What I like about the show and what I don't

[Willow]

Star Trek writers - screwing with continuity since 1966

Yep. Trek's entire backstory is built on retroactive continuity and rewrites. You can either go with the flow and enjoy the little bits of backstory they give you (like tying ENT into "The Tholian Web" via "In a Mirror, Darkly", Klingon foreheads, Arik Soong naming the Briar Patch, Archer building the Federation etc) or fret because a background model or 20 year old line of dialogue doesn't jibe.

I bet STEPhon IT never even realized that TOS and Voyager, despite crossing over a few times, can't possibly exist in the same universe because according to Spock in "That Which Survives", Kirk's Enterprise would have made Voyager's 75-years-at-warp-9.975 journey in under a month at warp 8.4. That breaks the entire premise of the show! TOS, TAS and the classic movies are packed with overwhelming evidence that zipping across the galaxy is no biggie - like effortlessly visiting the rim of the galaxy and the centre. Then along comes Voyager, ignoring all of that for their purposes.

Thank you
I thought I was the only one who felt this way. I'm an analytical person, and I could drive myself crazy trying to make everything "fit". I'm re watching TOS now, after a few decades, and some of its internal logic doesn't make sense to me...never mind throwing in 4 or 5 other shows and various movies. I've decided it's just best to enjoy it for the entertainment that it is.

 

[IrishNero]

Yes, it is very easy to rip these shows apart on a technical basis (let alone a continuity basis). The writers aren't astrophysicists, and even astrophysicists aren't privy to the detailed knowledge of general relativity and quantum field theory that would be necessary to create a working warp drive. For all of our conjecture and imagination, Science fiction is still far more fiction than science. If I were to sit down and watch these shows with a discerning, scientific eye, these shows would be torn to shreds, and me along with them. That's why I don't.

 

[I am not Spock]

I didn't like the Borg under the ice in Regeneration, because it makes Picard look like an unthorough idiot for not blasting the debris of that Borg sphere into little enough pieces.

But the episode itself was entertaining. For a story about the Borg, who were not encountered in the 22nd century, they did a pretty good job of it, and it could have been much worse than what we got

 

[eyeresist]

I didn't like the Borg under the ice in Regeneration, because it makes Picard look like an unthorough idiot for not blasting the debris of that Borg sphere into little enough pieces.

But the episode itself was entertaining. For a story about the Borg, who were not encountered in the 22nd century, they did a pretty good job of it, and it could have been much worse than what we got

Interestingly, the question of what happened to the remains of the sphere was mentioned in the original DVD commentary for First Contact, so people in the Trek business were conscious of it even then. I guess when someone raised the issue, they said "It's not a blooper, it's a sequel opportunity".

I thought the ep was well done, especially when we finally got to Enterprise. It was well-staged and quite gripping - I really bought that the Borg were an unknown, unpredictable threat. The introductory stuff with unknown characters was a bit hard to care about. (Was it just me, or did that set-up strongly evoke the beginning of the original Mummy movie?)

 

[IrishNero]

Interestingly, the question of what happened to the remains of the sphere was mentioned in the original DVD commentary for First Contact, so people in the Trek business were conscious of it even then. I guess when someone raised the issue, they said "It's not a blooper, it's a sequel opportunity".

A professional writer once told me that every plot hole or unanswered question is an open doorway, and an opportunity to expand or create something more. I think ST writers, in general, are very conscious of continuity issues, and are careful not to paint themselves into a corner.

And when they do, they get out of it by using time travel.

 

[T'Girl]

TOS and Voyager, despite crossing over a few times, can't possibly exist in the same universe because according to Spock in "That Which Survives", Kirk's Enterprise would have made Voyager's 75-years-at-warp-9.975 journey in under a month at warp 8.4.

But if the Enterprise were traveling back "down" whatever effect moved them away from the planet in the first place, then their travel time back to the planet wasn't solely the result of their 23rd century warp engines.

Janeway's 75 years journey estimate is intact.

 

[Starborn Dragon]

You know the theme song is a very appropriate song that expresses the spirit and the message of Star Trek. While it is meant to be a love song, I still don't see how it can't represent the desire to go out and explore.

It really does take a lot of courage and faith to boldly go where no man has gone before. Both in matters of love and in outer space. Being in love with a good woman is an adventure of exploration all on its own.

My only qualm is I don't understand why they had to remake the song and get a guy to sing it that sounded like Rod Stewart.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Things I Liked

• The way the stories generally were sequential
• The bridge design: NASA meets Star Trek
• The characters were in the future, but still close enough to modern day that they were relatable
• The fact that the transporters were rarely used, especially early on
• The decontamination chamber: Bacteria and viruses on another planet could easily wipe us out due to a lack of immunity if we're carbon based. The only saving grace we'd have would be Vulcan medical data and information we know on pathogens already
• Sickbay looked pretty good
• The fact that the Universal Translator didn't always work right, took some time to grasp foreign languages, and required a linguist to fiddle with things to make sure it worked

Things I Didn't Like

• The Temporal Cold War
• The Federation and Klingons meeting early
• The Early Borg Encounter: If we knew how to deal with them in the 2150's, we'd have handled them just fine in 2365 and would have probably never had them get so close to Earth; this means they'd have never went back in time, never got blown up by the E-E, and would have never ended up where they were; furthermore, this means that Cochrane wouldn't have had his crew killed, and the E-E's crew wouldn't have had to have impersonated his crew and do the Warp 1 flight... and RESET
• The fact that some species had holodecks, cloaking devices in eras where they weren't known to the Federation, as well as subspace-corridors which weren't shown until TNG
• The Silicon Based Virus: Silcon based life can exist, but it would likely cause no harm to us for a simple reason -- our bodies have almost no Silicon in them (Viruses hijack a cell and turn it into a virus factory… if we have little Silicon in our bodies, we couldn't produce the goods). The only harm that could possibly exist is it could cause some other secondary effect which would harm.
• The fact that they basically said Trip Tucker never graduated college and learned about engines from boats -- that's absurd
• The fact that the Enterprise looked like the Akira-Class
• The fact that they lack force-fields (they'd need it for the M/AM reactions)
• The short range (they were only a few clicks away when firing sometimes) of the weapons
• The low power of hand-held and shipboard weapons (displayed on screen)
• The fact that Lt. Reed's family were in the RN and worked on ships: Wouldn't surface ships in those days be as quaint as sailboats?
• The small number of Federation Deep-Space ships (yeah, I know they were "slow-pokes", but you'd still figure there would be some crawling around other than the boomers)
• The Xindi consisting of multiple species on the same world evolving together.
• The Vulcan timeline: They're very smart and yet they advanced so slowly; the Romulans follow from this logically (admittedly this is a critique of ST in general, but it was worse here)
• The fact that the universal translator when used on the planets they didn't have any device on them in many cases which means they'd be hearing gibberish…

Things I Was Neutral About

• The Warp 5 capability: The Daedalus which were newer designs could only do Warp 3. Admittedly, in Star Trek, the exact velocity is often ignored: The Enterprise (NCC-1701) was limited to Warp 6 (216c), and maximum of 8-9 (512 to 729c), and yet in episodes they traversed more than one star system in a day (Doomsday Machine), and in one episode did 765,000c (That Which Survives; the ships listed speed was 8.4 which is 592.704c); Admittedly, Gene Roddenberry initially listed a maximum speed for the Big-E of 0.73 LY/Hr (which looks right for The Doomsday Machine), which would make Warp 5 or Warp 7 seem damned slow
• The Uniforms: On one hand they looked very NASA like; on the other hand, the colored piping and pips looked TNG/DS9 like (I think they'd have done better with stripes on sleeves, or even modern rank insignia)
• The Vulcans Attitude: I was initially going to put this under things I didn't like, but come to think of it. Most species that managed to reach space-travel were top-dogs on their home-world. They didn't get that way by being nice, and given the choice between us and them; they'd choose themselves.
• The explanation for Vulcan behavior due to corruption of old teachings (it depended on the first bullet)
• The fact that they didn't often attempt communication via linguacode like in TMP (electronic communication including certain basic constants like pi, shapes and so on, prior to using audio or visualizing -- hey, why not ask for a linguistics database)

 

[eyeresist]

Things I Didn't Like

• The fact that some species had holodecks, cloaking devices in eras where they weren't known to the Federation, as well as subspace-corridors which weren't shown until TNG
• The fact that they basically said Trip Tucker never graduated college and learned about engines from boats -- that's absurd
• The fact that Lt. Reed's family were in the RN and worked on ships: Wouldn't surface ships in those days be as quaint as sailboats?
• The small number of Federation Deep-Space ships (yeah, I know they were "slow-pokes", but you'd still figure there would be some crawling around other than the boomers)
• The Xindi consisting of multiple species on the same world evolving together.

1. Just because something wasn't shown in earlier series doesn't mean it wasn't known. The only real glitch is that they actually got their hands on a Suliban cloaked ship, but it's possible they could have dealt with that in a later season, e.g. the Romulans steal the ship and wipe the records.
2. Of course Trip went to college. TATV is a load of bollocks.
3. I don't buy that ships would be obsolete - it seems only slightly more likely than the extinction of wheeled vehicles. Plus, we don't know what the "navy" of their time actually does - in the 20th century, some "cavalry" groups were actually tank regiments.
4. Space is big. Really big. Plus the Enterprise is supposed to explore space unknown to Terrans, so it would make sense they wouldn't go where there were a lot of humans. They didn't go to Alpha Centauri colony, for instance.
5. That's something I thought was really interesting. It's not impossible, and it's something we've never seen before.

Things I Was Neutral About

• The Uniforms: On one hand they looked very NASA like; on the other hand, the colored piping and pips looked TNG/DS9 like (I think they'd have done better with stripes on sleeves, or even modern rank insignia)
• The explanation for Vulcan behavior due to corruption of old teachings (it depended on the first bullet)

1. I don't think the crew should have had military insignia. I prefer the NASA parallel, that they are a group of scientists in space.
2. As someone who has disliked the emotional aspect of Vulcans, I appreciated that they provided a cultural explanation, rather than just saying "Vulcan's think they're smart, but they're just a-holes."

 

[CuttingEdge100]

1. Just because something wasn't shown in earlier series doesn't mean it wasn't known.

Actually it was said to be quite new in TNG and the biggest holodeck at the very least.

The only real glitch is that they actually got their hands on a Suliban cloaked ship, but it's possible they could have dealt with that in a later season, e.g. the Romulans steal the ship and wipe the records.

Unlikely

2. Of course Trip went to college. TATV is a load of bollocks.

Yet it was canon...

3. I don't buy that ships would be obsolete

That's your opinion, but there wasn't a space-ship fleet other than SF it seemed...

4. Space is big. Really big.

I know that already...

Plus the Enterprise is supposed to explore space unknown to Terrans, so it would make sense they wouldn't go where there were a lot of humans.

But there wasn't much reference to other ships, it seemed to be suggested that the Warp 5 capability made long range space-travel possible...

5. That's something I thought was really interesting.

Interesting, but unrealistic

1. I don't think the crew should have had military insignia. I prefer the NASA parallel, that they are a group of scientists in space.

Well stripes would have worked then...

Unfortunately there never seemed to be any combat ships...

2. As someone who has disliked the emotional aspect of Vulcans, I appreciated that they provided a cultural explanation

Yup.

 

[eyeresist]

1. Just because something wasn't shown in earlier series doesn't mean it wasn't known.

Actually it was said to be quite new in TNG and the biggest holodeck at the very least.

That was the first starfleet holodeck then. Doesn't mean some other species didn't have the technology first.

The only real glitch is that they actually got their hands on a Suliban cloaked ship, but it's possible they could have dealt with that in a later season, e.g. the Romulans steal the ship and wipe the records.

Unlikely

Entirely possible.

Plus the Enterprise is supposed to explore space unknown to Terrans, so it would make sense they wouldn't go where there were a lot of humans.

But there wasn't much reference to other ships, it seemed to be suggested that the Warp 5 capability made long range space-travel possible...

The NX-01 was the first warp 5 ship.

Etc.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

First Contact came before Voyager. There are multiple Queens.

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Borg_Queen

I still don't know if Janeway finally killed the borg, or not.

I actually thought older Janeway who had that virus thingy became a Borg Queen..

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

What I liked

The ship - Nice design they used actual LCD screens everywhere they could. Those giant ones at the Federation looked like regular TV sets but still kind of cool. Kudos to the prop department.
The Aliens
I actually liked the TCW
Future Guy was a Romulan .. I read that somewhere
I love the theme song
Erika Hernandez
Porthos
I love the ship, did I mention the ship?