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Voyager Eulogy
When Voyager first came out I sort of considered it the red-headed stepchild of the franchise. It's premise, that the Voyager had been thrown 70k light years into the Delta Quadrant by "The Caretaker" and that it would take 75 years to return, was in my mind contrived and inconsistent with the model of physics that the Franchise had embraced. (There is no way it would have taken that long to return using high warp, remembering the restriction of high warp speeds was enacted by the federation only after Voyager was deemed lost).
So, like many, I ignored the show until much later in the franchise's lifespan. (It wasn't a coincidence that I started "catching up" with Voyager only after I purchased a Tivo.) I figured, what the heck, and put a season pass on the show. After watching it, I noticed that, like many of the Star Trek series, it had just needed to get its legs and have its characters get comfortable with the roles and the mixed bag of writing that came from the incredible hunk of crap that is Berman/Braga's idea clump (I won't grace them by saying they have brains).
That said, I started to enjoy Voyager, and I even came to like and look forward to watching it. I still do look forward to seeing the episodes I missed, as I'll just continue to exercise my denial over what the evil bastards at Paramount have done to the franchise to service my need to watch starships blowing stuff up. (Something DS9 served well in it's later seasons).
Seeing the season finale, I realize now that while I enjoy the series, I wish you could thumbs down particular ideas in the Tivo. Specifically, I'd like the ability to make it impossible to watch any Star Trek show that has anything to do with:
- Time Travel
- The Holodeck
- Super Smart/Psychic characters
- The Doctor getting reprogrammed by the nebbish aliens.
What happened to the writing that brought us The Wrath of Khan, for god's sake?
My beef with modern Star Trek aside, what made this particular episode of Voyager so disappointing? The use of time travel in the season finale, combined with reminding us of the logically inconsistent existence of the Borg Queen (played by the really great and terrifically creepy Alice Krieg, from First Contact), and frankly a lazy approach to ending the series, having the characters do things counter to their established ethics and morals to bring the ship home and wrap up the series.
Slight Spoiler
Also, the use of advanced weapons of the
future to make it easy to deal with the borg was like playing Doom in god mode, pretty but boring, and in the end, pathetic.
End Spoiler
A pretty concise description of the poorly titled Endgame can be found here on the LogBook.
In the end, you'll feel like Voyager deserved a better ending and the Franchise, a better show. I think the tombstone on the series should read "Selectively enjoyed, despite itself." I'm afraid the same will be said about Enterprise, 7 seasons after its debut.
Babylon 5. And it was also one of the best series.
Man you are being SIMPLE!!!! Do you remember the first and last episode of STTNG? Well it was Q in each of them. And each time Q questioned humanity and what it represented. It was not about time travel. In voyager the first and last episode dealt the problem of making decisions and then living with those decisions. Remember the phrase "If I knew then I would have done it differently?" Well Voyager actually went through that in the last episode. Next time think it through a bit!!!
933.4 times the speed of light == warp 933.4
Unfortunately warp speed doesn't work that way ;) In the Trek universe Warp speed is exponential. According to the Star Trek Encyclopedia warp factor 9.99 is 8.48 Trillion Km's per Hour... at that speed, to travel 10,000 lightyears takes 1 year... (At that speed they could've been home in 7 years - but we all know that Voyager can barely push that speed, let alone sustatin it!)
A normal cruising speed for the current vessels is about Warp 8 - which makes it roughly 10 years to travel 10,000 lightyears... Using that 70 years or so seems about right.. (That is of course, if they decided to keep going in a straight line.... Sure they might get home quicker - but who'd be watching it?)
Oh and slightly off topic - if you enjoy Trek (and especially a good laugh) be sure to check out ev Trek - the best Trek Parody around..
The USS Galaxy was built in 2357 at the Utopia Planitia ship yards on Mars. Designed to be the state of the art exploration Starship, the Galaxy class was an enthusiastic effort. The Starship was commissioned in 2360 as the USSGalaxy NX-70637. It's Captain was the decorated Vulcan, CaptainShoak.
The USS Galaxy was a great success under the command of CaptainShoak. However, great expense over runs put the Galaxy class project in jeopardy. In late 2360, CaptainShoak was pivotal in getting Starfleet command to use the a Galaxy class ship as the platform for the USSEnterpriseNCC-1701-D. The Enterprise was originally slated to become the Enterprise class ship, using the cheaper Nebula platform. Captain Shoak argued that the flag ship of the federation should be the best ship Starfleet could build, and the Galaxy class was it. Captain Shoak was successful. The Enterprise became a Galaxy class Starship and breathed new life into the Galaxy class project. But in so doing, Captain Shoak diminished the uniqueness of his own vessel. Now the Federation wanted to keep the Enterprise in the Alpha quadrant, since it was the flag ship, and assigned the USS Galaxy, now rid of all the developmental and design problems, out on deep space exploration.
The USS Galaxy was assigned to the boarder of the Alpha and Gamma quadrants. There it carried out it's mission of space exploration and charting. For many years the USS Galaxy carried out it's mission under the loyal crew and command of the Vulcan Captain. But the USS Galaxy received none of the glory or fanfare that the USS Enterprise-D received, being the Flag ship of the Federation and stationed in the Alpha quadrant.
In 2371, When the USS Enterprise-D was lost on Veridian III, The USS Galaxy once again became the premier Galaxy class Starship. With the recent Borg threat to the Federation, and the lack of powerful Starships as a result of the loss at Wolf 359, the USSGalaxy was restationed back in the Alpha quadrant where it could more readily defend the Federation planets from any outside threats.
Just three months after the loss of the Enterprise-D, Captain Shoak was diagnosed with Bendii Syndrome and retired from Starfleet to return to the planet Vulcan. His command of the USSGalaxy was turned over to his first officer, RobertEdwardLeePrice, who is currently the Captain of the USSGalaxy.
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Assume for the moment that Sinclair was not reassigned. Given what we know happens to him in "War Without End," the story makes much more sense if that episode were shown as the last one in the series. It completes a loop and brings us back to the pilot episode. It fixes a number of problems including the Great Machine (which never actually does anything significant except in that episode -- it just sort of hangs around afterward and it is never adequately explained why Sheridan doesn't use it), the marriage ceremony in "The Parliament of Dreams" (again, never followed up -- perhaps Delenn was supposed to go with Sinclair?) and Catherine Sakai (who was probably meant to be the Anna Sheridan character -- she worked for IPX!).
The problem with the above scenario is that it doesn't adequately address the ousting of the First Ones. That's an important element of the story and not something I think JMS made up along the way. Unless Sinclair goes through this process and then uses the great machine at the very end to complete the cycle.
Recall that JMS thought the story would be better after reassigning Sinclair because he would not be the subject of every major element of the story. It would be much more believable, he felt, if the major responsibilities were split between two characters. It seems clear to me that in spite of what some fans want to think, the Sheridan character was nothing more than a fix-up to an ugly situation with Michael O'Hare (who doesn't get nearly the credit he deserves).
That said, B5 remains one of my favorite sci-fi series of all time. It's a great story. Farscape ranks right up there with it, simply because of the great writing, which B5 sorely needed. JMS, Like George Lucas, is a wonderful storyteller, but his writing skills leave much to be desired.
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Will Seven get to life a life and not be the Borg lab rat for eternity?
Will the Doctor get the same rights afforded Data and other artificial life forms? Will he be erased/reprogrammed? Will he get to keep his 26th century mobile holo emitter (that's temporal contraband, yes?)?
What about Janeway's now remarried (after he thought she was dead) ex husband?
If the Borg transwarp conduit opens up right in from of freaking Earth, why haven't the Borg yet sent fleets of cubes to Earth? It took all starfleet had to defeat one borg ship. A fleet would have been unstoppable.
The Queen dies twice? To quote Barclay... "I hate temporal mechanics."
And the umteen bazillion family reunions.
Well, when you use the Infinite Improbability Drive, occupying every point in the universe simultaneously often does strange things like converting missiles into a bowl of petunias and a large sperm whale. So I could imagine it turning you into a giant lizard, too.
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Lets break it down shall we...
Science: technological in nature... spaceships, time machines, cyborgs etc..
Fiction: Make believe... not true... not real... fictictious (what do i look like, a bloody thesauraus?)
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Speaking of inconsistancies.. I'm curious.. the Queen Borg... whats up with that? She has now died in 2 different events. Thats the only thing I would like some explanation for. I'd be willing to accept that she isn't actually flesh and blood and simply an AI stashed in the middle of Borgdom. I realize that she is supposed to be the Borg, but how's she(it) coming up with the same flesh and blood drone body. I'm doing it aren't I? :)
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But they looked so alike?!
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First Contact
Endgame
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I quote Mr. Beltran from an online transcript of one of his appearances, talking about the episode in which Kes returns (read here:
I had heard that they were planning eight seasons, then got cut short to seven, leaving them to squeeze the last two seasons into one. Not a troll, just misinformed. Chill.
We're not scare-mongering/This is really happening - Radiohead
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... once I joined the B5 cult ;)
OK, Berman Trek shows typically have nicer tits, but for almost anything else you gotta go with B5..
Your Working Boy,
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Right. Then why was the old Janeway freaking out when the Klingons were about to follow her back in time (near the beginning of the show)?
If the Klingons' ships were able to go through the time-portal, why not Voyager? It's crap like this that makes me glad Voyager is over.
I seem to remember the original definition of "warp speed" being the speed of light raised to the "warp factor". If you take this then:-
661797846884160000000 Distance in meters. (70K light years)
7.2597926626745539199273892718133e+50 Speed in m/s at warp 6
Distance / speed gives:-
9.1159331627571503158813050949698e-31 seconds (e-56 at warp 9 )
Ie - er they could go back and forth til they got bored. No wonder they had a re-think - Capt. Kirk could have commuted to other galaxies from Starbase 1....
Over here:- http://www.netmoon.com/startrek/warp/warp9.htm
is a much lower definition that puts warp 9 at 1516c. That still only puts the answer at 46 years (assuming it can run at warp 9 for that long).
I remember that episode... didn't it also have something to do with cummulative effect? where a lot of high warp travel along a certain coridor or shippign lane would destablize it, but a singe high warp kick accross the middle of no where wasn't such a big deal untill it started to add up... the whole thing reminded me of the arguments about speed boats in sensitive wetlands, then of course I saw one of the trek writters at a greenpeace rally protesting a power boat race on some lake somewhere because clear across the (very large) lake there was a wetlands.
you think it'll take us seven whole seasons before making comments like "selectively enjoyed"? yeah, right. If the trek writters (idea clump? lol!) continue to poor out the inconsistent drivvel that has littered DS9, voyager, EFC and Andromeda then I doubt we'll have to wait that long.
;)
Anyway, nice to see Chris' writing style hasn't changed from the old usenet days, although that wasn't quite enough spolierspace. (not that this was much of a spoiler.
I enjoyed all Star Trek series, though TNG was definitely my favorite. That's not the topic of my post, however.
I completely agree, Stargate is an excellent show. The stories are always good, and it equals Star Trek as far as its level of quality, fun, etc. If I ever have to miss it at the regular time, I always record it. It's great.
Yes, Earth: Final Conflict and Andromeda are disappointing. Blah.
I think Janeway also violated the Parallel Universe Prime Directive- seems she stole the ablative shield technology from Batman. Geez.
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
While there are many inconsistences in Star Trek, the treatment of a Federation-run, Bajorian-owned starbase is not one of them, simply because we've never seen that situtation before.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Of course, I don't think you actually can go warp 1 in the Star Trek universe. I think you can go all the way up to .8 or so on inpulse, then you jump to warp 2. But that may be from a book, and not canon.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Boy do I have to take issue with this. One of the fundamental ideas that relativity was derived from is, in fact, the exact opposite, the idea there is no such thing as the 'same time' for different observers or different events in a different place in space.
If I'm over here, and you're over there,a nd we both do something, we can't ever figure out which of us did it first. In fact, if we attempt to do them at 'the same time', you'll see you do yours first, and I'll see me do mine first. And, thanks to relativity, we can't even sync our clocks without some external source, like a pulsar. Of course, then we have to measure how far away this pulsar is from both of us, which requires our clocks are already synced!
Anyway, what relativity, and all other classical phsyics theories in existence assume, is that it is cause, then effect.
Quantum physics, on the other hand, doesn't always assume things like that. And it also does annoyingly, bring back the idea of 'the same time' with quantum entanglement. Using quantum entanglement means it is possible to send messages faster then light. Which completely blows relativity out of the water.
Basically, FTL is one of the places where QM and relativity differ. It's not too much to hope it will be possibly to 'move' things outside space, thus leading to the interesting idea that maybe you can't go 'faster then light', but you can go 'instantly', as long as you don't go though space to get there.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Does't look like the order of events is the same to me. What he's talking about is 'causality', which relativity just kinda assumes.
Relativity doesn't, BTW, forbid either going backwards in time or going faster then light. In fact, there are several places that can happen under current theories. The first comes to mind as a rotating torus you go though, and the second as the over-used-on-star-trek-but-might-actually-exist tachyons, which travel faster then light. (And also go backwards in time, but you can go backwards in time without going faster then light under current theory, by using the rotating torus that swaps space and time that I just mentioned.)
Now, relativity competely and totally ignores the idea 'mis-causality', aka, a paradox, might happen, so, in a sense, time travel is 'impossible' under relativity, simply because we have no theory that says what would happen. But that's like saying singularities are impossible because we don't know what happen in them. It's not literally impossible, under ralativity, to travel though time.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
TOS was not made by Paramount, it was made by Desi-Lue (spelling?) studios.... the same people that brought you "Lucy... I'm home...".
Well, in a show full of Janeways, Tuvoks, and Harry Kims, that "neutral", "bland" character really was one of the most interesting ones. Ironic because Star Trek was supposed to be about character drama.
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Well, the fish rots from the head down, and when they decided to make the Captain's distinguishing characteristic to be "She always plays it by the book", the series was doomed from the start to have every epoisode be "Prime Directive, Ma'am! Yes, Ma'am!" Well, they could have fixed that, but they waited until the very last episode to do so.
Chakotay, the big bad rebel could have been a great character but was completely neutered into an administrative yes man. B'Elanna, Tuvok, and Kes never got any writing and acted more like props. The Doctor could have been a somewhat interesting minor character, but since he was the only one who actually got development, every other show became about him (the other ones being about 7of9).
I guess my original point was this was only half a failing of the writers. My theory is is that producers were chickenshit to do anything interesting on a network show with a supposedly more mainstream audience, and ended up with a show just like "Seven Days". It wasn't so much Dumb as Dumbed Down, which is not what the trekies want to see. Worse, corrections weren't made midcourse. Anyway, I chuckled at the die cast remark.
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No, it was a smart move. The show had moved so far to the watered-down mainstream that it had essentially lost the hardcore trekie audience. That doesn't bode well for the future of the franchise.
T&A got the core fanbase back. They might not have liked the plots, but they were watching with some interest at least. That puts them in an ideal position for "Enterprise" which, on the face of it, is going to be a more Trekie-type show. The idea appears to be to bring the librarian crowd closer to the spock ears, rather than visa-versa.
(And ironically, the non-trekie females I know that watch the show didn't dislike the 7of9 character)
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Uhm...no. Think of it like you are in a car going 60mph. On the other side of the street is another car going at 60mph. Now for some reason you decide to hit the other car. The two cars collide at 120mph, not 60mph. The original poster had it right, the classic example being if you are on a train going at just under the speed of light and you run towards the front of the train, relative to the universe you just moved faster than the speed of light, but relative to the train you did not so it's all ok.
-matt
You are misunderstanding relativity. If you are standing still and I come running at you with a flashlight the light travels at c because that is the speed at which light travels in a vacuum. In reality we'd both see light travelling at slightly below c because if we were in a vacuum we'd have other things to worry about. Think of it like a train coming towards you sounding it's whistle. The whistle is higher pitch coming towards you because the wave compressions are created closer to each other. The light would just happen to be a higher frequency.
Relativity definately allows for faster than light travel, you just need to fudge things a bit. Ie, expand the space behind you while collapsing the space in front of you. This is very possible the problem is the insane energy requirements. It's all relative, as long as you are not moving faster than the speed of light relative to the region of space you are in the universe is happy with you.
-matt
Neelix left in the third-last or second-last episode. He stayed behind to act as an embassador for the Federation in the Delta quadrant at a planet where there were other Talaxians (sp?) living.
Janeway gave him the push he wanted to stay with the Talaxians by saying that now, since they were in contact with the Federation while in the Delta quadrant that an embassador would be wanted by the Federation.
From what I remember of Larry Niven's writing (inventor of the Ringworld), a Dyson sphere's interior surface would be about three billion times that of Earth's, if built at Earth's orbit. The Ringworld was only 100,000 (?) miles wide (width of surface, not overall diameter) and had a surface area of three million Earths. I read Niven's essay on extreme space stuctures about 10 years ago so my numbers are likely off.
I drank what? -- Socrates
SPOILER Having Janeway come from the future was the stupidest, most unoriginal idea I have ever seen - how the @^$# did this make it into the series finale? Some of you may be questioning my claim that it was an unoriginal idea; how many of you knew that they'd kill off the future Janeway? I rest my case. (she did die, right? I can't remember for sure because I wasn't paying attention - but it's safe to assume she did heheh)
And then there's Bellana's baby. When that came up I had to double-check to make sure I wasn't watching X-Files. Plus, I watched some episodes early in the season, and she WASN'T pregnant - so when did that magically pop up?
And THEN, they cheated to get home! WTF is up with that? You spend 7 years making your way home, only to have your captain come from the future (something she wouldn't do anyways) and save the day with her magic fairy powers. To quote Charlton Heston from Planet of the Apes (better than Voyager and any remakes they'll ever do btw): "You did it. You finally, really did it... God... DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!" END SPOILER
Another interesting thing to note is that UPN launched their network with Voyager. Almost no other UPN show took hold for at least the first couple of years. Obviously, this means that Voyager was also controlled by the ratings-mongerers, who undoubtedly share a sizeable portion of the blame for the often-poor quality of the show.
I'm not looking forward to the next ST series if it's going to have any of the same people involved in it that were responsible for the overwhelming number of negative aspects to Voyager.
Also, if any of you are wondering if there is any good sci-fi out there these days, forget shows like Dark Angel and Voyager and check out Andromeda (created by Roddenberry btw - think of the cool/fun aspects of the old ~1980 sci-fi shows, only without almost all of the cheesy aspects) and on the Sci-Fi Channel be sure to watch Farscape (WOW! They're sure as hell not afraid of killing of main characters once in a while!). Invisible Man is pretty good too - kind of like X-Files, only it's well-written and the characters have a sense of humor (in fact, the whole show does). First Wave is awesome, but I can never stay up to watch it (plus they keep moving it around, so it probably won't last long)
That's all I can think of right now... Except that ST:TOS and ST:TNG reruns are better than I remember! Screw CGI space-battles! I want good writing and acting (in that order, please)! MAKE IT SO!
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Some people have explained the nature of this episode that forced warp restriction. Clearly an environmental message, this was an episode where an alien scientist committed suicide to prove her seemingly improvable theory that warp-fields were damaging space and would eventually create sub-space rifts (AKA: holes in the ozone?). The debate was that nothing could be proven and more research would have to be done before the galaxy begin to abandon technology that support their way of life. Anyway, after the enterprise is trapped in the sub space rift created by the scientist (and their obligatory narrow escape), bans were placed restricting warp usage in heavily trafficked corridors of space. There may have been other episodes that dealt with this issue, but I saw this one last week and it is fresh in my mind.
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Speaking of The Prisoner, anyone know of a sci-fi representation of Virtual Reality - or even any discussion of it - that predates The Prisoner?
Weren't most of those drug induced hallucinations?
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I believe the warp levels work out like the ratings for earthquakes do. Each successive full rating is 10 times more extreme than the previous. So warp 7 would be 100 times faster than warp 5, etc.
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If the 26 year later janeway came back in time to help the current crew get home earlier with 26 year later technology, wouldn't this not happen with the current crew getting home earlier?
Worst eulogy ever...
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The warp scale used in TNG and beyond is exponential, where warp "1" is equivalent to light-speed (c), warp "8" is [1,024 x (c)] and warp 10 (which requires infinite energy and makes the traveller occupy all points of space at once, btw) is an infinite speed.
The 75-year timeframe either assumes a cruising-without-engine-damage speed of warp 8.x, or a higher travelling speed above warp 9 but factoring in regular maintenance stops.
Ya know, maybe I should stop those IRC startrek sims and get some real work done, lol... ::shuts off the holodeck and returns to helm duty::
BRTB
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Excellent point, but you should extend it to include just about everything Hollywood makes today. Every era seems to be dealing with all the exact same issues that are important to the folks over in Hollywood, CA. It shows a terrible emptiness in imagination, and they end up hectoring us relentless on the proper way to think--very boring in the end.
The good stuff, rare as it is, doesn't do that.
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The warp 5 limitation was cause warp drives were tearing the fabric of space time.
Going at high warp speeds doesn't send you back in time. Going faster than warp 10 theoretically would (in the star trek universe).
The real reason for the limitation: all the on-board Windows boxes blue screen at anything above Warp 5.
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I thought the speed of light (c) was the physical limit. What is this "warp" I keep hearing about?
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I generally liked DS9 and STTNG but I never really like voyager. I would watch half an hour of the show and then think to myself "What exactly happened?" There was no real plot. It was so formulaic.
When I saw the finale of voyager, I first thought, "wow that was a good episode". When I thought about it, though, I realized the plot didn't really make any sense. It was only interesting in the last 15 minutes. I have always watched voyager to laugh at the plot holes and the magical abilities of the crew to solve any situation "by emitting trionic radiation" and "varying the shield harmonics".
The introduction of 7 of 9 served only to further cheapen Voyager. I think the best idea would be to make a series of made for tv movies about different crews in the Trek universe like the acclaimed "The Outer Limits" anthology series.
With the new series, I wish it luck but I have doubts. I'm sure one of the first episodes will be having the female Vulcan first officer go into heat. That's always good for ratings.
P.S. A little late on the posting of this story?
Except that you shout tell TiVO to even remove all the episode where Voyager has been saved by 'superwoman-janeway-i-know-everything-i-do-everyth ing-i-fix-everything". Sometimes she really had the bad attitude...
At one point, during Endgame, I wondered myself why the rest of the crew was still on board. A ship with two Janeway was absolutely impossible to defeat, or even attack... You think that the weapons of the future eas like playing Doom in God Mode? No, I think that having two janeway wor even more cheating than that... hehehe
But I think that if you remove from the series your 4 points, and mine, there are very few remaining episodes...
The big challenge for them will be the new Serie "Enterprise"... will see.
Thanks again, man, great review !
The problem with this (and just about all other speed of light workarounds) is that there are TWO restrictions on going FTL. The first is that its physically impossible, the second is that it will create a nasty paradox no matter how it is achieved. ANYTHING that lets a message arrive somewhere faster than a beam of light could be used to send messages back in time, which obviously breaks everything down. By "warping space time" you are warping time, and backwards time travel is impossible.
One of the fundamental ideas that relativity was derived from is that the ORDER of events is the same for all observers. FTL travel or backwards time travel violates this principle.
In short:no type of mini-worm hole creating, negative energy harvesting, black-hole sling shot utilizing, warp drives, no matter how cleverly they try to get around the speed of light, could ever work unless physics as we know it are VERY VERY wrong.
Which is a possibility. I sure want faster than light travel, but from any sort of realistic educated outlook, it isn't bloody likely. Worm holes are purely hypothetical, basically conceived as science fiction conveniences, and othes schemes are fundamentally impossible. Our travel in the cosmos may well be seriously limited.
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Uhmmm... no. When two cars approach each other at 60 MPH they see 120 MPH, but when two things approach at very close to the speed of light, things are a bit different. You still see the thing coming at you at below the speed of light. How is this possible? Time slows down for you. This is why you age slower on a quickly moving spaceship than on earth. It is impossible to observe anything moving faster than light. This has been proven by actual observation many times over since Einstein.
In the case of the train, you're wrong again. If you're on a train moving close to the speed of light, space gets deformed to prevent you moving faster than light. Things get "squashed" together. The train and its contents, relative to the outside world, get compressed in the direction of their velocity (it loses length) so that relative to the outside world you are traveling a lesser distance on that train and are still going slower than light. Bottom line: it's impossible for anything to go faster than light relative to anything else.
It boggles the mind. But physics gets really strange under extreme conditions.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
It's not just that we can't do it with any machines, we can't even think of a way to do it without violating things that just plain can't be violated. This isn't a barrier of sound type situation at all. For the barrier of sound we knew that some object could go faster than the speed of sound at sea level, plenty of things do, just outside of the atmosphere. It was just considered a very very difficult engineering problem, not a physical impossibility. On the other hand, the speed of light is a barrier imposed by our most fundamental understanding of the nature of space and time. We cannot conceive of a way that ANYTHING could go faster than light.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Was it me, or were there too many galaxy class starships (Next Generation Enterprise NCC-1701D type)? I thought there were only 2 made: the Yamato (which was lost in a TNG episode) and the Enterprise. In the final episode there were a few more to greet the Voyager...
I'm pretty sure the Galaxy class starships would have had a USS Galaxy as their class ship. :-)
I couldn't buy the "the Dyson Sphere builders must have abandoned it because of the solar flares" explanation.
If someone had the technology to build that kind of structure in the first place, that would be like abandoning a new house because the furnace's pilot light needed adjustment.
Episode: Force of Nature (middle of last paragraph explains about the warp 5 limit)
t ai l.asp?ID=68628
/. transformed the last part of that address. It's actually .....detail.asp?ID..... )
p
http://www.startrek.com/library/episodes_tng_de
(for some reason
Star Trek: The next Generation episode list (shows Force of Nature as Season 7)
http://www.startrek.com/library/episodes_tng.as
icanneverbereached@sogoaway.com aint my address.
Warp Nacelles folding up: Berman thought it looked cool. But yes, that explanation you gave pretty much covers it.
I didn't factor those events in because I was looking at it from Janeway's view in "Caretaker Part 2". She didn't know those things would pop up, so she was figuring the time out as best as she could, taking in the delays, and not accounting for any shortcuts.
That's not to say she wasn't looking for shortcuts. Most of the first season was about the ship looking for shortcuts, preferrably wormholes (for example: Eye of the Needle, Prime Factors, dialogue from multiple episodes). About the beginning of second season, the topic turned more to "Well, we can't find a shortcut, so let's try to make first contacts and explore while we're here", which understandably brought up arguments from crew members, especially Neelix, from time to time.
And yes, I have seen the whole series, from start to finish. I have quite a few arguments about where technology disappeared to (Warp Ten shuttle (Threshold), Coaxial Warp (Vis a Vis), Quantum Slipstream (Hope and Fear... Seven said at the end of the episode that she was working on it to adapt to Voyager's systems), Transwarp Conduit (Dark Frontier... that was adapting Transwarp Conduit for use on Voyager, not using an external Conduit Generator).
Understandably the creators couldn't use such easy ways out, because if Voyager had a quick way home, most of the series was gone. However, revisiting Slipstream or Coaxial Warp would have been a nice thing to see. (Remembering Coaxial Warp, it supposedly took them about 10% faster than their existing warp, and would have still meant a long travel.)
icanneverbereached@sogoaway.com aint my address.
Homer doesn't go mad, he goes crazy.
Thanks for the correction. I couldn't remember the exact quote.
icanneverbereached@sogoaway.com aint my address.
Am I the only one that thought of the Probe until I read the story?
-1? This post (er, the parent of this one), should be at least 2, informative.
and every single episode ended up with Kirk getting the hook-up with some freaky alien chick.
This is exactly what makes the first series the best to me. Kirk didn't mess around with negotiations and peacful resolutions - 'BLAST them and take their women' was his moto.
LRJ
I wanted Janeway to die the moment she opened her f c i g mouth.
Her voice was annoying, she was more egotistical than Kirk, AND she was ugly.
The perfect ending of the show goes something like this...
TUVOK: Captain, the level of damage (and lameness) we have sustained will be impossible to repair. I'm sorry to say we will not be moving. We are stranded.
JANEWAY: Impossible! Someone do something about this! I refuse to let my crew sit here stranded! We WILL get home! We WON'T give up hope! We are STARFLEET OFF--(OOMPH)-- (JANEWAY is tackled by the entire bridge crew, and beated to death.)
...
(Her body in sickbay)
EMH: Please state the nature of the me... oh. It's Janeway's corpse. Well, I guess we won't be needing THIS anymore. Now, what is it we do with bodies again?
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
It was that episode of Next Generation that guest starred Jimmy Dewhan (Scotty). In the climax scene, Scotty and Laforge were trapped on a space ship being crushed by these huge doors. The Enterprize rushes in to save them. The only things keeping Scotty's craft in one piece are the shields. The Enterprize then BEAMS Scotty and Laforge throught the shields onto the saftey of the Enterprize. Now, the golden rule of Star Trek from day one, was "You Can't Beam Through Shields". They made up some bullshit reason why they were able to beam through the shields but it didn't matter. My heart was broken, and I never watched an episode since.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Yes, this is what most good science fiction is all about.
Extrapolating current social trends into some hypothetical future
Unfortunatley most current star teck doesn't do this. The tendency has become to locate current popular debates and use those to base a story that will enable the show to seem 'current' and socially aware.
Vorlon tavutna chog!
I think that what's happening is people are remembering with too much nostalga the old Trek series. It's kinda like whenever I watch Wargames or Tron. Those movies SUCK. Still, though, I get a lot of kicks watching them and I watch them as often as possible.
It's one thing to say "The old series was much better", but it's another thing to say "The old series was better because that's how I remember it".
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That's just the way it is
How did you get 3 insightful?
The warp 5 limitation was cause warp drives were tearing the fabric of space time.
Going at high warp speeds doesn't send you back in time. Going faster than warp 10 theoretically would (in the star trek universe).
This is not true exactly. In an episode of TOS, altough I can't remember which, some "alien being" propelled the ship to either warp 11 or warp 12, something I know as faster than warp 10.
The higher, the fewer.
A temporal corsality (sp?) loop... akin to the one they were stuck in with the Enterprise struck Frasier Crane's (har har) and Rebecca Howe's starship from 75 years before, only to have Data and the number 3 rescue them.
The higher, the fewer.
Exactly... I think the Federation would have cut Voyager and Janeway some slack if they were stuck 75k light years away to break the speed limit. Hell, I can do it taking my wife to the hospital...
The higher, the fewer.
An imaginary number is still a "real" number in the sense that it has value. Altough not possible in normal space time, Who Knows what may be possible in subspace, or with a large enough EMF. After all, take a look at all the imaginary numbers running around you in the springs on your car, the B fields generated by your cell phone, etc. The square root of -1 is a legitamate solution that solves true life equations. Don't forget, it was proven that the earth was flat, and a few of Newton's so-called laws have been proven otherwise. (Albeit in special circumstances.)
The higher, the fewer.
Am I just dense or did they never bother to explain the actual end of "The Endgame"? At one point they were being chased by the Borg Sphere, they took a turn somewhere so that everybody thought they'd go back to the Delta-quadrant and then the sphere is barfed into the Alpha-quadrant, the Federation shoots and shoots, and finally Voyager pops up, destroying the sphere.
So what happened? They somehow (how?) managed to get [behind|inside|over|under] the sphere (did a circle-jerk in the tubes?) and nuked it?
Hrumpf.
Oh well, usually Voyager two-part-edpisodes are really cool in the first part and then the second part is ladida-everythings-peachy, just like that (in the last 10 Minutes) - at least this one (even though still following this approach) was entertaining.
And it (obviously) gives us Geeks a lot to talk about...
-- "Tradition is the illusion of permanence."
In First Contact, the Borg do indeed head straight for Earth. Unfortunately, they forgot to time warp to the Cochran era first before any Enterprise showed up to follow them. That sucking sound I hear must be a Plot Hole.
Yes, indeed this was first used in TOS... In the "Doomsday Machine" Decker was CAPTAIN of the other ship, on the Enterprise, he became "Commodore" Decker. I remember reading somewhere that this was used in ST to acknowledge Captains on the bridges of other ships. An honorific more than an actual rank.
"A Geek for all Times!" - Dave Adler, PMEB mailing list, 3/14/99
I will have to disagree with a lot of what's been said. I started watching the original Star Trek when I was a young kid. My step-mother was a fan, and she turned me into a sci-fi nut introducing me to both Star Trek and Asimov.
When TNG came out, I was pretty disappointed. In fact, I think I skipped the entire first season after Mission to Farpoint.
Something happened in the second season, though. The characters seemed to find themselves and a balance. The stories improved. I was hooked. When I moved to Mexico, I had almost 100 episodes of TNG on video tape with me. I watched at least 3 episodes a week while I was there.
Shortly before I left for Mexico, the first season of Voyager was wrapping up. I had pretty much ignored it until the season finale and the first episode of the second season. Then I was hooked. I'm no catching up on the episodes that I missed while I was in Mexico.
I admit, the season finale was incredibly disappointing. I was pretty put off. Still, though, I enjoy a lot of the rerun episodes that I catch, and I'll continue to watch them while they're on.
I can't say the same for DS9. Something about it just doesn't really do it for me. I can't put my finger on it. I watch it occasionally and even enjoy it occasionally, but TNG and Voyager were by far, superior.
TNG had a great final episode, and I guess that added to the disappointment of Voyager's last episode. What I didn't like about TNG, though, were the motion pictures that followed. The characters, particularly Riker, Data, and Troi, don't seem to take it seriously at all in the motion pictures. It's almost like they're just there to party and get a paycheck. Sorry, that spoils it for me.
I have to say that the premise for Enterprise doesn't really appeal to me. Like Voyager and TNG, I'll probably watch the first episode or two, and then wait for things to come around in the second season.
Maybe I'll be pleasantly suprised, but right now, I'm doubting it... Sorry, but I had to throw in my $0.02.
Unlike many people here, I actually watched Voyager because I enjoyed it. Even the ones before 7 of 9 showed up. Personally, I preferred DS9, but I genuinely looked forward to watching Voyager, as well.
With my bias clearly stated already, I must say that I really enjoyed the Voyager finale. I found it to be much better than the DS9 finale in all but one way: what happens afterwards? With the DS9 finale, they showed what happened to the station, the characters, etc. With the Voyager finale, all you see is the events leading up to the final confrontation, the confrontation itself, and the immediate results afterwards (no, I'm not going to spoil it; there are plenty of other people who can, if you want). You don't get to see any long-term effects. If anything can be said about the Voyager finale needing improvement, it's that. (I really liked the nostaligic panorama put together at the end of DS9; Voyager could have used something similar)
BTW, does anyone know whether there's been any talk of a DS9 movie or a Voyager movie?
Hmmm. Kinda makes me wonder what the warp equivalent of the quantum slipstream drive is . . .
Why is it that every captain so far has become an Admiral within 20 years? I remember when they had the ranks of "Commodore", which was lost from ST:TNG onwards. I am sure there are several other ranks whihc they skip past an dit demeans the rank of Captain to being a lowly rank and that of admiral as easily attainable.
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- [Darth] Snowbeam
I am Lord Snowbeam. Heed my call!
"...having the characters do things counter to their established ethics and morals to bring the ship home and wrap up the series..."
Yeah...right. So, you're saying that the future Janeway wouldn't have gradually turned against her own beliefs in the Prime Directive after several years? People change, you know.
If you can't spell, or can't be bothered to check your spelling, I don't see how you can criticize the writing of others.
Timothy should learn the difference between "its" and "it's"; he got it wrong two times out of three.
Captain Cathrine Three way Commander Two-cock Hairy Pimm Belana Whorez Knealin Commander "Choad" eh? (o.k... it's not that good) The holographic 'Cockter' and of course... (you guessed it) 7 of 69
Voyager gave us the one thing the others did not do very well... T&A. 7of9 was and still is something we can forever be gratefull for. Our very own Cherry2000 in ST garb... now I'll have to plunk down money for Elite Force to see her...* *******
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A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
I would think that in (almost) all cases where a leading caracter is killed off, it is because their contract has run out. It is just a fact of (TV production) life.
OTOH, I remember watching the episode where she was killed and I didn't think for a minute that she wouldn't come out alive. When she finally died I realized that it was quite a dramatic end for this caracter (even though the black ooze was rather ridiculous). It certainly didn't harm the overall atmosphere of the series.
My original hope for the series was that while traveling home, they would periodically pick up new technologies and an occasional new crew member. Then when they finally arrive home seven years later, Voyager is barely recognizable as a Federation ship. It's got all kinds of jury-rigged technologies hanging off it...things they've picked up from other civilizations to compensate for the Star Fleet components that eventually failed. The jury-rigs are only half understood, but some of the technologies are so advanced that Voyager is able to slip past Borg cubes and make it home in just seven years. The crew has adapted so well to their "alien" adoptees that they no longer feel entirely at home on Earth. The final two-hour episode could have taken place entirely on Earth, each of the main crew members realizing that Earth no longer felt like home, and volunteering to embark on Voyager once again. The final shot could have been of them, ironically, _leaving_ Earth for another long mission. I like my ending better.
I hope that after I die the one word people use to describe me is "resurrected."
goto #freevideo on efnet and get it from there :) they have it usually in divX format
-- http://electronicintifada.net --
Why don't you people get a life??? You...you look like you're about 30 years old. Tell me, have you ever kissed a girl??
You're using her as bait, Master!
i knew i missed something! even if it was just two seconds and the credits. thanks a bunch guys!
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Bill and Ted do the time travelling bit *so* much better.
Reading from the Star Trek Tech manuals ... a sector is approx. 20 lights years across. They state it takes about 20 days to cross at Warp 6. So .. 20 years equals 7300 days -- divided by 20 days = 365 - this is the factor. 70,000 light years = 25,550,000 days ...Divide 70,000 by 365 and you get 191.78+ yrs at Warp 6. Getting more detailed Warp 1 = 1 cochrane ( 1 cochrane = speed of light). Warp 2 = 20 cochranes. Warp 6 = 392 cochranes, so if you divide 70,000 lights years by 392 cochranes you get 178.57+ yrs. Warp 9 = 1516 cochranes..... so 70,000 yrs / 1516 cochranes = 46+ yrs. So it still is a really long time to get home. In "Endgame" it initally took Voyager 23 yrs to get home.... the had bunch shortcuts here and there throughout the series. So those of you who say those numbers that series state don't jive.... well they do... The people who check the facts for the show "The Keepers of The Trek Bible' make sure the facts jive.
*** I Know Everything, But Can't Remember It All At Once ***
I think that's BS. DS9 was a much better show than Voyager. Even minor characters such as Garak had more to them than say, Ensign Kim. Plus Odo and Kira and Jadzia Dax were just great roles. DS9 was brave enough to take a different look at the Federation, the outskirts, an its cowboy tactics. I never liked TOS, too cheesy. TNG was cheesy too until Gene Rodenberry died then it suddenly got better with Rick Berman and Michael Piller at the helm. DS9 was a dark Star Trek. Voyager on the other hand just seemed too commercial and frankly I didn't much like the characters except for Janeway and the Doctor. Knowning that the next series is going to have the Quantum Leap guy as the new captain takes away all my hope for Star Trek.
Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so. - Bertrand Russell
Agreed. You have to give shows a certain respect when they are willing to do that; especially outside the predictable season premier/sweeps/finale times. The tension of an unknown outcome makes for incredible viewing.
Example: Did you see the X-Files finale? (um, oh yeah, spoiler warning) That scene, with Krychek and Mulder in the parking garage? That was AMAZING. Why? Because you didn't know what was going to happen. There was the possibility that Mulder could die there, that it really could be his end.
The Warp Scale for measuring speed is a log scale, similar to the Richter Scale for measuring earthquake intensity. I.E.: the difference between Warp 9 and Warp 8 is significantly greater than the difference between Warp 1 (the speed of light, c) and Warp 2.
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Stupid people suck.
As to the borg queen:
Alice Krieg played the borg queen in Star Trek:First Contact while Susanna Thompson played the role in Voyager. I've always assume that since they were different actresses and since the first one did die in First Contact that the borg just chose a new queen.
My cynical nature makes me assume that we will get boxed sets (about 2 years after the first DVD releases) in the hope we end up buying both the dual episode DVD's and the Boxed sets.
On my really cynical days I would say that they would fail to release a few episodes per series on anything other than boxed sets which due to the staggered release would force early buyers to end up with duplicate episodes. Though most probably they will just release boxed sets with the typical "Interviews with actors/directors/staff" or "New unreleased footage" ala Star Wars.
-----------------------------------------
Physicists are said to stand on one another's shoulders while programmers stand on one another's toes.
It was in one of the later Next Generation episodes (called Force Of Nature) that they came up with the limit of warp five. Check out http://www.startrek.com/library/episodes_tng_detai l.asp?ID=68628 to see a description.
My complaint is that main characters would become "Possessed", and then flake out. This plot device was used in TNG, DS9, and Voyager. How many times did Data act irrationally, only to find out that something had taken him over and he was not responsible for sodemizing the warp coil. Same with the other episodes. Whichever writer came up with this deserves to be "Possessed" by some angry fans.
The Galaxy, Yamato, and Enterprise were the first Galaxy class starships and were constructed at roughly the same time. However, a number of Galaxy class starships have been built since then.
The warp speed restrictions were implemented in season 7 of TNG. The Voyager series started the January after TNG ended. Therefore, the Voyager crew most certainly knew about the warp speed restrictions. However, Voyager was designed with some new warp engines that could legally exceed warp speed limitations, as mentioned by the shuttle pilot who took Paris took to DS9 in the pilot.
- http://llwyd.tripod.com/startrek/stvborg.htm
The IMDB link does not yet have the series finale of Voyager. Incidently, Susanna Thompson played a Trill in one episode of DS9.http://us.imdb.com/Name?Thompson,+Susanna
i just watched a tape i made of it again... now, they started the thing at 8 pm, cause it was a double episode. i always thought it was really stupid for them to do it, cause EVERY SINGLE TIME they do that, I miss it. I think it would have been much smarter to start at 9 and go til 11. Sure, kids watch it, but the kids that watch it can stay up til 11. Or if they have to go to bed, at least they still wouldn't have missed the first hour. So I only saw 44 minutes of it, or whatever it trickles down to after commercials. You know what? I still haven't seen the first half, and I don't think it mattered at all. Short of wondering where Neelix was after seeing the last half TWICE (yeah, he musta been a favorite of mine) I think had the first half figured out within the first 15 seconds. I still don't know what happened in the first half, so if someone wants to tell me I actually missed something, please.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
I could liken how I imagine the producers/writers felt to living up here in the North East... You get a giant blizzard (I believe the local term is "No'Eastah'byGod"), getting dressed up, shoveling the walk to get to the driveway, shoveling the driveway, and making it all the way down the last 8 feet til the street starts. You give up, hop in your car, and gun it backwards down the driveway. The car gets stuck, ALMOST all of the way through. You climb out through the sun roof, see that the car isn't going to get hit by oncoming traffic, declaring out loud "Ah forget it!", and walking back into the house so that you can feed your kids Ramen Noodles. Umm.. and stick some time travel in there. That makes my point sound a lot better. Thanks
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
This guy is a troll. The link reveals a picture of two naked guys giving anal and oral sex to a toy barney doll. Sick, if I may say so. I suppose if this sort of thing makes you happy, go for it, but personally I wish I haden't clicked on it.
-James
Really? For what real-life situation? When will I ever need i gallons of gas, or have to pay $3i+2.95 for a magazine?
I do agree though that the writing seemed somewhat flimsy. I was disappointed by them actually returning home, I felt there would be good opportunities for Voyager movies if they left the ship in the Delta quadrant. I guess in the next 20 years, we'll get some more TNG movies, then it will be only "Enterprise". I have always been willing to watch Star Trek series from the start until they get up and running and get good. I am not so sure I will want to watch Enterprise. In my mind, its kind of like going for a ride in a `55 Chevy after being used to a `95 GTI. Sure, it's a cool ride, but I like my power windows and air conditioning.
cat
Yeah dude, and Number One was HOT! I think Majel is much more attractive as a brunette.
cat
DS9 was a much better finale in terms of closure.
cat
Also, if you don't like the show's politics (folk on the net seem to only like white male captains), write your senator, or change the channel.
--
mrBlond
CowboyNeal for president!
"Hit any user to continue."
There's always time travel. ;)
Krishna
--- I'd love to go out with you, but I have to study for a Turing test.
- Time travel: umm, what about "All good things"? "Yesterday's Enterprise"? "Time's Arrow"? "Trials and tribble-ations"? OK, so there are many rather silly eps that revolve around the subject as well, but considering what great potential it has for plots, I'd definitely not dismiss it altogether. It's perhaps the all-time scifi theme, certainly not to be missed out on one of the all-time scifi series.
- The Holodeck: Episodes set mostly on the holodeck have a greater-than-usual chance of being, if nothing else, at least funny: we've seen Data play Sherlock Holmes in "Elementary, dear Data" and "Ship in a Bottle" (which actually had a very thoughtful plot as well), we've seen Tom Paris play Captain Proton in "Bride of Chaotica!" , in what is arguably the only enjoyable episode of Voyager (ironically a fill-in for the original concept for that episode never filmed due to damage to the props). Again, as with time travel, this is a theme that allows for a variety of intriguing, intelligent and humorous plots, and cuts off many restrictions imposed by the usual Trek settings.
- The Doctor: OK, I'll admit, I haven't seen the episodes where he gets reprogrammed, but in general I'm sure most would agree that without Robert Picardo in it, Voyager would be even more of a drag than it already is (or was). But then, maybe DiBona subscribes to that too.
Another good theme bet is whenever Q is involvedIt truely started to die the day he took over... oh well
--
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
...were the lazy kids who didn't want to do their homework, Crusher always loved his homework, and they felt he set a bad example.
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If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
They just replicate some more, that kind of limitation is not intersting, nor necessary
Not to mention the inherent time travel issue that comes up all the time and is never explained: now that Janeway's home, you can be sure that Starfleet will make sure she can't try to go back in time again. If so, then she won't guide the crew home, and we'll revert to the alternate future. In that one, Janeway does help the crew, and we go to the "real" future, which then brings us to the alternate future again. . . etc, etc, etc. This issue comes up in many episodes, where the actual time travel negates the reason for time travel in the future, which leads to this temporal paradox.
There is not one timeline, but an infinite number of timelines, this means you can create new ones but never eradicate exsisting ones, and thus that paradox can never occur.
--
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
"I think in one of the books (maybe one of the later Star Trek Chronologies?) they lay it all out, with a map showing where everything is (the Federation, Voyager, Klingons, both ends of the Wormhole, etc)." I saw that map well a simplified version of it in the T.V. guide star trek aniversy thingy. It's interesting to note that the wormhole that connects to DS9 was only like short hop away from where the Voyager crew was zapped. but it was the other way from earth. If they had just gone backword they could have gotten home a hell of a lot faster, but of course the show would have had nothing to do.
Theres one problem with reflecting your reality, sometimes your reality starts to reflect you.
Admiral Janeway claims to be from 26 years in the future, not 16. I stopped reading the article there.
Listen, I watched Voyager for 3 years and then gave up on it. Nelix was un-watchable, as was his "girlfriend" Kess, who departed soon enough. Not as soon as the annoying Seska, IMO. Nobody found her completely nauseating?
Then there were the Kazon. They were able to manufacture tony starships; artificial gravity and all. We were expected to believe they couldn't synthesize water. HELLO???
Nonetheless I thought the series finale of Star Trek Voyager was excellent. Maybe I was just away from the show too long to feel betrayed by a bullshit plot line. Sorry.
P.S. Berman, Piller and Bragga did to Star Trek what Gappa did to the Japanese monster movie genre. They killed it. Gene Roddenberry is rolling over in his grave.
Too true. As a friend of mine once put it, good science fiction starts with good fiction. You can't have a good story just by tossing in tech.
I'd say the carbon/water thing is probably quite likely high in the scheme of hypothetical life in the universe. Bipedalism is anyones guess. Earth seemed to generate sweet bugga all bipedalism.... except for the dominant species, so maybe any little green men we might hypothetically meet will be bipedal on account of the fact they actually got anyware... or non existant
Of course they could be slathering bug-monsters too.
And Startreck truly rocked the whole way through.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Science: technological in nature... spaceships, time machines, cyborgs etc.. That's not science. That's technology. Science is a process of creating and testing ideas to attempt to learn how the universe operates. It has absolutely nothing to do with spaceships, time machines, or cyborgs.
All it takes is nukes and nerves.
As a red-head I'd just like to point out that I really HATE the opening line to this little "anti-voyager" rant.... Now that that's out of the way, I wish people would stop bashing ST:Voyager. Sure it started off kinda weak, and the show could be a little slow and tech-heavy at times, but so were all the other series. It just took a little longer for them to find their characters and get a few half-decent episodes written. I watched the finale episode twice yesterday and I thought it was fairly well done. Yes it dealt with the borg, yes it dealt with time travel, and yes there was lots of tech-talk but overall I think it did a pretty good job. I did think it was odd that 2 minutes in a transwarp corridor was enough to get them the rest of the way home, when a normal trip would have taken 16 more years. And why didnt the admiral initiate a self-destruct of her little ship once she knew she wouldnt be needing it anymore? Anyway, voyager wasn't the "red-headed stepchild" of the franchise, it was more like the poor cousin that took a little longer to find itself. Just be thankful that there wont be a movie.
no there wasnt... the show ended with them approaching earth, then the credits... that was the problem. There was no "closure" showing what happened to the crew when they made it back home... it would have been nice if they had pushed everything ahead a bit and left more time for cleanup at the end of the show.
BH
BH
Fools! They laughed at me at the Sorbonne...!
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
I wrangled with this myself... the only way I could resolve the time travel thing is that they are actually alternate dimensions... where the Janeway from a different dimension and time goes to a parallel but different dimension that is farther back in time... if one thinks of time as just a bunch of frames that are all there at the same time... and that time is just an illusion... this may make sense... at least to me... Addbo
Except, check out the guy's knowledge of geek code and his low /. number. It's inconceivable, freshman though he may be, that he is that utterly ignorant of relativity. Conclusion, he is trolling. I would add "badly," but he appears to have gotten at least one fish.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Frozen people != time travel.
Are the Borg all disabled now? Turned off, freed?
I don't believe the episode was designed to spark controversy, but rather bring an honest end. It didn't do that.
In a very early episode they discussed replicating or building torpedoes--they decided it wasn't possible.
How about "reverse the polarity" or "match the frequency"... That got annoying.
And what about the improvements they kept making to the sheilds and weapons to counter specific foes; but only existed in single episodes? Why not keep the changes and continue with them?
Somebody obviously doesn't understand physics and what c represents.
Two words:
:-)
Thank you!
As for food, etc.. the replicators would take care of that. I'm sure if the trip had taken 70 years, it would of have been an orgy ship - that or the holodecks would of have been umm.. "occupied" almost continously - and they were.
I am also pretty sure that what will need major repairs after x hrs at high warp is not the superstructure but the Dilithium crystals / warp drive components. Logically, a bit more speed wouldn't make a difference if you're already going _________
I could be wrong, but I don't have my sttng tech manual with me, so I can't look it up.
The slashdot 2 minute between postings limit: /.'ers since Spring 2001.
Pissing off hyper caffeineated
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According to Roddenberry, ST:TOS was conceived as "Wagon Train to the Stars", that is, the concept of exploration and meeting strange and interesting people... sort of like /., come to think of it :)
Social commentary, breaking new TV ground, dealing with taboos, observations on the human condition, , were all hallmarks of TOS and TNG. (Sorry, I can't fairly comment on DS9 or Voy) TOS a mistake? I think it was the same sort of mistake which have set other TV ground-breaking classics apart from the dross. The fact that it was ahead of its time, both in its fictional setting and for the '60's when it was originally broadcast, was indicative of its inherent nature. TNG carried it forward for its first few seasons, but like most other successful franchises, overstayed its welcome, IMNSHO.
All of this is not to say that there aren't folks who are obsessed with the program. For a look at how bizarre things can get when a TV program takes over your life, view the documentary, Trekkies. Truly frightening!
Dude,
you know waay too much about this.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Which only goes to show that letting contemporary political issues seep into the framework of a science fiction series is a bad idea in the first place. Sci fi sucks when it doesn't bother to create interesting worlds out of conjecture, but merely transplants the present into technicological drag.
Yeah, how dare Herbert write anything that even remotely touches upon the scarcity of oil. How dare Stephenson comment on the consequences of unchecked privatization, overpopulation, and natural disasters. How dare Vonnegut explore doomsday devices. How dare Heinlein comment on the militarization of society. PKD had no reason whatsoever to put his finger on the nexus of paranoia, technology, and cynical anti-drug attitudes shockingly similar to the spot we find ourselves in today.
Good God Almighty, even the internet hype surrounding the X-Men movie cast itself as an allegorical treatment of racism in this country. I'll probably get tagged as flamebait for going off at the handle like this, but extrapolating current social trends into some hypothetical future is one of, if not the most valuable function SF performs for mainstream society. It is a way for people to express their hopes, fears, and concerns for the future. If all they wanted to do was tell stories with no societal, political, or economic consequences, they could've gotten jobs writing for daytime TV. I'm glad they didn't.
--
Freeper Logic
The exponential curve has been broken on at least one STTNG episode where Riker's in the future with a suped up enterprise with a third warp nacelle and he manages to go at warp 15. That's amazingly fast :)
I love deadlines, especially the "whooshing" sound they make as they go flying by.
I stopped becoming a fan of ST when EVERY single freaking 'Alien' they came across was bipedal and humanoid. I mean ffs, Bear says only 10% of universal life is probably bipedal, let alone carbon and water based. Severely stunted imaginations is what killed this show.
" The best Bucket is a SCREAMING one "
My biggest gripes about Star Trek are about the unreliability of Transporters and Holodecks. Nothing turns me off faster than "our transporters don't work because of a [particle] field on this planet", with the exception of the Holodeck program run amok. If the damned Transporters and Holodecks broke down that often, why would you ever use them? I'd be like Bones McCoy too, and stick to Shuttlecraft.
:-)
If they could only combine the inability of holodecks to turn off when needed, and the transporters, they would have something
Also, why they don't put critical systems (like the bridge, transporters, engineering) inside holodecks is beyond me since those would be things that should have the bullet-proofness of most holodecks.
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
I agree.
/could/ hit warp 10 using the 'established' warp theories. It took new theories to go FTL. But Warp 10 only needed more power?
TNG was trek 2.0
But DS9 was mostly "All my Neutrinos", A soap-opera in the sky. Miss one episode and you don't know what the hell is going on.
Voyager-ack. Bad, Bad technobabble. STFU if you don't know WTF you're talking about, writers! I can't help but wonder if they fired Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda.. Tech advisors for TNG.
Ever played the 'Elite force' game? I kinda put aside my cangrin of their blatent abuse of Gene Roddenberry's story, just to get some enjoyment out of the game. "Just lemme pull my phaser rifle out of my transporter buffer.. Hold on a sec" Uhm, no such thing as a transporter buffer, damnit! Not the way they were talking about it. (The character reaches down to a spot on his belt and a weapon materialises.)
Of course, a wrestling tie-in "The rock" didn't help any.
Plus, the whole first 3 seasons were basically the same stories, repeated with new names each week.
Lets try this to get home. doesn't work
Ok, lets try this to get home. doesn't work
ok, lets try something new, do this to get home. NOPE doesn't work
fresh story--
ok, lets try this to get home. doesn't work
etc etc etc LAME
Plus the mentioned Time stories. Hell, I'm in for a good temporal delusion.. TNG had some good ones, but Voy? 26th century temporal "police"? Why didn't they interfere with kirk, picard, or sisko? If the borg can go back in time, why not go back to the 17th century, while at the edge of federation space, then go take over the earth?
All kinds of borg ships exist in the Delta quadrant.. why not have a significate portion of them go take over the federation?
Since when do phaser rifles shoot blasts of energy instead of the familar phaser beam?
How logical is it to deevolve when you hit warp 10? As if you
It requires infinite power to go warp 10, and you are everywhere at once. According to cannon material like the ST:TNG tech manual. Or are we throwing that out now?
-since when did 'MTV' stand for Real World Television instead of MUSIC television?
> Same goes for IMO one of the best episodes of
> TNG, The Pegasus
The Pegasus was kinda neat, a good character
study, but the premise was *way* too much for
my suspension of disbelief. "Let me get this
straight. The Federation *willingly* signed a
treaty that says the Romulans and the Klingons
get to have cloaking tech and they don't?? What,
were the Fed diplomats all drunk?"
Chris Mattern
When I first caught this headline, I thought it was about the death of the NASA probe of the same name. I'm pleased to hear that it's just the TV show that's going bye-bye.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
That being said, all of these suggestions sound like good ways to end the series. However, I'm not sure that they can work, simply because of ratings. STTNG tried something like this by broadcasting Family after the end of Best of Both Worlds, and while I thought it was a good character episode (well, OK, it had a supposedly-French child with an annoying British accent, but still), which brought some closure to the episodes preceding it, they were roundly criticized for releasing something boring. Seems to me like that would be disastrous for a series finale.
Sung to the tune of Disney's "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast, "We Need Breasts" has some funny lines on the topic. My favorite:
"if you want the Neilsen rank up,
put Kate Mulgrew in a tank top!"
It's hard to morn a series that was originally pitched as "Gilligan's Island" in space, without the humor.
How would you say that too??
Twenty Fird?? Sounds like an Elmer Fudd thing...
We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
The borg nearly wiped them out all of star fleets vessels. After this I assume they rebuilt there whole fleet and invested in huge ships to defend themselves agaisnt another attack.
http://saveie6.com/
Actually the popular science articles were not talking about how to accelerate to a speed that fast but as a way around the whole notion of classical motion. The theories they had listed were the ability to bend space so much that you could fold space so that where you are and where you wanted to go where right next to each other. After you move to the new spot you allow space to reform and you have seeming moved faster than light speed
I/O, I/O, its off to disk I go, with a read and a write, and a bit and a byte, I/O, I/O, I/O, I/O
Considering that almost every episode of TNG had Geordi warning of a warp core breach, I'm suprised that there are any Galaxy class starships left.
People like to ask each other "Which Star Trek (or other sci-fi/TV) series is your favorite?". Mine is an answer you may not have heard before: My favorite series is always the one(s) that is (are) producing new episodes. And no, this response is not as vacuous as it might sound. Some might even agree with me that it is silly, perhaps with rare exception, to watch the same old episodes of any television show over and over again, analyzing them for consistency and adherence to a nebulous ideal as if they were some form of High Art.
This is supposed to be ongoing, weekly entertainment, and I for one found Voyager to be substantially as worthwhile as any images that are out there. It is so rare to find television that regularly tries to convey a hopeful vision of the future. I will want my kids to see people living in a world where we have evolved beyond many of today's problems and often subdue the darker sides of human nature, where we see ourselves setting higher ideals and trying to live up to them, where science, technology and discovery figure prominently in the theme (sure it's phony, but how much interesting can you say about the future that isn't phony?), and where people are using the challenges facing them to pull ahead into a future that is even more magical.
I'll miss Voyager (at least until the next new show arrives), and may there always be new shows to take its place!
"That's impossible! Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light!"
"Of course not! That's why we had the speed of light increased in 2513."
(Badly remembered, from Futurama).
Spocks Brain was more of a standard episode than it is getting credit for here. Scene opens on the Bridge, a problem develops... Standard Trek: And aren't these redeeming qualities? Using an organic brain to run a habitat. Spock helping to re-install his own brain showed how exceptional he was, even for a Vulcan.(That's one of the things I hate about the Ambassador Spock thread. He is a scientist not an ambassador.) Bones using the helmet "It so simple even a child could do it." or something was cool. He cared for Spock, despite their bickering, and was brave enough to use the helmet even though he knew it could kill him. I'll admit you'd have a hard time finding an episode I couldn't defend. CPB
I just did some research on this based upon a comment someone made to me.
Roddenberry "blessed" the timeline that says that Robert April was the original Enterprise captain. April would've had the Enterprise for one five year mission, Pike for two.
However, none of that means anything in regards to the new series. The new series takes place 150 years before Kirk, and depending on when they actually choose, probably before the Federation.
Personally, I think all bets are off. The name "Enterprise" and the limitations put upon it by the various series mean little when we're talking that far before the beginning of TOS. (Yes there is a scene somewhere that shows all the various ships named "Enterprise". And I doubt this one will be there. Maybe they missed it :-)
Sources: Star Trek Chonology, news release about "Enterprise".
Sean.
I would've been satisfied if they'd just replayed the first scene with the new timeline in place. That 15 minutes or so would make all the difference.
I would've been satisfied.
But I really would've loved to see a three or four episode arch bringing the seriese to true closure. That would have been great.
Sean.
I watched voyager off and on during the span of the series. I happened to have thought that DS9 had superior writing and actors. The problem with voyager, besides the writing, was the saturation of Star Trek during its run. Additionally if it weren't for Star Trek, I'm sure that Palms would look a lot less like communicators. The problem with Star Trek is this, and perhaps this is a product of the times (local, not stardate) that each series has occured in, but the show used to be more about a utopian government, enabled through technology, and now it has just degraded into nothing deeper than explosion scenes, and shots of 7 of 9. There was always something underneath the surface in the first two shows, and although critics would say that its just flashy graphics and a waste of time, I could say no, and that there was always a moral to take away from the shows. And I wonder if the changes don't have something to do with our recent technological growth. After all what we have now in some cases surpasses even the technology of the enterprise. Sure there's no phasers and no photon torpedoes, but where's their AIM? Definitely our communications channels are much, much better. Video conferencing and all. Okay, so our android technology only reaches that of Battlestar Galactica (i.e. that robotic dog from sony) but in a few years... I always respected the old series for its sense of awareness of social problems in the country at that time. I hope the new series has more of that. What I'm trying to say is that I feel that the idea that this could possibly be our future (which is a premise of this type of science fiction) well it just seems more and more far fetched with each series, and therefore its more and more difficult to suspend disbelief and get into the show. If you add that to the fact that there were no "heroic" characters in Voyager that you could really respect its no wonder why the show is probably the least favorite of all the Star Trek shows.
I think the main problem is that everyone assumes there is only one borg queen.
I'd bet the 6 sepperate hubs represent 6 sepperate borg colonies, each with their own borg queens, much the same way ants, bees, whatever, have a queen per colony.
This would also explain how the same actress can get killed 2 times (possible three if she was still on the ship in Best Of Both Worlds). Because hives typically replace the queen as soon as the other one is killed (which we can assume was done through cloning).
But the question becomes, if you have to come up with explanations like that to cover up plot holes, is it really worth it?
Kyle
Then the final episode of TNG has Riker's future Enterprise doing warp 13.
And so forth.
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
Remember, they used a few alien devices to skip several tens of thousands of light-years - I think at the beginning of the last season they were something like 40k from home.
"Photon" torpedo is actually a misnomer. They consist of hydrogen and antihydrogen, which when triggered annihilate in a big explosion. They just kept the name from the original trek since they couldn't very well change it, could they? :)
What is this "restriction of high warp speeds... enacted by the federation."
Was this from DS9? What was the reason?
Just trol- I mean, wondering.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
" But, if it was growing backwards in time, why was it bigger 5 minutes in the future between the time they visited and saw nothing and Picard's realisation?" Remember the three inverse tachyon pulses? The ruptured the fabric of time to create the anomaly. The "past" and "future" for the size of the anomaly are viewerd in refrence to the time of its creation. So when they raced back on the three-nacelled Enterprise to see the "little" anomaly, their naturally curious minds decided to probe it with the inverse tachyon pulse. This was not possible with Captain Crusher/Picard's little medical vessel. And since the chance/intent of initiating the pulse at that point in time/space had not arrived yet, the anomaly would not have been created in the future and present in the old-Picard timeframe. And so the future of the anomaly's creation was realised with Admiral Riker's Enterprise returned there and saw it, and consquentially conducted their scans.
Dude, that was it. If you saw the 2-second shot of Voyager being esccorted towards Earth by several Fed ships, then that was it. Ya didn't miss anything. Pretty lame, eh?
By far this was the best episode in the whole series. The writers were really on the ball inspite of the inherent disposability of the crew. By the end of that episode I actually felt sad because the duplicate crew's bravery and sacrifice ended up being in vain, and I really wanted them to make it. Hell, with that quality of writing I would just as soon as had the original crew die and let the duplicates take their place. I could also relate to the shock and sorrow they must have felt when they found out that they weren't who they thought they were. Now that says alot considering that most books or tv shows fail to move me one way or the other. My second favorite would have to be the episode where the crew encounters a telepathic memorial that makes them relive the traumatic events leading up to an alien war time tradgedy. These episodes were thoughtful and added a human touch to what would otherwise be soft speculative fiction. These episodes are a glimse of what could have been had the show not been on such a fan pleasing course.
Voyager had potential, but poor writing, casting (I think that Robert Beltram and Kate Mulgrew would have done well to reverse roles), and execution ruined it from the get go. The signature of TNG was wonder and discovery (Think the Inner Light, or Tin Man), for DS9 it was intricate plots and rich character developement, for Voyager it was hackneyed fan pleasing and an effeminate ship and crew. Oh, and lets not forget the original series which though cheesy, was rich in allegory and fun to watch when I was a child. The new series might have potential as well, but it's not worth it for me to waste 200 hours of my life to catch two good hours of tv. For that matter my tv doesn't work anymore, and I am not in any hurry to change that situation.
DANG BLASTED!! I didn't watch it Wednesday. My wife wanted to use the Tivo to record her TV shows while we went to the movies to see SHREK (good movie, lmao, laughed my ass off!). So I decided to watch it Sunday. But, had a BBQ at a friends house and I THOUGHT I told Tivo to record it, but didn't. Came home with 15 minutes to spare but didn't want to ruin it by watching the end. I used the TV Guide in Tivo to see if it's coming up again, BUT IT IS NOT! So please, will someone send me a COPY of it. I'll pay for it!!!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! boy_afraid.geo@yahoo.com
Admiral Janeway will have survived the explosions of the Unimatrix and since she already began the assimilation process, but since she carried the virus to the Borg, and hence it immune to it herself, will become the new Borg Queen in a bizzare temporal paradox.
For a long time, canon said that warp X meant you were going X^3 times the speed of light. So warp 1 was the same as c, warp 4 was 64c, warp 8 was 512c, and so on. The Excelsior, the first to use transwarp drive technology, had a listed maximum speed of warp 12.8 or something like that.
Then it changed for some reason, and warp 10 suddenly meant infinite speed. Clearly, the cubic relationship no longer held. Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise gives relationships between warp number, energy usage, and speed. It says that integral warp numbers are more energy efficient than fractional ones because of the way concentric warp fields stack up or something. So you get a kind of sawtooth energy curve with ten troughs and peaks, one trough for each integral warp number from one to ten, that goes fairly steadily from zero energy to infinite energy.
The warp-number-to-speed relationship in this model is more complicated than a simple exponential or hyperbolic. I don't remember exact numbers, but warp 1 is still about light speed and warp 9 went from 729 (9^3) to something like 1500 times light speed.
So let's see...70000/1500=46.7 years. But Janeway recalls a 23-year trip in this last episode. Could it be I'm forgetting, and warp 9 is more like 3000c?
Another note. Don't worry about me. I don't even watch much Star Trek anymore. I've managed to develop a life.
Reading over all the comments so far, it seems everyone LOVED or HATED the last st:voy
And now, i'll offer up my $0.02
Dispite the fact timetravel never works right in ANY show(plot holes you could drive a bus thru) Endgame's time travel was minimalistic, and therefore ALMOST worked for me..the only problem was the 180 both janeway's attutes took.
I had been hopeing that the first hour of endgame would be "getting home" and the second part would be once they were home. in any case, they needed far more of an ending. or an explnation of what happened
and now for the rest of the series:
The effects over the last few seasons have been stunning, IMHO far better than any other show i've seen
In plot however, there was too much repition, and the way they can solve any problem by creating some magical, unheard of device is, to say the least..rather patheticWhile i am looking forward to the next series, I will miss voyager, because dispite it's problems, i's realy grown on my in the past few years.
The opinions in this post are ficticious. Any similarity to actual opinions, real or imagined, is purely coincidental.
I can, and often do, set aside picking nits to enjoy a good romp through space, or fantasy, or action sequences, or whatever. But Voyager had problems far beyond the nits. The writing was some of the worst on TV this side of the WWF. I tried for all 7 years of it's run to like it. I really did. And, yes, there were a few good episodes here and there. On the whole, however, I couldn't even finish watching most of them. Sadly the finally fell into that catagory.
jello.
aka aron.
Really? For what real-life situation? When will I ever need i gallons of gas, or have to pay $3i+2.95 for a magazine?
Most government budgets are purely drawn up with imaginary numbers i. How else can you explain CIA getting money without review and question?
"Face it, a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.
Yep, everyone forgot the transwarp drive after Seven of Nine was brought onto Voyager.
It was very forgotten for such a long time that the series was getting inane.
"Face it, a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.
I honestly have to disagree with this. I will say, first, that I really disliked the voyager series. Part of it was that after the first episode, the whole idea of getting blown 75,000 light years into the Delta Quadrant was a little much to swallow. Something like that would never have happened in the STTNG series.
Personally, I preferred the personality of Picard, Riker, and the rest of the TNG crew much better. What I didn't like about Voyager is since they were constantly moving home, they never really visited the same place twice. At least from the original to TNG, they kept some similarities such as Vulcans and Klingons to name a few. Also in STTNG, if you watched the series, places like the Neutral Zone showed up multiple times. But in Voyager, with them getting blown into the Delta Quadrant, there was nothing like that; you never saw the same place twice (or at least it was rare).
Overall, Star Trek: The Next Generation was by far a better series than the newer Voyager. I hope that Enterprise is a better series for the survival of the Star Trek 'Franchise.' If they crank out another cheesy series like Voyager, I still won't watch, and I'm sure many people will begin to loose interest as they did between STTNG and Voayager.
Sorry, DS9 was the best of the bunch. It had a depth of character, philosophy, and religion seldom seen in the others.
As a matter of fact, it is available in DivX.
No idea where to get it though, nosiree.
yes... you and every other "drone".
Australianus Geekus
Yes it is so very easy to dis Star Trek... we all do it. I dont know why though, we all watch it. There have been some serious inconsistencies and themes lacking in continuity.. but hey, its been a great journey. Voyager is light entertainment and has provided exactly that for me. I dont beleive that its concepts were ever intended to be technologicaly elite.. at least I hope not. But hasnt everyone just been in stiches over the insights Voyager has provided into the way we would/will interact with other races intergalactically. I totally have. Realistically.... after being lost in the Delta Quadrant for so very long....was any ending going to be a satisfying one? I cant see any way Berman/Braga could have written a script that could ever make us say... "no way... I didnt see that coming" I think they did ok. ( Not that I have even seen it yet.. as an Aussie girl, I will let you know what i really think in 2016 when it is realeased hear ) Oh well....At least now all your cubes are belong to us.
Australianus Geekus
Ok, I admit I'm old enough that I remember the original series (TOS) and owned several of the model kits (including the cheesy Enterprise with the lights inside -- the lights were so bright they shone through the plastic instead of the windows...). That said, and not that I'm an authority, I recall the actual warp formula was n^3 x c (the warp number cubed time light speed). This puts warp 9 at 729 x light speed and warp 10 at 1000 times c. This would put the distance involved within the correct parameters. Now that we've cleared that up, I enjoyed the final episode, but not near as much as "All Good Things" the final TNG episode. I thought that Kate Mulgrew did a wonderful job of differentiating the older and younger Janeways, with the older one authoritative, hard bitten, and cynical and the younger more idealistic and unwilling to call down her older self until she could no longer avoid it. From a character standpoint, it was well-written, I thought. That said, I believe that the ST product (I'm not so starry-eyed I don't know it's a product) is part of our modern mythology, and will continue until such time as we find something to replace it. I have enjoyed most of the series' and am not such a fanatic that I've seen every episode of any of them. (My personal fave aired today, the TNG episode where Wesley evolves to become like the Traveler). Yes, it's just TV. But it's also a reflection of our culture/society. Think about it...everyone had computers, commucators and PDA's! It either forecast those items or helped to shape them.
Nitewing '98
Everything works...in theory.
During Voyager's run, did anyone else think that Janeway must have been wearing a wig to cover her bald head?
I mean, all the other ST Captains have been bald or balding (Kirk, Picard, Sisko), so she must have been too, right?
Me? Debunk an American myth? And take my life in my hands?
Me? Debunk an American myth? And take my life in my hands?
Well you have to think When you go back in the past you basically destroy the future that you would be going back to
the borg queen is hot.
'Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.'
The ASCEM Golden Orgasm Award winners posted at http://www.geocities.com/ASCEMGO/-- I especially liked "Morning Dew", and you can skip right down to chapter 16 for the naughty stuff.
http://geocities.com/cc_ssd/ -- Heavy on the Pavel Chekov, but who wouldn't like "The Taming Of The Shrew"? And plenty of other hot slash.
Ooops, I'll try to bring this back to the topic of Voyager by citing Tommyhawk's slash page at http://www.leatherdog.com/~tommyhawk/startrek.htm which is all Chakotay/Paris.
--A Dirty Old K/S Lady
I forgot to mention two other Star Trek timeline stories, both the Generations and First Contact movies had time travel jiggery that was handled reasonably well. But in both of them it's clear that changes to the timeline propagate forward and back. One of the issues that's implied but never dealt with in Generations is that Picard could have travelled back to save his brother and nephew but he chose to save an entire planet instead. Come to think of it with so many time travel stories maybe they should call it Time Trek.
This did happen in TNG though. Q brought them there to meet the Borg. He also brought them back in time to see the very beginning of evolution on earth (which seems much harder to swallow.)
It began with what might have really happened afer such a long voyage. Crewmen and friends dead, others wounded. A saddened and seasoned Janeway and crew, because of those losses and the battles it took to get home. So I thought the writers had shown courage and the two hours would explore how that happened.
Instead we get the wishful thinking syndrome, the thing we go through when we suffer real losses in our lives. What would we have done to change those failures and losses. And of course we don't have time travel to repair our losses and they probably won't in the future.
So you need some kind of function like
speed = 9/(10-WarpNumber) c
I don't think that's exactly the right function, but it's something kinda like that. Actually I think the real function is more "decimally inspired" and artificially exponential, but I don't remember just how. In any case, warp 1 is the speed of light, and at warp 10 you "occupy all points in space at the same time."
Another important aspect is that, even if flagships like the Enterprise can exceed warp 9, they can't cruise at that speed. Cruising speed is perhaps more like warp 4--7 for voyager, I'm not sure exactly. It's whatever speed they can sustain for long periods of time.
So if the Milky way is about 100,000 light years across, and Voyager is on the opposide side, and they can't go straight through the center because of various astrophysical hazards, maybe a 75,000 ly journey is about right. So to make that in 75 years, they have to be going 1000 times the speed of light. I don't know what the cruising speed of Voyager is, but 1000 x warp 1 seems "reasonable" (whatever that means in SciFi).
...at least DS9 and TNG was. Just because Voyager has it's problems certainly isn't a reason to give Trek a blanket negative review.
-Tim
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"You would not get a high grade for such a design" -- Andy Tanenbaum on Linus' Linux design.
Not so, I hated when they killed Dax off in DS9, now don't get me wrong I liked ezrie too but Jadzia was just sitting there minding her own buissnes and BAM dead, that was lame.
Which only goes to show that letting contemporary political issues seep into the framework of a science fiction series is a bad idea in the first place. Sci fi sucks when it doesn't bother to create interesting worlds out of conjecture, but merely transplants the present into technicological drag.
If you'll recall, that's exactly what Gene Roddenberry did with the original Star Trek!! He (and everyone involved) was very proud of the fact that they were able to talk about current political issues, but disguise them so that the network wouldn't censor them by putting them in "technological drag". I wholeheartedly believe that part of living up to Gene's ideals for the series is continuing to put in contemporary issues, so that people can think about them in a new light, without even realizing that they're thinking about them.
Of course, most trekkies are too smart to fall for that, but I think that it's an integral part of Star Trek to do this.
---
Cole's Axiom: The sum of intelligence on the planet is a constant. The population is growing
Raj: Mama, we CAN'T fight the Borg. They're just too big and mean.
Mama: Honey, if we can feed Rerun, we can find it in our hearts to fight the Borg.
Dwayne: Hey, HEY, hey! I just found this Anti-bugblatterbeast gun out back in the alley!
Raj: I'll modify it it into a futuristic anti-Borg weapon!
Dee: That's from the future! Oooh, I'm gonna tell Starfleet!
Rerun: Raj, you can't modify it on your own! Contact your Spirit Guides!
Raj: Oh mighty spirit guides! I pray to you to aid me in this hour of need. Mama, they've come to me! They told me how to build an anti-Borg weapon.
Rerun: (Dances)
Mama: Alright, baby. Now it's our turn to whoop butt on those Borg!
[Many explosions and grimaces]
THE END
Teaser: See Shirley as Seven-of-nine in "What's Happening Now, Voyager?"
BTW, if I remember correctly, deus ex machina means "god in the machine"
Has everyone forgotten about "Transwarp Drive"?
Two words: Gilligan's Starship.
Religion is the opiate of the masses. The wealthy smoke the real stuff.
They don't necessarily need to put the franchise on hold, they just need to offer a story that people want. This new series "Enterprise" sounds completely lame. I read the character bios and think they're remaking TOS, but with new special effects. Add to that, IIRC, The original Constitution class Enterprise was captained by Kirk senior, then to Pike, then to Kirk junior. So who the heck is this new guy? There was a pretty serious movement in the ST fan base to have the next ST series be about the voyages of the Excelsior under Capt Sulu. George Takei was all for it. Now *that* would be a cool series. Too bad Berman's a moron.
I stand corrected. IMHO though, of all the incarnations that ST has seen, the universe used in the Star Fleet Battles war game are the best. It is more closely based on what Roddenbuy wanted then any other incarnation. It is also by far the most consistent. Just about everything from TNG was a ripoff from SFB: The 'Q' instead of the Organians, the Ferrangi instead of the Orion Pirates (which were so much cooler I can't even begin to describe), the list goes on and on. A much broader range of characters in the varios stories told, etc. And last but not least, the General War, a galactic wide Civil War with a dozen major participating races. Oh, yeah, almost forgot about the Andromedan invasion. Way more cool than the Borg.
Good point. Frankly, I thought that the Bord Queen should never have been introduced. Sure, she's well done, but there is only one thing the Borg should be saying: "We are the Bord. You will be assimilated. Resistance is Futile. Your technological and biological distinctiveness will be added to our own." Then the ultra-powerful tractor beems should suck a few ships into a cube and assimilate the crew.
Incidentally, was it just me, or did Admiral Janeway seem to take an awful long time to be assimilated. Even after accounting for the virus, the Bord Queen still controlled her drones until she fell apart. Shouldn't mthe Admiral have been controlled as well. We saw the bloody gadgets on her face, for crying out loud...
I'm the stranger...posting to
One thing you have yet to realize is that the Warp Speed measurements are exponential. Warp 2 is ten times, not two times, the speed of Warp 1. As Warp 1 == the speed of light, Warp 9 != 9x the speed of light.
1. The Dominion didn't need DS9 other than as a base, like the Federation did, to guard the wormhole. Don't forget that DS9/Terok Nor (original Cardassian name) was pretty much the only stationary object between anything and the wormhole. The Dominion needed to hold DS9 as a base of operations to ensure that their reinforcements from the Gamma Quadrant got through without interference.
2. Q introduced the Federation to the Borg as a "wakeup call" to the Federation, and Picard in particular.
Though we may have different ideas on how it works, I'm quite certain it is exponential.
Until you hit warp 9.
Then I believe it's a quadratic curve to infinity, where, as you said, it takes infinite energy to go at infinite speed and occupy every point in the universe simultaneously.
And the award for Ironic Comment of the Year goes to...
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#/usr/bin/perl
require 6.0;
sed 's/In Soviet Russia/In NSA America/g' < yakov-smirnoff-jokes.txt
There are many anagrams of "Voyager". Here are two of the most fitting: GAY ROVE GRAVE YO
I thought Id never say this, But you guys are a bunch of TOTAL LOSERS. That being said, I am a Star Trek Fan. What you all have said about the series' makes it TOTALLY obvious to me that you dont understand it, and only watch it becuase you think it makes you smarter or "more human". Whatever that means. You have mentioned things in episodes which are blatently flase, the whole thing about beaming through the shields in Relics is a perfect example. If you had ACTUALLY watched the episode you would have seen them SHOOT THE SHIELDS OF THE SHIP WITH THIER PHASERS, TAKING THEM DOWN. THEY THEN BEAMED THEM THROUGH. THATS WHY IT WAS SO SUSPENSFUL, BECUASE THEY DIDNT HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO DO IT!!!!! ARGH! This was not the only inconsistancy in what you all have said, but I will refrain from wasting my time on you all. Also, I wanted to say that I did not like Voyager as much as the other 3 series, but only becuase it was geared to the mass audience. In the end, though, I thought it was a neat idea that could have been expanded on. There, I have spoken my word. William BTW : Why do I know more than you? Because I watched the damn show thats why! And I dont sit on message boards 24-7 quarelling about useless details and facts. I HAVE A LIFE.
Before you post another thing about FTL Travel Read this:
In 2370, following the fgormation of a massive subspace rift in the Hekaras Corridor, the Federation Council agreed that the use of warp fields posed a significant threat to some areas of space. Therefore, the Council decreed that some areas weould be limited to essential travel only. In addition, The Council imposed a Federation-wide "speed limit" of W.F. 5, which could be exeeded in times of extreme emergency.
BUT: Later advances in Warp technology made it permissable to travel at speeds faster than W.F. 5. One of the first ships to be equipped with the technology was the U.S.S Voyager, whose variable-geometry warp drive nacelles prevented damage to the subspace continuum.
So, as you can see, the 'Speed Limit' became void in that way, and it no longer mattered how fast you went.
I think I have read/ scene several times that the Enterprise was the first starship. Oh, warp existed, but a starship was designed with science labs etc. I am sure they will flush this continuity down the drain, with tons of other stuff. Do they even try?
Ya know, I keep reading this crap about it being several series and it is too hard to keep track of it all, but there is a great deal of evidence that this is bologna! Come on, half the fans spot the inconsistencies very quickly. I keep asking myself "do the writers actually watch the shows?" Some small errors will always occur. Few get upset if the red button fires torpedoes in one episode, and blue does it in another. But for God sakes, after someone starts codifying things like torpedoes, warp, sheilds, etc by the time they made the manuals in TNG, these erros should be all done. My two cents.
I think you hit it on the head in a big way. Voyager did have promise, and they ignored it. (1) By what, episode 2, no more Marquis (sp) fed tention. Everything good. (2) Ignoring supplies. This is not just nitpicking about number of torpedoes and things like that. What a plot device. If Janeway had to think before she shot.... Even more so, damage would not be fixable. If you got a hole shot in the ship, it would always be there. Consequnces for actions, could have been wonderful. (3) As you wrote, real ethical dilemas. Since you could pretend there was always a starbase for fixing, and you never did run out of crew even on a small ship, it was easy to stay on prime directive. Would have been better to see more temptation. (4) I could go on, but these are a few things that made the show painful to me.
With all TV sci-fi shows, I have finally decided to just enjoy them, and stop nit-picking them. Anything fails under microscopic scrutiny, even reality... I have found that when I just let go and enjoy them, I am far happier with the experience than tearing them apart. Just my 452 pesos.
Totally. I caught the same thing, but somehow couldn't explain to the people I was watching with that what SHOULD have happened is that the "future" ship would race up to it the first time, and shoot their little tachyon beam into it just as it disappeared into nothing. Which would, of course, make the plot resolution impossible, but would have made SENSE at least.
Of course, the whole time-travel premise of the show is moronic -- if the issue is that the evil growing-backwards thingie will have made it so humans never existed, then humans never existed to make the growing thingie appear in the first place and so therefore did exist and around and around and around.
Same with the Voyager bit. Since the future Janeway got Voyager back early, and therefore everything was happy and Tuvok didn't go nuts and so forth, suddenly the future Janeway had no reason to go back and change things and around and around and around.
Caveat Scriptor: time travel is a cheap and easy way to bamboozle your readers/viewers in place of actually entertaining them.
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1) As usual, much of the episode didn't happen. OK, the fact that much *did* happen is unusual
2) So there's that "other" voyager still going out.
3) They blew their sophomoric time "paradoxes" worse than usual: "If you die, none of this will have happened." OK, then why doesn't the Borg dying have the same effect?
4) the fast warp stuff. I missed any notion of a "ban" on hi8gh warp. It comes and goes inconsistently. The Enterprise (the real one) could cruise at 6 and hit 8, though 8 was stressful. Unless it was one of the episodes where each fraction above 7 was tough. Or where it could get to 9. Or where aliens took over (ok, so that was as common as the modern "didn't happen" episodes) and take it to 13. Up until they make a movie with the Excelsior and it's warp 13+ transwarp--which is dropped immediately after that movie. Up until voyager does an episode centered around hitting warp 10, the "theoretical maximum" (with instantaneous travel?). Star Trek never was consistent. BUt originally, they didn't worry about it, rather than making fools of themselves trying to be consistent about it. (Shades of Quayle's, "I stand behind all my misstatement.")
hawk
Sit down... watch the show and enjoy it for what it is. A story. It doesn't need to be realistic. It doesn't have to follow a set of rules throughout the season saying that you can't do this because in show 42 so and so did this and that therfore making the thought of time warp using potatos and lemon juice is impossible.
Whatever happened to the time when we watched a program/play/movie with no thought for minor inconsistancies or outlandishly cool toys like holodecks.
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- Jimbob
Umm... I've seen every episode of TOS, TNG, DS9 and Voyager. As well as every movie, and even the cartoon series.
TNG was by far the worst of them all.
Or don't you remember Wesley Crusher, or the Black Ooze that got rid of Lt. Yar?
Bleah, perhaps 10% of the episodes of TNG were any good and those mostly included the Borg.
When exorcising Windows it's understood that only a low level format will do.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Chris, your essay makes me wonder if you have even watched the show.
Oh, you're spot-on with your criticisms of the writing, especially the over-reliance on time travel, but you're so far off on the premise that I hardly know where to begin.
But I'll take a shot:
1) The "warp speed limit" was set in The Next Generation, which went off the air in 1994. Voyager didn't air until 1995. The "speed limit" was set in an episode that aired in November of 1993, "Force of Nature", long before Voyager got lost.
2) 75 years to go 75,000 light years is not at all inconsistent with the physics of the show, even if we assume (which we can) that the speed limit isn't being followed, either because they fixed the problem or because they just don't care. (Paramount's web page says they fixed the problem, in the case of the Intrepid class, with those funky folding warp nacelles.) Unless you think that the ship can maintain 100% engine output constantly for decades, the 75/75,000 number translates out to about Warp 8, which strikes me as a pretty good cruising speed for a ship which is only intended to go three years between refits.
If you're gonna complain, complain about the REAL technical problems, not stuff that you simply don't understand fully.
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Aside from everything else wrong with the episode, why weren't they happy to be home. No one so much as said "hurrah". There was no glimpse of the ticker tape parades or anything. They seemed downright sullen to be back. Heck, if they didn't want to cheer about getting home, maybe they could have applauded the destruction of the transwarp doohickey.
And most importantly... who won the frickin' baby pool!?!
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Trek is a massive cash cow for Paramount, a major franchise for them. Because of this, they were far less likely to do anything that would cut off that revenue flow.
Since we live in a capitalist society, the key question for the Star Trek franchise is not "How big is it?" but instead "How fast is it growing?"
And, unfortunately, the hardcore (90% male) nerd market has been pretty much saturated. Starting with about the 3rd season of TNG, the francise made radical adjustments to gain more female viewership. This continued with Voyager (which after all was a "network" show), by trying to appeal to a much broader and less science fiction-oriented mainstream audience.
Unfortunately, it was full of flat, boring, motavationless characters, no soap operatics, very little space operatics, and the over-simplified particle-of-the-week plots failed to appeal to both the Technical Manual crowd and their mothers. So, the show failed, both critically and more importantly in the ratings. If it didn't have "Star Trek" in the title, it would have been cancelled after a year or two, and the only reason it lasted as long as it did was the wise addition of some T&A to get back the spock ears group.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Don't forget the distant, distant future concept of "sidewarp", mentioned briefly in the novel "Federation". :)
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I think "We are the Bord" better describes the audience.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Boy don't I agree. At least with DS9, they dedicated 10 entire episodes to wrapping up the series, and even then it was a VERY rushed ending. With voyager, they tried to do it all in one episode. Well, they TRIED anyways.
And it appeared from the last few years that they were progressing toward developing an actual technical way to get home. Barclay was responsible for many technological breakthroughs that provided the voyager crew with realtime communication with Earth. I was hoping they were going to lead up to a way to carry transporter buffers over that same medium, so they could slowly transport the entire crew back, but slowly since they only had 11 minutes a day to do so. Then as only a skeleton crew remained, something could go horribly wrong and spend a couple episodes surviving that crisis, resulting in a dramatic ending. That would have worked for me.
Instead... we got....
blah.
A full two hours (minus a few minutes for a
cliffhanger resolution at the beginning of the show) would have been nice. What charges would the Maquis face? how would they and Seven, and Naomi, and Echep integrate into society? Hell, even seeing Kim getting promoted would be SOMETHING.
Oh well. Its over now. So be it.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I respectfully disagree -- I really liked Wesley Crusher; I thought that the child genius who, at first, is never given a chance to show his abilities (yet later saves the ship many times) is a character I can relate to (and he reminds me of Spiderman =). The Black Ooze may not have been the best idea, but the idea of Tasha Yar being killed by a force beyond our control for no reason was revisited many times as the characters realized life isn't fair.
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
DS9 was taken by surprise? DS9 was always expected to have 7 seasons, and it did. The finale wasn't anything thrown together; it was a seven-episode, well-planned arc. I find your post hard to believe. . . are you just another troll showing that posters can be wrong, but sound right, and be modded up, or do you have some serious evidence of this?
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
I wanted at least Janeway to be killed off in the Voyager finale (how anyone like her after seven seasons of bad decisions?), or, even better, the entire ship should have been destroyed. It would have been a powerful end to the series, and bring some finality to a setting we won't see for a long time to come (since the next series will be in the past). Voyager has also always been ridiculously optimistic; a little realism would be nice, especially when the series won't have any movies. This ending was just too happy and perfect.
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
It's not that simple. There are solutions to the equations of general relativity that allow for space to be "warped" in such a way that, locally, c is not exceeded, but that overall give FTL travel. However, it's not clear whether these equations have any real physical meaning; some of the possibilities include things like incredibly massive rotating cylinders that "drag" the time axis into a spatial one, or large amounts of negative energy.
Then there's quantum effects like tunneling, where a particle basically goes from one point to another without passing through the intervening space.
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You cannot wash away blood with blood
But the Enterprise of the new prequel show is not the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 we know from ST:TOS; the prequel takes place before the founding of the Federation or Starfleet, and this is an earlier ship that "just happens" to have the same name.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Chakotay! Drop those coconuts!
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I think that was the reason she had Doctor Bob - excuse me, "Doctor Joe" score a couple grams of that experimental anti-chronon radiation drug (assuming again a few kilos for Voyager's crew was not available).
And why the "healthy as the first day the doctor saw her" Janeway couldn't wait a couple more years for Deus Ex Machina Industries to come up with a sturdier time machine, that wouldn't burn itself out going one-way.
it was a "paradox".
So you're not allowed to analyze it. :-)
> On a side note, interestingly, in Popular Science they discussed how Warp drive IS theoretically possible.
r elativity/reltoc.html
No it's not. You need infinite energy to reach 'c' (speed of light.)
You can't physically travel faster then the speed of light. The equations of relativity contain: square root(1 - (v^2/c^2)) which you can see for yourself: http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssci/phys/class/
At speeds above 'c', you have a square root of a negative number - something which doesnt' exist in the real world (aside from "phase" of a wave.)
One thing they should stop doing is trying to appeal to a wider audience. That is the reason star trek is dying.
None of the episodes link (hardley any of them) and if they did it was so small it didn't impact the episode if you missed the first one. All the episodes were one in themselves. DS9 realized this at the last moment and made the last season very brilliant.
Baywatch Babe 7 of 9 is there to attrach the male side who would not ordinarily watch the show. They could have left her borg implants in place and left her looking ugly and she would have filled the parts of the episodes were she has some technical thing to do.
Particle and Anomally's of the week make things really crappy...
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
My local station somehow cut off the end of the show. what happened after the last commercial break? I didn't even see the credits. was there a captain's log supplemental or something?
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
IIRC, Tasha was killed off because her contract was up and she didn't want to go on (at least at the price they were paying her), and Sinclair left because the viewers hated him. However, Sheridan proved to be a great character in his own way, while close enough to Sinclair to satisfy the gap, but different enough to be more than a Sinclair replacement. And then bringing Sinclair back as Valen was just great.
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Don't you remember? "You only have enough power for a one-way trip."
She could create a rift sizable enough for the Klingons (and therefore Voyager), but once it was closed, they're SOL. And what good would it do to bring Voyager into the future?
Anyway, it was a stupid way to end the series.
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Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I don't think I've seen anyone who's seen all of Star Trek and doesn't think that Voyager was the worst of them all. It certainly doesn't compare to TNG and DS9, because those were thinking shows.
- around-no-matter-what-the-cost episodes into doubles or trilogies - there's only so much one can do in an hour (~40 minutes really). After that, they're out of enemy space and no longer an issue. There were only a few races in Voy that were capable of keeping up with or passing Voy, which is why the borg were relied on so much - they had the conduits. Everyone else was left behind in their own space.
You ruined the entire series for yourself, so if you want someone to blame look in the mirror. Take Voyager for what it is, and stop comparing it to the others.
Excessive 'thinking' is a waste of the entire Star Trek universe. It is the future - and the future is about new tech, toys and places, not the same old political crap that goes on today. If I want reality I can go out in the Big Blue Room. This is sci-fi. Fiction. BULLSHIT. If you want to over analyse, go debug some code.
Fuckin' hell - people think I'm uptight.
Voyager abandoned all of this. The only concerted effort to maintain a story arc, with Voyager and the Kazons, was abandoned three seasons into the show. The rest of the series was just isolated episodes
Like TOS? DS9 are just campers... they found 'emselves a high-traffic spot and pitched a tent. It's not terribly hard to keep a story line going when you're not going anywhere. Voyager is on the move, discovering brave new worlds and all that shit. The most possible would be to extend those Janeway-wants-to-go-straight-thru-enemy-space-not
Voyager also abandoned continuity by completely forgetting about their limits on shuttles and photon torpedoes
OK, I'm not going to fabricate excuses.. but I'm sure more goes on on a starship than what makes an episode. Doing deals with arms traders makes for some easy and obvious plots, but it's not exactly true to the spirit of Starfleet.
they didn't come up with a witty solution like in TNG
There's only so much 'wit' can do... unless said wit leads to cool new techs, or variations on existing ones. Sooner or later you're going to need equal/better tech or you'll just get your butt kicked. Game Over.
they just inverted a new particle, or pulse, or weapon. This formula was used in 90% of the shows, including the finale
I have to agree it was excessive.. but I'll take excessive technobabble over psychobabble any day.. this is the future after all.
The Enterprise solved that with intelligent characters outwitting the Borg systems (Data "hacks" in), not powerful uber-weapons.
Maybe he could upload them a virus off the Mac in the ship's museum? If you applied your own bullshit-detection algorithms to this as you used before then you should come up with the same 'yeah, right' conclusion. Ah, but you LIKE this series, so the BS detectors are only on half power.
The largest continuity issue with the Voyager finale was that they were able to take a transwarp conduit right home to Earth
They cheated.. that pisses me off. But lots of stories end with the hero dying or other unfavorable ending... learn to live with it. This isn't a holodeck - YOU do not write the story.
The Borg are no longer menacing; they're weak and stupid.
I think they've always has a darlek (sp?) quality about them.. supposed uber-baddies, yet.. why not just.. RUN AWAY!? I think this queen bitch fucked em - they were probably stong at one point, then this ego maniac managed to separate from the collective (unamatrix 0 style) and try to run em.
There's little chance of another future series
That's a shame. I don't know much (or really anything) about the next series, but it's going to have to be overflowing with this 'thinking' shit because there's nothing else going for it.
All the cool new toys have been done in future episodes, so not only do we know what they are, we know what they DON'T HAVE. There's only so many oops-crashed-the-shuttle-into-the-planet-again episodes I can take before I start wishing for transporters.
We've seen the Klingons and whatnot, AND how it turns out. All that's left are conflicts with minor empires that either fold or become our allies quickly. Any long running conflicts would need to have been in past episodes, otherwise we run into that continuity issue you keep bringing up.
The only possible positive is the Kirk era fuck-the-Directive mentality... hoonin' about the quadrant kickin' butt. That would suit me fine. However I recall Kirk's Enterprise getting whipped and destroyed almost as often as not when attacked. I'm sure before shields are invented (given to them by God according to your logic - some magic that allows them to get shot and not depressurise instantly) they'll be avoiding conflict. I'm sure not all races invent space travel at the same time Earth did, so would probably be either more advanced and dominate, or be just starting out and be easily overpowered with little more than a nasty look.
I can just tell it's going to be mostly drawn out policical and 'character building' crap.. making allies, etc. And I know I'm going to get really tired of the Vulcans (our first contact, and who aren't bent on destroying us).
Shuttlecraft. Too small.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Sigh. It is so sad to watch the rapid decline of Red Dwarf. I have been a fan since I saw the first episode in 1991 or so. I would argue that the first two seasons were the best; it took me a while to get comfortable with the new Holly after Norman left the show, and I feel the dynamics of the two humans (well, one barely-human and one hologram--both viable targets) left alone in deep space with the Cat to play off made for a more original show.
Still, after the addition of Kryten to the cast it recovered into a great show. Season five was pretty weak, IMHO. But six was great.
When it comes to the last two seasons, seven had a few good moments. The rest of the moments were crap; in particular the Kryten vs. Kochanski catfights. They could have ended the series with them recovering an EMPTY Red Dwarf and heading back to Earth. Perhaps even let them get back to Earth somehow and cut to the credits just before they discover what is there.
But no; we have to have them in season eight which has destroyed the entire makeup of the show. Bald with their hands over their crotch? Oh, that's sophisticated humor.
But my biggest frustration is the changes the are making to the old shows. They are re-recording all of Holly sequences and messing with the dialog (Felicity Kendall's bottom has been removed, for example (that must have been painful).) How dare they mess with the old episodes??? Perhaps they want to edit in some scenes of dancing spaceships and dinosaurs with fecal incontinence.
(There is no way it would have taken that long to return using high warp, remembering the restriction of high warp speeds was enacted by the federation only after Voyager was deemed lost)
The warp 6 restriction has been enacted for some time, it was mentioned in TNG a few times (Pricard was authorised to exceed warp 6 on a few occasions)
Leg Godt!
Hmm, let's see : 70000 light years, 75 years to return, 70000/75 ~= 933.4 times the speed of light == warp 933.4 in the Star Trek model of "physics". Even assuming Voyager can go faster than warp 9-point-something, it's awfully faster than any conventional ST vessel.
It seems to me there is no way it would have taken that *short* to return using high warp :-)
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Regardless of how insightful your very long post may be, calling andromeda "another great show" made it lose all credibility with me.
Also, the "thinking" shows of all the treks we're almost always the worst ones, because "thinking" usually made characters and drama take a back seat to the eureka of the last 15 minutes. I believe trek, in all its forms, was best with large scale drama, like wars, or spies, or secret weapons. In this type of framwork there's plenty of opportunity for drama, suspense and characters.
Also, in other opinions, "earth, final conflict" is also horrible, but I still watch it for a small sci-fi fix. Farscape can be a very good show but for a while there it took a serious nosedive, must have changed writers or something and they didnt know the characters anymore. Lexx has been pretty good the last season with the fire and water planets, but its not really sci-fi, but then again, you could just have the robot head start babbling about transphasic fields or tetrion emmissions for a few minutes and it would have as much science as trek. Stargate is by far the best sci-fi series there is now, its got lots of drama, cool wormholes, good and evil, mythology, honor, intersteller politics, babes, guns, explosions, a pinch of timetravel, great characters and good humor. Can you tell I have Tivo
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There seem to be a lot of people commenting about how fans of the show should just be quiet about the numerous (and sometimes glaring) inconsistencies that plagued voyager. Several things must be kept in mind when considering these gripes
:)
1) When you're dealing with technology that doesn't actually exist yet, you're bound to contradict yourself a few times. This is why the Star Trek series has always been plauged by various technology related mess ups. There are so many in fact, that books have been written about the inconsistencies in EACH series. I do believe that either because of the nature of the show or because people seemed so willing to attack it that more of these inconsistencies came to be noticed. In either event, they're going to happen, like it or not. You'll never convince paramount to hire a team of theoretical physicists to fact check the show. Not only would that cost money, but it would make script writing and post production a nightmare.
2) Many people seem to be encouraging us to forget about the techno-blunders and just enjoy the show. I think you're all missing out on exactly what kind of person watches Star Trek. ST fans don't usually finish watching Voyager and then switch to Friends. Most of us like to think about the shows we watch. We WANT the show to make sense everytime, we want to find the mistakes, and we want people to fix them or at least abide by the same rules. It's the fan base the show has relied on so heavily. And I think it's here where the legit gripes come in.
3) The blunders in this show were evidence not of a new problem the writers have, but how the show is marketed. I think if you look back, the inconsistencies in other Trek shows benifited the plot at large. When you start chucking together random technology with a wanton disregard for what's been done prior just to make the show look cool, you're going to upset people. At the same time you're going to lure in some viewers who want to see "stuff blow up" and Seven's rack. Voyager relied on big explosions and fancy technology to win it's ratings. In doing so, some people who wouldn't normally have watched tuned in, while other more "loyal" fans deceided to call it a day.
4)In the end, Voyager wasn't so much a bad show, as it was a bad attempt at marketing. You have to know what your customers want if you're going to sell your product well. According to what I've read, Voyager is the worst rated of all the series, and rightly so. You can't try and use the lowest common denominator to sell a show that people who like to think like to watch. For God's sake, Voyager could never compete with temptation island or survior, it never should have tried. Hopefully the next series will speak more to the traditional demographic instead of tyring to lure people in with breasts and boom. Not that I minded the breasts
Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here
And when Q introduced the Borg by spinning the Enterprise into the Delta Quad (way before the warp six limit) they acknowledged that the introduction took place a hundred years before it should have.
I know it's all stupid anyway, why am I talking about it?
Trolls throughout history:
Trolls throughout history:
Jonathan Swift
I watched Voyager because I liked to see Seven's T&A stick out thru that spandex catsuit ;-)
I'd always hoped that the ending would be the ship getting home to Earth, and Seven would get to meet Data, now that he's got his emotion chip installed under his fingernail, upon meeting her, he'd say to her, "I'm fully functional and programmed in multiple techniques".
All you people remind me of the Episode of the Simpsons where Homer played the Dog in "Itchy and Scratchy"
"Mister, when itchy ripped Scratchy's ribs out and played them like a Xylaphone, he struck two different ribs, but they played the same note, What is with that?"
I, too, ignored Voyager until later on (Kinda hard to watch anything on tv when you have no power or running water, much less cable). Once I did, I was fortunate to be near a local station that plays reruns every weeknight, so I got to watch pretty much every episode that aired. It sure was irritating at first to see Kate Mulgrew mugging the camera(Patric Stewart she isn't) as the music swelled just before some inane commercial took over the display, and even more recently, I thought the idea of 7 fighting The Rock was a desperate publicity stunt to boost ratings, but all in all, it was fun to watch the actors becoming comfortable with the roles, and to disagree with the author of this story, I thought the premise the series was based upon was interesting, and brought up things to consider.
That said, I felt let down by the finale. (spoilage warning: I won't give it away if possible, but still want to air my gripes) The overall plot could have just as easily have been another weekly episode. Also, the last couple of episodes have felt kind of rushed. Why was Neelix so abrupt when he left the ship? It really wasn't like him to even discuss his plans with a very suddenly grown-up Naomi. IMHO the finale, for that matter, could have used an extra hour to flesh out some of the complications and twists they threw in there. Why not a two- or three-parter, instead of crowding everything into ninety minutes (show-commercials=@90minutes)?
The "big" ending of it all was worse than anticlimactic. There was simply not enough time to finish the job. Now that I've become used to the characters, it's kind of dissappointing that the next series will be set two hundred years before Voyager... guess that leaves out any option for cameo appearanes, with the possible exception of Q. Oh, well, time goes on.
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
I wanted Janeway to die exactly 4 episodes into the Voyager series. What a pompous, bombastic, trite, and annoying character was she! I think she set the tenor for the irritating PMS edge every character of Voyager's crew had. When I think about their bitter, sharp, & naging conversations I just want to smack their faces raw. The painful death of Janeway by being sucked into cold space would be a just reward for enduring the years of nattering dialog by the Voyager crew. Bleh!
Take the physical copies of the series and toss them into a burning trashbarrel. Spare the TREK fandom of the future from enduring this crap in rerun.
"Face it, a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.
Quite right. It doesn't have to be that way. If you can forgive the muppets, give Farscape a try. Top quote? "Enough techno babble, gadget girl. Will it work or not?"
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No, no, that's old series shuttlecraft you're thinking of. Voyager shuttlecraft are transwarp capable starships with more firepower than a Constitution class cruiser, hyperbongo shielding, 27 parsec scanners, industrial grade trainspotters, cloaks, cargo bays, a gymnasium with sauna, and a wet bar. Or so it seemed, anyway.
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Introducing Jeri Ryan was the correct choice at the time, but I don't know if I'd call it "wise". Not in the long term. Long term, we might look back and view it as cynical, manipulative, exploitative, in fact the worst kind of dumbing down by committee.
Picture the coked up pony-tailed 30-something creative team sweating over their Porche payments. "We need eyeballs! Get some tits in there. And make them big, and not those jiggly round ones. I want tits that you could carry beer glasses around on. Oh, a reason? I dunno, how about making her a Klingon? Got one already, huh? I should really watch the show more. What're those robot things called? Borg, huh? Any objections? OK, dig out a spandex unitard and let's buy us some flesh to fill it."
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Actually youngster, it's simply (c * (warp factor ^ 3)). That's Gene Roddenberry canon. All else is heresy. No, I shall not hear you. LA LA LA, CAN'T HEAR YOU. ;)
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*cough* Genesis torpedo *cough*. "Dang, the protomatter is unstable, Genesis doesn't work. All we're left with is some sort of doomsday weapon..."
Now, now. I'm sure that she has a well rounded character with fullsome potential for growth and development and... ah, screw it... hubba hubba, the purty lady's got big tits, uh huhuhuh, shake it baby, yowza, whoop whoop. And so on. Yes, I too am viewing Enterprise with a great deal of trepidation. If I wanted to watch tits, stereotyped characters and risible plots, I'd watch V.I.P. But perhaps that's the audience they're targetting with Enterprise.
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They dumbed it down until it lost the actual SF geeks, then they dumbed it down even further until the geeks came back? Ouch. That's scary because it sounds so plausible.
Good point. They never made 7 of 9 act like a bimbo - but mostly (says I) by making her neutral bordering on bland. As I say above, in a different setting (e.g. Farscape or Babylon 5), Seven could have been a fascinating character.
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- "in Popular Science they discussed how Warp drive IS theoretically possible."
No it's not. You need infinite energy to reach 'c' (speed of light.)Q spare us from 1st year physics undergrads. Warp drive doesn't move the ship, it moves the universe. Watch more Futurama, or failing that, heed ye the words of Lucy Lawless in the Simpsons: "Look, whenever something like that happens, a wizard did it." ;)
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Which is true, but strange, as Grant then went on to write an unrelated series, The Strangerers. Imagine running a cheese grater over your eyeballs, then dunking your head in a bucket of vinegar. That was the first five minutes of The Strangerers. Then it got worse. Much worse.
Meanwhile Doug Naylor has managed to scam the funds for a Red Dwarf movie. Oh dear.
Wow, suddenly I'm feeling nostalgia for Voyager. That's wierd.
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Blurgh, how true. Even the acting was monotonous, with flat. Stilted. Delivery. It was like watching statues in many of the scenes. Plus, they were always so earnest. The least utterance was delivered as though it was profoundly important. Even in the token "ha ha" scenes, everyone was so dreadfully serious and self aware.
For me, the worst thing was that most of the characters were "Federation v4.0" die cast drones. Take away their superficial quirks, and Paris, Kim, B'Elanna, Chakotay, Tuvok and Janeway were largely interchangeable in any given situation. Only Neelix, Kes, and (bizarelly) Seven and the Doctor were actually distinctive in terms of their behaviour.
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I'd agree, except for one glaring error in the final moments of the final episode:
When Picard realised that the "thing" (whatever the hell it was) was growing backwards in time, they raced back to its origin and lo-and-behold, there it was.
But, if it was growing backwards in time, why was it bigger 5 minutes in the future between the time they visited and saw nothing and Picard's realisation?
I caught that right away and it kind of ruined the whole show for me.
Oh well.
Ryan T. Sammartino
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
Here's a fun one, something I always wanted to do.
1)Somehow, find a patch of land large enough to walk across.
2)Then, find a way to *owe* that land to someone else. Maybe sell it without first owning it (I have a nice bridge, if you are interested)
3)Take a walk across this patch of land.
Now, in theory, land that I 'owe', has a negative value, as does any money I owe in my bank account. As land is generally measured by area, we will assume that this land has, for me, a negative area.
Now to walk across it, I will be constructing a line through this negative area, which is equivalent to the length of one of the sides... since area = length * width, and area is negative, this path will of necessity be some multiple of i...
Maybe its petty, but taking an imaginary journey strikes me as self defining in some strange way.
I always find it bit odd that the small subgenre of written science fiction that is time travel seems to be so popular in scifi movies and TV. I guess it's the allure of changing mistakes you made in your past. The problem is, it's fiendishly difficult to do a good story without getting yourself tangled in paradox, and I'm not entirely convinced that it's easy for all viewers to follow the tangled timelines.
But it has been used often with entertaining effect in Star Trek: The Guardian of Forever where they go back and alter the course of the 2nd World War is a classic and I think the most popular Star Trek episode ever. But it had a real science fiction writer behind it, plus it was exploring the alternative history genre as well.
The one with Teri Garr where they stop the nuclear space platform is good too (now if they would just come back and stop the Bush missle defense and militarization of space plan).
And The Voyage Home is also a very entertaining movie that uses time travel to enable the classic "fish out of water" satirical societal outsider commentary.
But from all of these, it's fairly clear that they take care to avoid interfering with the timeline.
And the Star Trek universe law seems to be a single timeline one, where your changes propagate forward and back.
The Next Gen episode where Q gives Picard a chance to change the course of his life was good, as was the series finale, which redeemed Next Gen to some extent for me.
We also see the single timeline progation in the DS9 episode where Jake ends up as an old writer, with Sisko watching him as a kind of temporal ghost, until Jake repairs the timeline.
The DS9 one where they go back in time to the Tribbles episode is cool.
In Voyager, they had the one where they destroyed the poleric energy planet, but then it never happened because they undid the timeline change.
Then the one with the huge ship that went around destroying planets, whose effects were eliminated when it was removed from the timeline.
And Harry returns to Voyager when he re-enters the timestream and undoes the changes that had landed him on Earth.
Plus which the doctor's entire portable emitter exists because of technology from the Federation Time Cops of the future.
But here's where things start to break down.
Why don't the Time Cops show up all the time to prevent any timeline alterations?
Then in the Old Kes / Young Kes time travel one, they didn't follow the paradox through.
Old Kes goes back in time to rescue Young Kes, so YK knows what is going to happen, this should break the timeline, but YK inexplicably goes on to become OK *again*.
And then finally to the series finale.
Ok, this Klingon gizmo apparently lets Admiral Janeway travel quite freely through time and space. Why doesn't she just go to before Voyager got sucked into the Delta quadrant, and stop them ever going there? There must be a 1000 ways she knows of to sabotage the ship harmlessly to prevent it from ending up in the badlands where it got grabbed. Or for that matter, why doesn't she just jump back and stop the construction of the Caretaker facility, or destroy it before it has a chance to grab Voyager.
Then to make matters worse, the timeline is broken. 23-year-voyage Voyager makes Admiral Janeway. She goes back in time and interferes MASSIVELY with the timeline (future tech, killing the Borg Queen, destroying the transwarp dohicky, bringing Voyager back early). Ok fine that makes 7-year-voyage Voyager. But then, there's not going to be the same Admiral Janeway who went back in time, so as soon as Voyager arrives near Earth, that Admiral Janeway never went back in time, so 7-year-Voyager never arrives etc.
This leaves aside minor details like the crime against sentients biological warfare against the Borg. Ok the Borg aren't attacking you, they've been leaving your ship alone. You can't just go and wipe their entire Unimatrix out. That's a war crime atrocity.
Red Dwarf had been running since at least 1989, I believe it is the longest running Sitcom on UK TV. It evolved over time, and consistency has never been a major concern for example the uniforms changed several times over the 7 seasons, generally as the budget increased, Lister had his appendix out twice. The gestalt entity known as Grant Naylor broke up during season 6, but the franchise was left open for other writers to continue (hey - open source Sci-fi). Robert Llewellan(Kryten) wrote an ep. It really should have died, so you can look at it in two ways(either accept every extra season or episode as a bonus and enjoy it while you can, or regard any additional material to a classic as polluting a 'pure artform'). Personally, both with Star Trek and red Dwarf, I regard any material produced with interest and enjoy it as it is. I'm not entirely sure about comparing RD and the ST franchises. One is a half-hour sitcom which just happens to be set on a spaceship(the sc-fi setting was originally not the principle driver, it was about two incompatible people forced to endure eachothers company, it could have been set on a desert island or in a prison(does season 7 make sense now?). Comparing ST with Babylon 5 (now theres a story with plot arcs, pity it died near the end and Crusade failed). cheer up, the producers(Paramount or the BBC) could spend the money in worse ways. This discussion resembles a post mortem more than a eulogy anyway
From my Autobiography - "Lifestyles of the Sad and Desperate"...
Didn't they mention in the episode that there were like 6 of those Hub's in the galaxy (not to mention how many might exist in the universe?) Also isn't the idea of the borg distributed. The queen should live on shouldn't she?
I find it amazing that Voyager had an entire season to hit every bullet point in your list, but instead came up with nothing more than ten seconds of Voyager and Earth, then cutting to credits.
DS9 was taken by surprise when they found out they weren't going to have another season, and still, they did a better job of wrapping up loose ends. It was rushed, but the well-informed fans knew why, and those who weren't still got a damn good story. What would you prefer: Particle-of-the-Week Torpedoes, or the Cardassians turning on the Dominion, and the Founder responding with a scorched-earth attack on Cardassia Prime?
We're not scare-mongering/This is really happening - Radiohead
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Voyager wasn't such a bad concept, it had the potential to REALLY open up the Star Trek universe by showing a part of the galaxy that had never been explorered by the protagonists. The trouble was in the writing. TNG started off pretty weak, most of the stories felt like rehashes of ideas from the original series. THen season three hits and they've got a much larger budget, cooler looking uniforms and you've got Mike Piller and Ron Moore busting off some badass sci-fi. The end of season three/beginning of season four was some well written sci-fi drama, one of the most often acclaimed. Same with seasons 4/5. DS9 had Ira Steven Behr who practically single handedly fleshed out some of the most memorable characters from the series namely Quark and the Grand Nagus. Voyager started strong with some good writing by Piller but slowly Bannon Braga seemed to end up doing alot of writing and Rick Berman just sat back and let teleplays cross his desk that involved little character development or plot. There was no analog for Best of Both Worlds or Redemption in all the years Voyager aired. It was pretty sad because they had had some excellent writing, Braga was the co-writer of All Good Things for chrissakes. I was disappointed that Voyager couldn't seem to retain decent writing but I think alot of that had to do with Rick Berman being in charge of it all. He just let crap get produced. Then again maybe he was as odds with Paramount because they were shelling out beacoup dollars for a show that didn't really compete against any of the other networks offerings. Anyways, I hope Paramount follows the Fox gameplan and releases the series' seasons on DVD (as been done with x-files).
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
After the second viewing, I feel even more strongly that the finale brings out the worst in the series. It relies entirely on inventing all-powerful future technology while abandoning Janeway's (already horrible) character. Let's count the number of things fabricated to make this episode possible: tachyon immunizations, anti-tachyon pulses to close temporal rifts, Klingon time travel technology, retractable armor for ships (which mysteriously malfunctions at one point, so that the future Harry Kim must help Janeway), transphasic torpedos (while Voyager used its supposed allotment of 32 torpedoes in the first season alone), transwarp hubs, nueral interfaces, a quick allusion to future stealth technology, Borg adaptations against various aforementioned technology, a borg-killing virus, and the ability to hide inside Borg spheres. Am I still missing anything? Oh, at the last second they realize they can destroy the hub and get home, with no explanation, overcoming another plot obstacle. I bet that if I watch it again, I'll find more.
And then there's Janeway. The future Janeway is great - devious and cunning, and she appears to have been truly scared and changed by her experiences. On the other hand, the present Janeway is an entirely different person than she was in the beginning of the series -- she abandons the Temporal Prime Directive, after numerous occasions in which she refused to allow the ship to get home because of Prime Directive issues. I sure hope that she gets Court Marshalled and jailed when she gets back (anyone who saw the last Captain Braxton time travel episode: "You are hereby placed under arrest for crimes you will commit"). It's completely, 100% out of character for her to do these acts, let alone for her to accept Admiral Janeway as really being a future version of herself. She's too damn stubborn to listen to anyone else.
Not to mention the inherent time travel issue that comes up all the time and is never explained: now that Janeway's home, you can be sure that Starfleet will make sure she can't try to go back in time again. If so, then she won't guide the crew home, and we'll revert to the alternate future. In that one, Janeway does help the crew, and we go to the "real" future, which then brings us to the alternate future again. . . etc, etc, etc. This issue comes up in many episodes, where the actual time travel negates the reason for time travel in the future, which leads to this temporal paradox.
By the way, did anyone else notice that Ron Moore was cited in the credits as Visual Effects Supervisor? Wasn't he the writer who left the show because he saw that putting Berman and Braga in charge was stupid?
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
There are a lot of reasons why Trek is in the state that it's in, but the main ones are Rick Berman and Paramount itself. In some ways, the death of Trek started in its own popularity.
Trek is a massive cash cow for Paramount, a major franchise for them. Because of this, they were far less likely to do anything that would cut off that revenue flow. Basically, they couldn't take risks whith the story, because that might cause people to stop buying Trek stuff, and take a few precious pennies away from Paramount.
Rick Berman is equally afraid of losing that income, because it would mean him losing his job. Now, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that perhaps this is because higher-ups have tied his hands. He's not the kind of person who can revitalize the franchise.
By far, the best thing to do was to end Voyager gracefully and end the Trek franchise for a while. Bring it back with new blood in a few years, and bring it back to the spirit of the original, episodes and characters that actually take chances and make the audience think. Then, maybe, Trek can get back to where it should be.
One of the biggest problems in the last episode was with some of the ideas they brought in with the last seasons.
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For instance, in a number of episodes in the 29th century there is a whole part of the federation devoted to keeping the timeline from being disrupted. They have atleast 2 vessels capable of traveling through time to prevent violation of the "Temporal Prime Directive". So where were they when Admiral Janeway went on her little trip?
This episode also ruins anyone wanting to watch Star Trek 10. Do you think the most powerful warship in the fleet (this is the concept behind the movie), the Enterprise, is going to have any of these cool new weapons that Voyager now possess? I seriously doubt it. Voyager could take out 5 borg ships whle the Enterprise works on one of them
I actually feel kind of sad that the borg are now virtually gone
For anyone who hasn't seen the episode or missed it: Admiral Janeway eventually travels to the Borg home base [Unimatrix 1] and infects the borg with a virus. It completely destroys the home base and virtual cripples them. It doesn't destroy them completely, however, which leaves room for them to make a comeback.
Now the federation can deal with more pressing matters, like the Romulans (Star Trek 10). Good thing they have those super advanced weapons! They can smit thier enemies now!
Its also too bad that Voyager won't become that really cool museum that Admiral Janeway told us about. The Federation is gonna rip it to shreds! Come on! Borg technology, future Federation technology, Slipstream Drive,...I think there was even something called a Delta Drive from earlier episodes.
I'd certainly have a field day.
Voyager had its ups and downs. To be honest Voyager had a really good final episode. It was very entertaining, but I think it has ruined Star Trek. At least for the future side of it.
I hope Enterprise is going to go alot better. They already taken care of the Baywatch side of things to make sure 7 of 9 finatics are happy. "Enterprise" Vulcan 2nd officer in Maxim. Funny I have never seen a Vulcan which such a big chest.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
It's awesome when a main character is killed off.
Why?
Because it puts the audience in disbelief and uncertainity. This is what made Babylon 5 so interesting. Imagine if Picard was killed off at the end of season 1. Happened in B5 (Sinclar was reassigned off station).
It makes it interesting, and makes those oh-no-is-he-gonna-die moments better. I never expected Tasha to be killed. And she was. BAM! Major surprise. Good drama.
Allegedly, high warp speeds send you back in time (see Star Trek IV: Save the Whales) just like light speed would mess you up without wormholes. So then they invented the trans-warp bullshit which is to warp as warp is to normal space.
Trolls throughout history:
Trolls throughout history:
Jonathan Swift
Seriously, when Star Trek was started people were overly idealistic and special effects were limited. Those two things have been bogging the franchise down ever since. And frankly, I thought DS9 was the best of the bunch, simply because it actually had a plot and characters that went somewhere, even if the station did not.
In any case, Farscape is by far the best SF on TV yet in all ways, much better than trek, and consistently so. (The only things that came close were Alien Nation, which was very subtle and thoughtful, and Babylon 5, which was epic and diverse).
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Quite. The Borg are basically zombies, and zombies are basically stupid and lame. However, it is possible to make a good zombie film, by showing them as relentless and inexorable. You can knock down a hundred of them, but they'll still keep coming, never tiring, never sleeping, always assimilating. Eventually, they'll wear you down.
Star Trek forgot that. "Resistance is futile" should not be open to debate. The moment they started talking to the Borg, they become a stumbling, moronic joke. By the end of Voyager, the Feds were figuratively tweaking their noses and giving them wedgies. Frankly, I had a lot more sympathy for the industrious Borg than I did for the annoying Feds and their incessant lucky breaks and changing of the rules.
Rot in Pieces, Voyager.
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Actually, it's not exponential, it's a hand-drawn function that has an asymptote at 10, where it takes infinite energy to go at infinite speed and occupy every point in the universe simulatenously.
That was the model until Voyager's Threshold, which establishes that going at warp 10 simply makes you turn into a giant lizard.
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If we really want to debate how many Starfleet angels can dance on the head of a warp 10 pin, here’s some fodder from Star Trek Chronology. If we’re gonna geek out, we should geek out with authority. :-)
So ST:TOS warp 9 would be 9=729 times the speed of light, and Voyager warp 10 would be the speed at which Voyager got back to the Alpha Quadrant and ended things so abuptly.
What's the 25rd century again? :)
Ben
If you recall the last episode of STTNG, Picard was struck with some syndrome, and was operating in 3 time periods ...
The voyager finale was kindof a low-power copy of that same structure -- Janeway operating in 2 time periods simultaneously, TUVOC was sick (as opposed to janeway/picard).
The real difference was, the STTNG episode was one of the best episodes they ever made ... the Voyager episode was such a hack its obvious the writers weren't even trying -- they tucked in the loose ends with a sledgehammer -- manufactured drama -- and tried to end with a bang by destroying alot of the borg which you know will come back eventually in some episode/movie/series -- and ALL done while relying on their "techno babel" ... somebody explain why the ship that got janeway BACK in time, couldn't take the whole crew forward again?
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
How many episodes don't end with specially engineered nanoprobes, or shield modulation, or a special retro-virus designed by the doctor, or some such nonsense solving the problem.
A lot of episodes end like that, which is why I concluded that tech-driven Voyager isn't as good as TNG, which did it less frequently. Even when they did use tech, they often used it with a strategy we can all understand and apply.
However, I disagree that tech deus ex machina is inherent to all sci-fi. Just because something is set in a sci-fi universe, doesn't mean a sudden invention has to resolve all the character conflicts.
For example, Darth Vader lies in the arms of Luke Skywalker after (spoiler!!) throwing the Emperor into the Death Star pit.
He says, "Luke... help me take this mask off."
Luke says "But you'll die."
Since it's character-driven sci-fi, Vader simply says "Nothing can stop that now. Let me look on you with my own eyes."
It it were Star Trek, Vader would have said: "Maybe if you tried recalibrating my helmet's obtronic resequencer to generate an isometric pulse, it'll restore your crushed lung with a isomorphic replacement."
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In TNG and DS9 (excluding the first few DS9 seasons) -- and now Andromeda, another great show -- most episodes consisted of a problem which was usually overcome by wit, intelligence, or skill from the crew. For instance, in TNG, the Borg were always these physically invincible enemies, and the crew had to come up with some intricate plot to overcome them. DS9 also made viewers think, usually using displomatic issues (the various alliances formed by the various races) or religious ones (the role of the prophets, as God or fate, affecting the lives of the characters). DS9's resolution of the many, many plot arcs in the last 7 episodes showed great planning and the great character development throughout the series, and it was a very fitting sendoff that ended the series in the proper spirit.
TNG and DS9 also relied heavily on continuity of certain plot arcs. In DS9, this is obvious. In TNG, it was a bit more subtle, but after rewatching most of the series and reading through the Star Trek Encyclopedia, I think that realizing the small way in which each and every episode was somehow connected to the larger themes makes the show seem even better. And the TNG and DS9 characters showed growth and development while still remaining consistent to what we knew of them.
Voyager abandoned all of this. The only concerted effort to maintain a story arc, with Voyager and the Kazons, was abandoned three seasons into the show. The rest of the series was just isolated episodes -- I could miss any one, and not care at all because it had no bearing on the larger outcome of the series. There were a few small attempts at bringing back some old characters toward the end, such as Lt. Carey and the aliens who blackmailed the Doctor in the next-to-last episode, but only fans who truly followed the series (especially online) noticed these links, and they were not at all important to the plot of the individual episodes.
Voyager also abandoned continuity by completely forgetting about their limits on shuttles and photon torpedoes. I found several sites online a while ago tracking those, and they lost the amount they started with many, many times over. Characters -- except the Doctor -- almost never developed, either, as an experience in one episode would be forgotten the next (this was fixed a bit in the last season).
Worst of all, Voyager was not a "thinking" show -- every episode was solved by what many call the "particle-of-the-week." Every time Voyager was in a seemingly inescapable predicament, they didn't come up with a witty solution like in TNG -- they just inverted a new particle, or pulse, or weapon. This formula was used in 90% of the shows, including the finale. Chris DiBona picked up on this a bit in his review -- the producers have made the Borg weak and feeble with the paradoxical Borg "Queen," weapons from the future, and a magical Borg-killing virus. Whatever happened to TNG's Best of Both Worlds, when one Borg Cube took out the entire Federation fleet? The Enterprise solved that with intelligent characters outwitting the Borg systems (Data "hacks" in), not powerful uber-weapons.
The largest continuity issue with the Voyager finale was that they were able to take a transwarp conduit right home to Earth -- if the Borg could do that, why didn't they transport right to Earth in The Best of Both Worlds? The Borg are no longer menacing; they're weak and stupid.
Voyager's finale also exploits the worst lapse of character yet. Janeway's always been a goodie-two-shoes since episode one, opting to follow the Prime Directive while her people suffer and die. Why is it that she's now willing to accept help from the future? If the character refuses every opportunity to get home with even the slightest repurcussions, why is it she's willing to accept such a blatant violation of her own principles in this episode? The future Janeway in this episode showed that she had changed and developed enough to accept this, but the past Janeway has totally abandoned her character. Finally, the series has backed Star Trek into a corner. There's little chance of another future series, because Voyager keeps inventing magical technology to solve everything. Worst of all is Time Travel -- as soon as one race gets time travel, they can just go back and do what they like. If any race beats the Federation to it, they'll go back and take over history. And there are many races more advanced than the Federation; if not, the ships would face no challenges and the show would have no premise. If the Federation develops time travel, then there's nothing to stop their peaceful existence, and there's nothing left to drive Star Trek. That's why they need to go back in time now; I just wonder what they'll do after the new series.
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
One of the writers, Rob Grant, basically stopped writing episodes (he only did one in S7) and it's clear he is the talented one able who actually came up with original and funny jokes and episode ideas. Seasons 7 and 8 have, if they're lucky, one or two mildly funny jokes per show, the and premises just aren't nearly as original. Legion, Inquisitor, Wax World, Quarantine, Demons and Angels, and of course the hilarious Gunmen of the Apocalypse. Each of these episodes is more memorable than season 7 or 8 in their entirity, not the mention the fact that they're so desperate for ideas that they are stretching single episodes into three instead. It's a deep shame that I have to say this, but I'd rather they ended what was once a superb series that I adored and watched almost religiously rather than continue to milk it and further tarnish its image. Star Trek is, IMO, average, switch-brain-off-and-kinda-enjoy-it TV viewing, and while it's not doing the world any good it ain't doing any harm either. Red Dwarf, unless you're watching a series 1-6 re-run, is now almost unbearably bad.
Is there really anything in the Star Trek universe worth saying that has not been said a dozen times in each series, five dozen times total, and at least twice in a movie? The pseudo-physics of the ST universe suffered the same fate as the pseudo-technology of Dr. Who, snarled up in contradictions and failures of vision that kept turning everything into metaphors for modern events. However, while Dr. Who dealt with its 20-year albatross of a history with tongue in cheek and a certain amount of wit, ST is so deathly serious about everything that it has ended up looking ridiculous.
Let's remember, kids, that the original concept was Captain Hornblower in Space according to Gene Roddenberry himself. Anybody remember Captain Hornblower? Let's just say that the number of episodes where Kirk and Spock end up in a dungeon stripped to the waist was in theme.
So we've lost the charming elements that made ST such a hot item with the K/S ladies and replaced them with, hmmm, let's see, androids instead of Vulcans. Boy that is so imaginative. And now we have the technology to show the Holodeck (always in the specs, not filmable in 1967) and the Earth (from the original ST bible, according to David Gerrold: we do not show the Earth, that's why we have starbases). But what has really been added? NOTHING .
No more series, no more episodes, no more movies. I'm sorry to say it but, while ending ST in its original incarnation was a premature mistake, bringing it back has turned out to be a much, much, much bigger mistake. Let's bury this dog before it completely skeletizes and think of something new.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Spoiler warning. After seven years, that's how Voyager ended, in my opinion. Did the crew use their years of experience with the Borg to get past them? No... they were blessed with a visitor from the future, who brought weapons to make them invincible to every enemy. They were then free to use Borg transwarp conduits (which didn't bother me as much since they've been established since season 6 of TNG).
Put another way, what did you want to see out of the finale? Here's what I've been imagining for seven years:
- The crew arrives home
- Emotional farewells between crew members and uncertaintly about their future
- Commendation or other acknowledgement by Starfleet
- An investigation into the psychological effect of unexpectedly seeing one's loved ones after seven years of isolation
- Will Seven of Nine be accepted by humanity and be able to live alongside billions of humans?
- What role will the Doctor play in liberating repressed sentinent holograms, as referred to in recent episodes?
- Whatever happened to Kim's fiancee?
- etc.
The producers, however, assumed that I had only one question, and wrote the entire episode under that assumption:- Will they make it back?
I wanted an hour or more in the Alpha quandrant providing closure to the series. But instead they held out the contrived suspense to the very last minute, giving us only one single shot of Voyager approaching Earth. Completely unsatisfying end to seven years' anticipation.I mean, all in all, it was just another episode. How many episodes were there that had them spend an hour getting REALLY REALLY CLOSE to getting home and then be thwarted? This episode was about getting REALLY REALLY CLOSE for two hours, and then being successful. I didn't want to see another episode about getting really really close. I wanted to see an episode about returning home!
Sigh... well, it's not important enough to get too worked up over. But still, their priorities were in the wrong place. It's that kind of substitution -- giving us more phasers, nebulae, and "transphasic torpedoes" instead of human drama, that makes Star Trek suck today compared to the days of TOS and TNG.
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