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 AduroT wrote:
DS9 has maybe too much Quark I think, but not excessively so.

He was always great on the station. Its when they started dragging him off to 'fix' the Ferengi/Ferenginar that it felt like a stretch.
It wasn't to his benefit, it wasn't even remotely his job or in his wheelhouse, and pretty much no one wanted him to do it, including himself.

As a not-particularly-successful barkeep/semi-criminal/criminal facilitator, he was great. As an unwilling social crusader, it was... odd.
And as the 'Magnificent Ferengi' episode showed, he knew a lot of nasty people that would have him, his brother and his mother quietly murdered, even if they did ultimately adopt some of the more profitable reforms.

Slipspace wrote:


We now have the ridiculous scenario where the crew is so poorly developed they have to make an ensign the XO, which is stupid beyond belief. Literally every other bridge officer outranks her, along with likely over half the rest of the ship and we're supposed to believe she commands enough respect to operate as the first officer?

The dumb thing, the truly dumb thing is... You are WRITERS, you control the vertical, you control the horizontal, if you want to move Tilly up you can set this up. Have her promoted in one episode, then kill another nameless officer and give her a temporary promotion, then have her demonstrate leadership skills, then make her first officer.

It's not quite as bad as Abrams having Kirk jump from court marshaled ensign to captain of the flagship in under an hour but it's pretty darn bad.

Unless of course Tilly's question about being promoted only because she's a yes woman pans out and she fails.

But that would probably lead to Burnham getting promoted back...

Some people use the excuse the Discovery decided to have a main character instead of being an ensemble. Which is fine.
The problem is, they chose a bad main character and, they never give you a break from them.
In Breaking Bad, we get plenty of diversions from Walter White and episodes not about him, in Star Wars Rebels, we get plenty of diversions from Ezra. the last episode that didnt have Micheal as a focus, was Sarues in S2.
People would be more than happy is discovery gave us a break from micheal.

No, no guys. Don't you remember that one episode from way back when Tily had to pretend to be the bad ass mirror universe self?

Surely that qualifies her for XO!

Well I enjoyed that.

Who doesn't like a good ol' fashion TNG episode of a debate around a conference table with an alien race with factions?

I'm not even joking. It was great.

Tilly as new XO....... Damn, they really DO need to develop the rest of the cast. Stamets initial reaction was right on the money.

I think the best argument agaisnt discovery I've seen was showing you a picture of long time people serving on the bridge and asking you who they where. no one knew because they wheren't developed AT ALL.

Their names are spoken so infrequently, that the only reason i know is that i pause alot on Amazon Prime.
Like I legit believe we have two characters(The Android Lady and lady with the breathing devices) where killed/abandoned was they had a Tasha Yar situation. Where they barely got any screentime, but had to be in tons of makeup just for their Bit Parts. So they wanted to leave.
Again we have a Trill symbiote in a human being haunted by their dead lover who is trans. HOW DOES THAT NOT GET ANY FOCUS BEYOND A "MAGICALLY SOLVED" b-plot.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

Their names are spoken so infrequently, that the only reason i know is that i pause alot on Amazon Prime.
Like I legit believe we have two characters(The Android Lady and lady with the breathing devices) where killed/abandoned was they had a Tasha Yar situation. Where they barely got any screentime, but had to be in tons of makeup just for their Bit Parts. So they wanted to leave.
Again we have a Trill symbiote in a human being haunted by their dead lover who is trans. HOW DOES THAT NOT GET ANY FOCUS BEYOND A "MAGICALLY SOLVED" b-plot.

Well, honestly a lot of reasons.

- It sounds like a lot of nonsense situations stacked together. (And I seriously hope you don't mean 'actually haunted' in a star trek show.)
- 'Magical' nonsense solutions sound like the only way out for something that sounds so convoluted and unnecessary.

- Dead love interests of secondary characters are pretty much the worst form of representation imaginable (barring actual hatemongering). If that's an actual goal, never do this. Pre-sorting them as 'under the bus' is a lot worse than screen time/make up providing an impetus for actors to be written out of the show. This kind of thing is a step back to vanilla 80s shows that have a gay or black character turn up, but they never have a love interest or significant other for the handful of episodes they're on, no matter how much time passes.
Just make the characters normal parts of the show and people's lives.

I mean haunted literally,cause they are. Their lover is dead, but they see them.
And it was solved by just having a chat with stamets, ergo, magically solved.
and i agree, its bad representation. But they went with it, least they could do is explore it and all its implications, like they did with the culber/stamets.

To change the subject I went on from First Contact to Star Trek 9: Insurrection...

Funny it's not bad, it's something else, just kind of mediocre and forgettable. The 1998 CGI for the space scenes doesn't help either.

Interesting that the first 1/3 of the film is, once again, the Picard and Data show.

Insurrection, eh? Here’s my hot take: the emergency maneuvering joystick is actually cool. Deal with it.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
To change the subject I went on from First Contact to Star Trek 9: Insurrection...

Funny it's not bad, it's something else, just kind of mediocre and forgettable. The 1998 CGI for the space scenes doesn't help either.

Interesting that the first 1/3 of the film is, once again, the Picard and Data show.

I found it dull and a big let down after First Contact but friends who are bigger Trek fans liked it because it was just a long Next Gen epsiode with bigger effects.

It’s not a Literally haunting, so don’t say it is. Their dead lover was the previous host of the Symbiote they’re carrying. I didn’t think it was supposed to work this way? Yeah it’s not I don’t know why you can see me like this. And it’s not Resolved, they just didn’t talk about it this episode. I’m sure we’ll see more of them because this is their new Wesley.

 AduroT wrote:
It’s not a Literally haunting, so don’t say it is. Their dead lover was the previous host of the Symbiote they’re carrying. I didn’t think it was supposed to work this way? Yeah it’s not I don’t know why you can see me like this. And it’s not Resolved, they just didn’t talk about it this episode. I’m sure we’ll see more of them because this is their new Wesley.

DS9 introduced the Rite of Emergence -

Memory Alpha wrote:The Rite of Emergence was a Trill rite that was performed by a joined Trill to bring forth the personality and memories of a previous host. This personality can then be interacted with by the current host.

This rite was used in 2375 by Ezri Dax to bring forth Joran Dax to help her investigate a number of mysterious deaths on board Deep Space 9. (DS9: "Field of Fire")

The Rite of Emergence was very similar to the Trill zhian'tara ritual, except the zhian'tara telepathically used other people's bodies as vessels and the Rite of Emergence solely took place in the host's mind. (DS9: "Facets", "Field of Fire")

But it seems the Tal symbiont has forgotten what it is...

I haven’t gotten that far yet in my rewatching of the series to remember exactly how that worked with Joran. In Discovery right now the former host is just always there but only she can see or hear them. She actively carries out conversations with them out loud but others would only see and hear her half of it.

Also yeah, as mentioned previously Discovery has kind of forgotten a several things about Trill. They don’t have the records of Riker being a host, as they reference no non-Trill has ever been one before. They also said they had almost zero viable hosts left despite DS9 saying some half the population was capable of hosting. Also they got weirdly mystical with them. When they got in one of those water pools to talk to the other Symbiotes, their bodies literally vanished in the shallow water and they went to some weird mind place thing. It was kind of dumb.

To be fair I'm ok with mystical stuff in ST - if anything its something they've lost over the years - Vulcans in the Original series movies were brimming with mystical stuff.


I can also see one case of a human taking a Trill symbiote being forgotten in history; though if I recall there were also complications in that so its not a long term viable solution. So even if it was remembered its not a full success story.

Plus one of the big story points that arose mostly after Jadzia died was that the Trill do practice a lot of self policing on how many can take a symbiote. Basically their government lies to them about how many of them are compatible, leading the general population to believe that its a very rare thing, when its potentially very common. It's buried in the DS9 episodes.


As for her being able to see the previous host, that certainly did happen in DS9 with both hosts of Dax - Jadzia got a family reunion style situation and Ezrie went on a mad killer hunt with one. So it can happen and there are rites/ways to enable it so its potentially that if something "went wrong" then the host could well see more of the past lives than they should normally. Having a very tight connection (former lover) might well be a major influencing part.

In short it all sounds very possible if played out right.

Yeah, I definitely feel their invoking that Ezri episode as the source behind what's going on with Adira (hey, my first guess was Amira... That's pretty good for Disco names).

But they're adding in wibbliness because of the human factor and former love.

Slipspace wrote:
We now have the ridiculous scenario where the crew is so poorly developed they have to make an ensign the XO, which is stupid beyond belief. Literally every other bridge officer outranks her, along with likely over half the rest of the ship and we're supposed to believe she commands enough respect to operate as the first officer?

There's an element that they're underdeveloped, but Discovery also seems to have a low-ranking crew - looking at Memory Alpha the bridge crew are all Ensigns or Lieutenant junior grade except for Lieutenant Nilsson. Commander Nhan left and Lieutenant Commander Airiam died. Jett Reno is a Commander and Paul Stamets & Hugh Culber are Lieutenant Commanders, but they're not bridge officers.

I know the government lies about the number of Trill who can be hosts, but it was the government telling Disco they had like none left and this non-Trill viable host was something to look into. If you lie to your people to not let them know how many can be hosts so they don’t start wars over them, you definitely don’t want anyone to know that non-Trill can host them. You would be telling your people there was always just a healthy number more than is required.

I think the main thing about Insurrection was how timid its ambition was.

The Space Village on Planet Hacky Sack looked like every other TNG Space Village/suburban outlet mall. The immortal villagers looked like every Hollywood extra. Their incredible physical skills were demonstrated by playing Hacky Sack. Their planet looked just like the Sierra Nevada, which we've all seen a million times.

I've seen more impressive displays in Bollywood dance numbers.




(Really I just wanted to see Kashmir Main)

The romance between Picard and um... Village Lady just felt forced, and poor Beverly was RIGHT THERE. But Riker and Deana's story was done so well maybe they didn't want to copy it.

Ah well. On to Star Trek 10: Nemesis!

Nemesis I think is underrated, overall.

Watched it for the first time in ages a few weeks back, and quite enjoyed it.

Main irk for me is Janeway being promoted to Admiral, as I really, really, really dislike her character. And I bet poor old Harry Kim remained an ensign.

“We have to get her out of the captain’s chair ASAP.”

“But how? She’s too popular to gakcan.”

“If only we could remove her in disgrace like all those admirals...”

!

I never disliked Janeway but she did sort of feel a touch more "head mistress" than "captain". That said I think Voyager had some issues in that they sort of wanted a big overarching story, but at the same time wanted lots of independent stories that didn't have to connect together save that "Voyager got a bit closer to home" or " Voyager sacrificed distance home to save someone or something or otherwise do good" I think after the massive story focus of the last DS9 series Voyager felt weaker because we'd seen so much of ST "mature" along certain lines and then Voyager was a trip back to an older model of storytelling for ST.

 Overread wrote:
I never disliked Janeway but she did sort of feel a touch more "head mistress" than "captain". That said I think Voyager had some issues in that they sort of wanted a big overarching story, but at the same time wanted lots of independent stories that didn't have to connect together save that "Voyager got a bit closer to home" or " Voyager sacrificed distance home to save someone or something or otherwise do good" I think after the massive story focus of the last DS9 series Voyager felt weaker because we'd seen so much of ST "mature" along certain lines and then Voyager was a trip back to an older model of storytelling for ST.

Someone put their finger on my dislike for her, and I think it was in this very thread.

In short, Janeway wasn’t a consistent character in the way her contemporaries were.

Picard and Sisko were pretty consistent. Sometimes they didn’t win, and they had to lump it. That was pretty cool, and character building (especially Sisko with his conflicting loyalties to the badge and the prophets).

But Janeway’s reactions always felt fitted to that episode’s narrative. And as ever when discussing Voyager, I want to make clear I am not criticising the actual cast members. But it’s so full of dubious plots and shonky writing it’s just not my bag.

Except you, Neelix and Kes. You were completely awful. Especially you, Neelix. Dating a child. Dirty.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Ah well. On to Star Trek 10: Nemesis!

Nemesis has a weird little spot in my heart. I saw it for my birthday when I was a young'un.

It has some truly atrocious stuff in it (Shinzon mindraping Troi, anyone?) but to counter that you have a young Tom Hardy who does turn in a pretty good performance, a really cool ship design in the Scimitar and a really good space battle between the Enterprise and the Scimitar.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


Except you, Neelix and Kes. You were completely awful. Especially you, Neelix. Dating a child. Dirty.

Neelix was odd in so much as he seemed superfluous as a character. They take him on as a cook to preserve energy from replicating food, even though it seems to be a really minor resource drain and they never really show any other shortages of resources in general on the ship. Meanwhile his role as guide was fast exceeded as they weren't going on a short jolly but across an entire sector. I think if they'd done a lot more to show how Voyager was pressured by their chioce - such as they did in Battlestar (original and new); then a "live" kitchen would have felt more important and his role at least then would have been important (esp when you consider most Starfleet officers likely only know how to cook as a hobby at best).

As for Kes, didn't her species only live for something like 10 years?

Indeed, but she was still like, two or three when Neelix inflicted himself on her.

And the crew didn’t even bat an eyelid as I remember!

Her species lives for ten years and only ever reproduces once, with one child. That comes out of the back.
The biggest thing was that resources where never a problem for voyager. Ok makes sense, they trade and look for dilithium /missiles.
But what are star ships powered by? The Warp Core?

The warp core uses deuterium for fuel, a common isotope of the most common element in the universe. (It’s possible they also use it to power the fusion reactors in the impulse engines. Otherwise I’m not sure why they just wouldn’t use all hydrogen.) Dilithium is used to regulate the interaction between deuterium and anti-deuterium in order to maintain 100% annihilation. The red glowy parts of the warp engines are big magnets that pull in hydrogen and deuterium.

I love the horrible math involved in Kes’ race’s reproduction. First off, their the whole they only have one kid. Your race is immediately doomed if it takes two of you to make one new one, and only ever one. Every male born is one less member of the race, and their population never goes up.

Secondly, their race has a nine year life span. They have their kid when they’re five. Kes says normally her father would have helped her thru it. Your father would be ten, and thus already dead of old age. Unless I suppose their ladies always dated younger men.