What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?

[TREK_GOD_1]

Masks is the one set in a closed down Pottery Barn, right?

Masks was trash.

 

[Macintosh]

In TOS the Enterprise damages itself in an attempt to destroy an asteroid before it hits Mirimanee's planet. In TNG fires multiple torpedoes to partially destroys an asteroid before it hits Tessen III.

In contrast, Slave 1 does the same thing pretty quickly and with more destructive force

Easily explained by not all asteroids being created equal in either size or composition.

In TOS: "The Paradise Syndrome" asteroid the Enterprise damages itself attempting to destroy is, to quote Spock, "almost as large as Earth's moon". This is ENORMOUS for an asteroid, about one hundred times larger than the biggest one known to exist in our solar system. It'd be like the Enterprise trying to blow up Pluto!

In the case of the Enterprise-D at Tessen III, it's clear from dialogue that the asteroid is both quite large ("it is of sufficient size and density to cause planetwide damage") and composed of materials that are specifically resistant to photon torpedoes ("the core is composed of nitrium and chrondite... it is unlikely another photon torpedo will be of any effect"). In order to cause "planetwide damage" a typical asteroid would have to be at least 1km across, and we never see its size directly compared to the Enterprise in the same shot.

In contrast Slave I seems to be flying through a planetary ring system, which would likely be mostly made of ice rather than rock and in which the largest objects would be measured in the tens of metres.

So does a Star Destroyer

That Star Destroyer is vaporising comparatively tiny asteroids. Hell, we see the original 1701's deflector shields doing much the same thing in the Strange New Worlds title sequence! The Tessen III asteroid was likely as big as the Star Destroyer itself, if not larger; the asteroid from Mirimanee's planet was much larger than even the second Death Star.

 

[Shawnster]

I liked the set pieces and props in Masks

 

[Citiprime]

IMO this is for me just a plot hole at this point. The idea of the "real" Earth being a nuclear wasteland & them giving "our" Earth the name for hope came obviously later & created this inconsistency in retrospect. But imo was totally worth it.

If I remember correctly, because of the WGA (writers) strike circa 2008, Moore left it where the season 4.0 finale (i.e., the Earth which is a wasteland) could have been the series finale if Syfy had decided not to bring back the series and would have let the show end on a Planet of the Apes ending.

Yeah. BSG received the "How I met your mother"s of endings.

The characterisation of the characters in the final episode was one that could have made sense in the pilot. But was wildly different than from the characters these person became to be in the last several years.

Also "god did it" is a pretty lame "answer" to narrative mysteries (see also: "Lost" ending).

And then it didn't even explain anything. They could have put god in there if they really wanted to do but STILL at least give some answers (e.g. was Kara an angel? A prophet? A Cylon? A cylon angel?). "Just 'cause" is a pretty shitty answer after years of build up & teasing of a resolution.

The best way I can explain the difference between BSG and Star Trek is this:

In Star Trek, the characters question the absurdity of: "What does God need with a starship?" and instantly reject the idea that it can be anything worthy of listening to or following, where in BSG the entire plot depends around the idea that God complicitly allows entire civilizations to fall, watches over the wholescale destruction and murder of millions of people, because it needs one starship for the main plot to deliver a single child to a certain planet to breed with cavemen.

 

[Citiprime]

No, it makes sense to abandon it, they'd pretty much used everything up and can't actually make anything new.

If you reduced the population of Earth to 50k random people that tiny number isn't going to have the knowledge or ability to restart a single major industry, let alone an entire technological civilization. They were always destined to be subsistence farmers within a generation, might as well burn the ships, because you can't go back anyway.

Except ...

You have to believe no one in that fleet objected just on the idea of liking to live with air conditioning. My issue is that in the ending the human survivors basically commit to a situation that goes against their self-interest in a way where SOMEONE should have objected and resisted.

The amount of people that realistically would have died from disease, exposure, predatory animals, etc., would have been absolutely awful. 6 months after putting their starships into the sun, and having to endure a winter on Earth with no significant technology and running out of supplies like antibiotics and pain meds, Apollo's idea of "breaking the cycle" would have been cursed by many of the survivors.

To me, it would have always made more sense for some of the characters to commit to the living off the land plan on Earth, and others to go with the centurions on the basestar to attempt a new community.

 

[Phoenix219]

BSG and Lost are the top shows that I can see definitively that the years of fan theories and analysis were better deeper and more intetesting with more thought put in than what the shows actually did.

 

[Rahul]

No, it makes sense to abandon it, they'd pretty much used everything up and can't actually make anything new.

If you reduced the population of Earth to 50k random people that tiny number isn't going to have the knowledge or ability to restart a single major industry, let alone an entire technological civilization. They were always destined to be subsistence farmers within a generation, might as well burn the ships, because you can't go back anyway.

Except ...

You have to believe no one in that fleet objected just on the idea of liking to live with air conditioning. My issue is that in the ending the human survivors basically commit to a situation that goes against their self-interest in a way where SOMEONE should have objected and resisted.

The amount of people that realistically would have died from disease, exposure, predatory animals, etc., would have been absolutely awful. 6 months after putting their starships into the sun, and having to endure a winter on Earth with no significant technology and running out of supplies like antibiotics and pain meds, Apollo's idea of "breaking the cycle" would have been cursed by many of the survivors.

To me, it would have always made more sense for some of the characters to commit to the living off the land plan on Earth, and others to go with the centurions on the basestar to attempt a new community.

I mean - they literally showed the survivors converting their starships into housing & utilities the season before. Sure, a lot of them were destroyed/abandoned. But that's a thing that was shown on the series itself, how humans would build a colony.
Them collectively deciding to instead become hunter-gatherers again is some ridiculous "god's not dead" level of logic.

Also, yes, there was a(nother) peace agreement with (some of) the Cylons. But... like... they literally lived through a first-strike-genocide. NEVER would they ever abandon their Vipers again.
Except if every character suddenly says "okay, this is the end of history now. No more plot development after this point". Which is a complete 180° from any single character action at any point before.

I do however love the (unintended) implication that we are all partly descendants from Cylons, and that all our religious soul-out-of-body experiences might be some remaining backup-related Cylon functionalities

 

[BillJ]

Star Trek is creatively dead. It is simply feeding on its own carcass now.

 

[FredH]

I do however love the (unintended) implication that we are all partly descendants from Cylons, and that all our religious soul-out-of-body experiences might be some remaining backup-related Cylon functionalities

That seemed an explicit, unavoidable conclusion, not an unintended one?

 

[1001001]

Star Trek is creatively dead. It is simply feeding on its own carcass now.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

Masks was trash.

What made it thus?

 

[cooleddie74]

Masaka didn't make it thus, I can tell you that much.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

Don't confuse him.

 

[Nerys Myk]

What made it thus?

Ben Cooper.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

Now I'm confused. Possibly due to my missing the MASKS episode.

 

[at Quark's]

Give the kid a break. She was four.

The best way I can explain the difference between BSG and Star Trek is this:

In Star Trek, the characters question the absurdity of: "What does God need with a starship?" and instantly reject the idea that it can be anything worthy of listening to or following, where in BSG the entire plot depends around the idea that God complicitly allows entire civilizations to fall, watches over the wholescale destruction and murder of millions of people, because it needs one starship for the main plot to deliver a single child to a certain planet to breed with cavemen.

Given the claims some of our real-world religions (or some of its more fanatical followers) have made, that BSG portrayal doesn't even sound that far-fetched.

<ducks>

 

[Nerys Myk]

Now I'm confused. Possibly due to my missing the MASKS episode.

Ben Cooper, maker of all the classic Halloween costume of time past!

Including this gem

 

[137th Gebirg]

I think I had the one on the left when I was 6.

 

[cooleddie74]

I probably had one of those.

 

[1001001]

Edited by Moderator

I’m going to assume you didn’t mean to post that here…??