Star Trek The General Star Trek Thread - From TOS to Corporate Schenanigans

[Sailor.X]

Okay, so who was in charge of the ship's operations department?

That is a good question. And for another solution to borrow from the US Navy. Janeway could have put together a Special Projects team and put Harry in charge of it. Being stranded in the Delta Quadrant would qualify for a special projects team being needed. But nope she was too spiteful to do that.

 

[bintananth]

That is a good question. And for another solution to borrow from the US Navy. Janeway could have put together a Special Projects team and put Harry in charge of it. Being stranded in the Delta Quadrant would qualify for a special projects team being needed. But nope she was too spiteful to do that.

It should be noted that Miles O'Brien and Janice Rand were the only NCOs who ever got any recurring screen time from TOS to ENT.

 

[Captain X]

Most Star Trek pretended that enlisted people didn't exist.

 

[Sailor.X]

It should be noted that Miles O'Brien and Janice Rand were the only NCOs who ever got any recurring screen time from TOS to ENT.

Most Star Trek pretended that enlisted people didn't exist.

That is why TOS and DS9 are the bestest Trek. They showed Enlisted people being competent. I don't know what Roddenberry was thinking with TNG. Damn near all of the Away Teams were all Officer. At least in TOS you have Kirk, Spock, Bones and a few Enlisted people.

 

[Captain X]

That is why TOS and DS9 are the bestest Trek. They showed Enlisted people being competent. I don't know what Roddenberry was thinking with TNG. Damn near all of the Away Teams were all Officer. At least in TOS you have Kirk, Spock, Bones and a few Enlisted people.

He was pretending Starfleet wasn't a military in spite of all evidence to the contrary that he wrote in himself. One of the early episodes smugly declared that even.

 

[Sailor.X]

He was pretending Starfleet wasn't a military in spite of all evidence to the contrary that he wrote in himself. One of the early episodes smugly declared that even.

Kind of why when I hear people say Gene Roddenberry's vision I cringe. What they are referring to are not the things Roddenberry came up with or liked. All the Good things in Star Trek came from people like DC Fontana and other writers. With Gene you get Star Trek the Motion picture and the first 2 seasons of TNG............ I will also note he hated the Wrath of Khan. Which is considered the Best Star Trek Movie ever made. Star Trek turned out good in spite of Gene not because of him.

 

[bintananth]

Most Star Trek pretended that enlisted people didn't exist.

For the story I'm sharing here the smallest warship crew I can come up with is 4 officers and 36 enlisted:

http://www.the-sietch.com/index.php?threads/tintagel.5677

That's a Frigate which is probably the only Llyrian warship in the Galaxy because Galaxies outnumber Llyrian warships by at least 3:1 in the Virgo Supercluster.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

With Gene you get Star Trek the Motion picture and the first 2 seasons of TNG............ I will also note he hated the Wrath of Khan. Which is considered the Best Star Trek Movie ever made.

TOS was classic sci fi. It had fun characters yes but the stories weren't about the characters. It was about a new, interesting idea every week.

Wrath of Khan was a space opera. Yes, it brought Star Trek back after TMP, but WoK fundamentally isn't Star Trek. It's a completely different genre that features the Star Trek characters and aesthetics. After WoK, the franchise morphed away from Roddenberry's vision, taking a more dramatic direction that usually involved violent conflict. DS9 is a straight up space opera that is about character drama.

The space opera model proved to be the undoing of Trek. If you don't have an interesting idea like TOS or early TNG did, and you're main selling point is the character drama, then the characters need to be compelling. After DS9, they couldn't get people to care about the characters anymore. The only likeable characters of Voyager were the Doctor and Seven. Aside from Archer's dog, the only vaguely likeable character of ENT was... Malcom. And then you have the Abrams films and Discovery. Also note that the TNG cast became less likeable in their shoddy movies.

 

[What's the sitch?]

Haha yeah, I watched Voyager for the Doctor and Seven and borg/time travel/dimension episodes. The Doctors actor also did pretty well imho as "Woolsey" in stargate/stargate atlantis.

 

[Captain X]

TOS was classic sci fi. It had fun characters yes but the stories weren't about the characters. It was about a new, interesting idea every week.

Wrath of Khan was a space opera. Yes, it brought Star Trek back after TMP, but WoK fundamentally isn't Star Trek. It's a completely different genre that features the Star Trek characters and aesthetics. After WoK, the franchise morphed away from Roddenberry's vision, taking a more dramatic direction that usually involved violent conflict. DS9 is a straight up space opera that is about character drama.

The space opera model proved to be the undoing of Trek. If you don't have an interesting idea like TOS or early TNG did, and you're main selling point is the character drama, then the characters need to be compelling. After DS9, they couldn't get people to care about the characters anymore. The only likeable characters of Voyager were the Doctor and Seven. Aside from Archer's dog, the only vaguely likeable character of ENT was... Malcom. And then you have the Abrams films and Discovery. Also note that the TNG cast became less likeable in their shoddy movies.

I can't say I agree with pretty much any of that. Ds9 was the high water mark of Trek as far as I'm concerned. As for the TNG movies, that's purely down to bad writing, and everyone, starts included, taking the audience for granted. You also had some of them having entirely too much influence on the movies, like Picard becoming an action hero and the dune buggy scene in NEM because of Patrick Stewart.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Ds9 was the high water mark of Trek as far as I'm concerned.

I halfway agree. DS9 was great because it was different than the rest of the show, and it's darker tone let it explore subjects in ways the others could not. TNG's "I, Borg" and "In the Pale Moonlight " explore very similar concepts but in totally different ways, because Picard had the luxury of looking at the issue in a pure abstraction with any potential consequences merely that, potential issues for another day, while Sisko knew that every day that went by without the Romulans involved carried a cost in federation lives and dwindling odds of victory.

But the key point is that it's only great in contrast to the rest of trek. Take away that context and it's generic gritty space drama #30, that will be vaguely notable but not really memorable or consequential (when was the last time you heard B5 or Andromeda being discussed?). On it's own merits I don't think it's nearly as good as it as as part of the franchise.

After DS9, they couldn't get people to care about the characters anymore.

While that's true, I think you're attributing a bit blame to DS9 there that it didn't deserve. VOY and ENT just had bad writing that undermined many of thier characters, there was nothing about being post-DS9 that did that.

And frankly, DS9 was not so much great with characters as it was just OK with many of them. O'Brien was every crusty old "don't call me sir, I work for a living" old soldier NCO type from every other show rolled together, Jadiza was so overwhelmingly mediocre that when she was replaced in the very last season her replacement, who was only there for one season, was so great there's still debate over which on was better despite the very short amount of time we had with Ezri, Garak was so vague and mysterious that people in universe called him out for intentionally deciding to be vague and mysterious rather than develop his actual backstory, and Odo spent five years wrapped up in a "will they or won't they" plot with Kira.

 

[bullethead]

She started the series as a Lieutenant Commander.

Troi went from Lieutenant Commander to Commander in a very dumb season 7 episode which said that she had to pass a "Commander's Exam" to get promoted even though she's not a line officer and was never trained or expected to be a watch officer. I think it's also mentioned in that episode or a different TNG episode (possibly the one where Dr. Crusher is left in charge of the Enterprise-D) that Crusher is full Commander because she passed the same exam.

The whole point of that episode was that Troi decided she wanted to become a line/watch officer, after seeing Crusher being a watch officer.

Like, the weird thing was that prior to Descent, we never saw Crusher serve as the watch officer.

 

[bintananth]

The whole point of that episode was that Troi decided she wanted to become a line/watch officer, after seeing Crusher being a watch officer.

Like, the weird thing was that prior to Descent, we never saw Crusher serve as the watch officer.

Which makes it even dumber. Crusher is a doctor and "we can't save everyone" emergency triage is a thing during a crisis so for her getting qualified to stand watch should amount to: "here's what line officers need know: how to handle the situation and what to do when they're the one in charge".

With Troi? She passed the exam when she realized she couldn't save everyone and ordered Geordie to do something the scenario said he wasn't going to survive.

 

[Sailor.X]

When I saw that episode the whole time I was thinking. It is the 24th Century why don't you have robot drones to do really hazardeous work like we have now. We send Robots to deal with certain situations that would be lethal to a human. And you mean to tell me Starfleet can't come up wiht a non AI robot that can handle those tasks.............. Glares at Starfleet Brass.

 

[bullethead]

When I saw that episode the whole time I was thinking. It is the 24th Century why don't you have robot drones to do really hazardeous work like we have now. We send Robots to deal with certain situations that would be lethal to a human. And you mean to tell me Starfleet can't come up wiht a non AI robot that can handle those tasks.............. Glares at Starfleet Brass.

Because it was a Kobayashi Maru stand-in. The whole point is to make the person taking the test realize they might have to make a decision that requires sacrificing some lives to save more lives.

That said, I think the reason Troi had a hard problem with it was because they literally gave her a scenario where the crew would normally technobabble a way out, and because the program wasn't written with that in mind, it didn't occur to her what the point was.

Like, they should've given her some kind of weird space anomaly where she had to order someone to fly into it do some dangerous thing, if they had to save budget.

 

[Battlegrinder]

With Troi? She passed the exam when she realized she couldn't save everyone and ordered Geordie to do something the scenario said he wasn't going to survive.

That was a little silly, though more because the promotion exam was basically "can you play a videogame that requires you to send an NPC on a suicide mission in order to progress?"

In fairness, it was 1994 and the writers could be forgiven for not seeing how that would look 25 years later.

When I saw that episode the whole time I was thinking. It is the 24th Century why don't you have robot drones to do really hazardeous work like we have now. We send Robots to deal with certain situations that would be lethal to a human. And you mean to tell me Starfleet can't come up wiht a non AI robot that can handle those tasks.............. Glares at Starfleet Brass.

They had an entire episode about exactly why that wasn't a good idea, and then another one to reinforce that concept.

 

[Bear Ribs]

When I saw that episode the whole time I was thinking. It is the 24th Century why don't you have robot drones to do really hazardeous work like we have now. We send Robots to deal with certain situations that would be lethal to a human. And you mean to tell me Starfleet can't come up wiht a non AI robot that can handle those tasks.............. Glares at Starfleet Brass.

I mean, if you told me there was a Star Trek Episode where an Apple Macintosh gained sentience via its immense 128k of memory I'd check rather than presume you were BSing me...

 

[bintananth]

Because it was a Kobayashi Maru stand-in. The whole point is to make the person taking the test realize they might have to make a decision that requires sacrificing some lives to save more lives.

That said, I think the reason Troi had a hard problem with it was because they literally gave her a scenario where the crew would normally technobabble a way out, and because the program wasn't written with that in mind, it didn't occur to her what the point was.

Like, they should've given her some kind of weird space anomaly where she had to order someone to fly into it do some dangerous thing, if they had to save budget.

There's a TOS novel where various TOS officers discussed how they approached the Koybayishi Maru. Kirk cheated, Chekhov did pretty much everything wrong, Sulu escorted them back to base with no further harm, and Scotty was finally taken down when the simulation sent 15 Klingon Battlecruisers at him because 7? at the same time wasn't good enough.

 

[Sailor.X]

That was a little silly, though more because the promotion exam was basically "can you play a videogame that requires you to send an NPC on a suicide mission in order to progress?"

In fairness, it was 1994 and the writers could be forgiven for not seeing how that would look 25 years later.



They had an entire episode about exactly why that wasn't a good idea, and then another one to reinforce that concept.

Who said anything about sending a sentient Robot. I am talking about a remotely operated one. You can make a user interface that allows for a non sentient machine to be controlled by a crewman to do the task. No AI needed.

 

[Battlegrinder]

There's a TOS novel where various TOS officers discussed how they approached the Koybayishi Maru. Kirk cheated, Chekhov did pretty much everything wrong, Sulu escorted them back to base with no further harm, and Scotty was finally taken down when the simulation sent 15 Klingon Battlecruisers at him because 7? at the same time wasn't good enough.

Sulu didn't escort them back, he was like "well, they're in the neutral zone, too bad for them, we're not going in there, that's against the rules".

Scotty technically also cheated by intentionally breaking the simulation with some sort of computer trick that worked on paper but not in practice, so he failed the test and got sent into engineering.....which was what he wanted the whole time.