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I like Pierce's classification of signs, but yeah, that would go over my head pretty quickly. I would think an anthropologist would be all over that conversation, though.
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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Things Trek does badly: Technobabble solutions that, despite being incredibly useful, are never used again. Omnipotent entities. Ridiculous mysticism, especially involving stoic Native American types. Conspiracies among higher-ups that inexplicably have no lasting effect on the Federation. Time travel. Things that rejigger DNA or "accelerate" evolution. Comic relief. Economic scarcity. Sexual tension.
So, given that list of things Trek has always been bad at doing, do you have any idea why Voyager sucked? Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I'd add women to that list. [Edit to add: Post-Uhura] Trek women are just awful at being realistic women.
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Things Trek does badly: Comic relief.
I think that Leonard Nimoy, Patrick Stewart, and Brent Spiner managed to escape that, as they are performers who seem to have a good sense of timing.
They were able to make me smile at the clunky groaners by the twinkle in their eyes and the inflection in their voices. Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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quote:Come on, with how advanced their regenerative based medicine was of course they could heal any wounds from torture within a few hours if not a day.
I suppose that'd include psychological healing as well.
quote:Picard and Data go through the most obvious character development.
I agree wholeheartedly. Both of them were very different people at the end of the series.
However, the movies became very much the "Picard and Data show" instead of the more ensemble story it had been before. I think this killed some of the TNG movies, especially Nemesis.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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quote:Originally posted by mackillian: However, the movies became very much the "Picard and Data show" instead of the more ensemble story it had been before. I think this killed some of the TNG movies, especially Nemesis.
If you think about it, the earlier movies were mostly the Kirk and Spock show, and they didn't suffer as much for it. McCoy was always second runner up in those stories, but they often worked well.
Of course, in TNG the relationship between Picard and Riker was not as interesting because Riker was always such a good commander himself- and yet he was never a foil for Picard. You always felt that they were never friends, whereas Data and Picard had a different kind of relationship, as did Picard and Worf– one of the greatest lines from any of the movies was "If you were any other man, I would kill you where you stand," between Worf and Picard.
Then there were was trek's worst lead character ever, Dr. Crusher. I don't know if it was the acting or the writing, but there is nothing much appealing about Crusher, and her relationship with Picard always seemed forced and boring. Wesley, as an extension of that character, was TNG's second worst idea. In fact Wesley Wheaton has written several interesting blogs about the failings of his character, and of himself as a young actor that were very insightful.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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TNG, DS9, TOS, VOY, ENT. Although I didn't see much of early Voyager or late Enterprise, so my opinions on those are less complete.
I'm sure part of my love for TNG was that it was my first Star Trek series, and I was still pretty young when it was over. However, repeat viewings (particularly of the later seasons) hold up well. I agree that a major failing of that series (particularly compared to DS9 or to other sci-fi series such as Stargate) is the highly episodic nature, where major events in one episode are ignored in subsequent episodes. On the other hand, of all the captains, Picard is the one who is most convincing to me both as a negotiator and as a military commander. Never underestimate the power of Shakespearean training
It's funny that the most interesting character on Voyager was supposed to be eye-candy. Seven of Nine (with the EMH as a close second) was the most complex person on that ship. Ironic that the Borg drone and the computer program proved to have the greatest capacity for personal growth. As a side note, anyone see the episode where Tuvok and Neelix got fused during a transporter accident? I liked Tuvix way more than either of his "parents." They should have kept him.
Come to think of it, it's always the outsider characters who are the most interesting and have the most change. Spock, Data, Worf, Odo, Seven of Nine, the EMH...let's face it: humans are boring!
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote:Originally posted by AvidReader: I'd add women to that list. [Edit to add: Post-Uhura] Trek women are just awful at being realistic women.
Blame Kirk for that. I'm sure that once he became Admiral he had some say in the Federation recruiting process...
Posts: 3486 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Nah, he'd have hired pleasant women. Post TOS women act like funny shaped men if they want to have any sort of authority. Sure there's always a great excuse for it (she's a Borg, a Klingon, a Vulcan) but they're always emotionless and lacking in non-physical feminity.
I call it Star Trek syndrome when I see it in other shows.
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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Voyager tried to do some good characterization with Janeway, but, yeah, it came off stilted and forced--the characterizations of B'Lanna (sp?), the EMH, and Seven were far more interesting.
While DS9 is still far and away my favorite Trek series, I like Voyager a lot more now than I did as a young teenager when it first started.
Posts: 100 | Registered: Oct 2006
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I think that is actually a remnant of the older generation of feminists. In my experience with female scientists, those who had to fight every step tend to be much less feminine. I have had female profs list traits that are feminine that I should work on eliminating if I ever want my male colleagues to take me seriously. My generation, who have had classes and workplaces with nearly 1:1 gender ratio, laugh at this idea.
Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
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One thing I disliked about Janeway (and later, Seven of Nine) is that I often felt like she was portrayed as being too good at everything.
Picard relied heavily upon his bridge officers. He asked them questions and he utilized their skills and abilities. He didn't always know the way to solve situations. One got the feeling that he was an excellent captain precisely because he could use his people so well.
It's been many years since I watched Voyager, but I seem to remember Janeway running the show much more, in the sense that she frequently shoed in on other people's jobs and devised brilliant solutions to problems that the relevant officer hadn't thought of... be it using weapon systems or engineering or what-have-you. I always got the impression an entire crew of Janeways would have been more effective than the existing crew.
And all of that goes double for Seven.
Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I couldn't disagree more on Dr. Crusher. I think she was great.
In fact, the general derision heaped on Dr. Pulaski leads me to believe that many people would agree with me.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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The problem with Doctor Crusher was that the main sub-plots they kept pushing for her mostly tied into Wesley Crusher...who (and Wil Wheaton agrees with this!) was an extremely annoying character.
Plus, she was often reduced to the role of the person who babbled while a scanner did stuff. Whee.
The few times they broke her out of this (such as when Data coaxed her into teaching him to dance, or when she keyed into the Enterprise repeating the same day over and over again), we got to see signs of a performer and character who could sparkle. But these occasions were rare.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: One thing I disliked about Janeway (and later, Seven of Nine) is that I often felt like she was portrayed as being too good at everything.
Except for the bits where she broke down, that is. I don't understand the claim made by others earlier that her character never developed. There was a period where she retreated from the job entirely... and then there's the finale, which I can only interpret as her finally snapping.
I know people like that.
Posts: 884 | Registered: Mar 2005
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It may be the particulars of how I came to like TNG, Puffy. I remember thinking it was awful during that first season, when they were actually recycling TOS plots on occasion, and the chemistry wasn't there, and the uniforms were ridiculous, and I stopped watching the show. Then, a few years later, there was nothing else on, and I watched an episode, and it was, I think, the one that introduced the Borg, and I was blown away, and though, damn, someone here is writing real science fiction. (I know it's trendy to sneer at ST in SF circles, but humor me.) The next episode I chanced to watch was "Remember Me," which was a Crusher episode, and I also thought it was fantastic and very thoughtful. After that, the next time I tuned in, I caught "The Drumhead," which again knocked my socks off. At this point, I figured out that this had actually turned into a damn good show somewhere along the line, and it became appointment TV for me (something no show since the fourth or fifth season of X-Files has been). So when I think of Beverly Crusher, I think of that excellent episode she was in. It's pretty much my first impression of her.
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I don't dislike Doctor Crusher. I'm just saying she was usually not used in a way that would play to the endearing, potentially cool things about the character.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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Jiordi LaForge was the MacGuyver of space. Who knew he could use that Inverse Tachyon Pulse generation thingy just lying around to seal a subspace rift? Right at the last second too.
Any guy who can do ground breaking theoretical physics in his head to generate novel applications of technology on demand is my kind of guy.
Was Brent Spiner any kind of actor or was he just naturally suited to appear to be trying to behave like a human? He had some opportunities to test his acting chops playing Data's evil twin or whatnot, but I think those only worked because all he had to do is act like not-Data and it'd work due to sheer contrast.
I actually loved TNG. Amazingly cheesy at times, though. And hugely, comically anachronistic. They have perfect tactile holography - and when the ship is threatened all of the high ranking officers take elevators to the bridge and sit around without seatbelts facing a big movie screen, instead of being plugged into secure VR pods in separate parts of the ship with independent life support systems so they don't all die at once. And for fights the tactics are roughly similar to those used in 20th century naval vessels. Oh well, I'm sure a lot of those decisions were based on what they figured would be good TV instead of any kind of actual thinking about technology.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I like the VR pods idea quite a bit. And in a concession to making it work dramatically, they could have had them all enter a shared virtual space that would function as a bridge.
As for their combat tactics, yeah--pretty absurd.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:Was Brent Spiner any kind of actor or was he just naturally suited to appear to be trying to behave like a human? He had some opportunities to test his acting chops playing Data's evil twin or whatnot, but I think those only worked because all he had to do is act like not-Data and it'd work due to sheer contrast.
I've heard several of the TNG cast comment that Brent Spiner was both extremely funny and a great actor.
You should note that he played three different characters in TNG (Data, Lor and Dr. Sung) plus a Dr. Sung ancestor in Voyager.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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He was great in Sunday in the Park With George and The Snark-Out Boys and the Avocado of Death. Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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I watch Night Court reruns in the morning before work, and Spiner pops up occasionally as the patriarch of the Wheeler clan. They were a wonderful, down-on-their-luck bunch who were always at the mercies of fate. Spiner was hilarious. His timing and delivery were always spot on.
I don't know how he was on ST, but he's a good actor.
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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The doctor on voyager stole the show every time. He was absolutely the best charachter.
Over all I liked Voyager, however it became laughable that they destroyed the Radial Flyer (sp?)what seemed like every 3rd episode.
I also agree on the lack of charachter development. The episode where Paris got married was one of my favorites, but then it turned out to be one of the alternate versions of voyager, which was cool inits own right, but the next episode we were right back to the wooden Paris. I would have liked to see him get married for real, and see how that changed the dynamics on the starship. voyager never took enough risks with the over-all storyline arc.
Posts: 197 | Registered: Jan 2007
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: You should note that he played three different characters in TNG (Data, Lor and Dr. Sung) plus a Dr. Sung ancestor in Voyager. [/QB]
I think that was Enterprise, not Voyager.
That three episode arc wasn't bad, but to me, it made Data's creator look like a tragic fool.
His grandfather makes makes super strong, super smart super people, and of course they get super arrogant, and start killing people. Rather predictable.
So then Dr. Soong makes a super strong, super smart android, and it too gets super arrogant, and starts killing people. Now it's the grandson doing exactly what the father did, and Dr. Soong is not so much a genius who miscalculated some, but he's a fool who ignored his own famiy history and made exactly the same error his grandfather did, with the exact same predicatable, lethal results. Makes him a lot less sympathetic.
Posts: 575 | Registered: Feb 2007
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quote:The episode where Paris got married was one of my favorites, but then it turned out to be one of the alternate versions of voyager, which was cool inits own right, but the next episode we were right back to the wooden Paris. I would have liked to see him get married for real, and see how that changed the dynamics on the starship. voyager never took enough risks with the over-all storyline arc.
Paris and Torres did get married for real and had a child. It didn't help.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:The episode where Paris got married was one of my favorites, but then it turned out to be one of the alternate versions of voyager, which was cool inits own right, but the next episode we were right back to the wooden Paris. I would have liked to see him get married for real, and see how that changed the dynamics on the starship. voyager never took enough risks with the over-all storyline arc.
Paris and Torres did get married for real and had a child. It didn't help.
wow, I really don't remember the last season very well. I forgot all about that.
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That's because there wasn't much worth remembering in the last season. They got home, but you don't need to see the show to know that. It's in the formula.
Posts: 684 | Registered: Jun 2002
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quote:Originally posted by The Reader: That's because there wasn't much worth remembering in the last season. They got home, but you don't need to see the show to know that. It's in the formula.
I know I saw the last episode where they got home but I absolutely can't remember what happened. I have some vague memory about their being two time lines in the show and something about 7 or 9 being killed in one of them.
Its rather odd because I remember the final episode of TNG in great detail.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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Janeway comes back from the future with Borg-fighting technology. They retrofit the ship, fly through Borg space and blow up a lot of Borg ships, and find a transwarp conduit that takes them to the Alpha Quadrant. They kill the Borg Queen again. Also, Seven of Nine and Chakotay inexplicably hook up. The end.
In other words: flagrant deus ex machina, Janeway's biggest Prime Directive violations yet, and the only romantic match-up that could make Worf and Troi look like a good idea.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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It annoyed me *a lot*, there were any number of earlier points where Janeway could have gone back and with either the extremely advanced technology or fore-knowledge could have brought Voyager back home much earlier. It was so incredibly arbitrary. Bah!
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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If the finale had involved the future Janeway taking the advanced technology back the very beginning of the series so that Voyager returned within a few days of its original departure into the gamma quadrant wiping all the events from the series from the time line, it would have at least been a more interesting plot twist.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: If the finale had involved the future Janeway taking the advanced technology back the very beginning of the series so that Voyager returned within a few days of its original departure into the gamma quadrant wiping all the events from the series from the time line, it would have at least been a more interesting plot twist.
But that would have been kind of sad, because Voyager did do some good in the Delta Quadrant. At the very least, Seven would still be a Borg drone.
I thought it would have been cool if the crew had learned that the Delta Quadrant jumped to join the Federation once it expanded out there, or if they founded their own Federation, because they remembered those nice Federation people who helped them. (Yes, there are a lot of people who would have bad memories of Voyager too)
Voyager could have done a lot of cool things...like have crew members leave the ship, and new alien ones join the crew throughout the show, or had the crew find a balance between the rigid Federation rules and Maquis sensibilities. But they didn't.
Posts: 575 | Registered: Feb 2007
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