posted
I think the "hatred" is simply a manifestation of the frustration that many Trek fans feel over the perceived lack of quality / continuity with Voyager and Enterprise. And as any politician knows...always attack the most visible leader.
Politician comes from two words: "Polly" meaning "many", and "Ticks" meaning "blood-sucking leaches".
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quote:Originally posted by Irishman: I mean, where is the "Trek" in DS9? They weren't trekking anywhere,
You mean compared to the massive amount of "trekking" that the Enterprise-D did, as it went from a starbase to a colony, to a settlement. And occasionally went and looked at a nebula. Woo!
quote:it seems too derivative of B5 for my tastes. The action happened on a station over 1500 meters in diameter, and we saw not much more of it than the Enterprise D!
Well, if we only saw 0.5% of the Enterprise-D, and 0.2% of DS9, that's not much of a difference. Besides, how many different quarters sets do you want to see?
quote:I think the producers of DS9 were afraid that fans wouldn't watch it, that's why they stuck O'Brien on there, to try to get some of the TNG fans onboard.
Well, to paraphrase Shakespear: Duh.
quote:As for inane technobabble: how does one distinguish from well-done technobabble and that of the inane variety. I happen to like technobabble. If I'm watching a courtroom drama, I expect to hear legalese. If I'm watching a WWII film, I expect to hear period babble. By the same token, if I am watching a futuristic sci-fi movie or show, I expect to hear technobabble. If it's done well, it will explain itself during the course of the show. I never had a problem with Voyager's technobabble.
Because it destroys all rules of drama. Problems have to be built up. Solutions have to be forshadowed. Lots of Voyager plots are summerised thusly:
Chakotay: Oh no, there's a big blue thing that will destroy the ship and the universe if we can't stop it, and NOTHING CAN STOP IT!
*everyone runs around for 40 minutes. Neelix makes a bad joke. We stare at Seven's breasts.*
Janeway: Hang on. What about if we reverse route the tetrion field through the warp reactor? That should create a stabilisation beam that will wipe out the big blue thing?
Everyone: Yay!
Narrator: And so, the day is saved, thanks to...confusing technobabble!
Court room dramas aren't a fair equivalent. They are based on real world laws, procedures, precedents. You don't have a murder case that ends with the prosecuting attourney saying:
HeroAttourney: Hang on. I know that this man has looked innocent all along. But, actually, if we look at subsection 3.2 of the milky milky munch law, then we find that he's actually not.
Everyone: Yay!
Narrator: So, once again, the day was saved, thanks to... an obscure law that no-one knew about in advance!
And in summary, Cartman's post actually summed everything up pretty well. Have a cake!
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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posted
Rules of drama? And you think Berman and Braga are formulaic? It's called trying to surprise you. I suppose you hated the end of "The Usual Suspects" too, as who knew Kevin Spacey was Kaiser Sozce?
Arthur Clarke said once that any sufficiently advanced technology will appear as magic. I suppose the same might be said for "deus ex machina".
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Formulaic? What does that mean anyway? I guess some Trek spisodes are formulaic in that they often go over ground that's been done before. Looks in the "You Have Got To Be Fucking Kidding Me" thread for one such example.
If I have one complaint about current Trek it's that it's nowhere near edgy enough and doesn't take any risks. I like a bit of shock value in my entertainment. I've often cited shows such as The Sopranos and Six Feet Under in that regard, but also more conventional network shows like Nip/Tuck and Without A Trace are doing stuff that we're just not seeing in Trek. There's no ooomph. I'm a recent convert to Enterprise, in that I'm actually watching it now, but it remains little more than a mildly diverting 43 minutes.
posted
So you really want Trek to follow in the vapid footsteps of current pop culture TV? I'll pass on Star Trek: Survivor, thanks.
I think Archer putting bad guys in the airlock is plenty edgy enough wihout his completely throwing out the "advanced morality" that humans are supposed to have developed by the time of Trek.
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Cartman
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posted
If I'm watching a courtroom drama, I expect to hear legalese. If I'm watching a WWII film, I expect to hear period babble. By the same token, if I am watching a futuristic sci-fi movie or show, I expect to hear technobabble.
Do you also expect it to solve the characters' dilemmas every other episode? Technobabble may sound futuristic, but if it completely replaces the human condition, then what story is there left to tell?
It's not biblical, why expect coherence from it?
Well, gee, maybe because a little coherency here and there (like the ship sustaining damage or a character being traumatized or anything with medium to long-term effects that aren't neglected or ignored the very next episode) goes a long way towards making a show believable?
It's called trying to surprise you.
People are surprised by clever plot twists and strong character pieces, not by particles of the week or deflector functions or subspace anomalies or whatever.
posted
You mean like all the follow-up they did with Kirk after Edith Keeler's death? Or Geordi's follow-up after being tortured and brainwashed by Romulans? Worf's follow-up after being paralyzed and having to learn to walk again?
Need I go on, really?
Enterprise's follow up has actually been much tighter than that on previous series.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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Cartman
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"Need I go on, really?"
No, because I never said TOS and TNG weren't just as episodic as VOY in many respects.
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posted
I point out the others to show that Enterprise is, in many ways, an improvment over what was done before....right down to Portho's ongoing "cheese eating problem".
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quote:Originally posted by Irishman: Rules of drama? And you think Berman and Braga are formulaic? It's called trying to surprise you. I suppose you hated the end of "The Usual Suspects" too, as who knew Kevin Spacey was Kaiser Sozce?
Well, if anyone hasn't seen that you've really pissed them off.
But no, that doesn't count, because it was forshadowed from the (warning, oncoming capitals) VERY FIRST SCENE. The Voyager's horrendous use of technobabble would have to have Keyser Soze be a random person off the street.
Okay, look, let's take the Big Deflector Dish weapon in BOBW. That wasn't a Deus Ex Machina, or pointless technobabble, for a few reasons:
1/ It was quite clearly explained near the beginning of the show.
2/ It was mentioned that it would have "bad side effects", so it wasn't something they could use more than once.
3/ It didn't work.
And going to the end of the show, the whole "interconnectivity being their weekness" thing also wasn't technobabble, because it made sense within the character of the Borg as it had been presented to us. Using Picard as a mole on the inside also made sense.
A bad ending would have been to have Geordi say "Hang on, I can get the big deflector weapon working again, and I've increased it's power by adding a supspace teacup pattern over it's internal matrix doowack". And have that blow up the Borg.
If you really want to use Voyager as an example, the ending of The Year of Hell wasn't "stupid technobabble" at all. A reset button, yes, but also one that made perfect sense. All the ship's problems had been causes by this time-ship changing things. The time-ship lives out of time. Blow it up, and it never existed. Problems go away.
See, Voyager got it right occasionally.
On the other hand, something like the ending to "Parallels" really was technobabble. "Oh no, Worf is jumping between universes, but if we do this, this and this, it will be fixed". However, that wasn't really a problem, since the point of that episode wasn't "Worf is trapped, and is trying to get home", but "let's have some fun showing how the show COULD have ended up after 7 years if things had happened differently". And also, there was development in the Troi/Worf thing (however silly that was to begin with), so it holds together.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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posted
What I kept wondering was during the episode where Geordi and Ro are in phase.
They could run through walls but their boots kept hitting deck and allowing them to simply walk around. And then Data does some little 30 second trick and POOF they're back!
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posted
BOBW's deflector weapon was not technobable, but the First Contact Borg not having their impenetratable subspace field was bullshit.
Or Starfleet made an upgrade to the Deflector weapon that was used prior to Enterprise's arrival that destroyed said field. Could explain the three deflectors of the Elkins or the secondary deflector system built into many of the new starship designs, I guess. OTOH, Voyager was able to destroy anything Borg related within a few minutes, so I guess the Borg just got dumb or something...
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I think that as a series, Enterprise is overall much better than The Next Generation, which really had a fairly awful first season, and didn't do that much better in the second. The problem and resentment with Enterprise, I think, stems from an audience which is to a large degree "Trekked-out." If Enterprise had been delayed until several years after Voyager had left the air, I think the audience (in general) would have been much more receptive.
I admit, I haven't watched Enterprise much. My schedule doesn't allow me the same days off on a week-to-week basis (and my VCR doesn't work), but when I do watch Enterprise, I see arc-based story-telling, and a concious effort to make the show (story-wise, at least) a closer cousin to Deep Space Nine than to any of the other ship-based shows we've seen. I don't think the show is done as well as Deep Space Nine was, but I do think that Berman & Braga have to the degree they've been able to, tried to combine the success of TNG with the success of DS9, and I think in that aspect, they're doing a good job.
Where I think they've already failed is that the Trek audience has been alienated by Voyager or other percieved slights. I think a lot of Trek fans are just bored by the franchise now, which does seem to favor many "retold" stories. On the other hand, if you had never seen any Trek, and you watched Enterprise first, followed by TNG, the "recycled plots" would probably be a reason listed for a dislike of TNG. I don't think the problem is as much with Enterprise as a series as it is with when the series is being watched, and with a PTB trying to inject creativity into a staff of writers and producers without realizing that maybe, just maybe, it's the PTB themselves which may be inhibiting such a lack of creativity based on their own previous Trek experiences.
I don't know if that made a bunch of sense, but I do think that the arc-based stories like we've seen this current season have helped improve the show, I think that Enterprise standing on its own merits (and not judged by any other series) has been consistently good, and I also think that Berman and Braga are creatively stunted in so far as Star Trek is concerned, and that it would only help the franchise if they move on after Enterprise ends its run.
Now, I'm not saying I hate them. I hate Voyager, certainly, but Berman has to a large degree shaped The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine (even if so by his lack of interest in it), and certainly he's got a claim to what I perceive as the success of "Enterprise." I just think that Berman and Braga incapable of thinking "outside of the box" to the degree needed to inject interest again in a new Trek ship-based series, and that after Enterprise's run, the franchise should be put away for a few years - even a decade or two, and brought back with a new approach, and better yet, a new NCC-1701- ... K?
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