Octopus Overlords

My guess is that sketchy scientist is going to turn out to have less pure motives than he presented.

Oh, and just to cut off Smoove before he posts this

El Guapo wrote: ↑Wed Jan 05, 2022 2:37 pm My guess is that sketchy scientist is going to turn out to have less pure motives than he presented.

I'm 75/25 leaning towards that being true. But it would be a nice Star Trek twist to have him be a tragic figure who really just does want to reunite with someone he loves and isn't thinking about the consequences/doesn't think he's wrong that there won't be lasting ones.

One of the great things about Star Trek is that it's willing to give us villains who aren't necessarily bad people. They're often just either too alien to understand until someone finds common ground, or they've been wronged and think they're the righteous side. And diplomacy has a higher rate of success than most other science fiction franchises.

hepcat wrote: ↑Wed Jan 05, 2022 2:39 pm

El Guapo wrote: ↑Wed Jan 05, 2022 2:37 pm My guess is that sketchy scientist is going to turn out to have less pure motives than he presented.

I'm 75/25 leaning towards that being true. But it would be a nice Star Trek twist to have him be a tragic figure who really just does want to reunite with someone he loves and isn't thinking about the consequences/doesn't think he's wrong that there won't be lasting ones.

One of the great things about Star Trek is that it's willing to give us villains who aren't necessarily bad people. They're often just either too alien to understand until someone finds common ground, or they've been wronged and think they're the righteous side. And diplomacy has a higher rate of success than most other science fiction franchises.

Well, what would be better is if his story is true, BUT he knows that setting off his bomb in the DMA is going to cause massive damage / loss of life, but doesn't care because it'll get him home in the process.

Or alternatively if he's the one responsible for the DMA in the first place.

I had just assumed that was the conclusion you were leaning towards. But yeah, that's entirely possible. While they don't lean heavily on mustache twirling bad guys, they have had them in the past.

Also, I hate the acronym DMA. It makes me think of either MDA or a Do Not Resuscitate contract every time they use it.

edit: Wait a minute...I just had a thought. A terrible, beautiful thought. What if the DMA is being caused by the First Federation. That might then lead to

hepcat wrote: ↑Wed Jan 05, 2022 3:12 pm I had just assumed that was the conclusion you were leaning towards. But yeah, that's entirely possible. While they don't lean heavily on mustache twirling bad guys, they have had them in the past.

Also, I hate the acronym DMA. It makes me think of either MDA or a Do Not Resuscitate contract every time they use it.

edit: Wait a minute...I just had a thought. A terrible, beautiful thought. What if the DMA is being caused by the First Federation. That might then lead to

Oooh, I’m now craving a nice glass of tranya!

(As a kid watching that episode I imagined it tasting like Tang which I really liked at the time)

side note: a while back I was reading some wiki entries on the script development for some of the old Star Trek TOS episodes. One of them mentioned The Corbomite Maneuver. At the end of the episode, when asked what he'd have done had the Enterprise not passed his "test", the original script called for a dark look to momentarily appear on his face, displaying how dangerous Balok really could be if needed.

I would have loved to see a 7 year old Clint Howard try to portray that.

Ok, not sure if this has been posted before, but I was wondering something. Full disclosure: while I am a fan of Star Trek, though I will readily admit that I am a Star Wars person through and through. Is there a person in the Trek canon that is analogous to Jar Jar Binks? A character that is near-universally reviled for being annoying/pointless/failed comic relief? I'm thinking of someone like Q, who on the surface (to me) is a deus ex character that is trotted out when the writers couldn't think of a decent story for that week's episode, or when they have written themselves into a corner and need to rescue the MC's.
"Oh no, how are we going to get them out of this time loop?"
"Um...maybe bring Q in and have it all be just a test of human ingenuity, and he will tell them how poorly they did, crack a few jokes at Picard's expense, and then fix the time loop."
"Oh, and we can have him wipe everyone's memory of it except for Data, because android, but no one else will remember!"

Or do Trekkies actually like Q?

hepcat wrote:...seriously, can ANYONE take zarathud off our hands? We'll even toss in a travel cage.

Just because I put you in the brig and revealed myself as the Old One, then drained the last of our fuel. I was such a good Captain of the Unfathomable until then.

Q is fine. It’s Wesley Crusher who was the Jar Jar of Star Trek. And then there was Voyager…

…and lens flare courtesy of J.J.

Hyena wrote: ↑Wed Jan 05, 2022 4:28 pm Ok, not sure if this has been posted before, but I was wondering something. Full disclosure: while I am a fan of Star Trek, though I will readily admit that I am a Star Wars person through and through. Is there a person in the Trek canon that is analogous to Jar Jar Binks? A character that is near-universally reviled for being annoying/pointless/failed comic relief? I'm thinking of someone like Q, who on the surface (to me) is a deus ex character that is trotted out when the writers couldn't think of a decent story for that week's episode, or when they have written themselves into a corner and need to rescue the MC's.
"Oh no, how are we going to get them out of this time loop?"
"Um...maybe bring Q in and have it all be just a test of human ingenuity, and he will tell them how poorly they did, crack a few jokes at Picard's expense, and then fix the time loop."
"Oh, and we can have him wipe everyone's memory of it except for Data, because android, but no one else will remember!"

Or do Trekkies actually like Q?

I like Q.

As I go through the Star Trek franchise from The Original Series to Discovery (not including the animated stuff) I don’t think any series character comes to mind that was as silly as Jar Jar. Even Neelix from Voyager had some good storylines from time to time. And early season Wesley was pretty annoying but unlike Jar Jar and the Republic I don’t think he would have led to the downfall of the Federation.

Zarathud wrote: ↑Wed Jan 05, 2022 4:30 pm

hepcat wrote:...seriously, can ANYONE take zarathud off our hands? We'll even toss in a travel cage.

Just because I put you in the brig and revealed myself as the Old One, then drained the last of our fuel. I was such a good Captain of the Unfathomable until then.

That was a lot of fun. I'm almost tempted to buy Unfathomable. But RMC has it, and we can play it on TTS. So that should be enough to make me save the 80 bucks or so for it.

But yeah....I hate you. I hate you with the heat of a thousand suns. You bastard.

p.s. you weren't "the old one". You were a dirty, dirty hybrid.

Hyena wrote: ↑Wed Jan 05, 2022 4:28 pm
Or do Trekkies actually like Q?

I'm not a huge fan, but I know he's loved by many fans. I liked him when he was initially just there to show the Federation that they knew very little in the scheme of things. But then he turned into a petty troll and his character went off the rails for me. There have been more than a few god like races/characters on Star Trek. He and possibly Trelane are the only ones I would be afraid would give me a wedgie when I wasn't looking. That's not how I envision super advanced races acting. Now, if they were to ever reveal he was basically a child (like Trelane), I might be more prone to accepting his shenanigans without a roll of the eyes.

Star Trek usually doesn't do super silly aliens, like Star Wars. Tribbles, maybe. But they're more like rats. They do "trill" though. So that's kind of in the same vein as the goofy plushy characters shouting gibberish that you find in Star Wars so often.

edit: forgot about Wesley. Yeah, he might be a Jar Jar level annoyance. At least initially. I was thinking more about alien races.

Hyena wrote: ↑Wed Jan 05, 2022 4:28 pm A character that is near-universally reviled for being annoying/pointless/failed comic relief?

That would be Neelix.



Who was, incidentally, half of the even more reviled - but thankfully limited to a single episode...

Hyena wrote: ↑Wed Jan 05, 2022 4:28 pm I'm thinking of someone like Q, who on the surface (to me) is a deus ex character that is trotted out when the writers couldn't think of a decent story for that week's episode, or when they have written themselves into a corner and need to rescue the MC's.
"Oh no, how are we going to get them out of this time loop?"
"Um...maybe bring Q in and have it all be just a test of human ingenuity, and he will tell them how poorly they did, crack a few jokes at Picard's expense, and then fix the time loop."
"Oh, and we can have him wipe everyone's memory of it except for Data, because android, but no one else will remember!"

Or do Trekkies actually like Q?

Q was more of the trickster. He was good comic relief, rarely used, and when he was used it was generally to shake things up, to push the setting forward.

Now, if you want to get into them using a tired trope to get them out of having written themselves into a corner, that would be Engineering (aka, technobabble), with the worst offender being B'Elanna Torres. TNG and DS9 were pretty good about having their characters solve the problems, with Engineering either being the catalyst or the red herring. They might, for example, have a story about trying to solve (technobabble) with (technobabble) while hunkered down in a cave while being hunted by a superior force, resulting in a story about humans persevering under pressure. Hell, the earliest example might be The Corbomite Maneuver, in which Kirk literally invented new technobabble on the spot to dissuade aliens from attacking the Enterprise. But again, that was a story about clever ingenuity, not the tech itself.

Every show had its terrible episodes because of misused technobabble. But Voyager... There were countless episodes of Voyager where a no-win situation wasn't solved by strategy, or teamwork, or any other quality, but with technobabble alone. We're down to the final five minutes. Voyager is disabled and surrounded. They're in serious danger. B'Elanna then proceeds to reroute the EPS flow through the phase manifolds, creating an inverse Keleron field that shifts them several light years away (or whatever.) That's the whole of the story. That's the resolution. She typed 'run' and hit the big red button and the problem was solved.

And when they do that, ugh.

Much like a trauma survivor dealing with a tragic event, I had managed to bury all memory of Tuvix. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

hepcat wrote: ↑Thu Jan 06, 2022 10:09 am Much like a trauma survivor dealing with a tragic event, I had managed to bury all memory of Tuvix. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Just imagine him carrying Spock's brain on the way to jam with space hippies. It's like exposure therapy.

(I tried to find a way to work in a romance with a Scottish ghost, but it just didn't work.)

Now, if we're talking silly and someone brings up Buck Rogers....

hepcat wrote: ↑Thu Jan 06, 2022 11:09 am Now, if we're talking silly and someone brings up Buck Rogers....

I thought for SURE you would have posted this

TWIKI!?!?? How dare you insult Twiki!!!

I named my roomba Twiki. There's nothing like yelling out "Alexa, tell Twiki to clean!" to cheer up your day.

hepcat wrote: ↑Thu Jan 06, 2022 1:54 pm TWIKI!?!?? How dare you insult Twiki!!!

I named my roomba Twiki. There's nothing like yelling out "Alexa, tell Twiki to clean!" to cheer up your day.

Did you attach your Alexa to the Roomba with a pimpchain and have it mumble, "Beede-beede-beede GET 'EM BUCK!"

Hyena wrote: ↑Thu Jan 06, 2022 2:00 pm

hepcat wrote: ↑Thu Jan 06, 2022 1:54 pm TWIKI!?!?? How dare you insult Twiki!!!

I named my roomba Twiki. There's nothing like yelling out "Alexa, tell Twiki to clean!" to cheer up your day.

Did you attach your Alexa to the Roomba with a pimpchain and have it mumble, "Beede-beede-beede GET 'EM BUCK!"

No, but during Octocons I would do that to IMLawnBoy.

That's fair enough. I don't think anyone would have expected it to go on as long as TNG did. Three seasons feels about right for this kind of thing.

And this might make Hep happy, as I plan on revisiting Discovery soon. As soon as next week, in fact. I might not have given it a fair shake the first time around and gave up on it around episode 8, I think. With more seasons available now, I'll be giving it another chance to impress me.

Honestly I wish they'd just made it one. Not that I didn't enjoy it, but I think it would've been a tighter story if Picard just died at the end of season 1.

Yeah, I kind of agree. It's the way the story is set up and laid out. Some of it is quite good, some of it not. Like for instance, I wish they hadn't gotten into so much detail with Icheb's death, and the whole Romulan/Borg storyline fell a little flat to me. I was expecting they'd do so much more with it, but it was kind of there and kind of not.

I don't understand why this is such big news around the web, other than "clicks" and sentimentality. The lead is in his 80s, and as much as I wish he'd continue playing the role indefinitely (with some decent writing), that's unlikely his wish. Three seasons is an amazing gift, and we haven't even seen the debut of the second one yet. At no point that I'm aware of was it suggested this could, or should be an ongoing series. (Not to lash out at the messenger--I appreciate that it's still news.)


I began watching this season of Discovery. I'm only on the second episode, but:
There are portions of future-Discovery I like a lot, and while I may not always like or agree with the character development, I appreciate the effort put in by the writers and actors. But I don't think this will ever be a Trek I can wholeheartedly enjoy. It's another Voyager/Enterprise for me. I like it enough to keep watching, but it consistently rubs me the wrong way and seems like it could have been much more. I don't mean to be a downer in these threads... I really do complain because I care.

I think later seasons will make you happier. They struggled to find their footing in season 1 before deciding it should show more reverence to the Star Trek we all grew up with. This latest season is almost pure classic TNG, but with an ongoing story arc or three.

Also, it has Tig Notaro. She's Spock with a drier sense of humor.

Akiva Goldsman wrote: There’s something that I like, which I think Robert Kirkman is doing right now with The Walking Dead, which is a kind of… I’ll call it Tales Of The Federation, where you would just do one-offs, right? So you could bring George Takei back for an hour, and do a show about Sulu as an older man, or find Jonathan Archer having now retired from his Enterprise and being on Earth, just do these certain really interesting ones.

Link

Yeah, you could do that. Maybe it would be worthwhile if the writing style was more in line with the characters' original series. But I really don't what the epitaph of many classic characters being written in the vein of Picard.


You know, for all the griping from people (like myself) who want new Trek in the vein of TNG and DS9, why don't they just literally do that? Take a page from what Star Wars is doing right now, and literally shoot a live action show in a concurrent timeline? (I know Lower Decks comes close, but I want a serious show.) Give us a show on a smaller ship during the events of TNG or DS9... or just before, or just after. I would be just fine with this making it impossible to bring back most alumni as guest stars, though I'm sure they'd do some bullshit recasting or de-aging or other nonsense. Make it a combination of 90s sci-fi and television sensibilities and the modern era. But I guess even if it ever happened, they'd make it horrible, wouldn't they?

TNG had people who thought it wasn’t really Star Trek when it aired. Same with DS9 (probably more so). To be honest, I would have been surprised if I hadn’t read some folks complaining Discovery wasn’t really Star Trek.

Ohh, really?

Well, I admittedly wasn't too keen on it when it first started, but I'm going through it again giving it a second chance. I think some series are like that. They require revisiting to fully appreciate.

Looks like JJ Abrams is going back to the trough.

I don’t hate his Star Trek movies (primarily because Karl Urban is a fantastic Bones), but between Discovery, Picard, the upcoming Pike series, and the animated stuff, I think it’s just overkill and will probably tank. Plus, those shows are so much better than his movies.

ugh. His Trek movies are solidly mediocre. That plus the Star Wars sequels have soured me a fair amount on Abrams.

I will say that this says that the guy who directed WandaVision is going to direct the movie, and Wandavision was great, so that's a glimmer of hope I suppose.

Oh sure, after the SW movies haven't worked out for him. Maybe he should just leave it alone. He isn't as clever as he thinks he is. Go ruin another sci-fi franchise, JJ. There are many of them, like say Stargate and Firefly. Or maybe make a Spaceballs sequel.

If J.J.'s ghost died in a brush fire near Patagonia I would shed only two tears.

I’ll always be grateful to Abrams for giving us Alias and Fringe and perhaps he should stick to creating good television series.

Whew, the hate is strong here. I didn’t think he was THAT despised. I’m more ambivalent about his movies than anything else. To ruin a franchise takes a bit more effort, I think.

hepcat wrote: ↑Wed Feb 16, 2022 8:36 am Whew, the hate is strong here. I didn’t think he was THAT despised. I’m more ambivalent about his movies than anything else. To ruin a franchise takes a bit more effort, I think.

Perhaps he had such a talented creative hand with some really good shows we expected perfection and got merely okay. I did think that his first Star Trek movie was enjoyable though. But Rise of Skywalker was really blah…so string him up!

I don't hate Abrams. He seems to be an inspired director/writer/producer who's best known for his ultimately unfulfilling mystery boxes and squeezing every drop of blood out of the nostalgia sponge. I enjoyed Alias at the time, but even then I was frustrated when it went to ridiculous lengths to surprise and shake things up. Some of that was due to corporate meddling. I also really like Fringe after what I considered to be the horrible first season. Heck, I even like Regarding Henry, the sappy family drama and second thing he ever wrote. And his name is on many things I've enjoyed as producer or executive producer.

But I can't forgive what he did to both Star Trek and Star Wars. How can one man destroy two franchises? (Not that there was much life left in them at the point he came in.) He's the frigging chosen one. And I know there are many who enjoy the Kelvin movies for what they are... that's fine. It's OK to try a new spin on things. I just don't think it was successful; the films were structurally flawed in many ways, pandered to nostalgia in the worst way, and could never touch the shadows of what came before. Which applies to his work on Star Wars as well. J. J. is all Hollywood. He's safe, and most people confuse him for good. He hasn't directed anything original in the last decade. (I thought Super 8 was pretty good though.)

I enjoyed Westworld, but only saw the first couple of seasons. I have no idea where he took it after that. I really enjoyed Lovecraft Country, but he didn't get the chance to turn that into a confusing mess before it was cancelled.

Sudy wrote: ↑Wed Feb 16, 2022 10:07 am
But I can't forgive what he did to both Star Trek and Star Wars. How can one man destroy two franchises?

Meh, the same things were said by some folks when The Next Generation (and DS9 and Voyager and Enterprise and....) and Star Wars 1 through 3 (and 7 through 9 and....) were made. Both franchises are still around and going strong though. I think "destroy" is being a bit overly dramatic.

I'll go see the new Star Trek film because, as I said, I think Karl Urban is great in anything he does, and because I enjoy them for the eye candy they are. But at the end of the day, I'm glad I can then go back home and watch something like Picard and Discovery that remembers the core beliefs behind Star Trek.