Star Trek: The Original Series and The Next Generation

[Fero McPigletron]

If you play the Deep Space Nine-centric arc of Star Trek Online(the arc is called Victory is Life) that Jem'Hadar shows back up, and if you make a JH character during one of their "Gamma Recruitment" events, he actually ties in rather heavily to your character story-wise.

That's just amazing! Cool of someone to follow that up. Could I get a spoiler on what happens to him? I'm assuming Odo isn't around. Now only if someone followed up the Puppy computer program, aw.

So TOS has the least relationship soap opera drama going on with the cast, ok. There wasn't anything that happened between him and Uhura in TOS? Not like the JJ Abrams movies?

 

[ooo-baby]

 

[Dekafox]

That's just amazing! Cool of someone to follow that up. Could I get a spoiler on what happens to him? I'm assuming Odo isn't around. Now only if someone followed up the Puppy computer program, aw.

Spoiler: Spoiler for Victory Is Life

Actually Odo is around, and the kid, now Dukan'Rex, ends up serving under him - I can't say too much about how and why of that wihtout also spoiling later DS9, but if you make the "Gamma Recruit" Jem'Hadar character he's basically your mentor throughout the entire VIL storyline. The VIL storyline involves the Hurq, who it turns out were a previous attempt at genetically creating super-soldiers, even using a precursor to ketrecel white, and have been lured in to attack the Dominion, including the Founder's homeworld in the climax. They've basically been rampaging across the galaxy due to a madness caused by the Dominion tinkering with their genetics, and it turns out ketrecel white can bring them back to reason, because of this. Bashir and several others including the PC go over to the Hurq flagship to provide samples of ketrecel white to their replicators so that they can regain control of themselves, but Weyoun blasts the package and vaporizes it. Dukan'Rex then sacrifices himself, jumping into the analyzer so it can read the ketrecel in his body and make the plan work. As a reward for saving the Founders from annihlation by the Hurq, they agree to remove the ketrecel dependency from their Jem'Hadar, including said PC.

 

[Fero McPigletron]

OMQ, was there no other way? I'd ask about how Odo felt after but I guess I should finish the series first. This sounds like a well written game.

I passed the DS9 ep where Jadzia Dax lost her energy based lover but I doubt they'd revisit it after the 60 year mark.

Also saw Riker appear. I read about the split a long time ago so I got the reference from Lower Decks when Boimler did the same thing. Hope he gets a happy ending in the mines.

---
Was that Spock kissing someone? Whaaaaa?

 

[Dekafox]

Spoiler

Unfortunately they didn't have time for anything else - at this point the Hurq fleet was already in orbit over the Founder's homeworld.

VIL is considered one of the highlights of the game, storywise. Not all of the arcs live up to it, but when they're firing on all cylinders, it's great, like the whole Romulan Republic storyline, and the Iconian War.

 

[The Predaking]

So TOS has the least relationship soap opera drama going on with the cast, ok. There wasn't anything that happened between him and Uhura in TOS? Not like the JJ Abrams movies?

There is some dialog there in early episodes where she kind of flirts with him, but for the most part it is Nurse Chappel that is after Spock. Uhura and Kirk are made to kiss by these telekinesis aliens for their amusement. It was a huge deal at the time as it was the first time an interracial kiss was seen on TV. There wasn't anything between the two characters though.

 

[ooo-baby]

There is some dialog there in early episodes where she kind of flirts with him, but for the most part it is Nurse Chappel that is after Spock. Uhura and Kirk are made to kiss by these telekinesis aliens for their amusement. It was a huge deal at the time as it was the first time an interracial kiss was seen on TV. There wasn't anything between the two characters though.

There were moments:

 

[ooo-baby]

In Star Trek: Beyond we got to see what the Borg was supposed to be:

Next Gen did not have the budget or the technology to pull this off so we had to settle for what we got, the poor man’s Borg.

Beyond is the story of Kirk and his crew defeating the real Borg.

 

[Sabrblade]

Beyond is the story of Kirk and his crew defeating the real Borg.

Correction: Beyond is the story of the Beastie Boys defeating real Borg.

 

[Donocropolis]

Correction: Beyond the story of the Beastie Boys defeating real Borg.

As fortold in the prophecies:

 

[ooo-baby]

Paramount is pushing pushing too much Star Trek content at once:

This show seems out of place. Only one show at a time should be out there, and right now that’s Strange New Worlds, the adventures of Captain Pike which was cut short in the 60’s.

To be successful a Star Trek show it needs to build upon and be connected to the Original Series or Next Generation.

 

[The Predaking]

I still need to go back and watch season 4.

 

[Copper Bezel]

Paramount is pushing pushing too much Star Trek content at once:

Not anymore they're not. This is the last season of Discovery, and the fact that Prodigy was among the handful of shows Paramount+ just summarily axed says to me that where the left hand is still throwing shit at the wall (Matalas hoping for his own show, whatever happened to the Academy show, the Section 31 monthly curated box of snacks) the right hand is going vicious for tax write-offs.

This show seems out of place. Only one show at a time should be out there, and right now that’s Strange New Worlds, the adventures of Captain Pike which was cut short in the 60’s.

No one cared who Pike was before Discovery S2. This is the adventures of Captain Pike, whose ship we wanted a reassignment to in 2019. And we got it, great, but don't forget that Discovery was the flagship show until that happened, so of course they're going to bloody wrap it up. (Though with the example of Prodigy, it was clearly never guaranteed they'd have a chance to do so.)

To be successful a Star Trek show it needs to build upon and be connected to the Original Series or Next Generation.

Well, welcome to the death spiral then, because there's only so much that can be done in these densely packed eras of Trek history, and if viewers demand everything has a one-step remove from Captains Kirk and Picard, then we're running out of possible material to cover without doing an honest-to-God reboot. Star Trek can't live in a Spiderman-sized box where history resets every seven years and sometimes there's a crossover, and no matter how many seasons happen it's always 2266.

And you're still talking about Discovery, which was itself already parasitically attached to the original series for two seasons before the time skip, because somehow they thought the thing that would lead audiences to accept Michael Burnham as the main protagonist was making her Spock's secret sister. Discovery was five minutes before Captain Kirk before SNW made it cool, which is how we got SNW. It didn't fully capitalize on either the potential of the source material or the raw appeal of the nostalgic iconography, and that was a bad choice creatively and financially, but I can't stress enough that that source material is still a limited resource, and if Trek isn't comfortable using the full breadth of source material that it has to work with and simultaneously venture into new settings and concepts, it's going to go back to the same well until it runs dry and we're going to end up in another quiet decade until the next inevitable TOS recast.

 

[Fero McPigletron]

I passed season 3 Fascination (eeeeeverybody was in lust with everyone else. Why in heaven's is Odo in love with Kira? Blurg.) and the Past Tense two parter (I wanted to see a follow up to the rich guy who helped Jadzia) and I had to stop at Life Support.

Why in heaven's did they bring back Bareil just to kill him again? He was dead from the accident then Bashir performed some resurrection miracle on him and they still let him die anyway?!? Geez. I liked the character and I was surprised that he was only in 7+1 eps. Felt like he was around forever.

And it was a disservice to pair the ep with the B plot of Jake and Nog's double dating hiccup. I'm sure there's a parallel with the clash of dating cultures with the Cardassian and Bajor peace talks but a comedic side story isn't a good fit with an emotionally tragic theme.

And there was something about replacing parts of Bareil's brain to keep him functioning but Bashir didn't want it do it so Bareil can keep his humanity. What in heavens?!? This is the future! And they're aliens!

I'm reminded of an 80s Astroboy episode where a detective hates robots but his body was replaced with robotics. Nothing wrong with that but he still hates robots because of it. Of course, he works well with Astroboy and of course changes his mind. Then a last minute crook shoots him in the head, the only thing still organic about it. I thought he was dead (there's a TON of deaths in the Astroboy toon, geez) but the guy apparently was still alive? With a robot brain? Now fully robotic. And he accepts his condition now.

Anyhow, I just wonder how Bareil could have been, if he had stayed on. Yes, he was in a religious whatever but being robotic would have been an interesting futuristic idea. Plus he was having visions (when that ugh Kai Winn blackmailed him into not being Kai) so that in a positronic brain matrix whatever could have been a story plot.

But they killed him off and paired it with a light hearted side story. What the hex. Am not happy with this ep, grr.

 

[ooo-baby]

They’re making Star Trek too complicated and convoluted. No wonder the Star Trek: Discovery synopsis on IMDb makes no sense:

Created by Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman for CBS All Access, the story of "Star Trek: Discovery" begins roughly a decade before Captain Kirk's five-year mission -- as portrayed in the original "Star Trek" from the 1960s -- and a century before the events of "Star Trek: Enterprise." The series follows the crew of the USS Discovery as they encounter new worlds and civilizations, delving into familiar themes and expanding upon an incident that has been talked about within the franchise's universe, but never fully explored.

How can Discovery begin a decade before Kirk and a century before Enterprise?

 

[The Predaking]

I passed season 3 Fascination (eeeeeverybody was in lust with everyone else. Why in heaven's is Odo in love with Kira? Blurg.) and the Past Tense two parter (I wanted to see a follow up to the rich guy who helped Jadzia) and I had to stop at Life Support.

Why in heaven's did they bring back Bareil just to kill him again? He was dead from the accident then Bashir performed some resurrection miracle on him and they still let him die anyway?!? Geez. I liked the character and I was surprised that he was only in 7+1 eps. Felt like he was around forever.

And it was a disservice to pair the ep with the B plot of Jake and Nog's double dating hiccup. I'm sure there's a parallel with the clash of dating cultures with the Cardassian and Bajor peace talks but a comedic side story isn't a good fit with an emotionally tragic theme.

And there was something about replacing parts of Bareil's brain to keep him functioning but Bashir didn't want it do it so Bareil can keep his humanity. What in heavens?!? This is the future! And they're aliens!

I'm reminded of an 80s Astroboy episode where a detective hates robots but his body was replaced with robotics. Nothing wrong with that but he still hates robots because of it. Of course, he works well with Astroboy and of course changes his mind. Then a last minute crook shoots him in the head, the only thing still organic about it. I thought he was dead (there's a TON of deaths in the Astroboy toon, geez) but the guy apparently was still alive? With a robot brain? Now fully robotic. And he accepts his condition now.

Anyhow, I just wonder how Bareil could have been, if he had stayed on. Yes, he was in a religious whatever but being robotic would have been an interesting futuristic idea. Plus he was having visions (when that ugh Kai Winn blackmailed him into not being Kai) so that in a positronic brain matrix whatever could have been a story plot.

But they killed him off and paired it with a light hearted side story. What the hex. Am not happy with this ep, grr.

Bareil was a great character but the issue was that the actor had been talking about leaving the show, and they had this script with a Federation ambassador being turned into a Frankenstein monster to stop him from dying. They thought that the audience wouldn't care if it were just some guest actor playing a new character. The writers thought if it were a likeable character that they were done with, then the audience would care, and you could bring Kira into the story too.


Also, without his influence, Kai Winn is now able to grow to be the most hated character in Star Trek history. Like she does such a great job that she is only eclipsed by the greatest Star Trek Villan of all time.

 

[Sabrblade]

They’re making Star Trek too complicated and convoluted. No wonder the Star Trek: Discovery synopsis on IMDb makes no sense:

Created by Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman for CBS All Access, the story of "Star Trek: Discovery" begins roughly a decade before Captain Kirk's five-year mission -- as portrayed in the original "Star Trek" from the 1960s -- and a century before the events of "Star Trek: Enterprise." The series follows the crew of the USS Discovery as they encounter new worlds and civilizations, delving into familiar themes and expanding upon an incident that has been talked about within the franchise's universe, but never fully explored.

How can Discovery begin a decade before Kirk and a century before Enterprise?

It's a typo. It's supposed to say "a century after the events of Star Trek: Enterprise."

 

[Fero McPigletron]

Bareil was a great character but the issue was that the actor had been talking about leaving the show, and they had this script with a Federation ambassador being turned into a Frankenstein monster to stop him from dying. They thought that the audience wouldn't care if it were just some guest actor playing a new character. The writers thought if it were a likeable character that they were done with, then the audience would care, and you could bring Kira into the story too.


Also, without his influence, Kai Winn is now able to grow to be the most hated character in Star Trek history. Like she does such a great job that she is only eclipsed by the greatest Star Trek Villan of all time.

Wait so there was a script where Bareil COULD have had his brain mechanized and he would have Frankenstein-ed? But the actor just really to leave anyhow? Oh ok. Guess we were going to lose the character either way. Would that he could have left the show in a bigger manner but, as a tragic episode, it was really sad, especially for Kira. It just had a couple of issues with me (the B-plot and the brain replacing, which you explained really could have been a thing).

THANKS so much for that info. Kinda made me feel better about it. Yes, Winn is a sandy beach.

 

[ooo-baby]

The good old days:

Greatest Star Trek mobile game ever. Simple is better.

 

[Dekafox]

Also, it helps to keep in mind that Trek in the up until some point in DS9(if you count Bashir, otherwise maybe Geordi's eye implants would be the line) avoided or looked at transhumanism as a universally bad thing. See Augments for but one example(though admittedly there were other mitigating factors there, which a recent SNW episode actually did a good job of poking at). You can be disassembled and reassembled all day long, but start replacing body parts(let alone the body) and suddenly it's a bridge too far. Kind of funny considering how the same show seems to universally posit that all living beings eventually become energy beings if the species lasts long enough. But of course it's fine as long as it's natural, and not artificially done.