Can we just pretend that Voyager never happened?

[Guy Gardener]

I expect more of season 6 Voyager than I do of Season 2 TNG.

Which is why Voyager is more disappointing.

How TNG dealt clumsily with race and gender, is still better than Voyager ignoring the mainstreaming of Homosexuality.

 

[at Quark's]

The people at J-25 were 20th Century level, and that didn't stop the Borg.

What evidence is there that they were on that level (and not higher) ?

 

[at Quark's]

Fine, Yar being killed by a lump of sludge towards the end of season 1. Starfleet's flagship chief engineer being held hostage by the dumbest aliens ever in Samaritan Snare. Ferengis taking over the Enterprise with a couple of old birds of prey and kid Picard saving the ship in Rascals. Or maybe the notion of a teenage kid leading a science project and driving the Enterprise...

Don't get me wrong, I love TNG. My point isn't that TNG is more shit, but both have had their low and rather questionable episodes.

I won't judge VOY for the existence of 'bad' episodes. Every trek series has had those. Just as every trek series has had outstanding episodes. I think when I would do an episode count, I wouldn't find significantly more 'bad' VOY episodes than TNG ones.

But I will judge VOY for the feeling that a lot of VOY felt like a rehash from TNG, even though there still were a good number of original episodes, and the atmosphere/setting of VOY is noticeably different from TNG.

But perhaps I'm not being fair in my comparison: I grew up on TNG.

 

[tcm121]

Threshold was season 2 Voyager, Rascals (alongside some standard Holodeck episodes, a common criticism of Voyager) was season 6 TNG...

Voyager probably did lack a fresh enough storyline that differentiated itself sufficiently from previous series. There's much to be said on that front. But we can't just say Voyager is bad because of Threshold and other standard poor episodes. Whether it's too different to the ideals of exploration and Star Trek because the idea is heading home and other things etc., yes I can see the point...

ALL of Star Trek lacked decent homosexual characters and relationships. That can't be a criticism of just Voyager. The TNG films ignored it just as much, and were on over a similar period. Ample opportunity for one with the rumours of Hawk being gay in First Contact before it came out.

 

[Catarina]

I still think season 7 of Voyager was the worst. I want to say six often, but season seven should have been wrapping things up, not doing silly episodes. trivial ones that is. They were fun but we has unresolved stuff that we assumed would have some conclusion. Another alternative was just leave them on the journey. It might upset people but it's at least consistent with the gloom of their predicament.

I'd say far more people felt TPTB dismissed us like they did Mulgrew at the last "Cut!". It's like they unscrewed the chair under us too. Business as usual.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The people at J-25 were 20th Century level, and that didn't stop the Borg.

What evidence is there that they were on that level (and not higher) ?

This is what we know for sure...

WORF: Captain, the sixth planet in the system is Class M.
DATA: There is a system of roads on this planet, which indicates a highly industrialised civilisation. But where there should be cities there are only great rips in the surface.

 

[at Quark's]

The people at J-25 were 20th Century level, and that didn't stop the Borg.

What evidence is there that they were on that level (and not higher) ?

This is what we know for sure...

WORF: Captain, the sixth planet in the system is Class M.
DATA: There is a system of roads on this planet, which indicates a highly industrialised civilisation. But where there should be cities there are only great rips in the surface.

Yes, I thought about that quote too.

But I see no reason why a 24th century technology-level civilization still couldn't have a developed road system. The fact that we see people beaming around all over the place doesn't necessarily imply that it would be the most suited transportation mode for everything, e.g bulk transportation. The transporter may be the quickest (by far), but not necessarily the most economic means of transport.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The amount of power that the Federation can generate effortlessly is ridiculous.

Why care about the profit of saving 40 million joules by using a truck instead of a transporter if an antimater reactor the size of a beer fridge can generate 30 trillion joules a second?

The real question of resources comes down to time.

Saving two weeks is more important than saving 40 million joules.

 

[bbjeg]

Some people don't like teleporting or flying, hence roads in the future.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

The people at J-25 were 20th Century level, and that didn't stop the Borg.

What evidence is there that they were on that level (and not higher) ?

I don't believe there's any.

 

[Dukhat]

I think that the Borg were a little more choosy about whom they were going to assimilate than we assume. Seven even said that if they had met with Earth before first contact they would have judged them unworthy of assimilation. In fact the more technological advancement you have the more tempting a target you become to them.

But we really don't know the Borg's true rationale for assimilating people, do we? Yeah, Seven may have said that, but then again she (or someone else, I don't remember) said that the Borg also considered the Kazon "unworthy" of assimilation. Why one and not the other? The Kazon's technology was on par with everyone else in the Delta Quadrant, so why didn't the Borg want them?

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

I think that the Borg were a little more choosy about whom they were going to assimilate than we assume. Seven even said that if they had met with Earth before first contact they would have judged them unworthy of assimilation. In fact the more technological advancement you have the more tempting a target you become to them.

But we really don't know the Borg's true rationale for assimilating people, do we? Yeah, Seven may have said that, but then again she (or someone else, I don't remember) said that the Borg also considered the Kazon "unworthy" of assimilation. Why one and not the other? The Kazon's technology was on par with everyone else in the Delta Quadrant, so why didn't the Borg want them?

She said that in "The Raven" right before she beat the crap out of Neelix for being in her way. Maybe they thought that the Kazons were useless people that like the borg only knew how to steal technology and not develop one of their own, although we can see the Borg, doing some kind of research at times, but I believe that's only to adapt technology not to invent it.

 

[Dukhat]

I think that the Borg were a little more choosy about whom they were going to assimilate than we assume. Seven even said that if they had met with Earth before first contact they would have judged them unworthy of assimilation. In fact the more technological advancement you have the more tempting a target you become to them.

But we really don't know the Borg's true rationale for assimilating people, do we? Yeah, Seven may have said that, but then again she (or someone else, I don't remember) said that the Borg also considered the Kazon "unworthy" of assimilation. Why one and not the other? The Kazon's technology was on par with everyone else in the Delta Quadrant, so why didn't the Borg want them?

She said that in "The Raven" right before she beat the crap out of Neelix for being in her way. Maybe they thought that the Kazons were useless people that like the borg only knew how to steal technology and not develop one of their own, although we can see the Borg, doing some kind of research at times, but I believe that's only to adapt technology not to invent it.

But if all the Borg are doing are assimilating people, what does it matter what their technology level is? They're just creating more drones. Any carbon-based lifeform would be suitable for that.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

But we really don't know the Borg's true rationale for assimilating people, do we? Yeah, Seven may have said that, but then again she (or someone else, I don't remember) said that the Borg also considered the Kazon "unworthy" of assimilation. Why one and not the other? The Kazon's technology was on par with everyone else in the Delta Quadrant, so why didn't the Borg want them?

She said that in "The Raven" right before she beat the crap out of Neelix for being in her way. Maybe they thought that the Kazons were useless people that like the borg only knew how to steal technology and not develop one of their own, although we can see the Borg, doing some kind of research at times, but I believe that's only to adapt technology not to invent it.

But if all the Borg are doing are assimilating people, what does it matter what their technology level is? They're just creating more drones. Any carbon-based lifeform would be suitable for that.

I don't know. The Borg will do anything their Queen orders them to and she seems like a raving lunatic. How did she get to be the Queen anyway? Does anyone have a theory about that?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Some people don't like teleporting or flying, hence roads in the future.

Recreational travel sure.

But freight?

Moving 90 million gallons of kerosene 15 thousand kilometres?

That's a lot of trucks.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

Some people don't like teleporting or flying, hence roads in the future.

Recreational travel sure.

But freight?

Moving 90 million gallons of kerosene 15 thousand kilometres?

That's a lot of trucks.

The biggest thing I saw them teleport were those wales and their seawater. That's still a lot less than millions of gallons of anything, though. Plus it was Klingon technology.

 

[bbjeg]

Some people don't like teleporting or flying, hence roads in the future.

Recreational travel sure.

But freight?

Moving 90 million gallons of kerosene 15 thousand kilometres?

That's a lot of trucks.

Trains probably exist in the future too. They're many reasons why it's wise not to base transportation on transporter technology. What if they're transporting large amounts of volatile chemicals that can't be teleported (90 million gallons worth)?

 

[Anwar]

The people at J-25 were 20th Century level, and that didn't stop the Borg.

What evidence is there that they were on that level (and not higher) ?

If they were higher, there'd be space stations or spacecraft remnants or whatever on the planet or in the atmosphere. All we hear about it "Highly industrialized" on the surface. Evidence of a civilization that was around Spacecraft level.

 

[at Quark's]

Some people don't like teleporting or flying, hence roads in the future.

Recreational travel sure.

But freight?

Moving 90 million gallons of kerosene 15 thousand kilometres?

That's a lot of trucks.

It would probably be an even greater number of transports. With an ocean megaliner, on the other hand ...

Anyway, I'm under the impression (but it's hard to prove), that in many scenes filmed on earth cities of starfleet HQ, there is still a fair amount of (air) traffic going on in the background (shuttles flying off and on), and something that seems like commuter monorails in some shots. It would be hard to believe all that is solely recreational.

Even Our Heroes still regularly take shuttles instead of transporting themselves down (or up). I certainly hope that wouldn't always be due to 'interference' or the ship flying in too high an orbit

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

The people at J-25 were 20th Century level, and that didn't stop the Borg.

What evidence is there that they were on that level (and not higher) ?

If they were higher, there'd be space stations or spacecraft remnants or whatever on the planet or in the atmosphere. All we hear about it "Highly industrialized" on the surface. Evidence of a civilization that was around Spacecraft level.

I am sorry but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I never heard someone say that they weren't any space stations around. For all we know, these space stations could have crashed on the planet after a prolonged period of neglect which is what happens eventually to our satellites.