Guinan: How do you feel about her?

[EnriqueH]

A civilian bartender (contractor) on a Starfleet exploration vessel in peacetime is fine. A civilian bartender on a battleship in the middle of a war is ridiculous.

See, I disagree with you here.

If anything, there's MORE of a reason for her to be on a battleship. With all that stress, mayhem and carnage they're inflicting and being inflicted? All the more reason to wind down after a shift, blow off steam, have a drink and maybe listen to Guinan's positive spin.

2 (and my main point) : Tasha was a strong enough character to decide for herself to go back and help the C. there was no need at all for the mystic "you don't belong here" mumbo jumbo. She could have maybe felt out of place herself and decided to go with the C because of that, or she could simply have done it because she was a brave and noble person. Having Guinan sense something wrong, decide what it was, and tell Tasha, was ham-handed storytelling, spoon-feeding the plot to us poor stupid viewers. We're smarter than that, and Tasha was a better character than that.

That's an interesting point. I love Yesterday's Enterprise. It was *the* episode that got me hooked on TNG and made me a fan ever since.

 

[Makarov]

I love Yesterday's Enterprise. I hate reunification. Basically Tasha's death became even more pointless - she does not even die in battle after the events of Yesterday's Enterprise. Guinan's advice sent her to her doom.

Even if Guinan was representing the audience's perspective of her original death being pointless, the Yesterday's Enterprise Tasha doesn't even die on screen. Tasha's original death was way better. Armus is merciful compared to being basically held as a slave and forced to make babies with romulans.

Guinan also blames Picard for what happened to her. "You're responsible." She's the worst!

But just so it doesn't seem like I only hate her, here are things I do like:
- her skill with the phaser in that holodeck game
- her relationship with ensign ro
- her backstory and warnings against the borg
- she likes bald men

That being said I wouldn't mind if Jellico kicked her off the ship in Chain of Command.

 

[EnriqueH]

What I don't like about Tasha's second death was that it led to Cmdr. Sela, which was a total misfire.

 

[Marsden]

I don't want to be the wet blanket, but Guinan is my least favorite character in the history of Star Trek.

Worse than being on a ship full of Pakleds led by Wesley.

I think I'm done here, carry on.

 

[Forbin]

A civilian bartender (contractor) on a Starfleet exploration vessel in peacetime is fine. A civilian bartender on a battleship in the middle of a war is ridiculous.

See, I disagree with you here.

If anything, there's MORE of a reason for her to be on a battleship. With all that stress, mayhem and carnage they're inflicting and being inflicted? All the more reason to wind down after a shift, blow off steam, have a drink and maybe listen to Guinan's positive spin.

While your intentions are good, I have to turn to a real-world question: do any ships in any of the world's military Navies have civilian food servers as regular members of the crew? If so, are they also present during combat? I honestly don't know for sure, but I kinda doubt it.

 

[borgboy]

I always thought if Captain Garret died when she wasn't supposed to, then Tasha would've had a good reason to go, to take her place on the ship in battle.

 

[enterprisecvn65]

Meh.....To me she was just a big time actress that was a big Star Trek fan and the show created a character for her to accomodate her desire to be a part of the Star Trek universe.

She had some good moments, I especially like her little "You have to let him go" chat with Riker when he didn't think there was anyway he could defeat the Borg, especially now that they had Picard as Locutus.

She had lame moments, like in Generations (but everyone was lame in that film) But generally I just saw her as Whoopi Goldberg in funny hats. If they explored her deeper I might feel differently but they kept dropping all these hints about her past and then just never explored. Like the time when she said that her relationship with Picard was beyond friendship, beyond family....hmmmm interesting, but what the hell does it mean? Well, unless it was explained in the expanded universe, people who just watched the shows still don't know what that meant.

She didn't detract from the show, in fact usually her advice was better than what Troi would whip up, but I don't think she added as much as she could have either.

 

[bbailey861]

A civilian bartender (contractor) on a Starfleet exploration vessel in peacetime is fine. A civilian bartender on a battleship in the middle of a war is ridiculous.

See, I disagree with you here.

If anything, there's MORE of a reason for her to be on a battleship. With all that stress, mayhem and carnage they're inflicting and being inflicted? All the more reason to wind down after a shift, blow off steam, have a drink and maybe listen to Guinan's positive spin.

While your intentions are good, I have to turn to a real-world question: do any ships in any of the world's military Navies have civilian food servers as regular members of the crew? If so, are they also present during combat? I honestly don't know for sure, but I kinda doubt it.

It'll probably come to it at some point. At Kandahar Airfield, civy contractors ran food services. And the airfield came under rocket attack almost daily.

As for Guinan, I loved her character. Whoopi rocked the role. I agree with Jedi_Master, she was under-utilized.

 

[HIjol]

A perfect example of a totally made-up race and person that you totally forget is a made-up race and person. She nailed whatever it means to be an El-Aurian. And she effortlessly and completely gives us a path to utterly forgetting there is no such thing.

...but, there is...

 

[EnriqueH]

A civilian bartender (contractor) on a Starfleet exploration vessel in peacetime is fine. A civilian bartender on a battleship in the middle of a war is ridiculous.

See, I disagree with you here.

If anything, there's MORE of a reason for her to be on a battleship. With all that stress, mayhem and carnage they're inflicting and being inflicted? All the more reason to wind down after a shift, blow off steam, have a drink and maybe listen to Guinan's positive spin.

While your intentions are good, I have to turn to a real-world question: do any ships in any of the world's military Navies have civilian food servers as regular members of the crew? If so, are they also present during combat? I honestly don't know for sure, but I kinda doubt it.

Interesting question, but I can also turn that around into a real-world question and ask you if the space shuttle program or the space station have a bar?

 

[Forbin]

See, I disagree with you here.

If anything, there's MORE of a reason for her to be on a battleship. With all that stress, mayhem and carnage they're inflicting and being inflicted? All the more reason to wind down after a shift, blow off steam, have a drink and maybe listen to Guinan's positive spin.

While your intentions are good, I have to turn to a real-world question: do any ships in any of the world's military Navies have civilian food servers as regular members of the crew? If so, are they also present during combat? I honestly don't know for sure, but I kinda doubt it.

It'll probably come to it at some point. At Kandahar Airfield, civy contractors ran food services. And the airfield came under rocket attack almost daily.

Okay, that's a data point I didn't have before, thanks.

 

[Forbin]

See, I disagree with you here.

If anything, there's MORE of a reason for her to be on a battleship. With all that stress, mayhem and carnage they're inflicting and being inflicted? All the more reason to wind down after a shift, blow off steam, have a drink and maybe listen to Guinan's positive spin.

While your intentions are good, I have to turn to a real-world question: do any ships in any of the world's military Navies have civilian food servers as regular members of the crew? If so, are they also present during combat? I honestly don't know for sure, but I kinda doubt it.

Interesting question, but I can also turn that around into a real-world question and ask you if the space shuttle program or the space station have a bar?

I don't get how that makes any point about bars and waitresses on warships during combat.

 

[enterprisecvn65]

A civilian bartender (contractor) on a Starfleet exploration vessel in peacetime is fine. A civilian bartender on a battleship in the middle of a war is ridiculous.

See, I disagree with you here.

If anything, there's MORE of a reason for her to be on a battleship. With all that stress, mayhem and carnage they're inflicting and being inflicted? All the more reason to wind down after a shift, blow off steam, have a drink and maybe listen to Guinan's positive spin.

While your intentions are good, I have to turn to a real-world question: do any ships in any of the world's military Navies have civilian food servers as regular members of the crew? If so, are they also present during combat? I honestly don't know for sure, but I kinda doubt it.

Well in the US Navy the only civilians who ever come aboard for a work related purpose are contractors or specialists from companies who are there to work on a broken system of the ship their company built and that is beyond the knowledge or materials available on the ship to fix at sea.

If the ship knows ahead it's going to probably be engaged in combat they'll usually try to get the workers off if they're not needed, but there are no guarantees. They come aboard fully aware that the ship may be called into combat and they'll have to just sit tight and share the risk.

Other than that, every single person who is a functioning member of the crew, from the captain to the guys who handle the ship's refuse is a member of the US Navy.

 

[f14peter]

See, I disagree with you here.

If anything, there's MORE of a reason for her to be on a battleship. With all that stress, mayhem and carnage they're inflicting and being inflicted? All the more reason to wind down after a shift, blow off steam, have a drink and maybe listen to Guinan's positive spin.

While your intentions are good, I have to turn to a real-world question: do any ships in any of the world's military Navies have civilian food servers as regular members of the crew? If so, are they also present during combat? I honestly don't know for sure, but I kinda doubt it.

Well in the US Navy the only civilians who ever come aboard for a work related purpose are contractors or specialists from companies who are there to work on a broken system of the ship their company built and that is beyond the knowledge or materials available on the ship to fix at sea.

If the ship knows ahead it's going to probably be engaged in combat they'll usually try to get the workers off if they're not needed, but there are no guarantees. They come aboard fully aware that the ship may be called into combat and they'll have to just sit tight and share the risk.

Other than that, every single person who is a functioning member of the crew, from the captain to the guys who handle the ship's refuse handlers is a member of the US Navy.

There were a number of civilian workers aboard HMS Prince of Wales when it set sail with Hood in pursuit of Bismarck, although as you described that was not intended but only because the ship launched before its scheduled completion .... hmmmmm, that sound familiar.

 

[Iamnotspock]

Geordi needed some serious dating advice and she didn't really help him, she practically laughs at him. She barely helps Barclay when everyone's ripping him. And her advice to Tasha Yarr in Yesterday's Enterprise results in a horrific life revealed in Reunification.

'Redemption'. She later appeared in 'Unification'.

Tasha's original death wasn't meaningless like Guinan says - she was attempting to protect Troi and probably saved someone else from being killed in her place. She also advises Riker to let Picard go in BOBW, another brilliant suggestion considering they saved him.

Retroactively, that conversation can perhaps be reinterpreted in light of 'Time's Arrow', since the events of that story hadn't happened by the time of 'TBoBW', and Guinan knows that Picard must survive in order to go back to the 19th Century and meet her in the first place. Was she trying some kind of reverse psychology on Riker?

 

[Forbin]

See, I disagree with you here.

If anything, there's MORE of a reason for her to be on a battleship. With all that stress, mayhem and carnage they're inflicting and being inflicted? All the more reason to wind down after a shift, blow off steam, have a drink and maybe listen to Guinan's positive spin.

While your intentions are good, I have to turn to a real-world question: do any ships in any of the world's military Navies have civilian food servers as regular members of the crew? If so, are they also present during combat? I honestly don't know for sure, but I kinda doubt it.

Well in the US Navy the only civilians who ever come aboard for a work related purpose are contractors or specialists from companies who are there to work on a broken system of the ship their company built and that is beyond the knowledge or materials available on the ship to fix at sea.

There are some folks in the place I work who've done that very thing. Mainly to train maintenance personnel on our avionics systems. One of my coworkers was aboard USS America on her final deployment.

 

[enterprisecvn65]

While your intentions are good, I have to turn to a real-world question: do any ships in any of the world's military Navies have civilian food servers as regular members of the crew? If so, are they also present during combat? I honestly don't know for sure, but I kinda doubt it.

Well in the US Navy the only civilians who ever come aboard for a work related purpose are contractors or specialists from companies who are there to work on a broken system of the ship their company built and that is beyond the knowledge or materials available on the ship to fix at sea.

If the ship knows ahead it's going to probably be engaged in combat they'll usually try to get the workers off if they're not needed, but there are no guarantees. They come aboard fully aware that the ship may be called into combat and they'll have to just sit tight and share the risk.

Other than that, every single person who is a functioning member of the crew, from the captain to the guys who handle the ship's refuse handlers is a member of the US Navy.

There were a number of civilian workers aboard HMS Prince of Wales when it set sail with Hood in pursuit of Bismarck, although as you described that was not intended but only because the ship launched before its scheduled completion .... hmmmmm, that sound familiar.

I was actually thinking of that very thing when I wrote that post. Yep POW was still having major issues with her main guns when she set sail to intercept the Bismarck and had many civilians aboard working on them. She was actually quite lucky she didn't get destroyed like the Hood.

Too bad those fully operational guns couldn't do a thing to save her once the Japanese air force got a hold of her several months later.

Great minds think alike

 

[EnriqueH]

While your intentions are good, I have to turn to a real-world question: do any ships in any of the world's military Navies have civilian food servers as regular members of the crew? If so, are they also present during combat? I honestly don't know for sure, but I kinda doubt it.

Interesting question, but I can also turn that around into a real-world question and ask you if the space shuttle program or the space station have a bar?

I don't get how that makes any point about bars and waitresses on warships during combat.

Simple, you say it makes no sense for bars to be on warships because of the real world analogy.

But I counter that our peaceful ships (space stations and space shuttles) don't have bars on them either (that I know of).

So currently, neither our exploratory or warships have bars on them.

So if you want to use real world analogies and follow your logic, then a bar doesn't belong on the prime Enterprise-D either.

Except that in the 24th century, our ships are grander and bigger. So I don't see the problem of a bar on an exploratory deep space ship...or warship. But that's just me.

 

[Forbin]

Interesting question, but I can also turn that around into a real-world question and ask you if the space shuttle program or the space station have a bar?

I don't get how that makes any point about bars and waitresses on warships during combat.

Simple, you say it makes no sense for bars to be on warships because of the real world analogy.

But I counter that our peaceful ships (space stations and space shuttles) don't have bars on them either (that I know of).

So currently, neither our exploratory or warships have bars on them.

So if you want to use real world analogies and follow your logic, then a bar doesn't belong on the prime Enterprise-D either.

Except that in the 24th century, our ships are grander and bigger. So I don't see the problem of a bar on an exploratory deep space ship...or warship. But that's just me.

You completely misunderstand, apparently. I said it made no sense for a CIVILIAN BARTENDER to be on a warship in battle. The barTENDER. The person. The civilian person, who might be put in danger during combat.

 

[STEPhon IT]

I thought Guinan was interesting. The writers never sold her short. I loved her in "I, Borg".