Star Trek

I know, right?

I know Kirk has a reputation of the "shoot first, ask questions later" captain, but Picard is the exact opposite.

He never shoots, even when it would be prudent.

Worf wore too many hats on the Enterprise, mostly inherited from Tasha. Not only are Tactical and Security different departments, but Communications really should be a separate function from Tactical.

Was any post Tactical on Kirk's bridge?

I think Chekhov's might have been.

Oh yeah, he was in charge of firing weapons. I always thought he was Ops, because Ops was up front on the D.

Maybe Weapons were controlled by Ops then. But I know in TMP his station was explicitly something like "Gunner".

edited 1st Dec '14 12:04:34 AM by TParadox

Huh.

A mystery for the ages.

Worf should have been Tactical while Tasha was settled in Security. Two separate stations that don't compete with each other. Being able to shoot a target down a hallway isn't the same as being able to coordinate an offensive with other ships and shoot down hostiles outside. And Tasha had built in room for depth with her engaging in sex with Data. He'd be able to continue on without it disturbing him, and she'd have to deal with the personal fallout, if there was any.

I think technically Chekov was the navigator, Sulu was the helmsman and tactical.

Levar Burton said that from the beginning they were already trying to figure out where everyone was going to be. Gene insisted that the ship was so advanced it could fly itself, once Geordi left half the time a random crew member with no lines took helm, the other half was Wesley (which, ironically, made him more tolerable by giving him busy work).

Regardless it is a prime example of The Main Characters Do Everything.

Yeah, Star Trek The Next Generation was supposed to be in the post-Vietnam War era Armies Are Evil we're not "cowboys" era.

And the show suffered for it.

Denise Crosby was pretty much told that she was there as eye candy. Trek was famous for long hours (10+ hours on set, after makeup). So she left a horrible role (for her) as soon as she felt she could.

I don't blame her. It's not like anyone knew how loosened up the show would become after Roddenberry backed off, and no one should have to endure that much work just to be eye candy.

Yeah, I recall Voyager being able to survive in a dogfight while totally unmanned. Something to do with gel packs or somesuch. The helm is completely redundant by the the 24th century.

Khan and the Eugnics Wars served as a lesson to mankind, that transhumanism and technology were not a fast-track to perfection. And so after another century of disillusionment we turned our eyes to the stars to find a slower path to evolution. But here we are onboard a ship that can fly itself, defend itself, and think for itself. With a pile of holo-emitters and some stem bolts, you don't even need maintenance crew.

I'm starting to think that the Roddenberry utopia was conceptually flawed, just because he lost the plot. There is no human element to any of this. It's as if the Enterprise is a not a ship but a flying cathedral, come to spread the gospel to backward races that haven't yet seen the light.

I don't think the bioneural gel packs had much to do with Voyager flying on automation. They were brand new for Voyager, and the Enterprise-D flew on automation as early as 10011100. Bok set up the Stargazer for total voice command automation so Picard's flashback would have lethal consequences. In Star Trek III, they operated the entire 1701 prime from a half-staffed bridge.

Edit: okay, a dogfight is pretty impressive for automation.

I never really got the idea they knew what to do with the gel pack technology. The idea was that they were making the ship a little cybernetic so they could use the speed of neural computation with the efficiency of a computer (and that sounds pretty suspect as it is), but they never really did anything with that concept other than one or two episodes where the packs got sick. And "Shattered" probably counts, with the same inoculation that lets humans pass through the different time zones also working on the gel packs to reintegrate the ship, but it could have easily been some non-MEDTECH kind of TECH.

edited 1st Dec '14 10:16:10 AM by TParadox

Gene pretty much told Michael Piller: "The people of the future are perfect, now go write drama." Hence the "lack of conflict" and everyone pretty much getting along, at the cost of the plot and characterization.

Gene originally had a theme of "Technology Unchained": the tech of the future would cure all.

This of course ran smack into the Good Old Ways trope that Hollywood was steeped in during The '80s. Hence the technology was perfect, until the plot required it to be broken. "The cold hand of technology" as Pulaski put it.

Hence the Broken Aesop: technology is bad, except for our warp drive, phasers, Picard's heart, Geordi's VISOR and Data.

edited 1st Dec '14 10:48:16 AM by TairaMai

But Picard's heart esploded.

No, he was stabbed and his meat was replaced with a metal one. And he was saved by technology.

But he got zapped and it esploded. And he went on a field trip with Q and decided to stabbed again when he realized blue/green wasn't his color.

Q claimed having an artificial heart made the phaser blast lethal, but then when Picard decided he'd rather die as the man the stabbing made him than live as the wishy-washy paper pusher, he pulled through. Did Q make him survive anyway? Was Q lying about the accident being fatal in order to put Picard through a test of character? Was Q even there at all, or was Picard having a near-death dream? It's all ambiguous.

And some of the best storytelling Trek has ever done.

Didn't that episode win, like, everything? Because it should have.

"Tapestry" and "The Inner Light" generally top the polls of best episodes of Star Trek ever, just below "The Best of Both Worlds."

In the run up to the finale, there was a marathon of the five best episodes of TNG ever, I think selected by fans. I can't remember what was in it, except The Inner Light obviously, and #2 and #1 were The Best of Both Worlds 1&2. I don't think Tapestry was in that event, but it should have been.

Ah, there it is. The other two slots were Relics and Yesterday's Enterprise.

edited 1st Dec '14 2:17:21 PM by TParadox

Inner Light was so popular, it was actually referenced in "Lessons."

I sort of imagine the writer's room shaking, like the Enterprise-D bridge, every time they actually write in continuity.

They wrote a sequel, titled "The Outer Light", where the Enterprise encounters an ark ship the planet launched some time after the probe, and Kamin's wife is still living on it because TECH. It would have been interesting to see Picard have to deal with being a stranger to a woman he loves from someone else's life, but it also sounds like a really, really bad idea.

Relics was such a good episode. I miss Scotty

Shatner's saga on Kirk's second life muses on how so many of his friends managed to make it to the late 24th century. Kirk got caught up in a temporal anomaly, Spock's species just lives that long, McCoy has done everything Starfleet Medical can think of to prolong life to himself, and Scotty was trapped in a machine.

I'm rather amused by Bones's comment that he doesn't dare retire from Starfleet Medical because all his organs have been replaced at least twice and he's afraid if he retires they'll ask for them back.

They had plot armor. TNG felt the need to tie itself to TOS in order to draw in the old-time fans. So of course the old guys would last long enough to appear in the show.

What is the average human life expectancy in Star Trek anyway?