Slashdot Mirror
First Peeks At Enterprise
abde writes: "On Monday, TV Guide featured a preview of the new Starship Enterprise on the cover (scans and comparison with other ships courtesy German Trek site Treknews.de). Entertainment Online also features an transcript of an interview (and video excerpt!) with Scott Bakula on the new bridge (and wow are the set interiors as incredible as advertised!). More images of the ship interior (including Engineering) from that ET special are also shown on fansite Section31.com."
Picard: Make it slow...
My impression of a British SciFi show (namely, Dr. Who)
Lead Character: Natter. natter. Natter natter. Natter.
Other Character: Natter?
Blue Character: Natter natter (laugh).
Lead Character: Natter natter natter natter. Natter, and natter some more.
Monster:[special effect here done by viewing a picture of Margaret Thatcher through a glass of stout]
Lead Character: Natter natter natter natter natter natter natter natter natter.
Character with strange forehead: Natter natter natter.
[Exterior shot of a strange planet, which is strange that a strange planet has so many hedgerows.]
Captain! The webserver, she can'na take the load!
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
4) I want some dumb people to crew a ship, not just the super-geniuses that Trek staffs Federation ships with.
Have you seen any of the Voyager episodes? The crew is chock full of nimrods. Besides, the writers have a tough enough time as it is writing "smart" characters. If they try to actively make someone dumb they would create the equivelent of a tetatronic-subspace-neutrino brain drainer. At least with the "smart" characters you don't allow the writers to completely forgo logic when writing for the character (although that doesn't stop them from trying).
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
While I can't help but snicker at all the "one more swing of the cat" anti-franchise posts (preach on, brothers!) I can't help but note that the design of the Movie Enterprise (ST1-ST6) is one of the most beautiful, graceful, and just plain _right_ examples of industrial design I have ever seen.
That's what I wish real spaceships looked like.
Reliant was pretty good, borrowing heavily from the Enterprise design, and the FASA Starship Combat pen-and-paper game had an endless array of variations on the theme, most of which worked as well.
Excelcior wasn't bad, but lacked the grace of the Enterprise design.
But once they got back on the samll screen, the design went into the toilet. Enterprise-D was lopsided, unbalanced, and *ugly* "First Contact" Enterprise looked like something a Goth would design, and Voyager was putrid too. Swinging nacelles? Mein gott!
The alien races fared no better. Klingons and Romulans in the OS looked bad-ass and _alien_. In the NG and later, they just looked... hokey.
Starship design peaked in the OS movies. I hope whoever penned the design for the movie Enterprise won an award for it; he was the high water mark.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
:)
hawk
Sure, the last season had rather hooky plots; the one where Al became the Leaper, the entire Evil Leaper thing, for example. But that typically happens to any show that gets more than a couple seasons on air...
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
There's an interesting oddity with O'Neal though, in McGyver he was the smart guy who knew everything.. In SG-1 he's 'shoot first, ask questions later' and 'explain it in english' -- basically opposite to what he used to play. Unless Bakula does an extremely good acting job (I wouldn't put it past him), everyone will be thinking "Sam" when he walks onto the bridge.
You can't see this if you have sigs turned off.
Taking a few years off from the highly profitable series from star trek will help them in the long run I think. Much of the reason that I like star trek was because it was new to me. With each series that goes by, I lose more and more interest in it.
Not to mention that Bakula is entrenched in the minds of most Sci-Fi fans from his role in Quantum Leap. One thing that trek had going for it in the past was that the actors were relatively new to the minds of viewers, and therefore could be easily molded to the character.
A couple seasons of break would allow for the writers to think up new material. In the meantime, Paramount has the other trek shows to put into syndication. Hell, DS9 went into syndication immediately, and I fully expect VOY to follow the same path.
You can't see this if you have sigs turned off.
Scott Bakula is a good actor. What's going on here?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I always wanted to see a non-Starfleet trek show, featuring smugglers and drug-runners and privateers and other scum. Reasons:
1) No super-high-tech-magical technology. Does your average seagoing freighter have all the bells and whistles of an Aegis cruiser? I want to see a dingy, barely-functioning civilian ship with limitations.
2) I want to see real aliens, the kind that you'd find scummy civilian spaceports, way off the main shipping lanes. What's a more interesting place: 24th century San Francisco or Mos Eisley?
4) I want some dumb people to crew a ship, not just the super-geniuses that Trek staffs Federation ships with.
5) I really really want to see the Federation as, if not as outright bad guys, then chasing after the heroes of a story. Perhaps the main characters could have a bounty on their heads for drug smuggling or something, with every other low-life chasing after them for it.
6) I want characters without morals. I want to see telepaths who wouldn't hesitate to invade someone's brain as a main character. I want a captain who's willing to take innocent people hostage to get out of a situation. I want realistic, scared, survival-oriented people as the main characters.
7) An unfair universe. I want main characters to get killed off *permanently*. No time-travel, no alternate universe, no particle-of-the-week magic, no transporter-to-keep-them-alive, none of that crap. I want characters to die dramatic deaths when it would advance the story and make everything interesting.
Yes, I'm stealing many ideas from other shows. But I still want to see them in Trek.
Yeah, well, if you had Sulu, you'd expect Scotty, McCoy, Spock, etc. to appear at various points. Fortunately, you could say that Kirk's dead. :) But, unfortunately, so's Deforest Kelley.
Dammit, Jim, I'm a corpse, not a doctor!
-30-
When you look at the mirrored site, scroll down and look also at the design that was disavowed as bogus. Keep in mind that the coming show is set in the century before the original series; which of the two designs -- the certified one or the disavowed one -- looks more plausibly like a starship that would have existed prior to the original Enterprise?
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
A lot -- it's a really weenie way of coming up with a story. I love(d) ST:Voyager, because what else could be better? True "going where no one has gone before"! Bizarre space-born phenomena! Aliens with weird heads and perky breasts! How intrinsically easy and interesting to write for!
And what do we get? Well, mostly the above, but Voyager had it's share of "holodeck" episodes, which made me gibbering mad. I mean, jeez louise, they're in the Delta quadrant! And you're gonna give me an entire "Captain Proton" episode???
ST:TNG used a couple of crutches -- holodeck episodes and Data episodes. The Data ones weren't too bad, but an entire hour going on and on about Data's quest for humanity was just too much. Leave that for asides and sub-plots.
The new Bakula ST should be good -- no holodeck, for starters... A sort-of Horatio-Hornblower-in-space. And, thank God, the Klingons will be enemies of the Federation again, and also show them at the height of the Empire! W00t!
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Yea, but even if there are challenges, the'll be solved in the last 5 minutes by rewiring the espresso machine through the forward deflector array so it can send a $PARTICLE_OF_THE_WEEK stream to solve $PROBLEM_OF_THE_WEEK.
It just wouldn't be slashdot without someone taking a dig at Microsoft. Forget sci-fi, looks like Bill already controls your every waking thought right *now* -- you can't stop talking about him.
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
but I wish they would use slug throwers
Lets see, bullets flying in a pressurized tin can, completely surrounded by a vacuum.
It would certainly make for the shortest lived Star Trak series....
;)
One thing I really like about TNG, is that when ever the Borg appeared, one got a very serious sense of "from this point forward, our entire civilization as we have known it will be over".
I find the sound track to "The Best of Both Worlds" to fit very well with the mood of the two-part episode. Heck, First Contact also induced the proper mood about the borg.
Voyager seems to have "softened" the Borg, and I don't like that. All of a sudden they're not scarry any more. One doesn't think "Oh shit, I'm gonna be assimilated for sure... my life is over" when seeing them on the screen.
Company uses franchise to make money.
All the news about starships, casts, history, etc. is just window dressing to this simple piece of news.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Hopefully they will avoid the NexGen script flaw of inventing some technology (magic) to save the ship and wrap up the plot in the last 5 minutes. The Original series (TOS) I liked beter because it was more about the people solving the problem instead of the easy way out as previously mentioned. (How much does everyone hate the HoloDeck?!!)
Anyway, what I want to see is more battles - let's face it, watching the enterprise kick butt is alot of fun - TOS vs Klingons, NextGen vs Borg that's what males 12-60 want to see. But please more money on good interesting scripts and less on special effects - Dr. Who stayed around for like 30 years because of that
..........FULL STOP.
The TV Guide article notes that the Universal Translator exists, but is pretty unreliable. The communications officer of the [em]Enterprise[/em], however, is a linguist.
--The basis of all love is respect
The TOS ship will always look too primitive, because the model was primitive. It will always look like a model hanging from strings. The prequel ship will be a CGI model.
However, look at the construction of the vessels. The TOS ship is smooth, almost aerodynamic--it looks like it was built in Seattle by an aerospace firm. The TNG and Voyager vessels are built like luxury liners. The prequel ship looks like its hull is solid steel--no transparent aluminum here. It looks like it was built in Detroit. It looks like it outweighs NCC-1701 by a factor of two, which it should.
Look again at the picture. The prequel ship is missing the entire engineering section--no cylinder at the bottom. It's not grand and beautiful--it's hard and functional. It looks more complicated because it should, and because the TOS ship is so simple due to the series budget.
One thing that viewers are going to have to deal with is that, while the technology of the stories is backwards, the technology of the actual production is much better than the TOS. A good way to think of it is that our views of the TOS episodes is "low res", but in the prequel we will have a high-res view of a low-tech universe.
--The basis of all love is respect
The supposed Great Klingon Transmogrification would have happened in Kirk's era, between the series and the first movie. Not a line in any movie mentioned anything funny happening to Klingon foreheads. When asked, Roddenberry said that Klingons always had bumpy foreheads, but they didn't have the makeup budget back in 1969.
What they should do is go with Roddenberry's explanation.
The two strains of Klingons theory is inconsistent with the DS9 episode where three individual Klingons, shown in the original series with smooth foreheads, were shown with forehead bumps.
Of course, doing it the Roddenberry way will be inconsistent with the "Gump Trek" episode of DS9, but Worf's "We don't talk about that" brushoff, and everyone's surprise at smooth-foreheaded Klingons, was a stupid way of dealing with the problem anyway. The transition from smooth to bumpy foreheads happened within the memory of many people alive at the time of DS9, specifically, Dax and the three Klingons mentioned above. It's as if Communism caused Russians to have bumpy foreheads, and no one remembered that Russians had normal foreheads before 1917.
(What they ought to have done for "Gump Trek" was digitally bumpify the foreheads of the "original series" Klingons. Except Darvin, of course. Alternatively, leave off Michael Dorn's makeup and never mention it, but have everyone on the space station immediately recognize him as a Klingon.)
(Lest anyone think I hated the "Gump Trek" episode, no, I thought it was a hoot. I just thought they botched the Klingon thing.)
-------
Caimlas
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Personally, i'd love to see them drop the whole episodic series concept for a while and go to miniseries with large budgets. Give us a rest from these "second-hand" treks for a little while.
I would have also loved to see an Excelsior series - The ship seems to have a lot of history with it, and it's right in there in perhaps the most interesting (imho) era of trek. and maybe they could have gotten George Tekei to sign on.
However.. I'd like to know, of the trek fans out there, how would you prefer to see the series live on?
1: A new series.. if so, with what plotline?
2: Forget voyager ever existed?
3: Star trek miniseries?
4: Just movies?
5: Something else?
Slashdot something useful.
Management is not a tunable parameter.
I forgot to mention - it was touched on in one of the books that the first "Q" was Trelane, from The squire of Gothos. So, it may come to pass that we see some Q, but not identified as "Q".
The romulan war hasn't happened yet in this timeline, according to an article i read. im sure it will be a point of conflict later in the series - and it may be a great one, if properly executed.
I'm going to wax theoretical..
I hope the klingons have their nose ridges, for one, and their sense of "Honor". I've always thought of it kind of like this.. Perhaps the klingons from the original series, identified as being from the planet "Khlinzahi", were an offshoot bunch - Klingons, without honor, perhaps some form of half-breed (perhaps with romulans? It might explain why they were allies in most of TOS [They shared the same ship design]).. If i remember correctly, they seemed to have some romulan personality traits. Somewhere between TOS and TMP, the klingons from Qo'nos became dominant again, either through politics (Perhaps all of the old klingons were from another "house") Perhaps thats why we see the "Old" klingons as the "modern rendition". Perhaps it was considered so dishonorable that klingon blood mixed with romulan blood that Worf mentioned "We don't speak of it.".
Slashdot something useful.
Management is not a tunable parameter.
But they did have a holodeck, eventually. Didn't you ever see the animated series? There was one episode where they went to the holodeck, and I remember McCoy at the controls. Instead of the TNG 'Arch', it was some washing-machine type setup. IIRC, Kirk or someone fell down a trap set in the forest. So much for safety protocols.
-- "Is this death or is this Ohio?"
http://www.techfx.org/ent-touched.jpg. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Here's a thought; watch the damn show before passing judgement.
I, too, wish they would go with a smaller ship with a more primitive look. It should definitely have a crew smaller than 430, maybe only 100-150. It should be cramped, like a submarine. It should have larger, inefficient engines. Was dilithium discovered yet (allowing greater power), or did they just have basic matter/antimatter? No transporter technology yet.
I don't even like that they're calling it "Enterprise" to begin with. Why wasn't this Enterprise hanging on the wall in Picard's ready room, or pictured on the rec deck in ST:TMP with the others? It also ticks me off that the writers of the series don't take pointers from the novelists, who come up with much better explanations for alot of the things in the Trek universe. Why make up something bizarre and new when a better, more elegant explanation (that would work just as well) already exists? *sigh*
The Vulcans already had a warp ship by the time they met Cochrane, and the Romulans split well before then. The Romulans are definitely capable of warp technology, though they may not have built it yet. I think they're relatively xenophobic.
I have zero tolerance for zero-tolerance policies.
Constitutionally Correct
I forgot to say, of course, that such a crossover episode would require the NX-01 Enterprise to travel back in time to the 1960s, where it would accidentally ram an even bigger NCC-1701 Entrtprise from the future that had just beamed aboard a USAF pilot destined to make the first trip to Titan, who was Captain Archer's great-grandfather....Just think, T'Pol could be Spock's grandmother and he would logically have to kill her just to see how the paradox played out...boy will Sam be confused trying to figure all of this out on the fly.....
C'mon, Scott Bakula's not THAT bad. Quantum Leap won a slew of awards and actually had some fairly thought-provoking episodes. For example, there was the one where he beamed into a Mercury Program chimp and sat in a cage with a diaper on for the whole episode. His potrayal of one of the first primates in orbit around the Earth certainly prepared him to potray one of the first primates to leave Earth's solar system. Besides, think about the fun of an Enterprise / Quantum Leap crossover episode. Sam beams into Captain Archer and looks in a mirror and sees....himself!!!
> The question is, what OS will they use on the prop computers?
Don't know, but I guess the database will be Oracle 8i Enterprise Edition. Sorry. That was inexcusable.
Get a life, everyone knows that the first "starship" enterprise was the enterprise shuttle prototype. And what about The USS Enterprise, aircraft carrier? Just because it wasnt mentioned in a show, or a manual, doesnt mean it couldnt have existed.
Personally this is the first trek series I have been interested since TNG. I never cared much for DS9 or Voyager. And just because Bakula is known for Quantum Leap is no reason he can't do a good job. Hell, if anything it means he CAN do a good job. It's not the actors fault if the viewer can't let go of the past. As for the ship, well, the disc is a little to Next Generation, but it looks cool.
--
Digitize me, Fred!
-- skantman
According to IMDB A.T. Montgomery gets to play Ensign Travis Mayweather. What sort of eejit thinks up a name like that? Enid Fecking Blyton?
--The opinions contained in this document are in no way expressed.
No no, according to TOS, Cochrane was FROM Alpha Centauri; he was a Centaurian.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Let me explain this even slower: HE SHOULDN'T HAVE BEEN ON EARTH AT ALL.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Seconded!!!
Of course, the REAL question is... Klingons: forehead ridges or no? They may be forced to answer the question of why the Klingons "don't like to talk about that"!
Freedom: "I won't!"
That's got to be difficult, though. Keep in mind that to make something that in any way resembled the TOS Enterprise would look quite cheezy.
/Brian
Hmmm... early Trek history, no Federation, underexplored galaxy... why do I suspect we'll see a lot of...
Red red shirts
Don't let it be you
'Cause what they go through
Ain't no fun at all
Red red shirts...
Shot to the head
The first to be dead
As we all know
That we all know
I'd have thought that in time
They'd get too smart to wear red
For that yeoman feeling bold
Time to make the switch to gold
(etc... either the Neil Diamond or UB40 versions will do)
/Brian
No. I was actually young enough to watch reading rainbow yet old enough to watch TNG -- he picked up TNG well into his time on RR. In fact, he even did a Trek-themed episode during the early second season of TNG.
/Brian
They may have to. Continuity on TOS was dreadful -- I think Starfleet had at least four different names in the first season.
/Brian
The only way I can see for them to pull it off is if they they boldly avoid going where they've already gone before. Hmmm...I like that, in a twisted kind of way. I feel a Saturday Night Live parody comming on...
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I seem to recall an episode in which Kirk died on a space walk, but the crew regenerated him from a transporter matrix. Star Trek has never been hard sci-fi.
I've begun watching the Real World, and have decided that I am going to start dressing and speaking like the cast members... I have plans for a convention next year... also these 'cell phones' look intriguing, but are far too advanced for us... what with people actually answering calls...?
"If voting could really change things, it would be illegal. " - Revolution Books, NY
- Bad science. OK, this isn't PBS. But can we at least get writers who know that a "planetoid" is not a kind of planet and that burnt hydrogen (commonly known as water) is not a rare substance? And even when the science is totally made up (like transporters) it at least needs to be consistent ("We don't have energy to replicate food! We'll have to transport it from the planet's surface!"). Yeah, I know, most TV viewers don't care. But SF fans are not most TV viewers.
- Idea Cowardice. When you get an interesting Basic Premise, give it time to work, and don't abandon it the moment it gives you problems. Idea: give the characters families and make them part of the story. (Naw, can't put children at risk.) Idea: A Warp Drive Crisis! (Naw, too hard to write around.) Idea: Give the Captain a girlfriend! (What?! You want to pay another regular? Dr. Crusher can fill in when he gets horny.) A society that has evolved beyond greed! (Hey, careful, some of our sponsers are Republicans!)
- Lazy storytelling. Not just "magic". Using the same gimmicks over and over. The worst one is time travel -- since it's paradoxical, the story doesn't have to make sense. Which is why we get more and more time travel episodes!
- Brainless imitation. It shouldn't suprise me -- Hollywood hates taking risks -- but it's painful to watch. Just because there's a successful movie with planet-obliterating aliens and gigantic space battles, doesn't mean the same thing will work on Star Trek. Not every cop show needs car chases or running gun battles, and not every space opera needs to be Independence Day or Star Wars.
- Dweebish characters. Need I elaborate?
- Preaching. OK, the Big Message has always been an important part of Star Trek stories. But it doesn't work as the whole story!
- Enough with the damn Holodecks. These people are part of my fantasy life. I don't want to know about their fantasy life.
- No more trekkie stories. If people who make Star Trek into a pathetic kind of religion want to write "fanfiction" let them post it on the web. Nobody else wants to watch TV shows or movies written by overenthusiastic amateurs. Take some money out of your sfx budget and spring for some real scriptwriters.
What's really sad is that I won't be able to resist watching the new series -- even though I know I will see all of the above!__
The romulan war hasn't happened yet in this timeline, according to an article i read.
2156: First Romulan war
2161: Formation of the Federation.
Assuming that the new Enterprise is a Federation ship, as opposed to just an Earth ship predating the Federation, what you've said doesn't make sense. Unless you're confusing the first Romulan war with the second.
Windows.net with setup wizards and clippy on all the terminals from the Microsoft federation of planets sponsored by the Corporate States of American. %80 of the crew are mcse's who's only job is to hit the reset button when the bsod appears and just to barely keep the ship running. The other %10 are microsoft certified salesmen who's job is to force windows.net and office.net and space.net into everyone's throat. The last %10 actually run the ship and have real space like duties.
Sadly I believe in a century form now corporations will become the next communist party in which they monitor everyone like 1984 and sponsor space programs like the enterprise to sell more windows based products. Bill would be thrilled if he could spy on everyone to make sure we were license compliant and with msn messenger and the spyware in windowsXP, it looks like he will get his wish.
http://saveie6.com/
TrekWeb has a bunch of links to various information on Enterprise including first looks of the sets. BTW, I am not affiliated with trekweb so I don't care if you don't check them out either.
http://www.corona.bc.ca/films/TP/scoops/scoops.htm l
The reason I think they had to do a prequel is that they've totally screwed up the technological level of the future. In the star-trek future, you have super-shields and weapons, you can travel in time, you can use wormholes, etc, etc. Its pretty difficult to write stories where there are abolutely no challenges.
If you're talking about the novel Q Squared, which is the only place you might get such a fallacy. Trelane could hardly be the first Q, since his two parents were also Q's!
The Q's have been around before man, this was I think explicitly stated in a ST:TNG episode but I can't remember which. Either way, John De Lancie rules.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
http://www.section31.com/protected-images/et-tease -1.jpg
Is that a Hanes cotton T-shirt our Enterprise Captain is wearing? =P
Bah, this is ridiculous. Even though the older Enterprise is properly designed (it looks like a design ancestor of the Reliant, which was an older ship than the Original-Series Enterprise). I don't like the "NX-01" designation. Enterprise's 1701 has always made me curious. I believe the numbering system must be as follows, first two digits indicate class of ship it is a part of (all the Enterprises have been in the heavy cruiser class) - that is, heavy cruisers (in TOS, the "Constellation Class") must start with 17. Then it is number 01 of that series (which may start with 00 for all we know, maybe the Lexington). Of course, this is ALL out of my ass and I don't know the truth of it. I would, however, suggest that the NX designator is generally used for experimental or prototype ships (Excelsior: NX-2000), not for standard ships of the line. Of course, at this early date, the Enterprise may well be experimental!
All I can say is, it will take a LOT of cunning and creativity to do this right. Think about it - they have to bring it into date with modern special effects, BUT they also have to make it look more primitive than the Original Series, shot in 1966-68!! I personally don't think "Enterprise" will have enough design talent on board to accomplish this feat. For instance, I expect to see transporters, even though it is established ST universe canon that they were not around at Kirk's time! Read John M. Ford's excellent novel, "The Final Reflection", which was set "a couple years before he (Kirk) was born" (quote). It was at this time the transporters were declared safe to use for the first time in the Federation, though the Klingons had them first. However, we're probably going to see the Enterprise crew beaming everywhere, probably with a transporter that works as nicely as ST:TNG's one. Oh well.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
I'm an old school trekkie, but I'm a bit illogical about what I consider canon. Basically, if it's one of the official ST novels, it's canon. But if it's stupid, silly, or runs counter to Gene's vision of ST ("Spock's Brain", some TNG episodes, pretty much all of Voyager starting at Season 2), then it's explained away with "alternate universe" and is not canon.
Either way, Ford had a far more interesting take on the ST world. I much prefer his Klingons to the ones we finally wound up with. After all, they ARE a SPACEFARING RACE. The folks who developed them for TNG and onwards seem to not realize this fact. Yes, it's "cool" to make Klingons stupid and gutteral and disgusting. But they figured out space travel on their own! I think they are worthy of the respect Ford treats them with. =) To my imagination at least, his take is the correct one. That is to say, I think if Gene had an equal sample of Berman and Ford in the same medium, and had to choose, I think Gene would pick Ford for creative talent. =)
Thanks for reminding me of the Constitution/stellation (I can NEVER remember which is the class and which is the ship!) and the Republic. I guess I'll need to reconsider my theory!
Cheers,
Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
The starship I can live with, though I would prefer something like an obvious predecessor to the Enterprise. (less streamlined - bigger engines that are less efficient etc)
I am more concerned these guys will change history as it has been portrayed through the 3 series (don't count voyuer) and the movies.
I am also concerned that this new "alien" in the background isn't the typical "must one-up the last series - (borg to dominion to 8472 etc) syndrome that we have seen before. I would think it great if it were the "Q" as we could have series cross-over "history" - but please no - We go to the future plots.
I was always under the impression that is what the Federation that met the Klingons, not the Earth itself (iow - the Federation existed).
Oh well, hopefully the Klingon ships keep their basic layout, and the Romulans don't pop up soon (they should barely be in space by this timeline)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Trek Geek 1 - A cell phone doesn't contain all the equipment and circuitry you'd need to actually contact an orbiting starship from the surface of a planet.
Trek Geek 2 - Ah, but your forgetting the minimum diameter of any given transtator component in TOS, which has to be at least--
Trek Geek 3 - We can also assume that the Eugenics wars wiped out a lot of 20th century technology, such as the minaturized components necessary for--
Me: *BLAM* *BLAM* *BLAM*... Well I just made the world a better place. Now what do I do with the bodies?
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Yes, but I bet the cellphone that's 1/3 the size of your flip-phone isn't powerful enough to reach from a planet's surface to an orbiting spaceship without using repeater towers. Think more along the lines of a satellite phone.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
People were irritated with DS9 and Voyager because they focused specifically on action and special effects. When that didn't work they swung to the other extreme of becoming cardboard cutout soap operas. (Remember the whole Worf/Dax thing? Shudder.) TNG had that perfect balance of action and interpersonal relationships.
But what DS9 had that TNG comepletely missed out on was depth of plot.
In TNG you got 37 minutes of story (74 if it was a two-parter) that was wrapped up neatly in the end. There were one or two plotlines per episode and that was it. The best exception to this rule of thumb were the series of episodes surrounding the Klingon succession and Worf's family.
With DS9 you got a whole series with several major plotlines weaved throughout for the duration. You had Bajor vs Cardassia, Federation vs. Dominion, Wormhole Aliens and the Prophets, Alternate Reality with the (very naughty but oh-so-fun) "bad" Kira, and so on. These were major themes from the beginning until the end, and they kept the series interesting. It was what compelled me to keep watching, even though they had a couple bad eipsodes. It created a sense of investment in the series.
Don't get me wrong, I liked TNG. Voyager I could forget about (and largely I did). But I think that DS9 was the best of the four series.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
But why a prequel?
To show George Lucas how it's really done.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
Without the all-powerful technology that is the central theme to most recent Star Trek stuff, they would have to focus on interpersonal relationships, cultural reactions to space travel, societal change, the formation of interplanetary alliances, etc.
It's funny... a lot of diehard trek fans didn't like ds9 and voyager because they felt it was going in that very direction (more relationships, less blasting the aliens). I still like TNG best overall, though a few melodramas arn't going to keep me from watching this new serries...
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The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
Why a prequel? In my opinion, two words: Rick Berman
- harborpirate -
// harborpirate
// Slashbots off the starboard bow!
These sets are too techy-sweepy-steely-gloomy.
I liked the it's-on-a-stage-set-in-burbank look of the original series.
I finally saw GATTACA the other night on the skiffy channel. You know what my favorite part of it was? They went to space in single-breasted suits. Not jumpsuits. Not moonsuits. Not lycra leotards and polyester toreador pants. Single-breasted GQ serge with coordinated ties and well-shined wing-tips.
They didn't climb a gantry or strap themselves into G-force cots. They walked from a hallway through one circular pressure door, sat in their stadium-style leather theater seats, and smiled at the stars out the window.
So get rid of the metal grate. I want a nice linoleum running all through the ship's decks. Maybe some shag wall-to-wall carpeting in the captain's quarters. 400 years of progress and you think humankind won't be bringing their lifestyles into space?
--Blair
The similarity is really remarkable. Could it be that we are dealing with an old-fashioned canard?
Okay, so I used to be as big a Star Trek fan as the next teenage geek without a social life, but I've sort of had better things to do recently, and the last couple of series haven't exactly floated my boat in terms of storyline, quality or acting. It seems the Star Trek is decaying with all the inevitability of uranium 235.
But why for the love of God did they pick Scott Bakula to play the captain? Have they never seen Quantum Leap!? Not only did it feature some of the most hackneyed, unoriginal plot lines seen on TV, but the acting made The Dukes of Hazzard look like an Oscar winner! Scott Blatula has all the emotional range of Pinocchio, without any of the novelty extending body parts! If you thought Janeway reminded you of a Dalek in terms of acting skill, just wait and be amazed!
Making the fifth installment of such a long-running show is incredibly tricky. Hiring third-rate actors is not making it any easier. I'll watch the pilot, but any hopes I had plummeted when I heard the news.
Could be fun; I found all the sequel series rather sterile (and what was with that teak woodwork on the bridge of TNG?)
"What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
In the first pilot (with Captain Pike) they had laser pistols, so I can see them sticking with that, but I wish they would use slug throwers, they're much more effective weapons. Laser beams don't have any stopping power!
"What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
Go on, slashdot them, too :)
"What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
Yes, they certainly should have tried to make the ship look more primitive then TOS Enterprise; instead this one looks more "modern" then NCC-1701D...
1. Something -- anything -- that doesn't suck. Since Deep Space 9 and Star Trek: Generations, the suckage of everything produced under the Star Trek trademark has increased monotonically.
2. Something that I can talk about in public without seeming like a social outcast. Maybe they should do a sitcom -- "Star Trek: Friends" with the lovely Jennifer Aniston as Yeoman Rachel.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
If the female trekkies of the universe think like the female trekkies I work with (and the one I'm married to ;-), they're all in agreement that Scott Bakula is "a major hottie." Even middle-aged women agree: Scott Bakula flat-out turns on the ladies.
/.er was caught off-guard when his female boss dropped this bomb. Before the trolls come out of the woodwork, I have to issue the standard disclaimer: as a guy, I don't check out other guys, blah blah blah. So, after a rather unscientific poll of the females I know, I've come to the conclusion that chicks dig Scott Bakula. QED.
/. care to help prove this whack theory of mine?
YMMV, of course, as this heterosexual
Would the ladies of
Even superheroes once were losers
And now for some commentary from Chris Pike himself: "Boop. Boop boop. Booooop. Boop. Boop boooooop boop. Boop. Boop."
There is a unidentiified vessel approaching. "On screen!" - Oh no, it's the rumored slashdot vessel! "Bridge to engineering" - Engineering here, go ahead... "Shut down all webservers right away, we're about to be slashdotted". And there the saga ends... ;)