All Star Trek Discussion Thread ("Into Darkness" trailer released)

[King Postwhore]

The third and most of the 4th season of Enterprise was great, just the rushed ending because they were canceled and had to quicly write an ending so it felt rushed.

[BlobVanDam]

That Borg episode pissed me off. The Borg and Q were thrown into episodes for unnecessary fan service. They ripped out the awesomeness that was the first encounter with TNG. Fuckers

They had an episode with The Borg and Q?!?!  Holy fuck, I'm glad I didn't watch that show. 

I've seen every episode of TOS and TNG multiple times, each Voyager at least once, and I apparently gave up on DS9 too soon (someday I'll remedy that), but I tried Enterprise and couldn't hang with it.  Yeah, the Vulcan chick was hot, but come on.  I think I watched two episodes, and in both of them they found some excuse to get her clothes off.  Seriously, that's what it's come to?

I heard some Enterprise episodes were actually pretty good, which I believe, but that the final episode blew chunks, and really... Q and The Borg?

If you're going to ever watch it again, best just skip to S3 (although you need to watch the finale of S2 to start the storyline).

But I don't remember anything with the Q in Enterprise at all.
And the Borg idea wasn't that bad. It was Borg who were left there from First Contact, which is plausible enough (considering it's Trek). Why did TNG have to be the first encounter with the Borg? If you want to get technical, it was already changed in First Contact when Lily saw the Borg on the ship, and even knew them by name. She was the first chronological human contact with them. So I don't really see the problem with the Borg in Enterprise. Much like everything else they rehashed, it was nothing new, and not done as well, but in theory I have no issue with it.

[hefdaddy42]

They had an episode with The Borg and Q?!?!  Holy fuck, I'm glad I didn't watch that show.  

[Orbert]

Ah, I'd forgotten about The Borg stuff in First Contact.  I even liked that movie overall, but man, what a mess.

When Q introduces the TNG crew to The Borg, it's supposedly the first time we've ever seen anything even remotely like them, and the first time they've heard about us.  Q even makes a point of saying that The Borg now know about us, and they'll be coming for us, or something like that.  If we'd contacted them back in Cochrane's time, and again in the time of Enterprise, then the amazing first contact with them in TNG is completely neutered, as El JoNNo said.

I guess you could argue that Q is omnipotent (by our standards) but not omniscient, so he didn't actually realize that The Borg knew about humans before the TNG episode, but basically it seems like they were included in Enterprise just to include an awesome species that had been created in the Star Trek universe, and they came up with a half-assed plot to shoehorn them in.  So yeah, it was fanservice.  But I never saw it, so I can't say how well or poorly it was done.

[BlobVanDam]

I really don't see the big deal of their introduction in TNG. It's not like it was all that good or detailed. It was the later episodes where they explored the Borg further that made them such a classic Trek race, not the fact that no human had ever seen one before, or that no Borg had ever known about Earth before.

I'm glad they ignored a quick line in an undeveloped plot for the sake of First Contact, as it's easily one of the better Trek movies. And maybe people should at least watch the episode of Enterprise before complaining! While it wasn't a great episode, they did actually make a solid attempt to fit it within canon, unlike their clumsy mishandling of the Romulans.

[El JoNNo]

When i mentioned Q and the Borg it was a general statement, the Q and the Borg have been in nearly every series. The same can be said about almost every "main" species. However, those species IE Vulcuns, Romulans, Klingons etc.. Are all plausible with the exception of Enterprise. Enterprise was the only series where most of the main species had not made contact yet. 

[BlobVanDam]

The only races I can remember from Enterprise that shouldn't have made contact yet were the Romulans and the Borg. The Romulans were an absolute mess, especially with the cloaked ship episodes. The Borg were only for one episode, and I was happy enough with the way it fitted into the timeline.
I don't recall the rest having the backstory to contradict Enterprise (such as Klingons, Andorians, Tellarites), and obviously the Vulcans were ok due to First Contact.

[Adami]

I thought the Borg thing was fine, it was well before much of what happened was properly recorded since the federation didn't exist yet.

And Q was never in Enterprise.

[hefdaddy42]

OK, I didn't see it.  So someone tell me how the Borg wound up in Enterprise without Q?

[Adami]

OK, I didn't see it.  So someone tell me how the Borg wound up in Enterprise without Q?

They were on earth from the incidents of First Contact, frozen in I guess the arctic or something. Then some scientists found them, studied them, got assimilated, the  Borg took off trying to get back home, but Dr. Becket stopped them.

[Orbert]

Okay, that sounds tolerable at least, provided the execution wasn't completely fumbled.  Still, at this point I probably would only watch Enterprise by renting the DVDs and starting from the beginning.  Knowing ahead of time that it doesn't really find its stride until the third season, and there were only four seasons, is discouraging.  I'll probably go with Deep Space Nine first.  My buddy's wife has them all on DVD, and I'm sure I could borrow them.

[Adami]

Every ST show starts off terribly for a while.

[Orbert]

Good point.

[The King in Crimson]

Every ST show starts off terribly for a while.

I must be the only person that doesn't hate the first two seasons of DS9. They're certainly much, much better than (most of) the first 3 seasons of TNG.

Netflix is starting to make a lot of Trek streaming, so it'd be pretty easy to watch if you don't have the DVD's. Actually, DS9 is the only show that's not available to stream. 

[Adami]

The first 3 seasons of TNG aren't great, and they have episodes WAY worse than anything from DS9, but they have stuff that was also way better than anything in the first two seasons of DS9.

Hell, when I did my DS9 rewatch, I literally just skipped the 1st season.

[The Dark Master]

The Borg episode in Enterprise was actually pretty good.  I rolled my eyes when I heard about it, but when I actually gave it a chance, it turned out to be one of the better and more memorable episodes in the series.

What did bother me in Enterprise was the way the handled the Klingons, specifically how they felt the need to explain in cannon why TOS Klingons had no ridges and were generally less honourable then klingons from TNG onward.   The whole space plague idea was just so very, very random and ill-conceived, only to tie up a relatively minor in-universe consistency issue derived solely from TOS' general lack of a budget.  The way they handled the Romulans bugged the crap out of me too.

Enterprise had a lot of untapped potential, and while the later seasons were very well written, the show gradually started to give into fan-wankery much too easily in a vain attempt to maintain interest by hard core trekkers and increase ratings.  It's a damn shame the show was never really allowed to fully stand on it's own, as they had some rather intriguing concepts (the Xindi) that could have played out very well, given enough time to develop and grow, like DS9 and the Dominion.  It had many commendable moments, but all too often tried to take the easy road of fan service, and sadly died with a whimper well before it's time.

[Adami]

I thought the Xindi were brilliant. It was an entire season long episode pretty much, which is something ST had never done ever. And I have no idea how much more time you could have wanted with the Xindi, it was an entire season.


Also, I agree about the Klingons. I think they should have left the explanation as to why TOS ones looked differently with Worf's "We don't discuss it with outsiders". Quick, witty, succinct, and to the point.

[The Dark Master]

I thought the Xindi were brilliant. It was an entire season long episode pretty much, which is something ST had never done ever. And I have no idea how much more time you could have wanted with the Xindi, it was an entire season.

Oh, they were developed fine as a concept, but I was just hoping to see them take the place as the main alien race in ENT.  I wasn't complaining that they didn't get enough time in the series as is, I simply wanted to see more of them.  What really bothered me about the Klingons and the Romulans was that it felt like the writers were using those established races as a crutch to increase appeal to the fans and thus act as a ratings magnet, and in the process stifling untapped potential of fresh ideas by simply rehashing old fan-favourites.  If they had tried to do the same with the Borg, that would have annoyed me as well, but the Borg only had one episode, and it was a good one at that, so they were not really an issue.

[yorost]

Every ST show starts off terribly for a while.

They usually get the first episode right, though.  TNG, DS9, and Voyager all had great openers.  I can't quite recall the Enterprise one, but it was at least pretty good.

The TNG first season is downright awful looking back.  Granted a third to half of TNG is pretty bad regardless, but that first season is surprisingly tough to watch now.  The whole series seemed really feast or famine to me.  Season 1 was plain and simple starvation.

DS9 tried too hard to recall TNG sometimes in the first season, but it put out some excellent episodes.  I've been surprised before at how much of the first season I can watch and enjoy.  Also, the end of the first season and beginning of the second season is one of the best runs of episodes the entire series.

Voyager turned what should have been the driving mechanism for the series, the two crew conflict for survival, into a superficial element.  That sin alone made the first season a tremendous disappointment.  It wasn't so bad compared to early TNG seasons, but it just felt so wrong.  Then they try to pop up those hard elements out of nowhere and you just wonder where they've been all this cheery time.

Enterprise, yeah, B&B lost it.  WTF, at least we had the Andorian episode.

[Adami]

B&B? And I still don't get the hate for Enterprise, at its very worst, it was better than the bad episodes of any of the other shows.




And you're right about Voyager. That whole Maquis/Federation thing basically disappeared after the first 2-3 episodes and only came back on occasion. It was a HUGE potential for them and they ignored it to give it a "Happy family" feeling. I actually liked Nelix, despite his overall uselessness, if only because he had one of the few good actors on the show. But Kim was by far the most useless character on any Star Trek ever. Tom really could have been written well, but wasn't, the indian guy that AndyDT loves so much was also written awfully as was just about everyone except the Doctor, he carried every single episode by himself.


However plot wise, the show actually had some insanely good episodes, but the poor crew really ruined it.

[The Dark Master]

However plot wise, the show actually had some insanely good episodes, but the poor crew really ruined it.

Yeah, even thought the bright points of Voyager were few and far between, the select handful of times that show actually got it's shit together, it was a beautiful thing.  The Killing Game is still one of the best Star Trek episodes ever, from any series.  

[yorost]

B&B? And I still don't get the hate for Enterprise, at its very worst, it was better than the bad episodes of any of the other shows.




And you're right about Voyager. That whole Maquis/Federation thing basically disappeared after the first 2-3 episodes and only came back on occasion. It was a HUGE potential for them and they ignored it to give it a "Happy family" feeling. I actually liked Nelix, despite his overall uselessness, if only because he had one of the few good actors on the show. But Kim was by far the most useless character on any Star Trek ever. Tom really could have been written well, but wasn't, the indian guy that AndyDT loves so much was also written awfully as was just about everyone except the Doctor, he carried every single episode by himself.


However plot wise, the show actually had some insanely good episodes, but the poor crew really ruined it.

Berman and Braga.  The first season was downright boring.  Even if every three or so episodes had been even good that would have been major improvement.  Time war was not that welcome as an overreaching storyline, in my opinion.  I'd rather have just had an origin story without the future coming into play throughout.

I have to agree with your opinions on Voyager, there.

[Adami]

Oddly enough the Time Wars thing was brought in by the studio or something, the writers/creators didn't want to do it. But the studio or whatever thought the show wasn't "futuristic" enough so they added the whole 30th century or whatever.


Also yea, the ending with Archer magically jumping back into his own time was just down right sloppy writing.

[El Barto]

Pondering the Star Trek always starts off bad theory.  I was looking over season 1 of TNG the other day when Andy started the survivor,  and thought it was an even mixture of passable episodes and crap until it ended very strong.  Four of the last seven episodes are very good.  At quick glance,  season two seems to be about the same quality wise, but the good episodes are distributed pretty evenly. 

I actually don't hate the first two seasons of DS9 at all.  Looking them over, though,  they're certainly not strong.  Season 1 has very little to offer.  Season 2 has some good episodes, and it's where they start laying some groundwork for the rest of the series, but overall it's still average at best.  After that, the show really turns bad ass.

I agree with most about Voyager.  Some of the crew were interesting, and a helluva lot of them were awful.  The Maquis thing was completely wasted.  Just as bad in my opinion was the terrible bad guys in the first season.  Those Kazon people really sucked pretty hard as villains.  The Vidians were an interesting concept, but were mostly just creepy.  The chick that defected was a problem as well.  She was actually one to add some much needed tension, and they got rid of her.  Furthermore, she was mostly annoying from the get-go.  Betrayal by somebody that's already a twat has no impact,  as opposed to getting screwed by a valued, liked and trusted companion.  Add to that,  Kes was both annoying and useless.  Considering the effort they put into developing her and the fact that she was well liked among the crew, she should have been the one to sell them out.  Regardless, once they replaced her with Catsuit-Girl,  the show improved quality-wise. 

Thus far,  I'd say that they all started on a pretty low note and improved after the first season.  TNG actually got rolling in the first season.  Enterprise might well be the exception.  I thought the first 2 seasons were generally pretty interesting, and it also felt like Star Trek.  You got to see plenty of the the onset of what we got used to, weapons, transporter, tractor beams, etc.  You were introduced to one or two of the older races.  Some of the episodes were better than others, but rarely did they absolutely suck.  Not bad, just rarely great.  Season 3 was certainly better entertainment, and as pointed out the Xindi were an  excellent concept,  it just never actually felt like Star Trek to me.  It was like any other sci-fi show on UPN, except not quite as good.  From then on out they were just throwing out gimmicks trying to not be canceled.  (And Worf's stance during Trials and Tribulations was fucking fantastic.  I really hated that they had to go and screw that up with some silly story about genetic re-sequencing, or some garbage.)  Personally,  I'd say that it started off alright and tanked pretty hard towards the end. 

[Adami]

I thought season 4 was mostly good.

I thought the idea of the xenophobes was great, although it was a bit rushed near the end. And the 2nd to last episode with T'breasts and Trip having to deal with the loss of their child was great. However the last episode, I will always hold as the worst episode to pretty much any show ever. It was pretty much a huge middle finger to everyone watching.

[El Barto]

I thought Trip was dead by then.  Anyway,  I hated the whole subplot with Trip and the Vulcan chick. 

[Adami]

I thought Trip was dead by then.  Anyway,  I hated the whole subplot with Trip and the Vulcan chick. 

Why? It was built quite well I thought, it was a lot better than Sylar and Uhura in the new movie. They took several seasons to even begin to get into it properly.

But I have a feeling you and I look for very different things in Star Trek.

[AndyDT]

B&B? And I still don't get the hate for Enterprise, at its very worst, it was better than the bad episodes of any of the other shows.




And you're right about Voyager. That whole Maquis/Federation thing basically disappeared after the first 2-3 episodes and only came back on occasion. It was a HUGE potential for them and they ignored it to give it a "Happy family" feeling. I actually liked Nelix, despite his overall uselessness, if only because he had one of the few good actors on the show. But Kim was by far the most useless character on any Star Trek ever. Tom really could have been written well, but wasn't, the indian guy that AndyDT loves so much was also written awfully as was just about everyone except the Doctor, he carried every single episode by himself.


However plot wise, the show actually had some insanely good episodes, but the poor crew really ruined it.

I thought the Maquis thing would have been bigger but then I thought that it would be irrelevant and seem petty given that they could be/then were facing the Borg in this sector. The great thing about Voyager I thought was the fact they were in it together and so you had links like crew members coming back later on including Kes.

As I said I thought Chakotay added the spiritual angle that ST had so often lacked. Kira's wormhole seemed more religion-based than spiritual. The native American thing had been explored in a ST:TNG episode and I liked how they developed it and brought a precious culture into the 24th century and "far from the bones of his ancestors" as he said.

[AndyDT]

I thought season 4 was mostly good.

I thought the idea of the xenophobes was great, although it was a bit rushed near the end. And the 2nd to last episode with T'breasts and Trip having to deal with the loss of their child was great. However the last episode, I will always hold as the worst episode to pretty much any show ever. It was pretty much a huge middle finger to everyone watching.

What do you call the new movie then? Seems to me they're not just saying there's no more but to forget about everything.

[AndyDT]

Round 2: https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=26967.0

[ZirconBlue]

The idea of Wesley Crusher probably looked good on paper, at least to some.  It's the future, there's this whiz kid genius on board, the son of an officer and personal friend of the captain.  The problem was the casting.  Wil Wheaton did not have the demeanor to project a likeable geek.  He just came across as a spoiled kid you want to slap multiple times.  I've seen shows where the geek (and there can be only one) is great, everybody likes him, or at least respects him, and I've seen shows where you just want to thrash him soundly.  Wesley falls into the second category.  On the show itself, everybody liked him, which added to the confusion, because almost no fans did.

I don't think it was the casting, since, in real life, Wil Wheaton actually is a likable geek.  I blame the writers. 

[chknptpie]

I  Wil Wheaton, saw him speak at Phoenix Comicon. Hilarious, nice, awesome dude.

[El Barto]

I  Wil Wheaton, saw him speak at Phoenix Comicon. Hilarious, nice, awesome dude.

Despised him on the show,  like the rest of North America,  but I realize that he got put into a fairly crappy situation and he certainly seems to have coped quite well, all things considered. 

He was great as the news reporter in San Andreas.

[ddtonfire]

Wil is reputed to hate his character, too.

[Orbert]

I can't see how it's all the writers' fault.  Most of the time, Wesley really is smarter than those around him, and he really does have good ideas which end up saving the ship, the planet below, whatever it is that needs saving.  An actor with sufficient gravitas could deliver the necessary lines and make them work.  The awe inspired in those around him would come across as legit.  It was how he looked and carried himself that buried him.

The writers are guilty of one thing, and that's setting Wesley up.  Wesley always had something to prove, because it was a given that "the boy" would be pretty useless, so it took a while for anyone to take him seriously, and he had confidence issues.  So Wesley always ended up delivering his lines not as someone confident and respected, but as someone wishing others would believe him, begging them to give his idea a chance, and hoping beyond hope that it will work and he won't look like an idiot.

Later, once it was established that he really was a genius and his ideas worked, after he'd earned the respect of Geordi, Data and the others, he still came across as a know-it-all brat.  But I still think that a better actor, or a better cast actor, could have made the part work.  Not all know-it-alls are resented, not all geeks are shunned.