration Enterprise as your favorite and Archer being good I can honestly say that I've head someone praise and ridicule every series. Even every movie as well too I think. That must be a good thing for the franchise as a whole.
I think what they needed to do with Enterprise was just make all the season 4 two parters be 6-8 episodes miniarcs, with some 'planet of the weeks' mixed in. Would have been far more enjoyable.
gorgon wrote: I agree with you that it wasn't as different as advertised. I think one part of the problem there (executive producers probably being the other part) is that some ST diehards don't want the formula tweaked. I remember all the drama just over Enterprise's opening credits because they didn't show a spaceship zipping past planets to the tune of some orchestral suite.
Even before Enterprise aired, I remember there were people complaining that it looked too high tech compared to TOS. Nevermind the fact that we have technology TODAY that is better than some of what TOS pretended to have.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Keep in mind that Into Darkness had a similar effect to The Force Awakens, where people loved it when they were watching it, mostly rated it very highly for the following week, and then over the next year realized what a terrible disappointment it was when they actually thought about the movie.
Not me. I hated it first time around and barely got through it and have zero interest watching it again.
Beyond was OK, but the crap trailers probably hurt it. Also lack of 'legendary' villain.
gorgon wrote: I agree with you that it wasn't as different as advertised. I think one part of the problem there (executive producers probably being the other part) is that some ST diehards don't want the formula tweaked. I remember all the drama just over Enterprise's opening credits because they didn't show a spaceship zipping past planets to the tune of some orchestral suite.
Even before Enterprise aired, I remember there were people complaining that it looked too high tech compared to TOS. Nevermind the fact that we have technology TODAY that is better than some of what TOS pretended to have.
Star Trek created this weird dynamic (starting with the appearance to the Klingons) that has kind of become one of my least favorite parts of the franchise.
Why don't Klingons in TNG look like Klingons from TOS you asked? Because we have a budget now. Shut up and enjoy the show. Stop sweating the petty details.
Why does the JJ Abrams Enterprise look so much more advance than the Original. Because its 2009!
Why can Starships now fire phasers at warp? Because we never said they couldn't. That was a third party tech manual!
I was impressed by the Klingons in Into darkness, and was looking forward to some edgy, dramatic war between the Federation and Klingons in the next installment, because why introduce them like that if you're not going to expand them?
gorgon wrote: Neither critics nor audiences thought that any of the new films were awful. Both had good reviews and audience scores. So you're in the minority on that one.
The puzzle with Beyond is why it's not doing box office. Some would say it's because Into Darkness damaged the brand that badly. Again, that seems like a fanatic's viewpoint, because the audiences scores don't point that direction. I tend to think the marketing lacked a hook and let the film down, and that audiences might be a little blockbustered out.
the majority of people liked spice girls, they are crap, so being a majority doesn't make you right, just like being a minority doesn't make you wrong, and vice versa, I happily say that the majority of people who like the new trek films, don't actually know anything about the old ones or the series, which is fine, but it makes there opinion less worth while than that of others who know the whole thing and can remain un biased, and I put myself in that category, I am happily waiting for this new series, I know what I want from it, and if it goes another direction and I enjoy it, then I have no problem with the deviation that adds to the story as opposed to detracts from the story like the new treks, all I'm asking for is not to be treated like an idiot, decent stories, good casting, the usual basically, the new trek films failed on almost every one of those for me, apart from cast, some of them are solid, get that right and they can carry the show, even through bad or boring episodes, like DS9, Next gen, and Voyager and TOS.
I also understand that the producers want moneez, so old trek fans may get ignored for new trek dolla bucks, which is how things work these days, but they can at least try to get some good stories and real sci fi out there I hope
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Keep in mind that Into Darkness had a similar effect to The Force Awakens, where people loved it when they were watching it, mostly rated it very highly for the following week, and then over the next year realized what a terrible disappointment it was when they actually thought about the movie.
Not me. I hated it first time around and barely got through it and have zero interest watching it again.
Beyond was OK, but the crap trailers probably hurt it. Also lack of 'legendary' villain.
I was just Addressing Gorgon's statement that STID was highly rated on Rotten Tomatoes, despite it being widely seen as a bad movie. If STB had come out closer to STID, it might have been able to ride the buzz, but now it just reminds people of that movie they just realized they actually hated.
Yes, some people hated it right away, but they would not have affected the RT numbers unless they voted highly positive reviews before even seeing the movie, like DC fans.
I saw Into Darkness on the Friday it opened. I thought it was messy and cheesy but not terrible. A buddy came into town the next day and he wanted to see it, so I sat through it again. Made me feel alternately sleepy and nauseous the second time. And the more I thought about it thereafter, the more I disliked it. Hence the F rating. I wonder if seeing Beyond a second time would make me like it more or less? I suspect that I will never find out!
Manchu wrote: I saw Into Darkness on the Friday it opened. I thought it was messy and cheesy but not terrible. A buddy came into town the next day and he wanted to see it, so I sat through it again. Made me feel alternately sleepy and nauseous the second time. And the more I thought about it thereafter, the more I disliked it. Hence the F rating. I wonder if seeing Beyond a second time would make me like it more or less? I suspect that I will never find out!
That's the Into Darkness effect I am talking about. I had a similar reaction, although it was more from replaying it in my head later,mince I only saw it once.
As for Beyond, I suspect you would like it even less. For me, the movie's saving graces are the character interactions, the humor, the wonder at Yorktown, its scale and implications, the positive, even cheesy, focus on unity/diversity, and the whole TOS "better to save lives than to take them" morality. I found the space station or ship based action scenes enjoyable, but the action scenes on the ground or grounded ships to be distracting and annoying. The plot and villain were perfunctory at best and served only to get the protagonists into situations where they can show off their personalities or capabilities, much like you see in a second-tier Marvel movie. Thematically, the movie suggests that inclusion and even cultural assimilation are the antidotes to terrorism--a less ambitious approach than Into Darkness, but apparently more achievable for the low aim.
gorgon wrote: I agree with you that it wasn't as different as advertised. I think one part of the problem there (executive producers probably being the other part) is that some ST diehards don't want the formula tweaked. I remember all the drama just over Enterprise's opening credits because they didn't show a spaceship zipping past planets to the tune of some orchestral suite.
Even before Enterprise aired, I remember there were people complaining that it looked too high tech compared to TOS. Nevermind the fact that we have technology TODAY that is better than some of what TOS pretended to have.
Star Trek created this weird dynamic (starting with the appearance to the Klingons) that has kind of become one of my least favorite parts of the franchise.
Why don't Klingons in TNG look like Klingons from TOS you asked? Because we have a budget now. Shut up and enjoy the show. Stop sweating the petty details.
Why does the JJ Abrams Enterprise look so much more advance than the Original. Because its 2009!
Why can Starships now fire phasers at warp? Because we never said they couldn't. That was a third party tech manual!
/end rant
Actually they explain that whole Klingon thing in Enterprise.
As for The Enterprise bridge looking totally different well I guess when Nero went back in time and messed up the Space-Time Continuum.....it made everything cooler looking!
I know they explain it. I'm saying there was no reason to, and the plot line was cheesy, contrived, and kind of dumb (easily one of the weaker plot lines in season 4). These things don't need explanations. They're explained by "we have a budget and we're going to use it to wow you." Worf actually resolved the entire thing in Trials and Tribbilations by saying "we don't like to talk about it. It is, embarrassing." The entire series could have just left it at that and been done with the matter. A series was never hurt by leaving a noodle incident hanging around.
And yes. One of the complaints of Into Darkness was that the Vengance fired its weapons at warp, which a horde of fans of the haters gonna hate variety cried about saying "you can't fire phasers at warp." The only thing that ever suggested you couldn't fire phasers at warp was a tech manual that is non-canon, and ships have fired energy weapons at warp several times since TOS aired (notably in Voyager, DS9, and Enterprise). TOSl described phasers as EM weapons, not energy weapons, and the tech manual said EM weapons couldn't fire at warp. This was abandoned in subsequent series entirely, and phasers simply became energy weapons in the series proper (and nothing in the series proper said they couldn't be fired at warp anyway). It was a pointless complaint, and even if it was true at some time in Star Trek, it would still be a pointless complaint about a trivial petty detail.
Star Trek probably shouldn't be MST3K, with the whole "it is just a show I should really just relax" kind of attitude.
Also, don't forget the real reasons Klingons went from honorable warriors to sneaky, cloaky, jack asses was because they wanted to reuse Klingon costumes in STIII so changed the villians from Romulans to Klingons. Later they came up with a terrible retcon but I can't be persuaded. No sir.
Ahtman wrote: Also, don't forget the real reasons Klingons went from honorable warriors to sneaky, cloaky, jack asses was because they wanted to reuse Klingon costumes in STIII so changed the villians from Romulans to Klingons. Later they came up with a terrible retcon but I can't be persuaded. No sir.
The Klingons could be pretty clever in TOS. If anything later Star Trek series' abandoned the idea of clever Klingons to make them tough warrior race guys. Think of Kor's first appearance in Errand of Mercy. Lots of brute force, but a fair amount of cunning as well.
LordofHats wrote: I know they explain it. I'm saying there was no reason to, and the plot line was cheesy, contrived, and kind of dumb (easily one of the weaker plot lines in season 4). These things don't need explanations. They're explained by "we have a budget and we're going to use it to wow you." Worf actually resolved the entire thing in Trials and Tribbilations by saying "we don't like to talk about it. It is, embarrassing." The entire series could have just left it at that and been done with the matter. A series was never hurt by leaving a noodle incident hanging around.
I don't agree that "cuz budget" is a better explanation than the one they did in Enterprise. I liked that storyline and they came up with a pretty serviceable explanation for something that was really hard to write an explanation for. It even still fit in with Worf's "we don't like to talk about it" comment. Obviously the Klingons would not want to talk about how their DNA had been corrupted with human DNA.
Print tie-ins for the upcoming CBS All Access series Star Trek: Discovery were announced at Star Trek: Mission New York, the Star Trek 50th anniversary celebration, last weekend, according to EW. A new comic series from IDW and a book from Simon & Schuster will launch with the series premiere in January (see “First Look at the New Starship from 'Star Trek: Discovery'”), according to the report.
Writer/producer Kirsten Beyer, known as an author of Star Trek: Voyager novels, is coordinating efforts on the new projects with Star Trek comics writer Mike Johnson (see “New Ongoing 'Star Trek' Series”) and long-time Star Trek novel author David Mack.
Eh, on topic the trailer and release text hits all the wrong buttons. I've been waiting to see another Trek series, but the advances in Voyager and DS9 left me wondering where they could go. Wish this was set BETWEEN TOS and TNG, not Ent & TOS.
As far as existing Trek goes, my favorite has become Enterprise, so long as you ignore S3 (S4's stories, are, IMHO, the best). I have long abhored DS9 as "not Trek", though I recently forced myself to watch the whole series, so at least I'd be familiar with it (yeah, I'm a long-time Babylon 5 fan too, so there's also that). The only episodes I find I like from DS9 are the ones about the alien races, usually the Ferengi homeworld and Klingon episodes. That they constantly cut away from the ship battles during the episodes infuriates me, especially since I never really cared for any the characters - with maybe the exception of Dax, who they went and killed ala Tasha Yar, replacing her with an inferior actor. Oh, and Garak - love Garak.
I like the red uniforms very much - but I think they probably look too "old fashioned" for producers, ruling out a good chunk of TOS to TNG. Let's please don't even think of returning to ST:TMP costumes - worst. space. pajamas. ever. (even compared to frumpy 80s-00s Trek, complete with male "skants").
Manchu wrote: I like the red uniforms very much - but I think they probably look too "old fashioned" for producers, ruling out a good chunk of TOS to TNG. Let's please don't even think of returning to ST:TMP costumes - worst. space. pajamas. ever. (even compared to frumpy 80s-00s Trek, complete with male "skants").
But Saturday Night Fever Bones is best Bones ever.
Stormonu wrote: Eh, on topic the trailer and release text hits all the wrong buttons. I've been waiting to see another Trek series, but the advances in Voyager and DS9 left me wondering where they could go. Wish this was set BETWEEN TOS and TNG, not Ent & TOS.
As far as existing Trek goes, my favorite has become Enterprise, so long as you ignore S3 (S4's stories, are, IMHO, the best). I have long abhored DS9 as "not Trek", though I recently forced myself to watch the whole series, so at least I'd be familiar with it (yeah, I'm a long-time Babylon 5 fan too, so there's also that). The only episodes I find I like from DS9 are the ones about the alien races, usually the Ferengi homeworld and Klingon episodes. That they constantly cut away from the ship battles during the episodes infuriates me, especially since I never really cared for any the characters - with maybe the exception of Dax, who they went and killed ala Tasha Yar, replacing her with an inferior actor. Oh, and Garak - love Garak.
jesus H bob..... as soon as you said you liked enterprise your opinion became invalid lol
DS9 is the best series, then next gen, then voyager and TOS-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> enterprise
DS9 is the best series, then next gen, then voyager and TOS-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> enterprise
I would put Next Gen further down that list, frankly.
While I enjoyed the Next Gen-era movies, so much of the series was just painful.
But yeah, Enterprise I just couldn't get into at all... and that's from someone who has read most of the novels... and would still rather do that than watch Enterprise.
Star Trek: Discovery Has Been Delayed Until May 2017
Which is bad and upsetting news, but shouldn’t be particularly surprising news, since it’s September—four months before its original January premiere date—and we still haven’t heard of anyone being cast for this show yet.
So instead of hitting CBS All Access—already a questionable choice of venue for this show—in January, Discovery will now have four to five extra months to get ready to launch, according to the Wrap. And as much as we want more Star Trek right now, it makes total sense for this show to take more time. Executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Bryan Fuller’s statement on the delay reads in part:
We aim to dream big and deliver, and that means making sure the demands of physical and post-production for a show that takes place entirely in space, and the need to meet an air date, don’t result in compromised quality. Before heading into production, we evaluated these realities with our partners at CBS and they agreed: ‘Star Trek’ deserves the very best, and these extra few months will help us achieve a vision we can all be proud of.
Again, not a shock. Especially since this is a show that’s going to require a lot of effects—both practical and CGI—and has a showrunner who is also working on getting American Gods on TV.
On the one hand, everything we know about this show makes it clear that the January date was a bit of the pipe dream from the beginning. On the other hand, it’s still shocking that CBS didn’t get the ball rolling on this earlier to capitalize on Star Trek’s 50th anniversary year.
To be quite honest, I just want the post dominion wars Star Trek Section 31/special ops show that they wimped out of making in favor of going with Enterprise.
That would have been an amazing show, and allowed us to simultaneously scratch both the Trek and BSG itches with a darker, more mature program.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Sounds like this is in response to how the poor teaser effects were received.
I suspect they were trying to do the show on the cheap with minimal casting. Just a gimmick to promote their new streaming service. Then they realized how many die-hard trekkies there are still out there and decided: oh, maybe we should actually try.
Stormonu wrote: Eh, on topic the trailer and release text hits all the wrong buttons. I've been waiting to see another Trek series, but the advances in Voyager and DS9 left me wondering where they could go. Wish this was set BETWEEN TOS and TNG, not Ent & TOS.
As far as existing Trek goes, my favorite has become Enterprise, so long as you ignore S3 (S4's stories, are, IMHO, the best). I have long abhored DS9 as "not Trek", though I recently forced myself to watch the whole series, so at least I'd be familiar with it (yeah, I'm a long-time Babylon 5 fan too, so there's also that). The only episodes I find I like from DS9 are the ones about the alien races, usually the Ferengi homeworld and Klingon episodes. That they constantly cut away from the ship battles during the episodes infuriates me, especially since I never really cared for any the characters - with maybe the exception of Dax, who they went and killed ala Tasha Yar, replacing her with an inferior actor. Oh, and Garak - love Garak.
jesus H bob..... as soon as you said you liked enterprise your opinion became invalid lol
DS9 is the best series, then next gen, then voyager and TOS-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> enterprise
I think I would have to go with a tie between DS9/Next Gen, then Enterprise, TOS and finally Voyager. I respect TOS but honestly it's pretty hard to watch nowadays.
Think it's going to be all about the characters, the story and the acting.
That last point - you forget what a bloody awesome bunch of actors they had with TNG (I think Patrick Stewart raised the bar for a lot of the cast, certainly from how it seemed, but also from what I have read about the making of the show), same too with Avery Brooks in DS9.
Also thought that was (part of) where Enterprise fell down, it was just lacking presence of characters.
Pacific wrote: Has been delayed until May now apparently
With Game of Thrones having a much greater CGI budget for their Dragons next season, there is a shortage of the world's supply of pixels. There are only so many pixels to go around.
They should cancel whatever release Michael Bay has for next summer to ease up on the pixel consumption.
Bryan Fuller is leaving his role as showrunner on Star Trek: Discovery, according to Variety. The launch of the CBS online series was recently delayed to May 2017 from January, indicating problems in getting it done in time (see "'Star Trek: Discovery' Delayed"). Fuller’s departure is another sign that work on the series was not moving fast enough.
A statement released by CBS Studios referenced Fuller’s other commitments, which include overseeing American Gods for Starz (see "First Look at Starz' 'American Gods'"), and a new Amazing Stories anthology series for NBC. "We are extremely happy with the creative direction of Star Trek: Discovery and the strong foundation that Bryan Fuller has helped us create for the series," the studio statement said. "Due to Bryan’s other projects, he is no longer able to oversee the day-to-day of Star Trek, but he remains an executive producer, and will continue to map out the story arc for the entire season."
Fuller was apparently having trouble getting the scripts ready. A Deadline story from mid-September mentioned three completed scripts, while the Variety story referenced above mentioned two completed scripts, and a Deadline story from Wednesday says that Fuller “wrote the first episode and is working on two more.”
The lead, slated to be a female starship captain, has also not been cast, and with shooting scheduled to begin in Toronto next month, that’s a problem. And with a science fiction series, there’s got to be time for effects once shooting is complete. So far we’ve just seen one ship image from the new show (see "First Look at the New Starship from "Star Trek: Discovery'").
Showrunning duties will be handed off to Fuller deputies and Star Trek: Discovery exec producers Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts, who worked with Fuller on Pushing Daisies. But Fuller has the Star Trek background from his experience on Deep Space Nine and Voyager, and he will continue to break stories for the first season. Geek film and TV vet Akiva Goldsman is being brought in for producing support. Goldsman worked with exec producer Alex Kurtzman on Fringe.
CBS has a lot riding on the series, which is the flagship for its new streaming service, and there’s a lot of associated product, including comics from IDW Publishing (see "'Star Trek: Discovery' Comics Announced"), and likely games from one or more of the several Star Trek game licensees.
"The lead, slated to be a female starship captain, has also not been cast, and with shooting scheduled to begin in Toronto next month, that’s a problem"
"Showrunning duties will be handed off to Fuller deputies..."
During the latest episode of Recode Media with Peter Kafka, CBS Interactive CEO Jim Lanzone talked about CBS’s new digital streaming entry into the Star Trek universe, Star Trek: Discovery, and dropped a photon torpedo in the process: the show may include nudity and profanity.
The first episode of Star Trek: Discovery is set for broadcast TV, but once it moves to CBS All Access, CBS’s digital platform, FCC broadcast rules no longer apply. When Kafka asked about the possibility of swearing and nudity in the series, Lanzone recalled, "The showrunners were like ‘Oh yeah, we could do that. And of course, the response is, ‘As long as it serves the story.’ But yeah!'
If Star Trek: Discovery features profanity, it wouldn’t be the first time for Star Trek, as some of the feature movies included mild instances of bad language, usually for comedic effect. However, nudity is unexplored territory for Star Trek.
CBS is relying heavily on the popularity of Star Trek to boost their streaming service, which already has one million subscribers, but the show has had a turbulent development period. The series debut was delayed from January 2017 to May 2017 (see ''Star Trek: Discovery' Delayed'). In late October, showrunner Bryan Fuller left amid reports that series development was not proceeding quickly enough (see 'New 'Star Trek' Series Loses Showrunner").
Further complicating matters is a lack of female lead. The show centers on a female starship captain, but CBS has yet to find an actress for the role. This could prove a stumbling block for a special effects–heavy show set to debut in six months, as the studio will need time to incorporate effects.
If the show does ultimately suffer another delay, Star Trek fans may be able to console themselves with comics. IDW has announced comic book tie ins for the series (see "'Star Trek: Discovery' Comics, Book Announced") and a Star Trek / Aliens crossover event with Dark Horse Comics (see "The Enterprise Takes on Xenomorphs") for spring 2017.
And, of course, there’s the extensive range of Star Trek games from multiple publishers, including the latest, GF9’s Star Trek Ascendancy (see "Two Player Expansions for 'Star Trek Ascendancy'").
Oh, I'm sure the zealots are going to freak out over that news.
Of course, mild profanity and a little skin handled the right way would make the characters seem more like people we can identify with, instead of beings living strangely chaste and sterile existences.
I'm aware there are those who would prefer their ST characters in the latter category.
If you're bee-bopping around space for years at a time with other young, fit cadets on a mixed sex space ship, there is going to be some hanky panky where some bodies start slapping like they got paid to do the wild thing.
If you're bee-bopping around space for years at a time with other young, fit cadets on a mixed sex space ship, there is going to be some hanky panky where some bodies start slapping like they got paid to do the wild thing.
gorgon wrote: Oh, I'm sure the zealots are going to freak out over that news.
Of course, mild profanity and a little skin handled the right way would make the characters seem more like people we can identify with, instead of beings living strangely chaste and sterile existences.
I'm aware there are those who would prefer their ST characters in the latter category.
What Star Trek were you watching? I mean, sure, there were no inexplicable ten minute long brothel scenes with dozens of naked extras writhing in the background, but that an evening viewing largely family-friendly show implied the physical part of relationships rather than just having Riker and Troi start fething on the tactical console is a strange definition of "strangely chaste and sterile".
Hell, one of the ST races literally goes sex-mad every seven years.
People seem keen to give ST a lot of gak for constraints that were far more a product of FCC/BBC rules than the choice of the folk making the show - by all accounts some of the stuff Rodenberry was prevented from doing by the rest of the writing/production team or by the networks was downright pornographic, the guy was basically a rampant hippie afterall.
One of the first episodes of Enterprise where they're oiling each other down in quarantine. I just wonder if we'll only see humans or aliens with genitles identical to humans naked, or if we'll get to see some really weird stuff down there.
To be fair, in one of the early TNG episodes Picard and Data blew a guy in half with their phasers (well, more like he melted Raiders of the Lost Ark style), and then blew up an alien parasite that climbs out from between his blown-open ribs.
Yup, and I recall reading an account, albeit unverified, that the audience were initially going to be left without any doubt as to Data's anatomical correctness before some of the other writers and a network guy managed to talk Gene off that particular ledge
TNG wasn't the BSG reboot or anything, but it was shown around tea time in the 80's and early 90's, so it doesn't deserve a lot of the criticism it gets for being too "safe" or sanitised.
Yodhrin wrote: Yup, and I recall reading an account, albeit unverified, that the audience were initially going to be left without any doubt as to Data's anatomical correctness before some of the other writers and a network guy managed to talk Gene off that particular ledge
Except, we still got that with the TNG homage-to-TOS episode The Naked Now.
Yodhrin wrote: Yup, and I recall reading an account, albeit unverified, that the audience were initially going to be left without any doubt as to Data's anatomical correctness before some of the other writers and a network guy managed to talk Gene off that particular ledge
Except, we still got that with the TNG homage-to-TOS episode The Naked Now.
Spoiler:
I think Gene had something rather more pornographic in mind.
For months, fans have been wondering who the new actors to join the Star Trek franchise may be, and we may now have an answer. There’s an as-yet unconfirmed report that Michelle Yeoh has been cast on Star Trek: Discovery.
The source is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan director Nicholas Meyer, who is a consulting producer on the show. “I know Michelle Yeoh is in it,” Meyer told Coming Soon. He wouldn’t say who she’s playing, but it’s quite possible she’s the female lead we know the show will have.
CBS, whose All-Access platform will air the show next year, told io9 they had no comment on the news, but that some of the information in the Coming Soon story was inaccurate. They would not say which information.
Yeoh is a veteran actress who first became a star in America in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. She has also starred in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Memoirs of a Geisha, and Sunshine.
If Yeoh is indeed in the series, this is a great first step for Discovery, which will debut on CBS All Access sometime in 2017.
Deadline has a followup to earlier reporting from Coming Soon about Michelle Yeoh’s presence in the cast. They further confirm the actress’ involvement with the series, but also add that she is actually not a member of the Discovery’s crew.
Instead, Yeoh plays Han Bo, Captain of the (presumably Federation) starship Shenzhou—a vessel that apparently plays a prominent role in the first season of the show.
Although, it does come off a bit Captain Asian of the USS Asian Name, I do hope they don't go full-stereotype and also make her a martial artist who drinks ceremonial tea and is also a warrior-poet etc etc. I'd hope we were past the days of Chakotay-ish characters.
Maybe the parallel suggests a closer look at the early composition of the Federation? I think the pre-Federation pan-Earth thing has always been a little too glossed over (Eugenics Wars, I know).
Manchu wrote: Maybe the parallel suggests a closer look at the early composition of the Federation? I think the pre-Federation pan-Earth thing has always been a little too glossed over (Eugenics Wars, I know).
We're pretty far past that point thought aren't we? It's only 10 years before Kirk and 100 years after Enterprise, you'd think humanity would be well past national identity at that stage especially given most of the technologies that would make capitalism and resource conflict obsolete will already exist by that point.
Divvying up the humans into national or continental subfactions running their own ships would be a backwards step.
Manchu wrote: Maybe the parallel suggests a closer look at the early composition of the Federation? I think the pre-Federation pan-Earth thing has always been a little too glossed over (Eugenics Wars, I know).
We're pretty far past that point thought aren't we? It's only 10 years before Kirk and 100 years after Enterprise, you'd think humanity would be well past national identity at that stage especially given most of the technologies that would make capitalism and resource conflict obsolete will already exist by that point.
Except Scotty and Chekov took pride in their heritage, and occasionally made a point of the superiority of elements of Scotland and Russia (though Chekov was more blatant about it than Scotty).
Manchu wrote: Maybe the parallel suggests a closer look at the early composition of the Federation? I think the pre-Federation pan-Earth thing has always been a little too glossed over (Eugenics Wars, I know).
We're pretty far past that point thought aren't we? It's only 10 years before Kirk and 100 years after Enterprise, you'd think humanity would be well past national identity at that stage especially given most of the technologies that would make capitalism and resource conflict obsolete will already exist by that point.
Except Scotty and Chekov took pride in their heritage, and occasionally made a point of the superiority of elements of Scotland and Russia (though Chekov was more blatant about it than Scotty).
They took pride in their heritage, they didn't end up aboard the USS Wallace and the USS Vladimir serving under officers who were also Scottish and Russian respectively. The whole point of having a Russian, a Scot, an alien, and a black woman on the bridge crew of the Enterprise in the first place was to emphasise that humans had moved past our differences and come together to pursue something greater, that the show wasn't just "NASA 2265, God Bless America, Hooah" despite the prevalance otherwise of American actors and the inevitable Amerocentric viewpoint of some of the stories.
Compel wrote: Although, something like, she's the first captain of the ship, therefore she got to name it, would be ok and interesting, in my view...
Or perhaps she's a seperationist pirate, who mutinied with her exploration vessel and is now carving out a small empire on the edge of known space. Possibly dealing in military secrets to a somewhat friendly alien body. Perhaps their captain died on some planet they were ordered to survey, and that turned the crew against the federation's ideals.
Yes, I'm aware that there are other explanations for why an Asian actress playing a character with an obviously Asian name and captaining a ship with same could be happening, I was merely expressing the view that I hope one of those possible explanations isn't the case.
Perhaps the series takes place in the period of Federation history before they've achieved a post-scarcity economy, and Starfleet needed to pander to Chinese investors for funding?
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Perhaps the series takes place in the period of Federation history before they've achieved a post-scarcity economy, and Starfleet needed to pander to Chinese investors for funding?
Again, it's 10 years before Kirk and 100 after Enterprise. Starfleet was a global affair even before the foundation of the Federation and the United Earth government encompassed every former nation on the planet by 2150, it's now a century after Enterprise and they also have the resources of several other advanced cultures to draw on, plus even without the Replicator they've also had everything necessary for a post-scarcity society(sophisticated robotics, non-sentient AI, functionally-unlimited energy generation, access to all the resources of at least our own solar system) since around the Enterprise era as well. It's possible they were still using something along the lines of a Basic Income back in Archer's time, but after a hundred years? I don't see a plausible scenario for Starfleet having to go begging to nation states, and not even for there still being such a thing as private investors, not without some hefty retcons.
Manchu wrote: Wasn't there some mention in TOS of crewmen having pay?
I'm fairly sure there was, somewhere, although it may have just been one of the books... I do remember being a little confused about why they seemed to suddenly have no idea what money was in the 4th movie.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Perhaps the series takes place in the period of Federation history before they've achieved a post-scarcity economy, and Starfleet needed to pander to Chinese investors for funding?
Again, it's 10 years before Kirk and 100 after Enterprise. Starfleet was a global affair even before the foundation of the Federation and the United Earth government encompassed every former nation on the planet by 2150, it's now a century after Enterprise and they also have the resources of several other advanced cultures to draw on, plus even without the Replicator they've also had everything necessary for a post-scarcity society(sophisticated robotics, non-sentient AI, functionally-unlimited energy generation, access to all the resources of at least our own solar system) since around the Enterprise era as well. It's possible they were still using something along the lines of a Basic Income back in Archer's time, but after a hundred years? I don't see a plausible scenario for Starfleet having to go begging to nation states, and not even for there still being such a thing as private investors, not without some hefty retcons.
STOS didn't have replicators. It had synthesizers, which is substantially different. They are still an economics scarcity economy and not bound by the quasi commie mentality that infected the Picard era Federation.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Perhaps the series takes place in the period of Federation history before they've achieved a post-scarcity economy, and Starfleet needed to pander to Chinese investors for funding?
Again, it's 10 years before Kirk and 100 after Enterprise. Starfleet was a global affair even before the foundation of the Federation and the United Earth government encompassed every former nation on the planet by 2150, it's now a century after Enterprise and they also have the resources of several other advanced cultures to draw on, plus even without the Replicator they've also had everything necessary for a post-scarcity society(sophisticated robotics, non-sentient AI, functionally-unlimited energy generation, access to all the resources of at least our own solar system) since around the Enterprise era as well. It's possible they were still using something along the lines of a Basic Income back in Archer's time, but after a hundred years? I don't see a plausible scenario for Starfleet having to go begging to nation states, and not even for there still being such a thing as private investors, not without some hefty retcons.
STOS didn't have replicators. It had synthesizers, which is substantially different. They are still an economics scarcity economy and not bound by the quasi commie mentality that infected the Picard era Federation.
Which is why I said without Replicators, and then listed the things that are actually necessary to eliminate scarcity. Replicators made the elimination of scarcity convenient in a way that serviced the plot of the show, such handwavery "magic" is not actually required.
Goods have, when you break it right down, two costs - energy and labour. Raw resources only have a cost because they require labour and energy to extract and process, and because our screwy property system on this planet allows the descendents of whoever hit everyone else over the head really hard centuries or millenia ago to extract rents from land they inherited, which handily doesn't apply to resources in space. Sufficiently advanced robotics and AI remove the need for labour for everything except the most high-concept, creative, intellectual work, and even those would largely be reduced to the equivalent of knowing how to correctly parse a Google search to ask the AIs the right questions. And I'm not talking Banksian style super-intellect AIs from the Culture novels, if they have computers sophisticated enough to even approach the idea of a "universal translator", they have computers that would be sufficiently sophisticated to take over every mechanistic, repetitive aspect of work even what we consider creative or intellectual work like computer coding or pretty much every bit of the legal profession except the standing in court and lying for your client part. As for energy generation, well, they have stable antimatter reactor technology.
Once the infrastructure was built, cost would be eliminated - resources(including food) extracted(or grown & harvested) by machines powered with functionally unlimited energy from sources that don't require rents to access(ie, space), transported by same, refined by same, turned into finished goods by same, and the whole chain maintained by same and managed by AI. Everything necessary for life and interaction in the modern world - food, shelter, clothing, energy, transportation, advanced communications tech - all of it would be, functionally, free. If everyone's needs are met without cost, then labour also ceases to have any value, since the only kinds of labour that would continue to have any relevance in such a system are ones, like advanced scientific endeavours, where those expending their labour are motivated by more than merely financial reward. No living expenses combined with "the world of work" being reduced almost entirely to fields where acclaim, achievement, or the work itself are considered much higher rewards to those who work in them than money means even those fields will, inevitably, cease to have any value in a fiscal sense, since there will always be enough such people who, not having to deal with earning money to meet basic needs, will be willing to work for "free" that any commercial endeavour would be doomed to fail.
And given that it's entirely possible we'll see all of the necessary precursors appear within our own lifetimes(hell, we could do the energy bit right now with just solar, we just need automation and AI management software to catch up), the idea that they wouldn't have them in the 2200's, and that a society that has been explicitly and deliberately trying to eliminate need, war, disease etc for at that time two centuries wouldn't have taken full advantage of them, or even that they would deliberately impose artificial scarcity where none need exist, is just silly.
This is why, despite sharing quite a lot of the concerns of anti-capitalists about the short and medium term, in the long term I have a fatalistic, borderline optimistic view; in simply executing its basic, inherent function, capitalism necessarily creates the thing that will destroy it; better-than-human-efficiency automation. In the end, there are only really two plausible outcomes for humanity - "utopia"(by which I mean a technologically advanced postscarcity society, the idea a society can ever be "perfect" is juvenile) or species extinction. Because, in the end, the technology will exist to eliminate scarcity, at which point we will either A; embrace it and achieve aforementioned "utopia"(ie, the Star Trek view), B; the elites of the present system will attempt to impose artificial scarcity and when the inevitable backlash occurs we will either B1; succeed and achieve A(the Mars Trilogy view), or B2; fail and eradicate ourselves.
Its a separate thread, but STNG isn't a post scarcity economy. There's lots of evidence of it: transporter credits for rationing, production limitaitons during the war, the whole more than one person on a ship, gambling. Ok now that I think of it most my references are from Deep Space Nine.
A post scarcity economy doesn't work, because people's appetites grow with the ability of the economy to produce them. Thats occurs now.
After all communism would be great if it weren't for all the people.
Manchu wrote: Wasn't there some mention in TOS of crewmen having pay?
I'm fairly sure there was, somewhere, although it may have just been one of the books... I do remember being a little confused about why they seemed to suddenly have no idea what money was in the 4th movie.
I'm watching TNG right now (as in, sequentially on Amazon... not the random episode order that cable channels do) and there have been a small number of odd mentions of money, bets and things that suggest they still have some concept of monetary value.
Yodhrin wrote: Yes, I'm aware that there are other explanations for why an Asian actress playing a character with an obviously Asian name and captaining a ship with same could be happening.
Well its not as if nearly every Star Trek has had an American Actor playing an American Captain (and nearly all of the crew), commanding a ship with an American name. If it wasn't for a Frenchman who sounded suspiciously English it would have been a clean sweep.
Frazzled wrote: Its a separate thread, but STNG isn't a post scarcity economy.
By any standard measure they are a post scarcity economy. The error that might be at play is that a post-scarcity economy = an economy with no money, which isn't really true.
The Federation clearly has some kind of economic system, because not everything can be replicated* and even the things that can be replicated need the energy to power the replicators to begin with. Obviously building starships is impractical with replicators, so someone is funding the construction of the humanitarian armada that also happens to be armed to the teeth. The thing that makes the Federation a post scarcity society is that all the needs of its society can be met because all you need to feed, clothe, and house everyone in the Federation is sufficient energy to power the replicators, but that doesn't mean the idea of economics falls into a black hole.
It's also the particular brand of American silliness that declares a society "communist" just because it isn't capitalist. The Federation by all regards is not a communist society. Socialist yes, but there's no evidence workers own the means of production in the Federation. It's completely unclear who owns any of the Federation's infrastructure, or how what economy the Federation does have is structured. I mean, how exactly does a society that doesn't care about the accumulation of wealth negotiate a trade deal with someone like the Ferengi, who only care about the accumulation of wealth? It's never really explained. Even Starfleet's exact relationship to the Federation's political structure is unclear).
*Examples include Dilithium, Tholian Silk, and complex organisms (though that might be more illegal than impossible...). Latinum is used as a currency solely because it cannot be replicated (a technology that hilariously makes gold and gems worthless). The series also suggests that while replicators can make almost anything, they can't necessarily match non-replicated versions so presumably there would be a market out there for non-replicated goods even if replicators can make the item.
I state commmunist, I should be more accurate in saying "hippy utopia nonsense." Mankind does not exist to achieve the highest self actualization. We are the most predatory, greedy species on this planet. Any economic system relying on altruism with our current genetic would implode instantly-it doesn't work outside of family units and even then it doesn't work for "unnormal" families. If we did Star Trek as humans really are WE would be Romulans.
The post modernist in me would suggest that the constant insistence by humans that they've overcome their baser instincts is just a ideological facade used to cover the gradual political and cultural domination of humans over the rest of the galaxy, but that's probably just a load of crock. Everyone knows there's no post-modernism in the 24th century. They're on post-post-post modernism
Mankind does not exist to achieve the highest self actualization. We are the most predatory, greedy species on this planet.
To be fair, the humanity of Star Trek is explicitly stated to be a humanity that has overcome some of its worst demons
Or.... to be fair, when faced with annihilation by Klingon or by Romulan (IIRC, those were the two mentioned by Edison in ST: Beyond that were unfriendly, and encountered pre-Federation)... AND having just come out of a planet spanning global war, it kinda makes sense.
I kinda picture them as post-ww2 Europeans in that, after WW2, the bulk of the countries sat out of, or had VERY limited participation in the various adventures we got up to... and I've seen some books and articles suggesting that after WW2, Europeans had basically finally had enough, and had generally realized how dumb war kind of is.
Frazzled wrote: I state commmunist, I should be more accurate in saying "hippy utopia nonsense." Mankind does not exist to achieve the highest self actualization. We are the most predatory, greedy species on this planet. Any economic system relying on altruism with our current genetic would implode instantly-it doesn't work outside of family units and even then it doesn't work for "unnormal" families. If we did Star Trek as humans really are WE would be Romulans.
Frazzled wrote: I state commmunist, I should be more accurate in saying "hippy utopia nonsense." Mankind does not exist to achieve the highest self actualization. We are the most predatory, greedy species on this planet. Any economic system relying on altruism with our current genetic would implode instantly-it doesn't work outside of family units and even then it doesn't work for "unnormal" families. If we did Star Trek as humans really are WE would be Romulans.
Speak for yourself!
Agreed... I mean, not to bring politics into this, but we did just elect a Ferengi to office
The Walking Dead star Sonequa Martin-Green has reportedly landed the lead role in the new Star Trek TV series.
She plays survivor Sasha Williams in the post-apocalyptic TV series, which is currently on its seventh season.
But the Star Trek role could mean Sasha's time on the show will come to an end.
And when it's a show about flesh-eating zombies, those ends don't tend to be particularly pleasant.
US publication Entertainment Weekly has reported the news, but Sonequa and CBS Television Studios (who are making Star Trek: Discovery) are yet to comment.
If confirmed, she will be the first African-American female to be the main character in a Star Trek TV series.
She is believed to be playing a lieutenant commander on the show, which will make this the first time a Star Trek show hasn't focused on a starship captain.
Sonequa's character in the show hasn't been named but several other key roles have already been cast and announced.
The show will star Malaysia-born actress Michelle Yeoh in the role of Captain Georgiou and Doug Jones as Lieutenant Saru, an alien character.
Star Trek: Discovery will also include the series' first openly gay character, a fellow lieutenant played by Anthony Rapp.
Producer Bryan Fuller has previously promised to maintain Star Trek's long-running history of diverse casting.
KamikazeCanuck wrote: Well she's be a good main character I suppose. Guess she's gonna be eaten by a zombie pretty soon.
If you're interested in her likely fate, go look up what happens to Holly in the comics. She took Holly's place on the show. I expect her end will be similar.
Formosa wrote: um....Nichelle Nichols, arguable she isn't a main character on star trek, but Zoe Saldana is in the new trek films, first African American my arse...
When they say "the" main, they mean the person the story revolves around. Like Kirk or Picard. Uhura was never "the" main character.
Bejamin Sisko was only a commander when he took over DS9, so being the first non-captain is incorrect as well. I'm cautiously optimistic about this new Star Trek project but, C'mon if you're gonna write up reviews or previews for the show it be nice to see some basic research about the franchise done beforehand.
Well I guess Sisko was still the CO of the station. I guess what will be different about STD is the main character won't be the highest ranking officer on the ship.
Breotan wrote: Unless I'm mistaken, that design was originally set for a proposed movie in the early 70's. I think it was called Planet Of The Titans or something.
Looks like the "Star Trek Phase II" design for the Enterprise. From what I've seen of the concept art, the ship looks really, really similar. For those who are unfamiliar, ST Phase 2 was intended to be a sequel TV series picking up a decade or so after TOS ended. The plans for a series were dropped after some of the interior sets were built (specifically the Engineering set and various corridors), as production switched to Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The constructed interior sets were then used in that film for Enterprise interiors.
It looks like this time, the show is using the unused designs for the exterior of the ship, rather than come up with something new. Unfortunately, the design is so radically different from what Star Trek established as its design aesthetic, that (in my opinion) it doesn't look like it really belongs in the ST universe. The ship looks like a classic-era Klingon bird of prey with a saucer section stuck on the front, which would work fine if the show was set just after TOS in a parallel universe where the Federation and the Klingons merged into one government. From what I've heard about the setting, this does not seem to be the case.
What it needs is a redesign, cause its still hideous XD
Although curious note, someone datamining the Star Trek Online Test Server files found reference to a new version of the NX-1 in the game files (the ship from Enterprise), as well as a reference to a "Experimental Dreadnought Cruiser." I've been racking my brain trying to figure out what the later could be, and it just occurred to me that STO might be launching a playable version of Discovery to coincide with the series' launch later this year.
Which means I'll have to look at that ugly monstrosity in game XD
What it needs is a redesign, cause its still hideous XD
Although curious note, someone datamining the Star Trek Online Test Server files found reference to a new version of the NX-1 in the game files (the ship from Enterprise), as well as a reference to a "Experimental Dreadnought Cruiser." I've been racking my brain trying to figure out what the later could be, and it just occurred to me that STO might be launching a playable version of Discovery to coincide with the series' launch later this year.
Which means I'll have to look at that ugly monstrosity in game XD
TBF, in STO there are a number of ship designs and designations not in canon sources. I've done some looking around, and according to what I've seen on the Dreadnought class (three nacelles, dorsal cannon) is only mentioned in novels, and basically unseen on screen.
I say that to say that this "experimental dreadnought cruiser" could potentially be something completely different. We've already got the time bandit storyline with 23c ships available in game.... Something tells me we won't really get starfleet player ships from discovery... and if we do, this design as is is so ugly that I doubt we'll see many in game, unless the stats are outrageously good.
TBF, in STO there are a number of ship designs and designations not in canon sources. I've done some looking around, and according to what I've seen on the Dreadnought class (three nacelles, dorsal cannon) is only mentioned in novels, and basically unseen on screen.
The Galaxy-X you mean? It appeared on screen in All Good Things. There are a lot of non-canon ships in game of course, but most cannon ships have found their way in (even the JJprise has managed to get in). I'm not saying it is, merely that it is possible. The next lockbox is supposed t have a different dreadnought for each player faction with a 23rd Century theme, and that same lockbox assuming the datamine is accurate will coincide with the release of the NX-1 T6 variant. Discovery is supposed to be set between TOS and Enterprise, making the Discovery a possible candidate for the Federation variant.
Console - Hull Ionization Module
Starship Trait - SIF Shunt
While this trait is slotted, activating any hull healing ability on yourself, while at full hull strength, will provide a boost to all power levels for a short time. This effect stacks up to 3 times.
FED 23c Shuttles - Launches three Elite Class F Shuttles. Class F Shuttles have Fore and Aft Phaser Beam Arrays as well as Fore Photon Torpedo Launchers. In addition, they will use the Emergency Power to Shields III ability and Beam: Overload II.
Warning; Cryptic does not like people looking at the game files on their computers and would "kindly" suggest that no one go digging through them. With that said; Source
Usually its the starship trait that is good on lockbox ships, and for sure the above trait is insanely good. It's better than Supremacy, which is the most often used trait for maintaining power levels. The science variants of the flag ships are pretty much perfect for console/boff layouts for the current meta.
Looks like the "Star Trek Phase II" design for the Enterprise. From what I've seen of the concept art, the ship looks really, really similar. For those who are unfamiliar, ST Phase 2 was intended to be a sequel TV series picking up a decade or so after TOS ended. The plans for a series were dropped after some of the interior sets were built (specifically the Engineering set and various corridors), as production switched to Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The constructed interior sets were then used in that film for Enterprise interiors.
Yeah, it's very clearly influenced by the Phase II design... but that design is butt ugly. As others have said, it looks more like a Klingon vessel than Federation tech.
And even ignoring the design, that CGI is woeful for a modern TV show. Up against Babylon 5 it would have been passable... but for a show coming out now, it doesn't fill me with hope for anything resembling production values.
Babylon 5 had the budget of a sitcom, and not a popular one. Discovery is the flagship series for a brand new network in an age of plentiful CGI. This is troubling.
STAR TREK DISCOVERY Delayed Again!! Spock’s Dad Recast Again!!
First the bad:
“Star Trek Discovery,” once slated to premiere this month before moving to May, won’t be premiering in May either. CBS All Access is now saying in a statement it doesn’t know when it will premiere.
Now the good:
James Frain -- who played recently played both Mayor Galavan and Azrael on “Gotham” and recurred on numerous other series, among them “24,” “Empire,” “Invastion,” “The Tudors,” “The Cape,” “The White Queen, “Grimm,” “Orphan Black,” “The Tunnel,” “Intruders,” ““True Blood,” “Agent Carter” and “True Detective” -- will play Sarek, father of Spock, on “Star Trek Discovery.”
Actor Mark Lenard first played the character of Sarek on the 1967 “Star Trek” episode “Journey to Babel,” and reprised the role on the 1973 animated episode “Yesteryear,” two episodes of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” and the third, fourth and sixth Star Trek movies.
Younger versions of Sarek were played by Jonathan Simpson in 1989’s “Star Trek V” and by Ben Cross in 2009’s “Star Trek.”
Bryan Fuller, co-creator and former showrunner of “Star Trek Discovery,” hinted that he wanted Winona Ryder, who played Spock’s mother in the 2009 movie, to reprise the role in the upcoming series.
While I’m been mighty impressed with Frain’s work over the years I’d be lying if I said it’s not a disappointment that they’re not bringing back Cross.
“Star Trek Discovery,” which will stream on CBS All Access (likely later this year), is set 10 years before the Kirk-Spock series broadcast in the 1960s. It is not excpected to focus on Kirk, Spock or any other familiar character, though familiar characters will pop up from time to time.
(I wonder if Spock is already serving aboard the Enterprise with Captain Pike.)
That's not the Discovery. It's not an Akira either, despite having the wrong style of nacelles for the Discovery era ships, it seems to be some wierd evolution of the NX class? Which is daft, because there's already a design for that in the NX-refit which does a pretty decent job of bridging the TOS aesthetic with the really questionable NX design.
The wireframe seems to go in completely the other direction, doubling-down on the Akira-ripoff nature of the NX design - the nacelles are all wrong for this period & there's no distinct secondary hull I can see, plus by TOS times all the ships we know of had moved on to the smooth saucer like the Constitution rather than the bumpy NX style. ST:Axanar already did a really good TOS-era version of the "underslung" Starfleet design with the Ares class, this doesn't really compare, so hopefully it turns out to be just background nonsense or is specifically called out as a really really old design or somsuch.
And apparently the Trekyards guys are claiming that despite them putting the USS Pizza Slice concept art in the new teaser, the Discovery looks very different now as the design team have "iterated a lot" - but us plebs aren't allowed to see the new version yet, evidently.
So it seems an extra on the Discovery set thought it would be a good idea to instagram a pic of a group of his fellows in full costume, referring to them as his "Klingon crew". The image was quickly deleted and he tried playing it down, and I really, really hope that's because he made a stupid mistake and hadn't read the script or something rather than because CBS is trying to contain the leak, because dear sweet potatoes, just look:
Even the shrapnel-faced wierdos from JJTrek look more like Klingons than these things.
Folk have put forward various possible explanations like they might be a Reman-style subspecies(that one I think will be less comforting than its advocates think given the reaction of a lot of people to Nemesis), or a conquered slave-race, or even ancient barbarian Klingons from eons ago abducted from their world and frozen in cryostasis by aliens then trapped within the event horizon of a black hole blah blah blah. And you know, they're trying to hard, but pretty much any of those theories would be better than them just deciding to redesign Klingons again for the sake of it.
The one thing I have seen "confirmed" by others actually in the know on this subject, is that these are NOT Klingons.
IMHO, they look a bit more like another take on Reptilian Xindi to me.
And I know some of the folks on the FB feeds I follow have said the Klingon ridge disconnect between TOS and other series' was answered in the Augment Klingons episode, which I don't buy for a second.
Beyond that, the only things I've seen regarding Discovery, is that it is set around a "famous" incident that has been mentioned in other ST shows/movies/material, but never shown on screen before... which is.... vague.
This looks so bad. Where is Enterprise F? Where is Riker on Titan? Why would anyone produce such crap when the potential for advancement of the NG timeline is waiting right there.
Xenomancers wrote: This looks so bad. Where is Enterprise F? Where is Riker on Titan? Why would anyone produce such crap when the potential for advancement of the NG timeline is waiting right there.
Does DS9 not count as NG timeline then? That was set a short while after Picard got borgified wasn't it?
Ensis Ferrae wrote: The one thing I have seen "confirmed" by others actually in the know on this subject, is that these are NOT Klingons.
IMHO, they look a bit more like another take on Reptilian Xindi to me.
And I know some of the folks on the FB feeds I follow have said the Klingon ridge disconnect between TOS and other series' was answered in the Augment Klingons episode, which I don't buy for a second.
Beyond that, the only things I've seen regarding Discovery, is that it is set around a "famous" incident that has been mentioned in other ST shows/movies/material, but never shown on screen before... which is.... vague.
Well they say that, but extras actually read the script so unless the guy was a complete moron or this is some ill-advised marketing stunt by CBS, the guy who read the script and just sat through hours of makeup for the part is probably more "in the know" than people on the internet. Also, there's some early concept art for the show specifically labelled as "Klingons" that looks a lot like the picture(but are even worse, having given them wierd three-finger aquatic webbed hands & feet or somesuch idiocy) I hope that's wrong, obviously, but CBS wore out all my goodwill with the ship design, the format change, and the half-arsed production so I'm fully into "(faintly)hope for the best but expect the worst" stage now.
The Augment arc did provide an explanation for the appearance change, and while it was a pretty obvious fudge it was probably the best they could do given the circumstances.
And just for the record, I'm not saying that the quality or design of these costumes & prosthetics are inherently bad, if these guys were a new race I'd be hyped to find out about them, they're just not Klingons, and they don't fit easily into what we know of the Klingons at this time in the Trek setting even post Augment-fudge. And you know, if this was a JJTrek thing, if they were spinning off some new reality to appeal to kids or mainstream audiences, sure, whatever, redesign away it'd suck but it would have a purpose. But CBS made a big thing about this being a Prime timeline show, about its proximity to TOS-era Trek, about it being a return to Trek for Trek fans(indeed that supposedly narrowed audience was their justification for sticking it on a paid online service rather than broadcasting normally) - you can't do that while substantially redesign important elements of the Prime setting and expect folk not to care.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: Beyond that, the only things I've seen regarding Discovery, is that it is set around a "famous" incident that has been mentioned in other ST shows/movies/material, but never shown on screen before... which is.... vague.
Xenomancers wrote: This looks so bad. Where is Enterprise F? Where is Riker on Titan? Why would anyone produce such crap when the potential for advancement of the NG timeline is waiting right there.
Does DS9 not count as NG timeline then? That was set a short while after Picard got borgified wasn't it?
DS9 has a few years overlap with TNG. I think Voyager came after TNG went off the air but it's a continuation of that continuity so the TNG era lasted at least 14 years on television.
The Augment arc did provide an explanation for the appearance change, and while it was a pretty obvious fudge it was probably the best they could do given the circumstances..
Meh... 'Trials and Tribble-ations' did a perfect job of covering it ("We don't discuss it with outsiders").
Yodhrin wrote:
The Augment arc did provide an explanation for the appearance change, and while it was a pretty obvious fudge it was probably the best they could do given the circumstances.
Lol, I think this is honestly one place where I think a bit of honesty would go miles: just fething say "we were a low budget tv show back then, and it's what we did... deal with it" I don't buy the augment arc story one bit. It's literally too corny for me.
Breotan wrote:
Axanar? The Romulan War?
DS9 has a few years overlap with TNG. I think Voyager came after TNG went off the air but it's a continuation of that continuity so the TNG era lasted at least 14 years on television.
I have no idea if it's either Axanar or Romulan War (though, isn't Romulan War shortly after ST:E?? From page 1, it looks like this show is initially supposed to be set around 10 years prior to Kirk's first 5 year mission.... Although, an Axanar plot would certainly be a finger in the direction of the fan film.
AFAIK, DS9 happens after TNG, or at least after Picard returns from being Borg... And given the Dominion War arc, We know that Voyager is generally concurrent with DS9, right?
I have no idea if it's either Axanar or Romulan War (though, isn't Romulan War shortly after ST:E?? From page 1, it looks like this show is initially supposed to be set around 10 years prior to Kirk's first 5 year mission.... Although, an Axanar plot would certainly be a finger in the direction of the fan film.
AFAIK, DS9 happens after TNG, or at least after Picard returns from being Borg... And given the Dominion War arc, We know that Voyager is generally concurrent with DS9, right?
Had Ent been renewed for another season, we'd have gone into the commencement of the Romulan War, the preludes to it were already building up (bombing on Vulcan, drone incidents), but the viewing figures weren't up to the desired numbers so it got canned.
Personally I'm over the prequel obsession we keep seeing in scifi, it's like producers are terrified of advancing the timelines or trusting writers to produce intelligent sequels instead of lore abusing fanservice chock full of cameos of characters and races. (see yoda meeting chewbacca in 3rd SW prequel, augments being built by Noonien Soong, 'darth vader built my interpreter droid' etc etc).
Personally I'm over the prequel obsession we keep seeing in scifi, it's like producers are terrified of advancing the timelines or trusting writers to produce intelligent sequels instead of lore abusing fanservice chock full of cameos of characters and races. (see yoda meeting chewbacca in 3rd SW prequel, augments being built by Noonien Soong, 'darth vader built my interpreter droid' etc etc).
Agreed on that front. Like, is it really so much of a problem to advance Star Trek to a point where Janeway is dead (just so we don't have to deal with her awful gestures), and move things along a bit?? I'd honestly be happy with Enterprise F (not J though, feth that noise... if they did that, it may as well be Dr. Who)
I mean, just looking at Voyager, we could get Captain Paris, or Captain H. Kim or something.
ORRRR, an even wilder idea, we could have a series with a Romulan WB, or another alien race as main characters.
You know, story aside, I'd actually love to see the Enterprise F from the Star Trek Online design competition become a proper canon ship. Not the Odyssey class from the game that was based on the winning design, although those are nice, something more like the original drawn concept with the fatter secondary hull and the functional split-neck setup.
For those who don't know it, the designer's original intent, which he expanded on after the competition was won and as per its terms PW took the design and went their own way with it, was for the two "necks" under the saucer to actually be a complete structure, with saucer separation occuring underneath the secondary hull and the "necks" forming a Warp Ring for the saucer section. There would also be a "Mission Pod" in the aft section where the shuttle bay is on a traditional design that would have a different purpose depending on the mission goal(ie it could be a deployable Escort for tactical assignments, or a small research station that could be left in orbit to observe a prewarp society etc).
Having basically three ships in one would have given the writers a lot of flexibility in the story structure, and such a ship would have been ideal for exploring the Gamma Quadrant a few years after the peace treaty with the Dominion had had a chance to bed-in. Would have been nice to see a proper episodic show about people exploring the galaxy again.
But yeah, we're still in the Reboot Era right now so tweaking or slightly expanding existing stuff is much more in vogue than making something new.
The cast continues to be revealed over at CBS All Access as production continues to finally roll along on Star Trek: Discovery. Terry Serpico, Maulik Pancholy and Sam Vartholomeos.
CBS announced that Serpico will play Admiral Anderson as part of Starfleet’s top brass. That would be a far cry from the actor’s first roll as a strip club owner on Donnie Brasco. His other roles include Purge: Election Year and The Inspectors.
The other two will be assigned directly to the series’ home ship, the Starship Shenzhou. Pancholy will be hanging out in the sickbay as the ship’s chief medical officer, Dr. Nambue. Pancholy is best known for his roles on 30 Rock and Weeds.
And then Vartholomeos will be at hand as a Ensign Wesley Crusher precursor, Ensign Connor. He’ll be playing a junior Academy officer assigned to their field tour on the Shenzhou. The actor’s prior credits include The Following and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
It would seem there are probably new casting announcements to be made shortly since there’s likely at least one less extra on set. Last week an actor named Andrew Mackay posted a photo on instagram with a caption of “Hanging out with my new Klingon crew on set of the new #startrek”. The post was quickly deleted, but not before fandom had already lept all over what appeared to be a radically changed Klingon character design. There’s not been a lot of word about what’s become of Mr. Mackay, but since studios aren’t fond of uncontrolled BTS photos, we expect that there’s been a call to central casting for a new Klingon. Preferably one without a working camera on their cell-phone.
The trio join a large cast which includes The Waking Dead star Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones (Hellboy), Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Anthony Rapp (A Beautiful Mind), Shazad Latif (Penny Dreadful), Mary Chieffo (Shelby’s Vacation), Chris Obi (Ghost in the Shell), and James Frain (True Detective).
Discovery’s premiere date has been in a state of flux over the past six months. It was initially set to premiere in January, and then then been pushed to May, and it’s now pushed yet again without a specific next publicly stated release date. Discovery’s original showrunner Bryan Fuller stepped down last year, ostensibly to focus on American Gods. Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts have since stepped in to try to get the series out of drydock. Unfortunately their prior collaborations have resulted in less than the best of series with Reign, Revenge, GCB, and Off The Map.
The Augment arc did provide an explanation for the appearance change, and while it was a pretty obvious fudge it was probably the best they could do given the circumstances..
Meh... 'Trials and Tribble-ations' did a perfect job of covering it ("We don't discuss it with outsiders").
100% agree, some things should just be left alone.
Same with the 40k addition of "Commander Dave Land" or whoever it was that designed the Land Raider in terms of a crap and unnecessary tidying of loose ends. fething awful
The Augment arc did provide an explanation for the appearance change, and while it was a pretty obvious fudge it was probably the best they could do given the circumstances..
Meh... 'Trials and Tribble-ations' did a perfect job of covering it ("We don't discuss it with outsiders").
100% agree, some things should just be left alone.
Same with the 40k addition of "Commander Dave Land" or whoever it was that designed the Land Raider in terms of a crap and unnecessary tidying of loose ends. fething awful
Lol, I thought it was the archaeologist Arkhan Land who found the STC for it, so they named it after him
As for moving the plot forward, I agree with the possibility of using the design concept of the Odyssey, but I'm much more partial to the Endeavor Class based on the Odyssey design
Ewww, no ta, not a fan of that version of the "shovel section" style. What I like about the concept-Odyssey is the way it draws together elements of its Ambassador, Galaxy, and Sovereign predecessors and puts a new spin on them.
I could get behind a show set on a Vesta class though, that's one good lookin' shovel
Xenomancers wrote: This looks so bad. Where is Enterprise F? Where is Riker on Titan? Why would anyone produce such crap when the potential for advancement of the NG timeline is waiting right there.
Does DS9 not count as NG timeline then? That was set a short while after Picard got borgified wasn't it?
Don't get me wrong - DS9 is my favorite series - it's just that NG timeline is so easy to pick up where it left off. Realistically the Ds9 and NG timeline are the same timeline anyways. I see no reason why Sisko couldn't be part of that series - or even janeway. It might not be Captain Picard but give me some new ships and new enemies. Don't go back even earlier because that is just not interesting.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Yodhrin wrote: You know, story aside, I'd actually love to see the Enterprise F from the Star Trek Online design competition become a proper canon ship. Not the Odyssey class from the game that was based on the winning design, although those are nice, something more like the original drawn concept with the fatter secondary hull and the functional split-neck setup.
For those who don't know it, the designer's original intent, which he expanded on after the competition was won and as per its terms PW took the design and went their own way with it, was for the two "necks" under the saucer to actually be a complete structure, with saucer separation occuring underneath the secondary hull and the "necks" forming a Warp Ring for the saucer section. There would also be a "Mission Pod" in the aft section where the shuttle bay is on a traditional design that would have a different purpose depending on the mission goal(ie it could be a deployable Escort for tactical assignments, or a small research station that could be left in orbit to observe a prewarp society etc).
Having basically three ships in one would have given the writers a lot of flexibility in the story structure, and such a ship would have been ideal for exploring the Gamma Quadrant a few years after the peace treaty with the Dominion had had a chance to bed-in. Would have been nice to see a proper episodic show about people exploring the galaxy again.
But yeah, we're still in the Reboot Era right now so tweaking or slightly expanding existing stuff is much more in vogue than making something new.
Not that I don't think a split neck design looks cool. I just think it would actually hurt structural integrity compared to the sovereign class. I like that the sovereign essentially has no neck and has been sleeked out compared to the Galaxy. I'd like to see the trend continue with the saucer section merging in the middle of the warp core section on the new explorer/super-dreadnought class. Startrek online interpretation is decent I think I just want something a little less bulky and more unusal.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: AFAIK, DS9 happens after TNG, or at least after Picard returns from being Borg... And given the Dominion War arc, We know that Voyager is generally concurrent with DS9, right?
Excluding time travel, Enterprise was the earliest on the timeline in 2151. TOS was set about 110 years later and TNG/DS9/Voy was set about 100 years after that.
Of the last three, TNG started in 1987 and ran seven years. DS9 started during TNG's 6th season and was essentially a spin-off show. They moved O'Brien from TNG to DS9 in DS9's pilot episode and eventually even brought Worf over. Voyager started in DS9's 3rd season, after TNG went off the air and ran for seven years. No actors/characters were moved although the pilot episode had scenes on DS9. All three shows ran in the TNG "era" and were concurrent with each other and lasted around 14 years on TV with DS9 seasons overlapping TNG and Voyager.
Back on topic, there have been some more casting announcements. I'm noticing a definite lack of alpha males in this production.
Casting for three new members of Starfleet were announced Monday:
1) Terry Serpico will star as "Admiral Anderson,” a high-ranking official of Starfleet. Serpico’s credits include “Army Wives,” “Rescue Me” and “Sneaky Pete.”
2) Maulik Pancholy will star as "Dr. Nambue,” the chief medical officer of the Starship Shenzhou. Pancholy’s credits include “30 Rock” and “Weeds.”
3) Sam Vartholomeos will star as "Ensign Connor,” a junior officer fresh out of Starfleet Academy assigned to the Starship Shenzhou. His credits include “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and “The Following."
Previously cast:
* Sonequa Martin-Green (“The Walking Dead”) will play Starfleet Lieutenant Commander Rainsford, the lead character on “Star Trek Discovery.”
* James Frain (“Gotham” “24,” “True Blood,” “Agent Carter,” “True Detective”) will play Sarek, father of Spock.
* Michelle Yeoh (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) will play the Shenzhou’s Capt. Georgio.
* Doug Jones (“Falling Skies,” “The Strain”) will play Lt. Saru, a Starfleet science officer and a member of a species new to the Star Trek universe.
* Anthony Rapp (“Rent,” “The Knick”) will play Lt. Stamets, a gay astromycologist, fungus expert, and Starfleet science officer aboard the Starship Discovery.
* Chris Obi (“Roots,” “American Gods”) will play T'Kuvma, the Klingon leader seeking to unite the Klingon houses.
* Shazad Latif (“MI-5,” “Penny Dreadful”) will play Kol, the Commanding Officer of the Klingons and protégé of T’Kuvma.
* 6’0” Mary Chieffo will play L'Rell, the battle deck commander of the Klingon ship.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: AFAIK, DS9 happens after TNG, or at least after Picard returns from being Borg... And given the Dominion War arc, We know that Voyager is generally concurrent with DS9, right?
Excluding time travel, Enterprise was the earliest on the timeline in 2151. TOS was set about 110 years later and TNG/DS9/Voy was set about 100 years after that.
Of the last three, TNG started in 1987 and ran seven years. DS9 started during TNG's 6th season and was essentially a spin-off show. They moved O'Brien from TNG to DS9 in DS9's pilot episode and eventually even brought Worf over. Voyager started in DS9's 3rd season, after TNG went off the air and ran for seven years. No actors/characters were moved although the pilot episode had scenes on DS9. All three shows ran in the TNG "era" and were concurrent with each other and lasted around 14 years on TV with DS9 seasons overlapping TNG and Voyager.
I meant in universe... I knew which order they were aired in. However, I must thank you because I didn't know just how close together they were. 14 solid years is quite a long time for new ST to be on air, methinks that may have played some role (along with theme song and ultra-corny writing) in killing Enterprise early.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: AFAIK, DS9 happens after TNG, or at least after Picard returns from being Borg... And given the Dominion War arc, We know that Voyager is generally concurrent with DS9, right?
Excluding time travel, Enterprise was the earliest on the timeline in 2151. TOS was set about 110 years later and TNG/DS9/Voy was set about 100 years after that.
Of the last three, TNG started in 1987 and ran seven years. DS9 started during TNG's 6th season and was essentially a spin-off show. They moved O'Brien from TNG to DS9 in DS9's pilot episode and eventually even brought Worf over. Voyager started in DS9's 3rd season, after TNG went off the air and ran for seven years. No actors/characters were moved although the pilot episode had scenes on DS9. All three shows ran in the TNG "era" and were concurrent with each other and lasted around 14 years on TV with DS9 seasons overlapping TNG and Voyager.
I meant in universe... I knew which order they were aired in. However, I must thank you because I didn't know just how close together they were. 14 solid years is quite a long time for new ST to be on air, methinks that may have played some role (along with theme song and ultra-corny writing) in killing Enterprise early.
Enterprise killed itself by being ultimately terrible. Terrible characters - terrible tech- terrible budget. Reminds me of sea-quest in space - though that is quite and unfair insult to sea-quest - which is at least 3 levels of magnitude better than Enterprise. Still - it's a common joke among trekies that Enterprise isn't even actually startrek. Discovery will likely be thought of the same way after it flops after 1-2 seasons.
There's a reasonably common idea in sci fi of humanity sending the best and brightest into space to colonise the galaxy, leaving Earth to become a backwater populated by those without the money or gumption to leave.
Enterprise bravely decided to invert that, and apparently manned Starfleet with w crew of morons who thought the best way to forge an interstellar multicultural civilisation was to blunder around insulting people and breaking things.
The TNG/DS9/Voy era was essentially Sesame Street for adults. Seriously. Go back and look how many episodes were about someone learning to cooperate. Worf, Quark, and Neelix were little more than muppet monsters.
Breotan wrote: The TNG/DS9/Voy era was essentially Sesame Street for adults. Seriously. Go back and look how many episodes were about someone learning to cooperate. Worf, Quark, and Neelix were little more than muppet monsters.
Pff, yeah, what rubes eh, who needs a positive story about cooperation or fellowship or science or tolerance, if it doesn't have big burly man-men in big clanky death-armour murdering half the galaxy or a leather-clad edgelord antihero reminding everyone that life is essentially meaningless and we're all going to die and be forgotten, who'd want to watch it?
Xenomancers wrote: Not that I don't think a split neck design looks cool. I just think it would actually hurt structural integrity compared to the sovereign class.
Well lets be fair. The structural integrity of all Federation ships is senseless. The closest they ever came to a sensible efficient design (within the confines of the "rules" established in Universe) are the Oberth and Miranda classes. And thats of course ignoring all the ships that break the rules used to justify the odd look of Federation ships, like Birds of Prey.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Looking at the current political climate...maybe we need another fourteen years of Sesame Street for adults teaching people how to cooperate.
Exactly. Humanity really does seem to have gone downhill since the end of Trek on TV.
Xenomancers wrote: Not that I don't think a split neck design looks cool. I just think it would actually hurt structural integrity compared to the sovereign class.
Well lets be fair. The structural integrity of all Federation ships is senseless. The closest they ever came to a sensible efficient design (within the confines of the "rules" established in Universe) are the Oberth and Miranda classes. And thats of course ignoring all the ships that break the rules used to justify the odd look of Federation ships, like Birds of Prey.
You make a good point - it always did bother me that federation ships are so terribly constructed and ships designed for spaceflight have wings. Though the newer DS9 and later designs seems to at least have some understanding of balance/center of gravy/ and structural integrity (at least to the point that an inertial dampner could smooth out any issue.)
I like the look of the Akira class, Saber class, Steamrunner class, and sovereign class (the first contact ships). The sovereign being a massive improvement over the galaxy in terms of balance - I'd like to see that kinda of look to continue to evolve into even more efficient shapes. How ships like the intrepid and galaxy ever made it past the draft phase just amazes me.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Looking at the current political climate...maybe we need another fourteen years of Sesame Street for adults teaching people how to cooperate.
Exactly. Humanity really does seem to have gone downhill since the end of Trek on TV.
I blame people that leave YouTube comments! You should have to have passed anger management training before being allowed to comment on YouTube.
Breotan wrote: The TNG/DS9/Voy era was essentially Sesame Street for adults. Seriously. Go back and look how many episodes were about someone learning to cooperate. Worf, Quark, and Neelix were little more than muppet monsters.
Pff, yeah, what rubes eh, who needs a positive story about cooperation or fellowship or science or tolerance, if it doesn't have big burly man-men in big clanky death-armour murdering half the galaxy or a leather-clad edgelord antihero reminding everyone that life is essentially meaningless and we're all going to die and be forgotten, who'd want to watch it?
*Mic drop* lol
For real though - Startrek isn't sesame street. It's just a scifi space drama and whatever else it wants to be at the same time.
Xenomancers wrote: Not that I don't think a split neck design looks cool. I just think it would actually hurt structural integrity compared to the sovereign class.
Well lets be fair. The structural integrity of all Federation ships is senseless. The closest they ever came to a sensible efficient design (within the confines of the "rules" established in Universe) are the Oberth and Miranda classes. And thats of course ignoring all the ships that break the rules used to justify the odd look of Federation ships, like Birds of Prey.
You make a good point - it always did bother me that federation ships are so terribly constructed and ships designed for spaceflight have wings. Though the newer DS9 and later designs seems to at least have some understanding of balance/center of gravy/ and structural integrity (at least to the point that an inertial dampner could smooth out any issue.)
I like the look of the Akira class, Saber class, Steamrunner class, and sovereign class (the first contact ships). The sovereign being a massive improvement over the galaxy in terms of balance - I'd like to see that kinda of look to continue to evolve into even more efficient shapes. How ships like the intrepid and galaxy ever made it past the draft phase just amazes me.
I seem to recall, and maybe I'm wrong since I haven't been able to find it again, but I seem to recall a group of fairly famous scientists on a TV show, youtube doc or something, talking about the aerodynamics of spaceflight, and they were talking about how Star Trek was a series that actually got it "right" insofar as they are in space and making major maneuvers/movements up there. Perhaps by mentioning it, someone else here has seen it, or knows the thing I'm talking about....
Anywho... all that said, whether their flight adjustment abilities are realistic, I find their designs to be weird from a tactics stand point. I had always thought that dealing with the larger class federation ships would be easy... but it wasn't until Beyond that we saw a group deal with them the way I thought everyone would try to: rip off the nacelles, aim for the neck, and they are literally sitting ducks.
Anywho... all that said, whether their flight adjustment abilities are realistic, I find their designs to be weird from a tactics stand point. I had always thought that dealing with the larger class federation ships would be easy... but it wasn't until Beyond that we saw a group deal with them the way I thought everyone would try to: rip off the nacelles, aim for the neck, and they are literally sitting ducks.
Thats because they have shields. You have to go through the shield to get to that effectively, and if you're strong enough to go through the shields you can generally blow the ship apart.
STOS was far better at that. While there may be secondary damage, if the shields held you were ok. Once the shields were gone they (or you) could just blow them away. While plot armor means that space battles take a long time, you'll note throughout STOS/TNG/DS9 if there is no plot armor and no shields then whatever got shot went boom in a big puffy cloud of CGI.
If you think about, they are throwing antimatter weapons around. While they used technospeak we're at least talking multimeg level damage.
Yeah, the shields are the ship when it comes to combat. It was only after years of TNG constantly having shields drop to increase drama that the physical shape of the ships really became an issue...and then we got the defiant, the first actual warship in the Federation arsenal, also the first ship with no neck or pylons.
Remember, Starfleet is not the military*. They don't make ships for war. The real story here is that Klingon ships are all designed for battle and all have longer, skinnier necks.
Anywho... all that said, whether their flight adjustment abilities are realistic, I find their designs to be weird from a tactics stand point. I had always thought that dealing with the larger class federation ships would be easy... but it wasn't until Beyond that we saw a group deal with them the way I thought everyone would try to: rip off the nacelles, aim for the neck, and they are literally sitting ducks.
Thats because they have shields. You have to go through the shield to get to that effectively, and if you're strong enough to go through the shields you can generally blow the ship apart.
STOS was far better at that. While there may be secondary damage, if the shields held you were ok. Once the shields were gone they (or you) could just blow them away. While plot armor means that space battles take a long time, you'll note throughout STOS/TNG/DS9 if there is no plot armor and no shields then whatever got shot went boom in a big puffy cloud of CGI.
If you think about, they are throwing antimatter weapons around. While they used technospeak we're at least talking multimeg level damage.
Sheilds protect you from torps and phasers. They don't protect you from stresses of spaceflight/inertia forces/ gravity wells. Then also consider shields on startrek seem to fail quite often under fire - even when sheilds hold there is a massive stress on the ships structure. I still think solid structure should be included in their designs.
Remember, Starfleet is not the military*. They don't make ships for war. The real story here is that Klingon ships are all designed for battle and all have longer, skinnier necks.
I'd argue that the desired ambush tactics of the Klingons make the necks a bit less of an issue initially... but as engagements become more protracted, and you have no cloak, yeah... I agree that can be a problem.
The Romulans actually seem to be the best designed for war and space. While the D'deridex may not be maneuverable, it doesn't suffer from having a long weedy neck, or thin spoiler wing pylons.
Sheilds protect you from torps and phasers. They don't protect you from stresses of spaceflight/inertia forces/ gravity wells. Then also consider shields on startrek seem to fail quite often under fire - even when sheilds hold there is a massive stress on the ships structure. I still think solid structure should be included in their designs.
Doesn't the deflector dish create a sort of bubble that is the warp field?? Like, doesn't it sort of act as a shield against the "space wind resistance" encountered during warp speed?
Sheilds protect you from torps and phasers. They don't protect you from stresses of spaceflight/inertia forces/ gravity wells.
Here's where technobabble comes in because ST doesn't follow physics. If they did every ship ever would instantly blow apart the moment it accelerated from the godlike level of G's, hence "inertial dampeners."
What are the Gs related to accelerating to 50% of lightspeed in 30 seconds?
Ensis Ferrae wrote: Doesn't the deflector dish create a sort of bubble that is the warp field?? Like, doesn't it sort of act as a shield against the "space wind resistance" encountered during warp speed?
Yes (at least, if I understand you correctly). The navigational deflector's job is to divert space dust and debris out of the ship's path so it doesn't hit the ship.
Or at least that's the theory, in practice it's role is shoot plot beams at stuff and act as a the ex machina part of "deus ex machina".
Ensis Ferrae wrote: Doesn't the deflector dish create a sort of bubble that is the warp field?? Like, doesn't it sort of act as a shield against the "space wind resistance" encountered during warp speed?
Yes (at least, if I understand you correctly). The navigational deflector's job is to divert space dust and debris out of the ship's path so it doesn't hit the ship.
Or at least that's the theory, in practice it's role is shoot plot beams at stuff and act as a the ex machina part of "deus ex machina".
Talking about potentially questionable design decisions:
I clipped that from the Trekyards podcast VOD on YouTube. On the right is a fan-made 3D model based on the wireframe from the teaser trailer(caveat, it was made on the assumption it was a pre-TOS ship and so when adding the hull details the author tried for a hybrid between the NX and Constitution styles and had assumed the saucer was roughly NX sized). It has been scaled based on numbers the podcast hosts were ostensibly given by actual Discovery production staff.
That right there to its left is the USS Enterprise, Constitution class, ie the premiere, most advanced, main heavy cruiser design of Starfleet in the Discovery/TOS era.
Ugh. Now I'm actually hoping the show has a stupid time travel story arc in it just to explain why a clearly 24th century ship(in terms of both design and scale) is in a show that supposedly takes place 10 years before TOS. Because the alternative is the burbling numpties have decided to use the mental HUEGscale from the JJTrek films. And that TOS design style just isn't "kewl" enough so they had to edgelord things up a little with knifeblade-style nacelles and random greebles sticking out of the hull.
Sheilds protect you from torps and phasers. They don't protect you from stresses of spaceflight/inertia forces/ gravity wells.
Here's where technobabble comes in because ST doesn't follow physics. If they did every ship ever would instantly blow apart the moment it accelerated from the godlike level of G's, hence "inertial dampeners."
There's also the Structural Integrity Field, designed to help keep everything together.
Ugh. Now I'm actually hoping the show has a stupid time travel story arc in it just to explain why a clearly 24th century ship(in terms of both design and scale) is in a show that supposedly takes place 10 years before TOS. Because the alternative is the burbling numpties have decided to use the mental HUEGscale from the JJTrek films. And that TOS design style just isn't "kewl" enough so they had to edgelord things up a little with knifeblade-style nacelles and random greebles sticking out of the hull.
That reminds me of the complaints I used to read about Enterprise before it was even on the air, where people complained about how it looked too high tech, as if we should still be using 1960s-era special effects, models, and budgets. Certainly, retain the TOS-era aesthetic, but not the 1960s problems.
I thought the main complaint about the NX was that is was clearly just the Akira with a minimum effort allowed to differentiate it. (My understanding is that the producers wanted to straight-up use the Akira as is, but the SFX guys volunteered to spend time changing the ship to look at least a little bit unique.)
Sheilds protect you from torps and phasers. They don't protect you from stresses of spaceflight/inertia forces/ gravity wells.
Here's where technobabble comes in because ST doesn't follow physics. If they did every ship ever would instantly blow apart the moment it accelerated from the godlike level of G's, hence "inertial dampeners."
There's also the Structural Integrity Field, designed to help keep everything together.
Ugh. Now I'm actually hoping the show has a stupid time travel story arc in it just to explain why a clearly 24th century ship(in terms of both design and scale) is in a show that supposedly takes place 10 years before TOS. Because the alternative is the burbling numpties have decided to use the mental HUEGscale from the JJTrek films. And that TOS design style just isn't "kewl" enough so they had to edgelord things up a little with knifeblade-style nacelles and random greebles sticking out of the hull.
That reminds me of the complaints I used to read about Enterprise before it was even on the air, where people complained about how it looked too high tech, as if we should still be using 1960s-era special effects, models, and budgets. Certainly, retain the TOS-era aesthetic, but not the 1960s problems.
Well, for a start, the main reason people were "complaining" about Enterprise because the show didn't even try to modernise the existing descriptions of ships from the period, they just took the 3D model of the Akira class from the late TNG era, flipped it over, and re-greebled the nacelles and the hull a little.
Your last comment makes no sense. The TOS-era aesthetic is exactly what's at issue with this new ship, in that it doesn't fit within it at all. Desiging new ships that fit into that aesthetic is hardly impossible - the USS Archer from the Vanguard novels is highly unusual by the standards of what we saw in the TV show, but it looks right because it has all the appropriate design cues. Same for the USS Sentinel or the Ares class. And yes, that means smoother hulls, round nacelles with the spinny-glowy orange bussards, and a scale that's consistent with the idea that the Constitution class is a heavy cruiser. It also means blue shrieking phasers, bright primary colours, big chunky flip communicators and all the rest. We already know what the TOS aesthetic looks like with modern tech behind the scenes, it looks like the special effects on the Remastered TOS blurays, or the exterior shots from the DS9 episode set in TOS times. IE it looks a lot like TOS with a better resolution.
If the people in charge of the shows think that the TOS look is too dated, then the blindingly obvious solution was to not make a TOS era show. But they chose to do exactly that, and so now if they also choose to heavily redesign that era's aesthetic any criticism they get for that choice is not merely justified but entirely deserved.
Well, for a start, the main reason people were "complaining" about Enterprise because the show didn't even try to modernise the existing descriptions of ships from the period, they just took the 3D model of the Akira class from the late TNG era, flipped it over, and re-greebled the nacelles and the hull a little.
Many of the people I saw were complaining that the show looked too high tech, not because of the ship's model, but literally because they had 2000s technology instead of 1960s technology in the show's sets, props, etc.
Your last comment makes no sense. The TOS-era aesthetic is exactly what's at issue with this new ship, in that it doesn't fit within it at all. Desiging new ships that fit into that aesthetic is hardly impossible - the USS Archer from the Vanguard novels is highly unusual by the standards of what we saw in the TV show, but it looks right because it has all the appropriate design cues. Same for the USS Sentinel or the Ares class. And yes, that means smoother hulls, round nacelles with the spinny-glowy orange bussards, and a scale that's consistent with the idea that the Constitution class is a heavy cruiser. It also means blue shrieking phasers, bright primary colours, big chunky flip communicators and all the rest. We already know what the TOS aesthetic looks like with modern tech behind the scenes, it looks like the special effects on the Remastered TOS blurays, or the exterior shots from the DS9 episode set in TOS times. IE it looks a lot like TOS with a better resolution.
It actually makes a lot of sense if you look at what I actually said. My point is that I feel you, like many others, are confusing TOS aesthetic elements with 1960s limitations.
To make this abundantly clear (since your reply implies I approved of the design on the far right when, in fact, I said no such thing), I do not approve of that design for use in this particular era.
I do not, however, need to see any extremely dated elements. Your examples of the modern versions in DS9 and the remastered episodes are not the best examples, as those versions still had to retain all of the elements (aesthetics and even the 1960s limitations, but, as you say, just "higher resolution"), because the rest of the show was still the original.
Yodhrin wrote: Your last comment makes no sense. The TOS-era aesthetic is exactly what's at issue with this new ship, in that it doesn't fit within it at all. Desiging new ships that fit into that aesthetic is hardly impossible - the USS Archer from the Vanguard novels is highly unusual by the standards of what we saw in the TV show, but it looks right because it has all the appropriate design cues. Same for the USS Sentinel or the Ares class. And yes, that means smoother hulls, round nacelles with the spinny-glowy orange bussards, and a scale that's consistent with the idea that the Constitution class is a heavy cruiser.
Or, for a marginally more recent example, the slew of TOS era ships STO has come out with this last year. I don't recall hering any complaints about those looking bad (did see a few about the Perseus class being a bit too Ares-esque).
Yodhrin wrote: Your last comment makes no sense. The TOS-era aesthetic is exactly what's at issue with this new ship, in that it doesn't fit within it at all. Desiging new ships that fit into that aesthetic is hardly impossible - the USS Archer from the Vanguard novels is highly unusual by the standards of what we saw in the TV show, but it looks right because it has all the appropriate design cues. Same for the USS Sentinel or the Ares class. And yes, that means smoother hulls, round nacelles with the spinny-glowy orange bussards, and a scale that's consistent with the idea that the Constitution class is a heavy cruiser.
Or, for a marginally more recent example, the slew of TOS era ships STO has come out with this last year. I don't recall hering any complaints about those looking bad (did see a few about the Perseus class being a bit too Ares-esque).
Absolutely, indeed this discussion has just got me back into STO and playing through the Agents of Yesterday content in my dinky wee Pioneer-class U.S.S. Kelly(named for Commander Kelly of the lost Ares V Mars mission as seen on Voyager, because yes I'm that much of a nerd) was probably the most fun I've ever had in that game. They did an excellent job adding new things while retaining the original aesthetic completely.
Well, for a start, the main reason people were "complaining" about Enterprise because the show didn't even try to modernise the existing descriptions of ships from the period, they just took the 3D model of the Akira class from the late TNG era, flipped it over, and re-greebled the nacelles and the hull a little.
Many of the people I saw were complaining that the show looked too high tech, not because of the ship's model, but literally because they had 2000s technology instead of 1960s technology in the show's sets, props, etc.
Your last comment makes no sense. The TOS-era aesthetic is exactly what's at issue with this new ship, in that it doesn't fit within it at all. Desiging new ships that fit into that aesthetic is hardly impossible - the USS Archer from the Vanguard novels is highly unusual by the standards of what we saw in the TV show, but it looks right because it has all the appropriate design cues. Same for the USS Sentinel or the Ares class. And yes, that means smoother hulls, round nacelles with the spinny-glowy orange bussards, and a scale that's consistent with the idea that the Constitution class is a heavy cruiser. It also means blue shrieking phasers, bright primary colours, big chunky flip communicators and all the rest. We already know what the TOS aesthetic looks like with modern tech behind the scenes, it looks like the special effects on the Remastered TOS blurays, or the exterior shots from the DS9 episode set in TOS times. IE it looks a lot like TOS with a better resolution.
It actually makes a lot of sense if you look at what I actually said. My point is that I feel you, like many others, are confusing TOS aesthetic elements with 1960s limitations.
To make this abundantly clear (since your reply implies I approved of the design on the far right when, in fact, I said no such thing), I do not approve of that design for use in this particular era.
I do not, however, need to see any extremely dated elements. Your examples of the modern versions in DS9 and the remastered episodes are not the best examples, as those versions still had to retain all of the elements (aesthetics and even the 1960s limitations, but, as you say, just "higher resolution"), because the rest of the show was still the original.
Either you're actually arguing for the exact same thing I'm arguing for in different terms, or I literally have no idea what you're on about.
Lets try a different tack to check that: Rogue One - in regards to using the aesthetic of the original trilogy, do you think it was good, or too slavishly adherent to the design conventions imposed by films being made in the 70's & 80's? Because that is a perfect example of what I mean when I say they should respect and recreate the TOS aesthetic. As to "dated elements" - as far as I'm concerned respecting the TOS aesthetic may well require retaining some "dated elements", but that is the price you pay if you want to use a classic IP without doing a reboot. And if they were doing a reboot, this whole discussion would be moot - people can critique the aesthetic of the JJTrek films, but you have to do that on their own merits as it's pretty clear they wanted a modernised, "Apple Store Starfleet" look and were using TOS as a jumping off point not an end point - but they're not, they are explicitly claiming this is proper, Prime Timeline, right-before-real-Kirk TOS-style Star Trek, and that means I want it to look like TOS.
They don't have to make the monsters and aliens out of papier mache, they don't have to use shonky projectors or CRT monitors for the viewscreens, but if they're not doing the geometric, primary-coloured, stark, 60's retrofuturistic aesthetic then they're not really doing TOS, that's all I'm saying.
Communicators are large, fliptop phones like sizes because they need to have quantum entanglement containers to communicate with show in real time at super luminal speeds.
Tricorders are large and body because they're an entire hospitals MRI and investigation suite... In a box.
The monitors are not super clear because they're computer generated visual representations of abstract sensor data.
Either you're actually arguing for the exact same thing I'm arguing for in different terms, or I literally have no idea what you're on about.
Lets try a different tack to check that: Rogue One - in regards to using the aesthetic of the original trilogy, do you think it was good, or too slavishly adherent to the design conventions imposed by films being made in the 70's & 80's? Because that is a perfect example of what I mean when I say they should respect and recreate the TOS aesthetic. As to "dated elements" - as far as I'm concerned respecting the TOS aesthetic may well require retaining some "dated elements", but that is the price you pay if you want to use a classic IP without doing a reboot. And if they were doing a reboot, this whole discussion would be moot - people can critique the aesthetic of the JJTrek films, but you have to do that on their own merits as it's pretty clear they wanted a modernised, "Apple Store Starfleet" look and were using TOS as a jumping off point not an end point - but they're not, they are explicitly claiming this is proper, Prime Timeline, right-before-real-Kirk TOS-style Star Trek, and that means I want it to look like TOS.
They don't have to make the monsters and aliens out of papier mache, they don't have to use shonky projectors or CRT monitors for the viewscreens, but if they're not doing the geometric, primary-coloured, stark, 60's retrofuturistic aesthetic then they're not really doing TOS, that's all I'm saying.
I think you missed another, much better example. Alien Isolation. people loved that game, and praised it sticking to the original two movie's visuals and style, both of which were aggressively 80s. You can make TOS with better visuals and nicer props and whatever, but you still have to make it look like TOS.
Sure, thanks to shoestring budgets that only got smaller. Even so, something about the production design clicked with viewers - our imaginations were/are still able to overlook or look beyond the crud, chintsy superficial level and see the sets and props and costumes on the level of what they signify. It's a bit like comparing SNES-era graphics in FFIII/VI to FF XV on PS4. Everything is so explicit with current production design and there's no getting around that. The bar is a whole lot higher. Fortunately, the designers could lean heavily on references to TOS like the Abramsverse designers do. I hate those movies but (some of) the production design is neat and it's about the only part of that series that "feels" like actual Star Trek.
No. I'm serious. TOS looked like gak. Comparing it to Alien there's a huge difference. Alien's sets looked like an actual place that carried an atmosphere. It didn't need the characters to make sense.
TOS' sets were little more than flashing light panels thrown together with mountains of plaster and bland. The set design in TOS was terrible then and it looks so much worse now. I'll never understand the obsession people have with the crude and terrible design of just about everything in TOS. Just because your imagination can overlook it doesn't change that the entire thing looked fake. It worked for TOS a bit because TOS was very campy at times, but Star Trek has largely moved past camp. It reminds me of every time a Power Rangers TV series tried to become mature and deep, and then instantly fell flat on its face because the giant robot was so obviously a guy in cardboard boxes.
You say Star Trek has moved past camp; I'd say it has moved past relevance. Star Trek only ever mattered because it was about the adventure of discovery. It didn't need to be as impressive as, for example, Alien because it appealed directly to the imagination. Alien needed realism because the point was to frighten you. The point of Star Trek was to entertain in an inspiring way.
I don't think Star Trek could get by today with the kind of budget we see these days with, for example, Adult Swim shows. I'm not advocating that anyone try. The point is, a production design inspired by TOS would not necessarily go amiss just because TOS itself was so hamstrung by its meager budget.
LordofHats wrote: It worked for TOS a bit because TOS was very campy at times, ...
I would say it worked for TOS because of when it was made, frankly. Peoples' expectations for the quality of TV show sets were considerably lower back then... Viewers weren't expecting Movie-quality production from TV shows in the '70s.
It also worked because the sets were ultimately just a backdrop, and stories tended to be far more about the people than the scenery.
LordofHats wrote: No. I'm serious. TOS looked like gak. Comparing it to Alien there's a huge difference. Alien's sets looked like an actual place that carried an atmosphere. It didn't need the characters to make sense.
TOS' sets were little more than flashing light panels thrown together with mountains of plaster and bland. The set design in TOS was terrible then and it looks so much worse now. I'll never understand the obsession people have with the crude and terrible design of just about everything in TOS. Just because your imagination can overlook it doesn't change that the entire thing looked fake. It worked for TOS a bit because TOS was very campy at times, but Star Trek has largely moved past camp. It reminds me of every time a Power Rangers TV series tried to become mature and deep, and then instantly fell flat on its face because the giant robot was so obviously a guy in cardboard boxes.
It's almost as if people can have different taste in design. But no, of course not, that's impossible, once LordofHats speaks, thus is made the law for all time and in all realities, oh woe unte ye who disobeys even in thought
Seriously though, you're pretty far off the mark. A lot of the execution of the aesthetic in TOS looked off because of the budget or the material constraints of the time, but to pretend that the actual design is uniquely awful and the show only looks the way it did because of those restrictions is farcical given the trends in futurist design contemporaneous with the show. Bold geometric shapes, bright colours, clean smooth surfaces, and minimalist computing technology were the fashion, and you see it over and over in other sci-fi TV of the 60's & 70's, on novel cover artwork of that era and so forth.
Now, you can dislike mid-20thC retrofuturism as a style, but you don't get to pretend it never existed.
Regardless though, even if we accept your hilarious attempts to argue that the TOS aesthetic is objectively bad and only exists because they didn't have or couldn't afford better - and? So? Well? How does that undermine the core point that if you're going to do a straight-up prequel - not a reboot - in an established setting with an established aesthetic(and the TOS aesthetic is well established in the fiction to extend much farther than 10 years before the actual original show's story) and you want to trade on the love that fans have for the thing you're prequel'ing, then you should bloody well respect the source material aesthetic included.
If CBS wanted to redesign established stuff they had two choices - make a post-Voyager sequel, or do a full-on JJ-style reboot of the franchise on TV. They chose instead to make a direct prequel to TOS, so they should have been willing to deal with the constraints that choice imposes on them creatively.
Yodhrin wrote: Now, you can dislike mid-20thC retrofuturism as a style, but you don't get to pretend it never existed.
I never claimed it didn't exist...
I said it looked like crap cause it does. It's not 1967 anymore. A giant panel of blinking lights might have seemed futuristic then, but it makes zero sense now. There were more buttons on some of those TOS consoles than an entire school computer lab. They had wood paneling right off of a Chrysler Town and Country! It's not that it's objectively bad. It's just dated. The only reason to bring it back is to write a love letter to golden age science fiction, which is something I don't think anyone involved in Discovery is going for. I'm not talking about the budget. Watching a show that supposed to be set in the future but looks like Colossus is bizarre.
Maybe Abrams went overboard with the bloom effects but at least the set pieces seemed like they were still in the future and not from the yesteryear of 1970 (I'll agree with Manchu on that). I don't understand the obsession. It's a piece of fiction, not holy Scripture. There's no reason not to update stuff to look futuristic when we've left what was once the future five decades in the past. Seriously. Did anyone here really expect that CBS was going to throw cash at the first new Star Trek series in 10 years (? something like that), and say "lets make it look like 1967"? It has nothing to do with my word being law (seriously what?). It's just the reality that it's 2017. No one was ever going to do a hard revival 50 year old aesthetics just to please the small number of hyper critical fans who are going to get worked up about that and who will probably find fault in any number of things anyway.
EDIT: At some point fans need to realize big budget productions aren't made to please them. It's made to appeal to a broader audience, and that broader audience is generally unconcerned with trivial things like whether or not a 2017 television series looks like it takes place before one from before my parents were out of diapers. It's TFA all over again. Some people complained the movie was too derivative from ANH, but the truth of the matter is that the film wasn't made for people who would take that negatively.
LordofHats wrote: My counter argument would be the fairly simple; TOS looked like gak.
Blasphemer! Heretic! Someone hold me back! You will pay for your many and varied blasphemies! Context in time is a thing.
Comparable TV shows were Laugh In, Gunsmoke, Twilight Zone, and slightly later Wild Wild West (one of the unsung originators of Steampunk). budgets were not large and frankly you're comparing a shoestring TV show against a big budget film.
If doing that you should compare the ST movies to Alien.
See, I thought the bridge of ST:ENT was a decent throwback to TOS, it had dials and buttons for days. They even had the periscope thing that T'Pol used occasionally that looked like the one used by Uhura on TOS (IIRC)
Granted, the exterior of the ship didn't hold up quite as well aesthetically, but I personally thought they got the bridge right, without being cheesy about it.
Agreed, Ensis. ENT looked futuristic without making TOS look backwards. TOS looks more futuristic than ENT, probably because ENT looks more "believable" than TOS. The tech of ENT was also explicitly, self-consciously far inferior to that seen in any other Star Trek series.
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Frazzled wrote: If doing that you should compare the ST movies to Alien.
ST:TMP had a production budget roughly 4x that of Alien. Visually, as well as narratively, ST:TMP is entirely forgettable - meanwhile Alien seared itself into popular consciousness. OTOH, TOS is arguably more iconic than Alien. And yet TOS was cheap as chips. The look of TOS may hold no appeal to LoH personally, but it connected to the popular imagination in a huge way. And all subsequent Trek sort of proves that throwing money up on the screen is not the answer (Wrath of Khan is the cheapest ST film).
I disagree that TMP was entirely forgettable. The Enterprise redesign was an instant classic seared into the popular culture with her introduction via the Kirk Gaze. Sadly, the ending revelation about V'Ger is also something we can't forget.
Manchu wrote: The look of TOS may hold no appeal to LoH personally, but it connected to the popular imagination in a huge way. And all subsequent Trek sort of proves that throwing money up on the screen is not the answer (Wrath of Khan is the cheapest ST film).
TOS is iconic for what it is not how it looks. Its not about how much money gets thrown at the screen. It's about set design that looks like it is from the past because it is. I'm sitting here with a keyboard and two monitors, and this is more technologically advanced than what I've seen space warping humans who can travel through time by circling a sun happen to have supposedly 200 years from now.
The biggest takeaway from TMP was the ST theme by Goldsmith.
It is about the only thing I can remember from the film off the top of my head XD
There is a non-profit called New Starship that preserves TNG sets from the Enterprise D as an interactive technology museum. They let kids come in and play with the stuff. Problem is, visiting kids are bored because all the sci fi stuff from 1987 is just ... well, regular stuff in 2017.
And the beige wall-to-wall, yeech!
Point is, the design on these shows is always "the future of the present." The TOS sets incorporate certain late 60s assumptions about technology that we don't share.
My take on mid-23rd-century technology - or rather aesthetics - is that form triumphed over function. For example, engineering was more of a modern art gallery than just a room where you house the engine. (You can see some of this kind of attitude in TNG as well.) That's a rationalization. What really happened is, the TOS production designers didn't foresee the aesthetic repercussions of the transistor.
Manchu wrote: There is a non-profit called New Starship that preserves TNG sets from the Enterprise D as an interactive technology museum. They let kids come in and play with the stuff. Problem is, visiting kids are bored because all the sci fi stuff from 1987 is just ... well, regular stuff in 2017.
And the beige wall-to-wall, yeech!
I don't find that unsurprising. I thought it was cool when the original Enterprise prop went on display at the Air and Space Museum;
I love it, my dad loves it, my mom thinks its neat, but I don't imagine my five year old cousins find it all that impressive.
Engineering was actually going for a WWII naval ship feel. You can especially see it first season when you see crew lined up in work coveralls (and crew cut hair styles) semi-shouting orders.
Frazzled wrote: Engineering was actually going for a WWII naval ship feel. You can especially see it first season when you see crew lined up in work coveralls (and crew cut hair styles) semi-shouting orders.
I think you can see that on through most of the TOS based films as well (as in the Motion Picture - Undiscovered Country). Roddenberry was a navy man. It definitely showed. EDIT: Wait. I'm thinking of Heinlein aren't I XD
Yeah Army Air Corp. I was thinking Heinlein for some reason
Manchu wrote: Roddenberry hated the military feel of Wrath of Khan.
Wrath definitely had it harder than the rest of the stuff from the Kirk Era, but I think to a degree Roddenberry was a bit bitter he got booted from the production team and became an "executive consultant."
That's where it started and Nicholas Meyer's brought it back for STVI (a.k.a., "the other good ST movie"). II and VI are almost like an alternate universe. And frankly, I like that take best of all as far as ST goes.
That's where it started and Nicholas Meyer's brought it back for STVI (a.k.a., "the other good ST movie"). II and VI are almost like an alternate universe. And frankly, I like that take best of all as far as ST goes.
Yes, absolutely, those were excellent.
I liked Voyage Home though just for a nice fun film as well. And if you don't like that well then double dumb ass on you!*
*please don't hit the report button and watch the movie instead...
Right - so in the EpVIII thread, the inevitable canard about "just enjoy the movie" just came up. Thing is, a movie that is just supposed to be enjoyed as fluff is also supposed to set itself up as fluff. ST IV is a great example of that. Voyage Home is a simple, light piece of "Star Trek Unplugged."
Damn haters i wish you all red shirts! The ship looks less bad than i expected, when i saw the designs it just looked like a star destroyer with a saucer stuck to it.
Sheilds protect you from torps and phasers. They don't protect you from stresses of spaceflight/inertia forces/ gravity wells.
Here's where technobabble comes in because ST doesn't follow physics. If they did every ship ever would instantly blow apart the moment it accelerated from the godlike level of G's, hence "inertial dampeners."
What are the Gs related to accelerating to 50% of lightspeed in 30 seconds?
Technically - warp travel wouldn't produce any G forces - the ship is barely moving - the space around the ship is what is moving. Yet ST invalidates this all the time - ignoring how the tech would actually work if it were possible.
The premiere date for Star Trek: Discovery, the new CBS All Access series, is no longer May, CBS CEO Les Moonves revealed at a Morgan Stanley investors conference, according to Variety. The series will now debut ‘late summer, early fall,” according to the report. The series required “a lot of post production,” he said.
Production started in late January, with the first look at the production released via video (see “’Star Trek: Discovery’ Video”).
None of this bodes well for the production. It's entirely probable the studio is demanding changes but are they demands like what made Rogue One or demands like what made Suicide Squad?
Jason Isaacs has joined the cast of the new Star Trek: Discovery series as Captain Lorca. Isaacs may be best known for playing Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter series and recently starred in the Netflix series The OA. He joins a cast that includes: Sonequa Martin-Green (The Walking Dead), Michelle Yeoh (Marco Polo), James Frain (Gotham), Doug Jones (Hellboy) and Anthony Rapp (Rent). No confirmation on whether these castings are for regulars, recurring or guest spots.
Star Trek: Discovery is in production now. It was originally slotted to make a February debut, that got moved back to May and now a release date is unknown but expected to be in the fall.
I've always imagined Xander Berkeley (24, Boot at the End, Walking Dead) as the perfect Garth of Izar. He even looks a little like Steve Ihnat (the original Garth in ToS).
Breotan wrote: I've always imagined Xander Berkeley (24, Boot at the End, Walking Dead) as the perfect Garth of Izar. He even looks a little like Steve Ihnat (the original Garth in ToS).
Xenomancers wrote: Hes a fantastic actor - I really enjoyed his character in the patriot. This show will probably end his career though.
I dunno... doesn't seem to have hurt Picard or Kirk's careers... Other more side character type actors are a different story though. I personally think that he's established enough that this wont really hurt him.
Compel wrote: That I'm kind of curious about, actually.
Stewart essentially went from Picard to Xavier. Admittedly, he probably did a whole lot of theatre stuff I'm not aware of.
Shatner was what? Kirk to TJ Hooker to Boston Legal dude, with some smallish roles in between.
Patrick Stewart came from 'walking the boards' and still does so now, he is quite often on in plays in Stratford and London. Going back some he also played a role in I Claudius, alongside some of the theatre greats of our time; Derek Jacobi, John Hurt and Brian Blessed.
I did read in an interview that he actually viewed the bridge of the Enterprise as the stage of a theatre in terms of how he projected himself. It probably explains why he had such a presence and power on the screen. Funny to think that he had originally auditioned of the role of Data, but the producers instantly imagined him as Picard (it's another one of those great 'what ifs' I think, along with the role of the Terminator almost going to OJ Simpson!)
I believe when he first got the Picard role there was a certain amount of ire from the theatre community (some of whom looked down their noses at a TV series, as a lesser art form). Out of devilment he said that his entire theatre career had been so he could build to getting that kind of role, which I think caused a few heads to explode
I believe when he first got the Picard role there was a certain amount of ire from the theatre community (some of whom looked down their noses at a TV series, as a lesser art form). Out of devilment he said that his entire theatre career had been so he could build to getting that kind of role, which I think caused a few heads to explode
Although he also apparently didn't expect it to last... There was an interview a while back where he said that the initial drafts for the show looked terrible, and he took the part to get an expenses-paid trip to the US, expecting that the show would be cancelled after a few episodes.
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Compel wrote: Shatner was what? Kirk to TJ Hooker to Boston Legal dude, with some smallish roles in between.
He also hosted Rescue 911, wrote (maybe) some books, released some CDs, and God only knows what else. He might have spent a bit of time off-screen since Star Trek, but dude's been busy.
Xenomancers wrote: Hes a fantastic actor - I really enjoyed his character in the patriot. This show will probably end his career though.
I dunno... doesn't seem to have hurt Picard or Kirk's careers... Other more side character type actors are a different story though. I personally think that he's established enough that this wont really hurt him.
I don't mean that taking on a startrek series roll will end your career - Stewart and Shatner have done fine for themselves. The supporting rolls don't seem to do much else - Jordie did do reading rainbow - off the top of my head that's the only supporting character I've seen in another film/show (I'm sure there are others but nothing significant). I assume Issac's will be taking on the roll of the captain so I think hell be okay in that sense.
I mean taking on a role that dries up in the first season as a complete failure - that kills your career. I could be wrong about the show though - it could be a hit. I will give it a chance for sure.
I don't mean that taking on a startrek series roll will end your career - Stewart and Shatner have done fine for themselves. The supporting rolls don't seem to do much else - Jordie did do reading rainbow - off the top of my head that's the only supporting character I've seen in another film/show (I'm sure there are others but nothing significant). I assume Issac's will be taking on the roll of the captain so I think hell be okay in that sense.
Brent Spiner (data) was the mad scientist in the Independence Day films...
Will Wheaton plays Will Wheaton on TV
And I know Marina Sirtis (Troi) has a decent IMDB filmography, but I couldn't recall hardly anything she's done. I'm Sure Jonathan Frakes and Michael Dorn have done stuff sicne, but I couldn't tell ya what it is.
The Doctor from Voyager also played a recurring role in the Stargate series, and George Takei, aside from his gay-activist-internet-persona-thing, did much the same as Stewart and returned to do a lot of theater stuff after TOS.
The guy who played Q I've seen in other things as well.
And I know it's not Star Trek, but Nathan Fillion has done quite allright for himself since Firefly.
I don't mean that taking on a startrek series roll will end your career - Stewart and Shatner have done fine for themselves. The supporting rolls don't seem to do much else - Jordie did do reading rainbow - off the top of my head that's the only supporting character I've seen in another film/show (I'm sure there are others but nothing significant). I assume Issac's will be taking on the roll of the captain so I think hell be okay in that sense.
Brent Spiner (data) was the mad scientist in the Independence Day films...
Will Wheaton plays Will Wheaton on TV
And I know Marina Sirtis (Troi) has a decent IMDB filmography, but I couldn't recall hardly anything she's done. I'm Sure Jonathan Frakes and Michael Dorn have done stuff sicne, but I couldn't tell ya what it is.
Mad scientist dude - how did I forget that! Ofc Will Wheaton - notable appearances.
Think Marina Sirtis did some of the voice acting in Mass Effect (maybe the 2nd one?)
Will Wheaton also had a part in Dark Matter (should point out not playing himself!) He was also in a Star Trek themed The Weakest Link where he came across as a bit of a smarmy idiot Interestingly turns out Levar Burton (Laforge) is a rather intelligent chap..
Yeah, Star Trek doesn't really end your career, it usually means you don't have to bother with one anymore. Several years of a successful TV show makes you a good bit of money, and you get to ride the convention gravy train for life.
So the actress who's playing the lead character has kicked off the promo interviews for STD, and apparently we are getting "Star Trek: Universe - the Man of Steelening" afterall.
Yodhrin wrote: So the actress who's playing the lead character has kicked off the promo interviews for STD, and apparently we are getting "Star Trek: Universe - the Man of Steelening" afterall.
Yodhrin wrote: So the actress who's playing the lead character has kicked off the promo interviews for STD, and apparently we are getting "Star Trek: Universe - the Man of Steelening" afterall.
Because of course we are. Ugh.
What? Can you clarify further?
She was doing a presser about her being confirmed for the lead role and other than the usual "oh it's such an honour to work on such a storied and long-running franchise maximum mega-respect blah blah" platitudes the main thing she seemed keen to get across was that this will be "rawer" and "grittier" and "darker" Trek. IE, the Snyderification of sci-fi continues apace, because apparently everything has to be the BSG reboot now.
I don't think its possible to make a raw/gritty Star Trek. That would truly be different.
I want a trek with Space Ninjas. And Tequila. And the Federation beating the snot out of everyone else*
*I just realized I want Star Trek: Klingons! See the epic adventures of Kang and Korloff as they rampage across space, having galactic adventures, beating the Evil Federation bad guys, and getting the girl!
Frazzled wrote: I don't think its possible to make a raw/gritty Star Trek. That would truly be different.
I want a trek with Space Ninjas. And Tequila. And the Federation beating the snot out of everyone else*
*I just realized I want Star Trek: Klingons! See the epic adventures of Kang and Korloff as they rampage across space, having galactic adventures, beating the Evil Federation bad guys, and getting the girl!
Who knows it might be awesome, but I expect it will be written by people of the nuBSG school who'll want to write a whole series worth of In The Pale Moonlight-but-grittier-rawr etc. Honestly I never thought I'd say this but, I'm sad Fuller isn't involved any more. At least the early indications coming from him were that he intended to take the show back to a positive, utopian, intellectual tone even if the resulting show probably would have still been a bit too character-drama focused under him for my taste.
I kinda agree, Deep Space Nine should be the darkest and grittiest that Star Trek should get. - And lets not forget, DS9 can get VERY dark and gritty...
However, DS9 was dark and gritty with a point. Star Trek doesn't work if it doesn't have a point to it.
I had a theory about these points of Star Trek before.
Star Trek (The Original Series): It shows the viewers, the watchers an idea of the possibility that humanity can be good. A good man, almost
Star Trek The Next Generation: It explores further the idea of "what does a Good Man look like?"
Deep Space 9: "We know what a Good Man looks like, what does it take to become one? How do you live as one in a complex world?"
Star Trek stories are morality tales, that's their function. To make them dark and gritty... It's missing the point, unless they really are trying something like, "The Siege of AR-558" or "In the Pale Moonlight" where the point of them was to ask the questions, not necessarily provide the answers. And even then, to base a whole series around that, I don't think it works.
More than that though, Compel, and the reason I don't think DS9 stands up quite as well as others do, is that in the context of their time TOS and TNG were subversive.
People living in a modern context forget just how radical it was in 60's America to have a show like Trek with a black female bridge officer, an Asian-American Navigator, a Russian helmsman, and a mixed-race first officer, and to tell the stories it told through them. It obviously wasn't a perfect paragon of identity politics by modern standards, but again in the context of the 60's it was subversive.
They also forget, somehow, despite many of them being alive at the time, how radical it was to have a show in the 80's, the decade of consumption and capitalism, depicting a society that hadn't just solved the most obvious problems of capitalism but had abandoned it and moved on to a higher form of society based on ideals and self-improvement over material acquisition, and which depicted a version of the Federation and of Starfleet that had matured beyond the cowboy antics of Kirk's era.
The problem with DS9 was that, while it often overtook the previous Treks in a technical way -better written dialogue, better special effects, a better mix of episodic and serial storytelling- it stopped being subversive, because the answer to "how do you live as a good man in a complex world" looked suspiciously like American liberal(literal, not "leftist") centrism - the economic side of the Federation's advancement as a society was downplayed in favour of focusing even more on tolerance, the Ferengi turned from an embodiment of the inherent barbarism of capitalism into comedy sexist trogs reframed so their greed becomes a playful joke and the viewer is invited to dislike them mostly for their treatment of women, and the overall tone of the later arc is a ringing endorsement of "pragmatic" military interventionism. Regretfully(outwardly) pro-war, socially liberal, economically neoliberal was the sociopolitical context of the day, and as DS9 went on it reinforced, justified, or excused that context rather than subverting it.
I'm not saying DS9 turned into right-wing propaganda or anything, but as the writers strove to depict a "complex world" they lost the show's edge. In other words, DS9 spent less time criticising our real society and more criticising its own, and I don't watch Trek to see utopian optimism deconstructed and traduced.
For my money, DS9 peaked with Sisko in "Explorers". A Starfleet officer, almost broken by the loss of his spouse, finally finishes healing his damaged soul by applying his engineering skill to a project driven by his newfound appreciation for the local culture and through the love of his son, and in the process strikes a humiliating blow against an opponent of the Federation without ever raising a hand in anger. After that point, while there are a lot of episodes of good TV drama before DS9 finishes its run, there aren't very many episodes of good Trek, IMO anyway.
And from what we've seen so far, STD looks like being late-DS9 on steroids, with the added "benefit" of them deciding to "reinterpret" the aesthetic of the day and the appearance of several established alien races. Bleurgh.
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