Star Trek General Discussion

[Ungnome]

Section 31 was probably the worst thing DS9 introduced to the Star Trek universe, really. We already had Starfleet Intelligence, did we really need some shadow quasi-legal organization that both is and isn't part of the Federation government? It's like they just wanted a Federation equivalent to the Tal Shiar and Obsidian Order. I really feel it was the only major misfire of DS9(though I haven't rewatched it in awhile, I may be forgetting some things)

 

[Copper Bezel]

I like it in the context of DS9. Subsequent appearances went cringeworthy, then parody, then self-acknowledged parody by the time it showed up in Lower Decks. The idea of Section 31 as an entity tacitly permitted to operate by Starfleet, but able to come into conflict with Starfleet Intelligence, was a very on-topic extension of TNG's evil admirals into the real-world politicking that DS9 was so good at and other Trek shows are so abysmal at. It allows for certain stories to have a range of the good, the bad, and the ugly all inside Starfleet itself without ever making Starfleet as a whole seem either evil or incompetent, and Section 31 itself still gets to stay obscured and mysterious so you second-guess just how much reach it has etc.

I honestly don't feel like DS9 had many misses, it always seems smart enough to recognize the tropes it's playing into and build them into something with substance. But every subsequent appearance of Section 31 has felt like the "Wow! Cool robot!" Gundam meme at best and I wish later writers had been smart enough to know what they weren't smart enough to handle.

 

[Cybersnark]

Yeah, Section 31 as it appeared in Berman-era Trek is tolerable; a secretive conspiracy that may or may not be anything more than a handful of rogue operatives (nothing any S31 agent says about how well-staffed and equipped they are can be trusted --until Enterprise included them, people were speculating that Sloane himself was just a single delusional psychopath acting on his own).

It's only in Secret Hideout-era Trek that it's become some sort of Shadow-Starfleet that operates openly and has its own ships, uniforms, and anachronistic tech. It's one of the things that makes me want to see modern Trek as a different timeline.

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

Yeah, Section 31 as it appeared in Berman-era Trek is tolerable; a secretive conspiracy that may or may not be anything more than a handful of rogue operatives (nothing any S31 agent says about how well-staffed and equipped they are can be trusted --until Enterprise included them, people were speculating that Sloane himself was just a single delusional psychopath acting on his own).

It's only in Secret Hideout-era Trek that it's become some sort of Shadow-Starfleet that operates openly and has its own ships, uniforms, and anachronistic tech. It's one of the things that makes me want to see modern Trek as a different timeline.

I'd been toying with the conceit (given that Discovery Season 2 seems to end with Section 31 being taken thoroughly off the board) that the 2370s appearance of the organization was the Zife administration dusting off the name of a long-defunct agency to run their own plausibly deniable intel schemes....

 

[Ungnome]

I think a lot of my dislike for section 31 probably does stem from the stuff done in 'Into Darkness' and later, but even in DS9 it felt a little 'off', just not to the 'we're building giant battleships in secret' level off.(What is it with Abrams and secret large-scale construction projects anyway?)

 

[Fero McPigletron]

OMQ, I had to Google "Lower Decks Section 31" and it was when the Boimler copy was killed! I didn't know the Section 31 he was referring to then! Now that I know, that's kinda cool, haha

 

[Copper Bezel]

And now you've seen the two shows with the best ideas of how to handle Section 31. Anywhere else you see them, it's only going to go downhill from here XD (The black badges are from their first involvement in Discovery.)

 

[Fero McPigletron]

Well, I got to the end of Deep Space 9. Quark got an ep (but, really, ROM?!?). It wasn't a space battle that won everything but Kira and Garak taking over a practically unguarded building seemed not very sci-fi-y but, ok sure. The Sisko Winn Dukat thing almost feels tacked on after all that, because the Dominion wasn't really involved with wormhole aliens.

WTFerengi is up with that anyway? Does Sisko come back? And Odo leaves forever too? Granted Kira can go romance the next executive in Bajor but c'mon, space sheriff Odo was awesome and unique. O'Brien leaving didn't really have to happen. Whatever on the Bashir Ezri arc. Nog is young and I'll have to watch the Lower Decks DS9 ep again to see if there's mention of him.

It's a good enough season ending and I'm glad the changelings were saved but I think the Bajoran mystic stuff could have been a separate event or season. I checked the other shows and they all stopped at seven seasons so I guess that was really it.

Good show. Odo was my fave at first then turned to Nog. Oh and something that I didn't mention before but greatly appreciated was Sisko always ALWAYS hugging and/or kissing and saying I love you to Jake. It fades into the background cuz it was so common place but, wow, some kid or teen out there must have connected to that frequent display of father and son affection. I appreciate the writers or producers for sticking with it. Must have helped more that one person feel loved out there.

---
Anyhow, I'm done. What Star Trek could I check into next? My friend is raved about ep2 of Strange New Worlds and I've already seen the Lower Decks crossover ep. Should I get into that next? Or Next Gen vs Voyager?

 

[wonko the sane?]

Frankly: you could skip voyager entirely and not really miss or lose anything. There was nothing of note that happens to the wider federation other than "oh, they survived". It wasn't very well written, and while it wasn't bad or un-fun, it adds nothing. It was structured to be more episodic rather than outright story driven: so when you expect (at the end.) to met up with a lean, tired, hungry crew rolling in a ship held together by bondo and duct tape: you GET a ship of the line ready for its next deployment. And if you're going to comment "well, they met more new species since TOS", I can easily counter with "the intrepid class was spec built to start the next federation era of exploration meant for five year deployments out past federation borders and they were going to do that anyway".

Why haven't you watched next gen yet? It LITERALLY leads to the events that unfolds on DS9.

 

[G.B.Blackrock]

Nog is young and I'll have to watch the Lower Decks DS9 ep again to see if there's mention of him.

Sadly, a mention is all that's likely to be possible, now that Nog's actor has passed away.

 

[Copper Bezel]

Strange New Worlds even now will be a quick watch to catch up. The seasons are half as long and there's only one and a half to see so far. Do that first. SNW isn't the best Star Trek series (you've just seen that one) but it's smart and creative and fun, and while it's not the first Trek series to be made on a prestige TV budget, it's the first one to have the art direction to capitalize on that. It doesn't have DS9's density of ongoing character and plot arcs so far, but its ability to hop genres from episode to episode is extremely fun to follow. I have issues with some episodes this season, but the first season was nearly flawless and I have high hopes as it continues. The best thing Discovery and Picard ever did was make LD and SNW possible.

I won't say that Voyager is without value. Among TNG, DS9, and itself, Voyager is the weakest series and the most incurious, in terms of science, sociology, and its own creativity. It was under Berman's very close management in exactly the way DS9 wasn't - the production overlapped of course, and Voyager was the thing that distracted Berman from DS9 to allow the latter to be good. There's a notable parallel in the Dominion War plot of DS9 and Voyager's two-part episode "Year of Hell", because both were concepted as defining arcs of their respective shows, upstairs wanted both of them cracked down to a two-parter, and the only difference is that in Voyager's case, the creatives folded and upstairs got their way.

The failure to take advantage of or even acknowledge the two basic defining elements of the premise as pitched, the fact that Voyager is an isolated ship with scarce supplies and run by an initially divided crew made up of a Starfleet crew and a Marquis one and all the conflicts that would occasion, is so legendary that what Voyager left on the table quite literally became the Battlestar Galactica reboot.

On the other hand, I remember it was revealed that Voyager was extremely popular for rewatching among the various Trek series during the streaming era. It's a very safe and purely episodic show with characters that never really grow or evolve but that fans have strong attachments to, and somehow its insular premise and refusal to explore any of the story implications thereof makes it sort of a cozy office comedy in the end. It creates a vibe of "that's so Tuvok" etc. It also has some of the wildest freak of the week premises in Trek. If you had to pick a show that Lower Decks evolved from, it's Voyager.

And it does feature breakout character The Doctor played by Robert Picardo, an unusually intelligent hologram with funny mannerisms and a god-touched singing voice, who gradually convinces you to think of him as a real character and want what's best for him. If I'm describing Vic Fontaine so far, it's worth saying that the Doctor was created first, and also that he suffers in the funniest ways. It is truly unconscionable that after Seven and Janeway have had major roles in recent series and even Tuvok's had a cameo, the Doctor hasn't been tapped once; he's without contest the best character and actor in Voyager.

TNG is the most definitive Trek to me, an attempt to do TOS again with a complete vision of what Star Trek was and should be and before any nostalgia set in. It's also somehow starchier and cringier than the original and will not shock you with its insight the way DS9 can. It's very episodic, with a wide and genuinely curious and creative collection of individual speculative stories that never quite rise to be as iconic as TOS's or as powerful as DS9's at their respective bests. At the very least, it'll fill in some context for DS9.

Don't bother with Enterprise, whatever you do. The tragedy of Voyager is that they could have done so much better. The tragedy of Enterprise is that it was the best they could do.

 

[Ungnome]

I'd argue that the final season of Enterprise had a spark of what could have been, but it was too late by that point and then they decided to ruin the whole thing in the series finale.

It did flesh out the Andorians and gave us Commander Shran, so I can't dismiss it completely.

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

Don't bother with Enterprise, whatever you do. The tragedy of Voyager is that they could have done so much better. The tragedy of Enterprise is that it was the best they could do.

"Belay that, mister!"

While it must be said that ENT's second season was quite lackluster -- to the point that many were describing the Trek saga as a zombie franchise at that point -- the writing for seasons 3 and 4 knocked ot out of the park, to use those baseball metaphors that the Berman era was so fond of. (And let's be blunt, if Trek can survive TOS Season 3 and TNG Season 1, it can take a beating from critics and fans.)

But do catch the pilot, the Andorian Incident, the cliffhangers for S1/S2, and the Borg episode, so you have a sense of what's going on in the mid-22nd.
Then a straight run from the S2 closer through to the proper series finale "Terra Prime" should give you a look at the foundations of the Federation, even if we never quite get to the actual agreements in-show.

(Yes, Berman and Braga tried to put a capstone on their run and regain the highs of 1994. And when you've pissed off Scott Bakula of all actors to do it....)

 

[Copper Bezel]

Even I'll concede that the last season of Enterprise contains some really good fun and clever stories. Everything touching on the Andorians and Tellarites is best in class prequel worldbuilding. Of course, even aside from the finale, it begins the trend Picard later picked up of the extended Brent Spiner family, and while the Mirror Universe episodes are very fun, they're also the most inconsequential to the series they appear in of any Mirror Universe diversion by way of not connecting with the Prime universe story at all, which contributes to the feeling that the series has mostly lost interest in its own story by the time it wraps up in a TNG episode.

I think I'm biased by a few things. I know that everything from the shape of the Enterprise ship to the way every technology from TOS and TNG had to have a "primitive" equivalent, like the Flintstones' television set, was unavoidable studio and network requirements. It's no different than the limitations on Voyager, but the implications were wider than the effect on just one show, because it made the past less interesting for everyone, and Trek now has a tendency to mine its past deeply and greedily. Then, instead of having a relevant Romulan war or something, they decided to make it a time travel story about protecting timelines, because Star Trek is so good at those. Then 9/11 happened. Then it was the Xindi reptilians, who look exactly like the bad guy from Galaxy Quest. In the end it was Nazi aliens, not space Nazis like DS9 but actual Nazi aliens. And there are just too many goddamn cowboys. Did I mention Archer is the worst captain in Starfleet history? Gah.

 

[G.B.Blackrock]

I'm not much of a fan of Enterprise Season 3. They took a great concept, and allowed themselves the freedom to do serialized storytelling (such as DS9 positively mastered), but it stayed in that limbo for far too long. If the arc lasted maybe just half the season, I'd probably have better thoughts about it.

Season 4, leaving the final episode aside, is what the show should always have been, and it's a tragedy that the show was cancelled just as it was getting good.

And even that last episode, as bad as it was, I won't say it ruined the series for me. I leave that judgement for How I Met Your Mother. I still can't rewatch any of that after seeing their finale....

 

[Fero McPigletron]

Why haven't you watched next gen yet? It LITERALLY leads to the events that unfolds on DS9.

Hehe, I was actually coming off the high of finishing Orville and asked in one of the Star Trek threads (or the Orville thread) which Star Trek series I should watch first. The votes went with Deep Space 9 so what's what I went with, hehe.

So I should go with Next Gen next? I think I can go there after I see Strange New Worlds. Apparently it's only 17 eps so I can finish that first. Then I'll see about Next Gen or whatever else gets recommended.

I looked it up and, yeah, Nog aka Aron E passed away at age 50? That's still pretty young. Man, that's horrible. I know Odo aka Rene A passed away too. I hope their characters and legacies are remembered.

---
Also, I rewatched DS9 Lower Decks ep and WTQ, I didn't realize Shaxs was a Bajoran!!! I've been seeing the nose ridge all this time and I didn't know!

Actually, for Cardassians and Bajorans, other than their ridges and spots, do they have any special alien abilities?

Vulcans and Romulans - smarter (?)
Klingon - more physical (?)
Trill - um, can carry symbions?



Cardassians - ?
Bajorans - ?
Orions - ?

 

[wonko the sane?]

You need to understand: there's actually very few aliens with what you could consider super human abilities, or even outstanding traits. They started (in TOS) as allegory for other countries and cultures (klingons were the soviet union, as an example.) because the writers were reframing the political climate at the time and then they just became vessels for the story. The entire point was to make the aliens relatable so that we don't see them as aliens, but see the commonalities. The point, after all, is to reinforce the concept of "yeah, we can all get along" and the more... exotic or genuinely alien you make them the less likely that is to happen.

But for the record:
-Vulcans and romulans: physically stronger and smarter. Has to do with vulcan (the planet.) having a higher gravity and apparently a hyperthreading brain. Romulans love their liquor and will happily fight you over it.
-Klingons: bigger, stronger, incredible endurance, multiple redundant organs make them extremely hard to kill. Try chucking barrels at them.
-Trill: basically human, slightly more complex brain, can easily carry symbionts. Other species can also carry trill symbionts: but ain't no one happy when it happens.
-Cardassians: armored, bipedal fish. Generally pretty stupid. Apparently the women are the more savvy in the species, but the men are in charge and don't listen to the women.
-Kazon: Me; Mom, can we stop and get cardassians? Mom: We have cardassians at home. *The cardassians at home*
-Bajorans: experts at PTSD, only discovered cause of the cardassians. Also: only species in the universe with actual proof of their gods. (except for you know who: but one arrow sorted that jive right out.).
-Orions: They're GREEN! Also, some females emit wicked powerful pheromones. The whole species generally seems structured around loose pirate or mafia social structures. Mind your wallet.
-Andorians: They're BLUE! The antenna gives them mild extra sensory perception (and I don't mean like telekinesis. I mean like sonar.) the rugged world makes them slightly stronger than humans, and better adapted to cold weather.
-Bolians: Also blue. Breathe methane, and the narcissism runs deep.
-Tellarites: Basically space dwarves, will squeal like stuck pigs.
-Tholians: Rejected mood ring crystals with phazers.
-Borg: Oh jive, RUN!

There's plenty more, but they're functionally secondary species that don't make routine or even frequent appearances, or were one shots created the story of the week. The idea was to reflect the humanity in the alien to make the stories approachable by the audience.

 

[Ungnome]

Outside of the Founders and Q, most races with extreme abilities are seen maybe once or twice.

The Tholians are interesting. They only thrive in extreme heat and their technology is rather unique.

 

[Copper Bezel]

Vulcans / Romulans as well as Cardassians also have a higher resistance to high temperatures, but only Cardassians complain about the "cold" on other species' ships. Then there are weird little things, like Bajorans having a shorter gestation period than humans, that come up as convenient for a story element. There are also all the behavioral aspects of various species - the big obvious stuff like warrior cultures and paranoia, but the Bajorans again are said to be more emotionally forthcoming than humans are - and these sound like cultural differences more than anything, but they're often treated as if they're innate or might as well be.

The superhuman abilities of Vulcans and Romulans track back to Spock, who was the token alien on the TOS bridge crew and had to have a reason to remind everyone of that once in a while. He was in essence representing not just Vulcans, but aliens as a general concept. In TNG onward, that's no longer the case (and it becomes weird for one species to be both super smart and super strong instead of having a single "thing".)

But yeah, everybody's really just humans from different cultures. Which makes those innate personality traits super sus, and the human exceptionalism in Enterprise downright unfortunate (especially since the humans of Enterprise are so damn American.)

I assume that all species other than humans have darkvision 30ft.

 

[Cybersnark]

-Andorians: They're BLUE! The antenna gives them mild extra sensory perception (and I don't mean like telekinesis. I mean like sonar.) the rugged world makes them slightly stronger than humans, and better adapted to cold weather.

Andorians also marry in groups of four (established in canon), which the novels have expanded to suggest that they actually have four sexes (zhen and shen look feminine, and chan and thaan look masculine).

A lot of species in Star Trek have "abilities" that are more based on their cultural upbringing, like Vulcan emotional control, Bajoran serenity, Ferengi business acumen, or the Cardassian love of intricate wordplay and social intrigue (which means that a member of another species raised in that culture would inherit the same traits, while a member of that species raised elsewhere would assimilate into their new culture).

(Remember that a culture is basically a form of selective pressure: some behaviours are rewarded, others are punished, and others are "neutral." Klingons are not inherently aggressive honour-obsessed brutes, but their culture rewards those who demonstrate those qualities [either naturally or because they train themselves to play the part]. Physically weak, risk-averse, or cheerfully friendly Klingons absolutely exist, but they won't get very far in society, meaning they won't get to interact much with outsiders.)

That includes humans; it seems that 24th-century humans (especially those that find their way into Starfleet) are all fascinated by history (see Tom Paris and his mismash of 20th-century Americana, Pavel Chekov's equally confused mix of Soviet-era trivia, Jean-Luc's fascinations with archeology and the Picard family legacy, or Ben Sisko's familiarity with the 20th and 21st-century civil rights movements [from Martin Luther King Jr. to the Sanctuary Districts]). It's a writer's trick to allow some connection to modern audiences (and a way to allow plot exposition), but it happens often enough that it's been commented on in-universe as a distinctly human trait.

Note that Worf (who was raised among humans) tends to have a deeper and more comprehensive grasp of Klingon history and culture than many Klingons who went to school on Qo'noS (though he lacks the pragmatism and streetwisdom [and internalized Klingon sexism] that he would have gained from growing up around other Klingons). A lot of that comes from Worf's own personal studies, but it still wouldn't have been possible in a culture that didn't highly value historical education.

The novels also introduce T'Ryssa Chen; a half-Vulcan (like Spock) raised on Earth by her human mother. She has the physical capabilities of a Vulcan (increased strength, resistance to heat, telepathic ability), but none of the social cues (she is highly emotional, undisciplined, and something of a disaster-gremlin) --but she does have the human love of history and culture (she grew up reading about [and identifying with] Elves and seems to be an expert in Earth fantasy fiction).