JolietJake
Banned
Voyager's ending sucked so hard. Felt like there was no resolution on the characters or anything besides that they made it home.
Star Trek: Enterprise surprisingly does not completely suck
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pacifickarma
CAGiversary!
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I think there were some novels published about the post-Voyager life for most of the characters. I'm not sure if the novels are considered canon or not, but I think Janeway became an admiral and Chakotay became captain of Voyager.
[quote name='pacifickarma']I think there were some novels published about the post-Voyager life for most of the characters. I'm not sure if the novels are considered canon or not, but I think Janeway became an admiral and Chakotay became captain of Voyager.[/QUOTE]
I think they are considered canon, for those who care. Didn't Admiral Janeway make a brief appearance in the last TNG movie?
They can be a guilty pleasure but there have been a lot of books following loose plot threads, especially those I've seen for DS9. There was a another series following Riker as captain of his own ship but I gave up halfway through the first one because it was so obnoxious in pushing certain character aspects, not because they contributed to the story but because the authors had axes to grind. Imagine if the original show felt constantly compelled to remind us that Uhura was black and wasn't it wonderful what strides had been made in diversity, instead of doing what they did, which was just have a competent officer on the bridge who wasn't a generic white male and let the audience draw its own conclusions.
If you liked DS9 the follow-on books are worthwhile. The Riker series, not so much.
What they need for Voyager is a novel to be an alternate conclusion to the series rather than the painfully dumb 'USS Batmobile' bit they did.
I think they are considered canon, for those who care. Didn't Admiral Janeway make a brief appearance in the last TNG movie?
They can be a guilty pleasure but there have been a lot of books following loose plot threads, especially those I've seen for DS9. There was a another series following Riker as captain of his own ship but I gave up halfway through the first one because it was so obnoxious in pushing certain character aspects, not because they contributed to the story but because the authors had axes to grind. Imagine if the original show felt constantly compelled to remind us that Uhura was black and wasn't it wonderful what strides had been made in diversity, instead of doing what they did, which was just have a competent officer on the bridge who wasn't a generic white male and let the audience draw its own conclusions.
If you liked DS9 the follow-on books are worthwhile. The Riker series, not so much.
What they need for Voyager is a novel to be an alternate conclusion to the series rather than the painfully dumb 'USS Batmobile' bit they did.
[quote name='dafoomie']All you'd really need to say is none of that shit in Riker's simulation really happened.[/QUOTE]
I think many fans pretty much consider it non-canon.
I thought it would have been kinda neat if they had put T'Pol into the new Star Trek movie and have it mentioned that her and Tucker were the first to have a Vulcan/Human hybrid child, relating it somehow to Spock's struggles. My fanboy-peen would have gotten so hard over that.
I think many fans pretty much consider it non-canon.
I thought it would have been kinda neat if they had put T'Pol into the new Star Trek movie and have it mentioned that her and Tucker were the first to have a Vulcan/Human hybrid child, relating it somehow to Spock's struggles. My fanboy-peen would have gotten so hard over that.
[quote name='snookie_wookums']Yes, but with Enterprise I feel like it started off so badly for so many reasons (whole new species we'd never heard about in the much later Treks for no apparent reason, for example), that the epic stumbles made it unrecoverable by the time the show got good.
Along with some here, I happened to like the whole time travel storyline. That was one tidbit that made later Trek rules more relevant. Does anyone here remember that a major rule that the Federation had was to never ever time travel?
That's why it was supposed to be such a big deal when Kirk did it in Star Trek 4: The Quest for Blue Whales. And also in like 4 episodes of TOS and 10 episodes of TNG, and I think like 3 in DS9 and maybe like 5 in Voyager.[/QUOTE]
That was one of the great moments in that 'Trial and Tribble-ations' episode of DS9. Sisko has to report to the Federation agency that polices time travel. When the find out that it involved Kirk the two agents interviewing Sisko make some comment like "Kirk. It's always friggin' Kirk."
Along with some here, I happened to like the whole time travel storyline. That was one tidbit that made later Trek rules more relevant. Does anyone here remember that a major rule that the Federation had was to never ever time travel?
That's why it was supposed to be such a big deal when Kirk did it in Star Trek 4: The Quest for Blue Whales. And also in like 4 episodes of TOS and 10 episodes of TNG, and I think like 3 in DS9 and maybe like 5 in Voyager.[/QUOTE]
That was one of the great moments in that 'Trial and Tribble-ations' episode of DS9. Sisko has to report to the Federation agency that polices time travel. When the find out that it involved Kirk the two agents interviewing Sisko make some comment like "Kirk. It's always friggin' Kirk."
snookie_wookums
CAGiversary!
[quote name='epobirs']That was one of the great moments in that 'Trial and Tribble-ations' episode of DS9. Sisko has to report to the Federation agency that polices time travel. When the find out that it involved Kirk the two agents interviewing Sisko make some comment like "Kirk. It's always friggin' Kirk."[/QUOTE]
I know, right? This is why some of the reactions about the time-travel storyline "ruining" Enterprise are so friggin far off base. Time travel had always been a few episodes here and there, at most limited to a two episode story arc.
Now, we FINALLY had a chance to see a whole season of Star Trek with a single storyline AND it involved time travel, which has always been an integral part of the lore AND it centered around something that meant the fate of the UNIVERSE!!! Seriously, I don't understand all the hating on season 3. OK maybe the nazis were a little bit too much, but other than that it was all pretty epic.
I know, right? This is why some of the reactions about the time-travel storyline "ruining" Enterprise are so friggin far off base. Time travel had always been a few episodes here and there, at most limited to a two episode story arc.
Now, we FINALLY had a chance to see a whole season of Star Trek with a single storyline AND it involved time travel, which has always been an integral part of the lore AND it centered around something that meant the fate of the UNIVERSE!!! Seriously, I don't understand all the hating on season 3. OK maybe the nazis were a little bit too much, but other than that it was all pretty epic.
[quote name='snookie_wookums']I know, right? This is why some of the reactions about the time-travel storyline "ruining" Enterprise are so friggin far off base. Time travel had always been a few episodes here and there, at most limited to a two episode story arc.
Now, we FINALLY had a chance to see a whole season of Star Trek with a single storyline AND it involved time travel, which has always been an integral part of the lore AND it centered around something that meant the fate of the UNIVERSE!!! Seriously, I don't understand all the hating on season 3. OK maybe the nazis were a little bit too much, but other than that it was all pretty epic.[/QUOTE]
A lot of people dislike the use of time travel because it can become a plot device that distorts everything that comes after. It give such extraordinary power to whoever posesses the means that it takes over the story. Which is fine if your setting out to do a time travel story but if you aren't and it is easily achieved then it creates the problem of time travel being the answer to everything. The Star Trek universe has made it plain that anyone with warp drive can do time travel pretty easily, and raises the question of why time travelers aren't constantly interfering in events. (Or worse, time traveling Q members.)
It has now become inevitable that every SF or fantasy series will have a storyline in an alternate setting where things went badly wrong and the protagonist must go back in time (or a parallel version of the world on a slower track) to change what subtle or major event changed everything. This has gotten to be one of the dread cliches that writers know they should not do but cannot resist. This set of forbidden plot devices includes: invisibility, shrinking to a tiny size, growing to a huge size, and others.
A really good writer can make something good of it. On one Farscape episode the heroes had seemingly been made tiny and it was driving one character nuts because she couldn't figure out how it was done and she believed it had to be an illusion. That was having fun with the cliche in a fourth wall breaking way. Another was in the Buffy the Vampire Season 8 comics, where we come to find that Buffy's sister Dawn has had an affair with some supernatural entity and become a giant as a result.
But most of the time it's just a mess. So people become wary of time travel plots.
OTOH, the time travel aspect could be applied as a reason nobody in the other series that come chronologically after Enterprise seems to recall that there was a species called the Suliban who caused a lot of trouble for while. They may have been casualties of the war in such a way as to have largely erased their having ever been an interstellar player.
Now, we FINALLY had a chance to see a whole season of Star Trek with a single storyline AND it involved time travel, which has always been an integral part of the lore AND it centered around something that meant the fate of the UNIVERSE!!! Seriously, I don't understand all the hating on season 3. OK maybe the nazis were a little bit too much, but other than that it was all pretty epic.[/QUOTE]
A lot of people dislike the use of time travel because it can become a plot device that distorts everything that comes after. It give such extraordinary power to whoever posesses the means that it takes over the story. Which is fine if your setting out to do a time travel story but if you aren't and it is easily achieved then it creates the problem of time travel being the answer to everything. The Star Trek universe has made it plain that anyone with warp drive can do time travel pretty easily, and raises the question of why time travelers aren't constantly interfering in events. (Or worse, time traveling Q members.)
It has now become inevitable that every SF or fantasy series will have a storyline in an alternate setting where things went badly wrong and the protagonist must go back in time (or a parallel version of the world on a slower track) to change what subtle or major event changed everything. This has gotten to be one of the dread cliches that writers know they should not do but cannot resist. This set of forbidden plot devices includes: invisibility, shrinking to a tiny size, growing to a huge size, and others.
A really good writer can make something good of it. On one Farscape episode the heroes had seemingly been made tiny and it was driving one character nuts because she couldn't figure out how it was done and she believed it had to be an illusion. That was having fun with the cliche in a fourth wall breaking way. Another was in the Buffy the Vampire Season 8 comics, where we come to find that Buffy's sister Dawn has had an affair with some supernatural entity and become a giant as a result.
But most of the time it's just a mess. So people become wary of time travel plots.
OTOH, the time travel aspect could be applied as a reason nobody in the other series that come chronologically after Enterprise seems to recall that there was a species called the Suliban who caused a lot of trouble for while. They may have been casualties of the war in such a way as to have largely erased their having ever been an interstellar player.
snookie_wookums
CAGiversary!
Great points all, epobirs. This is actually what I thought made the time travel arc in Enterprise all the more relevant since it provides the excuse of the United Federation of Planets' ultimate macguffin: the Prime Directive. Because of Enterprise's exposition on time travel, it is now clear that The Prime Directive was probable created specifically with time travel in mind, instead of something added on later, such as it seemed with the movies and later with TNG.
All that said, I still sat uneasy at all the different races that Enterprise introduced that I never heard about before. Before anyone pipes up about Star Trek books, let me state now that I do not consider it canon stuff, since none of it ever made it into the previous shows or movies. Retroactively adding in no less than 38 races on a show that's supposedly introducing the past history of a well-documented series just does not make any sense in any way whatsoever and smells more like invention out of desperation than anything else. I really wish they're just kept with what was known and maybe added in a few races that could have been marginal players later on an as such easily forgotten into the background of the future.
You're probably right about the relevance of the Suliban however, and such a fate is deserving for those meddling a-holes, but it still doesn't explain away the other 37 races I'd never heard of before, book appearances notwithstanding.
All that said, I still sat uneasy at all the different races that Enterprise introduced that I never heard about before. Before anyone pipes up about Star Trek books, let me state now that I do not consider it canon stuff, since none of it ever made it into the previous shows or movies. Retroactively adding in no less than 38 races on a show that's supposedly introducing the past history of a well-documented series just does not make any sense in any way whatsoever and smells more like invention out of desperation than anything else. I really wish they're just kept with what was known and maybe added in a few races that could have been marginal players later on an as such easily forgotten into the background of the future.
You're probably right about the relevance of the Suliban however, and such a fate is deserving for those meddling a-holes, but it still doesn't explain away the other 37 races I'd never heard of before, book appearances notwithstanding.
There was a first season episode of Enterprise where Archer had a monologue towards the end regarding his choices in regard to interfering with the alien species of the week. During that he suggested they really needed some ground rules regarding this sort of situation that officers could reference and know when to just walk away. He was plainly alluding to the Prime Directive, although it was kind of silly to suggest that nobody had given this serious thought in the centuries before interstellar travel became a reality for Earth and the decades since slow-ish interstellar travel became available. (One of the bridge officers had grown up on his family's trading vessel, suggesting humans could have been mucking around with various planets well before Starfleet ever showed up.) Obviously most of the species who could have passed through the neighborhood had non-interference policies or the planet would have been openly visited long ago, rather than by secret agents like Gary Seven.
Hey, it can be worse. One of the episodes of the animated Trek series used a Larry Niven Known Space story, 'The Soft Weapon,' as the basis of a Star Trek story. This meant dragging in a huge chunk of Known Space backstory about a war that wiped out nearly all sentient life in the galaxy about 3 billion years ago. Making this work entailed substituting Sulu and Uhura for the original human characters. It also meant bringing in Nesus, the Puppeteer, and the Kzinti.
They could have had Klingons instead of Kzin, especially since they did a horrible rendition of the rat-cats. This left the question of whether Puppeteers and Kzin are part of the Trek universe or not. Most choose to ignore that episode or even the whole animated series, although it did introduce characters like Robert April, the first captain of the Enterprise and its primary designer, IIRC.
So that was a big hairball of complication. I remember some of the pen and paper Trek RPG games treated the Kzin as part of the package but largely so that they had another popular species with speciifc battle tactics. I remember Dragon magazine, which was the official publication of TSR, the original publishers of D&D, had a section where people created versions of characters from mythology and fiction in D&D playable form. (Giants in the Earth?) One issue had D&D Kzinti using the premise that they'd wandered through a dimensional rift from their home in the Known Space universe, which in turn lent the same premise to their turning up in Trek. Whee!
See, everything can be explained! You just have to memorize sufficient amounts of insane trivia instead of wasting your neurons on stuff like useless 'practical knowledge.'
Hey, it can be worse. One of the episodes of the animated Trek series used a Larry Niven Known Space story, 'The Soft Weapon,' as the basis of a Star Trek story. This meant dragging in a huge chunk of Known Space backstory about a war that wiped out nearly all sentient life in the galaxy about 3 billion years ago. Making this work entailed substituting Sulu and Uhura for the original human characters. It also meant bringing in Nesus, the Puppeteer, and the Kzinti.
They could have had Klingons instead of Kzin, especially since they did a horrible rendition of the rat-cats. This left the question of whether Puppeteers and Kzin are part of the Trek universe or not. Most choose to ignore that episode or even the whole animated series, although it did introduce characters like Robert April, the first captain of the Enterprise and its primary designer, IIRC.
So that was a big hairball of complication. I remember some of the pen and paper Trek RPG games treated the Kzin as part of the package but largely so that they had another popular species with speciifc battle tactics. I remember Dragon magazine, which was the official publication of TSR, the original publishers of D&D, had a section where people created versions of characters from mythology and fiction in D&D playable form. (Giants in the Earth?) One issue had D&D Kzinti using the premise that they'd wandered through a dimensional rift from their home in the Known Space universe, which in turn lent the same premise to their turning up in Trek. Whee!
See, everything can be explained! You just have to memorize sufficient amounts of insane trivia instead of wasting your neurons on stuff like useless 'practical knowledge.'
bigdaddy
Banned
Ummm... there were almost 100 episodes and Manny Coto, of Odyssey 5 fame, wrote maybe 20 episode, he only wrote the final season episodes, but not the premiere or finale.
And it sucks, the stories are redoes, and retelling history in a horrible way. If they wanted to do that they should have done a reboot like the new money. The acting was horrible, and almost offensively bad.
The only thing going for the show was it's sets looked nice, and the CGI was nice.
[quote name='pacifickarma']I think there were some novels published about the post-Voyager life for most of the characters. I'm not sure if the novels are considered canon or not, but I think Janeway became an admiral and Chakotay became captain of Voyager.[/QUOTE]
Sadly not cannon because I think Janeway dies in one of the books.
Also we didn't see the aliens again because they just became part of the federation and nothnig else. Star Trek really needs to add more bad guy races and races in gernal. They are like only 5 pain races, they really need new ones. That's what made DS9 so good, new races to do new things with.
And it sucks, the stories are redoes, and retelling history in a horrible way. If they wanted to do that they should have done a reboot like the new money. The acting was horrible, and almost offensively bad.
The only thing going for the show was it's sets looked nice, and the CGI was nice.
[quote name='pacifickarma']I think there were some novels published about the post-Voyager life for most of the characters. I'm not sure if the novels are considered canon or not, but I think Janeway became an admiral and Chakotay became captain of Voyager.[/QUOTE]
Sadly not cannon because I think Janeway dies in one of the books.
Also we didn't see the aliens again because they just became part of the federation and nothnig else. Star Trek really needs to add more bad guy races and races in gernal. They are like only 5 pain races, they really need new ones. That's what made DS9 so good, new races to do new things with.
New races are a budget problem for TV production, just as ships used to be.
With a new races you have all of the attendent makeup, costuming and other props to produce and store against future need. All of this costs money. There is a season budget divided between the episodes so that if one episode has high costs it must be made up with another that avoids new costs. This often means a talking heads episode with few guest actors and little or no new makeup, costumes, props, etc.
New ship designs were a big expense back when it required calling Greg Jein (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Gregory_Jein) and ordering up an expensive new model. It also made for scheduling issues. The switch to CGI for most or all exterior space shots reduced the cost hugely as well as the needed to produce a movement sequence. It also took away a lot of the limitations of motion-control models. You no longer had to worry about reflections or number of objects and various other hassles.
CGI did help Enterprise on the alien species issue. We got a lot more example of very non-human races that would have been extremely dificult to do well just a few years earlier. Look at what they did with the Gorn, taking it from a guy in a bulky, stiff costume who could barely see where he was facing and making it into a fast, agile, frightening predator.
With a new races you have all of the attendent makeup, costuming and other props to produce and store against future need. All of this costs money. There is a season budget divided between the episodes so that if one episode has high costs it must be made up with another that avoids new costs. This often means a talking heads episode with few guest actors and little or no new makeup, costumes, props, etc.
New ship designs were a big expense back when it required calling Greg Jein (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Gregory_Jein) and ordering up an expensive new model. It also made for scheduling issues. The switch to CGI for most or all exterior space shots reduced the cost hugely as well as the needed to produce a movement sequence. It also took away a lot of the limitations of motion-control models. You no longer had to worry about reflections or number of objects and various other hassles.
CGI did help Enterprise on the alien species issue. We got a lot more example of very non-human races that would have been extremely dificult to do well just a few years earlier. Look at what they did with the Gorn, taking it from a guy in a bulky, stiff costume who could barely see where he was facing and making it into a fast, agile, frightening predator.
bread's done