Oolite Bulletins

I have to admit that TOS was a piece of history for me when I watched it for the first time...but still I enjoyed large part of it...

TNG...well, it was TOS without so bad special effects lots of individual episodes were good, but I kinda missed more connections between them. That was what DS9 offered...first two seasons were kinda "setting up the scene", but then...

I didn't like Voyager...bad characters, continuity...what continuity? The only character I really enjoyed on screen was Q. Sometimes.

ENT was okay, once I was able to shut down my "trekkie" part of brain. Episode 4 was good tho...except the ending. But "Mirror, Darkly" episodes are best mirror ever.

Surprised nobody mentioned movies here...but almost everyone thinks the same about them...best 6,8, worst 5. The only one that brings up some discussion is Nemesis...

I've got fond memories of TOS, even though most of the episodes were, i retrospect, pretty awful. The only one which sticks in my memory as being any good was Errand of Mercy – it's the only one I can think of where the Federation actually found an alien race they could learn from, rather than teach... An awful lot of the episodes seemed to be along the lines of

ALIEN: "Hi there, humans! We live in a paradise."
KIRK: "Aha! But your paradise is artificial! Here, we'll turn it off for you. There ya go!"
ALIEN: "Augh!"
KIRK: "Suffering is good for you. Buy more hamburgers. And away!"
(roll credits)

TNG was awfully group-huggy. It did have its moments, mostly after Roddenberry died, it has to be said, but what with all the stupid holodeck stories and the unremittingly beige decor, it did get very wearing.

I actually liked DS9, myself, even though it was a ripoff of the (vastly superior) Babylon 5. The static location seemed to allow for more in-depth exploration of some of the alien races. And they must get bonus points for going back in time and farting about inside the "Trouble with Tribbles" TOS episode.

Voyager... oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear. Threshold: says it all, really. "There's no small irony in the fact that an episode that so badly mangles evolution manages to be the single best argument against a loving God."

Enterprise could have been good, I think (especially if Paramount had stuck with the original idea of calling the captain Jeffrey Archer... comedy gold, at least in the UK). But all the time-travel junk was just a dead weight around the series' neck. And the opportunity to show humanity learning and developing was dumped in favour of pointing out to the Vulcans where they'd got it wrong all the time.

As to the new film: I hope it doesn't crash badly, because I want to see more SF made for TV and the big screen. If it is a flop, it might put the studios off. Personally I'd prefer something other than Trek, though. The new Battlestar Galactica has shown that it's possible to make a decent grown-up SF drama series; Stargate SG-1 showed you could make decent SF brain-candy with a sense of humour; and Dr Who proves that you can make a good SF kids'/"family entertainment" show, too.

Disembodied wrote:

The new Battlestar Galactica has shown that it's possible to make a decent grown-up SF drama series;

with the fear of side stepping here...

Oh dear.. please not another

While i respect the attempt to mature the Sci-Fi genre.. i just do not like the turn the plot has taken

God creates man
man discovers god
man destroys god, by becoming god and creating a species in their own image: the cylons
the cylons discover god,
the cylons destroys man and becomes god
god (re)creates man. (the final five or something)

All this has a matrix style tale to it... where the machines and man destroys and recreates each other over eons...., in short it could all have happened somewhere else, in the past before.

I could ramble on and on about all the things I do not like in regard to specifics in this series..

I much more liked the original BS galactica, because what is wrong with an enemy that is hell bend on destroying your race, in order to ensure their own survival.. having the machines discover religion is fine since they are artificial machines, however: they know their origins, namely the humans, then why try to find out where to humans came from.... by destroying the humans, instead of infiltrating the military and scooping up all information they could... and send out their superior jump able ships across the galaxy to find earth.

Of course this is all my opinion, apparently the new BSG has a large audience, but i´m not one of them anymore... because it is starting getting to twisted, just like ST:enterprise...

Cheers.. Frame

Frame wrote:

I much more liked the original BS galactica, because what is wrong with an enemy that is hell bend on destroying your race, in order to ensure their own survival..

...except it's an awfully big universe... surely the original series Cylons could just have gone off somewhere else? What was the point of the war at all?

"Okay, humans, you don't like us and we don't like you. But you know what? We're immortal robots. So screw you, we're going to go way the hell over the other end of the galaxy, and wait for you to go extinct. Time is on our side."

Analysing the plots of TV SF shows is like analysing the contents of a meat pie – it's a sure-fire route to disappointment and salmonella. It's not so much the plot background I think is grown-up about the new BSG, it's the dialogue and the characterisation and the acting. The goodies aren't all unflinchingly good and the baddies aren't all irredeemably bad. Plus it's got the old SF trick of using wacky space-futures to talk about today: religious fanatics, suicide bombers, the relationships between the Occupiers and the Occupied... You've got to admire the series for the way it dealt with the Cylon occupation of New Caprica, for example: Our Heroes are invaded and taken over by a vastly powerful military, and the Resistance fights back the only way it can – by becoming suicide-bombing terrorists. It's about the most interesting, and least morally monochrome, take on recent and current geopolitics I've seen on TV. Which admittedly isn't saying much, when it's up against cartoon nonsense like 24...

But to drag this back to Trek again: are there any notable examples of present-day commentary in any of the Trek shows? Apart from TOS's hopeful use of a Russian crewman (even if he was always the one who got dropped in the Agony Booth/had a brain-eating slug poked in his ear/fell off the nuclear wessel)?

TNG did have a few episodes of that type.

There was definitely one that dealt with drugs, and another that dealt with pollution (in the form of warp field degradation in a particular part of space - it featured a protester who blew himself up).

Voyager had some episodes too - one I recall dealt with 'thought crimes' etc.

Cheers,

Drew.

Ah, I remember the pollution one from TNG... Voyager, though, I have managed to expunge from my brain except for the whole, massive, cataclysmic WTF-"He turned me into a newt! ... I got better" episode.

I'd forgotten about The Undiscovered Country film, which is a pretty much direct reference to things like Chernobyl and the ending of the Cold War. I wonder if they'll do a film about it starting up again?

TOS: Classic space opera. Characters, stories and plots that hung together fairly well (apart from the last series). Generally good acting. A mythology that has often been copied but never equalled. Classic. Lots of people slag it off now. Put it this way - if it was crap would it have spawned four spinoffs and a successful movie franchise?

TNG: almost as good as TOS but with no real surprises. Hit its stride in season 3 with more in-depth characterisation and dramatic stories (and, of course, action to appease the Die Hard generation).

DS9: Paramount Steals Babylon 5 Idea. Badly done copy of B5 until, again in the 3rd season, it found its own stride. Still stole lots of concepts from B5 though.

VOY: Lost In Space - the Federation Years.

ENT: Fornicate Off. Flawed, badly written, badly acted and with a cast that had NO chemistry. Tried to tie too many concepts together in one neat package and did it VERY badly.

There. My tuppence worth.

Selezen wrote:

Put it this way - if it was crap would it have spawned four spinoffs and a successful movie franchise?

Dunno. It worked for My Little Pony.

Selezen wrote:

DS9: Paramount Steals Babylon 5 Idea.

Yeah. It’s pretty sneaky the way they ripped off B5 before it even started.

Ahruman wrote:

Selezen wrote:
DS9: Paramount Steals Babylon 5 Idea.

Yeah. It’s pretty sneaky the way they ripped off B5 before it even started.

and IMDB backs the big A up - DS9 1993-1999, B5 1994-1998

When I interviewed Dwight Shultz many years ago having just appeared in both ST and B5 he said Star Trek is where we'd aim and B5 is where we'd end up!

(Sorry for name dropping but it's my only claim to fame!)

Ah, but there's the story (both affirmed and denied by seething fanboys all over the internet) that Babylon 5 was pitched to Paramount in 1989... whereupon the evil executives decided to steal the Big Idea of having a scifi show set in and around a space station, and Trekify it, because such a hugely original idea could never be thought of twice. Or not, as the case may be.

JMS wrote the first outlines for Babylon 5 in 1976. He often states that he only really got into television to make Babylon 5 and that all the other jobs he did were so that he could "climb the ladder" and have creative control over the series and make sure it was made according to his vision.

He created series bibles, screenplays and other production notes for distribution to potential production companies and did distribute them to various companies, including Paramount, as early as 1989.

JMS wrote:

Question
JMS - how hard was it to pitch the show with ST:DS9 already being
made/shown?

Jms at B5
We didn't. B5 was created 1986/87, and was being pitched years
before there was DS9. We even pitched it to Paramount in 1989.
There has never been an overlap. ga

Sources: Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5; Lurker's Guide - search for "~history ~paramount ~pitch"

Disembodied wrote:

But to drag this back to Trek again: are there any notable examples of present-day commentary in any of the Trek shows? Apart from TOS's hopeful use of a Russian crewman (even if he was always the one who got dropped in the Agony Booth/had a brain-eating slug poked in his ear/fell off the nuclear wessel)?

Now I'm vondering vy Pavel Chekov didn't say that the agonizer vas a russian inwention?

Some redeeming features of ST:Enterprise...
T'Pol
Hoshi Sato
Reed
Tucker
Dr. Flox

By the way, those of you who can't get enough ST:TOS may wish to use www.google.com to search for "Star Trek New Voyages".

Go boldly.

I much more liked the original BS galactica, because what is wrong with an enemy that is hell bend on destroying your race, in order to ensure their own survival.. having the machines discover religion is fine since they are artificial machines, however: they know their origins, namely the humans, then why try to find out where to humans came from.... by destroying the humans, instead of infiltrating the military and scooping up all information they could... and send out their superior jump able ships across the galaxy to find earth.

Is battle star galactica both a movie or a tv series? I only know of the movie. It was weird. never trust a deep space casino.

FSOneblin

Did anyone else find B5's "Last Best Hope" line annoying?

Everytime I hear it I start wondering:

A: What happened to all the other 'best' hopes?
B: Does somebody have stash of 'good', 'average', 'poor' and 'to be honest unlikely to work but will do if nothing else' hopes somewhere to fall back on when the 'best' hope gives up the ghost?

Cheers,

Drew.

A: Babylon 1 through 3 were sabotaged in the construction phase. Babylon 4 vanished just before it was due to come on line. B5 was the last hope because there was no money to make a Babylon 6 if B5 failed.

B: There were loads of crap hopes - diplomacy was failing and there was a rising belligerence of the Narns against the Centauri and intermediaries had failed to get the pair to come to any sort of agreement. B5 was to be host to a diplomatic council that would be made up of representatives of all the major races in the explored galaxy.

Season 1 wrote:

The Babylon Project was a dream given form. Its goal: to prevent another war by creating a place where humans and aliens could work out their differences peacefully.

The Minbari were always aloof towards other races to, and that did irritate the other races in the start. The fact that they had almost decimated the human race ten years before played a big part in the human drive towards creating a diplomatic station - the Minbari actually contributed a lot towards the construction costs of the station and had the deciding vote on who would be the commander.

So there!