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Discuss Star Trek and everything about it

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That was such a quick punchy I barely saw it. Didn't even bother to step into it or anything.

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DS9 is probably the "best" series, but TNG is my favorite due to nostalgia. I couldn't stand any of the prophet mumbo-jumbo on DS9 but the fact that it had actual story arcs instead of a stand-alone episodes was amazing. It had a much more nuanced take on the society too; Star Fleet wasn't just a perfect utopia full of Picards with perfect morality.

I tried watching the highlights of Voyager but it's so unfathomably stupid I had to abandon it. I think "Year of Hell" perfectly sums up the problems with that show. For once, there are actual consequences to Janeway's idiotic decisions that they have to live with. The ship takes actual damage that doesn't get hand-waved away like the never-ending torpedoes or shuttle craft. Then, of course, the most Voyager of Voyager endings:

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david_a said:

Star Fleet wasn't just a perfect utopia full of Picards with perfect morality.

I think this is one of the reasons I love TNG so much in a nutshell, the whole "utopia" thing it has going on. It's unrealistic as hell of course, but it's nice to lose your mind for a few hours in a place where there are next to no assholes, and the ones that are there get owned by the end of the episode. I really need to give the other Trek series a proper watch, I've heard a lot of good things about DS9.

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david_a said:

I tried watching the highlights of Voyager but it's so unfathomably stupid I had to abandon it. I think "Year of Hell" perfectly sums up the problems with that show. For once, there are actual consequences to Janeway's idiotic decisions that they have to live with. The ship takes actual damage that doesn't get hand-waved away like the never-ending torpedoes or shuttle craft.


That was meant to be a whole season. They got told to STFU and it ended up as a two-part story.

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Aliotroph? said:

That was meant to be a whole season. They got told to STFU and it ended up as a two-part story.


Enterprise had its own Hell Year season, but it didn't get wiped away like Year of Hell would have. I can't imagine them having an entire season of Year of Hell. That would have gotten old so fast. I liked the premise of a captain spending 200 years to get his wife back.

There actually was battle damage to Voyager that carried over on various episodes, but it was very subtle more like black spots instead of entire sections missing. They can just replicate everything to patch it up. I'm not defending it, but technology in the Star Trek franchise has that capability.

The 6th season felt like they spent money on special effects other than standard space battles. There were interior shots that zoomed out to the exterior to show just where Janeway's ready room is. Every episode had something like that.

I'm a few episodes into season 3 of DS9 and its still a struggle. Having the Defiant devoid of all crew just seems odd. Of course maybe the crew is all on the station itself. It still just seems weird that the station crew is the Defiant crew, but whatever having a spaceship makes a station more interesting.

I get a sense that none of the DS9 characters like one another with rare exceptions. Kira seems to be bonding with Odo after that Mirrorverse episode where Odo died. Benji and Dax have always had a friendship and I guess that Dax and Kira have some sort of girl bond going on.

DS9 also seems to be the series where sex and the thought of nudity is brought up frivolously.

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DS9 picks up steam about halfway through the third season. Once you get to Garak/Odo you realize its potential.

Admittedly, this may be because I thibk Garak is pretty much the greatest, but those two episodes truly change the series as a whole.

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geo said:

I'm a few episodes into season 3 of DS9 and its still a struggle. Having the Defiant devoid of all crew just seems odd. Of course maybe the crew is all on the station itself. It still just seems weird that the station crew is the Defiant crew, but whatever having a spaceship makes a station more interesting.

S3 is still a bit of a slog. The characters' chemistry improves but not much happens. Having rewatched the series recently, the whole Dominion War arc kind of simmers in the background for most of the show and only moves to the forefront in the last 2 seasons. But once Worf comes along the episodes are consistently good. For me, DS9's strength was in fleshing out the world and focusing on alien characters. People like Garak and Weyoun are definitely in the top 10 roles in all of Star Trek.

But yeah... since the space station itself becomes a strategic asset, it kind of makes sense for them to get their own ship. The Defiant is an escort ship, built for combat; it has a tenth of the crew that a ship like the Enterprise would have. The crew quarters are barely more than a hole in the wall. Luxuries like holodecks and atriums are nonexistent. Instead of a restaurant/bar/lounge it's got a cramped mess hall. It's also worth noting that the Defiant becomes Worf's ship eventually.

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A tenth of a crew? I haven't seen TNG in 7 years, but I think a tenth of a crew is Voyager. Unless crew is different than people in general. well 150 vs 1,000.

With a crew of 1,000 makes me feel like there can be spin off series (15 years ago) still on Enterprise, about the bullshit in the science or engineering departments.

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TNG and DS9 were the only two I could ever get into. Voyager was ok.

Also:

Bucket said:

This is important.


This one is my favorite:

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geo said:

The 6th season felt like they spent money on special effects other than standard space battles. There were interior shots that zoomed out to the exterior to show just where Janeway's ready room is. Every episode had something like that.

The only Voyager episode to have zooming effects like this is Good Shepherd, the episode where Janeway takes a few "black sheep" crew members out on an away team with her and accidentally discovers a dark matter lifeform.

As for me, I've always been a TNG fan minus the first two seasons. The 1st and 2nd season was crammed with forced acting and questionable dialogue:

  • When given the order to "increase to warp #" you do not repeat and acknowledge the order as "full impulse."
  • You do not order to lower the ship's shields while still in low orbit of a star's atmosphere.
Things started to improve in the 3rd season, especially the McCarthy/Chattaway/Jones music scores. I was never a fan of the sci-fi synth music style of the early seasons. When they went full orchestral prior the 4th season, it got even better. The series was solid by around the same time.

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It was only an example and not the one I was referring to.

From the look of the bigger budget sci-fi effects, what I was thinking about as different than traditional space battle special effects are a city with its buildings being destroyed. Normally it would be a painted city getting hit with special effects, but these are getting smashed with torpedoes. Nothing longer than 5 seconds, but it makes season 6 stand out.

May we never forget one of the songs where bad threads go to die

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Psyrus said:

  • When given the order to "increase to warp #" you do not repeat and acknowledge the order as "full impulse."

'Full impulse' means that the thrusters (not the warp drive) are on full. This is required to move the ship through the warp bubble that it makes.

Psyrus said:

  • You do not order to lower the ship's shields while still in low orbit of a star's atmosphere.

Why not? The deflector array moves all particles out of the way of the ship.

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Krispy said:

Why not? The deflector array moves all particles out of the way of the ship.


Krispy is right.

About the full impulse. I thought impulse, thrusters and warp were all different. I've heard people say thrusters only. Why wouldn't they say full impulse (different than full impse)?

Can anyone explain Voyager's logic of "warp 10 is like being everywhere at once." Its always been a laughably awful episode, but it makes me think Warp 9 isn't 90% of being everywhere at once, why would warp 10 be everywhere at once? That felt like it was someone's first time writing a Star Trek episode.

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At some point, it was decided that the warp scale asymptotically approaches 10. Which I find silly given that several times warp factors in excess of 10 have been mentioned (in both TOS and TNG), and even if you bought that, imagine that their technology develops so that safe cruising speeds would have to be represented as warp 9.99997 or something like that. Too many digits, go back to calling it Warp 14 or whatever :P

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geo said:

I get a sense that none of the DS9 characters like one another with rare exceptions. Kira seems to be bonding with Odo after that Mirrorverse episode where Odo died. Benji and Dax have always had a friendship and I guess that Dax and Kira have some sort of girl bond going on.


I'm surprised you haven't picked up on the whole O'Brien/Bashir bromance going on. I guess it does become more blatant in future seasons.

geo said:

Can anyone explain Voyager's logic of "warp 10 is like being everywhere at once." Its always been a laughably awful episode, but it makes me think Warp 9 isn't 90% of being everywhere at once, why would warp 10 be everywhere at once? That felt like it was someone's first time writing a Star Trek episode.


Think of warp speed as a curve, not a straight line. Warp 10 is infinite speed, so warp 9 isn't actually 90% the speed of warp 10. Similarly, warp 1 isn't half the speed of warp 2, it's about 1/10th the speed. You may have also noticed the ships often travel at warp 9 point something - this is because 9.9 is roughly twice the speed of warp 9, while warp 9.99 is about two and 2/3s the speed of 9.9. In fact, in "Where No One Has Gone Before" where the Enterprise travelled to the edge of the universe, it's been stated off-screen that its speed was warp 9.9999999996.

The relative speeds are often rather inconsistent within the on-screen episodes, which is partially explained away in-universe by the warp scale occasionally being recalibrated as ships became capable of travelling at faster and faster speeds. "Canon" has it that this happened at some point between TOS and TNG - warp 10 in TOS and Enterprise is roughly warp 8 in the TNG era (I'd love to see the look on Tucker's face if he learned that his beloved warp 5 engine began hitting critical levels when the ship was only going 1/15th the speed Federation ships would routinely be travelling at in just a couple of centuries).

The warp scale was clearly recalibrated again by the time of the alternate future of All Good Things, because the future Enterprise D travelled at warp 13 at one point. And this isn't even getting into transwarp, quantum slipstream, etc.

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NiGHTMARE said:

I'm surprised you haven't picked up on the whole O'Brien/Bashir bromance going on.


I assume its a joke, these two seem to be paired together in a Nelix and Tuvok sort of way, but its more subtle and less pronounced. I get the feeling that O'Brein still doesn't like him even after a season or two since they've pointed out they don't like one another. They play racketball or squash together, but I think that's more or less because of a competitive nature not to mention there's nothing for Bashir to do. He seems forgotten about as much as Dax but with fewer episodes about Bashir than about Dax. Bashir is the Harry Kim of DS9 and Dax is the Chakote.

Bashir has a polite restrained hostility to the clothier. Its great everyone knows or thinks he's a spy. When its probably Quark that's the spy. Quark knows everything, but the clothier always knows codes and passwords to everything when DS9 is in a crunch.

One of the joys of watching DS9 has been the level of polite restrained hostility from the Cardassians as a whole. They're a highlight, but getting a bit watered down now that they've had so many diverse Cardassians. Kind of like as the franchise progresses, Klingons aren't all blood thirsty warriors.

I still chuckle at the fact Dax gets away with saying Benjamin. Sure one trained the other, but isn't a commander a higher rank than a science officer? It wasn't until almost the third season before I even found out what Dax does. Well other than bait all the men, but oh what irony she's really a slug. Calling him Benjamin sets a bad example for the other underlings. Just one of those idiosyncrasies I guess. Back in screenwriting class, we learned that your characters need nicknames for one another! Only X can call Y by Z, but everyone else calls Y as Y.

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It was established that Bashir and O'Brien had actually started to like each other in the season 2 episode "Armageddon Game", the one where they're destroying biological weapons for an alien race, who then try to kill them so they can never recreate said weapons.

Bashir and Dax definitely get a larger share of screen time as the show progresses. Bashir in particular has at least three sub-plots that span multiple episodes.

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NiGHTMARE said:

In fact, in "Where No One Has Gone Before" where the Enterprise travelled to the edge of the universe, it's been stated off-screen that its speed was warp 9.9999999996.

... and on-screen, in that very same episode, it was stated that they were going warp 15 when they made it to M33. The second journey to a billion light years away was so fast that the computer was unable to calculate their speed properly.

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NiGHTMARE said:

It was established that Bashir and O'Brien had actually started to like each other in the season 2 episode "Armageddon Game", the one where they're destroying biological weapons for an alien race, who then try to kill them so they can never recreate said weapons.

Bashir and Dax definitely get a larger share of screen time as the show progresses. Bashir in particular has at least three sub-plots that span multiple episodes.


I saw that episode. I thought it was all death talk. Oh you're not that bad of a guy I like you.... because you're dying or I'm dying. Odo and Kira had the same thing a season later before it all got twisted around.

I've also noticed if an episode seems 1 character centric, the next episode will be about that character too. Maybe other TV shows work like that, I just haven't noticed it until DS9.

Seems like whenever Dax has an episode about her she's unconscious or not talkative. Its about her, just doesn't involve her. Of course there are exceptions like when he / she / it fell in love. Then suddenly she was Jadzia and not Dax. Oh yeah and the one where she was a Klingon. Well not really, but kind of.

Commander Cisko gave her an order not to participate, but like the insubordination rule breaker she is, she does what she wants. Its cool though.

What's awesome is how racist Odo seems to be against Quark. If Quark was really doing anything wrong, he would have been busted a long time ago.... unless Odo is inept. He's always talking about how rules prevent him from doing his job.

I never see him harass Morn. He's my hero and quite the running joke.

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chungy said:

... and on-screen, in that very same episode, it was stated that they were going warp 15 when they made it to M33. The second journey to a billion light years away was so fast that the computer was unable to calculate their speed properly.


Like I said, it was all very inconsistent. TOS was particularly bad; Star Trek VI had the Enterprise travel from Earth to Kronos - a distance of 112 light years - in little over 8 hours, when Rodenberry had established in the writer's bible that the ship's maximum speed was .73 light years per hour (so it should have taken almost a week, and that's provided they managed to maintain that speed the entire time). The first couple of seasons of TNG weren't much better, but even in the final season of Voyager they gave a relative speed for warp 9.975 in one episode, when a season five episode had already given a relative speed for the same warp factor which was almost double that. The reboot isn't immune to the problem either, with Into Darkness oddly enough making almost exactly the same mistake as Trek VI when the Enterprise travels from Earth to Kronos in a day.

Another explanation given by the writers is that warp speed is affected by factors such as gravitational pull (for example, at one point in the Trek reboot the Enterprise is at maximum warp but has a relative speed of zero, due to a black hole), however inconsistencies have popped up even when characters have been talking about warp travel in general and not specific routes.

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NiGHTMARE said:

The relative speeds are often rather inconsistent within the on-screen episodes, which is partially explained away in-universe by the warp scale occasionally being recalibrated as ships became capable of travelling at faster and faster speeds. "Canon" has it that this happened at some point between TOS and TNG - warp 10 in TOS and Enterprise is roughly warp 8 in the TNG era


This, I believe, was also around the time that gear ratios became obsolete.

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I read this in another thread:

Ladna said:

Nah there's not, and you can tell because 99.9999999% of the time when you go anywhere no one's yelling at anyone. Maybe it's different for you though, maybe 100% of the time whenever you go somewhere someone's being a bully, and there's a simple explanation....


And thought I was reading another Warp 10 explanation.

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The wildly inconsistent incident with the Ent-D passing warp 10 was really caused by that episode being written before the series was properly fleshed out. I don't think they had even finished casting when that script was turned in. Stupid episode.

Dax gets away with just about anything with Sisko because her previous host had a bromance thing going with him. They make the occasional reference to adventures that sound like the plot of The Hangover. Dax is really horribly selfish most of the time, and seems to like bullying people. I suspect the other reason she gets away with it is because all the men want her and Kira wants to be friends with somebody who isn't a man.

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Aliotroph? said:

The wildly inconsistent incident with the Ent-D passing warp 10 was really caused by that episode being written before the series was properly fleshed out. I don't think they had even finished casting when that script was turned in. Stupid episode.

Well ok. How about All Good Things... when Riker ordered the Enterprise to go to warp 13 to get out of Romulan space?

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