Federation by the Reeves-Stevenses has never been canon, but it's, in my eyes, the greatest Star Trek novel ever written.
What are your opinions regarding Star Trek that are, shall we say, unorthodox?
The over reliance on canon just points to creators and a fandom that have lost their imaginations.
The Gold Key comics when I was a kid were goofy and just off in left field, but a lot of fun. They did what stories are allegedly, well, supposed to do - entertain me.
I still have my GK #1 Star Trek I bought 30 years ago, it sure was goofy.
The only Chief Engineers who actually felt like real engineers were Scotty, Trip, O'Brien, and Reno. They gave off this blue-collar energy that made you really believe they actually got their hands dirty.
You could picture Scotty lying flat on his back, wedged into some impossible space, trying to coax life out of a failing system. Trip crawling through a wall to reinforce a bulkhead before it gives way. O'Brien up to his elbows in grease, keeping some half-dead piece of machinery running through sheer stubbornness. Reno rebuilding old tech simply because she thinks she can make it better.
That sense of physical, hands-on problem solving is what sells them. It is not just that they are smart. It is that you believe they've done the work.
I can't say the same about the other Chief Engineers. Not because they are not capable, but because they are rarely framed that way.
Geordi and Torres often come across as more theoretical, more polished. You hear the solutions more than you see the work. The grit is implied rather than shown.
Billups, maybe. Hemmer, we hardly got enough time with to really judge. Pelia feels more like someone who delegates than someone who dives into the machinery herself. Jakum Pog has that hands-on energy, but it tips too far into caricature to fully land.
For me, the difference comes down to texture. The best Trek engineers feel tangible. You can almost hear the tools, smell the burnt circuits, and feel the cramped spaces they are working in. When that element is missing, something about the role feels a little less real.
If I had to single one out, Trip Tucker probably comes closest to nailing that working engineer feel. There is a constant sense with him that he is not just solving problems, he is physically wrestling with them.
You could picture Scotty lying flat on his back, wedged into some impossible space, trying to coax life out of a failing system. Trip crawling through a wall to reinforce a bulkhead before it gives way. O'Brien up to his elbows in grease, keeping some half-dead piece of machinery running through sheer stubbornness. Reno rebuilding old tech simply because she thinks she can make it better.
That sense of physical, hands-on problem solving is what sells them. It is not just that they are smart. It is that you believe they've done the work.
I can't say the same about the other Chief Engineers. Not because they are not capable, but because they are rarely framed that way.
Geordi and Torres often come across as more theoretical, more polished. You hear the solutions more than you see the work. The grit is implied rather than shown.
Billups, maybe. Hemmer, we hardly got enough time with to really judge. Pelia feels more like someone who delegates than someone who dives into the machinery herself. Jakum Pog has that hands-on energy, but it tips too far into caricature to fully land.
For me, the difference comes down to texture. The best Trek engineers feel tangible. You can almost hear the tools, smell the burnt circuits, and feel the cramped spaces they are working in. When that element is missing, something about the role feels a little less real.
If I had to single one out, Trip Tucker probably comes closest to nailing that working engineer feel. There is a constant sense with him that he is not just solving problems, he is physically wrestling with them.
There are a lot of novels and comics that make a lot of the live-action look bad.
Peter David’s entire Trek run with DC and the New Frontier books are amazing Star Trek.
There wasn't really a lot in Voyager worth hating, it was just so overwhelmingly bland.
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Just watched “Think Tank” for the first time in a decade. Definitely an underrated gem.
Voyager could be really good or really bad, there was no in between.
As far as enjoyment or validity as stories, sure. (And I also certainly just prefer the “shipboard culture” of Diane Duane’s 1980s portrayal of the Enterprise to anything we saw onscreen for TOS, whether TV or film.)
It’s just that as part of a widely distributed, copyright-holding capitalist setup, many more people are likely to see even the worst Star Trek episode or film (even if it still bombs anyway) than are likely to read even the best Star Trek novel (let alone fanfiction story or fanfilm), completely regardless of quality. Likewise, while future such productions aren’t required to reference anything at all, if they do it’s a lot more likely to be something from (say) “Who Mourns for Adonais?” than it is to be something from (say) The Trellisane Confrontation. That’s got nothing to do with “quality” status, but a higher “production hierarchy” status is inevitable.
Until and unless some future age where (a) Star Trek improbably remains in the collective popular imagination, and (b) the old corporate holds over it fade and disappear, and it turns into a Robin Hood/King Arthur thing where nobody controls it and there’s no one “real” version. I don’t see that happening (though that is pretty much the fanfiction model), but I’d be quite happy to be wrong about that.
Hmm. I found the entire series “in between”. Oh well. Another reason Trek producers shouldn’t worry about making something “for the fans” and just focus on whatever they envision as their own contribution to the franchise…and hope for the best.
Well, I wasn’t so crazy about chaotic space CHAOTIC SPACE chaotic space ChAoTiC sPaCe myself…
I'm pretty fond of what Star Trek Online did with it. The origin story for the Romulan refugee faction is probably the best of the origins they created (though the original series themed one might be more fun, from a fannish point of view).
Keep the goosenecks. I like them.
No. He's right.
One argument for goosenecks is that it is cheaper to film a crew reaction to the viewer than the effect we'd react to. More opportunity for drama and to emote while holding a prop to convey emotion to the camera.
When a Trek series is just....there most of the time....that's a bigger sin than sucking.
"TATV..." was awful, but at least it made us feel SOMETHING.
I will say that LeVar Burton was the gold standard on spouting out technobabble. Not just out of the engineers, but out of everyone across the franchise.
"THE FIGHT" was a horribly executed episode, but at least the idea of Chaotic Space was interesting.
I'm reminded of the monitors used in Space: 1999.
For the first couple of episodes, Koeing would press a button and the actor would step into the frame as if being summoned.
That was quickly discarded and the actor would already be onscreen facing the camera when Koeing called for them.
It lost the "live" feeling.
That episode induces nam flashbacks
I fucking love the first DC Comics run. I dug how it gradually turned into an ensemble series with those recurring lower decks characters.
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