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
One of the things I noticed about cartoons by Nickelodeon and Disney Channel is that they often had child characters that were nigh omniscient, with the parents being bumbling idiots. The adults were always the worst. They were the people who lived in a permanent infomercial. How they managed to grow up, succeed at a job, and raise children to the age that the main characters are seems like the epitome of luck.

Well, I get that same feeling with Lower Decks. The children are the omniscient ones, and the "adults" are idiots. What's worse, is that the spunky free spirit is the best of the best, and their genius/luck is what's going to save them every time, with maybe an attempt at a heartfelt episode where the losers teach the main characters some humility... which will be ignored in later episodes.

I remember the show Malcolm in the Middle where the smart kids/ignorant parents was done mostly right (sorry Bryan Cratson's dad character). The kids were brilliant, but unwise. The mother was the opposite. She didn't have the genius of her sons, but she was wise, and she knew what to do. They couldn't one-up her all the time because she knew what they were capable of. Could such a dynamic be replicated in Star Trek form?

I now wonder if we're incapable of having something light-hearted and Trek-y. I poke around places and find that maybe the younger crowds want that, and that's who execs are trying to attract. Case in point, when I was running Star Trek Adventures games for a store, I would have people submit characters that were broken in horrible ways, characers any rational organization like Starfleet would have long ejected. "Yeah, could we not have the schizophrenic Trill with the serial killer symbiont, please?" "But, but! It's tragic!" "No, it's a gimmick. And gimmicks are good for one shots only."

And here I think the show's characters are just gimmicks.
 
Last edited:
Titan Lithos said:
Could such a dynamic be replicated in Star Trek form?
Click to expand...

The junior guys at the ground level, despite being lazy and cynical, know what's up; the higher-ups are all out of touch idiots who have Peter Principled through the ranks to their level of incompetence. It's a classic setup for war comedies, and even outside that subgenre, shows up in a lot of workplace sitcoms. It's very versatile, easy for audiences to relate to, and can be adapted to almost any setting or genre with a hierarchy where some people are at the top and some people are at the bottom.

Kelly's Heroes and Blackadder Goes Forth are both good illustrations of how it's been done well in military fiction. Office Space works too as a more general example.

The problem is, writing stories like this is difficult if your entire lived experience is going to a bunch of exclusive private schools, in preparation for your nepotistic hiring directly into a TV screenwriter gig. I imagine it's difficult if not impossible to write a sympathetic everyman character that isn't a caricature when you have never been an everyman yourself.
 
werewolf rape erotica said:
Why is it that whenever someone involved with Star Trek tries to "write a love letter to the fans" it ends up being nothing but a gigantic middle finger to the fans?
Click to expand...
SteelPlatedHeart said:
Just like ST: Picard was going to be “an introspective emotional look into the core of Picard’s character.”
Click to expand...

Its because words don't mean anything to narcissistic sociopaths.

PreferredPenne said:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Sr4bomaqMTE
Click to expand...

What, the fucking hell is that abomination of a score man? I feels like this awkward mashup of the TOS opening, the TNG opening, some really butchered parts of James Horner's Wrath of Khan/Search for Spock theme and ...some of Dennis Mcarthy's stuff for DS9 and Generations?

What.

SteelPlatedHeart said:
View attachment 1500195
Click to expand...

Fun fact. A bunch of absolute nerds put together a fan production where they really did put zombies into Star Trek. Its pretty cringe but I applaud the effort:

 
Last edited:
Prompt Critical said:
The junior guys at the ground level, despite being lazy and cynical, know what's up; the higher-ups are all out of touch idiots who have Peter Principled through the ranks to their level of incompetence. It's a classic setup for war comedies, and even outside that subgenre, shows up in a lot of workplace sitcoms. It's very versatile, easy for audiences to relate to, and can be adapted to almost any setting or genre with a hierarchy where some people are at the top and some people are at the bottom.

Kelly's Heroes and Blackadder Goes Forth are both good illustrations of how it's been done well in military fiction. Office Space works too as a more general example.

The problem is, writing stories like this is difficult if your entire lived experience is going to a bunch of exclusive private schools, in preparation for your nepotistic hiring directly into a TV screenwriter gig. I imagine it's difficult if not impossible to write a sympathetic everyman character that isn't a caricature when you have never been an everyman yourself.
Click to expand...
One of my favorite sitcoms that a friend got me to watch is the 2 season "Better off Ted."

Not only is it one of the funniest shows ever (especially if you have worked in corporate or government) but they had character game tight. Like the lab partners (my favorite since they loved robots so much) were bumbling, socially inept fools, but they were also legit brilliant and invented the hyper-chicken!

Meanwhile their supervisor, Ted, was generally socially perfect and wasn't an idiot, but didn't have the knowledge and skill they did. Don't even get me started on his supervisor, Veronica.

THAT was a lower decks show done ideally - especially given that most of the character there working for Viridian were middle management or lower themselves.

Here's the other catch: You can't do bumbling higher ups well ON A SPACE SHIP. Why? BECAUSE THE CREW WILL BE DEAD! You can have bumbling leadership in a war or an office building because the characters are not surrounded by the harsh, unforgiving vacuum of space! If the bridge crew is so incompetent they're smashing into things while flying (though part of that I blame on the ass ship design), guess what? Hull breach - oxygen all sucked out - dead crew. Space is beyond darwinist and if the show doesn't acknowledge or work with that, it's doomed to failure.
 
Flexo said:
"Better off Ted."
Click to expand...

I'm still salty af that hardly anyone watched so it was canceled way too fast. the episode about the new light sensors was incredible. and that was 2010!


the part they skip towards the end is how they have to hire black guys because hiring only white guys to follow black guys around would be discriminatory. but every black guy needs a white guy for the sensor, so...
 
This is a bad sign...
 
White Devil said:
Even the theme sucks, but the CGI isn't bad.
Click to expand...
Did we watch the same video? That looked objectively worse than the Voyager opening from 25 years ago. The way the ship is softly lit from all sides instead of using the bold, high-contrast shadows Trek usually has just makes it look super cheap and lifeless.
 
I've been watching random Voyager episodes on Amazon Prime. I last watched Scorpion and I'm just thinking, "Janeway, space has 3 dimensions. You could have gone above or below the Borg." Also, I'm not letting any of you forget the UPN crossover when Seven got the People's Elbow.

How did the Equinox avoid the Borg anyway?
 
SG-1 did a couple lower deck episodes, and made it work by winding up the new characters and letting them go. Even through the main cast is ridiculously hypercompetent, exploring the mistakes and accidents that can emerge naturally from the setting. The one that seems most pertinent is "The Other Guys," where a couple of lower deck characters make the classic military fuckup of "good initiative, bad judgement" and nearly destroy some secret squirrel shit the main team was doing. If you had the bridge crew as supporting characters that pop in occasionally doing important shit while the lower deck characters mainly deal with their own spheres autonomously (which is how it actually works in the military, generally speaking) it would make more sense. I mean, imagine the deflector array tech on the TNG Enterprise- "you're reconfiguring it AGAIN? To do WHAT?"

...or you could just try to force some Pickle Rick tier memes. Whatever works for you.
 
XYZpdq said:
Big Show was great as an Orion
Click to expand...
Seems like he enjoyed himself.
tumblr_piocj7p8px1wr7a27_540.jpg
 
Titan Lithos said:
One of the things I noticed about cartoons by Nickelodeon and Disney Channel is that they often had child characters that were nigh omniscient, with the parents being bumbling idiots. The adults were always the worst. They were the people who lived in a permanent infomercial. How they managed to grow up, succeed at a job, and raise children to the age that the main characters are seems like the epitome of luck.

Well, I get that same feeling with Lower Decks. The children are the omniscient ones, and the "adults" are idiots. What's worse, is that the spunky free spirit is the best of the best, and their genius/luck is what's going to save them every time, with maybe an attempt at a heartfelt episode where the losers teach the main characters some humility... which will be ignored in later episodes.
Click to expand...

And to be fair to Disney and Nickelodeon, it makes sense to structure the shows that way given the main audience is kids, who probably view their parents as idiots alot of the time, lol.

This is a show, presumably, made for adults, so...yeah no.
 
Intelligent Calcium said:
Did we watch the same video? That looked objectively worse than the Voyager opening from 25 years ago. The way the ship is softly lit from all sides instead of using the bold, high-contrast shadows Trek usually has just makes it look super cheap and lifeless.
Click to expand...

I just didn't think it looked awful. Admittedly I watch next to zero TV nowadays.
 
Quintex96 said:
They found a wormhole and sacrificed aliens to the engines.
Click to expand...
I know about the alien part. I don't think magic alien dust would make them go THAT fast.

Now I'm wondering if there are any Equinox novels. I know the novel verse can get pretty bad

The Borg attack the entire Galaxy, say "Resistance is futile . . . but welcome." They eat Pluto, Janeway becomes the Borg Queen, and we find out that the Borg came about because Erika Hernandez crashed the USS Columbia into a nanomachine planet.

but I don't think it can get as bad as what we got
 
TaimuRadiu said:
I know about the alien part. I don't think magic alien dust would make them go THAT fast.

Now I'm wondering if there are any Equinox novels. I know the novel verse can get pretty bad

The Borg attack the entire Galaxy, say "Resistance is futile . . . but welcome." They eat Pluto, Janeway becomes the Borg Queen, and we find out that the Borg came about because Erika Hernandez crashed the USS Columbia into a nanomachine planet.

but I don't think it can get as bad as what we got
Click to expand...
We know. I bitched about the magical space elves earlier in this thread.

It is total bullshit is what it is.
 
DAE think that the Borg were just rendered batshit afraid of the Federation and that's why they were after it so much?

250 years or so before BOBW they receive transmissions from this sector of the Galaxy that they've never heard of. Then 50 years later they get another one from the same place. Then (like 150 years later) this giant starship just "appears" in their space, shortly after they use a transwarp conduit to appear what's supposed to be far away from Federation space. These Federationers find a way to disable at least one ship, and then the Borg Queen assimilates Picard and goes tsundere for him.

Then a Federationer ship just appears in their space and not only kills their worst enemy, but repeatedly disables and destroys Borg ships. And it keeps appearing 10 000 light years away from the last place it was.

From the Borg perspective, wouldn't being proactive against the Federation be self defense?

edit: not quite sure on timeline here but it's good enough
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom