Things You Hate About Trek (of late)

[Butters]

Adding replicators or nanoprobes isn't what damages the show. If anything, it adds to the atmosphere of how advanced these space travelers were in regards to other aspects of their lives.

Not really it doesn't. It makes it look like a bunch of writers that said "You know what'd be cool..."

TOS nailed it right for the most part: The tech is everyday, the characters don't need to waste to much time worrying about talking about it anymore than they need to, if it works that's all that matters.

TNG and beyond: The whole 24th century is a bunch of gadgets geeks that just can't STFU about their new toy and get on with getting it done without a long winded explanation.

Replicators and Nanoprobes and technobabble BS last-minute-saves just "Trek's version of "And then a Wizards comes along and waves his magic wand..."

For me, Replicators were just the point where I said, "Oh for fuck's sake". Like I said, I can overcome it so long as I'm not stopping and actually THINKING about the world-construct of the series.



And here's a another one for my list:

-- Get out of Death free cards. TOS started it with TSFS, the rest of the series followed along: Kill a character and they'll come back in some shape or form. Trip might be dead, but the fictional-corpse wasn't cold before the tie-in media rushed to undo that one too.

Replicators are a natural progression from transporters. That whole matter energy thing. People moaning about replicated food though. Every meal available designed by a michelin chef and reviewed by a body of critics prior to approval, and yet people moan about it? Now that is bollocks.

Trek has uber technology. The Vulcans can not only prove the existance of the soul, they can play about with it. The katra. The problem with trek is its insistance on trying to sell us relatable characters. How would a 14th Century pig farmer relate to an Oyster Card?

 

[Stone_Cold_Sisko]

The alien makeup thing was more a pure budgetary concern than making them "too alien".

One of the makeup guys actually said that they were told to pull back on the aliens. One of these days I'll go re-research it to find specifics.

There's another interview with Ron Moore (circa 2003 i think right before BSG launched) where he also talks about how virtually all the arguments with Rick Berman (and the studio which to be fair isn't always Berman) were always ALWAYS bout having to "pull back" in virtually all respects. Can't do this, can't do that, arcs have to be shorter, consequences can't last that long, Nog can only have part of one leg blown off and can only last one episode, etc etc on and on.

Berman (and the studio) trying to homogenize everything, make it so bereft of passion, of any "risks" (i put that in quotes because on so many other shows these aren't risks, it's just in oh-so-safe Star Trek).

 

[Anwar]

Well, at that point Trek was a cash cow. Typical corporate reaction to a cash cow is never EVER deviate from what worked before and make sure to squeeze every drop of milk out.

A better technique would be to treat the cow gently, let it do it's own thing as long as it doesn't hurt itself (as in, go directly against what Trek is) and offer it good grass to eat and a little nookie on the side.

That would mean less money in the immediate time, but an ultimately longer-lasting and healthier cow.

 

[neozeks]

Well, at that point Trek was a cash cow. Typical corporate reaction to a cash cow is never EVER deviate from what worked before and make sure to squeeze every drop of milk out.

A better technique would be to treat the cow gently, let it do it's own thing as long as it doesn't hurt itself (as in, go directly against what Trek is) and offer it good grass to eat and a little nookie on the side.

That would mean less money in the immediate time, but an ultimately longer-lasting and healthier cow.

Man, did you just write a detailed comparison of Trek with a cow? Too funny!

 

[GalaxyX]

Man, did you just write a detailed comparison of Trek with a cow? Too funny!

I could have done without the image of a cow getting nookie

Anyway, if Star Trek ever wanted to reach a general audience, they needed to stay humancentric.

One of the major reasons TNG was successful was simply because alien makeup on screen was very minimal, save for main characters like Worf, or even Data. So even though it's implied that the Federation is a bunch of different Alien worlds, the Enterprise D was a mostly human crew.

As much as raging fanatics like to argue this, Alien makeup put off the general audience.

 

[lonesomechild]

hmmm...When was the last time Trek was a general audience type show? I mean, I love TOS, TNG and DS9, but I watched VGR and ENT more out of loyalty than anything else. Until this last movie came out, I would have speculated that it was the original fanbase and it's progeny that were keeping the franchise afoat (although I have only anecdotal evidence). Therefore, I feel that they could have been a bit more liberal in catering to the "raging fanatics."
I personally could have done with some more and more innovative alien make-up. More alien in general, really.

 

[Navigator_NCC2120]

My biggest biggest gripe with Star Trek as a whole is the ridiculous forehead of the week aliens.

This unfortunately is carryover influence from Star Wars.

Take a guy, slap some goo on his face, and voila! instant alien.

This was made all the more ridiculous in the episodes where human characters were "surgically altered" to look like alien characters. First of all, did anyone notice how to "surgically alter" a human character always meant "adding shit to his/her face"?

The only time a character "subtracted" from his face what when Dukat was "surgically altered" to look Bajoran.

Not to mention the ridiculousness of the ease of surgical procedures in the 24th century. There's zero pain, there's zero healing time, there's zero scarring left. That's off topic though.

Back to the Aliens. The forehead alien concept became so ridiculous in fact, that we are supposed to believe the Vidiians are sick reflected in the way they look, yet you see a race like the Nausicans, and they look even worse, yet they are supposed to be "normal" for their race.

Yeah, no thanks. StarGate was much smarter in that they used the forehead alien concept sparingly.

There was a Voyager episode where B'Elanna Torres got her Klingon half and human half separated from each other to form a pure Klingon B'Elanna being and a pure human B'Elanna being. The separation was done by a Vidiian doctor. It was Season 1, Episode 14, "Faces" (the description is below). So Dukat was not the only character to get make-up "subtracted" from their face in a Star Trek series.


Here is a picture of both B'Elannas from that episode courtesy of www.trekcore.com.


Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
/\


Season 1, Episode 14:

Original Air Date—8 May 1995
Lieutenants Paris, Torres, and Durst are imprisoned by the Vidiians. In an attempt to develop a cure for the phage, a Vidiian doctor splits the bi-racial Torres into two people; one Klingon and one Human. The two Torres' escape the prison compound, but the Klingon Torres is fatally injured protecting the weaker, Human Torres. The Doctor tells the Human that she will not survive unless he re-integrates her Klingon DNA. Before her death, the Klingon Torres tells her weaker half that saving her life makes her death honorable.

 

[Anwar]

hmmm...When was the last time Trek was a general audience type show? I mean, I love TOS, TNG and DS9, but I watched VGR and ENT more out of loyalty than anything else.

VOY and ENT can be called "UPN Trek", a somewhat separate category from the other shows. The other shows were just shows wherein the writers were allowed to wrtie and tell stories for the Trekverse. UPN Trek (VOY and ENT) were made more the express purpose of making money, plot and characters be damned (though this isn't what the teams in charge of either really wanted).

 

[AdmiralSteven]

I hate the way unnamed characters die in firefights. I understand that someone has to die in a firefight once in a while to make things look real, but to have someone jump out from behind a wall to fire at the bad guy is just plain stupid to me. I can always tell who’s going to get killed before they show it, and I that kills (pun not intended) the scene for me. I mean, why would someone jump out from behind a secured location and expose their entire body to shoot at someone? “I have to fire my weapon at the bad guy, so I must jump out completely from my secured location to fire my weapon in hopes of not getting killed.” I’ll tell you, if I’m in a firefight with a bad guy I’m just going to stick arm and just enough of my head to see around the corner and nothing more. If you don’t give them a large target it’ll be harder to hit.