Star Trek

That she does. She also agrees that Janeway was probably nuts.

Mulgrew herself is good. I've never counted Janeway's issues as a condemnation of Mulgrew.

Certainly, but I'm saying that under a different actress Janeways issues would be a lot more problematic purely from a writing standpoint. Instead Mulgrew conveys in many episodes that Janeway is emotionally struggling with the moral issues Voyager has faced, which makes it almost Canon that she is close to a psychotic break.

I would say among the main captains, Janeway is the one you don't want to piss off because she will take it personally and make you suffer for it.

The original actress for Janeway, Genevieve Bujold would have had a...very different interpretation. I've seen snippets of her acting in the original pilot and she came off as completely terrified of everything. It was probably a side-effect of a way more demanding production than she was used to (she was never a TV regular, mostly doing movies), but her version would probably have seemed on the edge of sanity in a different way.

It certainly does seem like she's overwhelmed, but apparently she would spend a long time (time they couldn't afford) before each take with her eyes shut getting into character so she could believe she was in space while the camera rolled. Maybe the clips they made public were not the most illustrative of that.

Ultimately, the character that was needed wasn't the character she wanted to play.

Berman was candid that Bujold was hired by the studio because she was an academy nominee, but he always had doubts because TV is a grueling pace. She only did two or so days of filming and had a meltdown because she had so much material to learn and strangers were fixing her hair in between takes, so the footage they released is probably all they got. The "terrified of everything" look was probably real. Mulgrew said because she was hired so late that all she could do was walk on the bridge like she owned the place.

Some interesting news via Hollywood Reporter

"The new deal comes as rumblings about another Star Trek series, featuring Patrick Stewart reprising his role as Star Trek: The Next Generation's Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, have been heating up. Sources say Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsman, who left Discovery after season one, are attached to the Stewart-led reboot. CBS TV Studios declined to confirm the Stewart project as sources say a deal is far from completed and may not happen despite the fact that the actor recently teased his potential return to the franchise."

edited 19th Jun '18 12:55:05 PM by BorneAgain

Wow, I'm suddenly in a very confrontational mood on many different fronts.

As much as I'd enjoy seeing Picard again, I'd rather the resources be put into something that doesn't reprise anything that's been a solid moneymaker for decades.

edited 19th Jun '18 4:43:56 PM by TParadox

This is American video entertainment we're talking about. You expect better? I can't say I disagree. I actually liked Discovery after it started growing. But I would still watch a Picard project.

RIP Harlan Ellison

Obviously his script for City on the Edge of Forever and authorship of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream are what he's best known for, but almost all of his fiction his worth a read if you get the chance.

His Xenogenesis essay is also worth checking out, especially given the current discussion and controversy about toxic fandoms.

There is a documentary series on Netflix "The Toys that Made Us." It's not a perfect series, pacing is off, jokes get old, entire decades get skipped, but overall it can be a fun watch.

Anyway, they had an episode on Star Trek and focused mostly on just how clumsily the toys have been handled over the years. The biggest thing I thought was interesting was that it wasn't until the 90's that fans got some genuine, screen accurate props from the franchise. Most toy companies with the license opted to switch stickers on generic laser guns, it wasn't until the mid-to-late 70's that they had some actual toys that at least resembled the props on the show (the communicator looked semi-accurate, but was a real walkie talkie with a three foot antenna). The most successful toys were the very accurate AMT model kits, and I also didn't know that AMT personally built the (mostly) full scale TOS shuttlecraft prop for free. All I knew about them before was that they did sell models of the Enterprise and they were regularly used in the show itself.

Big Finish will be producing some Star Trek audiobooks. They're the studio that rose to prominence on Doctor Who audio dramas, so maybe Star Trek audio adventures are in the future.

James Whitbrook of io9 writes an article on doing a Star Trek show from an alien's perspective.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-dont-we-have-a-star-trek-show-from-the-aliens-point-1827374825

As intriguing as this would be, the reason most Star Trek stories have human leads: so the audience can relate to the characters.

Now a web series with alien characters in the lead could work. Web series tend to find their niche as opposed to broadcast or cable that need to pander to the demographics.

Or just play Star Trek Online and play as either a Romulan or Klingon and see the story from that perspective.

A bigger reason is the make-up. Neelix is the only regular who had more than slight retouches on the ears, nose or brow. And tellingly, antagonists have fuller make-up than Federation members and allies.

Humans as protagonists is inevitable with the original idea that each episode's focus would be the weirdness of the alien of the week. Only DS 9 and now Discovery have tried using recurring parts of the setting for extended stories.

And as a result, most aliens are really just humans with a quirk. To make any race into protagonists, they would have to be given more cultural and individual diversity, while still feeling alien to the audience in some way that impacts the story. And still being relatable on some level. Feasible I'm sure, but breaking hard with franchise tradition.

On the matter of this wiki's perception of Janeway, I think much of it comes from fans of Sci Fi Debris repeating his best lines, as well as hardcore franchise fans who don't like how Voyager compared to other series (normally, it's a work's own fans that edit its entries the most). But I remember that fanzines of the time talked about Janeway's inconsistency.

Edited by Reymma on Jul 17th 2018 at 12:09:28 PM

Discovery S2 trailer

Well, looks like they are really trying to get more people into the series, huh.

I'm all for Pike taking over (and I've heard Dr. Culber is going to return) and am quite interested in what the second season has in store.

So I got my thieving hands on the seventh season of Next Generation (I've seen a few scattered earlier episodes) and may I say that while it feels constrained next to today's television, I'm impressed by how they handled what they could do.

The season has next to no action, but can make intrigue feel deadly in Gambit. Masks is among the best, using artistic care and Brent Spinner's brilliant acting to give tension to a confrontation without violence (in some ways it's like a Doctor Who episode). Eye of the Beholder is very well directed and gets us into Deanna's mind, fitting for when she's peering into another mind. Firstborn packs a lifelong family drama into one episode, and makes it work, even if it opens a whole can of questions. It even succeeds in doing comedy in Genesis. And All Good Things... the time anomaly thing makes no sense, as has been said before, but it just feels right as a conclusion to all they've been through, Q being vaguely helpful, the make-up being impeccable, the transitions between different sets giving it a sense of vast scope, and Picard showing some flaws for once. Though it made me wonder why they didn't change the Enterprise's appearance in those seven years.

Still, the limits of self-contained episodes becomes a big hindrance in Emergence. The ship becoming a thinking entity could have been the backbone of a whole series, seeing it grow from a set of reflexes, to an animal, to a learning child would be wonderful. Instead it has to run its full course and leave no trace within 45 minutes. Meanwhile Pre-Emptive Strike does have lasting consequences, but it seems they will play out in Deep Space Nine and it feels incomplete. The show as a whole is visually bland, with long shots of everyone standing around the same small sets (and they really are very small, as well as too clean). Much of the time I treated it as an audio drama, looking at other things.

Homeward feels like someone is trying to point out the absurdity of the Prime Directive. No anthropologist would allow a people to die off from a natural catastrophe. It would have worked if this was accepted as the limit, but instead it's treated as a violation they have to go with.

Then Homeward. It should be a fine episode, but it made me cringe from start to finish because of the Native American parallel. The parallel is constantly, explicitely made, yet is really quite weak: they've been there only twenty years, and the Federation wants to keep them safe, not take their land. And Wesley's role is just weird.

And the Enterprise's abilities vary as the plot demands. Thine Own Self should not have happened with the sensor power shown in Bloodlines.

All in all it's odd that next year came season 1 of Voyager, beyond doubt the weakest.

I've been reading The Autobiography of James T. Kirk. I wasn't looking forward to catching up to TOS and covering events I already saw in episodes, but it's so focused on what was important to Kirk in those times that it doesn't have the problem I had with the first Red Dwarf book.

Notable retcons so far for the sake of drawing a narrative:

• Kirk never met David, but he knew Carol had had a son. The last time he saw her was when he was about to arrange for his ship to transport them where they were going, and she beamed aboard long to tell him to stay out of David's life.

• Spock was only the science officer in Where No Man Has Gone Before. Gary Mitchell was Kirk's XO until Kirk had to kill him. Kirk chose Spock to replace him because the only officer available who was equally qualified for the position was Ben Finney, and ever since the incident on the Republic, it was no secret that Finney hated Kirk.

Notable retcon for the sake of fixing nitpicks: the Enterprise needed an eight-month refit at the end of Pike's second five-year mission. Kirk found a way to break it into a two-month refit and a six-month refit so the Klingons wouldn't get wind her part of space was unguarded. This is why the ship is different between The Cage, Where No Man, and the rest of the series.

Also, apparently it's deuterocanonical that Hoshi lived on and was executed at Tarsus IV. It was written into the Defiant bio shown on screen in In A Mirror Darkly, but that part was cut off. Goodman included Kirk spending time with her son in the days between his encounter with Kodos and when Captain April and the Enterprise showed up and restored sanity.

Edited by TParadox on Jul 26th 2018 at 5:10:32 AM

So Star Trek Online announced that it’s going to integrate with Discovery with its Age Of Discovery arc coming in September. The tutorial of new Discovery era characters will be with Tilly at her time at the academy and the arcs everyone plays will deal with the Klingon war and the defense / retaking of Starbase 1.

The big part is it will be entirely canon, the overall plot is coming straight from the Discovery writer’s room. So much so that the game’s writers have been informed of what will be coming up in the coming seasons. Yes, plural and they have a plan.

Only Mary Wiseman has been announced so far but more discovery actors will be coming.

What’s interesting is they have said there will be a toggle for Discovery Klingons to make them look like modern, TOS or Discovery Klingons.

Edited by Memers on Jul 31st 2018 at 3:47:35 AM

I don't play the game, but if I did you just sold me on it.

Its free to play btw, extremely fair on the F 2 P scale, the only thing I have spent money on is buying a max level ship which I really didnt need to but I really wanted to rock the Defiant.

But yeah I am really interested in how they are going to line up with the show, Tilly is my fav character of the bunch and after the way they wrote Garak and Quark in the last xpac it should be awesome.

So a friend of mine got a VR system, along with the game Star Trek Bridge Crew. It's my first time doing anything with VR, and the experience was quite fun. The character models are rough, but the sensation of being on a bridge operating the controls was really cool. Ended up doing the Kobyashi Maru.

I've seen a bunch of videos of that game, and it looks really neat. Wish I had that kind of money...