OFFICIAL N-G.com Star Trek Thread

[Zero Satori]

This is the thread for all the nerds to embrace the fact that they enjoy getting some science mixed-in with their entertainment. From the original 1966 series to the Animated Series, the movies, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, and everything beyond, everything's fair game here. Definitely indulge your inner Trekkie, folks, and go beyond just television and movies into books, comics, or other media when you feel it's worth mentioning.

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To start-off the discussion, I'd like to know what the Star Trek fans around here think about the potential "split" for the franchise now that the new alternate-timeline movie (2009) has given a view on Star Trek which the common man seems to be able to digest. Less challenging stories, more character drama, and no "Roddenberry/Berman"-timeline releases, it seems, on the horizon. Is traditional Star Trek doomed to be relegated to print media in the future?

 

[Lagduf]

Just to properly establish my nerd credentials I would like to be that pretentious douche who feels obligated to point out that an alternate-timeline/alternate Trek universe already existed prior to this new "split."

Behold the Starfleet Universe [SFU] which, if memory serves me, was created after TOS but before Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

If you've played Starfleet Battles [SFB] you've gamed in the the Starfleet Universe. I play ADB's Federation Commander which is a streamlined non-cumbersome version of SFB again set in the SFU.

To start-off the discussion, I'd like to know what the Star Trek fans around here think about the potential "split" for the franchise now that the new alternate-timeline movie (2009) has given a view on Star Trek which the common man seems to be able to digest. Less challenging stories, more character drama, and no "Roddenberry/Berman"-timeline releases, it seems, on the horizon. Is traditional Star Trek doomed to be relegated to print media in the future?

As I said when the new Star Trek film came out the most interesting aspect of the film, for me, was where those in charge were looking to take Star Trek next.

I assume they'd like to do more work in this new universe but will it be in the form of more movies or a new tv show?

Either way I don't think it looks particularly hopeful for any new Star Trek releases [film/tv] in the original universe at least based on characters from the previous shows. I'd be surprised to see another TNG film.

I'd like to see a show set farther in to the future in the original timeline.

 

[smokehouse]

Love ST.....mostly a TNG fanatic but I can always enjoy any of the original series or films.

Personally, I welcome the "new timeline" films...loved the film that came out last spring...it was well written, well acted and well casted...can't complain. Light years (no pun intended) beyond the pile of shit that is GI Joe, Transformers 2 and Terminator 4...

 

[SPINMASTER X]

Everybody in here likes Spock except me

 

[smokehouse]

Everybody in here likes Spock except me

You got that straight motherfucker...

 

[Zero Satori]

Behold the Starfleet Universe [SFU] which, if memory serves me, was created after TOS but before Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

I'm glad that you're familiar with the Starfleet Universe, Lagduf, because it seems that a disproportionately small amount of people have actually heard of it. From an ambitious fanboy's perspective, it's a dream; let me see if I have this right: The original creators wanted to make a Star Trek book, but got the rights to the alien races and technical designs that were license-able at the time and decided to break-off in their own direction.

Since then, they've effectively taken a divergent path from Star Trek post-1980, without the advancements or chronology shown in The Next Generation and everything that came-after, essentially creating a "Star Trek"-based universe that is rooted in the original series, the Animated Series, and fan-works of the dark ages between 1966 and 1979, and mixed with the talents of their own teams.

To no small extent, it seems that the Starfleet Universe would be a direct parallel to the new alternate-timeline Star Trek universe. But for some reason, reading a lot of their books (particularly the old, old, old ones) shows that these guys are closer to maintaining a balance between science and fiction, and establishing deep-running histories and legends, when compared to the other. And for that reason, I'm more likely to see Starfleet Universe (divergent or not) as a world carrying a similar torch to the original than the new one.

What would be interesting would be if, in lieu of series coming-out based on the Roddenberry/Berman timeline and (hypothetically) Paramount opening expressing their sole interest in the alternate-timeline series, Star Trek fans once again (as the Starfleet Universe people did) turned to high-quality unofficial publishing for their entertainment and exploration needs.

Everybody in here likes Spock except me

 

[Mithos]

I'm a Star Trek fanatic. I still read the books. I didn't enjoy Voyager and Enterprise, but I absolutely loved TOS, TAS, TNG, and DS9. I loved the first 6 movies and the last one and I find the TNG ones barable, but not as awesome as they should be.

 

[Zenimus]

When I was little, I was a huge Star Trek fan. TNG was on primetime TV, and I always tried to stay up to watch the midnight TOS reruns.

DS9 came along, and I never really got into it. It seemed more focused on drawn-out politics and diplomacy than exploration and adventure, like the first two. Voyager returned to those roots, and I enjoyed that show.

TNG is still my favorite overall. Oddly enough, my grandpa started getting into TNG just before he died a few years ago. He would surprise me by talking about this new episode he saw, and how he hates "those damn borg". It was funny to hear my 80 year old grandpa use all these Star Trek terms.

I liked the new Star Trek movie too. I has a lot of the action and adventure elements of the original series, and it still entertains the intellectual side with the scientific concepts and ideas. And they kept the "red shirt guy" running gag. That was great.

 

[brentsg]

I grew up on TOS and didn't embrace TNG until years later (after it was off-air)... But I eventually did get into it and I loved Enterprise.

I never spent much time with DS9 or Voyager.

I thought the new movie was great. Whatever it takes to keep the franchise alive is cool with me.

 

[Decepticreep]

DS9 FTW!!! The episode where Benjamin Cisco gets stuck in a time "rubber band" loop type thing and Jake spends his entire life trying to fix it is one of the best episodes ever.

 

[Moon Jump]

I didn't really get into Trek till I was a teenager and was watching reruns of TNG at midnight before I went to bed in the summer. I caught a couple of good episodes and was hooked. When I was a kid I'd watch the old cartoon on Nick once and a while, but other then the Tribbles episode, I didn't go out of my way to watch it.

I will say seeing Trekkies really made me want to see more of it. They screened the movie at the Long Island Sci-Fi convention and it had people rolling in the isles laughing. They screened the movie right after they had a FILK concert so a lot of people that participated in it also stayed to watch the movie. So the loudest howls of laughter came from the one fat crossdresser that told the interviewer, "Have you ever heard of Fliking??" and the whole place lost it.

I really need to pick up some DVD's of the show but my ass is broke. The best I can do is get reruns when it's on WGN at midnight and whenever Sci-Fi decides to run it.

 

[Poonman]

Reeeaaally obscure question about TNG guys and it's been bugging me ever since I saw it back when I was like 12-13....

Remember that 2 part episode Where Spock is hiding out on Romulus and Picard/Data disguise themselves to go down there and seek him out?

Well...in the first part the enterprise turned off all their lights and left only life support systems for a stake-out in the middle of a federation starship scrapyard....


So as they lie in wait, in comes this badassed motherfucker of a ship, totally chromed out, about the third of the enterprise and armed to the fucking teeth (ironically) gets blown up for carrying TOO much weaponry.

So 2 things: what race was piloting that thing and 2, has this class of starship ever been documented as part of the Star Trek mythos?

Star Trek geekdom is usually pretty thorough with this shit and I wanna see some photos of it gat dammit!


EDIT this was the ep btw. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)

EDIT2: guess it's on youtube sweet! (move to around 6 min) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e6zwmCVfXM

 

[Decepticreep]

I really need to pick up some DVD's of the show but my ass is broke. The best I can do is get reruns when it's on WGN at midnight and whenever Sci-Fi decides to run it.

If you have Netflix, the first season of TOS is on instant que. Also, Spike TV shows Voyager and DS9.

 

[Nesagwa]

All seasons of TOS are streaming for free on CBS.com

http://www.cbs.com/video/?showname=classics/star_trek&showtype=classics#video

 

[Lagduf]

Sp0o/\/?!, if you ever need to look up something Star Trek related then fuck wikipedia, it's useless.

Go to Memory Alpha, a badass Star Trek wiki.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Unification_I_(episode)

It appears the ship in question is just some unnamed ship never to be seen again in TNG.

 

[Lagduf]

If you have Netflix, the first season of TOS is on instant que. Also, Spike TV shows Voyager and DS9.

The TOS on Netflix is the recently "redone" version where they've added in new graphics.

It's actually been rebranded as Star Trek: The Original Series.

The episodes aren't in the order they aired in the '60s but are in order of how they re-aired them (iirc) on CBS.

 

[Nesagwa]

The TOS on Netflix is the recently "redone" version where they've added in new graphics.

It's actually been rebranded as Star Trek: The Original Series.

The episodes aren't in the order they aired in the '60s but are in order of how they re-aired them (iirc) on CBS.

They should be in the production order rather than the air date order (which were really way out of order)

The redone TOS looks really good btw.

 

[Lagduf]

They should be in the production order rather than the air date order (which were really way out of order)

The redone TOS looks really good btw.

Did they clean up the film?

I've only watched the redone TOS online, which is pretty low quality.

 

[Nesagwa]

Did they clean up the film?

I've only watched the redone TOS online, which is pretty low quality.

From what I've seen they look completely awesome.

I think the first season just came out on BD. It includes both versions too.

 

[terry.330]

From what I've seen they look completely awesome.

I think the first season just came out on BD. It includes both versions too.

Yeah they cleaned them up added/fixed some of the more terrible effects. They did not however totally fuck everything up like a lot of the newer "SE" bullshit like say Star Wars or ET. The updated TOS is actually very well done.

 

[Zero Satori]

I realise that science fiction fans (perhaps "especially Star Trek fans") can be amongst the most info-hungry people, thriving upon the ideals of knowing and propagating knowledge of their respective series, so the idea of "cutting" or "changing" things is particularly disconcerting. One only look at the rabidity of "Greedo shot first" or "How large is Jabba The Hutt?" discussions upon Star Wars' revamping to see how nasty this can bring arguments.

But, regarding Star Trek, I have a (extended) question for everyone here:

The universe is so vast that it's difficult to approach. Anyone that has tried to jump right-into the franchise knows that, a good percentage of the time, watching a single episode is going to raise newcomers' eyebrows or just frustrate them with a lack of stand-alone entertainment. The new alternate-timeline movie did a good job of basically stating "We'd rather have a quality film that people can enjoy on its own than something which fits" and went beyond that to "fit" nevertheless. In a sense, think of how single-issue comic books do things, where yes, they're often part of a larger whole, but can't afford to be crap on their own.

What would you think about the franchise's operators taking every single series and basically making a "director's cut" of the show which offers to newcomers and anybody else on a time budget only the best?--Instead of filtering through hundreds of The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine episodes, there could be only a fraction of that, released in nice DVD/BluRay/Digital packages. Some would be entire episodes that are just genuinely good and advance the series, and others would be cut versions (down to a half-hour, for instance, if a single episode has too much crap but something good in it) or even splices (gluing parts of multiple episodes together into one epic, less-filler story).

This way, if someone wants to watch Star Trek, they don't have to look-up on fansites for conflicting and confusing opinions on "which ones to watch and which to skip" or sit-through full episodes just to get fifteen minutes of something that's actually entertaining.

Your thoughts, N-G-Trekkies?

 

[Lagduf]

Pretty interesting preview of the upcoming Star Trek MMO

Sounds like it could be good.

I understand, of course, the decision to make Klingons enemies, but I don't particularly care for that.

Also, they mention the Gorn as enemies? Aren't the gorn friendly to the federation? They are in the Starfleet Universe

One thing that irked me about this preview was that Starfleet was continually referred to as a military organization, which is not the case.

I wonder why the decision was made to have everyone be captain of a federation ship? Why not throw in Klingons and Romulans, then add other races in the expansions.

Hopefully you can play as a non human character.

 

[thirdkind]

Yeah they cleaned them up added/fixed some of the more terrible effects. They did not however totally fuck everything up like a lot of the newer "SE" bullshit like say Star Wars or ET. The updated TOS is actually very well done.

I haven't watched them yet myself, but I plan on picking up the BD version soon. Everything I've heard says that they're done well, and including the remastered original effects, which the HD-DVD version didn't have, makes it a no-brainer.

I'm hoping Paramount decides to give TNG the same treatment on BD. The DVDs are hideous, even for SD. I'm a bit concerned about the effects shots though, because unlike TOS, where the original effects were composited on film and could be scanned quite easily for HD presentation, TNG's effects were rendered at 480i and would need to be redone completely from scratch. I doubt upconverting the 480i source would look good at all right next to the live action elements remastered in 1080p. I'm normally a rabid purist, but to get TNG in HD, I might be willing to accept new effects shots done in the spirit of the originals.

What would you think about the franchise's operators taking every single series and basically making a "director's cut" of the show which offers to newcomers and anybody else on a time budget only the best?

"Best of" compilations are generally hated by existing fans and don't sell very well overall. Besides, the Trek universe is so huge that even a compilation would have too much material for even a casual fan to bother with. Appreciating Trek requires a level of obsessive fanboy nerdism that casual fans never approach anyway.

 

[mainman]

Yeah, big star trek fan here myself especially DS9. I can name the class of all cannon and non cannon fed ships and I'm ashamed to admit I can even tell you about their specs.

 

[J. Max]

I realise that science fiction fans (perhaps "especially Star Trek fans") can be amongst the most info-hungry people, thriving upon the ideals of knowing and propagating knowledge of their respective series, so the idea of "cutting" or "changing" things is particularly disconcerting. One only look at the rabidity of "Greedo shot first" or "How large is Jabba The Hutt?" discussions upon Star Wars' revamping to see how nasty this can bring arguments.

But, regarding Star Trek, I have a (extended) question for everyone here:

The universe is so vast that it's difficult to approach. Anyone that has tried to jump right-into the franchise knows that, a good percentage of the time, watching a single episode is going to raise newcomers' eyebrows or just frustrate them with a lack of stand-alone entertainment. The new alternate-timeline movie did a good job of basically stating "We'd rather have a quality film that people can enjoy on its own than something which fits" and went beyond that to "fit" nevertheless. In a sense, think of how single-issue comic books do things, where yes, they're often part of a larger whole, but can't afford to be crap on their own.

What would you think about the franchise's operators taking every single series and basically making a "director's cut" of the show which offers to newcomers and anybody else on a time budget only the best?--Instead of filtering through hundreds of The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine episodes, there could be only a fraction of that, released in nice DVD/BluRay/Digital packages. Some would be entire episodes that are just genuinely good and advance the series, and others would be cut versions (down to a half-hour, for instance, if a single episode has too much crap but something good in it) or even splices (gluing parts of multiple episodes together into one epic, less-filler story).

This way, if someone wants to watch Star Trek, they don't have to look-up on fansites for conflicting and confusing opinions on "which ones to watch and which to skip" or sit-through full episodes just to get fifteen minutes of something that's actually entertaining.

Your thoughts, N-G-Trekkies?

Been done already:

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Star-Trek-Original/dp/B001TH16CO/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1252298705&sr=8-7

They have these for TNG and DS9 too...as well as different theme packs that focus on the captains, alternate universes, etc.