Okay, we can chat about STAR TREK here

[Varian]

[QUOTE=Alienblue]The doniminion War was overraught with too much blood, too much anger. There was SUCH an easy way to prevent this war. Early on, the Dominion-who pretty much OWNED the Gamma Quadrent told Sisko and company to "Stay on your side of the wormhole!" -sooo, WHY didn't they?[/quote]

In that same episode, after the Jem Had'ar said that, Dax told him that imprisoning Sisko isn't going to stop people from exploring the Gamma Quadrant. Jem Had'ar saiid that the Dominion anticipated that response so they already destroyed New Bajor. At that point, the Dominion was at war. The Federation sent the Oddessey (sp) to investigate the Jem Had'ar's threat and to retrieve Sisko. Dominion blew up the Oddessey which was considered an act of war against the Federation (interesting the ship had the name, Oddessey. TNG and old school Trek were 'exploration' shows, a space oddessey whereas at that point DS9 turned into something more Illiad like).

The DS9 writers wanted to put in this fact into a show somewhere but (unfortuantely) forgot: that the Dominion knew of the Federation long, long time ago and had long term plans against the Alpha Quadrant (why else would they send out the 100 shape shifters?). But the discovery of the Worm Hole ruined those plans and accelerated (from the Dominion's perspective) the inevitable conflict which should have occurred centuries later.

There was no intention of DS9 writers to go against the 'Roddenbury vision'; the intention was to keep ratings up. Face it, Star Trek had been taking too many trips to the well. TNG was filled with a cold war with the Romulans (and Borg after a fashion). They started to do a cold war with the Dominion as well in the third season. They 'reinvented' the series in the fourth season with the Klingon arc and yet again in the middle of the fifth season. The 'cold war' wasn't entertaining anymore so it was time the writers thought to bring the Dominion finally onto the stage. DS9 writers, being syndicated, were fortunate where they could push the limits (each season finale they kept one-upping it). At the beginning of the sixth season, they tried to serialize the show but the higher ups said no (but they were able to get out six episodes). At the end of the series, the writers probably said "**** it!" and did a 10 episode serialized arc.

There has been too many trips to the well, and Star Trek is currently dead. Paramount is trying to bring back the franchise with yet another prequel movie. Paramount ought to remember that Star Trek movies were made only because Star Wars came along. Just as the Star Wars prequels helped ruin the mythos of that franchise, Paramount is running a major risk doing the same with Star Trek prequels. Does anyone really want to see Matt Damon as Captain Kirk?

[m0zart1]

[QUOTE=Varian]Just as the Star Wars prequels helped ruin the mythos of that franchise, Paramount is running a major risk doing the same with Star Trek prequels.[/QUOTE]
 
Ah, I was with you up until you said that.  I loved the Star Wars prequels, and as someone who watched these films in theaters since the first one up to the last, I don't think I am unqualified to judge them.
 
The mythos of Star Wars was far more ruined by the contradictory and completely confusing storylines proposed in various book trilogies as a "sequel trilogy" to the Star Wars universe.  If anything, the prequels put it right back on track and undid a lot of the damage those sequel books did.  This is true of EVERY prequel movie, but it is especially true of episode III.
 
I don't accept much as canon from the expanded universe, but those last books, with the nutty notions of cloning the Emporer to return, and Luke turning to the dark side, were just plain silly.  The prequels are far more coherent, and by far more in touch with the spirit of the original trilogy than those messes of novels were.  Within the expanded universe, the Exar Khun saga and the first Knights of the Old Republic video game also went a long way to restore a lot of credibility to Star Wars as on ongoing and viable space opera.

[Alienblue]

First, Varian, You are a WAYYYY bigger Star Trek nerd than I! I bow to thy superior logic!

But you did make one boo-boo, saying "The creators had INTENDED to show (this) but never got around to it"...as per Star Trek Canon rules, it NEVER HAPPENED, then! Unlike Star Wars which accepts almost everything in the exanded universe as canon. I love SW but hate the complicated EU), in Trek Only things that appear onscreen OR in the official "Reference manuals" from pocketbooks. (onscreen either in a show or movie).

I think going back in time worked better for Star Wars than Star Trek, two reasons: First Star Wars is COMPLETE Fantasy- "A long time ago in a galaxy far far away"- while trek attempts to be a "real" representation of OUR future. Also, even a few HUNDRED years ago, in the 'wars universe, they were pretty advanced by our standards! You can go back pretty far in Star Wars, and most planets stil have SOME form of spaceflight and such.

Star Trek:Enterprise didn't work-for ONE reason- because we are already more advanced in some ways than the OS Trek, let alone a Trek of less than a hundred years from now! Part of the allure of science fiction is the fantasic gadgets and ships; I don't wanna see an Enterprise with HULL plating and no tractor beam! I mean, going back in time is neat for one or two shows (or a movie- Star Trek 4) but not a whole SERIES! Again, in Star Wars, go back 80 or more years, you still have Jedi lightsabers and cool ships (even cooler than in the "sequals", since the rebellion was forced to use old run down stuff by then). So sorry, but you can't compare Trek to Wars. Apples and Banannas.

I agree they kept trying to change things too much. They got it half right with Voyager; a small ship, a small tight nit crew- if ONLY they hadn't turned it into "lost in space" (I LOVED that series movie remake BTW), if they had kept Voyager right here in the alpha/beta quadrants...losing all ties with the federation cut the heart out of it! I am HOPING the movie will give us the Original Trek we want; Since Kirk/Spock would be much younger (remember how "silly" spock looked and acted in "The Cage"? Ah but he was YOUNGER!)-I can accept other actors as long as they are SOMEWHAT close in appearance and GOOD actors.
Wow! Long post-sorry, like I said you press a button....

[m0zart1]

[QUOTE=Alienblue]But you did make one boo-boo, saying "The creators had INTENDED to show (this) but never got around to it"...as per Star Trek Canon rules, it NEVER HAPPENED, then! Unlike Star Wars which accepts almost everything in the exanded universe as canon. I love SW but hate the complicated EU), in Trek Only things that appear onscreen OR in the official "Reference manuals" from pocketbooks. (onscreen either in a show or movie).[/QUOTE]
 
That isn't entirely true either.  The issue of what constitutes canon in the Star Wars mythos is a complicated one.  Take a look at the Wikipedia entry, which basically consists of a large compilation of quotes on the matter from Lucas and his internal cronies:
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_canon
 
At one point you can see them clearly saying that there is only one canon.  At another, Lucas tells everyone that the only real canon is the movies.  There's some strange contradiction along the way.  Lucas freely admits that he hasn't even read the EU novels.  He considers them to be part of a parallel universe, as he replies here.  Notice how he parallels the storyline of his mythos with Star Trek's organization:

STARLOG: "The Star Wars Universe is so large and diverse. Do you ever find yourself confused by the subsidiary material that's in the novels, comics, and other offshoots?"

LUCAS: "I don't read that stuff. I haven't read any of the novels. I don't know anything about that world. That's a different world than my world. But I do try to keep it consistent. The way I do it now is they have a Star Wars Encyclopedia. So if I come up with a name or something else, I look it up and see if it has already been used. When I said [other people] could make their own Star Wars stories, we decided that, like Star Trek, we would have two universes: My universe and then this other one. They try to make their universe as consistent with mine as possible, but obviously they get enthusiastic and want to go off in other directions."

[feilong801]

[QUOTE=m0zart][QUOTE=Varian]Just as the Star Wars prequels helped ruin the mythos of that franchise, Paramount is running a major risk doing the same with Star Trek prequels.[/QUOTE]
 
Ah, I was with you up until you said that.  I loved the Star Wars prequels, and as someone who watched these films in theaters since the first one up to the last, I don't think I am unqualified to judge them.
 
The mythos of Star Wars was far more ruined by the contradictory and completely confusing storylines proposed in various book trilogies as a "sequel trilogy" to the Star Wars universe.  If anything, the prequels put it right back on track and undid a lot of the damage those sequel books did.  This is true of EVERY prequel movie, but it is especially true of episode III.
 
I don't accept much as canon from the expanded universe, but those last books, with the nutty notions of cloning the Emporer to return, and Luke turning to the dark side, were just plain silly.  The prequels are far more coherent, and by far more in touch with the spirit of the original trilogy than those messes of novels were.  Within the expanded universe, the Exar Khun saga and the first Knights of the Old Republic video game also went a long way to restore a lot of credibility to Star Wars as on ongoing and viable space opera.
[/QUOTE]

I dug Timothy Zahn's trilogy, though. Thrawn was a great character.
 
-Rob

[Quiet Flight]

I tried watching Voyager today. They had a experiment to travel faster than warp 10 I think, then they was talking about him occupying every point in the universe at once. I stopped watching.

[Varian]

[QUOTE=Alienblue]But you did make one boo-boo, saying "The creators had INTENDED to show (this) but never got around to it"...as per Star Trek Canon rules, it NEVER HAPPENED, then![/quote]

But it did happen. In the second season finale, when the Dominion was first 'seen', the Jem Had'ar and Vorta knew everything about what was going on in the Alpha Quadrant. Founders had sent the 100 infant changlings out (one of which is Odo). It SHOWED that the Dominion knew about the Alpha Quadrant far before the Alpha Quadrant knew of the Dominion. It just didn't TELL us directly which the writer was regretting.

Anyway, no one should be worried about being a 'Star Trek' nerd. The series had a lot of class and will probably be the last time we'll see a TV sci-fi show have such a large budget (production quality on Star Trek is amazing although the writing was not). Star Trek incorporated lots of classical theater. Have you ever wondered why there are so many TV shows that are just plain horrible or why a good show can appear but is driven within the ground fairly quickly? Most entertainment in Hollywood is run by ex-agents who are extremely talent-less. They are those guys in high school you knew who, got good grades, thought they had 'creative talent'. Ron Moore (who would make the new Battlestar Galactica), DS9 producer and Voyager writer, complained that Rick Berman and the suits at Paramount would keep interfering with the show. TNG and DS9 were syndicated so they didn't have the extra layer of beauracracy that Enterprise and Voyager did. JMS of Babylon 5 made himself a producer just so he could keep the suits away from his baby. No wonder I can't find anything on television I want to watch these days!

[QUOTE=Quiet Flight]I tried watching Voyager today. They had a experiment to travel faster than warp 10 I think, then they was talking about him occupying every point in the universe at once. I stopped watching.
[/QUOTE]

You are fortunate. Threshold is the worse episode of Trek ever. You thought the show got bad at THAT point? Amazingly, at each commercial break, the show finds a way to get worse and worse.

-Show talks about breaking warp 10. (Silly but OK.)
-Show says after breaking warp 10, person is everywhere. (Stupid! Not only because of that but how it breaks canon of warp speed higher than 10.)
-Paris does the test successfully. He starts mutating into a lizard monster. (Already, this show is BAD.)
-It is revealed Paris isn't actually mutating, he is 'evolving' to the next stage of human development. (Which happens to be lizard-fish creature with no brain!)
-The 'evolving' Paris decides to kidnap Janeway and fly away. Janeway also 'evolves' into a fish-lizard. (Why kidnap Janeway? How bad can this episode get?)
-Voyager eventually finds Paris and Janeway as little fish lizards. Apparently they mated and had little fish-lizard kids. ("NO WAY!!" I thought when I first saw this.)
-What must be seen to believe, the next scene shows Paris and Janeway back to normal done by magic DNA repairing from the EMH. Janeway talks to Paris how she always wanted kids but never thought she'd have them with him. (!!!!)

A segment on the DVD was given to the writer to apologize about the episode. It shows the fish-lizards and all! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbtT-1hq0pw

[Alienblue]

Varian- that show you mentioned was so bad it was funny! They got the idea of a person occupying all places at once from a molecular experiment that said, at a certain "speed" of rotation or something (it's blurry now, read this a long time sgo) the molecule would actually be in two places at once-oooo kay, but how'd they go from 2 places at once to EVERYWHERE at once? I think this show is worth watching because it is hysterical. The most awful nextgen I can remember is "The Loss" where Deana Troi loses her "mind reading" powers and basically cries and blubbers her way through the show-she's so BAD even WILL doesn't care!

Voyager had some good episodes though. My fave was the one where the ship was trapped in a planets timeline, frozen as we see the planet go from the stone age to the space age and the people can finaly get the "sky ship" on its way! Classic trek story!

[feilong801]

Wow Varian... that would probably make me shoot milk out of my nose, had I seen it! Awesome.
 
 
Deanna Troi was just.... hideously bad. I remember the gift. It's like the television equivalent of getting a frontal lobotomy.
 
-Rob

[Alienblue]

I don't get trekkers who think Deanna Troi is "Hot". I always thought Gates Mcfadden, aka Doctor Beverley Crusher, was MUCH sexier than Troi. Troi was a over-emotional blubbery bimbo in a bunny suit for most of the TV series (I admit she improved a LITTLE in the nextgen movies)... My vote for the top five sexiest babes in Trek history are:
1.Uhara from the original trek- a REAL cutie!
2.Kes from Voyager-Damn them for dropping her for the sexpotborg!
Seven of nine was ANNOYING, not SEXY!-plus, too obvious!
3. Natasha Yar from next gen.
4. Rand from TOS ; too bad they dropped her too.
5. Captain Janeway; Strong and motherly-caring at the same time! Granted she's not as CUTE as the others but still SEXY!

It would be interesting to hear a woman's top five males. Would they choose Kirk, Picard, Riker or Spock for #1? I'm betting on Spock-if only because women ALWAYS seem to want that one guy they CON'T have, they know THEY can make him love them!