Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier

  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
Sexual Chocolate said:
The first season of TNG was pretty bad, but one great episode was "Conspiracy".

That's the one with the alien bugs that infest people and wear them like a skin suit and are plotting to take over Starfleet. It's not a very original idea (Invasion of the Bodysnatchers was already an ancient trope by 1988) but it's executed well, with an unusual amount of body horror for Star Trek.

View attachment 1429708

It has a perfectly downbeat ending too. The conspiracy is stopped for now, but the brain bugs get out a signal to their bug buddies, and the show all but ends with "To Be Continued".

So of course we never see them again.

Which is a shame, because unlike the Borg, the Cardies, or the Romulans, who were all pretty much WYSIWYG bad guys, the brain bugs were a creepy, insidious threat that allowed the show to explore paranoia. Probably wouldn't have made a good villain of the week because they look like dung beetles, but the writers could've done something interesting with them trying to complete their plan and get revenge on Picard.

Plus, the part where Remmick was all like "we seek peaceful coexistence" and Picard and Riker are like "nope", and phaser the fuck out of him until his head explodes was genuinely badass.

View attachment 1429743
Click to expand...
Conspiracy was a standout episode, but the bugs would've been useless as a recurring villain. Starfleet would just send out a memo telling everyone to look out for people with new gills they didn't have before, or a sudden compulsion to eat worms if eating worms was not already part of their culture's cuisine.
 
Flexo said:
It really is ironic when you think about it. Humanity's super power that has let them conquer Earth is basically cooperative teamwork. The Borg is the ultimate manifestation of that super power. If something like them were encountered out there in space - could you ever really beat them?

It's no wonder the writers started gimping them.
Click to expand...

As much as I like Best of Both Worlds the cosmic horror fan in me kind of wishes the Borg were just a one time deal that we only see in Q Who and nothing else. They are at their scariest and most mysterious in that episode and Best of Both Worlds was the start of their downfall. Hypothetically they didn't need an entity like Locutus to lead the attack, they just needed to assimilate Picard's knowledge. Giving the Borg a face humanized them a lot and really took away that idea they they're this absolute hivemind.
 
L50LasPak said:
As much as I like Best of Both Worlds the cosmic horror fan in me kind of wishes the Borg were just a one time deal that we only see in Q Who and nothing else. They are at their scariest and most mysterious in that episode and Best of Both Worlds was the start of their downfall. Hypothetically they didn't need an entity like Locutus to lead the attack, they just needed to assimilate Picard's knowledge. Giving the Borg a face humanized them a lot and really took away that idea they they're this absolute hivemind.
Click to expand...
Yes and no. Seeing Picard up on the screen did a lot to add to the horror for the audience, and you can imagine it demoralizing the other starfleet officers to see one of their own now forced to help the enemy.

Also I just finished the TNG manga, and one of the stories in it involves the aftermath of BOBW, addressing a plot hole I never thought about. (Will try to upload some images later.)
 
So as someone very uninformed on Star Trek stuff, do physical weapons not work on the Borg? Can they not come up with some sort of blade Meade or of space metal or whatever and just cut off their hands so they can infect people? I don’t think you can technically adapt a way to not get cut by things.

I apologize if this is a really stupid question.
 
SteelPlatedHeart said:
So as someone very uninformed on Star Trek stuff, do physical weapons not work on the Borg? Can they not come up with some sort of blade Meade or of space metal or whatever and just cut off their hands so they can infect people? I don’t think you can technically adapt a way to not get cut by things.

I apologize if this is a really stupid question.
Click to expand...
Melee weapons do work on the borg but being that close means they can inject their victim with some form of nanite that starts the assimilation process. It's very much a zombie scenario where you need to avoid being 'bitten', or in this case injected.
 
SteelPlatedHeart said:
So as someone very uninformed on Star Trek stuff, do physical weapons not work on the Borg? Can they not come up with some sort of blade Meade or of space metal or whatever and just cut off their hands so they can infect people? I don’t think you can technically adapt a way to not get cut by things.

I apologize if this is a really stupid question.
Click to expand...
It was literally not a question addressed until First Contact. Then Worf proved that - apparently - the borg are vulnerable to old fashioned tools.

Which means instead of phaser rifles, Picard should have been outfitting his security teams with medieval weaponry. (The thought of Data with a flail would have been hilarious.)

Agarathium1066 said:
Melee weapons do work on the borg but being that close means they can inject their victim with some form of nanite that starts the assimilation process. It's very much a zombie scenario where you need to avoid being 'bitten', or in this case injected.
Click to expand...

That's why the ancients invented spears.
 
Flexo said:
That's why the ancients invented spears.
Click to expand...
That's one of the biggest ironies of the Borg. They hard counter most high tech weapons but could be effectively warded off with pikes and some armor. Except the Federation has advanced so far those weapons are at most replicas or museum pieces. You would think the Federation would specifically replicate equipment to fight them but no one wants to watch redshirts form into a pike wall.

I assume.
 
Agarathium1066 said:
That's one of the biggest ironies of the Borg. They hard counter most high tech weapons but could be effectively warded off with pikes and some armor. Except the Federation has advanced so far those weapons are at most replicas or museum pieces. You would think the Federation would specifically replicate equipment to fight them but no one wants to watch redshirts form into a pike wall.

I assume.
Click to expand...
Stargate did this well.

The super powerful Asgard aliens were fighting a borg-like, grey-goo style enemy. Their efforts to create bigger and better weapons kept backfiring, but they discovered that we measly 20th century humans and our basic bitch kinetic weapons were super effective against the enemy.

But then a running gag on Stargate in general was that old fashioned methods could still be effective.
 
Agarathium1066 said:
That's one of the biggest ironies of the Borg. They hard counter most high tech weapons but could be effectively warded off with pikes and some armor. Except the Federation has advanced so far those weapons are at most replicas or museum pieces. You would think the Federation would specifically replicate equipment to fight them but no one wants to watch redshirts form into a pike wall.

I assume.
Click to expand...
Armor is no good at stopping Borg nano injectors going by Voyager. Armor however would by very useful if there is any "Megumin" type crew members running around using whatever explosives (CE, antimatter and etc.) they can get on the Borg.
 
Last edited:
Uranus Pink said:
Armor is no good at stopping Borg nano injectors going by Voyager. Armor however would by very useful if there is any "Megumin" type crew members running around using whatever explosives (CE antimatter and etc.) they can get on the Borg.
Click to expand...
Ahh that's good to know. I've never seen Voyager so I assumed something has to help with it. Would make sense their injectors would be able to pierce many materials though.
 
Flexo said:
The Starfleet personnel def. Obrien & Sisko top picks. Bashir and Dax secondary.
Click to expand...
As much as I love the thought of Sisko being in the First Contact movie, I think it would get just a bit too messy if you also brought in Dax and/or Bashir, (or any other DS9 characters for that matter) There are already a ton of named characters running around, and I don't really see what other members of the DS9 crew aside from Sisko (for his unresolved Borg/Picard issues.) and I guess O'Brien (mainly for all the ways he could potentially suffer... he should get partially assimilated before being saved.) would bring to the film...

Also, First Contact is a TNG film. Sisko has major thematic reasons for being there, which make total sense for both him and the story... but how do you justify Jadzia or Julian being there?

It would be most interesting to see Sisko and Picard interact on a more "equal" footing than the *first (*not counting Locutus) time they met. They're both Captains by Star Trek First Contact, and while Picard would technically outrank Sisko in the context of this film, because they're both on his ship, they might still disagree on how to handle the issue of the Borg after the time travel... What if Picard was acting more in line with the character of TV Picard (i.e. more diplomatic), and Sisko was basically playing the role or Movie Picard (more emotional, and hating the Borg more.)? Let's be honest, Sisko lost his wife, and many of his former friends/crew to the Borg, Picard lost his personal autonomy for like a day and a half to the Borg... Picard got what he lost back, and Sisko obviously didn't. Who do you think was more impacted by the Borg?

I actually believe that Picard (if he had been written in character) should have been able to more pragmatically deal with the Borg than Sisko. I'm sure being assimilated really fucked him up, but he already got the chance to vent a lot of his frustration in the very next episode after (where he mud wrestled his own brother because of his own angst), not to even mention the other TNG episodes where he successfully dealt with the Borg. Sisko never even got a chance to meet with the Borg again onscreen after Episode 1 of DS9, where they killed his wife and most of his crew...

Not even after he directly helped design the first Federation ship explicitly designed to fuck up the Borg... Yes, that ship was the Defiant, i.e. "Benjamin Sisko's Motherfucking Pimp Hand" (the ship Worf was captaining, in the battle of Sector 001... i.e. The Borg battle in Star Trek First Contact), but Worf did...

My disappointment is immeasurable.
 
Sexual Chocolate said:
The first season of TNG was pretty bad, but one great episode was "Conspiracy".

That's the one with the alien bugs that infest people and wear them like a skin suit and are plotting to take over Starfleet. It's not a very original idea (Invasion of the Bodysnatchers was already an ancient trope by 1988) but it's executed well, with an unusual amount of body horror for Star Trek.

View attachment 1429708

It has a perfectly downbeat ending too. The conspiracy is stopped for now, but the brain bugs get out a signal to their bug buddies, and the show all but ends with "To Be Continued".

So of course we never see them again.

Which is a shame, because unlike the Borg, the Cardies, or the Romulans, who were all pretty much WYSIWYG bad guys, the brain bugs were a creepy, insidious threat that allowed the show to explore paranoia. Probably wouldn't have made a good villain of the week because they look like dung beetles, but the writers could've done something interesting with them trying to complete their plan and get revenge on Picard.

Plus, the part where Remmick was all like "we seek peaceful coexistence" and Picard and Riker are like "nope", and phaser the fuck out of him until his head explodes was genuinely badass.

View attachment 1429743
Click to expand...
Fun fact: "Conspiracy" is the one episode of ST:TNG that was precluded by a Graphic Content warning disclaimer in the UK because of the scene where they explode the head of then melt open the guy hosting the queen bug with their phasers.
 
I been watching some Major Grin videos recently and this thought occurred to me. Did the Picard series ever explain why Romulans no longer had that single hair style they shared with Vulcans? It seems that Romulans are either bald, like in Abrams Trek, or had their own individual hair style.
 
Idk, the TNG movies were pretty lame (including First Contact, which was the least lame but still about on par with Star Trek III: The Search For Spock), so I'm glad they didn't ruin Sisko.

Apart from Movie Picard being a different (and worse) character to TV Picard, Brent Spiner was already visibily ageing out of the role of Data by the time the TV show ended in 1994 (when he was 45). And that was back in the days of standard def TV's, which were almost as forgiving as the soft focus effect TOS used along with swoony music to let you know you were looking at a beautiful woman.

lWQsN-1497471888-1588-blog-trek_blurryface.jpg


Putting him on a giant screen in HD didn't do anything to hide the crow's feet and under his android makeup. By the time Nemesis came out, the guy was in his 50's and starting to look less like an ageless robot and more like the William Shatner mask from Halloween. It was distracting and wasn't really fair on either the actor or the character.

Sisko is my all time favorite Star Trek captain and had a complete story arc on the best Trek ever made, so a movie would be inevitably disappointing. It would be great to see Quark again tho, Armin Shimmerman is delightful.
 
The Nothingness said:
I been watching some Major Grin videos recently and this thought occurred to me. Did the Picard series ever explain why Romulans no longer had that single hair style they shared with Vulcans? It seems that Romulans are either bald, like in Abrams Trek, or had their own individual hair style.
Click to expand...
That's something that doesn't bother me too much. Most sci-fi shows depict their aliens as having singular characteristics that are shared among the entire species, so it's nice to see other species being as diverse as humans for a change.
 
PreferredPenne said:
That's something that doesn't bother me too much. Most sci-fi shows depict their aliens as having singular characteristics that are shared among the entire species, so it's nice to see other species being as diverse as humans for a change.
Click to expand...
I always just assumed Vulcans and Romulans had some sort of space North Korea thing going on with haircuts, where culturally only certain hairstyles were deemed "acceptable".

It isnt like their hair genetically grows like that.
TPol_%28mirror%29.jpg
 
The Nothingness said:
I been watching some Major Grin videos recently and this thought occurred to me. Did the Picard series ever explain why Romulans no longer had that single hair style they shared with Vulcans? It seems that Romulans are either bald, like in Abrams Trek, or had their own individual hair style.
Click to expand...
The romulans also wear the generic bad guy clothes (dark fabric/black leather) now, instead of the usual mosaic pattern from the Berman era.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom