Trek Thread

[Stofsk]

I really need to rewatch DS9 from start to finish, and give s7 a proper go of it. I remember being pretty disappointed by WYLB, with the exception of the last minute of the show - that slow pan-out with Jake looking out the window, joined by Kira, with the DS9 theme played slow, is really beautiful television.

[Gands]

I did the 1-7 watch a few years ago. It was pretty awesome, and I really liked the early season DS9 stuff.

I would have liked more Bajor/Cardassia content.

[timmy]

I finished rewatching DS9 S7 the other day because CrazedW and I are copying each other at everything right now. FOR LAKARIAN

[Crazedwraith]

Lakarian is not worth saving old ladies for though. Just Damar.

[Bounty]

I'm rewatching S6 now. Statistical Probabilities is a lot better than I remembered. I somehow completely forgot the discussion of eugenics over dinner and why it pissed Bashir off so much.

[Big Orangutan]

I always liked "Statistical Probabilities".

So I watched some original Star Trek last night on a local cable channel. I'd forgotten how wonderfully cheesy it was. TOS has aged much better than TNG for me. There's a lot more genuine adventure and a lot less of the annoying heavy-handed preaching I typically associate with TNG.

Star Trek: The Next Generation is generally better and has more deph than TOS, despite its faults, but the original Star Trek is in a lot of ways funner.

[Stofsk]

Actually I'd have to disagree there. While there are quite a few great episodes of TNG, TOS I think kicked more goals than missed. I think they handled the 'weekly adventure show' format better, they had better characterisation, and they explored themes a lot better too. TNG had too many 'ok this season we need a Troi episode, or we need to do something with Riker, hey let's do one of those transporter accident stories but with Riker right, except he doesn't get along well with his transporter clone'. Hell at one point, they were seriously considering shaking up the show's format by killing off Riker and replacing him with Thomas - Data would have been promoted to XO, Tom Riker would take over at Ops.

There was also an underlying difference in theme between both shows, and I think TOS had the superior idea. In TOS, the prevailing theme is that humanity is not perfect, but we're trying and should get points for effort - best exemplified in the character of Kirk. How many times did he get angry, violent even, only to come to terms with his own nature and rise above it? 'Arena' is the classic example of this, granting mercy to the gorn when all episode he expressed desire to hunt them down and punish them for Cestus III. 'A Taste of Armageddon' was another great episode - Kirk demonstrating how ugly war is, how clean the Eminiarans had made it, and how this was actually a terrible thing - war is hell, which is why it's a thing to be avoided. 'This Side Of Paradise' had the whole crew hypnotised or whatever by those alien spores, and Kirk nearly succumbed too - it was only due to his darker side, the place where his primal anger resides, that allowed him to shake it off in the nick of time. McCoy wistfully comments at the end how 'this is the second time man has been kicked out of paradise'. To which Kirk responds, 'No, Bones, this time we walked out.' In 'The Corbomite Maneuver' Kirk outright says to Balok that Baily isn't the best member of his crew, but because of that, he'd learn more about us that way. In 'Devil In The Dark', Kirk overrules his science officer's desire to capture the unknown creature terrorising the miners on Janus 7 because to his mind, it's a proven killer and needed to be dealt with. But even in that context, when he faced off against the Horta alone and in danger, he nevertheless chose to spare its life.

Meanwhile in TNG, the underlying theme is that humanity is perfect and everyone else is bad or evil or stupid. From the first episode onward this was a theme. Q puts humans on trial for god's sake, and Picard spends the rest of the episode going 'haha' to Q, who turns out to have been demonstrably wrong. In 'Justice', Picard mollifies a machine god with one of his speeches. It's a terrific speech, and I said this to RedImperator during a facebook convo, but he rebutted 'yeah but you'd think a super-AI would have thought of that exact argument already.' TOS had that same resolution to many of its episodes, but usually there was some underlying fault in play and the AI wasn't perfect - like Nomad's memory circuits were damaged, or M5 had Daystrom's memory engrams and so may have been influenced by the latter's sense of morality. There was always something Kirk could exploit. In TNG, Picard's speeches are like a superpower.

And while I liked Picard most of the time, there were some truly odious episodes written by idiots who had a poor understanding of the material they were dealing with. Picard exasperatingly defending the Crystaline Entity to Dr Marr, who's lost her child to that thing, is an example of that. Comparing the thing to sperm whale eating cuttlefish? Except we're not dealing with a goddamn space whale here Jean-luc, this thing's warp-capable - it's NOT a naturally evolved creature but something else. Like Spock's observation in a similar episode 'Obsession', nothing that can go to warp is natural. There has to be some kind of technology or science at work to explain it, but it's not an animal. There the crew recognised the danger of the cloud creature and aimed to destroy it, but in a similar episode in TNG they were trying to communicate with it. Which is all well and good, but Picard's priorities were fucking wrong. And about the only person who actually stood up and told him so was Riker - this was after Picard actually had the temerity to question Riker's objectivity (earlier in the episode Riker lost an old lover to the Entity). And yet when Dr Marr took matters in her own hand, the narrative clearly paints her as the bad guy. Oh look, here's this vengeful mother, fucking it all up - how dare she. Or what about Picard's selective violation of the Prime Directive? He'll intervene when Wesley fucks up in 'Justice', or he'll be forced to intervene when Data's pen pal's planet needs his help, but when it's another planet Worf's brother is on, well tough shit. That's life.

About the only thing I think TNG did better than TOS was push the whole secular humanist philosophy - Picard's finest moment IMO was when he told that proto-vulcan guy who mistook him for a god to shoot him with the arrow in 'Who Watches The Watchers'. Because he believed a culture that embraced religion would regress and inevitably lead to superstition, fear and ignorance - so he put his life on the line to prove to these people that he isn't a god, and that belief in a god is a bad thing. That's actually quite extraordinary for an American TV show to say that. Try saying something like that on today's channels. TOS approached that in a couple episodes, but never hit it that high. But ultimately I think TOS had the better underlying theme and characterisations. Kirk and Spock disagreed plenty of times, Bones and Spock bickered a lot too - but they were still friends at the end of it. On TNG, Picard Was Always Right - Even When He Was Wrong (ESPECIALLY When He Was Wrong). And it was hilarious, because a lot of the writers complained about this shit, but never really tried challenging it. Jeri Taylor I think complained about the whole Picard has to be right all the time, which is fucking funny because she went on to writer on Voyager and had Janeway do the exact same thing. Brannon Braga complained about the prime directive had become a cliche or something, but 'Homeward' was a season seven episode, so what the fuck were the writers doing handling a concept they clearly didn't understand properly and also felt contempt for?

[uraniun235]

Part of that might have been interference from Berman - the whole ~Gene's vision~ thing. That said, I don't like pinning everything on Berman, or Braga... Piller deserves a lot of blame too. If the "well we need to do a [character] episode" thing bothers you, I'm pretty sure Piller was the guy who championed that. Excessive technobabble? The cast came to calling it Piller filler.


I don't fully agree with your take on the Crystalline Entity - even if it is artificial (and maybe Spock was wrong on that point), that doesn't necessarily diminish its status as a life: see Data. That said, I do think it's imperative that it cannot continue to exist at the cost of further sentient life, and if the Federation's resources are insufficient to guarantee the safety of other life in coexistence with the snowflake (to an acceptable degree of risk), then extermination is warranted.

It's been quite awhile since I watched the episode, but I do seem to recall that they thought it likely that it could slip away and kill again despite their efforts, so on the point that "this thing probably really does need to be killed", I do agree on that.

[Stofsk]

Trying to devise a means to communicate with it is all well and good, and I agree with that - it's been established previously that communication was possible, IIRC Lore said as much in 'Datalore'. But Picard was drawing a long bow when he made the analogy to the sperm whale. My contention was not that the snowflake wasn't a form of life, but that it was a dumb animal that roamed space feeding on class M planets the way a large sea creature does swimming through an ocean.

Spock may have been wrong, but I don't agree with this interpretation. While Spock's been wrong before, those incidents were few and far between. If he says 'nothing natural can go faster than light', or however the line went, then I'm prepared to accept that as part of the audience hearing an in-context expert on Trek science.

And yeah, Riker made the point to Picard that he felt his priorities were mistaken - as XO that's his purview and he told him in private, which is great - one of the few times I can recall a subordinate questioning Picard's decisions. Picard's reaction was to question Riker's objectivity - which, I dunno, rubs me the wrong way. I was already against Picard in this episode, it felt like he was digging himself an even greater hole. I did enjoy Riker's response, going off memory it was something like 'I'm not exactly a raw cadet on his first away mission - I've lost people under my command before. If we take the time to try and communicate with this thing, we may lose our chance to kill it. And I don't think that's a risk worth taking.'

EDIT On your other point, I agree with you that I don't like to blame Berman as the be-all end-all of TNG-era Trek's various faults and misteps. But, ultimately, he's the guy who was overall in charge. I didn't know that about Michael Piller, and you're right he's worthy of some blame too.

[uraniun235]

At risk of sounding defensive, I'm not trying to pick up Wayne Poe's old line of "lol spock was such a dumbass", but rather the notion that in the intervening 70+ years between TOS and TNG, the Federation's understanding of the universe may have arrived at the conclusion that warp travel could conceivably be achieved by a natural entity. Personally, I wouldn't endorse the series moving in such a direction and I think Spock should still be right, but at the same time it's entirely possible that the producers of TNG+ may have decided otherwise, consciously or not.

All that said, this aspect of the conversation is admittedly very nitpicky on my part. I think my takeaway from all this that I should watch the episode again.

[Stofsk]

It's important to remember that in the teaser of that episode, you had Riker and Data and a few others of the crew on this beautiful class M planet, and talking to colonists and hearing the plans for the settlement and shit. And we meet Davila, Riker's old flame, and she seems sweet and a genuinely nice person and everything. Then the snowflake arrives and Shit Gets Real (tm) and after the intro credits the crew take shelter, people die, including Davila who ran to help some old dude who fell, and the planet is devastated. So like... it's hard to be sympathetic to the idea that it's just roaming space eating planets because that's its life cycle.

Like I said above, communicating with it is a potentially good idea, but Picard was expressing reluctance over the notion of having to put it down. Because if they had communicated with it, and it agreed to some kind of truce whereby it goes 180 degrees away from the Federation, that's basically handballing the problem to someone else, someone who may very well not be able to defend against the Snowflake. We have no way of knowing how many worlds it's torched, how many countless lives have been lost, we have no idea how old this thing was, or whether there are more of them out there. Finding out information about them is a good idea, just for practical reasons, but Picard was swinging too far in the direction of 'hey let's let bygones be bygones' and making excuses for it.

I feel like the show was being pretty schizophrenic about what it was trying to tell us. It opens with it demonstrating itself as a threat; then Dr Marr comes in and carries a huge chip on her shoulder. Her character softens a bit when she interacts with Data, despite some initial hostility. The central conflict seems to form between Picard's 'hey let's try to talk to it' vs Marr's 'wtf we have to kill it'. And of course, the episode ends with Marr taking matters into her own hands and killing the snowflake - which the narrative goes out of its way to tell us is a Bad Thing. Personally I think it was a good episode trapped inside the body of a terrible episode. Like I said in my previous reply, the scene with Riker telling Picard what he thinks and expressing his grave concerns that Picard is waffling on about bullshit is the highlight of the show - and IIRC (it has been a long time since I saw it) the camera did linger on Picard as though he really was weighing the risk of trying to communicate with the creature vs making sure to neutralise it as a threat (kudos to Stewart for being able to express such thoughts nonverbally). That scene, and the opening teaser and first act were really good. It's heavily let down by the climax - especially Data (unintentionally) torturing Marr for her act of defiance.

I'm interested to hear what other people think.

[timmy]

Whose side are you on, anyway??

[Stofsk]

Mang

I wish I could get paid to just talk shit about Star Trek

I mean I basically responded to a one-line off-the-cuff comment by BO by writing a 1000 word essay. It took me mere moments to think of the textual examples. If this would be an academic assignment I'd be like blah who cares I'll put it off because whatever. What's more I wrote that after being awake for over a day and spending the last five hours cleaning up my mum's little office/factory.

[evilsoup]

Personally I think it was a good episode trapped inside the body of a terrible episode.

this describes a hell of a lot of star trek

[Zablorg]

When I saw that episode I thought Picard's stance was actually a very subtle joke from the writers in the context of the series; of course he doesn't want to kill the massacring snowflake, he's Picard. Yes, yes, he's filled with wonder when it starts to communicate back: he's Picard.

[RogueIce]

Mang

I wish I could get paid to just talk shit about Star Trek

I think Chuck Sonnenburg beat you to that one.

[Crazedwraith]

Indeed. I am curious when like for 'skin of evil' the requested by has two names. Did they request it together? both pitch in 50% or does he let you paid for an episode he was already going to do?

[Veef]

I think Chuck Sonnenburg beat you to that one.

Hey there's plenty of illicit advertising revenue to go around. Just ask Pewpewdie.

[uraniun235]

Like I said above, communicating with it is a potentially good idea, but Picard was expressing reluctance over the notion of having to put it down. Because if they had communicated with it, and it agreed to some kind of truce whereby it goes 180 degrees away from the Federation, that's basically handballing the problem to someone else, someone who may very well not be able to defend against the Snowflake. We have no way of knowing how many worlds it's torched, how many countless lives have been lost, we have no idea how old this thing was, or whether there are more of them out there. Finding out information about them is a good idea, just for practical reasons, but Picard was swinging too far in the direction of 'hey let's let bygones be bygones' and making excuses for it.

I don't think a truce has to involve "hey go hit the Romulans or something", I was envisioning more of a "hey, stick around this space station, we'll grow and feed you all the giant vats of algae you want" kind of deal. After rewatching the episode, I think that's what Picard was thinking too (or at least, some sort of arrangement that doesn't involve hoovering up entire biospheres).

I'm not getting the same takeaway on the episode. Killing the snowflake won't bring back anyone, and justice is kind of a meaningless concept in the context of an alien which may not even perceive its food to be life. The episode goes out of its way to show that the snowflake is dangerous, but it's easy for me to envision an alternate universe where we're decrying the episode's writers for chickening out by not showing any attacks and failing to make the danger more visceral for the viewer. We're already told that it's already attacked like a dozen colonies. Does it really matter if the last (known!) attack took place a week ago as opposed to a couple months ago?

Picard never discards the possibility that it may prove necessary to kill the snowflake to prevent further deaths, but as he said, it's a last resort. Assuming they go about it smartly, worst-case scenario is they waste some time trying to talk to it and wind up having to blow it up anyway. Best-case is they're able to establish contact with a new life-form, come to an agreement where sentient life is no longer consumed, expand their knowledge of the cosmos, and preserve what appears to be a unique form of life.

[timmy]

Barely related: destroying the crystalline entity is one of the hardest PvEs in STO.

The fact that it's a thing at all says a lot about the broader fanon and the compromises that have to be made for the sake of a game.

[Stofsk]

Barely related: destroying the crystalline entity is one of the hardest PvEs in STO.

The fact that it's a thing at all says a lot about the broader fanon and the compromises that have to be made for the sake of a game.

And Borg cubes go down if you look at them funny

Bill, Picard made a comparison between this creature and the sperm whale. 'The animal is not evil, it is feeding.' Yet, they were going to try to communicate with it? Communication wouldn't be possible or necessary if it was just an animal. 'Datalore' established the precedent that it was intelligent, Lore was the one who lured it to Omicron Theta. Hell, Lore openly talks to it on the bridge.

If they communicate with it, great. But I seriously doubt that will solve the problem. It appears ready and able to consume entire biospheres, and Picard's analogy is totally inapt a comparison to make. As Dr Marr says, 'People are not cuttlefish.' And giant warp-capable snowflakes are not sperm whales either. And even Riker was telling Picard his whole 'let's not kill it unless we absolutely must' thing was too risky.

If Picard hadn't made that really godawfully stupid analogy, I wouldn't have a problem with the episode. If he had said instead 'Look we know from our past dealings with it, that it's at least intelligent enough to respond to directions. That implies higher cognition. Maybe we can negotiate with it, reach an understanding so that it doesn't murder whole planets.' Instead of saying 'There are those, Doctor, who would argue that the Crystalline Entity has as much right to be here as we do.' Picard comes across as a complete asshole in this episode. Or in that scene, at the very least.

[RogueIce]

Barely related: destroying the crystalline entity is one of the hardest PvEs in STO.

The fact that it's a thing at all says a lot about the broader fanon and the compromises that have to be made for the sake of a game.

And Borg cubes go down if you look at them funny

Didn't that happen in Voyager too?

[Stofsk]

Barely related: destroying the crystalline entity is one of the hardest PvEs in STO.

The fact that it's a thing at all says a lot about the broader fanon and the compromises that have to be made for the sake of a game.

And Borg cubes go down if you look at them funny

Didn't that happen in Voyager too?

Yes. Ironically, the transphasic torpedos in STO are nowhere near as destructive than they were in 'Endgame'. In fact, they're like the worst torpedo class to have.

[RogueIce]

And Borg cubes go down if you look at them funny

Didn't that happen in Voyager too?

Yes.

So they're staying true to canon!

Ironically, the transphasic torpedos in STO are nowhere near as destructive than they were in 'Endgame'. In fact, they're like the worst torpedo class to have.

Damn it STO I just gave you props and now this.

Oh well. Quantums 4 Lyfe!

[timmy]

Fire rate on quantums means lower DPS than photons