The Robots From Prototype

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Voyager' started by The Overlord, Sep 21, 2013.

  1. The Overlord

    The Overlord Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Sfdebris made an interesting suggestion in one of his latest reviews, that the robots from Prototype should have been reoccurring villains, instead of a one shot bad guy. That's an interesting idea, because there have only been a few robots in the Star Trek Universe and having a race of robots would have new type of enemy. The Kazon were not working as the main villains and Voyager ruined the Borg by overusing them, so maybe having the robots be the main villains would have been better and they likely would have gotten a better costume if they were reoccurring bad guys rather then one shot baddies.

    So should the robots from Prototype been reoccurring bad guys or were they better as one shot characters?

    http://www.sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/v829.asp
     
  2. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Dalek's have burned me out on robots.
     
  3. Pondwater

    Pondwater Vice Admiral Admiral

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    One shot Villains.


    They were created by Pralor and Cravic, opposing races that were hell bent in destroying each other. The Automated Personnel units just carried that out posthumously .
     
  4. The Overlord

    The Overlord Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Except the writers could have just given the robots a different motive that would have made them suitable for reoccurring villains.

    They were certainly a better choice then the Kazon and the Borg work best when used very sparingly, look how often TNG used the Borg, they were menacing because they didn't appear very often and when they did, they seemed almost unstoppable.

    If the Borg only showed in epic stories in Voyager, like Scorpion, then they wouldn't have suffered such villain decay, but having them appear in underwhelming episodes like Unimaterix Zero undermined their menace. Even they appearance in Endgame made them seem like a shadow of their former selves.

    I think the Voyager crew needed a reoccurring foe that wasn't lame like Kazon, but using the Borg in that role ruined their menace and mystique. They needed their own interesting reoccurring villains and those robots were not a bad place to start.
     
  5. R. Star

    R. Star Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    A robotic villain that isn't the Borg might've been interesting... but not those silly mime robots. They had no staying power whatsoever.
     
  6. The Overlord

    The Overlord Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    As Sfdebris noted, if the robots were reoccurring villains, they may have gotten a better costume, because a reoccurring villain is going to get a better budget then a one shot baddie.
     
  7. Tosk

    Tosk Admiral Admiral

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    Daleks are cyborgs, not robots. ;)
     
  8. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I know, I know.. I've just never had that mech fascination.
     
  9. R. Star

    R. Star Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    They could've looked awesome. That doesn't mean as written their culture of kill the creators so we can kill the other robots who killed their creators isn't silly.
     
  10. Tiberius

    Tiberius Commodore Commodore

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    Those Automated Units never worked for me, because there's a huge flaw in the idea behind them, namely, the ship of Theseus.

    So, I can use any old part to repair one of these bots and it will work. Arm, leg, brain, cooling system, whatever, and it will work. BUT I can't do it with the power supply. The power supply only works for one robot and one robot alone.

    That just doesn't work.

    So I have an automated Unit. I'll call him Bill. I decide to replace Bill's arm with a spare. I put the spare on and put the original arm on the bench. A little while later, I replace the other arm. Again, I put a spare on Bill and put the arm I remove on the bench. Then I replace his legs and all other components with spares, each time putting the components I remove on the bench. Eventually, the only part left of Bill that is original is the power core. Everything else is a replacement.

    But if the power core can only work for one particular bot, how can it work for Bill when he's been almost entirely replaced? I have a bunch of parts sitting on my bench that I can assemble to form Bill, I'm just lacking the power core. The Bill who's currently walking around is not the original. It's a new body made up of new parts. How could it possibly work with Bill's power core? After all, what I've done is no different to using those spares to create a new body which is now called Bill - and this new body is using the power core designed for the bot made up of the spares sitting on my bench! So how then can it be that a power core works only for one bot when a bot can be almost entirely replaced until it is literally no different than constructing a new body with an old power core? If a power core won't work when it's put into a different body, why would it work when a new body is built around it piece by piece?

    If they'd said that each brain required a particular power core to work, then it would be okay, because there are only a set number of combinations. Brain 1 with Powercore 1. B2 with P2. B3 with P3. And so on. If Bill is B1 with P1 and his powercore fails, you can't slap in P2, because it won't work with b1. But the writers never specified that, and so the idea behind them makes no sense.
     
  11. Captain Rob

    Captain Rob Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Bill must be running some old 21st Century Microsoft DRM code.
     
  12. Lighthammer

    Lighthammer Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I actually thought it would have been really interesting if the one that befriended B'lenna would have actually joined the Voyager crew as a reoccurring character.
     
  13. Tiberius

    Tiberius Commodore Commodore

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    Sure sounds like what the Builders did, eh?
     
  14. lurok

    lurok Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I thought they were a bit crap (in execution). Idea was sort-of interesting, but only so-so.
     
    Last edited: Sep 21, 2013
  15. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    It reminded me of too many other things that also bored me :lol:
     
  16. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Although I never realized it at the time, I love that they used actual head and arm props from Terminator 2 as robot parts, and just put a strip of duck tape over the mouth to disguise the distinctive Terminator teeth!

    As for the episode, I thought they were pretty generic robots. Good enough to crop up once or twice more, but not as an ongoing villain.
     
  17. Tosk

    Tosk Admiral Admiral

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    I can't say for sure that there is no Terminator arm (although I don't recall seeing one) I can say for sure that the 'taped mouth' robot head is most definitely not a Terminator prop.

    I do remember seeing Johnny Five's arm though. :)
     
  18. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I know I read it somewhere. Let me find the link...
     
  19. Tosk

    Tosk Admiral Admiral

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    I'm pretty sure I recall reading it somewhere once, too. But still...

    [​IMG]
     
  20. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Great comparison! The Voyager one looks like some kind of Terminator head knock-off which they modified. Thanks.