Random Star Trek discussion

Discussion in 'Media Central' started by 14thDoctor, Jul 24, 2021.

  1. 14thDoctor

    14thDoctor Oi

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    Oh, I know. I posted 90% of that in the Lower Decks thread the other day.
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  2. Diacanu

    Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

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    Ds9, season 1, episode 2, "A Man Alone".

    A racist mob forms in front of Odo's office.

    Morn is in the mob!

    Boo, Morn!! Booo!!

    :nono:
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  3. Diacanu

    Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

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    Rom has a different personality and voice in the early episodes.

    He kind of de-evolved in intelligence like Homer Simpson.
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  4. tafkats

    tafkats scream not working because space make deaf Moderator

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    How many TOS episodes have at least one of these three plots?

    1) The ship is intercepted by a powerful, godlike being or beings who fuck with the crew.

    2) The Enterprise encounters a primitive people who are being controlled or manipulated by someone or something.

    3) Kirk talks a computer into killing itself.
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  5. 14thDoctor

    14thDoctor Oi

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    Yeah, he got flanderized hard.

    Or if one wanted to be generous they could argue he was simply following the Nagus's old failed "Ferengi are fierce predators and also maybe they eat people" marketing campaign.
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  6. Diacanu

    Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

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    ENT "Oasis".

    Oh! I totally 100% forgot Rene Auberjonois did an ENT! :soma:

    And "Marauders" yesterday had Ethan Philips, and Clint Howard.

    And the Augments arc had Brent Spiner.

    And the Siranite arc had Jack Donner.

    So that's people from all 4 previous shows as different characters.
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  7. Diacanu

    Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

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    Trip- "What if she gets hurt? What you gonna do, program a holographic doctor?".

    Haha!! He hinted at the thing!
    :D
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  8. 14thDoctor

    14thDoctor Oi

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    There was a great DS9/Insurrection Easter egg in one of the Augments episodes, but I'm too lazy to confirm the proper spelling right now.
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  9. ed629

    ed629 Morally Inept Banned

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    I still think Data tried the phaser stun setting on Spot, well the first Spot. With disastrous results, then replaced the first Spot with a second one. Which would explain why Spot looked different, possibly more than once. And that's why he told Geordi that he couldn't stun Spot because he knew it would end badly.
    Last edited: Aug 21, 2021
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  10. 14thDoctor

    14thDoctor Oi

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    Morn was only there to pick up chicks. :async:
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  11. Nova

    Nova livin on the edge of the ledge Writer

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    Comment I made on YouTube in response to a review video about Master and Commander:

    How great would Enterprise (by whatever name) have been if they had simply directly translated these movies to SF?
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  12. Paladin

    Paladin Overjoyed Man of Liberty

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    That was sorta done in book form: David Weber's Honor Harrington series, which would make a terrific sci-fi series.
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  13. Steal Your Face

    Steal Your Face Anti-Federalist

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    This is what Roddenberry had in mind when he created the character of Kirk. Here's a pretty good review of Master and Commander and it's ties to Star Trek.
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  14. Spaceturkey

    Spaceturkey i can see my house

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    that pretty much covers it
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  15. Nova

    Nova livin on the edge of the ledge Writer

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    out of 79 episodes, and giving you credit for Gary Mitchell even though he doesn't quite fit the premise of #1...
    and being as loose as is possible with the categorization...I can't count even as many as 30 eps out of 79 that your could cram into one of those definitions, and strictly defined it's not close, really, to even that many
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  16. 14thDoctor

    14thDoctor Oi

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    [​IMG]

    I just saw this posted on a pro-science meme page, which is hilarious since T'Pol and the Vulcan Science Directorate were 100% wrong about what those two are discussing, which was the possibility of time travel. :jayzus:
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  17. Diacanu

    Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

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    "Assignment Earth" on right now.

    Man, Gary Seven's transporter safe is really easy to crack!
    The knob goes "bloop!" when you hit the right number!
    Four bloops, and you're in.
    A 3 year old could crack that security.
    :lol: :diacanu:
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  18. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    According to the guest on this podcast, when Spock makes a prediction about something, he's almost certain to be wrong.
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  19. NAHTMMM

    NAHTMMM Perpetually sondering

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    Well, part of his role is to be a foil to Kirk, so Kirk can tell danger or logic to shove it and do something exciting.
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  20. Raoul the Red Shirt

    Raoul the Red Shirt Professional bullseye

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    I would say you're undercounting. Or maybe I'm overcounting:

    I am at 33 and there are probably some episodes that I've left out.

    Godlike Being Episodes:
    Charlie X
    Where No Man Has Gone Before
    The Menagerie I
    The Menagerie II
    The Squire of Gothos
    Arena
    Who Mourns for Adonais
    Catspaw
    Metamorphosis
    Obsession
    Wolf in the Fold
    Plato's Step-Children
    Return to Tomorrow
    The Savage Curtain
    Requiem for Methuselah (could also be put in Kirk Causes AI Self-Destruction)

    Primitive People:
    Return of the Archons
    This Side of Paradise
    The Apple
    Friday's Child
    A Piece of the Action
    A Private Little War
    Patterns of Force
    The Omega Glory
    Bread and Circuses
    The Paradise Syndrome
    The Way to Eden
    The Cloud Minders

    Kirk Causes AI Self-Destruction:
    What Are Little Girls Made Of
    The Changeling
    The Apple
    I, Mudd
    The Ultimate Computer
    Spock's Brain
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  21. Quincunx

    Quincunx anti-anti-establishment Staff Member Administrator

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    Also an AI self-destruction.
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  22. shootER

    shootER Insubordinate...and churlish Administrator

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    Watching the end of remastered TOS on H&I always makes me wonder why they didn't clean up the closing credits like they did the rest of the episode. The slides still have dirt and scratches on them. :(
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  23. 14thDoctor

    14thDoctor Oi

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    Yeah, it's an intellectual version of the Worf Effect.
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  24. Diacanu

    Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

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    The computer core of the station from "Dead Stop" is also the AI member of the think tank from "Think Tank".
    Same prop, anyway.
    But my fan-canon is that the Think Tank found the Dead Stop AI.
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  25. NAHTMMM

    NAHTMMM Perpetually sondering

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    I would put "Obsession" and "Wolf" more in the monster of the week category with "Immunity Syndrome", "Man Trap", "Operation Annihilate!", and "Day of the Dove".
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  26. Raoul the Red Shirt

    Raoul the Red Shirt Professional bullseye

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    I suppose it depends on what you have as your dividing line between "godlike" and merely powerful being.

    What separates Redjac, say, from the salt-sucker is that Redjac is extremely long-lived and not capable of just being phasered nor has conventional weaknesses to humanoids.

    The space ameoba is not sentient enough to fit in the class of "godlike."

    Fair point that the thing in Obsession might be more run-of-the-mill space monster, though.
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  27. matthunter

    matthunter Ice Bear

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    The Obsession alien is immune to even ship's phasers. But then gets blown up with an antimatter charge, so a torpedo would have done if they'd gotten to the point of establishing how those work.
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  28. NAHTMMM

    NAHTMMM Perpetually sondering

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    To me, personally and subjectively, the "god-like alien" trope in Star Trek suggests hyper-advanced beings that the crew basically can't do anything about, who either (1) drive the plot according to their arbitrary whims (Squire, Arena, Spectre of the Gun, Adonais, Return to Tomorrow, Triskelion, Q) and the crew mostly have to either outlast them or dance to their whims for a while, or (2) they show up at the end (or whenever) to dispense wisdom/the message and their morals are Indisputably Correct because gosh look how infinitely more advanced/ascended they are than the crew (Errand of Mercy, Arena, Q). Menagerie / The Cage is kind of a third category where the godlike beings have to be reminded that humanity is awesome and maybe they don't know everything after all. The Empath is kind of that way too, but again I don't get a godlike sense from those aliens, just that they're playing God with the other civilizations.

    The probe in Changeling was an Earth probe that was super-powerful and smart, yes, but it was flawed and built on inferior technology. The crew basically had to figure out how to defuse a bomb. Of course bullets couldn't stop the Obsession monster because blah blah time sync. Just like the giant space amoeba couldn't be simply shot. You don't make a monster of the week that can be stopped by shooting it ten minutes into the episode. Plato's Stepchildren were just a bunch of weenies whose power trigger the crew figured out and exploited for themselves within like a day. The Kelvans and the Spock's Brain women had power triggers, too, and I wouldn't consider them godlike, just more powerful than the Enterprise crew, or simply able to make their advantages count.

    If you want to consider those to be "godlike" plots, I won't argue further. I'm thinking in terms of the overall feel of the story and perhaps you aren't. It's a subjective experience, and there are grey areas where sometimes the antagonist is not godlike, but so overpowering that it feels like "here we go again".

    In the end, there are a lot of episodes where the crew encounters a culture way more advanced than they are, and a lot of episodes where they encounter a culture way less advanced. And that would be expected because odds of two cultures meeting at nearly the exact same point of progress in their civilization are pretty slender. But it is interesting that the writers' minds so often ran along those patterns.
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  29. Diacanu

    Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

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    Speaking of anti-matter, it always cracks me up in "Doomsday Machine" when Matt Decker says "pure anti-proton!! Absolutely pure!!".
    Um, what would the contaminant for anti-matter be?
    Baby laxative?
    Floor sweepings?
    Anti-matter would burn out whatever you cut it with.
    It's fucking anti-matter.
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  30. Jenee

    Jenee Driver 8

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    maybe a stray electron here or there?
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