Of course I'm not obligated to prove anything to anybody. The same does not apply to you and others of similar ilk.
I wonder about just how important space battles are. TOS season 1 was heavy on the philosophical and rather light on Things Blowing Up Real Good. IMO, that was one of the best seasons of Trek, but it was heavy on character development and moralizing/exploring social issues. That made it unique, not the "Forehead Alien of the Week" that Voyager was. Corbomite Maneuver had a "battle" that was hardly a battle. Balance of Terror was as close as you got to a space battle in season 1. That's about it in Season 1. Things start picking up in Season 2, but the quality of some of those episodes begins to decline as well. I think when the writers run out of ideas, they fall back on Things That Go Boom Real Loud. Action becomes a substitute for a solid story many times. Now you will have Teh Space Battles occasionally since in the TOS era, the Klingons and Romulans are militant and conflict is inevitable. But you can still tell a good war story without firing a single round of ammo.
By the "needs space battles" standard, VOY would be the best of the Trek series, since there was a space battle most every episode.
Perhaps you're right. As we have a viable and hugely successful Trek film series going now, there probably is no call for a TV show. True, the constant danger to survival in space is rarely explored. One of my favorite Firefly episodes was the one when a guy invades the ship and tries to take control. And one of my favorite classic BSG eps was the fire. Star Trek never had enough of the space is generally dangerous type of episode. Space travel shouldn't be seen as so routinized. But as others have said, conflict and danger are inherent to the human condition. In the medium of space, there are many ways to explore this without resort to broadsides.
You've forgotten "Errand of Mercy"? It had a very intense space battle in the opening of the episode. And what about "Arena"?
Why is that? Is it because you feel superior to others? When in fact you are not superior in any way whatsoever.
Well I would still like to see a much darker side to the Trek universe...a section 31 series. I doubt that would ever happen though because it would dull the utopia image the franchise has created.
You do not need consoles exploding (which is completely unrealistic anyway) and starships lumbering around like tanks at point blank range for a battle to be "intense".
Why wouldn't it? Star Trek is the science fiction franchise that I've historically been the most interested in. Though not one that has always been as enjoyable as it could be.
No, darker. I'd have the Federation president and his flunkies indulging in mounds of space-coke, and piles of little boys, and everything turns so rotten, the people cry out for the KLINGONS to save them, cuz at least they live by a fucking code.
Hmmm...they kinda started something along these lines with Reed on Enterprise, but how about...? The new Star Trek series centers around a starship on a mission to a distant part of the galaxy (or, as I've suggested in other posts, to another galaxy through some kind of wormhole-like passage). One of the main characters is secretly a member of Section 31 and, as the series progresses, the Captain/crew discover this and realize that he's got some secret agenda and that this mission may not be what everyone thought it was. This sets up constant tension; maybe the guy has special knowledge that enables the mission and so they're forced, on occasion, to trust him. And here's the kicker: we don't get to know (possibly until the end of the series) if the enigmatic crewmember is a "good guy" or a "bad guy."
Maybe he can be. It's less important that he be one or the other than that the crew (and the audience) constantly wonder.
Okay, so there's a bad guy on board (perhaps with a secret agenda) and the tension comes from knowing that one (or more) of the officers of the ship may be working with him. (Or is that too nu-BSG with its "Who's the Cylon?" bit?)
IMHO mixong section 31 with non section 31 is Voyager 2.0. I can't deal with more sanctimonous bullshit from self righteous officers decrying Section 31 as a bad thing. Of course we will never actually have Section 31 portrayed as good because the way they operate does not fit in with the ultra libertopia view of the future Trek shows. The only chance is if were set in the Abramsverse.
Actually reminds me a bit of Hunt for Red October, with the political officer and the general awareness that there was probably another KGB plant on board. As with the isolated submarine, a deep space mission experiencing such a dynamic would likely encounter more and more crew dysfunction.
The best bad guy is someone doing terrible things, but with the same end goal as you, and you can't make convincing arguments why they are wrong. Imagine someone fighting a WWII style total war, with pure Vulcan logic.
See, I think the best bad guy is someone/something so cold and implacable that there's just no choice other than fight or flee. Berzerkers, for example.
I submit that the best villain is one where you never know what he's going to do. Vader in Star Wars and ESB was an enigmatic figure, with some kind of overarching plan, that was never entirely clear. He also had no expression when he did things and you only knew if he was angry if he wanted you to know that he was angry. Was he a man? A machine? An alien? We didn't know. Did he just choke that guy because he was angry? Or because he had no more use for him?
We come to the difference between a villain and an antagonist. A villain is a character who does evil things, often for the sheer joy or self-satisfaction of doing it. His evilness is meant to stand in stark contrast to the hero's goodness. An antagonist is the character that opposes the protagonist, and, though we may find him largely unsympathetic and his motives less than noble, his opposition does have some sort of emotional or reasonable basis that we can understand. The Joker is a villain in both Batman (1989) and The Dark Knight (2008), but I'd argue he's a much more well-developed antagonist in the latter.
