What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?

Discussion in 'General Trek Discussion' started by Amasov, Jun 20, 2020.

  1. ED-209

    ED-209 Commodore Commodore

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    Star Trek Beyond is a good film. Absolutely the best of the Kelvin movies, better than any of the TNG movies and better than some of the of TOS movies.

    I'll let myself out.
     
  2. 1001001

    1001001 Serial Canon Violator Moderator

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    :techman:

    [​IMG]
     
  3. JonnyQuest037

    JonnyQuest037 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    <Keeper> May you find your way as pleasant. </Keeper>
    She got it. It was called "Yesterday's Enterprise."
     
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  4. Oddish

    Oddish Admiral Admiral

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    She did indeed. :D
     
  5. 1001001

    1001001 Serial Canon Violator Moderator

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    I'm not sure being held captive, raped, and murdered by Romulans was "better".

    It definitely wasn't an "empty death" which is what she was so afraid of, so that's something I guess.
     
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  6. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    No, not really. Given her backstory that seems rather tragic.

    Honestly, her death in "Skin of Evil" while random was at least in the line of duty, rather than her being out of place in time and jumping on to a random ship.
     
  7. Oddish

    Oddish Admiral Admiral

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    Maybe it wasn't a happy fate, but it was a good episode.
     
  8. cooleddie74

    cooleddie74 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    It was worth getting Sela just to see Tasha one more time, even if she was an alternate timeline version of herself. Her anti-time appearance in "All Good Things...(TNG)" was also pretty good.
     
  9. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    It really wasn't. Thankfully they steered clear of her in the movies. :p

    It was a neat sci-fi idea, but Crosby simply didn't have the chops to pull it off convincingly. I still laugh at her "I am Romulan." in "Redemption II"
     
  10. Mytran

    Mytran Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    The episode was entertaining in as much as we were watching alternate universe versions of our usual characters I suppose.
    However, it's core concept is highly problematic in that the timeline never has any reason to happen in the first place.
    Hmm, is that controversial? ;)
     
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  11. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    The episode is fine. But, she didn't need the follow up in Sela.
     
  12. Henoch

    Henoch Rear Admiral Premium Member

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    At the end of Yesterday's Enterprise, we all thought she died a heroic death at the time. :angel: Then they ruined it again with her "half-Romulan daughter" in Redemption II. Aargh. :brickwall:
     
  13. Vger23

    Vger23 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Here’s one: Yesterday’s Enterprise is over-rated due to it being one of the first GNDN reset-button episodes where virtually the entire proceeding happens and is not perceived/remembered by the main /prime characters.

    [​IMG]
     
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  14. Oddish

    Oddish Admiral Admiral

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    I say it's overrated because of the weird "Guinan has a feeling" aspect of the plotline.
     
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  15. Orphalesion

    Orphalesion Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Or at least if you create Sela, make her a more interesting character with more to her existence than just "blond Romulan played by Denise Crosby"
    Though maybe that last part was why she didn't amount to more...?
     
  16. at Quark's

    at Quark's Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    It's a weird ability, but why would it downgrade the episode? They needed an anchor and otherwise no one would have known something was wrong with the timeline and attempt to correct it in the first place. Guinan's "transdimensional perception" (to give it a name) to feel beyond the ordinary (e.g. that something fishy is going on with the timeline) pops up more often, for example in Q Who or in the way she can be both inside and outside the Nexus in Generations (and both versions seem to be aware of one another,too). Guinan just is a rarely explored character overall and we don't know much of what she actually can or cannot do.
     
    Last edited: Sep 17, 2020
  17. amp

    amp Commander Red Shirt

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    Without Guinan's feelings we'd just get technobabble on chroniton particles or something. Instead we get some interesting conflict; both the scenes between Guinan and Picard as well as that rather contentious meeting with the crew in the ready room.
     
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  18. Peregrinus

    Peregrinus Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

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    Which all leads to my probably-controversial opinion: I hate time-travel episodes. They're usually not done "right". There are two models of time travel, and they don't play together. The "continuum" or "steady-state" theory is the one that says if you go back in time, anything you do will create the recorded history you already know, because you were there in the past doing the things. "Messing up the timeline" doesn't work. A paradox isn't a fun little logic puzzle to think your way out of -- the universe is simply not so arranged as to allow one to happen. It's what the dang word means.

    I allow special dispensation for entities like Q or the Guardian of Forever, because we don't know what they do or how they do it. Apart from them, I automatically discount episodes like "Past Tense", which feature we-broke-history-and-have-to-fix-it stories.

    The other theory is the "multiverse" model, which holds that every subatomic particle at every Planck instant simultaneously experiences every possible permutation, splitting off different timelines for each. Pick one, there will be very similar "adjacent" timelines, with more and more differences becoming apparent as you get further and further from it -- in a higher-dimensional sense. In this model, you could go back in time and, since your arrival would alter the energy state of the universe at that point, a new reality will fission off, and you can muck about to your heart's content -- it won't impact the timeline you left. The trick, then, would be getting back to your origin timeline... assuming you wanted to.

    Thanks to the Mirror Universe and "The Alternative Factor", "Yesterday's Enterprise" and "Parallels", I feel there's more broad support for the Multiverse model than the Continuum model. Especially because they like throwing in paradoxes like "Timeless" -- good episodes that just don't work. It's why I'm so hacked off at Voyager's finale. A better episode would feature them finding a way home in the first act, and then the rest is the ramifications of that return for the rest. An even braver story (and thus very unlikely to happen under these producers) would have been to have the ship never get home -- either leave it open ended or have them sacrifice themselves to save some race they ran across, and, in the coda, Starfleet finally manages to backtrack their journey and hears about what happened years later. But what we got was the weakest format they could've gone with -- the two-hour process of actually getting home, and fading to the end credits just as they do... and with the help of time travel, to boot.
     
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  19. CorporalCaptain

    CorporalCaptain Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    You describe two models of time travel stories, but those aren't the only two. The one where you actually destroy the original timeline when you alter the past would be a third, and there are other models as well.

    I think "Yesterday's Enterprise" was largely a nostalgia episode for Tasha, but it's more than that. By the time YE was made, TNG was finding its legs, so YE also represented a chance to get Tasha right.

    The whole "we've got to sacrifice ourselves to save the universe" is a Starfleet archetype, and YE helped make it a cliché.

    Also, YE was an early example of TNG pew pew, though not the earliest. Even though "Q Who" had some ship-to-ship combat footage, the shots Picard ordered in that episode were slowly and deliberately applied to the cube. IMO a truer example of TNG pew pew before YE is in "The Survivors," both alien and Federation firing patterns are rapidly paced.
     
  20. cooleddie74

    cooleddie74 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Season 1 of ENT is actually one of the strongest first years for any Trek series. It's Season 2 that starts dropping the ball but even it has some real winners.
     
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