Does It Get Better???

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Yeah I think TNG was really into that one eyed devotion to starfleet and the working to better yourself ideal in a way that wasn't as much of a driving force for the other shows. The Roddenberry grip.

DS9 had the advantage of showing the characters on a mini settlement and had major characters completely outside of the starfleet/humanity ideals. This was very enriching to character development and just plain more interesting to look at.

 

[AdmiralScreed]

Good points, everyone. I personally thought the TNG characters were far more real. They carried out their duties with extreme professionalism, which to some may have been misconstrued as stuffiness. But in their off hours when they had a chance to relax I thought they were very fun and engaging people. They played games like poker, spent time on the holodeck, made and listened to music, and socialized with one another in Ten Forward. If I were on the Enterprise I would behave just like they did.
To me the Voyager characters seemed far more cartoonish, and the lack of any real development in most of the characters made them seem very unreal to me.
I'll agree TNG had plenty of flaws. The first season was extremely uneven, and some characters like Geordi and Crusher were underdeveloped, but on the other hand you had terrific characters like Picard, Data, Riker, and Worf who changed so much over the course of the show. These are the characters who made me fall in love with the show......oh, and can't forget my favorite doctor, Kathryn Pulaski!

 

[exodus]

Interesting, I never got the impression that you found the characters on Voy. cartoonish from your reviews.
I found Pulaski kind of a bigot the way she treated Data.
You would think she didn't grow up with technology at all the way she acted toward it and him. How did she ever pass a psych evaluation to be put on a diplomatic vessel like the Enterprise if she didn't always respect the chain of command or except a new life form?
I would never use the holodecks on the Enterprise either considering most of the time they never worked right and were always getting trapped inside them.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

You get points for liking Pulaski

Yes the VOY characters are more cartoonish and that is an element as to why I like them so much. As an ensemble they are lively and colorful, full of shazam!.

I guess if I was on the Enterprise I wouldn't behave just like they did. I'd be more likely to behave like Trip or Paris. But I'm not into starfleet at all, there is no way I would ever be part of such an organization and when Trek makes the wunnerfulness of starfleet one of it's storyline backgrounds I glaze over.

Yes TNG had some great stories and laid the groundwork to much that came later. DS9 in particular owes it a debt as far as races and Klingon house politics go.

 

[exodus]

You get points for liking Pulaski

I thought you were cool.

 

[AdmiralScreed]

Interesting, I never got the impression that you found the characters on Voy. cartoonish from your reviews.
I found Pulaski kind of a bigot the way she treated Data.
You would think she didn't grow up with technology at all the way she acted toward it and him. How did she ever pass a psych evaluation to be put on a diplomatic vessel like the Enterprise if she didn't always respect the chain of command or except a new life form?

She was somewhat of a bigot at first, yes, but one of the reasons I found her so endearing was because she eventually came to recognize that her treatment of Data was wrong. By the end of her only season on the show she and Data were great pals. I thought she was very likable, and her occasional conflicts with Picard and Data made her interesting, among a group of characters who seemingly always got along.

And about my cartoonish comments, what I meant by that was that the characters were very one-sided. They were given personality traits early on, and the writers pretty much stuck to them and didn't really develop the characters into round, complex, and unique individuals. Maybe cartoonish was the wrong word to use because they didn't behave immaturely necessarily.....but on the other hand I feel it's not entirely inappropriate either. I need to formulate this a bit more....

 

[MacLeod]

Yeah I think TNG was really into that one eyed devotion to starfleet and the working to better yourself ideal in a way that wasn't as much of a driving force for the other shows. The Roddenberry grip.

DS9 had the advantage of showing the characters on a mini settlement and had major characters completely outside of the starfleet/humanity ideals. This was very enriching to character development and just plain more interesting to look at.

A starship is a sort of mini settlement. Espically in the case of VOY were it was possible that you would be spending the rest of your life with the rest of the crew.

 

[exodus]

Interesting, I never got the impression that you found the characters on Voy. cartoonish from your reviews.
I found Pulaski kind of a bigot the way she treated Data.
You would think she didn't grow up with technology at all the way she acted toward it and him. How did she ever pass a psych evaluation to be put on a diplomatic vessel like the Enterprise if she didn't always respect the chain of command or except a new life form?

She was somewhat of a bigot at first, yes, but one of the reasons I found her so endearing was because she eventually came to recognize that her treatment of Data was wrong. By the end of her only season on the show she and Data were great pals. I thought she was very likable, and her occasional conflicts with Picard and Data made her interesting, among a group of characters who seemingly always got along.

And about my cartoonish comments, what I meant by that was that the characters were very one-sided. They were given personality traits early on, and the writers pretty much stuck to them and didn't really develop the characters into round, complex, and unique individuals. Maybe cartoonish was the wrong word to use because they didn't behave immaturely necessarily.....but on the other hand I feel it's not entirely inappropriate either. I need to formulate this a bit more....

Come to New Jersey.
I can show you a whole State full of people that are just like B'Elanna, Tom, Harry & Neelix. Seriously, that's why I find them real. I know LOTS of people that are just like them. We don't call them cartoonish, we call them "characters".

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Yeah I think TNG was really into that one eyed devotion to starfleet and the working to better yourself ideal in a way that wasn't as much of a driving force for the other shows. The Roddenberry grip.

DS9 had the advantage of showing the characters on a mini settlement and had major characters completely outside of the starfleet/humanity ideals. This was very enriching to character development and just plain more interesting to look at.

A starship is a sort of mini settlement. Espically in the case of VOY were it was possible that you would be spending the rest of your life with the rest of the crew.

Yes but it's a mini-settlement of people in the same organization with the same ideals who even went to the same school! Can't compare that to DS9 with it's mix of races and civilians from all over with agendas that have nothing to do with starfleet.

 

[AdmiralScreed]

Interesting, I never got the impression that you found the characters on Voy. cartoonish from your reviews.
I found Pulaski kind of a bigot the way she treated Data.
You would think she didn't grow up with technology at all the way she acted toward it and him. How did she ever pass a psych evaluation to be put on a diplomatic vessel like the Enterprise if she didn't always respect the chain of command or except a new life form?

She was somewhat of a bigot at first, yes, but one of the reasons I found her so endearing was because she eventually came to recognize that her treatment of Data was wrong. By the end of her only season on the show she and Data were great pals. I thought she was very likable, and her occasional conflicts with Picard and Data made her interesting, among a group of characters who seemingly always got along.

And about my cartoonish comments, what I meant by that was that the characters were very one-sided. They were given personality traits early on, and the writers pretty much stuck to them and didn't really develop the characters into round, complex, and unique individuals. Maybe cartoonish was the wrong word to use because they didn't behave immaturely necessarily.....but on the other hand I feel it's not entirely inappropriate either. I need to formulate this a bit more....

Come to New Jersey.
I can show you a whole State full of people that are just like B'Elanna, Tom, Harry & Neelix. Seriously, that's why I find them real. I know LOTS of people that are just like them. We don't call them cartoonish, we call them "characters".

Yes, haha, I see where you're coming from. But the VOY characters were totally stagnant, and we didn't see many sides to them. Real people change over time and have multiple layers to their personality.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Real people change over time but not in the direction you're allowed to change on TV.

Real people start with one group of idiosyncracies, strengths and weaknesses, and then later they have a totally different group of idiosyncracies, strengths and weaknesses.

TV characters start with one group of idiosyncracies and weaknesses then gradually blunt them over time without adding new ones. Long TV series' character development is just a slow gravity of every character's personality quirks toward the center, and no Star Trek is any exception.

I liked TNG and Voyager. TNG has a better group of actors and better writing, but Voy has a good cast with good chemistry and at least half the episodes are well written. I definitely end up coming back to TNG and DS9 more often than Voyager, but that's like comparing a good beer to a great one. Voyager is Sam Adams Boston Lager and TNG and DS9 are the fancy craft beers that come corked.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

TV characters start with one group of idiosyncracies and weaknesses then gradually blunt them over time without adding new ones. Long TV series' character development is just a slow gravity of every character's personality quirks toward the center, and no Star Trek is any exception.

Except Gul Dukat.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

And personally I think I would rather hang out with TNG characters than Voyager characters.

Riker knows where the party's at, Geordi or Wesley could carry a pretty damn good science conversation, and if you want to have fun on the holodeck? Barclay's your man.

Now, if you want to really have fun, hang out with the DS9 crew.

The Voyager crew may be more personable but I can't think of anything we'd talk about. Maybe you could have some fun with Paris fanboying out over 20th century pop culture. But I get the sense he'd be a little controlling over the conversation.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Forget about the ships, which crew would you rather go to Risa with?

We saw what happened when Worf went to Risa and it wasn't pretty.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The final credits saved you from some very Klingon skinny dipping.

 

[AdmiralScreed]

That's a toughie............hmmm............Risa.................TNG or VOY..............I'd probably go with TNG, but I'd be happy to take Belanna with.......

 

[R. Star]

I dunno. Voyager's characters did seem cliche in a lot of ways.

Janeway was the self-parody in a lot of ways. Completely inconsistent, she'll be preachy about her ethics one week and perfectly willing to break them the next week.

Chakotay was well... dull. A few Indian cliches are all that define him. I can think of only two episodes he was really interesting in. The pilot(where I thought I was going to love this guy at the time) and Scorpion(where species 8472 briefly provides him with a functional pair of cajones).

The EMH was easily my favorite character, and he carried a LOT of episodes by himself, but he can't do it all.

Paris, well... let's see, he's a pilot, a field medic, commando, history expert, can design spaceships all by himself, oh and is a sci-fi fan.... can we say Mary Sue? Funny how all the Starfleet people in the pilot didn't want him around. Oh and they all died... well Chakotay didn't, but he lost his testicles in that episode.

Torres... well, her character traits include yelling at people, smashing people, fixing things and breaking them. She's angry all the time, but never over anything solid.

Kim... yeah, he's boring. Even his crew members thought that.

Kes... interesting premise, but poor execution. It might have been interesting seeing her explore her mental abilities, but the writers could never figure out what to do with her. So she got ditched.

Neelix... what a jerk. He forces himself into every situation, has to be the center of attention, gets jealous to the point of stalking, and is generally annoying. Frankly I have no idea why Janeway even trusted him after he lied to them and got them captured in the pilot.

Seven... well she was interesting. She had a perfectly calibrated pair of Borg spheres and that outfit was perfec--- oh her personality. She was a jerk. A hot jerk, but a jerk. It was amusing for awhile, but then got old. Then in season 7 they just literally hit a button and say. "You're human now! You have emotions!" and she falls for Chuckles... yeah.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

TNG and VOY are left in the dust in the competition to accompany teacake to Risa. The winner of an all expense paid week long resort stay in my presence goes to DS9. My 7 nights of luxurious hedonism will be spent with these lucky people!

Julian Bashir: Just enough wide eyed wonderment left in the man to really enjoy the sparkle of the place, plus he does love to kick back and relax. I'd be charmed to end up trapped in conversation with him.

Ezri Dax: She's adventurous without being a lunatic but cute enough to draw a crowd of (presumably) interesting people. She's that bubbly friend I have to bring along to drag me out of my observer status.

Quark: So far on this trip we're all dorks and we need Quark to slip his latinum and lobes around so we get to do that extra special cool stuff we would be too dorky to find ourselves. Also I've always had some hots for Quark and he's a nice diversion when Julian gets too angsty.

Mr. Homm: For fetching stuff. And hanging our clothes on when we go swimming.

Odo is BANNED from coming.

 

[exodus]

Janeway was the self-parody in a lot of ways. Completely inconsistent, she'll be preachy about her ethics one week and perfectly willing to break them the next week.

I always though that was a woman's prerogative?
I always found that made Janeway the most human.
People in general are inconsistent, especially when faced with new perspective and experiences. Me personal saw every Capt. had to face a trial-Picard with Q, Sisko with the Prophets. Too me Janeway's was too see if she could stick to her morals in an immoral DQ. I think if we wee in her shoes, we probably couldn't always stick to our morals either. I think that's find her to be like Kirk.

Neelix... what a jerk. He forces himself into every situation, has to be the center of attention, gets jealous to the point of stalking, and is generally annoying. Frankly I have no idea why Janeway even trusted him after he lied to them and got them captured in the pilot.

Sounds like a die hard sci-fi fan too me.
Except Neelix is a party animal. Get it-Hahaha!

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Janeway was the self-parody in a lot of ways. Completely inconsistent, she'll be preachy about her ethics one week and perfectly willing to break them the next week.

The way you describe her, she's the most realistic character in Trek history.