There are parts of Canada that are nothing like Britain. For one thing, my description in my previous post was of one province and part of the Territories. British Columbia is between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. I live in Alberta, which is on the other side of the Rocky Mountains, and our weather does strange things sometimes, depending on what's going on waaay out in the Pacific Ocean (it's a two-day drive from here to the Pacific; my province is landlocked).
It was kind of a joke xD but, on the non joking side, Britain too has ‘weather’ tendencies, and contains a little bit of pretty much everything also. It’s not quite as up there in the Tundra as some of Canada mind you.
All I need is a country that's somewhat subtropical and somewhat stretched north-south to have the four distinct seasons. I have that. (Basically, what I have is Ontario, with a smidgen of Winnipeg depending on the year.) It's fortunate that there's no feline annual natural rhythm to worry about, then. Is there a domestic animal that would suffer from the elimination of the 365 day year? We've done such perverse things with, say, cows that I'd rather think the sky is no limit there. [quiote]Don't presume to tell me that I can just ignore the natural rhythms of the seasons I grew up with.[/quote] Why not? There are people who think they can't live without going to opera every Saturday. But that's not a biological imperative, and neither is your seasonal snobbery. Starfleet would stamp hard on snobbery anyway. But if a colonist wanted to settle on Planet Y that had a year 222 days long, I'm sure he, too, would sneer at his former neighbors on Planet X for thinking they cannot survive if the year has fewer than 444 days. The latter is a very real threat anywhere south of Svalbard soon enough... I'll grieve when (not if) that happens in Europe, but at least I can take a jet holiday farther north and thus help make sure the snow eventually disappears from there, too. Well, that's rather relevant to everything in Star Trek. Or used to be, before replaced by "moving to Vancouver". Did we ever see seasons outside Earth? - The fall on Caldos in "Sub Rosa" probably counts - trees can't be like that permanently. Unless specifically engineered to, I guess. (Perhaps some colonies arrange for eternal afternoons, too?) - Snow in general has been for "ice planets", which is sort of the opposite of seasons. - Bajor could be supposed to have seasons, but despite our seven-year residence we never see this. If the surroundings look different, we're simply at a different spot on the planet. - Vulcan looks different every time we visit. They probably pity us humans for having such indistinct seasons. Beyond that, it's just verbal mentions of monsoon seasons or whatnot. Alas. But perhaps the new shooting locations will finally change that? Timo Saloniemi
I'm talking about female cats and the cycles they go through if they're unspayed. The cats don't have a choice in this. It's part of their natural reproduction. Why only specify domestic animals? It's hardly "snobbery" to state what I'm used to, what I prefer, and that I can't fathom going without that. Some people freak out if they see a snowflake. It's been snowing all day here, and I find it cozy and relaxing. If I have to go outside, I just dress for the weather and get on with it. There were numerous planets in TOS and the TOS movies where we saw snow. I don't remember much about Sub Rosa other than it involved a ghost played by Duncan Regehr. Don't bother mentioning anything from Enterprise, because I only watched a few episodes of that and barely remember those. Not sure what you mean by new shooting locations. If you mean Discovery, I'm not watching that.
Discovery has so far made 6 and 1/2 bottle episode, at 6, 7, 8, or 9 million a piece depending on the source. Looks like some location shooting next week.
According to IMDb, - Voyager's budget : +$23,000,000 for the pilot (which was more treated like a feature than a pilot of series). -> it seems a lot but the delay before finally shooting the pilot, the building of Voyager's bridge, converting the old TNG sets, the reshot of most of the Ocampa scenes among others, the alteraction of Mulgrew's hairstyle (which cost more than the special effects!) -> making the pilot the most expensive television episode in the history of the Star Trek franchise! For the rest of the series: An average of $3,000,000 per episode $2,000,000 per episode (Season 5) (+$23,000,000 pilot) $3,500,000 per episode (Season 6-7) For comparison : - TNG's budget An average of $1,567,000 per episode $1,300,000 per episode (Season 1) $1,400,000 per episode (Season 3) $2,000,000 per episode (Season 6) -DS9's budget: An average of $3,500,000 per episode (the pilot cost +$12,000,000) $1,500,000 per episode (Season 2) $4,000,000 per episode (Season 4-7)
Wow. So season 1 cost $68 million in production. Season 2 cost $78 million. Season 7 of Voyager cost $91 million dollars. Season 7 of DS9 cost $104 million. That's in the same ballpark as Discovery, 20 years later, which cost somewhere between $90 million and $120 million, depending on the source. And they've been mostly bottle episodes so far. Production costs must be huge in 2017. Contrast all thosee duckets with Season 4 of Enterprise, which (I've heard) cost $900,000 per episode. After a severely reduced budget, they made a bunch of multi part episodes to what was effectively 10 stories. This is supposed to have saved a lot of money.
So much money* for one of the lower-rated ST series (while it could and should have become a hit, knowing than they had some fabulous actors with Mulgrew-Ryan-Picardo-Philipps-McNeil and great ideas to develop instead of always harping on the same scenes with the same people -> don't get me wrong, I like Voyager but I'm also realistic!), with Entreprise, through Voyager got 7 seasons (while the TOS got 5 and Entreprise 4 even if the series was close to being the shortest of 5 ones, with 3 seasons!). -> that's maybe why the lack of investment by some people (in the cast & staff of writers) was so revolting! * for ex, just take expenses, some of them were ridiculous and useless (Janeway's hairstyle in Caretaker, her holodeck adventures as a nanny in first season). On the other hand, the film sets were great, especially the amazing Astonomic Lab, the Sick Bay or the Bridge.
To answer the OP: The Night Shift is usually "when the captain is asleep" - not everyone can be on duty 24 hours per day; so staff is organized based on shift times and so on and so forth. The night shift is essentially a "station-keeping" shift, making sure all the proper routines are in place and so on. It's usually an opportunity for more junior officers to get a little more desperately needed experience - including the Bridge Watch Officer, who is essentially the acting Captain when the CO is off the bridge. Like many things, Voyager does an absolutely miserable job portraying this. Discovery is roughly on par with DS9's later seasons, budget-wise; with an added investment of cinema-quality sets, reduced number of episodes (15 to DS9's 20+) and cheaper vfx relative to the late 90's. DS9 could have been made to look far more cinematic with only a little bit extra in budgeting, if they wanted to.
I know Voyager apparently could not afford to pay for the right to use Roy Orbison's "Ooby Dooby" for "Zefram Cochrane's favorite music" in the episode "Homestead" and had to make do with fake music.
I think it was a success. Ratings are always relative to the year, and rate of decline(in general TV ratings) and also the size of the network. I've heard that UPN was only available in 60% of the US around the year 2000. Voyager was their highest rated tv series, and they demanded another Trek series to replace it as soon as it ended. And I've never heard of any concerns over viewership in any interviews from the time for either DS9, or Voyager, unlike Enterprise where it was constantly talked about during its run.
My main question with this is: If Kim is commanding the night shift, then why is always on the bridge during the day shift as well? Is he some sort of superhuman that never sleeps?
It would be interesting to know such longer-term schedules, yes.... Does one command the night shift for a week, then a weekend off, then back to the day shift, and vice versa, or is there a primary shift you are assigned to with some (but not too much) variation?
I doubt he's working all 3 shifts. He probably volunteered to get some command experience to add to his promotion packet. I bet Tuvok has more night shift hours than any other.
Frankly, I think that the idea that Starfleet uses a three-team, three watch system for the bridge or engineering watches is extremely implausible (more plausible for the work details, science labs or sickbay where brief "comfort breaks" would be possible during the 8-hr period), particularly as they don't appear to get "days off" as such. Something like the traditional merchant system of "four-on, two-off" split among four teams (not three) would seem to be more logical and easier on the crew.