Star Trek

I don't know much of what we see in DS 9 is Dax more so than Jadzia. Aside from the fact that she joined Starfleet academy before the joining we do not see anything about her.

All we know is she was shy smart Cute Bookworm type. We never meet her family, never see someone who knew Jadzia before Dax and see them comment on the changes and such.

With Ezri we get all that and more.

As far as we knew in "The Host" nearly all Trill were joined, making it a major part of their society. As well, they never really explained what the host mind experiences while controlled by the symbiont. It could be euphoric or you can communicate with the symbiont and argue for certain actions, so you're not completely at their mercy.

The DS9 version was different in many ways, one, because of the joined personality and two, symbionts were established as comparatively rare and made that aspect of their culture somewhat elitist.

One of my favorite ways Improvised Star Trek tweaks the source material is that they have a joined Trill on their crew who was Joined late, to the most perverted worm in Trill society. The resulting change in his behavior got the former rising star Commander dishonorably discharged, but he was able to successfully argue that since the Joining creates a new merged person, he could have a go at a second career. However, he had to start at the bottom again.

Okay, yeah, I'm going to go with "The trill worm has all the memories of the previous hosts, but it only shares the ones the previous hosts would have wanted the new one to have from someone else. Anything the hosts want kept secret is theirs to keep, unless they decide to give their secrets away during the ritual."

That way it makes more sense. Kurzon obviously didn't want Jadzia to know how he felt.

So Star Trek: Timelines just launched as a mobile game today.

It takes ages to load the app.

I was surprised to find that John DeLancie does at least the introductory narration, but not very, because John DeLancie will do pretty much anything for Star Trek.

edited 14th Jan '16 6:09:26 PM by TParadox

Star Trek Borg was a damn good star trek game, Q was the only way it worked too.

I love watching and listening to John De Lancie, it's the joy of watching someone quite clearly enjoying their job.

His performances in things like Borg, Spock Vs. Q, and this new game seem to be slightly different from when he's on an episode. Campier?

It's a shame that Starfleet doesn't have Commodores by the 24th century. Sisko was doing at least a Commodore's job by season 4 (my father's said that Worf's job description of "coordinate the fleet in the strategic area" should make him a rear admiral).

And I think we've talked in here about how Next Gen would have been more realistic if Picard had been made a Commodore at some point with his senior staff commanding ships in his detachment.

Commodores never really fit in the Real Life US Navy. Anything above the O-6 is flag rank and thus and Admiral. A lot of Captains were promoted to Commodore after World War Two and when the war ended, most were either proper Admirals or retired.

In a show like Star Trek, a rank like "Commodore" is usually a paper-pusher. Can't have the heroes pushing paper no can we?

The only Commodore I can think of was Matt Decker, who had a ship to lose.

The way Commodore was explained to me is that it's just slightly above Captain, to the point that it was often given as an honorary rank to a post-Captain who was temporarily on a ship he wasn't in command of.

I believe the rank shows up on Okudagrams a couple of times in early TNG.

It's certainly a real world rank but in general there isn't an obvious distinction between Commodore and an Admiral in terms of responsibilities. It's simpler to understand that a Captain is in charge of a starship and an Admiral is a Captain's superior. It might actually work if there is a well established starbase and a Commodore is the fleet coordinator stationed there, but Star Trek has always been about the frontier, even DS9.

Well, Sisko had responsibilities well above a captain's pay grade. If Star Trek didn't have it in mind that all Admirals are meddling paper pushers at best, he'd be one.

The guy he works directly with once war starts is probably the most active admiral who isn't scheming to take over anything.

IIRC, the writers considered promoting Sisko to Admiral, but then they realized that since the fans didn't like that Sisko started as a Commander, that they wouldn't take his promotion well.

It's kinda like calling a leader of a kingdom a princess and not calling a Queen, we have a trope for that somewhere. A captain is a better fit as The Captain.

Personally I think they should have taken the 'person in command of the ship is the captain' Naval thing farther and made him officially an admiral but still referred to him as captain on the Defiant and station.

He was a commander because it was a podunk station in the Boonies, Alpha Quadrant that wasn't even a proper Federation outpost, just a Federation presence on a station owned by a planet receiving humanitarian aid while they rebuilt their society.

Deep Space 9 was basically Babylon5 with all the personality removed.

Not quite, some of the ideas were-if the rumors were true-copied some ideas.

The Prophets are not the Vorlons: the Prophets are more like The Watcher. Until Sisko asks for their help-even then their was a price tag attached.

Babylon Five was a sci-fi version of Lord Of The Rings. Watch B5 and then LOTR (or the other way around) and you'll see it. Mr. Morden, Londo=Biibo/Frodo, President Clarke=Saruman

Deep Space Nine had to wing it. They dropped hints of the Dominion, but they almost lost it to middling ratings. Unlike Voyager or Enterprise, Ira Steven Bher and co had a plan....

They just had some flops of eps (looking at you Profit and Lace...Let He Who Is Without Sin).

And the Klingons and Worf arc was a bit of an asspull, but it worked.

edited 26th Jan '16 12:17:31 AM by TairaMai

None of the parraels that you mentioned beetween B5 and LOTR are really true apart from some very small similarities. And as far as I'm concerned, DS 9 was a poor man's B5 (even if it technically had more production value), no matter how much it's fans would like deny it.

I never watched Babylon 5, so I can't give an opinion from an informed position on that part. However, I do know, that the guy with the Polish last name who created B5 and his writers agreed that the two drifted far enough apart in content after the second season of DS 9 that any initial ripping off was no longer there.

Writers crib from each other all the time anyway. There's even a legal term for it protecting a Frivolous Lawsuit over superficial similarities, "Scenes-a-faire" or roughly "Scene that must happen." It's completely possible that two separate groups of people develop the same basic idea with no known input from the other, because there are only so many ways to depict a similar topic. One of the most famous cases on that was Fort Apache, The Bronx with Paul Newman, where a novelist claimed that his book Fort Apache (the real life nickname of the Bronx police precinct) was illegally used as the basis for the film, citing the murder of two cops and the presence of prostitutes, cockfights, drunks, Irish policemen and foot chases as being similar. The lawsuit was thrown out, citing "Scene-a-faire."

I don't know much about Babylon 5, but given Star Trek's pre-existing history (Wolf 359 factors immensely in the DS9 backstory) I'd imagine there can't be too much that is exactly like B5 without B5 emulating something from Star Trek as well.

Babylon Five was a homage to LOTR but DS 9 was more grounded in Star Trek.

While even JMS acknowledged that there was some cribbing, it was obvious by seasons 2 of each show that things had gone far enough apart that most fans DGAF.

Now the one episode that did get everyone riled up was a fan e-mailing a trojan/worm to JMS. It erased a lot of his files and left the message "Star Trek Rules" on his CONFIG.SYS file. This person had posed as a member of the fandom/convention community.

This guy was 4chan before 4chan. Yes, even back then the trolls were trollin.

Of course a few year latter even the comic strip Over The Hedge poked fun at it: the turtle and the raccoon getting a fight over B5 vs DS 9.

Just a spot of trivia from the B5-DS 9 Fandom Rivalry.

Another campily insane Star Trek summary on Netflix, this time for The Voyage Home:

Reminds me of the newspaper tagline for Star Trek VI: The Battle for Peace has Begun!....