Star Trek

[Techwright]

3 hours ago, TheOtherTed said:

Not to harp on this as the curmudgeon that I definitely am, but I watched the reboot movies (even the gods-awful "Into Darkness") almost exclusively because Chris Pine and Karl Urban did a great job capturing the mannerisms of their characters.  They did their homework, and it showed, and so I stayed to watch.

 

I'm not seeing that here.  Instead, I'm hit in the face with the nonsensical line "I'm from space."

Into Darkness: ugh, don't get me wound up.  So much wrong with that one, however they could have fixed a major element just by inserting one line of dialog for Kahn:  "They surgically altered me so that no one familiar with history would recognize me."  There.  Now Indian Kahn Noonien Singh can be played by a very white British actor.  It's well-established canon that Star Fleet has the plastic surgery technology to make their spies look extremely different.   Nothing can help the miracle blood screw-up or the precision system-to-system beaming though.

 

Chris Pine and Karl Urban: absolutely great job.  Chris' performance was more subtle; Karl's more overt, but both were good.  Personally, I also liked Zachery Quinto, and of course, he had the original to guide him. Zachery may not have the deep, melodic baritone of Nimoy, but his performance was noticeably better than the Spock they brought in for Discovery.

 

"I'm from space." That is just weird.  I'm not sure I ever heard OG Kirk refer to himself that way.  Iowa, yes.  It showed Kirk as grounded (pun somewhat intended), not forgetful of his roots.

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

Quick one: now the Picard era is over, and...

Spoiler

...many, MANY deus-ex-historias, blatant nicking from Galactica, and the odd handwave aside - did you think the old crew got the sendoff they deserved?

 

And with Captain Hansen (fka 7/9) now firmly in the Big Chair of Enterprise-G (fka USS Titan)... do we want to see the ST: Legacy series taking it forward?

 

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

Quick still from the new SNW series...

 

Spoiler

Yup, that's Jack Quaid and Tawny Newsome on the SNW / Lower Decks crossover episode.

 

Exactly how all this is going to work? Frak(es) knows: especially considering that timeline-wise, Lower Decks is set during the later TNG movies era (when Riker moves to the Titan), and SNW is pre-Kirk. Given the title of the ep is Those Old Scientists, I'm expecting more than a little timey-wimey malarkey.

 

[Techwright]

10 hours ago, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

Quick still from the new SNW series...

 

  Hide contents

Yup, that's Jack Quaid and Tawny Newsome on the SNW / Lower Decks crossover episode.

 

Exactly how all this is going to work? Frak(es) knows: especially considering that timeline-wise, Lower Decks is set during the later TNG movies era (when Riker moves to the Titan), and SNW is pre-Kirk. Given the title of the ep is Those Old Scientists, I'm expecting more than a little timey-wimey malarkey.

 

 

 

The question is...

Spoiler

Will the 29th century time cops be as annoyed with them as they were with Janeway and that menace, Kirk?

 

[biostem]

A random thought regarding Star Trek, (and perhaps all Sci-Fi in general):  Why is it that the characters are exactly as competent and equipped as they need to be to handle any given situation?  It's interesting to see things like Voyager's "year of hell", where they suffered setback after setback, with resources constantly diminishing, (though the seemingly endless photon torpedoes and shuttlecraft somewhat counter that).

 

That being said, with respect to the previous image that was shared:

Spoiler

I would really love to see a bit of a clash or explanation on how Starfleet personnel from decades or more apart seem to be perfectly equipped for the enemies and anomalies they run up against.  I'd love to see a situation where a ToS-era crewmember laments how much better that TNG-era tricorder is.  The only thing that comes immediate to mind is how the NX-01 crew ran up against an anomaly they could have easily avoided, if their Enterprise was capable of Warp 7...

 

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

8 hours ago, biostem said:

Why is it that the characters are exactly as competent and equipped as they need to be to handle any given situation?

If I had an argument, it's because even in the 25th Century, space is still hard, and if you're not quite smart and vaguely competent...

(a) you wouldn't have made it through the Academy, let alone to senior officer status

(b) you would quite likely be dead.

Real-life equivalent of an ST problem would be the Apollo 13 incident, where they had to cannibalise bits of the ship, using instructions from a scratch model built on Earth, to fix the ship enough to limp home with everyone mostly alive.  It's only because you had a bunch of very smart people, both up there and down here, plus a metric ton of luck, that they pulled that off. I'm reasonably smart, but anything I can't type instructions to is a hardware problem and I'd have been screwed. No RAC / AAA in space...

 

(...though that was another Trek series idea I had - Starfleet Search & Rescue. Because what better way of going looking for trouble is there than pulling people out of it?)

 

Thinking about it, it is still strange that every crewmember on every sci-fi ship knows enough about every part of that ship in order to use it. Even in Red Dwarf: Dave is one of the least competent humans in existence, even with every other human removed from existence. Basically he's a cleaner, yet can do electronics repairs, fly a shuttlecraft (badly, but still).

 

I liked that Discovery's Jett Reno (more Tig please next season) improvised surgery and life support tools by reading technical manuals and guesswork.

Edited May 18, 2023 by ThaOGDreamWeaver

[Techwright]

If I understand correctly (NASA people correct me if I'm inaccurate), while the Space Shuttle crews had specific functions like Missions Specialist, they had to be competent in all disciplines on the ship, in the event that one or more of the crew was incapacitated or lost.  Sci-Fi would expand on that concept then.  McCoy may be a medic, but he has to know enough to assist Spock in reconfiguring a torpedo, or working bridge controls during Kobayashi Maru trials (one of the things the Alternate Universe movies got right, IMHO).  He's competent, but not the genius in any field but his own.

 

That said, space travel and the knowledge needed for it is vast, and one thing sci-fi fails on repeatedly is how the crews get and retain such high-end knowledge.  Star Trek shows Vulcan childen standing in training craters undergoing training on a level humans would consider torture, but those are Vulcans.  This is where I think The Matrix got it right.  The future should be about hacking the brain to stuff vast amounts of information in it.  Then training should solidify the understanding of that information, and provide muscle memory for tasks.

 

Regarding your hidden remarks @biostem, reference the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Relics in which brilliant Montgomery Scott is brought into the TNG era, and struggles with the engineering concepts that have far surpassed his knowledge.  It is his antiquated ways that provide a solution to the episode that future generations have forgotten.  In the end, he's given a slower warp-capable shuttle stocked with all the info he needs to bridge the gap between the two time periods, and directed to a planet of retired engineers who will doubtless help him.  It's a good look at how the two generations don't work well in each other's wheelhouse, but work well together.

Edited May 18, 2023 by Techwright

[InvaderStych]

So am I alone here?

 

I don't know what they intend with the cross-over, but I am sort of hoping it has the same light tone and self referential/mildly-deprecating approach that they took with the DS9 Tribble episode. Probably just me, but given what they did with the story-book episode in s1 I'd like to see them give it a go.

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

They’re not giving much away, although I suspect we’ve got a Alien Lust Spores / Sex Virus / Accidental Love Potion #9 Replicator Incident episode on our hands. And 3D Boimler and Mariner.

[biostem]

I'd really love a series that covered the period between ToS and TNG eras, instead of retreading ToS stuff...

[TheOtherTed]

*rocks in a fetal position* Please, no more "Naked Time," no more "Naked Time," no more "Naked Time"...

[Techwright]

2 hours ago, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

They’re not giving much away, although I suspect we’ve got a Alien Lust Spores / Sex Virus / Accidental Love Potion #9 Replicator Incident episode on our hands. And 3D Boimler and Mariner.

 

And now we know why Pike's hair has gone white.