Star Trek

The Prophets are strictly localized in the Bajoran sector, possibly guarding some kind of seal on the Pah-Wraiths so they don't overwhelm the universe.... I'd just like to know what they expected Sisko to do for them when he became a Prophet. Teach them about linear matters?

edited 12th Apr '14 4:14:24 PM by johnnyfog

The whole plan with Sisko, the wormhole, and the pah-wraiths was actually a Xanatos Gambit aimed at getting the Prophets a really good Creole chef to teach cooking in the Celestial Temple.

But Sisko's dad never went to the Celestial Temple... How can he cook food for the Prophets? Maybe you meant "rather decent Creole chef."

edited 12th Apr '14 5:59:50 PM by Swish

All Ben did was skin potatoes and play pianee.

That's it. The Celestial Temple lacks good jazz.

edited 12th Apr '14 7:41:00 PM by johnnyfog

Roberto Orci Lobbying to Direct Star Trek 3

My response◊.

Stumbled across this old thing looking for assets for a photoshop joke that's already been done.

TNG season 1: Worst ever?

I wouldn't have called early TNG cheesy. Awkward, often unfortunate, but not cheesy.

I was surprised to read that there are people who find Tasha's existence annoying. She's a great character with potential we didn't get to see because Crosby felt like Yar wasn't going anywhere without noticing that it was the first season and nobody was going anywhere.

Some of those suppositions are pretty tantalizing.

And you want Worf in his "rightful" place? Break Tactical and Security. Tasha is a great security chief, Worf is a great tactician. Let's say the "Conspiracy" aliens broke up Starfleet's complacency and they decided that ships of the Enterprise's level of importance need a tactician who doesn't have to run off to apprehend people at every intruder alert.

Gah, what if there were more than just Beverly and Deanna around when the show felt like fulfilling its Bechdel quotas?

What other episodes in the first two seasons get it as right as "Heart of Glory"? It's not only a great Klingon episode, it's the first great Klingon episode, and stakes its claim on defining what Klingons are if not the enemy.

I personally agree that TNG season one is the worst season of Trek. I don't feel it has anything to do with the presence of Tasha Yar. It's just the perfect storm of bad scripts, poor direction, and terrible production values. Much like seasons 1 and 2 of Voyager felt like reheating leftover TNG, season one of TNG felt like reheated TOS and that had been sitting in the fridge a whole lot longer.

All of the spinoffs took a couple of years to find themselves. So those early years will be creaky.

If I ever find a portal to infinite Universes, first one I'm hitting is one where Crosby stayed on the show. Just to see how different it would be. The second would be the one that grants me immortality.

It would have been interesting to see her stick around and eventually explore her relationship with Data. I mean . . . she was awkward around him after The Naked Now, and seeing her grow out of that, and maybe even embrace Data for his innocence, would have been an extra layer of sweetness the show could have used to cement more fans.

Picture Data's Day where he and Tasha are both taking dance lessons from Beverly so they can dance together as a couple at the O'Brien wedding.

ETA: Also, IIRC, didn't she leave because she talked to Roddenberry himself about her character growing and got the answer that Roddenberry wanted TNG to be like TOS, with three main characters and an ungrowing supporting cast?

edited 25th Apr '14 6:56:41 AM by Journeyman

I thought the ensemble format was intended from the beginning, as a reality of how television worked in the 80s.

I think it was in the comments that somebody pointed out that Geordie seemed to have a thing for Tasha. That could have given him something to do besides constantly strike out.

It's built like an Ensemble show, and it plays like one pretty much from the start of season two, but it didn't really play like one in season one.

Season one was the Data, Riker, and Picard show. Others got their moments, but it was still more their show at that point.

And then the movies pare it back down to Picard and Data. That's a disappointment about the movies. I like TNG better than TOS overall, but the TOS movies expanded the cast into an ensemble while the TNG movies sharply narrowed the focus.

They were setting things up to be a little more dynamic than that, Roddenberry was trying to recreate something of the same dynamic between Kirk, Spock and McCoy but nothing really settled into a perfect match-up. Picard was at the forefront but his relationship with Dr. Crusher was a major part of those early episodes, somewhat of a sexual tension version of Kirk's relationship with McCoy in how they had history together and she was the only person who could easily speak her mind to him. Picard and Riker together were supposed to equal Kirk (commander/diplomat and adventurer/womanizer) but they grew out of it, in many ways Riker was more stern than Picard.

I think the exact story with Crosby was that she wanted more to do but they told her not to get her hopes up. Everyone got a distinctive Day in the Limelight in the first season: Troi for "Haven," Data for "Datalore," Worf for "Heart of Glory," Geordi for "Arsenal of Freedom" and Yar for "Code of Honor." Wesley and Beverly neither had a distinctive "about them" episode but they did feature prominently in several episodes. Of all those, "Code of Honor" easily the weakest and most embarrassing, and besides the final fight Crosby didn't have much to do in her own episode.

One way I would've helped to characterize Tasha was split the roles of Tactical Officer/Chief of Security between her and Worf, e.g. have Tasha as Tactical Officer and Worf as the Chief of Security or vice-versa. It has never made sense having one officer who did both those things. This would, in turn, make Tasha and Worf into (better) Platonic Life-Partners / Bash Brothers.

And about Wesley, I'd like to think of Anton Yelchin's Chekov as what Wesley should've been: a brilliant young man, yet no more so than his grown-up comrades.

I think they figured out Wesley later, but the damage was done. I saw the show out of order, and I didn't understand why people hated Wesley until I saw a summary of The Battle that focused on the scene where he barges onto the bridge, starts giving orders to Ops, and only after they find something on the sensors does he explain that he was "playing" with them and got a longer range than they do on the bridge.

That's what most people's first impression of Wesley was like. Well, there were episodes before that. The Naked Now is particularly damning, but I think if they were handling him more like they did by Menage a Troi, he would have been better received.

Heck, he's even pretty decent in Datalore, but the damage had been done and everyone just took relish in Picard shouting him down for actually being right.

There were rumors that the Wesley episodes came from general script ideas to be made into ONE episode, but because of the writers strike they all ended up being made into their own episode. By the second season Wesley was a valued member of the crew and care was made to portray him as a smart kid with all the normal hang-ups involved (like "The Dauphin") and not as some uber-genius who knows more than the adults, but that first season left a really bad aftertaste.

The second season was the one hurt by the strike, though. That's why the big Season Two finale is the gorram clip show.

Okay, according to Memory Alpha, Shades of Gray happened because Paramount wanted them to save time and money. Everything I've been taught was a lie.

edited 30th Apr '14 7:12:09 PM by TParadox

Truthfully, I never had a problem with Wesley. He wasn't my favorite character (That would be Worf) but I didn't think he was bad. Just a little bit of a show stealer from time to time, but since he was Roddenberry's pet it's understandable.

I didn't have a problem with Wesley because I formed my opinion of his character on later episodes while I was close to his age, so I didn't notice how obnoxious he was in the first season until long after I learned he had a hatedom.

I'm just glad Wil Wheaton recovered from that hatedom and is still doing TV. He's awesome on Big Bang Theory.

edited 30th Apr '14 7:33:43 PM by Journeyman

I agree, of course in general I don't really get how people can hate a fictional character so much. I was too young to really understand how obnoxious Wesley was in the earlier seasons but I didn't really start watching the show until season three. All shows tend to have annoying aspects, either you keep watching or you don't. Either the show gets better or it gets worse.

As for the writers strike, it's something that affected season one and two in many ways, but not as overtly as one would think. They still had the episode count, but it resulted in a lot of behind-the-scenes drama in addition to the inbuilt "risky revival of a classic series" behind-the-scenes drama. "The Child" was a literal Recycled Script from the Star Trek: Phase II tv show that was never made, modified with the TNG characters.

Season 2 came in a few light, I believe.

Devil's Due is a much later episode and is still recycled from Phase 2. On the one hand, Data is a better arbiter than the Enterprise computer. On the other, Ardra trying to seduce Kirk would have been more convincing than trying to seduce Picard.

So I'm watching one of my TOS DV Ds right now, and I'm in the middle of the second season episode "The Changeling." For those that don't remember which one that is, that's where they take on a probe that destroyed several planets and thinks Captain Kirk is it's builder. During the episode, it kills Scotty and then brings him back to life, and also wipes Uhura's mind. One of the scenes shows Nurse Chapel helping Uhura relearn everything, particularly how to read. At one point Uhura gets frustrated and says something in Swahili to Chapel. This made me start to wonder—if Uhura's mind was completely wiped by that thing (Mc Coy confirms that this is what happens) how does she still know how to speak Swahili when she forgot everything else?

Different type of memory maybe? People with amnesia can retain different languages. It's stored in a similar way to knowledge of how to walk.