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Sorry to keep banging on about the theme? But of all the streaming shows not to have “skip intro”, it would have to be this, wouldn’t it!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Something I am enjoying is the tech exploration. The crew clearly understand how it should all work, but the early ironing out of bugs and fine tuning works. After all, unlike La Forge or Chief O’Brien, they don’t have centuries of trial, error, refinement and improvement to fall back on.

And hey, it’s better than Voyager thus far.

The problem of the Temporal War was that the writers didn't really know where to go with it until they finally just scrap it to never talk about it again. In that way it's a little bit similar to the DS9 pilot where they open up all the conflicts with the Cardies and Bajorans only to come back to them 20 episodes later. The Bajoran arc never really clicked because despite Winn's character and outstanding acting, the bajorans themselves kept being boring, with the provisional government being some faceless and often useless institution overruled by the religious fanatic of the week.
Well, sticking to Enterprise, it's the 4th season that shows everything people actually wanted to see, and it's a shame that the series ended right when the first steps to building the federation began.
And while the Enterprise theme didn't have to grow on me, the Discovery theme certainly had to, and it did. I'd say it's the only good thing about the series, but still the weakest of all post-TOS intros (quite fitting for the weakest series...).

Thing is in DS9 a major story picked up fast to overshadow the Bajorans and did so in a "real" way that wasn't a temporal war or such. Heck the very fact that it did overshadow them was even part of the plot

Enterprise got seriously hobbled by studio interference as well.

Every Trek before it had many of the cast doing their own episodes (or y'know, Jonathan Frakes doing a whole movie), and by the time Enterprise rolled around, Paramount wanted that program dead so they could be evil corporate overlords.

There was a lot of trouble behind the scenes at the studio as well, which led to Trek as a product being shelved as well.

Enterprise just had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Honestly when you look at how studio executives seem to often make a hashup of things you'd think they'd realise that just trusting creatives to create awesome stuff works better than the suit-top-down approach

But how else do they earn their bonus?

Or something.

You a see the heavy studio hand in the opening credits: the Akiraprise. One of the most important decisions in preproduction was taken from the creatives and made by the dumbest person in the room.

Genuinely sorry, but I don’t follow?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Genuinely sorry, but I don’t follow?

The USS Akira was the most popular ship design from Star Trek First Contact.

They took Alex Jaeger's design and handed it to the Enterprise design team and said, make the Enterprise look like this, because the fans think this design is cool.

The design team balked as it didn't fit the esthetic of the Era, but the powers that be won out.

 Overread wrote:
I think something missing from the Vulcans (which honestly has been missing for a long time) is a sense of magical mystery about them.

You really only get that feeling in a few of the Original series and the films. Hints at it in TNG, but by DS9 and Voyager Vulcans are just "really stern serious people who might share a joke with you after you've beaten them down over several seasons"

There was an episode of SNW which really highlighted the flanderisation of Vulcans over time.

Members of the SNW crew get turned into Vulcans and immediately start acting emotionless and logical. Vulcans are not biologically emotionless or logical, it is a philosophy they follow and a lifetime of practice that leads to their devotion to logic. In fact, their emotions are much stronger than those experienced by humans.

We've seen what happens when a human feels how a Vulcan does, it reduced Picard to tears and uncontrolled emotional outbursts when he took on the burden of Sareks emotions.

Yeah they've forgotten that Vulcans are closer to Eldar from 40K. They REALLY engage like crazy.

Heck remember when Spock took off his shirt and fought hand to hand whilst in a mating ritual or something like that?

Something that on the surface looks more Klingon than Vulcan. Take away that dynamic and they are just that co-worker with a rod up their backside.

Include it and they are a race fighting against their own instincts; a boiling raging sea of emotions just bubbling away beneath the surface as they work hard every single day to hold back and keep themselves tamed.



That and things like mind-melds and nerve pinches. Which these days are treated like a video game ability (and everyone took a class point in nerve pinch). Remove the religious magical mystery from them - and - again you water them down to just that by-the-book guy.

That episode had a few funny moments, but was overall pretty bad because of how they depicted “Vulkans”.

Yeah, the Vulcan episode was so far the low point of SNW, pretty sad as the series had a nice start, but season 2 and even more so 3 were pretty rough. The writers established a nice crew but don't know what to do with them.

I'm currently watching DS9/Voy chronologically and 1996-98 really shows as the golden age of Trek. DS9 season 5 and 6 are just without comparison and Voyager at the same time reaches its zenith, too, with Distant Origin, Skorpion and year of hell. Also First Contact and Insurrection air at the same time.

Also, if memory serves? Vulcans are effing rock ‘ard when it comes to fisticuffs.

Individually and physically way stronger than a smelly hooman. Maybe more so than a Klingon?

There may be some head canon in this but my memory is that in the Star Trek universe most of the space faring races reached the warp drive/transporter tech level and then stalled, for like thousands of years.

Humans jumped from chemical rockets to warp drive in no time and kept pushing. And given our tendency to sometimes evolve into godlike psychic beings we ain't done yet.

The Vulkans et al, are afraid of us.

This is a great old screed on the horrors of human technology in Star Trek along with some Vulkan thoughts on it all that I’ve always loved. Warning for some profanity.

https://chamomilehasa.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/star-trek-humans.jpg

Ahh yeah I recall reading that and it does seem to make a kind of sense in the setting!

And yeah the Federation for the longest time was the big pusher on new technology; new frontiers and territory and more. Even the big empires like the Klingons, Cardassians, Romulans - all basically expanded and then came to a grinding halt. Meanwhile the Federation keeps pushing new boundaries!

Patton Oswald also being an irresistibly hot Vulcan in that episode tells us it's not a case of the writers misunderstanding Vulcans, but a conscious, active effort to mock them.

 AduroT wrote:
This is a great old screed on the horrors of human technology in Star Trek along with some Vulkan thoughts on it all that I’ve always loved. Warning for some profanity.

https://chamomilehasa.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/star-trek-humans.jpg

Which is why of all the Disco cast? I liked Tilly the best. She had that raw passion and genuine excitement.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Patton Oswald also being an irresistibly hot Vulcan in that episode tells us it's not a case of the writers misunderstanding Vulcans, but a conscious, active effort to mock them.

It wasn't that he was irresistibly hot, it was that he and Una had a chemistry that "clicked" far more than it should have. I've personally known women in my life that are most assuredly less than pretty but were able to reduce me to instant give-in just by virtue of showing up, so I get where they were coming from. I just think Patton Oswald was a piss poor choice to illustrate that.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
This is a great old screed on the horrors of human technology in Star Trek along with some Vulkan thoughts on it all that I’ve always loved. Warning for some profanity.

https://chamomilehasa.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/star-trek-humans.jpg

Which is why of all the Disco cast? I liked Tilly the best. She had that raw passion and genuine excitement.

The anti-Ensign Kim?

How did she gain rank faster than any other Trek character ever?

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
This is a great old screed on the horrors of human technology in Star Trek along with some Vulkan thoughts on it all that I’ve always loved. Warning for some profanity.

https://chamomilehasa.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/star-trek-humans.jpg

Which is why of all the Disco cast? I liked Tilly the best. She had that raw passion and genuine excitement.

The anti-Ensign Kim?

How did she gain rank faster than any other Trek character ever?

Wouldn't that actually be Kelvin-Kirk?

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

The anti-Ensign Kim?

How did she gain rank faster than any other Trek character ever?

Because Starfleet is based on merit and skill, especially in the post-collapse era of the later Discovery seasons.

3 years with combat experience in the Klingon War (a recipient of the Starfleet Medal of Honour), a very high level of engineering skill, and an aptitude for command would make anyone a candidate for rapid promotion.

Discovery has its flaws, but a main character getting promoted for being good at their job isn't one of them.

 Gert wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

The anti-Ensign Kim?

How did she gain rank faster than any other Trek character ever?

Because Starfleet is based on merit and skill, especially in the post-collapse era of the later Discovery seasons.

3 years with combat experience in the Klingon War (a recipient of the Starfleet Medal of Honour), a very high level of engineering skill, and an aptitude for command would make anyone a candidate for rapid promotion.

Discovery has its flaws, but a main character getting promoted for being good at their job isn't one of them.

Well, except for Burnham of course who did nothing but screw up and cry all the time and even started a war, yet they made her a Captain of all people. (Yeah, I dropped the series after that, it couldn't really get any worse).

Like I said, the series has flaws but the promotion of Tilly isn't one of them.