So What Are you Reading?: Generations
- Thread starter captcalhoun
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Yeah, I guess that's possible. To me it's more of an issue that after a while it seemed like Voyager was not having any significant issues with being so far away from the Federation. Every so often an episode would crop up where they would be running low on something, but for the most part it was like they were in Federation space. Maybe if they had done something halfway between what they were and the Equinox. I don't expect the ship to be falling apart around them, but a bit more hardship resulting from being so far from the Federation would have helped.
It's sort of a shame they didn't draw out the Starfleet vs. Maquis dynamic a bit more. It should have been a more gradual acceptance of the two.
But on the positive side, one thing I did like about Voyager is the opportunity to see a number of new civilizations for a change. And they seemed to map that out pretty well as Voyager traversed the Delta Quadrant. They'd meet a group, sometimes for a number of episodes like the Kazon, the Vidians, the Hirogen and finally the Heirarchy, and eventually would leave them behind as they travelled further. And I liked some of the other alien civilizations they encountered like the Krenim, even if it was limited to 1 or 2 episodes.
It just seemed at times the showrunners on Voyager fell into a comfortable, almost TNG style mode instead of challenging that mode a bit more. It's one thing I liked about DS9 in that they broke that mold a number of times.
Overall Voyager eventually managed to win me over. I found more positives than negatives. But there were definitely some missed opportunities. It could have been more. And one reason Voyager ranks last on my list is it did have more than a few clunkers. It seemed every season had at least 2 episodes that were
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Yes, that's true, that the show squandered the potential of its premise -- but fans often focus on the wrong details in their attempts to make that point. Like the perennial "Where did they get new shuttles from?" question, which is an attempt at a "gotcha" but is a particularly thoughtless question because there are replicators. As long as they have energy and raw materials, they can make anything they need. We actually saw this process in "Extreme Risk" -- a belated but definitive answer to the question of where they get replacement support craft. And yet people keep clinging to "Yes, but where do they get new shuttles from?" even decades after the question was explicitly answered onscreen.
The replicator ration question is not quite that bad, because the show did pretty much just drop it without explanation, but it's a question whose answer can be deduced with a little informed thought. There's no reason why a vessel that's able to travel between stars and asteroids should ever want for energy or raw materials (although the show itself ignored this sometimes with idiotic episodes like "Demon").
Well, not always. In the second season, a lot of fans complained that they were still doing Kazon and Vidiian stories instead of leaving those races' territories behind. It was plausible enough if you assumed both species had fairly widespread territories (and the Kazon were multiple somewhat nomadic tribes, so that made sense), but it still seemed like a poor fit to the premise, and it wasn't until season 3 that we started to see the show leave alien races behind.
And later on, the producers made a big mistake in bringing the Malon back after "Dark Frontier," in which Voyager jumped 20,000 light years. It just didn't make sense that the Malon, portrayed as a fairly primitive starfaring power, were spread that far across space. Although that's nothing to the illogic of "Homestead," where Voyager stumbles upon a Talaxian colony after traveling more than 40,000 light years past Talaxian space. The whole premise of the series for seven seasons had been how hard it was to travel that far, and then they just run into the same guys they met at the start???? It was an insanely stupid way to contrive an excuse for Neelix to leave.
I think that was partly because VGR was on UPN and the network wanted a more conventional TNG-type show. DS9 was syndicated, and first-run syndicated shows tended to have more creative freedom since they didn't have to satisfy the tastes of network bosses in addition to their own producers and studio heads.
Although I've heard conflicting stories about whether it was UPN or Rick Berman that wanted to hew to the more conventional formula. Either one is plausible. Apparently Berman let DS9 have more free rein because he was focused on VGR and the TNG movies, and because Ira Steven Behr was effective at convincing Berman to let him do as he wished.
I never really thought of that to be honest. I actually didn't keep count of the shuttles and those they lost. And in retrospect, considering they build the Delta Flyer from scratch I guess it's reasonable they could build other shuttles if need be. It's just not something I ever put a lot of thought into.
When I think of Voyager difficulties, it seemed they should have had more struggles then they did. When they did the Equinox episodes that's when it became more apparent. It started me thinking why was everything so comfortable on Voyager? Shouldn't they have struggled more?
I sort of figured there territories were pretty vast. As you noted the Kazon were nomadic so they probably didn't have a well defined territory anyway, and the Vidiians were desperate so it made some sense that their search would spread far and wide. Once the 2nd season concluded though it was time to move on, which thankfully they did.
Yeah, I agree with you there. The Malon were an interesting 'villain' but once they jumped all that distance they should have been left behind. It's like the writers forgot they made that huge jump.
That could have been explained better. It seemed like the Talaxians arrived quite a while earlier so you can't even really say it took them generations to get there. Perhaps if they stumbled on a wormhole or something that would have helped. But it was a big hanging story thread that really wasn't explained well.
I could see a bit of both. I think I remember something that Berman didn't even want to do Voyager right away, but had wanted DS9 to go it alone for a while and Paramount was like either you do it or we'll get someone else. I got the impression sometimes that Paramount interfered a bit. But one knock on Berman was sometimes he got a bit comfortable. I liked Berman era Trek but it's a fair criticism sometimes. I think sometimes he was to committed to a particular vision, and to protecting Roddenberry's vision for Star Trek, that sometimes he seemed to not want to push the boundaries of that vision. It seemed on Enterprise at least, esp. by the 3rd season, he was more willing to think outside the box (though I imagine that was partly due to the threat of cancellation forcing him a bit outside his comfort zone).
In-story, I figure they either used the Sikarian trajector from "Prime Factors" (whose range happened to max out at 40,000 light years) or the Vaadwaur's subspace corridors from "Dragon's Teeth" (which must have stretched as far back as Talax, because the species had had prior contact). But just because an idea can be rationalized in-story doesn't mean it wasn't a bad idea in real-world creative terms. It undermined the whole premise of the show, rendered the whole epic 7-year journey trivial, if some folks from one of the same species they met back in the pilot just happened to be there near the end, without a single word of explanation or discussion of how unlikely it was for them to have made it that far. That's what's galling -- not that they put a Talaxian colony there, but that they didn't justify it, that they treated it as not a big deal and not surprising in the least. It showed utter contempt for continuity and narrative logic, even more so than usual for VGR.
I'm doing a re-read of Target Lock by James H Cobb. Pity it's the last in that series (as far as I know)
Ha, thanks! I did create a spreadsheet awhile back that I update with the episodes of Literary Treks. It's mostly to keep track of the reviews on my website at www.treklit.com, but if you scroll to the far right, it has links to the Literary Treks episode for each novel as well. Some aren't included (any episodes where the feature is a comic or doesn't have a novel as the feature). Also, on the left side, any books marked with a green box have an associated Literary Treks episode. Hope that all makes sense! I've made it viewable publicly here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gCzkxpF7lpcDl_dRvetuA2_AnzFhMiyg2p1hgpTsH-8/edit?usp=sharing
Also, sorry for taking so long to respond, I've been sick the last few days and away from the computer.
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M
marlboro
Guest
^ Awesome. Thanks!
The newest episode of Literary Treks is up now: Literary Treks 259: He's Gotta Grow Some and Just Do It, all about TNG: Triangle: Imzadi II by Peter David.
I recently finished reading TNG: Death in Winter for an upcoming Literary Treks, and have just started on Star Trek #44: Vulcan's Glory by D.C. Fontana.
I recently finished reading TNG: Death in Winter for an upcoming Literary Treks, and have just started on Star Trek #44: Vulcan's Glory by D.C. Fontana.
M
marlboro
Guest
Armageddon 2419 A.D.
Someone finally had the balls to speak up about the dangers posed by flying Mongolians. Between the crummy writing and the Yellow Peril nonsense, I didn't make it very far into this one.
S.C.E. Wildfire
Very good.
Someone finally had the balls to speak up about the dangers posed by flying Mongolians. Between the crummy writing and the Yellow Peril nonsense, I didn't make it very far into this one.
S.C.E. Wildfire
Very good.
Just started Agent G: Infiltrator by C T Phipps. I've read a couple of his before now and enjoyed them.
Oh, wow, yes. I can't blame you -- it's pure white supremacism, actually using language about the need to defend the "White Race" (equated with Americans) from the evil yellow horde. It's the sort of thing you'd only see published today in the darkest corners of the Web, but it was mainstream fiction in its day. Combined with the kind of writing you'd expect in Hugo Gernsback's Amazing Stories, far more interested in futuristic technobabble and worldbuilding than in characterization and plot. It's actually kinda feminist, portraying women as strong and capable fighters, but that's more than cancelled out by its profound racism.
Although the racism in Armageddon 2419 A.D. pales in comparison to its sequel The Warlords of Han, in which the "heroes" ultimately use a systematic campaign of nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare to achieve the successful and total genocide of the entire Han (Chinese) race. Which I think must've been too racist even for 1920s audiences, since there's a clumsily tacked-on afterword trying to walk back the genocidal hate by saying, Oh yeah, the Han ultimately turned out to be part-alien which was why they were so evil and subhuman, and we get along just fine now with all the other human races including the "real" Chinese.
As for the Buck Rogers comic strip that adapted the stories, it started out with the same Yellow Peril premise and the kind of blatant stereotyped depictions of Asians that were standard at the time, but avoided the pro-genocide stance of the original stories (despite having the same author involved) -- instead, a year into the comic, it turned out that the evil Viceroy of the US was a rogue actor who was renounced by the Emperor back home, allowing peace to be declared, after which the focus turned to outer space and enemies from other planets.
Read Waypoint #5 over Friday and yesterday.
The two stories in this one were the DS9 story Frontier Medicine written by Cavan Scott, art by Josh Hood, and colors by Jason Lewis, and the TOS story, Come Away, Child written and art by Simon Roy. Both stories letters were by Andworld Design.
The two stories in this one were the DS9 story Frontier Medicine written by Cavan Scott, art by Josh Hood, and colors by Jason Lewis, and the TOS story, Come Away, Child written and art by Simon Roy. Both stories letters were by Andworld Design.
M
marlboro
Guest
Bubba Ho-Tep by Joe R. Lansdale.
I didn't like it. I love the movie, and the stories are almost identical, but the written version just doesn't work for me. Two reasons, I think. 1) Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis are great in the movie. 2) Lansdale uses a lot crude, and frequently scatalogical, humor and it comes across, to me, as trying too hard to be shocking. The movie cut back on that a bit.
I didn't like it. I love the movie, and the stories are almost identical, but the written version just doesn't work for me. Two reasons, I think. 1) Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis are great in the movie. 2) Lansdale uses a lot crude, and frequently scatalogical, humor and it comes across, to me, as trying too hard to be shocking. The movie cut back on that a bit.
I recently posted two reviews on my site:
Deep Space Nine: Millennium, Book III of III: Inferno by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens
The Next Generation: The Valiant by Michael Jan Friedman.
Recently finished Star Trek #44: Vulcan's Glory by D.C. Fontana.
Currently reading Voyager: Spirit Walk, Book One: Old Wounds by Christie Golden.
Deep Space Nine: Millennium, Book III of III: Inferno by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens
The Next Generation: The Valiant by Michael Jan Friedman.
Recently finished Star Trek #44: Vulcan's Glory by D.C. Fontana.
Currently reading Voyager: Spirit Walk, Book One: Old Wounds by Christie Golden.
I read the last issue of ST: Waypoint a couple days ago, and with that done I decided to get back to working my way the TNG/Titan books with TOS: History's Shadow by @Dayton Ward. Yes, I know that isn't TNG or Titan, but it's and it's TOS followup Elusive Salvation are connected to TNG: Hearts and Minds, so I'm reading them before I move on to H&M.
Power Curve by Richard Herman. It's another I'd read a few years back, but I thought I'd catch up with the series again.
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