Brontoforumus Archive
Discussion Boards => Media => Topic started by: McDohl on January 24, 2010, 12:08:37 PM
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Something possessed me to torrent the entirety of TNG, and I've been bouncing back and forth through them as they come in fully.
I really can't comment too much, but I guess with the new game in beta that seems to be awful, the topic might be worth visiting.
Which episode is BEST EPISODE?
I submit that it's All Good Things, the TNG finale.
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I am Locutus of Borg.
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I forgot the episode name, but it's the episode where the Enterprise hits some space turbulence and almost explodes in like 5 different ways. It illustrates how the best ship ever is still a huge deathtrap.
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Oh, I know the one you mean. Picard's trapped in a turbo lift with a bunch of kids, or something, right?
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I just watched that episode about half an hour ago. Disaster.
It's the same episode where Keiko gives birth with Worf as the midwife. :lol:
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Ahahaha, yeah, I'd almost forgotten about that.
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inb4 The Inner Light
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:humpf:: "Congratulations, you are now dilated to ten centimeters."
:oh:: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"
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Re: Inner Light
I'm totally watching that one after I get off work
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Which one was that, again? I haven't actually seen an episode of TNG in ages.
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The Groundhog Day episode is a personal favorite of mine.
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Which one was that, again? I haven't actually seen an episode of TNG in ages.
Picard lives a lifetime of another man in about 30 seconds, and gets his flute.
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Re: favorite episodes
Fifteen years ago, I would have said Relics.
Ten years ago, I would have said The Measure of a Man.
Five years ago, The Drumhead.
Today, Tapestry.
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Which one was that, again? I haven't actually seen an episode of TNG in ages.
Picard lives a lifetime of another man in about 30 seconds, and gets his flute.
Ohhhh, right, THAT one.
I dont' think I could name a favorite TNG episode. I don't remember it all that well.
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Oh god the ending to The Inner Light was j... just...
:;_;:
Coming in close second for sheer badassery was "Yesterday's Enterprise"
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Those are all pretty cool choices, Buge.
The DS9 episode with Q was one of my favorite Q episodes.
Giant mustaches, fisticuffs, and the best line ever.
"YOU PUNCHED ME! Picard never punched me!"
"I'm. Not. Picard."
Clearly, Benji. Clearly.
WARNING YOUR POST BLAH BLAH BLAH
Yeah, Kabbage. Yesterday's Enterprise was pretty rad. It also set up the appearance of Tasha's Romulan daughter, which I thought was cool.
Sucks about Tasha. I remember reading that she felt that her character wasn't good for much besides "Hailing frequencies open", and got fucked off in the most abrupt and crummy manner possible, like she was just some redshirt.
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I remember reading that she had a conversation with Worf in the beginning of one episode, which led her to comment that if she'd actually had more moments like that one she would've stuck around.
I know a hell of a lot more about DS9 than I do TNG though.
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It's probably not the OMG BEST EPISODE!, but I always had a soft spot for Hugh ("I, Borg").
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Oh yes, and in the other series':
Conscience of the King for TOS. I love this one. It puts Kirk into a moral dilemma, and not the kind of dilemma that later serieses would go for, like 'to save these simple villagers we must reveal our technology,' but it is a problem close to him. The governor who killed half a colony on which Kirk lived is on the Enterprise at Kirk's mercy (or so he believes). Never mind that eyewitnesses are dying left and right. Never mind that the #1 suspect is an old man with a failing memory and a cute daughter. Kirk's the law in the Final Frontier™, just as Kodos was. Whatever choices he makes, he's got to live with.
In the Pale Moonlight for DS9. Same deal. Sisko's got a hard decision to make and he has to live with it. Also, Garak. This one is a little different, mostly because it's international intrigue stuff, but also because during TNG era Trek, the Federation society was painted as a utopia, and it was refreshing to see someone of that utopian society actually get blood on their hands. Also, Garak.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEqoRrDZA2M
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6x15 Tapestry
6x25 Timescape
5x18 Cause and Effect
Also, pretty much any episode with "Time" or "Q" in the title.
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How 'bout VOYAGER?!
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:lol:
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It had a pretty great Opening, at the very least.
I've always been pretty partial to the more mundane episodes. You know, the ones that didn't feature some horrible calamity or catastrophe. The ones more about what life is like on the Enterprise.
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Regarding DS9:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6KGOkzbf_c
Start at 0:41 for good times.
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In the Pale Moonlight for DS9. Same deal. Sisko's got a hard decision to make and he has to live with it. Also, Garak. This one is a little different, mostly because it's international intrigue stuff, but also because during TNG era Trek, the Federation society was painted as a utopia, and it was refreshing to see someone of that utopian society actually get blood on their hands. Also, Garak.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. This is exactly the reason DS9 is my favorite Trek series.
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Another one I plan on watching: Thine Own Self.
Troi has a crisis of career stagnation, and ends up getting promoted to Commander.
I think what prompted this was the Disaster episode, where she had to be in charge of the bridge when everything was shut down.
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Yeah, that is a pretty good ep. [spoiler]Killing Geordi is fun![/spoiler]
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Oh yeah, 7x11 Parallels is great. This may actually be my favorite episode, though Tapestry, Timescape, and Cause and Effect are all wonderful. I really enjoy
all most of the timespace distortion eps.
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There's a bunch of DVD collections out there that are called "Fan Collectives". They have a common thread that brings all of them together. I own the Q Fan Collective, but I've seen Time Travel and The Borg on shelves.
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Regarding DS9:
(Tribble Barfight Video)
Start at 0:41 for good times.
Ah yes, thank you for reminding me how awesome that episode was.
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How 'bout VOYAGER?!
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:lol:
Turns out there is one decent episode of Voyager!
A YEAR OF HELL
(starring Red from That 70's Show as the big bad)
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5x18 Cause and Effect
(http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/stexpanded/images/3/3f/Bateson.jpg)
"Well, Jean-Luc, from what you're telling me, it seems your inability to form a... lasting romantic relationship could stem from some unresolved issues with your father. Were you and he very close?"
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How 'bout VOYAGER?!
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:lol:
Turns out there is one decent episode of Voyager!
A YEAR OF HELL
(starring Red from That 70's Show as the big bad)
:hellamad:
That was the episode that made me quit watching the series. I kept hanging with the series because there were all the hints from early time travel episodes about the "year of hell." I had visions of a season long arc where the ship became gradually more and more ragged as the voyager crew fought off foes on every side with no resources and heavy casualties. Instead I got a two part time travel episode that wrote itself out of continuity. :khaaan:
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I only bothered to watch a couple episodes of Voyager. From what I hear I'm not really missing much.
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That's actually the part that bugs me most about the late-DS9 and beyond episodes. Star Trek TNG focused heavily on diplomacy and exploration, but when Bab5 outwrote all of the DS9 diplomacy episodes, the Star Trek writers switched to "blow lots of shit up with phasers and torpedoes" mode and never went back. Voyager and Enterprise more or less followed this tradition.
I *liked* the fact that the Enterprise D rarely had to use its weapon systems. It was a rare and special occasion when the Battle Bridge made an appearance.
DS9 was handicapped from the beginning on the "exploration" side since they only had shuttles for half the series, but I feel like the interspecies interaction bits had a lot of potential. Voyager was supposed to be about exploration, but the exploration bits only extended as far as "the things we encounter on a straight line path back home." Which were mostly Borg.
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Yeah, action was really not what Star Trek was supposed to be about. Maybe some sweet shoot-outs or fist fights here and there, but I mean, the Federation is supposed to be a fleet of science vessels. It was supposed to be about figuring shit out, not barrelling the DELTA FLIER through an exploding sun every week.
Turns out there is one decent episode of Voyager!
A YEAR OF HELL
(starring Red from That 70's Show as the big bad)
That was the episode that made me quit watching the series. I kept hanging with the series because there were all the hints from early time travel episodes about the "year of hell." I had visions of a season long arc where the ship became gradually more and more ragged as the voyager crew fought off foes on every side with no resources and heavy casualties. Instead I got a two part time travel episode that wrote itself out of continuity. :khaaan:
Well understand first that the entire show is a complete farce. Voyager is just Lost in Space where the robot is a STONE COLD FOX. They used time travel so heavily and so constantly that by the time they were done I'm pretty sure the REAL Voyager crew had enjoyed a thoroughly uneventful cruise from A to B with no apparent mishaps along the way.
You have to go into Year of Hell with the understanding that nothing in Voyager ever mattered, ever. Just enjoy the spectacle.
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My favorite episode is the 2009 movie. :nyoro~n:
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Star Trek is generally better the closer it gets to Star Wars.
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Niku likes the less-brainy, more explosion filled Star Trek.
Occasionally I throw episodes of TOG on and enjoy the shit out of it. Some episodes fall into camp and ham-fisted writing, but others can be gripping and interesting. Though I tend to find myself going for the look and aesthetic of the show more than the actual plots.
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To be fair I have seen maybe a grand total of five episodes that are not the 2009 Star Trek.
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I loved the 2009 Star Trek movie. But I am a fan of both schools; the brainy Trek school and the non-brainy, explosion-filled Trek school.
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I prefer the less-thinky Star Trek simply because I have a hard time taking the damn thing seriously when it asks me to.
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I'd argue that the 2009 Star Trek movie is a departure both from the mindless explosions of the previous four movies and the godawful boardrooms-and-technobabble of TNG*. Yes, there's action, oh horror of horrors, but it's not about the action. It's a character story, like we used to see back when TOS or TNG were being worthwhile. Myth-building and characterization, well-written and intriguing, are why it's one of the best Star Trek films. To lump it in with such as Nemesis just because it actually has action scenes in it is flatly ignorant.
*This is not to disparage DS9, mind you. Legitimate politicking and intrigue are different from the tiresome debates about nothing that encompass the majority of TNG. And no, another dreary pontification on the Prime Directive is not "brainy".
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Inner Light was a perfectly good lead-in to introducing my Trekkie friend to Kino's Journey, specificially "The Kind Land." Actually, right after we watched it, I said, "You're not gonna believe this, but..."
I'd say it's my personal favourite. Apparently it's also Patrick Stewart's favourite as well.
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(Stuff)
:approve:
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DS9 remains my favorite Star Trek, but that not withstanding, Babylon 5 is better in every way. This is true of most sci-fi, actually.
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sorry guys but i have to put a feather in my cap for picard and TNG. It might have been dull, but I liked that.
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Inner Light was a perfectly good lead-in to introducing my Trekkie friend to Kino's Journey, specificially "The Kind Land." Actually, right after we watched it, I said, "You're not gonna believe this, but..."
I'd say it's my personal favourite. Apparently it's also Patrick Stewart's favourite as well.
There is no way in hell they would have pulled off that last scene with a lesser actor, I'll tell you that much.
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I thought about Star Trek: Voyager, and I came to a rather :facepalm: -ing conclusion: The most engaging characters were an imaginary man and the eye candy.
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In fairness I avoided that show like the plague and tried to watch as little of it as possible, but I too can say that 'Year of Hell' is the only Voyager episode I ever enjoyed.
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The most interesting characters in Voyager were Data and Data.
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There was a Voyager episode where Seven of Nine plugs her brain into the ship's computer and goes crazy conspiracy theorist and starting putting together theories about how Voyager's presence in the Delta quadrant was a Maquis plan to hurt the Federation, or a Federation plan to steal the Caretaker's array, or a Federation plan to capture a Borg drone. It's pretty amusing, if only because she raises a lot of very legitimate questions about the plot holes in the series's premise.
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The most interesting characters in Voyager were Data and Data.
I'm often a defender of Voyager. For instance, I don't really understand why everyone seems to hate Janeway. What does she actually do that annoys you all so much?
But Disposeable Ninja's statment there is pretty much the truest statement about the series I've heard in a long time. They totally copped out and went for a double Data. One of them was a hot babe too!
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She's a sanctimonious mass murdering hypocritical sociopath painted as the good guy.
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I hated it because the plots were artifical and impermanent, because Trek had gone over to fanboy-flavoured writing, and - the worst crime - because none of the characters were likeable or even interesting.
Like part of the reason people wanted "year of hell" to really happen, was because hey, something with actual PERMANENT IMPACT would happen, instead of the usual episode of Highway to Heaven, but also because nobody gave a fuck about any of the characters.
I mean, the doctor was cool, but then they erased his memory! And THAT of all things they made permanent!
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She's a sanctimonious mass murdering hypocritical sociopath painted as the good guy.
Hell, let's call a spade a spade.
They put some tits in a skintight suit to sell a sinking show.
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i liked how the voyager came back all bad ass
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She's a sanctimonious mass murdering hypocritical sociopath painted as the good guy.
Hell, let's call a spade a spade.
They put some tits in a skintight suit to sell a sinking show.
I was referring to Janeway.
inb4
So was I. :suave:
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Well, I suppose you could argue the show was sinking before it started, so...
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I felt that Seven was likable. She played the whole I was raised to be an automaton but now I'm around real people so I'm slowly becoming a real person thing pretty well all things considered.
She was sort of a reverse Data. He tried to be human all the time, but was held back by his artificial nature which he had to struggle with all the time. Seven wanted to try to act more human too but whenever she felt vulnerable or unsure of how to do it and self conscious, she would cling to her whole I'm a superior borg act to keep people at a comfortable distance. I think it usually worked well as a character.
I liked the Doctor because he was sort of like a version of Data who started out already being really good at seeming like a human because he was designed and coded to mimick us perfectly, but was constantly trying to reinvent himself to express that he really was an individual despite his pre-programmed facade which was actually fake. Data was never able to fake it, but his constant disappointment in the failure of his attempts to do so, revealed his very human nature. The Doctor had the opposite problem, he had an "act" that worked, so he had to tare himself away from that to actually be accepted as human.
Also, I actually liked Neelix after he got over his initial annoyingness. He was a unique character in Trek I felt, the guy who acts cheerful all the time to hide his inner uncertainty and fears. Also, I like to cook so his little cantina was cool to me.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWlv_02fRyY
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She's a sanctimonious mass murdering hypocritical sociopath painted as the good guy.
I'd be eternally grateful if you would share some prime examples. I've heard things about Janeway and I'm a bit interested, but not gung-ho interested enough to go watch an entire series.
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Tuvix was the result of a transporter accident on the USS Voyager, combining Lieutenant Tuvok, Neelix, and an orchid in 2372.
The accident was the conclusion to an away mission to collect some orchid samples. Only one molecular pattern rematerialized, and formed a healthy organism combining everything regarding Tuvok and Neelix, including organs, enzymes, and memories. According to the Doctor, Tuvix also possessed: "...Tuvok's sense of intellectual superiority, and Neelix's annoying ebullience." Despite repairs having just been made to the transporter, no fault could be found in the logs at the time of the accident.
It was Tuvix, the name the combined individual had given himself, who realized what had happened. The plant samples, which were also caught up in the matter stream and were also a part of Tuvix, contained lysosomal enzymes. Tuvix's research indicated that this could be an indicator of Symbiogenesis, where an organism reproduces by merging with a second species to produce a hybrid. This usually only occurs with microcellular organisms. Tuvix suggested that being deconstructed during beaming allowed the symbiogenesis enzymes of the plant to react to Neelix's and Tuvok's DNA in the matter stream, so only the single organism existed at the point of rematerialization. The theory turned out to be correct when two plants and the orchid were beamed up together, resulting in one plant arriving on Voyager.
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It took the Doctor almost a month, but he found a way to reverse the accident, by using a radioactive isotope which would attach to the DNA strands of one of the merged species, but not the other. By beaming out the segregated DNA strands, the transporter would have the original DNA strands necessary to restore the two individuals.
Tuvix announced that he didn't want to die, feeling that he had just as much right to exist as any other being. He explained to Janeway that, while he did care about Tuvok and Neelix (regarding them as his 'parents'), this also gave him the will to live of two men, and he didn't want to die. He pleaded with Kes, among others, to speak to the Captain on his behalf. Kes persuaded Janeway, however, that the procedure was necessary, as she needed Tuvok and Neelix. Tuvix pleaded with the bridge crew to stop the Captain from "murdering" him, but eventually allowed the procedure to take place, saying that everyone would have to live with his death on their conscience, for which he was sorry, as they were all, in his eyes, good people, his friends.
However, the Doctor refused to perform the procedure; as a physician, he had sworn an oath to do no harm, and refused to take Tuvix's life, especially against his will. Janeway herself, therefore, performed the process. It was a success, and Tuvok and Neelix were restored, although Janeway was forced to live with the ethical conundrum around the difficult decision. (VOY: "Tuvix")
in before justifying murder
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Wow... now that's some embarrassingly bad writing.
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Also see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SutVhjR0Isk
and this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfyNrIcv31g
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The Tuvix episode is probably the worst episode of the entire series.
No, I have to admit, Voyager is by far the worst Star Trek series ever made. I just don't think that makes it a bad show in general. It wasn't great and I'll never watch reruns of it, but it was something to watch when it was on and DS9 had ended.
I like that episode where the Doctor goes back to the Alpha Quadrant to perform a procedure on the programmer that made him.
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The worst episode is the one where they break the warp ten barrier, and then Paris turns into a newt, and then the doctor fixes him AND THEY DON'T JUST GO BACK TO THE ALPHA QUADRANT AND THEN GET CURED BY THE DOCTOR. That is the worst episode.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nsaucfx8lxI
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Jesus, I had actually blocked out half of what made that episode so bad. Thanks.
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I couldn't stomach more than 3 minutes of the review itself, so I don't want to know what's in that episode.
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I just sat down and watched Year of Hell.
Man, that was a damn good movie. It would have made an even better season, but what can you do?
EDIT: Neelix getting a field commission? :facepalm:
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A better season invalidated by a reset button.
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Yeah watching an entire season of show just get poofed away blew hard when they did it on Dallas 25 years ago. It wouldn't have been any better in Voyager.
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Why would it have to have been a reset button?
Here's how I would have ended it.
[spoiler] Janeway sets the collision course with Red Foreman's ship. Tuvok, disobeying Janeway's orders, beams her off Voyager before the collision and reactivates his ship's temporal shielding. The Zahl, who was the race that they originally came in to contact with gives the senior staff of Voyager a ship to get them on the way back home. Once they leave the sector, they start running across former Voyager crew in the next season, slowly reuniting Voyager's family. Now with Tuvok with amazing movie-era LaForge ocular implants! Sure, it's not USS Voyager anymore, but there's some of that change that Voyager desperately needed. [/spoiler]
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While watching Lexx's musical episode, one of my friends suggested TNG should have had a musical episode.
I'll just put that one out there.
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Done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_IpOVF8S5Q&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyyjCn1ML3k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYDM7-G1HDU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGlC9GUQk5s
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Fun trivia! The writer of episode Threshold (Janeway and Paris turn into newts) was written by the producer of the sci-fi series Threshold.
Threshold was probably the stupidest episode of all Star Trek. They invent Warp 10, but never use it again. They fix Janeway and Paris just by beaming them through the transporter buffer, but never use this technique again. Quote from the writer:
"I wrote the episode, or at least the teleplay. It's a terrible episode. People are very unforgiving about that episode. I've written well over a hundred episodes of Star Trek, yet it seems to be the only episode anyone brings up, you know? "Brannon Braga, who wrote Threshold!" Out of a hundred and some episodes, you're gonna have some stinkers! Unfortunately, that was a royal, steaming stinker. And... it had some good intentions behind it. It had a good premise, breaking the warp 10 barrier. I don't know where this whole "de-evolving into a lizard" thing came from. I may have blocked it out. I think I was trying to make a statement about evolution not necessarily being evolving toward higher organisms, that evolution may also be a de-evolution. You know, we kind of take it for granted that evolution means bigger brains, more technology, you know, more refined civilization. When in fact, for all we know, we're evolving back toward a more primordial state. Ultimately, who can predict? Unfortunately, none of this came across in the episode. And all we were left with were some lizard... things crawling around in the mud. So. It was not my shining moment."
The Tuvix episode was pretty stupid too. Janeway rules that beaming Tuvix back into his component people is murder, but orders the Doctor to do it anyway. The Doctor concurs with Janeway, points out that as a doctor he can do no harm, develops the unethical separation procedure anyway, and contents his conscience by having Janeway press the button. Despite this, in another episode he refuses to perform a life-saving medical procedure when he discovers it was by unethical moral research. (Then uses it anyway, but feels bad about it.)
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Oh I don't know... horrific writer abuse of the transporter is a grand tradition stretching back to the original series.
Doesn't mean it's not terrible writing though.
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Why would it have to have been a reset button?
Because this is Voyager we're talking about. The status quo must be maintained at all costs.
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You know, that show might have had a chance to be good if they had dared to throw that premise out the window. In that sense, Year of Hell was like the symbol of everything that show ever did wrong.
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Voyager had the Sliders problem where you know they won't get home until the series ends, and the series will continue for as long as people will watch.
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I forget if these are linked elsewhere on the forums, but these are highly relevant (and some NSFW) TNG clip edits: http://www.jandrewedits.com/
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Voyager had the Sliders problem where you know they won't get home until the series ends, and the series will continue for as long as people will watch.
Seriously, how sweet would it have been if Voyager had been written less by formula and actually went in an unexpected direction that wasn't established from the first episode? I think pretty sweet if they'd actually done it.
Year of Hell was one of the best episodes but unfortunately it really did need a reset due the premise of the show being beyond FUBAR by the end of it. But I really feel that they could have done something far less predictable than, at the end of the show, we get back to Earth.
I would have found it way more interesting if they had gotten back to Earth by the 2nd or 3rd season say but done so by pulling some crazy, desperate trick on the Borg during the whole Species 8472* thing. They would have thought they could get away with it, but whatever they did would end up bringing either the borg or Species 8472 or worse, both of them back with Voyager into the Alpha Quadrant.
The ensuing seasons would have been an all out clusterfuck as crazy shit happened and Janeway, Tramatized by fucking over the Alpha quadrant so bad would eventually come to her senses and use her and her crew's more intimate knowledge of the two races to find some solution to save the alpha quadrant.
The finale would probably involve time travel and quantum realities, etc. and would result in Janeway saving the Alpha Quadrant but at the cost of most of the crew, including a beloved main cast member, probably Seven or ChakoteSeven who was against the plan at the start but then ends up jumping in during a dangerous part when something goes wrong and saves the day in a selfless Spock in Wrath of Khan like manner. Janeway and the survivors are then left statisfied that they got the oppurtunity to undo their boneheaded fuck up that they made during a momment of emotional weakness but are left having to accept the deep personal price they paid to do so.
Anyway for tldrers
Instead of "At the end we get home after many adventures."
It would be "We get home at some point, but in a hasty and regretable way that fucks up everything, then manage to fix everything, but only after paying the price for our foolishness."
I think that would have been way cooler.
*Is that right? If so, then the only reason I can give for my mind latching on to such a random number is that I must have subconsiously enjoyed hearing Jerry Ryan say it over and over in episodes.
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Yet another reason why it sucks a stone cold D that Ronald D. Moore got kicked off the show after three episodes:
From Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_D._Moore#Battlestar_Galactica_.282004.E2.80.932009.29), on the subject of the BSG remake:
The premise has a lot of possibilities. Before it aired, I was at a convention ... and they were answering questions from the audience about the new [Battlestar]. It was all very technical, and they were talking about the fact that in the premise this ship was going to have problems. It wasn’t going to have unlimited sources of energy. It wasn’t going to have all the doodads of the Enterprise. It was going to be rougher, fending for themselves more, having to trade to get supplies that they want. That didn’t happen. It doesn’t happen at all, and it’s a lie to the audience.
I think the audience intuitively knows when something is true and something is not true. Voyager is not true. If it were true, the ship would not look spic-and-span every week, after all these battles it goes through. How many times has the bridge been destroyed? How many shuttlecrafts have vanished, and another one just comes out of the oven? That kind of bullshitting the audience I think takes its toll. At some point the audience stops taking it seriously, because they know that this is not really the way this would happen. These people wouldn’t act like this.
How sweet would Voyager have been if by season four the ship had huge, gaping chunks missing, borg tech grafted onto the hull, a ragtag crew of random aliens they had picked up to refill their numbers, and some semblance of Federation utopian ideas being tested against actual need?
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Voyager had the Sliders problem where you know they won't get home until the series ends, and the series will continue for as long as people will watch.
Of all the shows you could have picked, you picked the one where they actually do get home halfway through the show and then they leave (http://tviv.org/Sliders/Into_The_Mystic). Jesus, Sliders actually made fun of the concept. Please be less retarded kthx
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I'm aware of how Sliders solved the Sliders problem. My point is that Voyager didn't. Maybe if the UK got Voyager before Sliders I'd call it the Voyager problem.
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Voyager had the Quantum Leap problem where you don't know if they will get home until the series ends, and the series will continue for as long as people will watch.
Better, Frocto?
How sweet would Voyager have been if by season four the ship had huge, gaping chunks missing, borg tech grafted onto the hull, a ragtag crew of random aliens they had picked up to refill their numbers, and some semblance of Federation utopian ideas being tested against actual need?
This this this this this. Even thought it would have amped up the costs of sets and model effects.
Heck, with all the ensigns getting eaten by sentient lava and stuff, they should have been down to maybe a quarter of the original crew by the end. The threat of mutiny should have been ever-present. "Yeah we can go exploring, captain, if you don't mind staying on the next planet we visit." They should have been teetering on the edge of piracy, and only the practicality of diplomacy (not any namby-pamby 'Federation ideals') could keep them in good graces with the locals. Replacement crewmen would be mostly aliens they had lured in with tales of their utopian society. They might even flirt with the notion of press-ganging. If the original Star Trek was "Wagon Train to the Stars," then Voyager should have been "Mutiny on the Bounty in Space."
Sadly, I could only see something like that happening now, in our post-Galactica/Firefly TV culture, which was, in some part, a reaction to the 'untrue' space adventure that Voyager had come to embody.
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WHAT DOES ZIGGY SAY?
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Goddammit Mongrel.
Sadly, I could only see something like that happening now, in our post-Galactica/Firefly TV culture, which was, in some part, a reaction to the 'untrue' space adventure that Voyager had come to embody.
Yeah, v. true. We would've needed some awful inbred Sci-Fi schlock like Voyager and Stargate to rebel against if we were to get the lean towards realism we've got now. Hell, Stargate Universe, while still unforgivably terrible, became a damn sight more watchable when they started shamelessly ripping off BSG.
It's one of those things where we couldn't have reached these heights without the neigh-traumatic lows of the 90's/early 00's
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So what's Quantum Leap about? I need more crummy sci-fi to watch in-between Lexx and Andromeda.
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Scott Bakula puts on dresses and pretends to be ladies to make their lives better.
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a-are you sure
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Basically. Sometimes he has no legs.
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Well the thing you have to consider is that under Rodenberry, Startrek was all about the macro scifi aspects. It was about the Q, the Borg, the Prime Directive, Data's search for humanity, these sorts of things. The crew and the ship were just there so that these concepts could be explored they weren't supposed to be realistic.
I don't think Rodenberry ever cared about the details of how the ship actually ran or anything logistical like that. All he thought of is what sorts of technology or phenomina could be out there and what major implications could they have.
It's episodes like that one where that planet erases all of the crew's memories because they have a custom of wanting to be left unfound by other aliens, but it doesn't work because they leave too many clues behind and human nature is to try to unravel mysteries. That was Star Trek. What did the aliens look like when they finally encountered them? I don't remember but I bet probably like humans or they said they made themselves look like humans to communicate or something like that.
The show didn't care about particulars, it just wanted to tell a story that explored a concept.
Now BSG, that's a totally different animal. That's a show that is all about the characters, not really the concepts. So, if they want us to relate to those characters and invest in them, they have to put them in a much more realistic take on the scifi situation so that we can imagine what it would be like to be there and be convinced enough that we understand why the characters do certain things or whatever.
Why I think Voyager sort of sucked where as Next Gen doing the exact same thing was great is that Voyager's concepts where dumb, uninteresting, and poorly written in almost every case where as TNG only had that problem for like 1 or 2 seasons. Also it had better actors over all. Even Marina Sirtis got decent towards the end, you know when she started wearing a uniform again and I think people like Patrick Stewart and even Levar Burton were almost good right from the get go.
I think the only people I liked on Voyager were the Doctor (He was good in China Beach too), suprisingly Tom Paris by the end, Seven, and to be honest I actually liked Neelix and Janeway by the end of the show too as much as that makes every nerd on the Internet think I'm an idiot. But to be perfectly clear, I always liked Neelix in concept because he was what many of us here seem to think the show needed a lot more of, Delta quadrant natives as new crew members and also, I feel he started playing the part really well towards the end of the series.
Now Janeway, her writing had highs and definate lows, but the highs were never enough to really make me like her character. BUT, I feel her performance of what was written for her was almost always good. Same thing sort of goes for Tom Paris too. He was a pretty goofily written character most of the time, but the actor made it work in a way that made him likeable. In stark contrast, I feel like Harry Kim was the opposite, a fairly real seeming and interesting character for that show who was rarely performed well.
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sweet
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Also, I never thought I'd say this, but every opinion Geo just voiced is completely factual and true. Voyager would have been better if it were better written, not if it were grittier or whatever. Star Trek was always fantastic and magical and about more important things than being realistic
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Basically. Sometimes he has no legs.
Or he's a monkey.
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Oh wow I never saw the monkey one. Now that I think about it, though, that is EXACVTLY what that show would do.
Hey whatever ended up happening with the evil leaper?
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Goddammit Mongrel.
I'M SORRY, I loved that show.
Wait, I'm not sorry at all. Quantum Leap was a gas. <3<3<3
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If we could find a .gif of Al thumping Ziggy with the heel of his palm in frustration, I think we'd have a suitable replacement avatar for you.
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RE: Getting home mid-series. That would have put them smack in the middle of the Dominion war ongoing in DS9, into which they would have been immediately conscripted. Would this have been awesome? We'll never know.
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If we could find a .gif of Al thumping Ziggy with the heel of his palm in frustration, I think we'd have a suitable replacement avatar for you.
I'm 80% certain you've actually posted one of those before. If not you than someone else on here.
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Trek's time travel bullshit is actually pretty interesting and amusing.
I just finished watching an episode entitled "Relativity". Seven is conscripted by a 29th century time ship to stop Voyager from being destroyed by an alternate timeline version of the time ship's captain. Just seeing Janeway suffer the headache of time travel and temporal incursions is amusing.
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Except they never actually deal with any of that shit in Voyager, they just roll their eyes and go "Temporal mechanics, who understands that stuff! Harry, pass me that chronoton disruptor."
Best time travel episode(s) is still All Good Things...
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNatvLe18ro
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I'm watching the DS9 two-parter Past Tense. (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Past_Tense,_Part_I_(episode))
Dax, Sisko, and Bashir get blasted in to the year 2024 by a Negative Space Wedgie while visiting Earth on USS Defiant. Using the same Treknobabble that stopped the Enterprise-E from vanishing from existence in First Contact, the others of the Defiant crew go to rescue them. I point this out because, in 14 years, the unemployment rate and economy is going to tank terribly, and people who are unemployed and can't find work will be stuffed away in cordoned-off areas of major cities to rot. Clearly the Beck/Palin ticket in 2012 was ALSO not Change We Could Believe In (tm).
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Oh yeah, I remember that one. Sisko becomes Martin Rodney King X or whatever.
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Yeah.
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So I guess I just watched a Red Letter Media (http://www.redlettermedia.com/) review of the 2009 movie.
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The doctor discussion over in SCIENCE BOARD got me thinking about Season 1 and 2 of TNG.
I love how the first season had a revolving door of chief engineers before they went and made the ship's wheelman the chief engineer.
Of course, given that one allowed Drunk Wesley Crusher to nearly break the ship, and another almost turned the show in to Voyager, no wonder Season 1 didn't have a permanent chief engineer.
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Is season 1 the seasons where Troy and Crusher wore miniskirts?
Those were okay.
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but dudes wore the same miniskirt uniforms
(http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110204220735/memoryalpha/en/images/thumb/e/ee/Man_in_a_skant.jpg/180px-Man_in_a_skant.jpg)
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Bad news when the artificial gravity breaks down.
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The only time I think that a ship in star trek ever had a random (i.e. nothing to do with enemy attack) catastrophic power failure, was Disaster, the one where Picard is stuck in a turbolift with dirty stinking children. Even then, the artificial gravity was still online.
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Gravity is really easy to control. I guess it's magnets or something.
Actually the thought occurred to me recently; if you could somehow generate an artificial gravity field inside a spaceship that was as strong as 1 G... wouldn't that mean that the ship would now have a gravity well the size of the planet Earth? Which is to say, powerful enough to fuck up the orbits of whatever planets or planetoids or other spaceships you happened to be cruising near?
Fuckin' magnets.
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Hasn't science shown that artificial gravity would be generated on a stationary...er, station, by putting it in to a permanent spin, holding people and objects "down" by centripetal force?
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Yeah, in reality. We're talking about Star Trek.
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Where you can blast holes in space with a deflector array and travel through time with a transporter.
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There are ways you can simulate gravity in real life but they are pretty clunky. One method is to spin the ship, but in order to get Earth-like gravity the spinning section has to be either really fast or really big. And the other way is that you will naturally get pressed down in the opposite direction of thrust whenever you are accelerating. The problem is that you generally aren't going to be accelerating the whole time, and spinning the ship or part of the ship poses irritating engineering problems. The Enterprise is really the wrong shape to be spun around that way.
According to Memory Alpha (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Artificial_gravity), the gravity in Star Trek works like this:
Artificial gravity is created using gravitons embedded in the floor plating. When an electrical charge is applied to them they produce gravity at varying strength depending on the amount of power applied to them.
So in other words, a wizarditon particle did it
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So someone could remove those floor plates in the hallway as a joke and you'd end up floating in midair.
Why can't we ever see THAT kind of shipboard malfunction.
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...but that explanation specifically says it needs electricity to work.
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Each floor plate probably just has a battery in it.
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The battery is probably for redundant backup power, drawn and kept fully charged from the primary power source, that being the warp core. At least, that's sort of how it works on a modern day aircraft carrier. The reactors do propulsion, electrical power for the ship and steam for the aircraft catapults. There. Practical explanation based on modern-day principles. Except for the whole gravitons and graviolis thing.
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I liked how Babylon 5 held that artificial gravity was rare among the space faring races. Most obviously represented by the titular station's huge spinning drum. They even went so far as to have areas of the station that were close to the middle have low to essentially zero gravity. Any human ship depicted without a rotation section, or in a part of the ship that wasn't spinning, showed people strapped into their seats.
Narn ships, for instance, never had spinning sections, but they didn't have artificial gravity either. They just strapped themselves in.
Only much more advanced races like the Minbari had artificial gravity, and they were said to be manipulating gravitational fields derived from the drive system, which is happily vague. The Centauri seemed to have it too, but it was never explained, and they only seemed to have it on their very large vessels.
I'm not sure anyone ever claimed to have 1g, except possibly the Minbari, because you don't need a full Earth gravity to walk around.
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Babylon 5 is still sort of a high-water mark for "hard" SF on TV. I admit it, I get a little warm fuzzy feeling every time I see a Starfury pointed in a direction other than its angle of motion.
I'm not sure anyone ever claimed to have 1g, except possibly the Minbari, because you don't need a full Earth gravity to walk around.
True, although we're still not really sure what the long-term health effects of less than 1g are. That said, the Gundam folks certainly never seemed to have trouble getting by on partial gravity (of course, they have it easy, what with being cartoons and all)
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If you have enough gravity to walk around, then you can exercise to make up the difference. They already do that to mitigate the effects of micro-gravity, and while it's not a cure, it does help. With more gravity, I'm sure it would help more.
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I think I remember one scene in Enterprise, back when I was still giving it a chance, where the black guy had found a weak spot in the ship's gravitational field and was sitting on the ceiling.
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I remember that! And I think I watched less than 5 episodes, easy.
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I think I remember one scene in Enterprise, back when I was still giving it a chance, where the black guy had found a weak spot in the ship's gravitational field and was sitting on the ceiling.
That was in the pilot.
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back when I was still giving it a chance
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So.... can anyone who actually subjected themselves to the whole thing give a three-paragraphs-or-less plot summary of the series?
Like I lost interest and simultaneously had no TV when it was big and never bothered to catch up or even watch isolated episodes. At that point I had long been coming down from my HUGE TREK NERD days and Voyager had killed most of my real interest pretty well, so I just didn't pay much attention at all to Enterprise, then my friends were all saying it was horrible, so that was that.
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So.... can anyone who actually subjected themselves to the whole thing give a three-paragraphs-or-less plot summary of the series?
afaik
1: freedom isn't free
2:
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So.... can anyone who actually subjected themselves to the whole thing give a three-paragraphs-or-less plot summary of the series?
It's been a long road, getting from there to here.
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Enterprise starts off like any Star Trek, except everyone is wearing X-Com jumpsuits and grumbling that the Vulcans won't give them technology. They explore planet of the week until space-9/11 happens, whereupon they load the ship up with marines and go hunt space-Al Qaeda. It turns out the bad guys are funded by future aliens who pay their species in genetic enhancements.
Captain Archer gets teleported into the future by future-Starfleet, which alters the timeline enough to destroy future-Starfleet, leaving Archer stranded in some ruins. Luckily, [I missed the following episode], and the Enterprise saves the day. They have a big party for the crew back on Earth, and Archer suggests that Earth found a sort of united "federation" of planets.
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Mirror Universe Enterprise was pretty super awesome.
And I thought the Battle of Wolf 359 was Space-9/11. Then again, I haven't seen the comparable thing in Enterprise, so I can't compare.
But I've heard Wolf 359 being called the Star Trek 9/11. I mean, the single Borg cube wiped out most of the Federation's ships, and the Enterprise was only able to stop the cube because they were bloody-minded enough to throw everything but the kitchen sink at the problem.
I think what makes Wolf 359 such a powerful event is we got to see it from two perspectives: Riker's, where we just sorta see ships blown up. Then, a few years later, we see it from Ben Sisko's point of view, and wow.
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I recently (like two years back) watched through Enterprise, every episode. Personally, I don't see why it gets such a bad rap. Or rather, I do, but why people tolerated Voyager's shit BUT NOT ENTERPRISE'S SHIT is beyond me.
Anyway, Enterprise's storyline changed season to season.
SEASON 1:
Exploring! A real sense of wonder as the first humans to ever leave their safe little bubble and set down on new planets and meet new species. Turns out the galaxy is pretty fucking hostile! Better actually get our ships some weapons! Also, time shenanigans/temporal cold war.
SEASON 2:
More Exploring! Turns out the Vulcans are sort of... dicks? Also, time shenanigans/temporal cold war. Also also, Borg Episode.
SEASON 3:
Oh shit! A giant space ball flew to earth and blew up Florida from orbit! Millions dead! Tucker's sister dead! The ball came from the Expanse, a weird region of space that drives Vulcans CRAAAAAAZY! Go kill whoever made the ball! Turns out some people who were being manipulated by time shenanigans made the ball! Oh no stop the bigger ball that is going to crack the entire planet earth! Also, time shenanigans/temporal cold war. Also also, Zombie Vulcan Episode. Also also also, the best episode in the series where an alternate timeline is explored where Earth got blown up and the remaining 6,000 humans struggle to survive while being hunted down to extinction by the Xindi.
SEASON 4:
Oh shit! The time shenanigans have invoked Godwin's law, and gone back to aid the Nazis win the war! Archer and co stop them. Silik, the main time shenanigan antagonist, teams up with Archer to fight the greater time shenanithreat and dies. Then some shit happens and it turns out, that plot thread from season 2 about the Vulcan's being dicks? Yeah. Romulans. Shadow governments. Drone ships. Later, an episode taking place entirely within the Mirror Universe without any of the original characters entering it. Mirror Archer is a dick! Mirror Hoshi is a bigger dick! OH SHIT WE ARE BEING CANCELED BETTER WRAP THIS UP UHHHH JUMP AHEAD X YEARS TO THE FOUNDING OF THE FEDERATION AS SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF RIKER DURING THE TNG EPISODE ABOUT THE PEGASUS YOU KNOW THE ONE WITH THE SHIP THAT COULD PHASE CLOAK STUCK IN THE ASTEROID THE END
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JUMP AHEAD X YEARS TO THE FOUNDING OF THE FEDERATION AS SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF RIKER DURING THE TNG EPISODE ABOUT THE PEGASUS YOU KNOW THE ONE WITH THE SHIP THAT COULD PHASE CLOAK STUCK IN THE ASTEROID THE END
No shit, really?! Ahahahaha! What a TNG episode to choose. That's gas.
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I keep hearing that it's two seasons of being terrible, including an episode worse than Threshold, and then with season 3 it actually starts to get watchable.
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I keep hearing that it's two seasons of being terrible, including an episode worse than Threshold, and then with season 3 it actually starts to get watchable.
Not to beat a dead horse, but... I could not at all remember what series that was an episode from. Sure enough, when I typed "Star Trek Voyager" and "Threshold" as the first search, there it was. :rolleyes:
I actually remember watching that one and MAN, it really did not bear remembering.
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Captain Archer
I'm really hoping- having never watched an episode of Enterprise- that when you say Archer, it's a euphemism, much like Space-Al Qaeda. It would just be the best thing.
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I recently (like two years back) watched through Enterprise, every episode. Personally, I don't see why it gets such a bad rap. Or rather, I do, but why people tolerated Voyager's shit BUT NOT ENTERPRISE'S SHIT is beyond me.
Because fool me once, shame on, shame on you... ... ... ...fool me can't get fooled again.
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Yeah, I was thinking after I made that post that it was probably because Voyager exhausted everyone's supply of bullshit tolerance. Luckily, (or unluckily) I didn't watch Voyager when it was airing, or Enterprise, for that matter, so I didn't come to Enterprise beaten down to my last nerve by Voyager.
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Voyager had this really annoying habit of cockteasing us with good/watchable episodes, so you'd watch the next few episodes of bad in the hopes for good again.
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Voyager had this really annoying habit of cockteasing us with good/watchable episodes, and then slamming the reset button like it would dispense candy.
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Yeah, the Status Quo gods were happy with Voyager.
And Mirror Universe Enterprise was pretty awesome.
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Voyager had this really annoying habit of cockteasing us with good/watchable episodes, and then slamming the reset button like it would dispense candy.
EXACTLY.
Like I said before the best thing they EVER could have done with that series was make Year of Hell real AND (maybe) an entire season.
But the incredible unlikeability of the entire cast sure didn't help that series.
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http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=183 (http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=183)
What gets me is his posture. Like, he came along on the 'let's have fun' trip, even sat in the swingset, even put his hands up into the 'I am having fun' posture, but he's adamantly refusing to get the point. And nobody cares.
...
yeah ok i should just stick to TNG i guess
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Ah, but the real tragedy is that Spock wants to have fun, but his self-worth is so tangled up in being logical and dispassionate that doing anything close to having fun would leave him vulnerable to McCoy's smug ribbing and Kirk's gentle condescension.
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ha ha yeah
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yeah ok i should just stick to TNG i guess
Yes, because Data is not at all comparable to Spock.
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Spock has emotions, Data doesn't.
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Spock has emotions, Nintendon't.
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I just learned that William Campbell passed away on May 1 at the age of 87. You might remember him as Trelane from "The Squire of Gothos", and Koloth, Kirk's Klingon counterpart in "The Trouble With Tribbles."
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I think Trelane was confirmed as a young Q, making Q present in every iteration of Star Trek except Enterprise. Just read that recently.
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A Q, mind you, not necessarily the Q.
Honestly there were so many omnipotent energy beings in the first series that you could retcon a whole season's worth of eps into "a Q is just fucking with the Captain."
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Oh, yeah. I don't think it was Picard's Q. And yeah, there are a fuckton of omnipotent (or near omnipotent) energy beings in Star Trek in general. Trelane just sort of had that "impish" quality that Qs seem to be known for.
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I think they actually stated somewhere that Trelane basically became the model for that kind of thing.
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The concept did make for a fun novel.
(http://images.wikia.com/startrek/images/7/7d/Qsquared.jpg)
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Oh god, I used to buy SO MANY Star Trek novels.
It's funny how it works. Star Wars novels were always like wretched fanfics (already discussed here). But early Star Trek novels (the ones I still might like a bit - haven't read any in over a decade) were almost criminally unrelated to Trek.
Basically, some struggling sci-fi writer would write an entirely original sci-fi story that they couldn't get published and just kind of let the Trek crew run into it a bit so that it nominally counted as a Star Trek novel. Sometimes they didn't even bother to maintain proper characterization, which made things even more bizarre. Some of the stories were bad, sure, but some were quite good. And quite a few of those writers went on to be recognizable names in Sci-Fi writing later on.
Towards the mid-and-early 90's, the books started to be more slavishly reflective of the main Trek canon (for what it's worth, no Trek novel is considered official canon on any level), but those early books were just hilariously weird sometimes.
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I used to read a ton of those at the library. There were good ones, scattered about, but there were a lot of really bad ones too.
I remember liking Q Squared, but not as much as Dark Mirror.
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God, I used to be bad.
Not only did I own all those tech manuals, I actually bought those nitpicker's guides (in retrospect, it boggles the mind that those were even published). Though, in my defense, it was more because they were cheaper than buying the episode encyclopedias. I really didn't give a damn about filming errors unless they were funny. Luckily, quite a few were.
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It's funny how it works. Star Wars novels were always like wretched fanfics (already discussed here).
No, they were like Star Wars.
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William Shatner stole Leonard Nimoy's bike ! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nxcw7ln9AU#ws)
Hee hee.
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(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/123768/forum%20post%20pictures/star%20trek/tumblr_lxntwwncFs1r9nlg1o1_1280.png) (http://rikereveryday.tumblr.com/)
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TNG episode 20 - "goodnight, sweet BEEP" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRpcqr89f0E#)
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It's sort of funny when you realize that the way that original scene wasn't written as Data being emotionless, but instead that he has ROBOT ASPERGER'S.
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Now that the hottest star trek thread is over, time to use this thread again.
A Glorious Klingon Dawn (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QuGv8_F2nA#ws)
EXPERIENCE BIJ
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(http://i.imgur.com/o9wuc.png)
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But Picard violated the Prime Directive on a number of occasions, some quite notable. I'm not saying he didn't hit that, it's just incorrect.
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But Picard violated the Prime Directive on a number of occasions, some quite notable. I'm not saying he didn't hit that, it's just incorrect.
He may have bent or even broken it from time to time, sure, but he never violated it. Never just wrecked it, thoroughly and with malice aforethought, until it was such a mess that there was no point in even trying to salvage what was left. Not the way he did to dat ass.
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Easy excuse: That first picture is from the first season.
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You mean the First Season with Justice, where Picard stops wesley from getting killed by a stupid law by violating the PD? Even visiting the planet violating the PD?
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Worf gets DENIED again and again on Star Trek TNG. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edflm7Hh3hs#)
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What's great about that is that he really does have the right idea at least half the time. It's Ellen Ripley Syndrome.
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Christopher Priest, during one of his periodic flurries of blog activity followed by sudden silence, posted last October about a Trek comic pitch (http://lamerciepark.com/projects/trek/) he wrote.
My one Trek idea—of Worf’s bridge commander test being manipulated by Starfleet to prevent his ever becoming captain—was borne, I believe, out of a TNG episode in which Counselor Deanna Troi takes the bridge commander test and learns yawn obvious lessons along the way. I recall thinking the episode would have been a lot more interesting had that been Worf and had Riker, et. al. known that, no matter what Worf did, he would never be promoted. A full commander could be given his own ship. Even a routine act of bravery could promote a full commander to the rank of captain, and that would never happen for Worf, due to either institutionalized racism or to some secret pact forged between the Federation and the Klingon empire.
And yes, Priest is totally upfront about where this idea came from.
I remember sitting at a pub with artist Mark D. Bright, giddy over the blockbuster success of our story, Spider-Man vs. Wolverine, and stupidly thinking that book’s huge numbers would open doors for us. Numbers like those would absolutely have opened doors for anybody else. But our phones never rang. We were never invited back for a sequel, and Marvel passed—twice—on sequel pitches from me. The conventional wisdom attributed the book’s record-breaking numbers to the characters; the talent had nothing to do with it. While, at the same time, we were routinely denied opportunities because our names weren’t big enough—claims that comic sales were predicated upon the names of the talent associated with them. Which one was true? For Mark and I, both; whichever answer justified the “no” we constantly received. At some point, I recall telling Mark that I knew, from that experience, I would never be offered X-Men or any real opportunity to succeed in the business.
[...]
This, for me, was the missed opportunities of Worf, likely because Worf has been traditionally written by people who could not possibly understand what a complete gut punch it is to live under that glass ceiling. To do your best and to, in many areas, out-perform others whose efforts were rewarded and who were given opportunities you never would be. Knowing, for a fact, I’d never be offered Superman or X-Men, that I’d never make Group Editor, let alone EIC.
I love Priest; he remains one of my all-time favorite comics writers, and the industry is poorer without his voice. I've never bought a Trek comic in my life, but if this had been published it would have been the first. (As it stands, odds are pretty good that the Doctor Who crossover will be the first instead.)
Priest's one of those dudes who seems to have a small but surprisingly dedicated fanbase. Any time his name gets mentioned on, say, CBR, I'm disarmed by the number of fans who pop up in the comments. It's a real pity that the guys who sign the checks don't share that enthusiasm. (He said in an interview awhile back that Joe Quesada -- who was the editor on the book, for God's sake -- had nixed plans to reprint his Black Panther run because it conflicts with the Hudlin version and that might "confuse" readers. Priest's response was to the effect that readers aren't stupid; I like to think that he's correct. And at any rate, while I liked Hudlin's first couple of arcs, Priest's run has aged better, inasmuch as it doesn't revolve around caricatures of the Bush Administration.)
I continue to hope that he'll be back and, indeed, that there was a reason the word "Quantum" fell smack-dab in the middle of that stack of books Valiant posted as a teaser. Of course, if that's true then I'm probably responsible for his sudden departure from blogging, since I'm the guy who first pointed it out. :whoops:
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He said in an interview awhile back that Joe Quesada -- who was the editor on the book, for God's sake -- had nixed plans to reprint his Black Panther run because it conflicts with the Hudlin version and that might "confuse" readers.
Which would explain why Age of Apocalypse and House of M never got reprinted. (http://brontoforum.us/Smileys/classic/rolleye.gif)
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Lost TOS script published for Kindle. (http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/02/22/long-lost-star-trek-script-resurrected/)
Essentially, the script was written for a guest appearance by Milton Berle, rewritten into something that the original writer and Roddenberry didn't care for, and then never filmed. It was thought to be lost but a fan turned up with a copy, which has since been scanned.
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Ironically, there was eventually an episode of DS9 where Worf effectively lost all possibility of conventional promotion due to his actions during a mission that caused an important spy during the Dominion War to be captured and killed. He was told straight up that he'd never be promoted into a command position (commander and above) because of this action. Of course, he was later made Ambassador to the Klingons, but as far as starfleet was concerned, his career, while not over, was going nowhere from that point onward.
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Lost TOS script published for Kindle. (http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/02/22/long-lost-star-trek-script-resurrected/)
Essentially, the script was written for a guest appearance by Milton Berle, rewritten into something that the original writer and Roddenberry didn't care for, and then never filmed. It was thought to be lost but a fan turned up with a copy, which has since been scanned.
This original version was rewritten into an unfunny comedy by the line producer Gene Coon apparently unaware that Uncle Miltie was also a serious dramatic actor and a good one. It t was so bad that I complained to Roddenberry.
"This is so lousy, Gene, that you should kill it!" I told him. "You can't, you shouldn't, shoot this thing! Read it and weep!"
So, The Outrageous Okona?
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Now picture the Piscopo cameo as his performance in, say, Sidekicks. As a villain.
Yeah, the lesser of two evils, thanks...
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Nobody Listens to Worf, by Andrea Tsurumi (http://andreatsurumi.com/projects/star-trek-comics/)
via (http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/02/23/nobody-listens-worf-star-trek-next-generation-comics-andrea-tsurumi/)
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It's Ellen Ripley Syndrome.
That was spooky.
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"Hiding in the airducts? That creature is without honor!"
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Instructions on how to make a Star Trek Quiet Book, now on Etsy (http://www.etsy.com/listing/83142930/star-trek-inspired-quiet-book-pdf?ref=sr_gallery_8&ga_search_query=quiet+book&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=US&ga_search_type=handmade)!
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(http://i.imgur.com/T2dIi.jpg)
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http://picardfights.tumblr.com/ (http://picardfights.tumblr.com/)
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James Doohan's ashes launched into orbit. (http://www.startrek.com/article/doohans-ashes-launched-into-orbit)
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in waaaaaaaaaaaaay, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay after a hundred trillion beam me up/launch me up jokes
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Man, I thought this happened soon after he died.
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Why did they even do this? Shouldn't they have waited until we had teleporter technology and then teleported him into orbit?
"Hey Doohan, you were in a show about space ships so here you go."
Are they going to do this for Shatner and Nemoy too? Will the cast of Babylon 5 get launched into space when they die?
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in waaaaaaaaaaaaay, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay after a hundred trillion beam me up/launch me up jokes
Funny, I was gonna go with the burial-by-photon-torpedo scene from Wrath of Khan.
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Are they going to do this for Shatner and Nemoy too?
Probably -- they did for Roddenberry.
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Man, I thought this happened soon after he died.
It did (I know... I thought I was having Deja Vu). The article mentions they did it back in 2008.
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Celtic Legends - Amazing Grace (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FKoX7u_Jo8#)
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It's too late for bagpipes you dork he's been dead for 7 years.
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yeah but he got launched in to space just like spock did you super-dork
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HE ISN'T COMING BACK LIKE SPOCK NOW IS HE?
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ΝΑ ΥΠΟΣΤΕΙΣ ΜΠΙΤΖ!
Σταρ Τρεκ - Η Πρόκληση Του Κλίνγκον (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc8butl3heQ#)
[spoiler][ΒΛΑΒΗ ΧΑΜΗΛΟΥ ΕΠΙΠΕΔΟΥ][/spoiler]
Θα έχετε άλλη μία ευκαιρία θα σωσετε το Εντερπράιζ...
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Suffer beach?
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(http://i.imgur.com/CMHCd.gif)
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I see Avery Brooks now looks like a fat vampire.
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Might want to take a second look (though not ready to discredit the vampire claim...).
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Yes and his arms got white all of a sudden. (http://i.imgur.com/9urlf.jpg)
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Why'd they swap heads?
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So he looks like a thin vampire.
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Star Trek weapons are actually super weak and solid projectile weapons are really strong. I mean, photon torpedoes? That's basically, like, light torpedoes. Torpedoes made of light. I step outside and the sun is out and I'm like, "photon torpedoes incoming" and then I'm like "raise shields" and put on sun screen and make explosion sounds with my mouth and say "shields holding captain."
"Very good, Number One, proceed to our coordinates ahead warp factor 5" and I make whooshing noises and hold my arms out like wings
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Who said this?
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ATTENTION: There is no reason to buy Season 1 blu rays anymore.
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/123768/forum%20post%20pictures/star%20trek/conspiracy-hd.gif)
Awwwwwwww yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah. (http://i.imgur.com/BahDT.jpg)
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?
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Season 1 of TNG isn't very good. Some people have been joking that it was totally worth getting the season over again to see that headsplosion in HD.
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Oh.
...don't remember that headshot being so cheesy.
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HD is not always a good thing.
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(http://i.imgur.com/O224P.jpg)
A space invaders clone. (http://www.ndim.net/DeepSpaceDefiance/index.html)
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check out today's Google homepage. :D
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The next film is titled Star Trek Into Darkness (http://www.avclub.com/articles/this-is-what-the-next-star-trek-movie-will-be-call,84754/).
That's not a typo, by the way.
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Star Trek 2 The Search for Curly's Gold
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There are a few threads this could go in, but I'ma stickin' it here: Mother Jones interview with George Takei (http://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/09/interview-george-takei-sulu-star-trek-gay-internment-allegiance).
He continues to be a fun interview and a great guy; this one's mostly about his upcoming musical about Japanese internment (and its origins in him being moved by the end of Act 1 of The Heights).
A good bit about Trek in there, of course, about being closeted in the 1960's and about the importance of a non-stereotypical Asian character on TV.
My father told me, "Don't do anything that would bring shame to the family." I was always mindful of that. When I told him I wanted to pursue a career as an actor, my father said, "Look at what you see on television at the movies, is that what you want to be doing? Do you want to make a life out of that?" And I said, "Daddy, I'm going to change it."
Fuck yes.
Trek's got an enduring legacy for a lot of reasons, but I think it's fair to say the most important is its role in showing an idealized future where we are better people. We'll get over the racial discrimination, it said, and the gender biases, and this issue we've got with the Russians right now will be ancient history. (And sure, maybe we'll fight some Space Russians, but before you know it one of THEM will be on the bridge, too.)
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Chekov was a Russian in Space, and he was even on the bridge.
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:joke:
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Actually it wasn't.
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Right, Worf is the Space Russian I am referring to.
Because TOS has Chekov, a Russian, being perfectly fine and chummy with the rest of the humans, but doesn't REALLY go beyond the Cold War paranoia because it still uses Klingons as stand-ins for Russians.
But then Next Gen brings it full circle by having Klingons join the Federation. And, it bears noting, this is BEFORE the Berlin Wall came down, so that's pretty visionary stuff.
THAT'S the point. Not a joke, exactly, but the point.
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Their society has always been closer to pre-occupation Japan than Russia, but even in TOS the Klingons (and Romulans) were portrayed with a measure of real respect. They were outright enemies to be sure, but not evil per se; even as the Klingons went around executing hostages they did it with an air of unhappy military efficiency as opposed to HA HA HA STOP US NOW AMERICAN CAPTAIN KIRK. Compared to how the bad guys were portrayed at the time in stuff like James Bond, it WAS a head above.
TNG of course drives home the idea that differences CAN be reconciled, but even then the groundwork for that had already been laid. The first episode the Klingons appear in ends with an enforced peace between the two races, and of course by TwT they've ratcheted down their open hostility from genocidal warfare to civil disturbance. It's progress!
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(http://i.imgur.com/oPGip.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/nIg1x.png)
:glee:
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@levarburton:
:(
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(http://i.imgur.com/14FEjl.jpg) (http://imgur.com/14FEj)
(http://i.imgur.com/edGyVl.jpg) (http://imgur.com/edGyV)
:kowhyee:
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TIL: Avery Brooks - Beard = RuPaul
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That's Michael Dorn.
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Avery Brooks Has Lost His Mind (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AECEnj6r6k8#noexternalembed-ws)
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(http://i.imgur.com/92OsL.jpg)
"Cuteness leak!! We got a cuteness leak in the engine core! I estimate two minutes to a woof core breach!"
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STAR TREK: THE VIDEO GAME -- Shatner vs. Gorn Trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hnBp7x2QAE#ws)
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Star Trek Into Darkness - International Trailer (HD) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhz4A5BCMAA#ws)
Also, this is the most recent trailer. (http://www.superherohype.com/news/articles/176229-the-new-star-trek-into-darkness-trailer-is-here)
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Welp, saw Into Darkness earlier today. It's good, and I loved a lot of things about this one, but lordy, it needs to take a breather every now and then. The last half of the movie is pretty much one exhaustingly sustained action sequence, funneled through an explosion and then continually punched in the face.
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Star Trek 2: The Trekening was almost frame-for-frame exactly what I expected. Don't take that entirely as a condemnation. Darkness wasn't something that'd force me to light a cigar halfway through with the deliberate intention of being thrown out (so far only The Crow: City of Angels, Queen of the Damned, Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Avatar have warranted lighting the emergency escape cigar. And no, I didn't mean The Last Airbender there. Seriously, fuck Avatar.)
I don't really have anything nice to say, either. Good job, JJ. That sure was an action movie where you could make a drinking game out of callbacks to older moments that were more effective when they were made on a fraction of this film's catering budget.
So... yeah. Didn't hate it. Blame Cumberbatch doing what he does, to the point that I'm really disappointed they didn't [spoiler]leave Kirk dead and make him captain[/spoiler]. Next up: Cumberbatch is a sociopathic genius Nazi dragon. The rest of the movie doesn't matter. Is he from the moon? Sure. Fuck it.
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Yeah, agreed.
There were a couple points where I was really enjoying their departure from the expected, in particular [spoiler]Kirk and Khan working together[/spoiler]. That whole stretch from [spoiler]launching out of the airlock to their escape from the bridge[/spoiler] was great. Loved it. Wish there had been more of it.
Really, they could've worked it so [spoiler]Khan seemed like he could genuinely be an ally, then maybe had Spock become more suspicious of him after talking to Old Spock, while Kirk trusted him more. When they had Khan kill Pike, any chance of some friendship went out the window. Would've been cool to see them as allies, then later enemies, instead of just always as enemies from the get-go[/spoiler].
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I made a joke to my friends that Into Darkness is like any of the old Trek Films except there is a continuous phaser fight going on in the foreground of every scene throughout the entire movie.
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They were almost literally inside of an explosion for the better part of that movie.
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So is this [spoiler]Space Seed + Wrath of Khan, or just, like, extended, much less creepy misogyny Space Seed?[/spoiler]
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So is this [spoiler]Space Seed + Wrath of Khan, or just, like, extended, much less creepy misogyny Space Seed?[/spoiler]
You just described two scenarios that would have worked just fine with me, but that didn't happen. Really, it was a lot more like Friday said.
Actually, can we just write a flash script to arbitrarily add lens flare, shaky-cam, random phaser battles and constant shouting to 60s Star Trek episodes? Because that might be more cost effective.
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WARNING: below spoiler is a main plot spoiler to Into Darkness.
[spoiler]It's Khan but he got woke up by someone else and was used by Section 31 (the bad/clandestine/do whatever it takes to make humans win part of the Federation from DS9 and Enterprise) to prepare for the coming war with the Klingons. But then he went rogue.[/spoiler]
There are tons of callbacks and similarities to what you're referring to, of course, but the story is pretty different.
It's good. Go see it. Just remember that there will be a guy making phaser and explosion noises in your ear whenever he's not going AND THEN KIRK FUCKED TWO CHICKS WITH TAILS.
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Friday is 100% correct on this
Also I have to say that the new warp core is boss as hell
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But also we have to [spoiler]give the first third of the movie to Kirk's father issues so that we know why he's super pissed at Khan. Because without that you know goddamn well they'd be the best of friends... or more.
KIRK <3 KHAN OTP 4 EVA.[/spoiler]
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[spoiler]KIRK <3 KHAN OTP 4 EVA.[/spoiler]
dare the Cumberbatch tumblr legions hope
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Invoke ye not the the Cumberbitches, lest ye bring them down on all our heads.
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[spoiler]So what was the point of the non-mystery of Khan? It's like, Abrams kept this thing a secret, so he can't use it in promoting the film, which might have interested any lapsed Star Trek fans. And Khan doesn't have any cultural cachet apart from a screaming Kirk gif, so they didn't build up any personal conflict he may have had with Kirk. They wasted a perfectly good opportunity! All this movie will do is invite comparisons to Wrath of Khan.[/spoiler]
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Bebop Cucumberpatch has a pretty good name.
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(http://i718.photobucket.com/albums/ww181/Daikaiju_photo/EnterpriseTan_zpsc56a489c.jpg)
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Bebop Cucumberpatch has a pretty good name.
... now I want Benedict Cumberpatch to play Spike Spiegel.
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He's got the build for it!
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And very little else, unfortunately. The guy wouldn't be my first pick for disarmingly playful rogue or however you'd describe Spike. On the other hand, he'd be a pitch-perfect Vicious.
Actually, you know what? I'm casting Michael Cera as Spike. Fuck you.
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Actually, you know what? I'm casting Michael Cera as Spike. Fuck you.
Really? You don't want to see Keanu Reeves deadpan his way through the role?
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You win at bad idea game.
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Half in the Bag (http://redlettermedia.com/half-in-the-bag-star-trek-into-darkness/) articulates most of my feelings about the flick very well, as usual. Though I do think
Bengledick Cabbagepatch Englebug Slaptyback Sherlock did as much as one possibly could with that script.
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Thoughts (http://www.corporate-sellout.com/index.php/2013/06/07/star-trek-into-idiot-plot/). Spoiler of thing you probably knew four years ago even if you haven't seen the movie.
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Well, three thoughts on that whole Situation. [spoiler]First, Khan Noonien Singh was Sikh, not Mexican, even if the actor first cast to play him was Mexican - it was the 60s, and they really only went as far as "brown's brown".
Second, in-story, I'd assume that him looking completely different was part of the John Harrison persona - if you're drafting History's Greatest Monster into your secret ops division and creating a fictional identity for him, it kinda makes sense you'd change his appearance dramatically while you're at it. You'd tell Hitler to shave if you don't want people to recognize him as Hitler. So it does kind of make sense that he wouldn't be Sikh.
Third, to quote the screenwriter, "Basically, as we went the casting process and we began honing in on the themes of the movie, it became uncomfortable for me to support demonizing anyone of color, particularly any one of middle eastern descent or anyone evoking that. One of the points of the movie is that we must be careful about the villain within US, not some other race." I can understand, and to a degree get behind, the not wanting to make another movie about The Evils Of Brown People.[/spoiler]
Fourth, Benedict Cumberbatch is really really good, pasty or no. This is no Last Airbender.
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What really struck me were all of the Trouble With Tribbles callouts. Since for a while there, the rumors/speculation were that the villain was Arne Darvin.
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I mean, Benedict Cumberbatch did a very, very good job. I wish they'd found a middle eastern or mexican guy again, but, at the end of the day, I can't complain about who they picked, because he did great.
This is a great point, however:
...moreover, there are some rather regressive overtones in making the ultimate genetic model of a human being a pasty white guy.
That said, Thad, I'm not sure if you're serious about it being ludicrously hard to swallow Khan changing races between movies. It's fairly clear that, while they'll throw a bone out here and there continuity-wise, this isn't really going to hold up as an alternate history. It's just a remake of the show. If they want to change something completely, they'll do it. For one, in this movie alone, Kronos had already detonated, decades too early.
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Well, right, hence the part where I said it would be a lot easier to ignore if they didn't keep hitting us with constant, intentional callbacks to Wrath of Khan. [spoiler]Kirk's death and KHAAAAAAAAAAAN[/spoiler] are the most obvious but just a couple of beats in a film that gets WAY too cute about being The Same Thing, Only Different.
The theory that [spoiler]they deliberately changed his appearance so no one would recognize him[/spoiler] is clever, but it's one of those cases where fans have to make up a reason that nobody bothers to put in the script. Besides which, [spoiler]if they really asked him to fake a British accent, why would he keep doing it after he went off the reservation? Pretending to be another Londoner while he sends Mickey Smith off to blow up the base is one thing, but why's he keeping up the act when he's explaining his origin story to Kirk?[/spoiler]
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[spoiler]Third, to quote the screenwriter, "Basically, as we went the casting process and we began honing in on the themes of the movie, it became uncomfortable for me to support demonizing anyone of color, particularly any one of middle eastern descent or anyone evoking that. One of the points of the movie is that we must be careful about the villain within US, not some other race." I can understand, and to a degree get behind, the not wanting to make another movie about The Evils Of Brown People.[/spoiler]
Oh, so I guess only the white man is good enough to be history's greatest monster, is that it.
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And I suppose we could argue that Montalban, not Cumberbatch, had the wrong accent for a guy named "Singh". But I always preferred the idea that Khan was a deliberate hodgepodge of races/ethnicities/national origins. Because that's a very Star Trek idea, that the Ultimate Human would be a combination of everybody.
On dee utter hand, "casting a guy who's really bad at the accent he's supposed to be doing" is also wery Star Trek.
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Oh, so I guess only the white man is good enough to be history's greatest monster, is that it.
Har.
There IS something to be said for the dilemma between the negative stereotype of the Evil Brown Man and the also-regressive idea that minorities should ONLY be depicted as heroes. (Remember Thor's old bit about the Street Fighter 2 opening of White Guy Punching Black Guy, how it was changed to two white guys in the Genesis version, and how really there's no possible permutation of that scene that doesn't play to either a stereotype or an exclusion?)
Trek's certainly got its share of positive depictions of minority characters, but I see the point that there's not really a prominent example of Latino/Sikh/however you want to classify Khan. (And obviously lumping all brown people together carries its own baggage.)
The original TMNT cartoon turned Baxter Stockman into a white guy, presumably because it didn't want the only black guy on the show to be a villain. (Course, the only black guys on the shows were STILL villains, it's just that one of them got turned into a warthog a couple episodes in and his race was never acknowledged again, and the other one was a black guy voicing a Japanese guy who looked like a white guy and spent most of the show hiding his face anyway.)
(There's also a whole sidebar about April's ethnicity and whether or not she was whitewashed; from what I understand, Eastman intended her to be biracial -- and in fact based on his own then-girlfriend, also named April -- and Laird didn't know that.)
Comparisons to unrelated franchises aside, I'm inclined to think, as usual, that the answer is more diversity and not less -- but the script didn't make much room for any new Good Guy characters. The cast is pretty much People We Saw in the First Movie, Established Characters from Wrath of Khan, Bad Guys, and Cannon Fodder (with some overlap across some of those categories).
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My understanding of Khan was not that he was all of the world's most evil creatures combined to make the most evil possible thing, but rather that he was - along with all the other Augments - a normal fetus that was extensively upgraded. He wasn't supposed to be absolutely genetically perfect, because there's no such thing - rather, he's superhumanly intelligent and strong and everything built on top of the template of a Sikh baby.
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[Star Trek: Into Darkness] was as stupid as we said it would be; so what you should really be gloating about is, "I told you that J.J. Abrams was going to do something so stupid that you wouldn't believe it." Because when you described it, it was the dumbest thing ever. And then, yeah, he did it. He did the dumbest thing ever. Which I never would have anticipated
It's like if somebody posted, "When they make the new Star Wars movie, some of the characters will be cartoons mixed in with that live action." And we say, that's ridiculous, because do you know how stupid that would be? And we go and see a new Star Wars movie, and halfway through the movie, a cartoon Benedict Cumberbatch appears and says, "You're about to sing a different toon, Skywalker." That's about the level of filmmaking that we're talking about
Another aspect of the plot is that the rogue faction is trying to "militarize Starfleet." The phrase "militarize Starfleet," which is actually used in the film, is so pregnant with stupidity that it's hard to put into words. Let's just ask -- militarize this organization of lieutenants and captains and admirals, and ships and cadets and weapons and courts-martial, and enlistments and commissions? Oh my god somebody stop him
He's trying to make the space navy into a military, help, help
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:glee: Where is that from?
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The first quote is just flat untrue, and the second is just nitpicking.
In regards to the first, Into Darkness is not a bad movie and if you think so then you are a fucking snob.
In regards to the second, yeah, it's stupid to say "militarize" about an organization that is already a military operation, but the meaning is actually "turn from something like the enlightened TOS/TNG Starfleet into something like the Mirror Universe Starfleet" which I don't know if there is a word for. Imperialize, maybe?
Section 31 has always been the "Mirror Universe" faction within Starfleet. For those of you who haven't watched DS9 or Enterprise, think of them as Cerberus from ME.
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Actually isn't Starfleet supposed to be a science endeavor, and not a military? I mean, in spite of their weapons systems.
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Both quotes may have been untrue and/or nitpicky, but that doesn't stop either of them from being completely hilarious.
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Their goal is exploration and science, yes. But because the Galaxy turns out to be populated by people who aren't so, uh, lets say "reserved", they made sure to have weapons.
Enterprise actually starts off with the ship leaving earth without any weapon systems other than basic torpedos, and I don't mean the photon kind. Just regular torpedos. They make it a point, over and over, that they don't do anything at all against shields and are hardly useful otherwise. Enterprise gets its ass kicked all over the place by pirates and shit for the duration of season 1 until they go back and get Phase Cannons.
Anyway, it's not like Into Darkness was a movie that will change your life, or even make you think, really. It's just a fun summer action sci-fi flick with a lot of explosions. Saying it's bottom of the barrel bad, like whoever wrote that quote is saying, means you are a fucking snob.
Both quotes may have been untrue and/or nitpicky, but that doesn't stop either of them from being completely hilarious.
I cracked a smile at sing a different toon, I'll admit.
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If someone said they were going to "Militarize the police" with its lieutenants and sergeants and captains, would you be worried? Okay then.
That said, I don't recall ever seeing an actual dedicated defense force in Star Trek. As far as I can tell, Starfleet is Earth's exploratory/science organization and its defensive military.
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RED SQUAD! RED SQUAD! RED SQUAD!
Edit: Don't forget the like 3 shuttles that made up the mars defense perimeter in Best of Both Worlds.
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Both quotes may have been untrue and/or nitpicky, but that doesn't stop either of them from being completely hilarious.
Yeah. This. The views of the quote-ee may not necessarily reflect the views of etc. etc. (they better not; they're from a dude I know who is generally very funny, but who is also waaaayyyy right-wing).
==========
Anyway, Starfleet is nominally a hybrid organization. Yes the science/exploration stuff is their day job, but they clearly also serve as the military and have done so in many many wars over the history of the Star Trek franchise.
Not as a national guard or reserve, not as the police, but the front-line military. There isn't some "proper" Federation military that shows up in a box with "in case of war, break glass" on the front. It's Starfleet that fights those battles.
Sure, Enterprise did try to return to the "science and exploration only" idea, but historically that's an exception not the rule.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's sort of silly too, but it just made for easier storytelling over the years. It probably happened because too many writers conflated "military style organization" with "actual military" and because it gave them way more leeway to have Kirk (and later Sisko and Picard) do lots of shooty pew pew pew heroics.
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Aside from the movies, Picard hardly does any shooty pew pew heroics. I think I can count the number of times Enterprise gets into a fight that seriously threatens it and aren't just using their phasers as a tool on one hand, and half of those are the Borg.
IN FACT
1. Best of Both Worlds
2. Descent
3. Yesterday's Enterprise (this may not even count because it's from an alternate spacetime where surprise surprise Starfleet is more "militarized")
4. Uh that episode where they all get their memories erased (probably doesn't count) (also the enemies they were facing were not a threat at all, which eventually leads to Picard AND Worf refusing to fight)
5. The episode with Spock where they blow up an enemy ship in one shot (after it attacks them) because it was carrying a fuckload of arms (not done by Picard)
There are probably a few more, but TNG has basically nil ship to ship combat outside of the Borg.
I can't even remember them getting into an actual fight with the Romulans. A lot of stare downs across the neutral zone, but the fight was always a cold one. The closest we got was "The Defector" in which Picard makes his threat "not idle" and Tomalak decides to back down instead of starting a war.
DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise on the other hand have lots of fighting.
Really, even TOS has hardly any ship to ship combat. TNG has always stood out, however, because Picard consistently finds a third option to FIRIN' MAH LAZOR.
EDIT: I forgot Q Who. Even then, they only fire at the ship to get away, not to destroy it.
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Well, the Borg were an existential threat to the Federation and Starfleet did serve in it's capacity as a military against them, but I completely agree on Picard.
Picard was good like that. When I named captains, there was a reason I put him after Sisko. Part of what makes the Borg such an impressive threat was how often they held back on the violence. The few times when Picard genuinely got his hands dirty were all the more impressive for being so. Sort-of like the classic Obi-Wan moment in the bar: "Holy shit, he can fight too!" (not exactly the same, but close).
I didn't mention Voyager (which has an absurd amount of fighting), because as a lost and isolated ship, they're not really part of any faction or fleet other than temporary alliances of convenience.
And of course TOS has a good amount of fighting too, though not so much as you might think and not half so much as Voyager or DS9.
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Anyway, Starfleet is nominally a hybrid organization. Yes the science/exploration stuff is their day job, but they clearly also serve as the military and have done so in many many wars over the history of the Star Trek franchise.
Not as a national guard or reserve, not as the police, but the front-line military. There isn't some "proper" Federation military that shows up in a box with "in case of war, break glass" on the front. It's Starfleet that fights those battles.
Well, science guys tend to have the best guns. In a setting where even the most minute advances in technology can turn into devastating military advantages, it makes sense that you want the people doing cutting edge research and the people in charge of winning your wars (defensively or otherwise) to be one and the same.
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Actually, I'm going to come right out and agree with "the militarization of starfleet" being utterly absurd in the context of the JJ Abrams movies. The examples you're providing of the organization as primarily humanitarian science/exploration/diplomatically oriented and just incidentally a well armed peacekeeping force don't stand up very well in an alternate timeline where everything is already shown to be intensely and even primarily militaristic. Especially compare scenes of star fleet academy in the older series and in the new movies. Instead of an elite officer's school that in all honesty looks pretty hippie-dippy and borders on crystal-spires-and-togas territory, it's now presented exactly like a boot camp for barroom brawling enlisted men that wouldn't look even a little bit out of place in Starship Troopers.
Where the new flicks diverge the most from the old is in their presentation of starfleet as a primarily militaristic organization, offering "the militarization of starfleet" as any kind of legitimate threat is just something these movies haven't earned. If you're carrying memories of the old shows, yes, that is credibly anithetical to what you know about this organization. If you're operating solely based on what you've observed in the last two movies, however, it's just fucking absurd.
In fact, it's a lot like Cumberbatch's "I am Khan (dun dun!)" moment. In the sole context of this movie you would have no idea why that name is significant, and neither do the other characters. They shouldn't give a fuck if his name is Khan, other than it's a damn peculiar name for such a white dude. Maybe if they had some kind of "holy shit, I learned about this guy in school" moment, but they don't. They save that for old Spock later. Which doesn't add anything to the drama at that point, anyway.
Despite its efforts to establish itself as something new, this franchise is still relying on things that hold emotional resonance and credibility solely because of how they appeared in the older movies and TV shows. Taken on its own this one is a loud, illogical mess that keeps holding out random crap and shouting "HEY, IT'S A TRIBBLE! YOU LIKE TRIBBLES, RIGHT? SET PHASERS TO STUN! PRIME DIRECTIVE! THE NEEDS OF THE MANY!" But it hasn't, itself, given you any reason to feel anything about any of that.
In fact, the only stuff that does almost work does so because the characters are so amplified that you can't miss it. Kirk was passionate and broke the prime directive a couple times, so here he's a hothead who does that non-fucking-stop while screaming at people. Spock is conflicted about his human emotions, so here he's constantly scowling like he has to take a shit the size of a birthday cake. Scotty was a bit odd, so now he's completely off the fucking wall crazy, etc.
While I'm bitching, I am completely goddamn tired of vengeance-driven psychos who happen to have a great big menacing spikey spaceship. This is at least the third flick in a row to pull that, and while shots of the Enterprise dwarfed by a bigger, pointier thing effectively establish "danger" to a summer movie audience, I'm just really bored by it. Remember how Khan beat the holy screaming shit out of a cruiser while commanding a comparatively rinky-dink scout ship? That effectively established his intellect as the primary threat. You will never see anything even half that clever in these flicks. Here Khan is supposed to be scary because he killed all those klingons and can be punched in the head a bunch and doesn't care. Whatevs.
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In fact, it's a lot like Cumberbatch's "I am Khan (dun dun!)" moment. In the sole context of this movie you would have no idea why that name is significant, and neither do the other characters. They shouldn't give a fuck if his name is Khan, other than it's a damn peculiar name for such a white dude. Maybe if they had some kind of "holy shit, I learned about this guy in school" moment, but they don't. They save that for old Spock later. Which doesn't add anything to the drama at that point, anyway.
And of course in addition to Nimoy showing up being entirely a "Here's a thing you remember from the old series!" moment, his dialogue is also made up of references to Wrath of Khan. When he said they defeated him "at great cost", I leaned over and whispered to my wife, "He died. He got better."
Despite its efforts to establish itself as something new, this franchise is still relying on things that hold emotional resonance and credibility solely because of how they appeared in the older movies and TV shows. Taken on its own this one is a loud, illogical mess that keeps holding out random crap and shouting "HEY, IT'S A TRIBBLE! YOU LIKE TRIBBLES, RIGHT? SET PHASERS TO STUN! PRIME DIRECTIVE! THE NEEDS OF THE MANY!" But it hasn't, itself, given you any reason to feel anything about any of that.
Yeah. It's a cover tune that shows some technical skill but a lack of understanding of the original.
I absolutely agree with Friday's point that anybody who says this movie is bottom-of-the-barrel is exaggerating or lacking in perspective. It's not the worst summer blockbuster, it's not the worst Trek movie -- it's not even the worst Trek movie where [spoiler]Kirk dies[/spoiler].
But it IS the worst second Trek movie that has Khan and Carol Marcus in it and where [spoiler]halfway through the movie one of the two principals gives up the chair to the other one because he believes he's more qualified to get them through this, and then dies of radiation poisoning while holding his hand up to the glass with the other guy on the other side[/spoiler]. And also somebody shouts "KHAAAAAAAAAN!"
On its own merits, it's not bad. It certainly suffers from the Summer Blockbuster Cliches laundry list you mentioned, but it's pretty and it's shiny and shit blows up and seriously the entire cast is just fucking great.
But if they wanted us to consider the movie on its own merits, maybe the last act could have gone five minutes without going "Hey, Wrath of Khan! Remember that movie? Huh? Huh? Do ya?"
There's a line in the MST3K of Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, where Raul Julia's watching Casablanca and somebody points out you really shouldn't be putting a much better movie in the middle of your movie.
I get why they wanted to riff on Wrath of Khan. It's the best Star Trek movie. I get why they brought Khan back. But copying the major plot beats of the movie note-for-note was too much. Like I said before, I'm pretty sure people who haven't seen Wrath of Khan will enjoy it more than people who have.
And they ARE relying too closely on the audience having an investment in stuff from the old series. I'd say that, ironically, Wrath of Khan did better as a standalone film. You don't have to see Space Seed to get who Khan is; who he is, what he does, and why everyone's afraid of him are all established over the course of the film. And, likewise, you don't really have to know anything about Kirk and Spock other than their basic background for their relationship to work in the context of the film.
The dilemma between exploration and militarization is a damn good one, and fits Star Trek pretty well. The question of a covert military organization engaging in morally-dubious operations, and of top brass seeking to provoke a war based on a completely unrelated terrorist attack, are sadly still pretty relevant metaphors for the world we're living in. But you're right that the military/peaceful exploration ethical dilemma is one more thing these movies haven't really given us grounds to believe and relies on a general familiarity with any of the various TV series to believe Starfleet isn't already militarized as fuck.
I AM curious to see what Abrams comes up with in Star Wars. As everybody else has noted, it really does seem to be a better fit for his skillset.
And since it actually takes place after the original films, hopefully he won't spend Episode 8 recreating Empire.
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What Thad said. By no means do I think this is a bad movie, though Trek has set a pretty fucking low bar for itself. It's not even a bad dumbass summer action flick. It's not a good one, either, and not just because it lives inside of a perpetual explosion of cliches. The plot is incredibly flawed, and the moments where it actually possesses any emotional resonance were already done word for word in a much more coherent movie. This one really is just an assemblage of action setpieces whose interconnectedness has less to do with telling a good story so much as "we've got to get these five things together, so we'll just link them with insane leaps and coincidence peppered with callbacks to stuff people used to like." I don't even need to get into crazy nerd shit here (he teleported to Klingonland? Huh. Alright.") Just simple stuff like how in the fuck was that plot with the torpedoes ever committed to film without anyone saying "seriously, guys, this shit makes no goddamn sense whatsoever."
Even for its time and place, this really should have been a much better movie.
Also, incredibly creepy to mention the MST of Overdrawn at the Memory Bank when I'm actually watching it right this moment. Playing through Remember Me put me in mind of it.
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This one really is just an assemblage of action setpieces whose interconnectedness has less to do with telling a good story so much as "we've got to get these five things together, so we'll just link them with insane leaps and coincidence peppered with callbacks to stuff people used to like."
Like I said, he's perfect for Star Wars.
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Fuck you and your truth, Thad.
I've marveled at how somewhere along the way Star Trek became all about crazy lazer battles and Star Wars became all chatterboxing about politics and diplomacy, but at long last we've finally united the two. Fuckoff stupid plots and phaser battles for all!
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yaaaaaay...?
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I miss TNG. ::(:
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Well, y'know, Spielberg and Lucas ARE the first two guys I think of when I think of people who write setpieces first and fill in the story around them.
If I wanted to be less charitable I could say Michael Bay, too, but I think Abrams is closer to Lucas and Spielberg than to Bay. His movies are smarter than Bay's, at any rate, though that's about as low as you can set the bar. (Bay, on the other hand, is at least refreshingly honest about what he is; the closest he's ever come to being pretentious was Pearl Harbor. And Pearl Harbor wasn't bad because it was pretentious, it was bad because it was the same kind of hackneyed, lowest-common-denominator pabulum as everything else Bay's ever done.)
Granted, it's been awhile since Spielberg made a good movie, and longer still since Lucas did. And I never got around to watching Lost so all I really know Abrams from is the Trek movies and the things I've HEARD about Lost. (Which make it sound a lot like X-Files -- an initially very promising, intelligent, and captivating show that made it clear, over time, that the writers were just making shit up as they went along and there was never any grand plan, which still managed to put out pretty great episodes for the duration of its run but set into diminishing returns years before the end. Is that about right?)
...oh hey, there's a new X-Files comic out this week, isn't there?
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the things I've HEARD about Lost. (Which make it sound a lot like X-Files -- an initially very promising, intelligent, and captivating show that made it clear, over time, that the writers were just making shit up as they went along and there was never any grand plan, which still managed to put out pretty great episodes for the duration of its run but set into diminishing returns years before the end. Is that about right?)
wow. that's the best and most apt comparison I've ever seen.
no, seriously. I'm not being sarcastic at all. That's 100% dead on.
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It's also a good description of Alias, Abrams' other show (that had much more involvement than Abrams did in Lost, actually).
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the things I've HEARD about Lost. (Which make it sound a lot like X-Files -- an initially very promising, intelligent, and captivating show that made it clear, over time, that the writers were just making shit up as they went along and there was never any grand plan, which still managed to put out pretty great episodes for the duration of its run but set into diminishing returns years before the end. Is that about right?)
wow. that's the best and most apt comparison I've ever seen.
no, seriously. I'm not being sarcastic at all. That's 100% dead on.
Yup
It was basically a phenomenal first season, followed by five more seasons of trying to live up to their concept.
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wow. that's the best and most apt comparison I've ever seen.
no, seriously. I'm not being sarcastic at all. That's 100% dead on.
I probably came up with the parallel since Paul Dini's short-lived, not-a-cartoon Cartoon Network show Tower Prep was pretty much written by people from Lost and X-Files.
(Speaking of Dini, Joker's got a great rambling monologue at the end of Arkham City where he's talking about how things are coming to a close and sometimes endings aren't as satisfying as you expect, and then he goes into an extended rambling rant about the ending of Lost. In the postgame a lot of the incidental dialogue is also people complaining about it.)
It's also a good description of Alias, Abrams' other show (that had much more involvement than Abrams did in Lost, actually).
I went with Lost because it's the show that people are likely to remember. Alias was a cult hit but doesn't have the mindshare that Lost does. I was thinking about where Abrams falls in terms of memorable works in comparison to titans like Star Wars, Jaws, Indiana Jones, ET, and Jurassic Park. (Bay's best-remembered movie is Armageddon. And it's best-remembered for having the exact same premise as another movie that came out at the same time.)
I heard an interview with Abrams where he explained that when he was a kid his dad tore the back pages out of all his Encyclopedia Brown books so he'd have to figure out the solutions himself.
Explains a lot, doesn't it?
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I went with Lost because it's the show that people are likely to remember. Alias was a cult hit but doesn't have the mindshare that Lost does. I was thinking about where Abrams falls in terms of memorable works in comparison to titans like Star Wars, Jaws, Indiana Jones, ET, and Jurassic Park. (Bay's best-remembered movie is Armageddon. And it's best-remembered for having the exact same premise as another movie that came out at the same time.)
Oh yeah. I just mentioned Alias because its trajectory is very similar to Lost. Killer first (and second) season, then starts to go downhill and you realize how much they're making up as they go along.
Bringing up all those Spielberg films makes me wonder how Super 8 was. I'd heard good things about it, calling it a modern take on an 80s Spielberg film. But I also read reviews calling it too cynical.
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I heard an interview with Abrams where he explained that when he was a kid his dad tore the back pages out of all his Encyclopedia Brown books so he'd have to figure out the solutions himself.
Explains a lot, doesn't it?
God, what a monster. Imagine if he did that to The Usual Suspects.
Verbal: Fuckin' Cops!
*THE END*
Daddy Abrams: So what did we learn today, son?
Li'l JJ: That... you can't trust the police?
Daddy Abrams: Eh, close enough.
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Super 8 was good, but did not stick with me for very long. It essentially was "Abrams does Amblin."
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God, what a monster. Imagine if he did that to The Usual Suspects.
See, I had the ending of Usual Suspects pegged from the minute Spacey first appeared onscreen.
Course, that could be because nobody tore the pages out of my Encyclopedia Brown books and I have a pretty good grasp on the mystery formula.
Don't get me wrong, I still think it's an exceptionally well-crafted film. I just thought it telegraphed its ending by making Spacey SO craven and helpless.
On the other hand, I've heard stories that the stars themselves didn't know the ending. But of course they wouldn't have been in the room when the framing device was filmed.
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Also, you have to take into consideration that The Usual Suspects came out pretty much smack in the middle of a period in his carrier wherein Spacey was ALWAYS the bad guy.
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I didn't see it until about 2008, but I'll take your word for it.
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This is a story about a guy named Al
And he lived in a rock mine with his tribble pal
But the horta mothers really didn't approve
so he packed up his singer stones and had to move
to a planet near romulus where he lived in a tree
and he worked in a jeffrey's tube ladder factory
and he played on the company mok'bara team
and every single night he had a time looped crazy dream
where he was wearing a bright red shirt on an exploration team
but that's really not important to the story
well the very next year he met a energy being
with a tricorder tattooed on her arm
But he didn't keep in contact and he lost her planet
then he got himself a job on a kalo root farm
and he spent his life savings on a split level cube
twenty light years past the neutral zone
and he really makes a might fine jelly bean and blood worm sandwich
so watch your tone
Then one day al was in a wormhole trying to get a tan
and he heard the tortured monologing of a funny little man
he was caught in a targ trap and al set him free
and the guy that he rescued was quite improbably
The leader of the Q continuum and so he gratefully
gave Al a starship and what do you know
Now he's got his very own weird al star trek show
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The circle is complete.
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(http://i.imgur.com/Te0gq4P.gif)
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(http://i.imgur.com/DMXN4IN.jpg)
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Posted by Smiler on TT:
(http://i.imgur.com/Uqiai7d.png)
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Search for Spock is better than Voyage Home, and Undiscovered Country is better than First Contact, and, in my mind, actually vies with Wrath of Khan for best Star Trek film ever. Basically, Wrath of Khan is the best for action, but Undiscovered Country is more compelling thematically, and really brings especially the Kirk character full circle. First Contact is another action flick, and is easily the best of the TNG movies. I haven't seen Into Darkness, but the idea of a worst Trek film than Final Frontier is dizzying.
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It is just flat-out impossible that any movie, from now until the end of time, could possibly be worse than Star Trek Nemesis.
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I don't know, man, Final frontier is pretty unwatchable. Maybe there should be some kind of showdown of the shittiest to determine once and for all the worst Trek film. I guess, ultimately, Nemesis has to win because, while Shatner was mortally afraid that he had killed Star Trek with Final frontier, Nemesis actually did.
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I looked at that graphic and laughed pretty hard. While taste is subjective and any serious discussion about the quality/order of the movies would go on for 100 pages of hardcore trek nerd jerking off about how blah blah blah Spock > Data, putting anything below Final Frontier is extremely questionable.
And Into Darkness wasn't that bad. I think the guy who made that graphic just had a hate-on for it, because like imagine if he was saying it was worse than The Last Airbender: The Movie.
That is essentially what he is saying.
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I don't know, man, Final frontier is pretty unwatchable. Maybe there should be some kind of showdown of the shittiest to determine once and for all the worst Trek film. I guess, ultimately, Nemesis has to win because, while Shatner was mortally afraid that he had killed Star Trek with Final frontier, Nemesis actually did.
I feel like Nemesis takes the cake, because, aside from the story and the writing and the way every character acts wholly and completely unlike themselves, Nemesis feels like a shitty space action movie, whereas Final Frontier feels like a shitty Star Trek movie. That alone makes it a slightly better Star Trek movie than Nemesis.
Also, real quick: I still cannot fucking believe that, in Insurrection, they didn't even bother to replace the bluescren in that final sequence. Just... holy shit.
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The problem with the bad Trek movies is that some fucking idiot(s) decided that what people wanted out of Trek was shitty space action.
Like, it'd be one thing if they made them and it was experimental and it sucked.
But no. They were intentionally making them shit. Because Hollywood.
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Insurrection was probably the worse movie thematically, but it didn't commit Final Frontier's grave sin of being just deathly boring. It's one of those bad movies that are so gray and drab that you can't even have fun mocking it.
Also given the popularity of the current Trek series it's hard to say that action Trek was the wrong idea. The real mistake was trying to halfass it with a bunch of aging out-of-shape TV actors, twice.
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Both Wrath of Khan and Undiscovered Country have heavy action elements AND out of shape TV actors, and they're excellent films. The problems with things like Insurrection and Nemesis is that they're just plain bad. Lazy writing, poor direction (in the case of Nemesis the director was phoning it in so bad that he literally called Lavarr Burton "Lamar" for the duration of the shoot), and, in particular, a total lack of interest in what makes Trek good beyond the brand guaranteeing a certain number of people would go see it.
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Well, after I posted that, I thought about it a bit more and realized that action in the vein of Starship Mine would have worked pretty damn well. Picard is a perfectly cromulent clever-trickster sort of hero, the real problem is they kept trying to make him a two-fisted brawler sort of hero and Kirk the philosophical warrior sort of hero.
Movie Kirk tried too hard to be TV Picard and Movie Picard tried too hard to be TV Kirk.
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Remember that part of Nemesis when Picard was straight dual-wielding phaser rifles in the hallway of the Romulan doomship, mowing down endless waves of zombie aliens
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Trek is good precisely because it's the opposite of shitty space action. It's good space action. When I said they were making shitty space action, I meant it.
Space action is ships/people shooting each other and having significant impact on the tactical situation. (Khan, Country.)
Shitty space action is lasers, lasers everywhere, constant lasers, fucking LASERS, and none of them have any fucking impact on the plot.
The new Trek movies are sort of in between Shitty and Good, I guess, because they don't really take themselves 100% serious, so all the lasers (seriously, the enterprise shoots like a million lasers per second now, in comparison to like, the one phaser shot per minute of old trek) are sort of just window dressing. Everything is so over the top and hypercharged that they don't seem particularly out of place.
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Remember that part of Nemesis when Picard was straight dual-wielding phaser rifles in the hallway of the Romulan doomship, mowing down endless waves of zombie aliens
yes this is perfect thank you
tl;dr: The more your movie looks like a Kongregate zombie defense game, the shittier it is
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Old Trek had a very deliberate age of sail styling to their ship battles. Look at a shot from Wrath of Khan where you see the phaser banks open up, and then the next shot lingers on bits of hull scorching and getting blow of into space, and then just look at any, say, episode of Horatio Hornblower where a cannon is fired at wood, and the parallels are obvious. New Trek seems to just think that lasers are cool, and you end up with this:
(http://i.imgur.com/lHgEm.gif)
Instead of this:
(http://i.imgur.com/ImAqQpE.jpg)
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I think what we all really want is a 90-minute, big-budget remake of Balance of Terror.
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So, The Enemy Below (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050356/trivia?item=tr0770950) (or alternately, Run Silent, Run Deep).
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Buge didn't post the other thing I linked which was a poll for best character in X position which had Janeway as best captain and the best helmsman being Dax the science officer of a fucking space station.
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Didn't they promote Janeway to desk admiral just to get her out of a starship, roaming the galaxy committing crimes against sapient beings wherever she went?
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The Psycho Janeway Theory is absolute.
SF Debris' Nemesis review is worth watching just for his parody Janeway being an evil mastermind.
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Voyager gets a lot better when you realize that the titular ship was never meant to be very important, so it's not staffed with the uber-best Captain and crew like the flagship and politically vital outpost are. It's a look at how predictably dysfunctional the lesser levels of Federation hierarchy tend to be.
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" Hey we had this great idea for biopack based tech and we made a brand new ship all around it, 'cause a ship that can catch a cold is obviously the best idea ever, and guess who we volunteered for captain's duty!" Turns out Janeway was considered entirely expendable, and when the whole crew disappeared down a time-space sinkhole, the psych eval department breathed a sigh of relief for all the future paperwork they were just saved.
Janeway then goes on to ruin Federation relations in 2-3 different quadrants of the galaxy, none of which the Federation can even observe, much less contact.
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Voyager never gets good enough to warrant the phrase "Voyager gets a lot better."
I like this trailer because it has both inscrutable executive decisions, wooden acting, and an attempt to make things interesting with explosions.
Star Trek Voyager Trailer Think Tank (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_PVaEkq8gM#)
HE MAY LOOK FAMILIAR BUT THERE'S NOTHING FUNNY ABOUT HIM
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blah blah blah Spock > Data
R Daneel Olivaw FTW.
...but I assumed we were all just supposed to look at the graphic for a minute, notice what's in the middle of it, and laugh.
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Finally got around to seeing Into Darkness.
The surprise twist is that I actually really enjoyed it. Much more than the 2009 reboot. There's an actual character arc for Kirk! Khan has kind of the same motivations as Nero, but it's played much more plausibly. Plus, Cumberbatch is much more charismatic and convincing as a villain than Eric Bana. And the whole film wraps it up in a nice little "The War on Terror is horrible" bow.
The biggest problems, though, are that Abrams seems to be shooting his first draft of the script, and the entire thing has the rhythm and pacing of Icelandic Speed Metal. Also, the characters all seemed like really amped up versions of themselves. Especially Spock, where they take "Cold, emotionless Vulcan" to mean "autistic."
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http://youtu.be/IN5Hwvw50SM?t=5m9s (http://youtu.be/IN5Hwvw50SM?t=5m9s)
DAT LOOK
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(http://i.imgur.com/zQgG2hv.png)
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Okudagrams are really neat-looking.
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(http://i.imgur.com/gITIfRO.jpg)
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And the rest. (http://www.citycyclops.com/7.31.13.php)
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In retrospect I probably shouldn't have read those at work.
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*Brentai floats soundlessly in the void
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Man, I thought I posted those, but huh, I guess not.
[obligatory joke about my senility]
[the jokes are my posts]
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In fact, you did! (http://brontoforum.us/index.php?topic=16.msg267598#msg267598)
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We need to bring back the pyokoboards, just to see how long it takes for Mongrel to post on them, wondering where everyone else is.
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Mongrel couldn't find it because it was posted as a link no one would ever click.
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ITT: Smiler declares Frank a non-person.
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(http://francois.brontoforum.us/miscpic/obrien.png)