What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?

I think it was more Vaal was stupid. Kirk tried to leave, Vaal blocked his exit then started fucking with the Enterprise.

 

I really hate the "It's Star Trek if corporate bigwigs say it is." argument.

I get what they mean, but it's it's such a specious argument. It's like saying margarine is really butter if the Country Crock commercial says it is.

 

Not sure that's an apt analogy.

 

That analogy is not quite on point.

 

An outside civilization might interfere with the peaceful, happy life Vaal was maintaining for the natives (via conquest, exploitation, or plain old influence); and if Vaal was remotely monitoring Kirk and co (which seems a reasonable assumption), then it knew that Kirk had outright said that they couldnt let these people keep "stagnating" like this. So to fulfill its apparent function of protecting these people, it had to prevent the Enterprise from leaving, and kill the crew if they wouldn't let the culture stay as it was. Vaal failed, but it couldn't have done anything else.

 

Fact check: Kirk decided that the natives were stagnating under Vaal's rule only after Vaal had threatened the Enterprise.

 

Fair enough. Vaal still has the same reason to do it though — if interstellar outsiders become aware of the place, they could threaten or overturn it. Whatever precursor civilization set Vaal up seems to have done it to maintain it in perpetual stability as well as protect it, like a more proactively aggressive version of the Preserver obelisk.

 

I basically agree, with one reservation and/or caveat.

Vaal was not self-sustaining. If the aliens who created Vaal had wished the people of Vaal to serve Vaal indefinitely and unconditionally, why didn't they provide a more automatic means of feeding exploding rocks to Vaal? What I mean is, the people seemed to have been given the means of breaking free of Vaal: stop feeding Vaal, or in terms more analogous to the Book of Genesis: disobey Vaal.

I have to wonder whether the existence of that "out" was a part of the overall plan.

 

again: it was about surprising the enemy, which still works with ftl sensors, and which was counteracted by data. ftl sensors would not be fooled however by seeing two ships, they would only see the real position.

 

Again, that's contradicted by the episode, because if it were so then Data would not have said that there was no known defense before he invented one.

Anyway, I'm done with this. You're welcome to your controversial opinion.

 

Okay, but would Kirk have come to the same conclusion at the same time if the Enterprise were not being threatened?

 

In "The Return of the Archons," Kirk argued similarly, but the ship was also threatened with destruction. I'm not sure we ever saw Kirk make a comparable decision when there was no peril to the ship.

 

Another one for me is I think Deep Space Nine is overrated. Not saying it isn't good, but, I've never bought into it being the pinnacle of Star Trek on television simply because it did what the other shows didn't (or couldn't) do. I've often asked why fans love the show so much -- particularly when the war starts -- and I almost always get the same answer; they love the action. When those same fans use that reason for loving DS9 as a reason to hate Discovery.

 

The original Star Trek still runs dramatic rings around everything that came after it.

 

And it's comedic rings are better, too.

 

And it will never be replaced.

 

I remember when it was just 1966-2001 or bust... And even before that people hated VOY, too, then DS9...though I only caught a whiff of all that in the 00s as I first got on computers, didn't even know how to sign up on forums... Remember when people actually tried to weigh Picard vs Sisko or Picard vs Kirk?

 

This. 1,000 times this. If DSC came out in the early-'00s, Niners would've loved it.

 

We still do.