Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier

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Drag-on Knight 91873 said:
Yes, but then you don't get the actor's charisma to make the character compelling.
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Maybe one could "acquire a taste" of relating to "starfish aliens", like in this one old space game called "Ascendancy"?

Ascendancy (video game) - Wikipedia

Exceptionally Exceptional said:
Fucks sake, you could technically use a bunch of crystals and lights to make an alien.
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And with 3DCG, it's much easier and cheaper to make realistic "starfish aliens" now.

I assume the current focus of "Nu Trek" is "social justice" though, so exploring the unknown is less of a concern to the writers.
 
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Drag-on Knight 91873 said:
Yes, but then you don't get the actor's charisma to make the character compelling.
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ToroidalBoat said:
And with 3DCG, it's much easier and cheaper to make realistic "starfish aliens" now.
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Yep, modern CGI + voice actor works well enough.

Yaphit on the Orville has plenty of charisma and expression, even though his face is just a mouth, thanks to being voiced by Norm Macdonald (RIP):
yaphit.png
I mean sure, that's a more comedic show so Yaphit is mostly played for laughs, but I think "weird CGI alien with expressive voice-over" could work in a more serious setting like Star Trek, too.

As for viewers being able to humanize and sympathize with non-bipedal sentient creatures, I think it'll work fine.
In the sci-fi book "A Fire Upon the Deep" which I read recently (my autistic book report here), the kind of aliens that appear as friends and enemies include:
  • long-necked dogs with pack sentience
  • sentient plants that can only move around and speak because someone was kind enough to place them on special robo-carts
  • butterfly-like things
  • incorporeal intelligences
...and they didn't feel less well-rounded than the human characters. Sure, a book can more easily express the inner life of a character, but I think a TV show could pull off all of the above.
 
TVBForever said:
I tried to get into DS9 and I just couldn't. DS9 was just... ok.
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It’s better than TNG was starting off.
Exceptionally Exceptional said:
It's funny, Miles was so close with Julian that he outright said he wished Keiko was more like Julian. And yet nobody obsesses about Miles maybe being a bit gay for Bashir's bussy. Hell, Miles is Julian's best fucking friend, way closer than Julian and Garak, so if anyone should be gay for the guy it's him.
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Miles and Julian are closer friends than Garak and Julian for sure, and I think that might be part of why they don’t get shipped as much, Miles and Julian spend their time doing things together, engaging in shared hobbies, like historical re-enactments, darts at the bar after work, and so on, after their initial friction in the early seasons it’s pretty much just two guys hanging out because they like doing the same things together, there’s not really any romantic chemistry from the point of view of an average shipper. Garak and Bashir on the other hand don’t really just hang out like best friends like that, they have one on one meals together, engage in verbal sparring with a lot of subtext and double meaning, and get embroiled in mysterious and exotic adventures full of danger and intrigue. I’m not saying I support the relationship, but I can see why a fujoshi or similar ilk of shipper would be more drawn to that paring. Julian and Miles enjoy doing straightforward, normal, manly if somewhat dorky things together, there’s not much for shippers who enjoy drama and power dynamics. Garak and Bashir are nothing but drama and lies and thrills, while still generally liking each other. There’s also the forbidden love between conflicting cultures and species and so on that these types just drink up.
t. has spent way too much time around fujos and fag hags
 
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Screamer said:
Anyone else pick up on how much they avoid showing Burnham's body in Discovery now? Same with Tilly but that's harder.

They try and shoot around full body shots, but every now and then there's an "oof" shot that looks so bad.
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I don't think anyone here outside one or two psychos actually watches STD.
 
PyrrhicRustle said:
after their initial friction in the early seasons it’s pretty much just two guys hanging out because they like doing the same things together, there’s not really any romantic chemistry from the point of view of an average shipper
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You know... it is kind of funny that BOTH of Bashir's friendships were kicked off after a "hurt/comfort" episode (which is a fanfiction favorite trope).
Miles - https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Armageddon_Game_(episode)
Garak - https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Wire_(episode)

Also what does it say about Bashir that nobody wants to be his friend until they're sick?
 
Captain Syrup said:
View attachment 3659480

Ugh! Just do like Becker and audition for The Orville.
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Ok Terry are you that old, washed up and starving for work that you'll retcon one of the more important happenings in the dominion war story arc? Come on don't do my man Worf dirty like that. Keep your piehole shut and let it be. Fuck, these celebs need to shut up.
 
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Exceptionally Exceptional said:
Even if we take the whole "Progenitor species seeded a bunch of planets with their DNA making most life forms humanoid" shit as canon, the fact is that non-humanoid species would still arise. And it's not like they couldn't do creatures like that. 2 guys in a suit, or a guy in a suit with puppeteered parts, could easily play a centaur-style alien.

Fucks sake, you could technically use a bunch of crystals and lights to make an alien. Just say they're a telepathic silicon based lifeform. Have them be a symbiotic species with a far more primitive species on their planet. The other species are dumb as bricks, but the crystal aliens use their telepathy to influence them into doing the various tasks the silicon species cannot.

That could be the core conflict of the episode. The crystalline species is applying for Federation membership and some people have some qualms about it because they think the situation is some form of slavery. So maybe we bring along a Betazoid to help suss out the situation and we find out that while the first generation were technically forced into this symbiosis, subsequent generations willingly undertook the mental influence because they benefitted from it as their crystal buddies pushed them to develop agriculture, architecture, entertainment, and other beneficial technologies.
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There are non humanoid aliens in Trek, OOU reasons aside, they just don’t seem to be that apparent. I’d even include Trek godlings like Q and the organians as non humanoid(they only appear so for human observers). Species 8472, the Horta, the changelings, and so on. Oh and the Tholians

As for the ancient humanoids-it’s obvious purpose aside, the concept doesn’t bother me.
 
Shamash said:
There are non humanoid aliens in Trek, OOU reasons aside, they just don’t seem to be that apparent. I’d even include Trek godlings like Q and the organians as non humanoid(they only appear so for human observers). Species 8472, the Horta, the changelings, and so on. Oh and the Tholians

As for the ancient humanoids-it’s obvious purpose aside, the concept doesn’t bother me.
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the DC comics between TOS movies 2 and 3 have a crew member who's a Horta
1662045833947.png
 
Shamash said:
There are non humanoid aliens in Trek, OOU reasons aside, they just don’t seem to be that apparent. I’d even include Trek godlings like Q and the organians as non humanoid(they only appear so for human observers). Species 8472, the Horta, the changelings, and so on. Oh and the Tholians

As for the ancient humanoids-it’s obvious purpose aside, the concept doesn’t bother me.
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You listed 3, and if them I don't fully count the changelings due to the fact that they appear as humanoids for 90% of the time they appear on screen.
Species 8472 was a great example, tho. Fucking weird ass things.
Species8472.jpg
Still, it would be nice if they took a leaf from David Brin's works. Look at the Jodphur, for instance. Fuckers are living plants made from
various rings that literally construct new Jodphur by stacking the necessary ring organs. DsciCYCU4AY2gRG.jpg_large.jpg
Or the G'kek, one of the only species in the 5 galaxies to evolve wheeled locomotion.
G'kek.jpg

So many possibilities, but Trek just seemed to not want to figure out ways to give us unique aliens because it was either too hard or too expensive.
 
TOS was more ambitious in giving us weird aliens. But they weren't always convincing. Berman's Trek played it safe with less risky forehead humanoids. I'd rather have the former. I liked the Anticans and Selay from TNG season 1, even if they weren't the most convincing costumes. I think I even had action figures of them.
 
One aspect of Berman Trek I disliked was the fact that aliens were usually…roughly at parity with the starfleet people in terms of technology. You had occasional one offs(like the Voth) that were much more advanced, but most of the time-you got the impression everyone in the galaxy was at technological parity.

TOS by contrast didn’t have this-you could have Uber advanced aliens one week, and a planet of mobsters(that didn’t know any better) the next.

For DS9 and aspects of Voyager the Berman model worked more-as the protagonists would be interacting mostly with aliens that were not easily run over or too powerful to touch. But TNG and I’d argue Enterprise would have benefited more from-one advanced race of aliens this week, and a Bronze Age civilization next week.

By the end of Voyager you get the notion the trek setting is basically hundreds if not thousands of states throughout the galaxy that are mostly equal in terms of technological ability. In TOS there was a great more variety-where weird and crazy variations in “power level” for lack of a better term was all over the place.
 
polyester said:
Yep, modern CGI + voice actor works well enough.

Yaphit on the Orville has plenty of charisma and expression, even though his face is just a mouth, thanks to being voiced by Norm Macdonald (RIP):
View attachment 3657258
I mean sure, that's a more comedic show so Yaphit is mostly played for laughs, but I think "weird CGI alien with expressive voice-over" could work in a more serious setting like Star Trek, too.

As for viewers being able to humanize and sympathize with non-bipedal sentient creatures, I think it'll work fine.
In the sci-fi book "A Fire Upon the Deep" which I read recently (my autistic book report here), the kind of aliens that appear as friends and enemies include:
  • long-necked dogs with pack sentience
  • sentient plants that can only move around and speak because someone was kind enough to place them on special robo-carts
  • butterfly-like things
  • incorporeal intelligences
...and they didn't feel less well-rounded than the human characters. Sure, a book can more easily express the inner life of a character, but I think a TV show could pull off all of the above.
Click to expand...
Or use puppets
1662050261647.png
 
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