Before Dishonour....seriously?!

Discussion in 'Trek Literature' started by sosolidshoe, Jul 3, 2011.

  1. j3067

    j3067 Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    That is only revealed in the N64 game if you get the best possible ending. Amazon has copies for $117.00. If he had not told you then you may never have found out at this point...unless you hit wookiepedia of course.
     
  2. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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    Dash who?

    Gosh, soon they'll be telling me that someone killed off Chewbacca. :lol:
     
  3. j3067

    j3067 Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    At least he did not get sucked into a wall. :p
     
  4. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    And like I said, it's far too small a population size for that to be meaningful. If you flip a coin twenty times and it always comes up heads, that's evidence that it's rigged, because the odds against that happening by chance are very, very high. But if you flip it only two times and it comes up heads both times, that's not evidence of a damn thing, because that's an outcome that could easily happen by random chance.


    And they certainly haven't. Like I said, Janeway's death has had deep personal repercussions that the main cast has been dealing with in every one of the Voyager novels published since then, which is the diametric opposite of a "redshirt death" where Kirk grieves for 20 seconds and then is laughing with the rest of the crew by the end of the episode.



    I don't see how they did so. If anything, by having the guts to cast a black man and a woman as captains, they did the opposite of "cashing in," because that cost them viewers. There are still people out there -- or at least there were in the '90s -- who won't watch shows with African-American or female leads. DS9 was never as successful in the ratings as TNG was, and you'd be shocked how much sexist hatred there was toward Janeway in the online rhetoric of the day. You'd think Trek fans would be above that sort of thing, but a lot of them weren't.



    And I've tried to explain why there's insufficient evidence that the differences are because of their race or sex. Correlation is not causation.


    Someone did depict him dying on a collapsed bridge, though. And he wasn't even given an obvious way out of death like Spock, Trip, and Janeway were. So that's a really, really bad comparison, because it actually works against the point you're trying to make.


    I guess you're forgetting the scene in TMP where Spock cried on the bridge. He actually did get pretty emo there for a bit.

    Besides, it's a spurious comparison. Ben Sisko is a character who has a history of depression. If you've seen "Emissary," you should know that. The comparison to another character is pointless because Sisko's behavior in RBoE is consistent with what was previously established about his own personality.

    Anyway, just because you don't like how Sisko was handled, that sure as hell doesn't prove that the people who chose to take him in that direction are racist. That's a complete non sequitur. Couldn't it just be that they see the character differently than you do?


    Fine, dislike BD or RBoE all you want. But it's unfair and unjustified to assume that the only possible reason the authors made choices you dislike is because of a character's race or sex. You can disagree with people's creative choices without assuming they had morally reprehensible motives for making those choices.
     
  5. j3067

    j3067 Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    I agree, if I had said that it would be awfully unfair. I never said that I thought they had morally reprehensible motives, I just think that they wrote terrible books. I think the net result of that is negative without it being intentional. I don't think anyone should be flipping coins to decide the fate of the series captains either.
     
  6. MattWallace

    MattWallace Lieutenant

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    <blink> Wow

    I don't recall commenting specifically on your handling of Janeway, alive or dead. I'd stopped reading Voyage after Spirit Walk and haven't read any of your Voyager novels. I've heard good things about them and intend to read them at some point. So, none of my comments should seem to be directed specifically at your writing.

    I apologize if I caused offence. It was not my intention. However, taken as a whole, of those books which I have read (which is about 99% of them, less some of the more recent ones) I still believe that women get treated less favorably than men. This is also true of a lot of the shows and movies. For example, Uhura get's more to do in the latest movie. Of course most of that is being Spock's girlfriend. In addition to their normal duties, Sulu gets to orbital skydive and fight with a sword, Chekov gets to sit in the center seat and save Kirk & Sulu when nobody else can and Uhura get's to kiss Spock. This hardly seems like progress to me.
     
  7. Captain Robert April

    Captain Robert April Vice Admiral Admiral

    So, when are ya bringin' back Janeway? :devil:
     
  8. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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    There are some fans out there who want Spock to kiss Sulu. Or Kirk. Otherwise it "hardly seems like progress" to them. ;)
     
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2011
  9. MattWallace

    MattWallace Lieutenant

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    Gender doesn't have to be the overriding fact the vast majority of the time. But if it's not going to be a factor at all, why did you, Keith and David decide to add female characters? If their gender isn't important why go with women instead of men?

    Let's not forget the very first female captain we saw. The Saratoga was disabled by the whale probe in TVH. Last we saw of her, she was calling for someone to help her. When we later saw that captain of the Yorktown, who was in a similar situation, he said that they were trying to generate power with a makeshift sloar sail (should be panel but let's assume he meant what he said). In his care, he's doing something to help himself and his crew and she's asking someone to rescue her.
     
  10. Thrawn

    Thrawn Rear Admiral Premium Member

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    ^ I don't think I've ever seen such a textbook example of confirmation bias.
     
  11. Bob Karo

    Bob Karo Captain Captain

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    I too want to thank Kirsten. It really needed to be said.
     
  12. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Oh, make up your mind. First you accuse us of treating female characters worse, then you take the fact that we've gone out of our way to be more inclusive of female characters than the shows were as confirmation that we're sexist pigs? Don't you see what a fundamental contradiction that is?

    I create female characters because I like and respect women. But when I'm writing a woman, I don't write her as "a female character," but as a character who is, among numerous other traits, female. I don't define her every action and decision by what sex chromosomes she has. It's just one facet of who she is. In the aggregate, I'll try to maintain a good balance of male and female characters, but I won't treat any single character as being defined by his or her gender above all else. I think your problem is that you are defining characters by their gender above all else, and you're assuming everyone else does too, so it doesn't occur to you that it's possible to make choices about characters for reasons that have nothing to do with whether they're male or female.


    Even if that's valid and not more cherrypicking, what the hell does it have to do with your accusations toward those of us who write Trek literature? We are not the same people who made that movie 25 years ago. Most of us were in high school or college at the time and didn't yet have any connection to the Trek franchise. I for one have always wished the Trek franchise would be more inclusive of women than it has usually been onscreen, and I've striven to live up to that goal in my writing. And I feel my contemporaries have successfully done the same.
     
  13. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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    And if the scenes were reversed, would it be the cowardly Asian Indian asking for help?
     
  14. JWolf

    JWolf Commodore Commodore

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    Given that a lot of people could be getting a reader or a tablet for the holidays and given that the Star Wars back catalog was just recently put out as eBooks, there could be renewed interest in reading the Star Wars novels. Just because a book is 15 years old does not mean that every person on the planet has read it. So get real and use spoiler tags even for a 100 year old book.
     
  15. Elias Vaughn

    Elias Vaughn Captain Captain

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    Rosebud was his sled.
     
  16. JWolf

    JWolf Commodore Commodore

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    I do think that Kirsten did some very good writing with Voyager. The way she handled Janeway's death among the crew of the Voyager was very well written. To invalidate all of that by bringing Janeway back to life would be a tragedy worse then her death. So let's leave her dead and let's move on.
     
  17. DonIago

    DonIago Vice Admiral Admiral

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    That's not how spoiler policy has ever been handled here to my knowledge, but if you have a problem with it, I suggest reporting it so a Moderator can look into the matter rather than trying to play Moderator yourself.
     
  18. MattWallace

    MattWallace Lieutenant

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    I don't think that's there's any question she'll be back at some time. Q being the untimate "Get Out of Death" card. Just like the Borg, there may not be plans for her return at this time but there's nothing that would prevent her from returning at some point in the future.
     
  19. Relayer1

    Relayer1 Admiral Admiral

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    As far as I am aware, policy is that we are careful around spoilers for a month or so, and after that it is assumed that it is not necessary - if you are worried about spoilers for old stuff, you avoid the Treklit threads.

    PS - Vader is Lukes father...

    :devil:
     
  20. MattWallace

    MattWallace Lieutenant

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    Christopher, at no point have I referred to you personally giving female characters the short shrift.

    Nowhere does this say that you do not write female characters well. None of this has been directed at you.

    You don't believe that there is a bias against female characters in Trek lit now. I agree that it's much better than it has been, even just a few years ago.

    How often has it been seriously considered to permanantly kill Picard? Or Sisko? Or Riker? Or Archer?