Trek Thread

[Crazedwraith]

could have been worst could have been shakaar

[Stofsk]

who

[timmy]

I thought Shakaar was a province on Bajor.

[Stofsk]

wasn't it the capital city or something

[Nietzslime]

Bam shakaar bam shakaar boom boom bom
sha wang sha wang boom
sha wang sha wang boom
Bam shakaar bam shakaar boom boom boom
grrrrrr
awwww
sha wang sha wang boom

[adr-admin]

i think it's the name of a farm province and of kira's friend who eventually became first minister

i'm not sure about the name of the province or not


there's also the shakaar resistance group which i think is named after the mang not hte land

[timmy]

A resistance group named after the man is, from a western human civ point of view, terribly vain, even if the man himself didn't endorse it

[Stofsk]

can we just agree that bajorans were pretty lame as far as humanoid aliens on star trek go

[Sandman]

They really were. I mean, amongst all of the good points of Deep Space Nine, the Bajorans generally weren't. They were good in theory, I suppose, but they weren't executed very well, and they rarely actually seemed that alien compared with some of the other nearly-human species in Trek. I mean, the Vulcans and Klingons were quite distinct, as were the Trill with their whole symbiotic worm weirdness.

Kira was a decent enough character, though.

[starku]

You're blakes people

The federation was convinced you were political so they let you run

Everyone you so much as looked at was pulled in for interrogation

[adr-admin]

but they have a space pope

and space cardinals

and did glorious battle with space nazis

ps bajoran phasers have trigger guards

[adr-admin]

but are they space trigger guards????????

why yes they are

[timmy]

I don't dislike the Bajorans; but then I never watched Babylon 5 so I'm probably not as critical of DS9 as Chris is.

[Stofsk]

B5 did things that shitted me too

DS9 did a lot of things right, so i don't want to sound like i'm bashing it

actually both shows had degrees of sheer brilliance mixed with multiple counts of absurd crap

which is a shame really

[starku]

if you put b5 in an established franchise with heaps of baggage it'd only have been worse

if you set ds9 free from the established franchise and all the baggage it would have been waaaaaaay better

[Stofsk]

I can sorta get behind that

They did some stuff right when it came to baggage inherited from TNG, like they made ferengi more comic and guys like Quark were played for laughs for the most part

and having Sisko be a survivor of Wolf 359 was an excellent decision that enhanced the intertextuality and continuity for its own sake

But the stuff with the klingons beginning of season four i think was really misplayed

part of that was due to the network or the higher-ups going 'you guys need to do x, y, z' but another part of it was the writers didn't handle it well

they also made things a little more grey than you usually see in trek, like the maquis, but they fucked it up royally with section 31 - both concepts could be seen as an attempt by the writers to try and move away just a little from the setting's baggage, with mixed results

[Zod]

a large part of the problem with DS9 is that it seems like some of the writers were a little too fixated on the idea of "let's get our protagonists stuck in different whacky adventures each week!"

and then when B5 came about they realized "oh shit, we might have to put some effort into our story arcs."

[uraniun235]

they also made things a little more grey than you usually see in trek, like the maquis, but they fucked it up royally with section 31 - both concepts could be seen as an attempt by the writers to try and move away just a little from the setting's baggage, with mixed results

The Maquis talk a good bit of propaganda but if you really pay attention, they're still basically villains. In the same conversation with Sisko where Eddington said "hey come on just leave us alone, we've got no beef with you", he had already said "hey man you send any aid to Cardassia and we're gonna start fucking your shit up." Then in the earlier episode where it's Sisko's old buddy who goes renegade, they basically admit that they want to start up a new war with the Cardassians and push all of the Cardassian colonists out of the DMZ. But the Cardassian colonists aren't even muscling in on their planets; the Maquis basically just want to wage an aggression to set up a "no Cardies" zone and also kill a bunch of Cardassians along the way.

What I'm curious about is if it's intentional or not. Did the writers want to have the Maquis solidly believe in a bankrupt cause, or did the writers not fully think through what the Maquis wanted besides "they took our jerbs we just want our homes boo-hoo"?

[Stofsk]

The thing is, they also depicted the cardassians as assholes ever since their introduction in TNG.

So by 'morally grey' I am saying that while the Maquis were the aggressors, part of it was that the Federation signed a peace treaty with the cardies which might have been too conciliatory, or portrayed to be borderline appeasement. Remember the very first episode we see the cardassians, we hear about a massacre of civilians on Setlik 3 and how one captain with PTSD believes they're gearing up for a second round. Setlik 3 is interesting because it wasn't a military target, only civilians were killed aside from a handful of Starfleet personnel from the USS Rutledge (so it is stated and/or implied), and the attack was based on faulty intelligence. So if you're a Maquis colonist, with memories of a civilian massacre on a nearby colony years ago when things got 'hot' between the Federation and the cardassians, where it really, really sounds like the latter just made up some bullshit pretext to attack, it just becomes really easy to take that next step.

At least that's how I think they tried approaching it.

[starku]

Tbh they shouldn't have even tried the maquis on because in America nobody would have the balls to actually do allegorical Israel va Palestine

Can you imagine anyone saying 'the maquis are an invented people'?

But after failing that they basically did it again with the planet bajoredom

[Stofsk]

That's one area where B5 kicked the shit out of DS9. The whole narn vs centauri thing had the added dynamic at the start of the show where the narn were on the rise and the centauri were on the decline (and had been for some time). That's such a great theme to explore, the idea that when the boot goes on the other foot it still kicks people in the face.

Although on the other hand, DS9 pushed a different idea that Bajor was this small piece of shit world while the cardassians were more sort of competitors or rivals to the Federation. Bajor was more of a quasi-failed state or in danger of becoming one. My favourite story that delved into this was the Circle trilogy at the beginning of season two. Those episodes had politics, intrigue, and really went into the whole reason why the Federation was even at Bajor - ostensibly to protect the place and build it up with an eye towards making it a member of the Federation. It's one of the few times where the Bajor plot line was actually interesting instead of being a snoozefest.

[starku]

But seriously with different casting the barn/centauri thing would have sucked ass

Those dudes just totally sold the hatred in a consistent way

Rather than y'know playing it for laughs half the time and diluting the effect like ds9

Ho Ho extrajudicial murder golly gee I r so smart you see

Btw chrimbo is s1 tos on BD worth watching

Bear in mind I remember tos being horrid

[Stofsk]

But seriously with different casting the barn/centauri thing would have sucked ass

Those dudes just totally sold the hatred in a consistent way

Yep. Those two really made B5 work for me.

Btw chrimbo is s1 tos on BD worth watching

Bear in mind I remember tos being horrid

I haven't actually got it nor have I seen more than one episode on a HDTV. That episode looked great, but it was very colourful. Like the colours in general were pretty strong. (Bilbo is gonna come in here now and tell us that the blu-ray guys really turned up the colour saturation to 11 )

It's one of those things that I want to get, if I had loads of disposable income. But I love TOS so my bias may not be of any use to you.

[starku]

Pffft I wasn't planning on paying

I was just watching ole blake and think 'isn't tos like this only 'good''

[Flagg]

It's worth getting certain episodes, like Balance of Terror, and the one with the giant planet eating space turd.