Stargate: Universe is what Voyager should've been like

[exodus]

I haven't seen BSG, so...

So how can you say for sure that nuBSG isn't his idea of a reboot Voyager?

I just finished watching the entire nuBSG series.
While I very much enjoyed it, it's very obvious that Moore took existing ideas from Voyager (and a little DS9) and flipped it. One of the most obvious is: Voyager is a nearly 10 years more advanced than other Starfleet ships to have fewer supply issues. Galactica is a 20 year old out of date ship ready for mothball which would create more supply issues. The Voyager crew embrace technology, the Galactica crew reject it.

 

[Anwar]

1) If that stuff really mattered to him, he'd have dealt with it in his own show. He didn't. And those complaints are aimed at VOY specifically and not other Trek shows, which shows this is more personal vendetta than anything else since those other shows HE worked on in Trek are guilty too.

2) It does make him out to be a hypocrite and puts those critiques in doubt. Especially seeing how there are other successful shows with a premise like VOY's that STILL didn't need any of those things to succeed.

 

[Gaith]

I haven't seen BSG, so...

So how can you say for sure that nuBSG isn't his idea of a reboot Voyager?

Oh, golly, gee, I dunno...

how about the fact that it's not called STAR TREK: BATTLESTAR GALACTICA?!?!


And even if it were, that wouldn't at all invalidate his earlier VOY criticisms. Hello? I said all this before. Are you even trying to engage in a discussion of VOY criticism here, or is this thread just a BSG pissing groud?

2) It does make him out to be a hypocrite and puts those critiques in doubt. Especially seeing how there are other successful shows with a premise like VOY's that STILL didn't need any of those things to succeed.

Which part of "how about reading his views and debating them on their own merits, since others in this thread, who haven't seen or made BSG, have signaled their agreement with them" don't you understand? I'm not Ron Moore, believe it or not, but I am still a human being with opinions, and when you totally ignore what I say in order to slag on Moore some more and backhandedly imply that everyone who agrees with certain statements of his from a certain point of time is wrong is, like, uncool, man.

 

[Anwar]

Fine, I'll take him apart suggestion by suggestion:

Most of his suggestions from the above article dealt with dialogue: he wanted slower integration of the Maquis crew, more crew discussion of the long-term ramifications of being so far from home, more interpersonal drama in general, better continuity, including more callbacks to earlier events and character moments, more sex, etc. He also objects to Seven's costumes, the lack of plants or artwork around the ship, and the fact that we virtually never see crew in off-duty outfits.

The Maquis integration: I do think it shouldn't have happened in one episode, but I deny it really should have lasted all that long. Chakotay was a principled Former Fleeter and not some crazy Fed-Hater, and the Maquis' were never VOY's enemy. They were the enemy of the Cardassians, and in VOY both the DMZ and Cardassians were 75 years away. There's little cause to keep up tensions when these folks who aren't even your enemy are the only familiar faces around and are willing to accommodate you.

Long-term ramifications? This has happened before, and there are other cases that show that the Trekverse is loaded with powerful aliens who can send ships far away, random anomalies/wormholes that could get them home and random leftover technology they could use to go home. What's the point in making such a big deal out of it when it's hardly a rare occurrence?

Better continuity/sex/whatever, that's negligible and no one complains about these things for other Trek.

As for Seven, no plants/artwork/off-duty folks, this has already been covered.

 

[Gaith]

Better continuity/sex/whatever, that's negligible

For you, maybe... but not for everyone; people are different, and that's okay. No need to laser-focus on Moore just because other fans have different opinions than yours.

Long-term ramifications? This has happened before, and there are other cases that show that the Trekverse is loaded with powerful aliens who can send ships far away, random anomalies/wormholes that could get them home and random leftover technology they could use to go home. What's the point in making such a big deal out of it when it's hardly a rare occurrence?

Well, if you read the interview, Moore finds that that's pretty much exactly the attitude the writers took. If you enjoy the result, splendid. But Moore at that time argued, and I agree now, that if you're going to do a show with a premise, you should make a big deal of the premise. If TNG had been about exploration, but then had most of its crew not really care about meeting new people, I'd have minded. If The West Wing had starred characters who didn't think politics was an interesting field, I'd have minded. If Boston Legal had portrayed lawyers who were apathetic about the quixotic cases they took on, I'd have minded.

Voyager featured a crew that rarely seemed to worry that they were so far from home. In fact, they rarely seemed to care about anything besides the immediate problem of who was shooting at them/stranding them on a planet this week. Well, I minded.

 

[Anwar]

Did you mind in Farscape that Crichton didn't spend every episode worrying he'd never see home again?

Did you mind in NuBSG that the cast rarely ever reflected that their civilization was gone and instead wasted most time on their personal problems?

Did you mind in DS9 that Sisko went on and on about how "The Dream cannot be destroyed!" and then goes on to destroy that very dream himself, and then carries on like that never happened?

Seriously, if the cast of VOY did break down like that they'd come off as pansies compared to the past Trek casts.

 

[Gaith]

Did you mind in Farscape that Crichton didn't spend every episode worrying he'd never see home again?

Did you mind in NuBSG that the cast rarely ever reflected that their civilization was gone and instead wasted most time on their personal problems?

Did you mind in DS9 that Sisko went on and on about how "The Dream cannot be destroyed!" and then goes on to destroy that very dream himself, and then carries on like that never happened?

Haven't see any of those shows; not too interested in them either. I like Trek for its social commentary and utopianism; my main complaint with Voyager is that, in neglecting basic continuity and focusing so little on intra-crew relationships, it utterly failed to explore the utopian aspects of Starfleet society in ways that went beyond those of TNG; indeed, since its characters were so fundamentally inconsistent, it was nearly always less sophisticated than TNG.

What would human sexuality be like in such a utopian but isolated society as the ship, for example? How would the characters balance the military structure of a fighting ship with the human needs to have a warm, peaceful home? How would they go about planning births to replenish the crew if, in the worst-case scenario, it did take 70 years to get home? Would they never plant a garden? Take pets? Train a new full-time doctor in case the EMH gets damaged?

I'm not asking for more darkness, or battle damage on the hull just for the sake of cool visuals. I'm asking for it because the premise demands it. Otherwise, "Caretaker" could have sent the ship two or three years or seven years away from the Federation border. But it didn't, but the writers didn't care.

 

[exodus]

Are you even trying to engage in a discussion of VOY criticism here, or is this thread just a BSG pissing groud?

No, I'm comparing and contrasting.
I don't favor one over the other and find they both fail and succeed in the same areas.
I just understand the critisims Moore had for Voy. are many of the same ones he fell into himself. I see him as throwing stones at glass houses while living in one himself.

 

[Gaith]

I see him as throwing stones at glass houses while living in one himself.

This interview was given before BSG - before he "lived in one himself". Maybe you missed that. Whatever. But allow me a hypothetical.


Consider an addiction counselor. In 2003, he says that heroin addiction is bad. In 2005, he becomes addicted to heroin, and engages in exactly the same self-destructive behavior he once criticized.

By your logic, anyone who reads his 2003 remarks that heroin addiction is bad and agrees with those specific remarks is obviously a fool, because he became addicted to heroin after making those remarks.

Ergo, by your logic, why bother criticizing heroin addiction at all? It just happens. What's the big deal?



Yeah... great reasoning there.

 

[Anwar]

You're seriously comparing drug addiction to him taking pot shots at a show (and claiming he'd do better in the process) then he utterly fails to do so? The analogy doesn't quite work.

 

[Gaith]

You're seriously comparing drug addiction to him taking pot shots at a show

No, I'm not. Read it again.

The analogy is designed not to compare actual processes but to question the thought process of saying "Ron Moore failed to live up to his own advice, ergo Ron Moore's advice was bad". Also, "anyone who agrees with Ron Moore's pre-BSG advice isn't worth debating, because Ron Moore failed." These are illogical, emotional, ad hominem arguments, and they're unworthy of this excellent board, imho.

What both BSG and the heroin examples fail to acknowledge is the logical possibility that though for some combination of circumstance and personal failing, the advice-giver did not live up to his own advice, that advice was indeed good, and that those who adopt it now just might have a point regardless of what happened to Moore/the addict.

 

[Anwar]

And I'm saying in most shows that have a similar premise to VOY, that advice still wasn't followed and it didn't stop them from being good shows. In fact, many of them did the same stuff as VOY and no one complained or thought they were bad shows.

 

[exodus]

By your logic, anyone who reads his 2003 remarks that heroin addiction is bad and agrees with those specific remarks is obviously a fool, because he became addicted to heroin after making those remarks.

No, that's your logic because the implication of such a thing is just in your head.
You're making the issue personal when it isn't.

 

[Gaith]

Prove me wrong, then - try critiquing Moore's points without pissing on a different tv show. Try seeing if your arguments are worth anything on the merits of their reasoning alone.


And no, a tiny plant here and there doesn't count when what Moore and I obviously mean (and he explicitly says) is we would have liked to see more plants and artwork than one would expect to see in any ol' AQ-based ship. Where were Voyager's gardens? Where were the significant, meaningful mementos of what they'd seen and where they'd been? For lack of any other references, when VOY wanted to represent Joe Carey's tragic loss, they had the senior staff discover... that he was working on a small model of Voyager.

That's pathetic.

 

[exodus]

Prove me wrong, then - try critiquing Moore's points without pissing on a different tv show. Try seeing if your arguments are worth anything on the merits of their reasoning alone.


And no, a tiny plant here and there doesn't count when what Moore and I obviously mean (and he explicitly says) is we would have liked to see more plants and artwork than one would expect to see in any ol' AQ-based ship. Where were Voyager's gardens? Where were the significant, meaningful mementos of what they'd seen and where they'd been? For lack of any other references, when VOY wanted to represent Joe Carey's tragic loss, they had the senior staff discover... that he was working on a small model of Voyager.

That's pathetic.

This is a joke, right?
You really think seeing a garden or mementos would have made a major difference on the show?

 

[Gaith]

I think that seeing that sort of thing would have been evidence that the writers cared about quality scripting, and I believe Moore when he says that the writers didn't give a damn so long as the target demo of Seven-slobberers kept watching, and thus the paychecks kept coming. A better-written show would necessarily have made Voyager the ship and crew more idiosyncratic - yes, I do believe that.

 

[Gaith]

Moore saying the writers didn't care.
Berman & Braga are saying Paramount told us to do it this way.

Well, those aren't really mutually exclusive, are they?

 

[exodus]

I think that seeing that sort of thing would have been evidence that the writers cared about quality scripting, and I believe Moore when he says that the writers didn't give a damn so long as the target demo of Seven-slobberers kept watching, and thus the paychecks kept coming. A better-written show would necessarily have made Voyager the ship and crew more idiosyncratic - yes, I do believe that.

I think Voyager found an audience regardless and to spite what Moore believes.

 

[Gaith]

It certainly inherited a large share of that audience, but yes, it got a fair amount of eyeballs. So did Transformers 2. Your point?


... Again and again, you choose not to debate any of Moore's arguments, yet continue to piss on him and offer up diversions.

 

[Anwar]

I'm saying Moore threw up a bunch of strawmen in that he never believed in his own arguments to begin with.