What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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Wow, I used VHS a fair amount during its time and I never had 1) 3) 4) or 6) happen to my tapes. 2) was just part of life, once a year or so you pop in a head cleaner tape. In 5) you're comparing VHS to its successors rather than to other technologies widely available at the same time.
One thing I liked about VHS compared to bluray is that the manufacturers can't disable fast forward on the parts with their ads, or if you stop in the middle lose your place and force you to start again at the beginning of the disc with all those damn unskippable ads again.
My first DVR (2000-2003) had a feature where a single button push would skip all commercials and nothing more. Automatically stopped at the restart of the show. Cable company forced an update of the software on all customers—no more automatic precision skipping. Can’t imagine who might have pressured the company for that.
I'm posting this in an existing thread so people will see it. It's Sunday morning, March 31, 2024. I just saw an ad for a set of earbuds called Timekettle that are a first generation universal translator. I thought it was a cool idea.
1,2 and 4 certainly happened to my father's massive collection over time. Maxell tapes were not recommended. But allow me to present 7): I once encountered a VHS blank tape with four especially bad duplicated films on it which was emitting liquid middle-of-an-Oreo-cookie-style pus fluid. But given that one of the duped films was CHATTERBOX from the 1970s, the tape's reaction was if anything highly restrained. Always try to dupe at least one classic with the three other dreggier titles to avoid this sort of situation. And choose your TREK quartet most carefully in the process, if you still have VHS.
OK, definitely never saw that happen with any of my VHS tapes!
Mine either.OK, definitely never saw that happen with any of my VHS tapes!
Not even James Woods encountered cassettes so bizarre. But on my parakeet's grave, it happened. CHATTERBOX sent it over the edge....a musical comedy involving a singing...body-part.
Coincidentally enough there was an AMOK TIME VHS at my local thrift store today.
No offense meant to any hardcore "Star Trek" fan (because I like a lot of it too), but I don't agree with Gene Roddenberry's view of the capabilities of humanity. I'm not a pessimist or a nihilist, and I don't even like the word "realist", either. I simply believe that human beings are fallible, having character traits both good and bad, and that as long as life continues on Earth, I don't think that will change. Just look at Biblical times, for example: many people 2,000 years ago were tribal, territorial, jealous, short-tempered, racist, and some of them were even murderous. Take away all the advanced technology and medicine that we've gained since then, and look really hard at the state of the human condition...not much has really changed. Oh sure, we can treat people better from time to time, being honest, graceful, and showing mercy. But those negative aspects remain inside of us, and I just don't see how in the next 200 years or so, we'll magically evolve to the point that all those problems disappear. I like the idea of humans living in an optimistic future, but I just don't think it will be completely free of our innermost problems.
This view is really biologically and evolutionarily unfounded. We evolved from an ancestor of the common ancestor of chimps and bonobos, and all evidence suggests that ancestor was closer behaviorally to bonobos than chimps. We have an evolutionary bias towards empathy and murderous strife is only a recent development.
I respectfully disagree.
I think that element is part of the science-fiction of Star Trek and one of its defining elements. It’s no different than any other speculative fiction that does a “what if?” as its underlying theme. And Star Trek’s commentary on the human condition is that there’s strength in communities, friendships, and families that might flourish if we threw bullshit like greed, bias, and any ideology not based in reason out the window.
And I think that whenever Star Trek has moved too much away from those attributes of its setting, then it becomes more generic. Then it becomes just another future show where flawed people shoot “pew pew” bolts of light at other flawed people with different colored “pew pew” light, and there’s no “heart” or resonance beyond that.
The “Killer Ape Hypothesis” has fallen out of favor with paleoanthropologists. Contrary to 2001: A Space Odyssey, human civilization didn’t come about because some human-ape ancestor learned to murder things. Relatively speaking, we’re actually less violent than chimpanzees and other ape species in social settings.
It’s now believed that human society came to be because we were better able to control our violent outbursts than those other species, reduced aggression while becoming hypersocial, and that led to building communities.
Controversial opinion....
The story and original script for Nemesis were really good and in the hands of someone who actually knew about and cared for TNG, it could have been TNG's best movie.
It's obvious that the writers had a keen knowledge of the lore and characters of the show and put a lot of tidbits in there.
The controversial part here is not so much that we all know it would have been better. What I'm saying is, it would have been the best.
The story and original script for Nemesis were really good and in the hands of someone who actually knew about and cared for TNG, it could have been TNG's best movie.
It's obvious that the writers had a keen knowledge of the lore and characters of the show and put a lot of tidbits in there.
The controversial part here is not so much that we all know it would have been better. What I'm saying is, it would have been the best.
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Controversial Opinion: writers do not need to care about Trek to write good Trek. Writers do not need to respect Trek. Knowledge us helpful, but good stories should take priority.
I agree, but for any longrunning franchise, it helps to know WHAT you are writing for.
I agree. I remember a Starlog interview with Nicholas Meyer around the time of Star Trek VI where he expressed the same opinion, saying, "I think our future is ashes" and arguing that there wasn't much evidence for man's perfectibility.
But I also believe that we can fight against and overcome our baser instincts. We're never going to entirely shake them, though. "We're killers... But we're not going to kill today."
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