When was that stated? Plus he was not even a admiral? So he could only be a aid like Sisko was. They did not even have to show the crew just the ship in the background blasting away. The writers really did miss some stupid things out.
Have you not heard of system upgrades? And who says those classes represented the bulk of the Federation fleet? What evidence do you have that your assertion is accurate? What does the type of ship have to do with specific battle strategies? Ships of a newer class may have superior capabilities, but said superiority has to do with improvements made to computer systems, weapons, and engines. None of those things in and of themselves have anything to do with establishing a tactical advantage. --Sran
Do you actually watch the episodes you cite to back up your arguments? The change in command you're referring to was not an action taken to discipline Picard but a means of assigning a commander experienced in dealing with the Cardassians to the Enterprise while the ship was in close proximity to Cardassian space. It was not a change made lightly, nor was it meant to reflect poorly on the Enterprise crew. Had it been, Jellico would likely have remained in command following Picard's return to Federation space. But don't let facts get in the way of your assertions. --Sran
Totally agree Sran. Even if the Mirandas and Excelsiors are inferior, from TNG and DS9 they are clearly made out to be the bulk of Starfleet. However, it's more than feasable that they are a more than capable design, only being gradually phased out as newer anti-Borg designs were coming online. Were it not for Wolf 359 it's even possible we may have never seen an Akira or Steamrunner, and certainly no Defiant. If you have 3,000 newer classes (Akira etc) and 7,000 older classes (Miranda) you're going to get your ass kicked if you leave the older ships out of the battle line. No matter how advanced the Galaxy Class may be, if you're sending her into battle against 20-1 odds, she's going to go down fast. Just look at Sacrifice of Angels for example. Now, delete all the Mirandas, Excelsiors and Ambassadors from the Federation fleet. The Feds may as well just turn around and go home.
It doesn't need to be stated, its fact. This is simply a nature of the beast. You should consider reading up on such things here: http://www.sagaftra.org/production-center/television/fact-sheet Knowing about the business makes it fairly easy to see how and why things are done without being spoon fed explanations of why decisions are made. We don't need to have full details about the cast members contracts to know what is typical for an SGA negotiated contract. This is generally why you don't see too terribly many crossovers in live action series and when you see them in animations there's often some sort of wonky disconnect (IE when the Fantastic Four crossed into the 90s Spider Man series, they wore different uniforms and had different voice actors even though they were essentially within the same design). Sometimes unions help a lot, sometimes unions make things endlessly difficult =(.
I feel like I am almost pointing out the obvious here, but I may as well just to keep everyone on the same page. Everything up to and including the Galaxy base designs were found to be inferior to the Dominion. Thanks to Wolf 359 almost a decade earlier, the Federation was already well along to upgrading its aging fleet. Essentially by the time the Dominion War came around, the Federation had already reformatted their shipyards to produce stronger ships so each Excelsior era ship that fell or was decommissioned during the Dominion war meant a new generation ship was replacing it. Compared to the Klingons and the Romulans, the Federation were the biggests power in sheer numbers already and realistically only the combined fleets of the Klingons and the Romulans could match the Federation in size, but since the Federation seems to be the only group actively preparing for a war against the Borg, they probably jumped ahead greatly in technology compared to the Klingons and Romulans. At the end of the Dominion War, really, all the Dominion did was gave the Federation a really good reason to put their new fleet into full production. I'm not sure how much the relaunch novels touched on this, but IMHO, that means the Federation should in theory be one the strongest powers in the Galaxy at this point since we have a decent idea whats in all four quadrants.
Wading in to murking waters here. In NEM Riker was given command of a ship we never see. The USS Titan. In 2005 there was a contest for the USS TItan pocket books. To design what the ship would look like. Now this is the books so it's canoncity status is shakey. The Star Trek Online Wiki gives the best description of the ship because it is playable in the game. Also check Memory Beta since Luna class ships are unoffical. http://sto.gamepedia.com/Reconnaissance_Science_Vessel http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Luna_class After the Dominion War, Starfleet commissioned the Luna class ships. Which from the sources above classify them as science and reconnaissance vessels. Remember this is apocryphal since this class of ship was never shown on screen.
Well, they did do a crossover story of sorts during TNG's seventh season and DS9's second with the introduction of the Maquis. It wasn't a direct crossover, and it was pretty lame. An indirect back-and-forth crossover like that would have been nice with an actual good story.
You know, taking into account that SGA series contracts probably into the way of using the main cast more between the two series, something I just thought of that would have added some more coherence to the series would have been to make much more use of the Guest Star contracts. This might be messy to look at, but DS9 had a number of recurring characters that were slated as guests. Without knowing a lot more about the physical contracts themselves (which may have been negotiated fairly strictly) we do have characters like Dukat and Martok that probably could have been used better in crossovers. Heck, Marc Alaimo played the first Cardassian Gul we encountered on DS9. If TPTB were a little better at thinking ahead, Garrick should have been the guy who interviewed Picard in Chain of Command. They could have used his disgrace from that episode was reason for being banished. There are certainly missed opportunities all over the place >.<
Getting to the crossover thing, it really does depend on how the studios want to handle it. NCIS & NCIS LA have regular cross-over with a single character (Vance) appearing in both - pretty much has to be the case as Vance is playing the NCIS Director, so would start to look odd if he's always referred to off-screen! But others pretty much haven't, the whole cast of LA in an NCIS two-parter which was the pilot anyway, then Abby in one LA episode and that's been it. CSI/CSI Miami/CSI New York have had a few cross-overs, even a three-part story where one part took place in each show. But once again, not many. Even Hercules and Xena had few cross-overs, Ares and Autolycus crossed over, Hercules appeared in a couple of Xena episodes and vice-versa, with actors sometimes portraying other characters (Yes Virginia, There Is A Hercules for example). But Trek itself has usually kept out of the cross-over game, apart from the noted exception of Pilots. Encounter at Farpoint, Emissary, and Caretaker all featured a character from the prior show, to indicate to the audience that this is "real Trek". They still fitted in a few such as Kurn, Toral, Thomas Riker, Kang/Kor/Koloth, Barclay and Troi, for example, but I think on the whole the powers simply wanted the different shows to be their own animal. Had they wanted to mention Picard as being more involved in the Dominion War, or had a multi-season spanning arc featuring Thomas Riker taking the Eddington Role in the Maquis, or have DS9 mention that they were following up leads in the badlands that may explain the fate of USS Voyager, they would have.
solariabsg25, you're mixing apples and oranges here. Here's an example of how I've heard the SGA contracts explained to me in the past: An actor is allowed to be cast as a single character in a continued series as a primary character for a standard flat fee per season. That same actor can be asked to play a second character other then the main character in any given episode for half cost, however, if they asked to play a third character in that same episode, they are paid at double the rate. If they are asked to play the established character they signed on for in that season in another series, they're paid at essentially time and a half (Yes, this includes playing mirror versions of the same character). Moreover, I know there's also some provisions in SOME contracts that basically say "If you're dressed and ready to act and the scene takes less than X, it only costs Y", but I know generally speaking, most actors hate signing those sorts of contracts because they tend to get surprise scenes thrown at them at the time. Put in context of "your" job --- I don't think you'd like it much if your job description said allowed your company to randomly go to another location on demand without much notice >.< A lot of this might sound shocking if you've never dealt with SGA (and I don't purport to be any kind of expert, I just have some passing experience with it) but its all logical when you sit back and think about what actors go through for a second. Now AS FAR AS I KNOW --- this applies only to main cast as far as SGA normal contracts go and has been fairly standard since the 80s. There is a whole separate set of guidelines for recurring cast members and as far as I know the only norm there is they contracted to appear in X number of episodes. Weather there is any other weirdness going on BESIDES THAT, I don't know, but I'd expect its on a case by case basis depending on the needs of the character. Then you have guest stars. They are contracted for one episode at a time and there is generally no provisions whatsoever related to other related franchises. So putting this into perspective, let's take a crossover episode: DS9's Premier - Emissary - Patrick Stewart being in that series meant he was being paid time and a half for that episode. If they could have done without him, they could have easily paid lesser known actors to fill out a lot more of the pilot or used the savings on the acting budget for something else. Lets face it, by the time Season 6 rolled around, Patrick Stewart was making damned good money and that was probably one of the most expensive parts of the acting budget for that episode. So, Solariabsg25, to break down your list there: - Kurn, Toral, Kang, Kor, Koloth and Barclay were only ever guest stars. They would have had ZERO - Riker and Troi completed there contracts on TNG by the time season 3 of DS9 hit. At that point, they would have been treated as guest stars.
No, you missed my point. I wasn't talking specifically about the SGA contracts, just the general issue of using established characters. Many shows (Trek and the others I mentioned) have used cross-over characters. If Trek had wanted to use Thomas Riker, or Picard, or Troi more often, I don't think they'd have cared too much about paying the SGA salary that was required if they felt the choice of character was necessary. They seem to have just made an artistic choice to limit the use of characters in cross-overs. The only rights-based issue I ever heard discussed was the Locarno/Paris situation, where for all intents and purposes the characters were almost identical, yet they went for a different name, even though they used the same actor. Whether that was a rights choice (not wanting to pay the creator of the Locarno character for his use) or an artistic choice (they felt Locarno was a douche and beyond redeeming) I don't know. Doctor Who has a rights issue thing where creators of various monsters have to be credited and/or compensated for their use if they turn up in the show at a later date (Daleks and Cybermen being the prime examples). I don't know if the issue is similar in Hollywood, only knowing the examples that Fox fought tooth and nail to try to not have any acknowledgement of HR Giger in Alien 3, and had to pay Micheal Biehn a shedload of money to simply use his image in the movie. I've as of yet never heard anything that would indicate they dropped a cross-over idea as it would have meant paying the cross-over actor too much, but of course that may have also happened, and it's practical - why use Picard when you can use Admiral Ross and do the same job cheaper, with a guest star who has been specifically picked for the recurring role?
The thing is, shows have a budget. IIRC (someone around here might have a better beat on this) was about $1.5 million per episode, but inside of that $1.5 mil you have pay your entire staff (actors included), pay studio costs, lighting, sfx costs, set costs, promotion costs, etc, etc, etc. That $1.5 mil sounds like a lot to the average person but once everything is paid off, you're lucky if you have enough for a 2 or 3 guest stars and a few special odds and ends for that episode. Some episodes might be a little more conservative so other episodes can have a bigger budget. The thing that actually kind of drives me a little nuts in this whole ordeal is Picard and Co. were generally available after season 3 of DS9 and baring physical actor availability, it would have made a whole bunch of sense to involve the Enterprise more closely with what was going on in the war. Heck, we almost could have used Picard in place of Ross in most situations since --- you know 7th Fleet and all.
Maybe Patrick Stewart was busy with other jobs? Like films, theatre and other television... You make it sound like he's just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring from Rick Berman. Ok, that's almost certainly true for the rest of the TNG cast, but Stewart's not exactly been out of work since TNG finished.
On Doctor Who, they managed to get the entire cast from all three shows (Who, Torchwood, and Sarah Jane Adventures) together for the season 4 finale. Crossovers can be done. I always thought it was a budgetary issue. They'd have to pay two entire casts to appear in the same episode. I think Sito Jaxa would make sense, for a DS9 crossover. Another feisty Bajoran, like Ro or Kira. I liked the character, and think she would have fit in on the darker DS9
Let's keep some timings in mind here --- what was going on during the 3rd season of DS9? Star Trek Generations the movie. What was going on during the 6th/7th season of DS9? First Contact. Its really not as though the Star Trek TNG actors weren't somewhat easily accessible. It doesn't mean they didn't have blocks, but they all had to have some level of accessibly time wise. Contract wise could be a different story.
Actually, that's wrong. First Contact took place during the fifth season of DS9. Insurrection happened during the seventh. --Sran
One thing that always bugged me about Voyager is that several of the characters didn't seem to know about the Dominion. EMH 2: The Romulans haven't got involved in our conflict with the Dominion EMH 1: The who? You'd think that the EMH would be programmed with knowledge about the Federation's newest threat (VOY season 1 occurs during DS9 season three, when the Dominion threat was real, and known about). Particularly since the Voyager holodeck had a shuttle training programme with Jem 'Hadar fighters as the opponents. Chakotay: The Cardassians had help from a new ally (when describing the massacre of the Maquis) We did get a few crossovers between TNG and DS9, and TNG and VOY, but not many between DS9 and VOY (except Doc Zimmerman, mirror Tuvok, and Quark showing up in Caretaker)
^First contact with the Dominion happened a few months before Voyager was lost, so anyone with Starfleet should have known about them. Chakotay was with the Maquis, so that might explain why he didn't know anything. As for the EMH, I suppose he would only have been programmed with knowledge of species he'd be expected to treat. The Federation's first experience with treating a Jem'Hadar solider came during "The Abandoned." Bashir treated the child who eventually grew into an adult and learned about his genetic enhancements and drug addiction. Depending on whether that information was classified, the Doctor may not have known anything related to the Dominion. --Sran
^Yeah, Sran, but was Starfleet well-aware of the dangers of the Dominion before Voyager's fateful mission? (I'm asking). The OP made my heart sink. I SO wish there would have been more DS9 crossover episodes! Such a shame that there weren't. Spock would have been awesome as a recurring character. You just disappointed me after-the-fact by telling me the Spock idea was on the drawing board. As awesome as DS9 was, just a few more crossover episodes would have made it undeniably EPIC. (Oh who am I kidding? It was already undeniably epic. Even MORE epic. That's what I meant).