What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?

[Citiprime]

My unpopular opinion... The Visitor is very overrated. I've never really liked it, and watching it again for the first time in ages it still does nothing for me.

I know it's hugely popular. Hugely. So I know I'm the odd one out. I really tried with it again. But it does nothing for me. I tried to understand why... and for me it's lack of consequence.

• Melanie is a nobody, I don't care about her as a plot device and she goes and she is of no importance.
• Sure older Jake kills himself, but he will live and his father and live... there's no consequence of that.
• I know reset buttons are a big Trek plot device but on this one, it reset and that's that.
• And I know they re-use actors a lot but this is Tony Todd. This is Kurn. I never really bought into him being Jake. And there's often a closer feeling between the real Jake and Ben in a scene in their quarters.
• The future scenes with the crew didn't feel compelling - TNG did better episodes featuring the crew in the future and it felt just a plot device.

If you've lost a parent or someone you're really close to, that episode hits the feels so hard.

I lost my father to stomach cancer at 10-years-old. The line that had me sobbing the first time I watched the episode was:

SISKO: (reading Jake's dedication) To my father, who's coming home.​

The entire concept of the episode, where a child gets a chance to save their parent and get a second chance to connect again, hits on the same angle as the Field of Dreams scene where father and son get to "have a catch" again.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

You are correct

Spoiler: Size of UFP Territory post USS Voyager's return.

There is some distance between the territory that the Dominion Control, and the Bajoran Wormhole's aperture within the Gamma Quadrant.

It's actually a notice-able distance.

Whoever made that map really has a poor opinion about Voyager's warp drive. According to that it would take Janeway's ship 4 years to complete a trip from Earth to Kronos that Archer's Enterprise managed in 4 days. Bajor is just as far, so Caretaker has a four year time jump between New Zealand and Deep Space Nine.

 

[AntonyF]

If you've lost a parent or someone you're really close to, that episode hits the feels so hard.

I lost my father to stomach cancer at 10-years-old. The line that had me sobbing the first time I watched the episode was:

SISKO: (reading Jake's dedication) To my father, who's coming home.​

The entire concept of the episode, where a child gets a chance to save their parent and get a second chance to connect again, hits on the same angle as the Field of Dreams scene where father and son get to "have a catch" again.

It really didn't though, for me, on my rewatch. I lost my dad five years ago, my mum two. I am a vaguely functional human as a result. But still it didn't get me on my recent rewatch.

I get your pain in different ways and don't in any way doubt what you got from the episode. I think that's the thing with grief, it gets us in different ways. The one I wasn't expecting... Jake meeting Jennifer in the mirror episode. This cut me up. I did not see it coming until I was watching it and he held her hands.

 

[fireproof78]

The one I wasn't expecting... Jake meeting Jennifer in the mirror episode. This cut me up. I did not see it coming until I was watching it and he held her hands.

That one hits way harder.

 

[Tallguy]

The industrial replicators that were stolen were at DS9... which is INSIDE the Bajoran system. ("FOR THE CAUSE", season 4.) Which their intended use and destination was for civilian use to help Cardassian systems basically destroyed by the Klingons.

Same with the Defiant being stolen. ("DEFIANT", season 3.) And the outpost Tom destroyed was deep INSIDE Cardassian territory. Nowhere near the DMZ and the colonies. (Never mind the fact it was a Starfleet ship that was stolen to begin with.)

It's not defending your homes when all of those targets were outside your systems and actually well within the territory of others.

Not that there are going to be rules for an extralegal militia, but what would the Maquis do to keep you on their side? Other than not exterminating whole planets. Realistically I'm against that. In the TV show it's just "This is a thing we can do". And Sisko DOES. It's apparently a less heinous attack in a Star Trek TV show context than it should be. (I think.)

Was the Defiant ever used against the Maquis? Voyager? Any Federation starships? The Federation is not a neutral disinterested third party here.

Are you proposing that they fight the good fight, but never leave their own system (which is actually legally Cadassia's system) and only fight with their own current supplies until they run out? I know the Maquis are supposed to be kind of a fool's cause to begin with but that really is suicide.

According to that it would take Janeway's ship 4 years to complete a trip from Earth to Kronos that Archer's Enterprise managed in 4 days. Bajor is just as far, so Caretaker has a four year time jump between New Zealand and Deep Space Nine.

This is a problem with later Star Trek. Certainly Enterprise. In TOS it used to take TIME to get to places. In TMP it was shocking how fast the Intruder was going to get to Earth from the edge of the Federation. The new fangled Enterprise was going to take four days to get back to Vulcan.

Broken Bow was ridiculous and fans were vocal about it at the time. But even DS9 would flit back and forth from Earth to Bajor with comparative ease.

So that's a very good point about Caretaker. But it's nice that Earth is enough of a paradise that they can put a penal colony there. I suppose it's like putting Alcatraz in the San Francisco Bay.

I know it's nothing approaching canon, but The Final Reflection put a trip to the Klingon home world from Earth at around a year or more. In the Warp 4-ish days.

 

[Farscape One]

Not that there are going to be rules for an extralegal militia, but what would the Maquis do to keep you on their side? Other than not exterminating whole planets. Realistically I'm against that. In the TV show it's just "This is a thing we can do". And Sisko DOES. It's apparently a less heinous attack in a Star Trek TV show context than it should be. (I think.)

Was the Defiant ever used against the Maquis? Voyager? Any Federation starships? The Federation is not a neutral disinterested third party here.

Are you proposing that they fight the good fight, but never leave their own system (which is actually legally Cadassia's system) and only fight with their own current supplies until they run out? I know the Maquis are supposed to be kind of a fool's cause to begin with but that really is suicide.


This is a problem with later Star Trek. Certainly Enterprise. In TOS it used to take TIME to get to places. In TMP it was shocking how fast the Intruder was going to get to Earth from the edge of the Federation. The new fangled Enterprise was going to take four days to get back to Vulcan.

Broken Bow was ridiculous and fans were vocal about it at the time. But even DS9 would flit back and forth from Earth to Bajor with comparative ease.

So that's a very good point about Caretaker. But it's nice that Earth is enough of a paradise that they can put a penal colony there. I suppose it's like putting Alcatraz in the San Francisco Bay.

I know it's nothing approaching canon, but The Final Reflection put a trip to the Klingon home world from Earth at around a year or more. In the Warp 4-ish days.

The Federation didn't start going after the Maquis until they started stealing from and attacking Starfleet. "DEFIANT", season 3 episode 9, was when the Maquis started doing things that made them an actual, genuine threat. Unless you're fine with someone stealing one of the most powerful warships in the quadrant and use it for their own purposes. Voyager's mission was weeks, possibly a couple months, AFTER that incident. The Maquis put the target on their own backs.

The Maquis upped the ante AGAIN in season 4's "FOR THE CAUSE", when they stole a DOZEN industrial replicators meant for use in systems with civilian populations that were decimated by the Klingon invasion of Cardassian space. For context on how big a deal this was, Bajor got TWO of them (according to Kira in the same episode), as Bajor was a single planet whereas there were multiple star systems these replicators would be used to help them rebuild.

And I don't have a problem with them getting ships and supplies outside their system. I do have a problem with them stealing things from others. You don't steal from other people.

And as you pointed out, those worlds the Maquis were on belonged to the Cardassians.

And to answer your question... no, once the Maquis started being an aggressive force, they could not do anything to keep me on their side. Once they went that path, they didn't care about having peace.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

The Transporter is/war a terrible plot device conjured to save money that became far too important in Trek. They should have just used shuttles to get to the various planets.

It’s cute and to some extent I agree, but finally I give the transporter a pass.

Firstly, it’s a genuinely smart solution to a budgetary problem. They needed to get to planets in the shows… putting a shuttle onscreen is expensive so it’s a decent workaround.

Secondly, like it or not, it’s become iconic. From the inclusion of ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ (never said onscreen, I know) within our modern lexicon to the fact that the transporter is now a distinctive part of what differentiates Star Trek from other science fiction shows.!

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Whoever made that map really has a poor opinion about Voyager's warp drive. According to that it would take Janeway's ship 4 years to complete a trip from Earth to Kronos that Archer's Enterprise managed in 4 days. Bajor is just as far, so Caretaker has a four year time jump between New Zealand and Deep Space Nine.

They screwed around with the distance of Kronos in ST:ENT

 

[Nerys Myk]

They screwed around with the distance of Kronos in ST:ENT

Had the distance been previously established?

 

[cooleddie74]

No. Until "Broken Bow, Part I" Trek had never established the relative distance of Qo'noS from Earth.

 

[Citiprime]

One thing I've wondered about the aftermath of the Dominion War is what happens to Cardassian space after the war? For example, the Cardassians are basically in the same position as Germany and Japan were after World War II, and the allies carved up Germany into zones of administration and some eventually installed favorable governments in their spheres of influence when the dust settled around the globe (e.g., East and West Germany, North and South Korea, etc.).

And I have to believe the Klingons and Romulans kept parts of Cardassian space.

In Voyager, we're told through a message to Chakotay that the Jem'Hadar went after the Maquis hard and basically eliminated it when the Cardassians joined the Dominion. But after the war, did the Federation reclaim those worlds, re-establish their colonies, and do away with the DMZ?

I've always thought that, since at the end of the war the Cardassians are basically in the same position the Bajorans were at the beginning of DS9, things might even go full circle and the Cardassians invite the Federation to administer help to a provisional government that eventually joins the Federation.

There's a vague hint that the borders have changed in Picard season 3. The Titan hides in the Chin'Toka system. In DS9, that system was the beachhead of the Federation's invasion of Cardassian space when they went on the offensive. But since the Titan is in the Chin'Toka system, it seems to be Federation space in the 25th century.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Had the distance been previously established?

I could've sworn somebody visited it before ST:ENT.

Maybe I was wrong.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

They screwed around with the distance of Kronos in ST:ENT

Here you go, I've fixed it based on a few lines I remember from a few of the episodes. The Gamma Quadrant races are hours apart, the Alpha Quadrant races are days apart, and the Delta Quadrant races are years apart.

The Romulan Neutral Zone is usually close enough for the characters to visit on the way to Betazed, so it makes sense for it to be days rather than years away. This puts Bajor a day's travel from Cardassia as well.

Parada was said to be an hour away from the wormhole for a Runabout in Whispers, which puts Dominion space close enough for the heroes to plausibly make it home in a battered shuttle in The Search.

And Voyager's trip maps fairly well to what happened each year if you resize the region to be half the size.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I could've sworn somebody visited it before ST:ENT.

Maybe I was wrong.

It was first visited in TNG's "Sins of the Father" I think this is the only line about travel

PICARD: Commander Kurn
KURN: Sir.
PICARD: We're changing course. Set coordinates for the First City of the Klingon Imperial Empire.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Here you go, I've fixed it based on a few lines I remember from a few of the episodes. The Gamma Quadrant races are hours apart, the Alpha Quadrant races are days apart, and the Delta Quadrant races are years apart.

The Romulan Neutral Zone is usually close enough for the characters to visit on the way to Betazed, so it makes sense for it to be days rather than years away. This puts Bajor a day's travel from Cardassia as well.

Parada was said to be an hour away from the wormhole for a Runabout in Whispers, which puts Dominion space close enough for the heroes to plausibly make it home in a battered shuttle in The Search.

And Voyager's trip maps fairly well to what happened each year if you resize the region to be half the size.

So did Voyager just take alot of detours to explore the local region & gather resources before heading on a "Relatively" straight line home?

It seems that in the first year + change that Voyager visited alot of local spaces.

They wouldn't have known about all those other territories near the Kazon Space if they didn't go visiting them for one reason or another.

It seems like Voyager got side tracked on plenty of side quests.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

They wouldn't have known about all those other territories near the Kazon Space if they didn't go visiting them for one reason or another.

It seems like Voyager got side tracked on plenty of side quests.

They had a Neelix. Plus they were always trading for star charts or whatever.

I don't think this particular star chart would be worth the warp plasma however, as it seems like mostly a work of fan imagination.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

They had a Neelix. Plus they were always trading for star charts or whatever.

Neelix had a way of ruining things, so that makes alot of sense.

I don't think this particular star chart would be worth the warp plasma however, as it seems like mostly a work of fan imagination.

It's the best one that I've got, the other maps seem to make less sense than this one.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

It's the best one that I've got, the other maps seem to make less sense than this one.

Memory Alpha says the maps in "Stellar Cartography: The Starfleet Reference Library" are used as a reference for the ones we see on screens in the new shows, so I think that's the best we're going to get. Well, besides what we see on the screens.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Memory Alpha says the maps in "Stellar Cartography: The Starfleet Reference Library" are used as a reference for the ones we see on screens in the new shows, so I think that's the best we're going to get. Well, besides what we see on the screens.

Is that a recent reference book, or a old one?

 

[Citiprime]

At the end of The Motion Picture, they mention to Spock they can take him to Vulcan in about 4 days from Earth.

That’s 4 days to go 16-light years, since Vulcan is established as being in the 40 Eridani A star system.

Just for argument sake, let’s say they weren’t talking about going to maximum warp when they mentioned taking Spock home, and maybe were going to do a slower cruising speed to Vulcan with that estimate. You might arguably still get a comparable speed to what the NX-01 was capable of doing, since it was a diplomatic mission where they’re trying to rush to Qo’Nos.

If you try to put TMP together with “Broken Bow,” it would imply Klingon space is a comparable distance from Earth as Vulcan. Although, that seems awfully close to the core systems of the Federation.

To add another layer to this, the Kelvin Universe has Qo’Nos as existing in the Omega Leonis star system, which is 112-light years away. So if you just extrapolate the math, if it takes 4 days to go 16-light years, it should take 28 days to go 112-light years.

And a month to go from the core of the Federation to the core of the Klingon Empire seems more believable.