In which I immerse myself in various Trek sometimes while drunk...

[Semah]

...and post random snippets about it. Hi all. Lovely site you have here. I think I'll stay. The movie has rekindled my interest in all things Trek, so I am overexposing myself to all sorts of Trek-related media, in various stages of inebriation and writing random thoughts about it. Enjoy and discuss.


I picked up the Star Trek: Borg Collective DVD set from the library and thus have started my overexposure with Borg stories.

I started with Q Who? This one's a mixed bag. The first appearance of the Borg is effective and serves to foreshadow some of the greatness that will appear in Best of Both Worlds, but as a whole, suffers from 2nd season bad writing. The crew make stupid decisions, spend most of their time in meetings, and have to rely on the Q ex machina to save their bacon. Also notable is the lack of the phrases, "We are the Borg," "You will be assimilated" and "Resistance is futile" which we get sick of by then end of Voyager, oh yes we do.

Best of Both Worlds, parts one and two are hands down the best Trek that does not feature Khan or Deep Space 9. The Enterprise deals with a threat that is almost too powerful and deals with the "Why the hell wouldn't Riker have taken a command by this point in the series?" subplot rather welll. And when it comes to cliffhangers, it's hard to do the end of part 1 better than that. "Mr Worf...fire" I remember watching it when it first aired and having a summer to try to figure out how the hell they were going to save Picard. Or if the rest of the show was going to be the adventures of Captain Riker and first mate Shelby.

The Borg were at their finest in these, by far. This was pre-Hugh, pre-Borg Queen, Pre Voyager beating them with ridiculous ease. These guys were scary. They were relentless, they were driven, and they adapted to anything you could throw at them. And they were calm about it. Too bad we never saw them again. (Well, we sort of did in Enterprise: Regeneration, but I'll talk about that one later.)

 

[Semah]

Then, last night, I got really drunk and watched Scorpion and Dark Frontier



I made it about halfway through the first season when Voyager first came out and just stopped watching. I watched a few here and there, but was unimpressed to say the least.

Scorpion was the attempt to shake things up. We would now have a Borg member of the crew, which would presumably lead to the dramatic tension that they could have had all along with, you know, their premise. But I digress. I've never seen this episode before just now. And part one was pretty damn good. The opening teaser certainly got my attention. We see 2 Borg cubes doing their, "Resistance is futile" bit and getting blown to smithereens. John Ryes Davis appears as Leonardo Divinci on the Holodeck and is nicely used. Later in the episode, Voyager comes across Borg space and encounters 15 friggin cubes, which are running away and completely ignore our heroes. We later meet Species 8472, a redonculously powerful alien race, badass enough to scare the Borg. Janeway later is talking to Leonardo about God, and realizes that she has to make a deal with the devil. (I have determined that Janeway is either certifiably insane or aware that she has plot immunity. That woman does more things to try to get her crew killed than any character ever.)


So Janeway makes a deal to use her supply of plot devicium to destroy the bad (worse) guys. (Oh, and Harry Kim is like near death just after touching one of the things. Harry Kim is always near death. Hell, he is often at actual death, but is generally Lazerused by the end of the episode.) Species 8472 shows up as they are negotiating, blows up a friggin planet, and 2 Borg cubes, as the third cube speeds away with Janeway on it and we have a "To Be Continued"


Wow. I have no idea how they're gonna get out of this one. Couldn't possibly be by nerfing the baddies, could it?

Why yes it could!

Scorpion part 2 isn't horrible, but mostly only because it has some awful crap later in the series to compare it to. Species scary has been given nerf balls to throw at Voyager in this one, thus allowing Voyager to survive a direct hit from them, a shot which utterly destroyed a Borg Cube in the previous episode.

But the main draw of this episode is of course, the introduction to Seven of Nine, whose addition did add the breakout character Voyager was needing, but only just. Her intro scene only lacks her hair blowing in the wind for over the top, "Here she is! The show's new hottie!" Then she spends most of her time spouting menace and walking circles around people slowly (This is the trademarked FEMALE MENACE WALK. It shows up over and over again. The Borg Queen's a fan of it. Anyway, they rescue her from the collective with Plot Devicium and blow up the bad species with more Devicium and fly away.

Then there is Dark Horizon.

I have invented a drinking game for Dark Horizon:

1. Gather a quantity of your favorite beverage.
2. Watch Dark Horizon.
3. Drink everytime you say, aloud, "But that doens't make any sense"
4. ...


In some episode I didn't see, Voyager got ship's logs of the Hanson Family (Mmm-Bop!) Seven Of Nine's parents from when she was a human. Now try to follow me here: They were scientists that were investigating rumors of the Borg, before anyone knew about the Borg, and had a souped up anti-Borg Detection shield thingee on their ship, again, before anyone had heard about the Borg, and decided to follow a Borg Cube around with their young daughter. The amount of "That doesn't make any senses" had drained two vodka drinks by that point, so the rest of the episode's a little foggy. I seem to remember that Torres rigged a transwarp thing to the Delta Flier and let them go Ludicrous Speed, and Seven got captured by the Borg and a different Borg Queen than the one from First Contact because the one from First Contact was in jail or something said that she was special because Seven was the only Drone who was ever non-assimilated (Forgetting about Locutus, Hugh, and The Descent Borg. Hey, cut her some slack, she's new!) All the while doing the Female Walk of Menace.

Then the good guys show up and stop them and The Borg Queen looks like Ming The Merciless at the end of Flash Gordon with all of the "Stop Them!" s and what not. Then the Voyager wins and they fly away.

Ugh.

 

[ALF]

Star Trek (all of it, even the shitty episodes) are an excellent escape from reality.
It could possibly be the farthest thing from reality. A hopeful future with awesome technology.
Bullshit news and economic rape takes it's toll. Star Trek is idealogical escapism.

 

[Semah]

Star Trek (all of it, even the shitty episodes) are an excellent escape from reality.
It could possibly be the farthest thing from reality. A hopeful future with awesome technology.
Bullshit news and economic rape takes it's toll. Star Trek is idealogical escapism.

Agreed. Most mockery I do is out of love. Though tonight I'm going to watch Endgame, so that may be stretching it.

 

[USS KG5]

Star Trek (all of it, even the shitty episodes) are an excellent escape from reality.
It could possibly be the farthest thing from reality. A hopeful future with awesome technology.
Bullshit news and economic rape takes it's toll. Star Trek is idealogical escapism.

That is Trek's real strength though. That is why it attracts so many intelligent outsiders, those who feel that there is in essence a lot wrong with our world.

Let's face it, although the optimism of Trek has fallen out of favour in the post-9/11 world, and shows like nuBSG have taken a different tack with great success, there is a lot of room for Trek right now.

Maybe now amazing levels of greed have brought the economy to its knees, that pointless bloody conflict and avoidable outbreaks of disease and famine cover the news and we all need to believe in a better future, we should all get out the DVDs again?

 

[Semah]

Star Trek (all of it, even the shitty episodes) are an excellent escape from reality.
It could possibly be the farthest thing from reality. A hopeful future with awesome technology.
Bullshit news and economic rape takes it's toll. Star Trek is idealogical escapism.

That is Trek's real strength though. That is why it attracts so many intelligent outsiders, those who feel that there is in essence a lot wrong with our world.

Let's face it, although the optimism of Trek has fallen out of favour in the post-9/11 world, and shows like nuBSG have taken a different tack with great success, there is a lot of room for Trek right now.

Maybe now amazing levels of greed have brought the economy to its knees, that pointless bloody conflict and avoidable outbreaks of disease and famine cover the news and we all need to believe in a better future, we should all get out the DVDs again?

It's certainly working for me.

Last night I decided to watch Way of The Warrior instead of Endgame and am glad that I did. I had just rewatched Emmisary, as I talk about in the DS9 forum. This one works really well as a companion piece. To see the station in the pilot being all but defenseless and in Way being able to blow Kilingons to Smithereens is rather satisfying.

The story itelf is compelling, made up of a series of one-on-one interactions: Sisko/Worf, Dax/Kira, Dax/Worf, Garak/Bashir, Odo/Worf, Quark/Odo, Dukat/Garak, O'Brian/Worf, Gowron/Worf, Garak/Quark (The root beer conversation is some of the Best Trek in any medium. Worf's infusion into the show was a welcome one, and The Dominion War was its strongest story arc.


Maybe I'll watch some TOS next.