Details, details, details

[C.E. Evans]

The thing that put me off of Star Trek Voyager from the beginning (among other things) was the whole "70 years to get home" and Janeway's constant prattling about "getting the family home".

If it was really going to take 70 years to get the ship back home........then there was no point in trying anyway. There was no reasonable way the ship completely unsupported was going to go on for 70 years.

Janeway wasn't the type of captain to quit and not try. From the very beginning, she said that they would be looking for ways to shorten their voyage home via wormholes and new technologies. So a 70-year voyage wasn't really an option for Janeway.

That tenacity is what separates Janeway from a more timid captain who would have just given up.

 

[Sindatur]

The thing that put me off of Star Trek Voyager from the beginning (among other things) was the whole "70 years to get home" and Janeway's constant prattling about "getting the family home".

If it was really going to take 70 years to get the ship back home........then there was no point in trying anyway. There was no reasonable way the ship completely unsupported was going to go on for 70 years.

Better to just admit as such and decide to keep exploring the Delta Quadrant and hope they found some new ally or technology that could help them.

That's exactly what she did, she pointed Voyager towards home, exploring along the way home, "knowing" it was at worst 70 years to get home, and she pursued technology and allies and Phenomenon to get them home quicker... and the Federation was all the better for it, as they brought new knowledge and technology home with them.

 

[MacLeod]

I liked the 1000 light years per year notion of VOY, it is easy to remember and was sometimes useful when the VOY sometimes made a big jump and they said how many lightyears they travelled.

Problem is, by that math, it could take years to get from one side of the Federation to the other. Seems like that would be a problematic amount of area to govern.

Sure, once you try to make a general speed rule out of this simply formula from a show whose setup was that it would take two or three generations to get home, once you try to connect stories like WNMHGF and TFF where the Enterprise reaches the center or the edge of the galaxy in a matter of days or weeks with a show like VOY whose ships is supposed to be the fastest ever yet takes decades to cross the galaxy it fails.
The problem of setting up VOY in another galaxy is obvious, if you wanna be mildly realistic the large distances between galaxies would imply that the ship has to spend a large part of its journey in the emptiness of space.

We are Trek fans so we naturally yearn for an epic Trek where everything is connected to everything. But as much as we might like continuity and consistency, it is far less important than the actual dramatic reasons for not caring about it and perhaps the influence of the continuity obsession upon the franchise in the last years, visible in ENT's last season as well as the semi-reboot nature of STXI, was not really beneficial.

Magic A is Magic A, i.e be consitant in how you use things. If you say this technology has this limit or can't do this or doesn't have this, don't all of a sudden x episodes later say those are gone.

The more you break from established rules of the universe in which you are operating the more you move towards killing the suspesion of disbelief.

 

[horatio83]

Suspension of disbelief? You wanna tell me that you watch Trek with a notebook into which you put every incident of when the transporter beams through shields or every line that reveals how fast a particular warp factor actually is? Seriously?
Being consistent about this stupid tech background stuff does not matter to anybody but obsessive fans who somehow cannot deal with the fact that writers make it up as they go along: lithium, dilithium, Vulcanians, Vulcans ...

It's not like contemporary writers are not already seriously limited by the pressure to be consistent with all the other stuff that came before them. You show a 22nd century Bird of Prey that can cloak and the fans rip you to shreds whilst totally missing what the story was actually about.

 

[Knight Templar]

Suspension of disbelief? You wanna tell me that you watch Trek with a notebook into which you put every incident of when the transporter beams through shields or every line that reveals how fast a particular warp factor actually is? Seriously?
Being consistent about this stupid tech background stuff does not matter to anybody but obsessive fans who somehow cannot deal with the fact that writers make it up as they go along: lithium, dilithium, Vulcanians, Vulcans ...

It's not like contemporary writers are not already seriously limited by the pressure to be consistent with all the other stuff that came before them. You show a 22nd century Bird of Prey that can cloak and the fans rip you to shreds whilst totally missing what the story was actually about.

The problem there is that Star Trek writers are for the most part not obsessive, compulsive about series while the most loyal Trek fans are.

 

[BillJ]

You show a 22nd century Bird of Prey that can cloak and the fans rip you to shreds whilst totally missing what the story was actually about.

Perhaps the writers wouldn't be ripped to shreds if the episode containing the violation wasn't piss-poor.

 

[horatio83]

What's piss-poor about it? We spend some time on the hull so check on unusual setting, we meet the Rommies for the first time so check on slowly introducing the upcoming war and for the most part of the episode we spend some time with Archer and Reed and actually learn something new about them. It's basically an unassuming character piece which plays on a nice background.
And last but not least we get a connection between this and the following episode, both of which set up a slightly darker mood for this season.

Now Trip spending some time with a princess in a story which is just a lazy copy job of a TNG script, that's what I would call piss-poor.

 

[MacLeod]

As a bare minimum a show should be consitant within itself, it doesn't matter what genre the show is or when it is set past, present or future.

As for being consistant with other shows within the franchise, some people are more forgiving about incosistancies than others.

 

[Knight Templar]

As a bare minimum a show should be consitant within itself, it doesn't matter what genre the show is or when it is set past, present or future.

As for being consistant with other shows within the franchise, some people are more forgiving about incosistancies than others.

Fully agree. I remember how irritated I was with DS9 basing an entire episode over the "fact" that the Mirror Universe "did not have cloaking devices" (The Emperors New Cloak) while conveniently forgetting that the second DS9 mirror episode clearly showed THREE ships decloaking ONSCREEN.

 

[MacLeod]

^Please I'm doing my best to forgot that particular MU episode. It was definalty one of the weaker ones.

 

[BillJ]

What's piss-poor about it?

It's dull. I don't mind going against a previously established fact if the story is worth it. Minefield definitely wasn't worthy of overwriting The Original Series. In my opinion.

 

[Knight Templar]

What's piss-poor about it?

It's dull. I don't mind going against a previously established fact if the story is worth it. Minefield definitely wasn't worthy of overwriting The Original Series. In my opinion.

Same here.

You know, as much as I like "Balance of Terror", I thought some of the things in it were ridiculous.

1) The Federation/Earth side having no idea what Romulans looked like, or even that they were related to the Vulcans. I mean come on, how many ships were blown up in the Earth/Romulan War? Are we supposed to really believe that the Earth side never recovered a few corpses here and there?

2) Scotty's statement "their power is strictly impulse" to be taken for most of Star Trek history that the "Romulans did not have faster than light travel". Ignoring the point that if the Romulans did not have faster than light travel that could NEVER have even fought a war, much less fight and survive versus a side that did.

 

[T'Girl]

1) The Federation/Earth side having no idea what Romulans looked like, or even that they were related to the Vulcans.

Hit a 22nd century starship with a hundred megatonne nuclear warhead and there might not have been much to recover.

Are we supposed to really believe that the Earth side never recovered a few corpses here and there?

And if a body was recovered, did it first travel through a jagged hole the size of your wrist on it's way into vacuum ? And is it a freeze dried mummy? Is it even a Romulan? Or is it a Reman, or one of the other intelligent species from within the Empire, serving aboard the ship?

2) Scotty's statement "their power is strictly impulse" to be taken for most of Star Trek history that the "Romulans did not have faster than light travel".

Or, that the Romulans lack matter/antimatter technology, and their warp drive was fusion powered, just like a impulse engine.

 

[MacLeod]

What's piss-poor about it?

It's dull. I don't mind going against a previously established fact if the story is worth it. Minefield definitely wasn't worthy of overwriting The Original Series. In my opinion.

Yes but if we take another example from VOY, re: the EMH having no backup to having one all of a sudden in "Living Witness".

Yes it was a good episode, but at least one B plot of a previous episode was about not having a backup copy of the EMh and I think it was mentioned several times in previous episodes as to whther or not they should risk losing the Doctor.

So perhaps we can be more figving of an almost throwaway line than one that forms more signifigant plot points.

 

[Knight Templar]

1) The Federation/Earth side having no idea what Romulans looked like, or even that they were related to the Vulcans.

Hit a 22nd century starship with a hundred megatonne nuclear warhead and there might not have been much to recover.

Are we supposed to really believe that the Earth side never recovered a few corpses here and there?

And if a body was recovered, did it first travel through a jagged hole the size of your wrist on it's way into vacuum ? And is it a freeze dried mummy? Is it even a Romulan? Or is it a Reman, or one of the other intelligent species from within the Empire, serving aboard the ship?

2) Scotty's statement "their power is strictly impulse" to be taken for most of Star Trek history that the "Romulans did not have faster than light travel".

Or, that the Romulans lack matter/antimatter technology, and their warp drive was fusion powered, just like a impulse engine.

They could've explained that later onscreen with a simple line of dialogue.

As for the remains of the Romulans (I'm not going to even talk about the horrible idea of the Remans from a terrible movie), even today forensic science allows for the reconstruction of faces from mere skulls. I have trouble believing that they don't have the technology in the 22nd century to take a few half vaporized corpses, examine them and say

"Hey, these guys we're at war with are very similar to our allies, the Vulcans".

 

[horatio83]

What's piss-poor about it?

It's dull. I don't mind going against a previously established fact if the story is worth it. Minefield definitely wasn't worthy of overwriting The Original Series. In my opinion.

They did not intend to overwrite a few lines from Balance of Terror, they acknowledged that they simply made an error and in the next story the Rommies did not have any cloak.

Although I cannot stand the continuity obsession of the franchise I totally agree that the 22nd century Romulans should lack cloaking abilities. But other elements from Balance of Terror like the notion that the Bird of Prey lacks warp capability obviously make no sense. It had more to do with the writer's notion that this Romulan ship is the equivalent of a submarine and thus supposed to be slower than the Enterprise.

 

[MacLeod]

Well with regards to continutiy to draw an analogy in a book or a series of books. You wouldn't expect a level of continiuty

Now if you view each ST story like a chapter in a book you expect a certain level of continiuty.

 

[horatio83]

A show like The Wire can be compared to a novel but Trek is episodic television.
Have you ever watched TOS? They made it up as they went along and even nowadays they still do, the only difference being that fans complain when a writer is not perfectly familiar with the five hundred hours that came before him.
Take something like The Inner Light. It is great precisely because it is a meteor that glows up and vanishesd, precisely because it is exceptional, precisely because it cannot really be woven into Picard's character.

 

[C.E. Evans]

1) The Federation/Earth side having no idea what Romulans looked like, or even that they were related to the Vulcans.

Hit a 22nd century starship with a hundred megatonne nuclear warhead and there might not have been much to recover.

And if a body was recovered, did it first travel through a jagged hole the size of your wrist on it's way into vacuum ? And is it a freeze dried mummy? Is it even a Romulan? Or is it a Reman, or one of the other intelligent species from within the Empire, serving aboard the ship?

2) Scotty's statement "their power is strictly impulse" to be taken for most of Star Trek history that the "Romulans did not have faster than light travel".

Or, that the Romulans lack matter/antimatter technology, and their warp drive was fusion powered, just like a impulse engine.

They could've explained that later onscreen with a simple line of dialogue.

I don't think it was necessary. A matter/antimatter reaction may be the preferred method for Federation starships using warp drive, but impulse power may be standard for other civilizations using a different form of FTL drive.

As for the remains of the Romulans (I'm not going to even talk about the horrible idea of the Remans from a terrible movie), even today forensic science allows for the reconstruction of faces from mere skulls. I have trouble believing that they don't have the technology in the 22nd century to take a few half vaporized corpses, examine them and say

"Hey, these guys we're at war with are very similar to our allies, the Vulcans".

"And the Rigelians." Although very different in appearance, the Rigelians are very similar otherwise to Vulcans. In turn, there may other races who are similar to Rigelians, and so on...

 

[MacLeod]

You do know that sometimes they hire someone to look after continuity when making a film/TV programme, to try and minimise continuity errors.

Sci-Fi fans are well known for expecting a high degree of conitinuity.

As a viewer it is not unreasnable to expect that the production team, not to contradict previous episodes/plot points etc.. without explain why.

It is far easier to overlook what amounts to a throw away line being contradicted than it is to overlook a contradiction that what was a A/B/C Plot x episodes ago.

Lets look at an example in VOY about holodeck power systems being incompatable with the rest of the ships power system. Should I hazard a guess as to why they put that line in. I think it was to prevent fans from saying well in TNG you established that holodecks are turned off in situations when resources are low. (in TNG's case it was power, episode "Booby Trap").