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Why exactly does the show have to be "about" anything? Do you hate it when Law and Order spends some time showing how the characters feel about themselves? After all, the show is about law and it's about order, and there is little of either of those to be found in personal musings. Where should we look to find this hidden meaning, then? In a pilot, perhaps? Hmm, TNG spent very little time saving giant luminescint space octipi while being judged by Q. And TOS? What the heck was that about? Romulan incursions on the Neutral Zone one week, Kirk reliving his past encounter with some cloud creature the next? Weird.
My point is, Frank, that what you seem to want out of your entertainment isn't all that common. That isn't to say it's bad. I mean, I want to read stories about campy future heroes saving planets from oddly named conquerors. But I have to write them myself. But what you seem to be looking for, that is, a story that has a single thrusting point and sticks to it, isn't going to be found on television. I'd suggest getting more into novels.
------------------ "20th Century, go to sleep." -- R.E.M.
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"But what you seem to be looking for, that is, a story that has a single thrusting point and sticks to it, isn't going to be found on television."
Yes it is; it's called Babylon 5.
------------------ Frank's Home Page "I can't remember stuff." - John Linnell
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There are plenty of aspects to my personality that people who have known me for years have no idea about.
Some of us, you know, hide ourselves from the outside world, unless we're extremely comfortable with the people we're with. Some of us wear masks upon masks.
I've posted here for quite some time now, have I ever mentioned my interest in archery? No? It never came up.
------------------ Calvin: "No efficiency, no accountability... I tell you, Hobbes, it's a lousy way to run a Universe." -- Bill Watterson
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Let's see... One example in how many years of TV?
The point is, it's called episodic television for a reason, and beating the dead horse over something that has been established for decades is rather useless.
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First: That may be true, but, if you suddenly made some obscure archery comment, and someone said "Wha?", nobody would have said "Yes, I believe First is quite an afficionado of archery." Apparently, Janeway wasn't keeping whatever interest she had in Ireland a secret.
The point isn't that it's impossible for Janeway to have been an Ireland expert and we never saw it. The point is that the writers made it up on a whim as a dumb plot device. It's just like the Nova class starship. There's no reason that the name couldn't have been stolen off the post-Galaxy project. But the writers didn't even think about consistency. They just do whatever they want, whether it makes sense or not. It's the principle of the thing.
------------------ "If you attempt to return the device to the store, and you are missing one single peanut, the store personnel will laugh in the chilling manner exhibited by Joseph Stalin just after he enslaved Eastern Europe."
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But on that same token, many people don't consider the books as canon material, and it was never suggested on screen that the next big Starfleet ship was going to be the Nova-class. It seems to me that the books should either be considered canon or not canon, and not have them be canon whenever it suits an argument. I'm not trying to be rude or anything, but if you're not going to consider the novels or books canon material, don't complain when the TV show writers don't concern themselves with the books. And it's not as if VGR is the only guilty party on that argument. DS9 once mentioned Captain Shelby - an intended reference to the character from "BoBW, 1/2" and New Frontier. It wasn't until after someone pointed out that they were asked not to use New Frontier characters that they said, oh, hey, we better make that be a reference to someone else.
------------------ "Questions, comments, bring them to me. Problems, take them to Kinis."
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*barfs at the mention of the old "nova class" argument*
Please. That was only canon by the loosest possible sense. (How many times did the ISS's name change before we even put a piece of it into space? Freedom? Alpha? Wasn't the Space Shuttle Enterprise originally to be called the Constitution? Does that mean that any ship made afterwards could not be named Constitution, because that was the name on the old plans?)
I mean, all the book really said was: "Someday, Starfleet may build a new class of ship, and we currently call this conjectural plan 'Nova.'"
Somebody should tell them they ripped off a Chevy model name.
------------------ Calvin: "No efficiency, no accountability... I tell you, Hobbes, it's a lousy way to run a Universe." -- Bill Watterson
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I'm not suggesting that the name couldn't have been changed. What I'm saying is that writers are ****heads who couldn't give less of a rat's ass whether they're consistent or not.
And the TNGTM is not a novel. It was written to get a bunch of info together in one source, so that the writers wouldn't call the warp core "the big glowie thing in engineering". It was supposed to keep things consistent. Hell of a lot of good it did, apparently...
------------------ "If you attempt to return the device to the store, and you are missing one single peanut, the store personnel will laugh in the chilling manner exhibited by Joseph Stalin just after he enslaved Eastern Europe."
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I can tell you that while it's a good show, X-files has its problems. "Aliens are going to take over the world! Wait, here's something unrelated we can go do."
------------------ Frank's Home Page "I can't remember stuff." - John Linnell