The Star Trek Thread, V5.0

[Joe_Armstrong]

I finally finished Discovery. It was much better than I thought it was going to be, threw me for a couple unexpected twists too.

Spoiler

I loved how the Lorca we got to know was from the mirror verse

The production values constantly blew me away and I like how they weren't afraid to kill off characters and take come chances. So much of this show goes against Star Trek canon, but their ship being so secret, allows for a section 31 (should they introduce that) thing to explain things that later generations never knew about. However, I don't see how they can explain Spock's half sister...

Speaking of Michael Burnham, she's the worst part of the show, and a big reason why it suffers at times. If you're going to make a singular character the focus of much of the show, they better compelling and well acted, she's neither.

Every time I hear her called Michael, it pulls me out of my suspension of disbelief, not to mention her overly emotional responses. She even gets ghetto at one point lol, though perhaps we can chalk spotty acting up to growing pains. Every Star Trek show started slowly IMO, except the OG after Pike. I gotta say though Michael's character/acting got worse as the season wore on, while everyone else improved.

I'm glad we eventually found out why Lorca wanted her so badly though, and it wasn't for Mary Sue reasons. I really hope he comes back, he was my fav character.

I give this show a solid 7 out 10. Hopefully the next season can maintain the budget and it brings back Harry Mudd.

John Sheridan is awesome.

 

[GtehMVP]

John Sheridan is awesome.

Bruce Boxleitner is awesome period! Bringing him into season 2 of Babylon 5 was their best move! He can be a bit campy, but his presence is undeniable. Besides, he's muthafucking Tron lol!

 

[sverre054]

Pretty interesting video with the make up and creature designers for Discovery. They are actually pretty big Trek fans, and have some crazy stuff they want to explore in Discovery, including showing more species that got little to no air time. They also hope the Breen become a antagonist on the show, so they can crack open those refrigeration suits.

 

[JDragon]

I just hope they get away from the crazy idea to make an un-nerdy Star Trek that is 'about the characters'. It's not. Star Trek is about a positive vision of the future, about technology, science and ethics. The universe is the stage, the characters just play their part in it.

 

[JDragon]

Pretty interesting video with the make up and creature designers for Discovery. They are actually pretty big Trek fans, and have some crazy stuff they want to explore in Discovery, including showing more species that got little to no air time. They also hope the Breen become a antagonist on the show, so they can crack open those refrigeration suits.

Cannot view unfortunately.

 

[Adamant]

@sverre054

I was wondering if you had any idea why Sisko wasn't on the Defiant in First Contact?

Also, what do you think is bigger: V'Ger or the Dyson Sphere?

The big E unlike the old Galaxy class,first and foremost a warship. It was made to take on the Borg, so it wasn't quite the long mission endurance ship, like the galaxy classes were intended to be. The intrepid class ships were built for high speed, deep space assignments, and to experiment with the latest technologies. The Enterprise would have would have largely dominated any aggressive species. But with such a large ship and crew, much more can go wrong, and they would have to stop more often, especially if they had the same reduced
resources. They were able to run Voyager with a skeleton crew, and due to its design and tech, were able to easily modify it and adapt, which would have been a challenge with e Big E.

It would be interesting to see how much faster it would have gotten home. Typically how long can ships maintain warp speed before having to power down? What is the purpose of powering down and how long does downtime usually last? With how advanced the E is, I would assume their downtime would be significantly less than Voyager, and their time at warp speed could be maintained for significantly longer. Even at the highest warp speed.

As for speeds, at warp 9.995, the E should be able to make the journey home quite a bit faster. I've read that once warp starts to get that high, the differences can be quite discernible. 9.975 vs 9.995 doesn't sound like that big of a jump, but it could be the difference between an additional hundreds of times the speed of light, and everything I've read about Warp 9.99 makes it seem like it's crazy ridiculous fast, and the E is .005 past that. To push the point further, isn't the Romulan Neutral Zone like 100 or more lightyears from Earth? In First Contact, the E gets from there to Earth in what's seemingly a matter of minutes. If that's accurate, then the E should be able to get home from the Delta Quadrant in a matter of months, or maybe just a couple of years.

Also, something even crazier to think about, the Scimitar must have a max warp of like 9.999 because in Nemesis, the E went to maximum warp while Shinzon just sat there in disgust for several moments before it cut to the next scene. Then later, it's revealed that he effortlessly caught up and has been easily following the E, literally right on their tail, for some time. So to do that, the Scimitar has to be insanely fast, to the point of making the E look relatively slow by comparison.

 

[sverre054]

@sverre054

I was wondering if you had any idea why Sisko wasn't on the Defiant in First Contact?

.

They never gave a firm answer, but Worf was XO of the defiant at the time, and Sisko around this time was elevated By Admiral Ross to help him lead the war effort. The timelines don't exactly, and also would lead to where are Dax, O'brien ect..... It's Kinda like how the justified not having the Enterprise E play a role in the Dominion war, they made up some canon in the books, that Picard convinced Star Fleet that the Enterprise crew had been in too many conflicts and it was better to have the flagship on more diplomatic and explorations mission(Yet the ship is a battleship, built to fight Borg cubes). So to answer both, they didn't want to pay from the actual Defiant crew or to build the E to appear in DS9

 

[sverre054]

@sverre054

I was wondering if you had any idea why Sisko wasn't on the Defiant in First Contact?

Also, what do you think is bigger: V'Ger or the Dyson Sphere?




It would be interesting to see how much faster it would have gotten home. Typically how long can ships maintain warp speed before having to power down? What is the purpose of powering down and how long does downtime usually last? With how advanced the E is, I would assume their downtime would be significantly less than Voyager, and their time at warp speed could be maintained for significantly longer. Even at the highest warp speed.

As for speeds, at warp 9.995, the E should be able to make the journey home quite a bit faster. I've read that once warp starts to get that high, the differences can be quite discernible. 9.975 vs 9.995 doesn't sound like that big of a jump, but it could be the difference between an additional hundreds of times the speed of light, and everything I've read about Warp 9.99 makes it seem like it's crazy ridiculous fast, and the E is .005 past that. To push the point further, isn't the Romulan Neutral Zone like 100 or more lightyears from Earth? In First Contact, the E gets from there to Earth in what's seemingly a matter of minutes. If that's accurate, then the E should be able to get home from the Delta Quadrant in a matter of months, or maybe just a couple of years.

Also, something even crazier to think about, the Scimitar must have a max warp of like 9.999 because in Nemesis, the E went to maximum warp while Shinzon just sat there in disgust for several moments before it cut to the next scene. Then later, it's revealed that he effortlessly caught up and has been easily following the E, literally right on their tail, for some time. So to do that, the Scimitar has to be insanely fast, to the point of making the E look relatively slow by comparison.

I think the Dyson Sphere would still be bigger. V'ger was Huge, but its threat was the power it produced.


The warp speed question is hard to answer, because it wasn't written into the show. Its technical stats were usually created after the fact in the technical manuals, and towards the ends they were all approaching that 9.9 threshold. Its all fuzzy math and techno Babel. Even more confusing when you get into the slip streams, and warp corridors.

 

[Adamant]

Also speaking of who was missing..... Q made only one appearance I believe. I'm wondering why Q never harassed the Founders? And what was his issue with Guinan? He's practically omnipotent. He should have no fear of either race. (And also in the Q2 episode of Voyager where he yells at his son "not to provoke the Borg".....why? Again, omnipotent. They can just undo everything, so what's the issue? Even if they are provoked, it should pose no threat to the Continuum)

I finished DS9. If I'm being honest, it just didn't grow on me the same way TNG and Voyager did. Perhaps it was because it was primarily set on a space station? IDK. The Dominion War was a cool concept and had a lot of cool battles, but overall, it all just felt a little anti-climactic to me. Especially the finale. That was super anti-climactic. I was hoping for some ultra massive biggest-we've-ever-seen final battle, but it just sort of ended with Odo somehow talking the one founder into surrendering. Maybe I missed something, but it just seemed a little convenient and lacked that epic final punch (that Endgame had, for example).

Perhaps the coolest episode was the one where they went back to the Kirk days. That was pretty rad. I enjoyed seeing all the classic uniforms and sets with the DS9 crew. They blended everything pretty seemlessly. It almost makes me wish they would make a modern series that looked and felt EXACTLY like that. Would be cool.

 

[sverre054]

Tribbulations was a amazing episode. It was an episode they wanted to make for a while, and finally they got the studio to open the purse strings. It was a filler episode that didn't help move along the dominion plot line, but it became a fan favorite. I always laugh when they try to ask Worf why all the Klingons look weird. Luckily they fixed that canon wise in Enterprise.

 

[Philo-Publius]

Tribbulations was a amazing episode. It was an episode they wanted to make for a while, and finally they got the studio to open the purse strings. It was a filler episode that didn't help move along the dominion plot line, but it became a fan favorite. I always laugh when they try to ask Worf why all the Klingons look weird. Luckily they fixed that canon wise in Enterprise.

And then they fucked it all up again with Star Trek Discovery (STD).

 

[Adamant]

Tribbulations was a amazing episode. It was an episode they wanted to make for a while, and finally they got the studio to open the purse strings. It was a filler episode that didn't help move along the dominion plot line, but it became a fan favorite. I always laugh when they try to ask Worf why all the Klingons look weird. Luckily they fixed that canon wise in Enterprise.

How did they end up fixing that? (I never really watched Enterprise outside of a handful of episodes).


Btw, kind of a strange question, but how does Star Trek in general keep the holodecks from becoming nothing but sex rooms with people replicating their crushes and doing the nasty with them? Have they ever touched on this in ST at all?

 

[sverre054]

How did they end up fixing that? (I never really watched Enterprise outside of a handful of episodes).


Btw, kind of a strange question, but how does Star Trek in general keep the holodecks from becoming nothing but sex rooms with people replicating their crushes and doing the nasty with them? Have they ever touched on this in ST at all?

Kingons stole the augment virus(like Khan), to try and create more powerful warriors. The augmented human DNA over powered the Klingon DNA, and started killing them and spread as a airborne virus. A cure was found, but many Klingons were permanently altered, with the loss of there ridges. I would take several generations to revert there appearance.

 

[JDragon]

Btw, kind of a strange question, but how does Star Trek in general keep the holodecks from becoming nothing but sex rooms with people replicating their crushes and doing the nasty with them? Have they ever touched on this in ST at all?

IMO it was pretty obvious that the holosuites in DS9 were used to have sexy time. But since ST is usually quite uptight about everything sex, they never really made things explicit. I am not an expert here, but I believe that the holo programs on the Enterprise D at least are open source / not encrypted (see Barclay's embarrassing moments in TNG) and doors are usually not locked. That should be quite the social pressure.

 

[sverre054]

How did they end up fixing that? (I never really watched Enterprise outside of a handful of episodes).


Btw, kind of a strange question, but how does Star Trek in general keep the holodecks from becoming nothing but sex rooms with people replicating their crushes and doing the nasty with them? Have they ever touched on this in ST at all?

In Voyager they actually addressed the sex issue in the Holodeck. Both Vorik and Tuvok, the Vulcans on boards, went through Pon Farr(Vulcan mating ritual, they go through every 7 years. They need to mate or they die. They also loose control of there emotions). They basically forced the Vulcans to use the Holodeck. Tuvok had to Order Vorik to use the Holodeck, in lieu of trying to rape various members of the crew and challenge all the men to fight to the death. Eventually Tuvok also had to use the Holodeck, but required his wife to be programmed into the program.

 

[sverre054]

IMO it was pretty obvious that the holosuites in DS9 were used to have sexy time. But since ST is usually quite uptight about everything sex, they never really made things explicit. I am not an expert here, but I believe that the holo programs on the Enterprise D at least are open source / not encrypted (see Barclay's embarrassing moments in TNG) and doors are usually not locked. That should be quite the social pressure.

Yeah Barclay was totally having threesomes with Holodeck Tori and Crushers

 

[sverre054]

Alex Kurtzman has taken over as both head Executive producer and showrunner for season 2. Discovery already has 5 episodes for season in the can, and they have decided to fire Berg and Harberts. I have some inside info, that CBS hasn't been happy with there budgeting, but they let it slide on season 1 because it was so far behind. Now word is they went way over budget for season 2 premiere, and they were tyrants to the writing staff.

Now if Kurtzman is actually focused on Discovery, I have no problem with him running the show. He is a good writer and knows how to run a production. Its pretty clear he wanted to take on more of a Rick Berman type role, while having Fuller showrun, and then Berg and Harberts after CBS fired Fuller. He has had his hands in alot of pots over the years though, so if hes focuses on Trek we should be fine. I do have no doubt, that they will bring in a new showrunner for season 3, and it wouldn't surprise me if they hired a trek veteran at that point. I could see someone like Manny Coto being brought in. In a dream world some one like Ronald D. Moore or Ira Steven Bher would be brought in, but they are both busy on there own shows, and would probably only become involved again with trek, if they created a new series.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/star-trek-discovery-has-suddenly-changed-showrunners-a-1826848946
Showrunners Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts are out, and executive producer Alex Kurtzman will step in. Kurtzman will also run the show’s writers’ room.

Star Trek fans will recall, of course, that Berg and Harberts got the job when original showrunner Bryan Fuller left the project in October 2016, well before the show aired its first episode. According to The Hollywood Reporter, which broke the news, this latest change-up is “based not on the creative but instead for leadership and operational issues.”



So, what does “leadership and operational issues” mean, exactly? THRcites an unnamed source who reports that “Berg and Harberts became increasingly abusive to the Discovery writing staff, with the latter said to have leaned across the writers’ room table while shouting an expletive at a member of the show’s staff... After hearing rumors of HR complaints, Harberts is said to have threatened the staff to keep concerns with the production an internal matter.”

Budgetary concerns are also mentioned, which means the remainder of the season (apparently the show’s already near-finished with its first five eps) will need to be leaner—a situation that’s actually been a good thing for Discovery in the past. THR notes that the showrunner change is not expected to affect the show’s production, and it also points out that Kurtzman, who co-created Discovery with Fuller, has a long history with Star Trek on both the big and small screen.

How this latest behind-the-scenes shake-up will affect the series, of course, remains to be seen; the CBS: All Access show’s not due back until 2019.

Update 9:31pm: Here’s the official statement from CBS:

We’ve made some producer changes at Star Trek: Discovery. The series continues under the creative vision and leadership of executive producer and co-creator Alex Kurtzman. Discovery remains on course for season two in 2019 with new and continuing stories that build on its successful premiere season.

 

[Philo-Publius]

Did they ever explain why those shit-ass Klingons look like fucking mutants?

 

[moreorless87]

Bruce Boxleitner is awesome period! Bringing him into season 2 of Babylon 5 was their best move! He can be a bit campy, but his presence is undeniable. Besides, he's muthafucking Tron lol!

Suited the show very well indeed IMHO, always had a slightly campy playful element to it but also a good deal of depth. It was also I'd say were the show cut ties with its TNG influence more, Sinclair was more of a Picard like figure where as Sherdian was rather more human/flawed.

 

[sverre054]

Did they ever explain why those shit-ass Klingons look like fucking mutants?

Basically they are trying to expand the canon of the Klingons. The Klingons control vast areas of the quadrant and control hundreds if not thousands of worlds.They are basically trying to set up that the various houses or groups of Klingons have evolved and may look slightly different depending on where the are from. Part of that new lore was that some of the worlds had crazy predators and dangers that required klingons to use the Ridges in there head, which is a sensory organ, and need shaved heads for full use of them. Its a cool premises, and it sounds like they will explore it more in the future. If they just added some hair, the changes don't actually look too drastic. It won't won't surprise me if some of them start appearing with hair in the future.