New Testingstan

yes, I just watched it today, "the thaw"

I also watched the episode that followed, "tuvix". and a couple days ago did "blink of an eye" and "virtuoso" from season 6.

I enjoyed all four episodes and am looking forward to watching more voyager in the coming weeks.

Oh, Tuvix. That was a good episode with a decent moral dilemma, and for once they didn't back out of it.
Shame it ended by turning the entire crew (apart from the Doctor) into murderous shits
I thought that Tuvix was a better character than either Tuvok or Neelix

indeed. i'm a little disappointed after they mentioned both tuvok and neelix would be willing to die for someone else they didn't say the next logical step: that's exactly what they were doing for tuvix

also a lil sad they didn't show us a little more of tuvix, settling for telling us about him in the captain's log, but it is only an hour show so i'll let it slide


but overall i agree, he was cool and it was a good dilemma, pretty solid episode

evilsoup wrote:I thought that Tuvix was a better character than either Tuvok or Neelix

This was not a high bar to pass

Neelix yes, but Tuvok. No.

The problem with Tuvix as a story concept is that the ending has to involve the character being killed off in order to restore the two main cast actors. So while the dilemma in theory should be a solid one, in practice the climax is predictable.

Which is what forced it to be a study of the reactions of the rest of the characters, and had it not been confined to one episode could have been used for serious drama and character development. Unfortunately... As you know, that ain't how B&B rolled.

Neelix was a great character in the pilot episode, where he scammed the Voyager crew into getting involved in a war so that he could rescue his girlfriend
he had some other good moments

evilsoup wrote:Neelix was a great character in the pilot episode, where he scammed the Voyager crew into getting involved in a war so that he could rescue his girlfriend
he had some other good moments

My first exposure to Voyager was through Trek EU novels I read as a kid. It wasn't anything to write home about, but it wasn't terrible like the show, and Neelix was actually my favorite character.

Which is why I didn't understand all the talk about how terrible the show was and how annoying he was until I finally saw it on TV after I graduated college.

evilsoup wrote:Neelix was a great character in the pilot episode, where he scammed the Voyager crew into getting involved in a war so that he could rescue his girlfriend
he had some other good moments

I wished they'd kept this aspect of his character.

timmy wrote:Which is what forced it to be a study of the reactions of the rest of the characters, and had it not been confined to one episode could have been used for serious drama and character development. Unfortunately... As you know, that ain't how B&B rolled.

Voyager was Trek's biggest and best chance to really shake things up, go off the beaten path and take chances with the characters and premise. It's so bizarre that they would come up with such a dynamic premise for a show, then shoot themselves in the foot right out the gate.

I'll take Voyager over Enterprise though.

Ralin wrote:My first exposure to Voyager was through Trek EU novels I read as a kid. It wasn't anything to write home about, but it wasn't terrible like the show, and Neelix was actually my favorite character.

I remember this! EU writers seemed to understand the character - many of the characters - better than the script writers. About three books in was one in which two ridiculously large fleets, built by two races that had resource-bankrupted an entire star system to do so, were dogging it out, and had been for at least a century, with an outcome possibly another century away. Why was Voyager heading into this? They were scanned by a coherent tetryon beam that came straight from the battlefield... That turned out to have come from a derelict First Federation ship that had wound up in the fray.

Exciting stuff, if my fourteen year old self does say so.

Yup.

I mean, not as awesome as the Shatnerverse. But what is?

Oh man

Did he send the E-A out in a blaze of non-brand-name aftermarket parts or what

And man I could imagine that storage facility full of museum pieces

Never did read The Return though

The Return was an... interesting read. It really comes across as someone having finished watching Generations and going '...That film sucked shit. My fanfic would be better than that.'

Well, from what I remember the first book ends with Kirk cold-cocking Picard, then single-handedly blowing up the Borg homeworld and wiping out the entire Collective.

The first one.

Then it shifts to a more serious trilogy where Kirk battles the one being that can possibly oppose him.

Kirk's evil twin. From an evil parallel universe.

Evil Kirk had been the emperor of the Evil Federation. He was of course the greatest leader in the history of the entire human race and had been single-handedly crushing the (evil?) Romulans and Klingons when his best friend, Evil Spock, betrayed him, leading to the Evil Federation's conquest. Earth and Vulcan were razed as a result.

Especially Iowa. They just line up their fleets and bomb the fuck out of Iowa for like a month, just because Kirk was there.

Anyway, Evil Kirk was shipped off to some hellish prison planet, but he escaped en route by seducing the hot female alien captain of the ship transporting him. And then in a freak accident he was sent forward through time to the TNG era, where he promptly figured out how to travel between between dimensions, something which had evaded the greatest scientific minds of two universes for centuries, and set off to take revenge on Good Kirk by conquering his Federation. Though not before assembling a posse consisting of people like the cyborg weapons master, Evil Geordi. And Evil Riker. And of course his chief lieutenant, the Klingon-trained sociopath Evil Picard.

Evil Picard is of course Evil Kirk’s bitch.

Anyway, Evil Kirk is in perfect physical condition and a master of all known forms of martial arts. Not that stops Good Kirk from defeating him in hand to hand combat the second time they face off.

This all leads up to a brilliantly written conclusion where Good Kirk convinces Evil Kirk to reform and return to the evil mirror universe to work for democracy, after agreeing that Good Kirk is both a better starship captain and a superior lover. We are also given to understand that Kirk’s newborn son is a genetically superior hermaphroditic psionic god-being that represents the next step in the evolution of sentient life. And then Kirk tells Starfleet to go to hell and not bother him anymore and heads home to raise his genetically superior hermaphroditic psionic god child in peace and the story ends.

Well, for awhile anyway. Shatner has since written more books. Something to do with Spock apparently dying while on a mission to Romulus working towards Vulcan reunification and Kirk going to investigate. I haven’t read them, but in my mind’s eye I like to envision them as being basically like Marvel Comics’ World War Hulk enacted on the Romulan Star Empire.

Oh, and there's one part where Evil Janeway tries to seduce Good Kirk, but Kirk just pushes her away and is all like "Eww"

I have trouble seeing Janeway as anything other then my 65 year old, smokes two packs a day, aunt. Preserved for all time through the power of nicotine.

man I don't normally read star trek books
but those sound fucking awesome

I think my favorite part was when Kirk threatened this admiral by telling him that if he didn't put the entire resources of Starfleet at his disposal to help him save his half-human, half-Klingon, half-Romulan wife he would team up with Evil Kirk and dedicate the rest of his life to destroying the Federation. And the admiral backs down and complies, just because he's afraid to fuck with Kirk.

Note that Kirk is in a security cell when he says this.

With weapons trained on him.

Behind a forcefield.

On a top secret, heavily fortified starbase in a remote location known only to a handful of members of Starfleet Intelligence.

And he has no hands. Because they had been burnt off in the previous book and his new ones haven't finished growing back yet.

And he's completely dependent on the man he's threatening for food and medical care.

And the admiral still backs down. Just because he's afraid to fuck with Kirk.

...Is this, like, serious, actual stuff from actual books?

joviwan wrote:...Is this, like, serious, actual stuff from actual books?

Yeah. Though it has been a long time.

To be fair, I'm reasonably sure a lot of that is Shatner poking fun at himself. I don't think he's really as arrogant as summarizing the books makes him sound.

I...don't think it would be possible, for Shatner to be that arrogant.

Well that all sounds incredible in the worstbest ways, so I wanted to make sure.

I have no doubt that Shatner knows how ridiculous it is and loves every bit of it!

Yeah. It sounds like the Homer Simpson remake of Mr Smith goes to Washington, and that's a film I'd pay to see in its entirety.

Shatner didn't write the books IIRC, they were ghost written by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens.

I never knew that, but I was aware at the time that I read The Ashes of Eden that it was similar prose to Federation, which I loved. I want to get a copy of that again.