By nerfed, do you mean "not ridiculously overpowered or crossing the galaxy and back every other Tuesday"? Because I'd call that "infinitely more realistic than TOS era."
Did anything good come from Project Vanguard?
- Thread starter Corran Horn
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By nerfed, do you mean "not ridiculously overpowered or crossing the galaxy and back every other Tuesday"? Because I'd call that "infinitely more realistic than TOS era."
Yeah, becuase when I watch a show that has the characters going down to a planet via a device that breaks them down to molecules, converts them to energy, zaps them to a planet, and reassembles them correctly and still alive without any type of receiving pad I'm basing my enjoyment on how realistic it is
I don't care about how realistic Trek is I just want to be entertained by it.
Yeah, who else has adaptive shielding?
Yeah, becuase when I watch a show that has the characters going down to a planet via a device that breaks them down to molecules, converts them to energy, zaps them to a planet, and reassembles them correctly and still alive without any type of receiving pad I'm basing my enjoyment on how realistic it is
I don't care about how realistic Trek is I just want to be entertained by it.
And the most entertaining part of Trek is definitely the constant threat of death and violence. You can't get that in any other sci-fi series, it's the cornerstone of Star Trek. I mean, you can't turn a corner in Trek fandom without hearing about Roddenberry's love of nihilism.
Besides, after just a couple minutes' thought, I've already come up with the Douwd, the Q, the Crystalline Entity, the Pah-Wraiths, and Nagilum as post-TOS examples of the sort of hyperbeings or dangerous cosmozoans that are still around in the 24th century. And that's just talking about the TV material, not Treklit.
(Edit: in hindsight my original post was probably a little too harsh, I toned it down a bit)
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And the most entertaining part of Trek is definitely the constant threat of death and violence. You can't get that in any other sci-fi series, it's the cornerstone of Star Trek. I mean, you can't turn a corner in Trek fandom without hearing about Roddenberry's love of nihilism.
No, it's just having a universe where not everything works out perfectly all the time and sometimes the heros don't get happy endings where everything is peachy but they still try to do the right thing anyway despite victory not always being assured.
As opposed to any one where everything works out all the time and the heroes are boring and invincible the vast majority of the time.
Whose one appearing member was a pacifist until he snapped, felt horrible about what he did, and largely just wanted to be left alone, and never seemed to go past trying to just scare Picard and co. off, really more tragic than potentially scary.
Lost the menace the moment he became a cosmic prankster.
Lost the menace when you could talk to it and it became really easy to kill.
Kind of loses the menace when technobabble can kill them.
Will conced the point on this one.
But most of them aren't as scary as some of the TOS ones and the ones that do did it in TNG's more TOS first couple of years and either disappeared completely or had their menace level dropped considerably.
And the most entertaining part of Trek is definitely the constant threat of death and violence. You can't get that in any other sci-fi series, it's the cornerstone of Star Trek. I mean, you can't turn a corner in Trek fandom without hearing about Roddenberry's love of nihilism.
No, it's just having a universe where not everything works out perfectly all the time and sometimes the heros don't get happy endings where everything is peachy but they still try to do the right thing anyway despite victory not always being assured.
As opposed to any one where everything works out all the time and the heroes are boring and invincible the vast majority of the time.
If you're talking about much of on-screen TNG and VOY, I'm with you. (Episodes like "The Wounded" or films like Star Trek: First Contact being notable exceptions.)
If you're talking about on-screen DS9, I have no idea what universe you're from.
If you're talking about modern TrekLit set in the post-DS9 Alpha Quadrant? Then I definitely don't know what books you've been readin'.
And the most entertaining part of Trek is definitely the constant threat of death and violence. You can't get that in any other sci-fi series, it's the cornerstone of Star Trek. I mean, you can't turn a corner in Trek fandom without hearing about Roddenberry's love of nihilism.
No, it's just having a universe where not everything works out perfectly all the time and sometimes the heros don't get happy endings where everything is peachy but they still try to do the right thing anyway despite victory not always being assured.
As opposed to any one where everything works out all the time and the heroes are boring and invincible the vast majority of the time.
Okay, if that's what you mean, then I get you; I think you might have just misspoken when you referred to "cosmic horror" earlier. Cosmic Horror means your traditional "humanity is nothing in the face of the true powers in the universe", "nothing you do matters in the end because you are an insignificant speck against the immensity of creation" type fiction; stuff like Lovecraft's work. It doesn't just mean "horror in space", it refers to a very specific, nihilistic, cynical genre of fantasy/horror/sci-fi that is very much lacking in plucky stick-to-it heroes because it's all about how humanity as a whole is utterly meaningless and could be snuffed out at any moment by a being so inclined to do so, it's just so minor that no one's yet bothered because no one and no thing cares enough about humanity to even destroy it. I thought that that was what you were looking for in post-23rd-century Trek, which was why I was confused because Star Trek has not really ever been Cosmic Horror beyond a few individual episodes. If you don't have a sense of meaningless and insignificance for the entirety of the human race, it's not really in the Cosmic Horror genre.
And the most entertaining part of Trek is definitely the constant threat of death and violence. You can't get that in any other sci-fi series, it's the cornerstone of Star Trek. I mean, you can't turn a corner in Trek fandom without hearing about Roddenberry's love of nihilism.
No, it's just having a universe where not everything works out perfectly all the time and sometimes the heros don't get happy endings where everything is peachy but they still try to do the right thing anyway despite victory not always being assured.
This is not the case in the television shows, never mind the literature. Choosing not to see the regretful Douwd, or the prankster Q, as scary is a matter of choice.
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