Trek Thread

[Stofsk]

I liked the two nuTrek movies perfectly well.

Does this make me a terrible Trekkie?

It makes you the worst

[Gands]

Fandom is measured in the ratio of love to hate you have for the franchise.

When you approach 1:1, you are a good fan. Until then you're just a poser.

[uraniun235]

I liked the two nuTrek movies perfectly well.

Does this make me a terrible Trekkie?

On a serious note (well not really) I did sometimes jump in and rate nBSG episodes a '5' before the episode even aired or I saw it."

[Crazedwraith]

Confirmed. RogueIce is a terrible person.

Eh. The first one was mindless drivel. But it was highly watchable mindless drivel.

the second didn't even have that going for it.

[evilsoup]

The second one was exactly as watchable as the first. I would actually call it an improvement over the first, though I still don't think it manages to get as far as 'good'.

But I don't know if bitching about the reboot films is a particularly useful use of time lol.

[Crazedwraith]

I'd only waste it another way.

the first one didn't have idiotic retreads of past films in it. Nor did it have an entirely pointless where Kirk is demoted and Spock reassigned only for it all to be undone in the very next scene. Nor did it have Spock and Uhura's relationship troubles given more than two lines.

all imho oc

[RogueIce]

I liked the two nuTrek movies perfectly well.

Does this make me a terrible Trekkie?

On a serious note (well not really) I did sometimes jump in and rate nBSG episodes a '5' before the episode even aired or I saw it."

Yeah but I actually saw it first this time.

And do you have that saved somewhere or did you go look it up? Oh it's still in your SDN sig, never mind.

I do wonder if that was a Testing thread or if the original post is preserved somewhere.

[uraniun235]

I think that was a Testing thread.

[thejester]

I just watched the first ever Star Trek episode which was also only the second ever episode of Trek I have ever watched

sci-fi was different back then

[Gands]

Yeah, Cage is pretty awesome.

[RogueIce]

"When men were men, and women wore miniskirts."

[evilsoup]

didn't the cage actually have sensible uniforms? And a female second-in-command

[RogueIce]

No skirts in "The Cage" AFAIK. And yes, the female First Officer who had no name and didn't make it into the series.

Also, according to Memory Alpha, "Female gold command uniforms were rare on both series [TOS and TAS] and were never seen with colored collars."

[thejester]

"Yes, it is true. I am disfigured from my life saving surgery. So naturally, because I am both disfigured and a woman, it is totally unthinkable that I return to human society."

[Stofsk]

She preferred the illusion where she was healthy and could walk normally and live with Pike to the reality.

Earlier in the episode she's the one who told Pike that the ability to live out illusions had the effect of a narcotic, and that this was what had doomed the talosians to eventual extinction.

That observation being somewhat personal was one of the things that makes 'The Cage' one of the best Star Trek episodes IMO.

Something of a spoiler:

Later in the show they reused material from 'The Cage' in the two-parter 'The Menagerie' which revealed years later Pike had suffered grievous injury, becoming disabled and bound to a wheelchair and only able to communicate 'yes' and 'no' to people. Spock decides to break lots of regulations in order to take him to Talos IV - just so he could live out the rest of his life in the illusion that he was healthy and hale.

Also, interesting trek tidbit; apparently Jeffrey Hunter's wife was the one who came on the set after the first pilot had been rejected but NBC requested a second pilot be filmed, and told the producers that her husband would no longer be involved in 'that kind of show'.

A few years later Hunter died in an accident. I think it was a car crash on a set. IIRC it was some kind of accident on a set, but I could be wrong.

[thejester]

I understand she goes back to the illusion, but I thought in the dialogue of the shot where the illusion fades for the first time makes it clear going back isn't an option for her.

EDIT: Haha, 'that kind of show'. Sad story though.

[Stofsk]

I understand she goes back to the illusion, but I thought in the dialogue of the shot where the illusion fades for the first time makes it clear going back isn't an option for her.

It was probably more of a 'won't' rather than 'can't' thing for her

[evilsoup]

I was sort of under the impression that the aliens were actually keeping her alive with their powers, as well as changing her appearance

[RogueIce]

So, I was reading me some TV Tropes (I know, I know) when I came across this entry:

From Star Trek:
◦ The Cardassians are introduced in the season four episode "The Wounded," where it is explained that it has been only a year since the end of the long, costly war between the Federation and the Cardassian Union. However, this information means that the first two years of the show occurred during a war that was never seen, heard or experienced. Just where, exactly, was the flagship of Starfleet while the rest of the fleet was engaged in active operations? And how is it that Chief O'Brien is a veteran of the Cardassian War when he's been on the Enterprise-D since TNG's first episode? Was the Enterprise fighting in the war between episodes and nobody bothered to mention it, or are we supposed to assume that the first four seasons all took place in a single year despite all indications to the contrary? Admittedly there are a few hints that while to the Cardassians it was a major war, to the Federation it was a basically just a regional conflict, albeit an unusually long and bloody one for the period, though that still doesn't explain how O'Brien got the time to be a veteran in the conflict yet never bothered to mention it on-screen for years.

WTF writers?

[Crazedwraith]

oh i just read that today. the 'remember the new guy' article I linked to on SDN?

The continuity on the cardassian war is a little iffy to say the list. I'm always amused when people screma but 'they were never mentioned before /or again'. I mean people don't go on about everything all the time y'know? And The Wounded I think was O'Brien's first big episode. Before that he was transport officer and basically responsible for making motions when told to energise. When was he going to slip in 'oh and i'm totally a war vet'? Conversation of detail peeps.

On the other hand the thing that he's the former tactical officer of the Rutledge. You know seriously senior staff But somehow has become a transport operator, enlisted and then an engineer afterwards does strike me as odd.

[adr]

I'm looking at my scripts collection, which doesn't quite match my memory of the episode. I should prolly watch it later... oooh tng tonight, don't mind if I do.

But right now at work so just doing text:


PICARD (V.O.)
Captain's log: Stardate 44429.6.
We are on a mapping survey near
the Cardassian sector. It has
been nearly a year since a peace
treaty ended the long conflict
between the Federation and
Cardassia.


[...]

PICARD
Last time I was in this sector,
I was on the Stargazer, running
at warp speed ahead of a
Cardassian warship.

STAR TREK: "The Wounded" - REV. 10/29/90 - TEASER 2.

2 CONTINUED:

TROI
(amused)
Running, Captain? You? That's
hard to believe...

PICARD
Believe it. I'd been sent to make
preliminary overtures to a
truce... I lowered my shields as
a gesture of good will. But the
Cardassians weren't impressed.
They took out most of my weapons
and damaged the impulse engines
before I could regroup and run.


I don't remember that exchange in the episode... prolly cut for time. Anywho, if the intention was Picard had a run in on the Stargazer, the conflict must be really long which gives O'Brien plenty of time too.


My guess is that this is less of a war in the Dominion DS9 sense and more of a long running series of disagreements with individual ships firing on one another and border colonies/outposts getting raided by small groups - more like the Maquis conflict that carries on.


PICARD
Mister O'Brien... I believe
Captain Maxwell lost his family...
during a raid on an outpost.

O'BRIEN
More like sabotage, sir. It was
on Setlik Three. A squad of
Cardassian militia made a sneak
attack on an outpost... wiped out
close to a hundred civilians.


* * *

KEIKO
That may be harder to do than to
say.
(beat)
You fought the Cardassians, didn't
you?

O'BRIEN
There were some skirmishes... when
I was with Captain Maxwell.






BTW omg omg omg just like me

O'BRIEN (Cont'd)
(beat)
I'd never killed anything before.
When I was a kid I would worry
about having to swat a mosquito.


and lol

He is not at all what one might have expected.
Slight of build, short greying hair, chiseled, angular
face -- he could be Lenin. Or Lennon.


ALSO praise to the writers for thinking about this


O'BRIEN
It's good we're trying this with
another Federation ship. It would
never work with an alien vessel.

GEORDI
I'm not so sure it's going to work
this time. Can you get an
accurate enough fix on his shield
modulation to get through?

O'BRIEN
I think so. The Phoenix should
be following standard Starfleet
protocols. They have to align
their shields at the start of
every sweep.

GEORDI
So you'll sync up the beam...

O'BRIEN
And slip right through...



explaining the one-off trick here as a one-off






anyway though I think "war" here isn't about fleet actions, it is about border skirmishes running over a long time that probably didn't affect many people not directly involved. But, it was costly anyway cuz Federation people don't like the idea of folks not getting along or a friend of a friend's cousin was involved in one of the massacres, etc.

So costly in terms of morality and politics rather than in terms of the whole Starfleet is constantly worried about it

[adr]

On the other hand the thing that he's the former tactical officer of the Rutledge. You know seriously senior staff But somehow has become a transport operator, enlisted and then an engineer afterwards does strike me as odd.

I actually randomly came across a fan theory for this that makes sense to me: O'Brien said he "hates what he became because of [the Cardassians]" in The Wounded, I quoted the part where he didn't even like swatting mosquitos above.

So maybe he had the tactical position because he was good at it, but when he got a chance to transfer, he wanted to get as far away from violence as he could - no more security/tactical and changed his career tract to another thing. In "Encounter at Farpoint" I'm pretty sure his job was conn - typically manned by a random redshirt ensign.

Then at some point he switched jobs to another thing he was good at: engineering (ref "All Good Things") and pretty quickly excelled his way to transporter chief.

But since he changed jobs to such a degree, his rank kinda reset as he was starting over down a whole new path.



it is good enough for me. We can even explain him wearing lieutenant pips in TNG by saying that was tied to his position there rather than a permanent transferrable promotion to DS9.

[Stofsk]

I don't recall them saying that the war had *just* finished. No timeline was given IIRC, so my headcanon was always that the war had ended in a ceasefire some time prior to 'Encounter At Farpoint' EDIT with a formal peace treaty signed whenever the episode says it was signed. In the immediate post-end-of-hostilities buzz Starfleet launches the Galaxy-class, a ship that could have probably ended the war more favourably for the Federation*, but because it was now peacetime the cardies got off a negotiated settlement. If that's so then the first four years of TNG might have been a tense ceasefire but relatively localised along a certain part of the border (far enough away that we don't hear about stand-offs that occur or protracted diplomatic negotiations).

Remember, in this war O'Brien was serving on the Rutledge and became her 'tactical officer' (lol obviously before O'Brien became an enlisted mang) but he's been serving on the Enterprise right from the first episode. And the 'war' seemed to be a series of border skirmishes more than anything else - O'Brien even referred to them as the border wars, which implies low-intensity low-scale fighting not total war like the Dominion conflict was.

* I base this on how we see the Enterprise and other Galaxy-class ships wtfpwn the Galor-class cardie ships frequently, and how the Nebula-class USS Phoenix we see in 'The Wounded' also seems quite capable of doing the same, which because the Nebula is from the same 'family' as the Galaxy, but looks like a more compact and perhaps even robust design, lends credence to my headcanon theory.

[Gands]

I always thought that the Cardassian war was meant to be like the Vietnam War, mostly because of this exchange:

PICARD: Would it be inappropriate to ask what happened between you and Spock?
PERRIN: Not between us. Between Spock and his father. They had argued for years. That was family. But when the debates over the Cardassian war began, he attacked Sarek's position publicly. He showed no loyalty to his father.
PICARD: I was not aware that Sarek was offended by Spock's opposition.
PERRIN: I was offended. I made sure Spock knew it. I'm very protective of my husband. I do not apologise for it.

[Darksi4190]

Does that mean either Spock or Sarek was in favor of going to war against the Cardassians?

Seems like an unlikely position for a Vulcan to have.