• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?

Data looks just fine to me in Picard. Sure, he looks different, but I use what I call ‘suspension of disbelief’ to get around it.

Exactly. I don't get why some can't get past appearances. Brent Spiner's looks changed in the intervening years, happens to all of us. Doesn't mean we're supposed to think Data changed.

Controversial opinion: that was also the best explanation for the Klingon ridges: they were always there, even in TOS.
Much better than the "augment virus" explanation we eventually got.
 
Exactly. I don't get why some can't get past appearances. Brent Spiner's looks changed in the intervening years, happens to all of us. Doesn't mean we're supposed to think Data changed.

My most loved show is Doctor Who. When actors in that show reprised their role years later and had obviously aged, fandom just got on with it. Same for me with Data.
 
My most loved show is Doctor Who. When actors in that show reprised their role years later and had obviously aged, fandom just got on with it. Same for me with Data.

But they were shorting out the temporal differential! It was all explained in Time Crash ;)

Another great example in Doctor Who is that William Hartnell, Richard Hurndall, and David Bradley all played the 1st Doctor – not alternate Doctors, not alternate versions of the same Doctor, just the same Doctor – and we just ignore the discrepancies in their appearance. If you can believe Zachary Quinto and Ethan Peck are the same person as Leonard Nimoy, or Tom Hardy is a clone of Patrick Stewart, or Zefram Cochrane looks like both Glenn Corbett and James Cromwell, or that Cyia Batten, Tracy Middendorf, and Melanie Smith are all Tora Ziyal, then you can believe Brent Spiner in his 30s is the same person as Brent Spiner in his 70s.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I think stuff like that works for cameos like Data in Picard and the Doctors in Doctor Who.And even with Guinan they could say "Yes, Elaurians live very long, but once they pass a certain point in their lives, old age comes over them very quickly"

But I would draw the line at stuff like filming a fifth season of ENT and pretending no time has passed despite the actors clearly having aged, like some people in the ENT forum want it to happen. That would be too ridiculous for me.
 
Last edited:
Personally I find that an actor being much older than they should be or a role being recast is like seeing part of the set wobble or something fall off a prop. It's really not helping my immersion, but they're doing the best they can with what they've got, so I have to just pretend I didn't notice. And it was very very easy to notice that Richard Hurndall wasn't William Hartnell, or that Zachary Quinto wasn't Leonardy Nimoy. I'm not sure that anyone bought that Tom Hardy was a clone of Patrick Stewart.
 
They should have included a line after the final poker table scene in All Good Things:

<Picard>: I should have done this a long time ago
<Troi>: You were always welcome
PICARD: So. Five card stud, nothing wild, and the sky's the limit.
<
screen fades out to black>
<Picard's voice>: Oh, and Data? Don't forget to activate your aging chip. There might be sequels.
 
I think stuff like that works for cameos like Data in Picard and the Doctors in Doctor Who.And even with Guinan they could say "Yes, Elaurians live very long, but once they pass a certain point in their lives, old age comes over them very quickly"

But I would draw the line at stuff like filming a fifth season of ENT and pretending no time has passed despite the actors clearly having aged, like some people in the ENT forum want it to happen. That would be too ridiculous for me.

I agree on revivals like restarting ENT. Not only because of appearance, though, it's just that the moment has passed.
It's also a reason why I don't a Firefly revival, even though I loved Firefly (see avatar). A couple of years later is one thing, but more than a decade? Too late.


This tread is turning rather uncontroversial, though.
 
Exactly. I don't get why some can't get past appearances. Brent Spiner's looks changed in the intervening years, happens to all of us. Doesn't mean we're supposed to think Data changed.

Controversial opinion: that was also the best explanation for the Klingon ridges: they were always there, even in TOS.
Much better than the "augment virus" explanation we eventually got.

I like half of this post. The first half.

Have to disagree with the second. I actually thought it was clever, and a nice way of combining BOTH theories from Bashir and O'Brien. It also goes a long way toward explaining the Klingons' animosity towards humans.
 
To you. To me it's fixing a problem that didn't need fixing. Actually, it created a problem, decided it needed fixing and patted themselves on the back for their cleverness.

^This, to me the Klingon makeup was always just a case of "we now have a bigger budget", and an easter-egg in the case of that DS9 episode.
It never needed any in-universe explanation.
 
The ENT explanation kinda ruins the DS9 joke for me. Originally it seemed like Worf didn't want to talk about his species having a "low-budget" alien design, which is kinda funny in a meta way. Now it's Worf not wanting to talk about a terrible disease that affected a ton of Klingons and probably caused severe social rifts in his society. Hilarious. Plus, why wouldn't the other Starfleet officers know about this? At the very least, I'd expect them to learn about the augment virus and the state of Klingons, while preparing to go on-board the station.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top