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SpaceChampion

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3 hours ago, Toth said:

Not necessarily, only Vulcan ships of Federation design like the USS Intrepid NCC-1631 (which was a Constitution class), USS Hera and USS T'Kumbra (both Nebula Class). All three have been mentioned as Federation ships crewed mainly (but not entirely) by Vulcans.

I must say I really chalk that up to the fact that Enterprise failed to establish Federation design philosophy as an amalgamation of its founding members. At most we can see that TOS weaponry is of Andorian origin, otherwise it does indeed seem like they ludicrously decided to make the technologically most inferior among the bunch the trend setter. But I'd say from a logical in-universe POV for the Federation to be an actual Federation and not just a human empire, we need to assume that everyone pitches in for Starfleet and otherwise is free to build their own mercantile or system defense fleet. I have seen the musing that the reason we haven't seen a United Earth Defense force in the 23rd and 24th century is that Earth houses Starfleet headquarters and therefore has an unusually high Starfleet presence anyway, making a dedicated defense force redundant.

The original series mentions UESPA (United Earth Space Agency). It’s really just what they called Starfleet before they came up with Starfleet (and the federation ) but it can be retconned as an Earth science agency separate from Starfleet. No or few ships, so on occasion Starfleet lends it a ship for a mission or two

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9 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

We also get it that the Vulcans serving within the Federation usually kept to themselves and had their own ship, e.g. that Captain who had that rivalry with Sisko about baseball in DS9.

In essence, Starfleet is basically a human organization in which some 'outsiders' are allowed to serve. But not TOS nor TNG or DS9 or Voyager or Discovery ever sent the message that many non-humans were part of the organizations.

Ideology does rarely match the facts on the screen in Star Trek.

This is one of my biggest issues with Discovery. There just aren't enough non humans in the crew and most of the non humans they do have are little more than glorified extras.

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59 minutes ago, sifth said:

This is one of my biggest issues with Discovery. There just aren't enough non humans in the crew and most of the non humans they do have are little more than glorified extras.

Discovery also has that problem, but, honestly, ever since Gene Roddenberry is gone there is no longer an attempt for 'true diversity' in the sense to actually have different nationalities in the crew, much less different species. It was Roddenberry who had people from different nations - Uhura is cool not just because she is black but also because she isn't African-American but actually from an African country. The same with Chekov and La Forge.

And then we got a Starfleet Captain from France in TNG. There was still an unpleasant Anglo-American majority even back then with Bones, Kirk and Sulu being merely an Asian American. But while Beverly Crusher has an English name and demeanor she is a child of the Moon, not an Earth nation. That Sisko is an African-American rather than African can also be critized, I think, before this puts the focus on the American situation especially when racism is dicussed (which is part of quite a few DS9 episodes). I'd have also preferred it if Bashir didn't have an English-speaking background. But I really like that at least Keiko O'Brien is Japanese.

It really gets bad with Voyager and Enterprise - where Janeway, Paris, Kim, and even the Doctor (if you count Lewis Zimmerman as his 'father') all have American backgrounds. And of course Chakotay is a joke because he is just an Indian stereotype and not part of a proper Indian nation. But the Enterprise is basically all Ango-American with Archer, Trip, and Reed. Even Mayweather had to have an English name and thus an apparent African-American background despite the fact that he grew up on a freighter.

Hoshi really is the only non-Anglo-American crew member aside from T'Pol and Phlox aboard the Enterprise - and the latter two are non-humans! And especially the Enterprise as an early project of United Earth should have reflected a United Earth rather than the Anglo-American bubble ... who basically also become the founders of the Federation thanks to how Enterprise went.

Make no mistake, I really like Archer as a character ... but not his background nor the background of most of his crew. Malcolm Reed really is a joke as a character with them insisting they needed a British mariner on that ship.

In that sense, if Star Trek doesn't really get diversity right when we talk the background of human characters then it is hardly suprising that this didn't really work with non-human characters.

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Have we seen that the Enterprise kept the NX-01 designation? Oh right, it was said that it was decommissioned at exactly the same time the Federation was founded, so they probably didn't bother giving it a new one.

Yup, they had to retire the Enterprise before the Federation and "proper" Starfleet were founded, to keep the retcon straight that the Enterprise NX-01 isn't part of the same lineage as the Constitution class (I believe it's mentioned a few times that the 1701 is the first Federation/Starfleet ship to be called Enterprise, and the NX-01 doesn't count because it's pre-Federation). It is a bit weird that no other ship was called Enterprise between 2161 and 2245, but assuming the number of ships being commissioned is pretty low (compared to later) it makes sense they'd want to cycle through a lot more names before eventually coming back to Enterprise.

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I have seen the musing that the reason we haven't seen a United Earth Defense force in the 23rd and 24th century is that Earth houses Starfleet headquarters and therefore has an unusually high Starfleet presence anyway, making a dedicated defense force redundant.

Given the absolute volume of times that Earth only has one starship available in the area (even as late as Homefront/Paradise Lost, when the Lakota is the only starship in the freaking Solar system to provide transporter assistance in what might be a Dominion attack), I'm not too sure about that.

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There just aren't enough non humans in the crew and most of the non humans they do have are little more than glorified extras

Not a major problem as early as DiscoveryThe Way to Babel in TOS suggested that there were only 30-40 member worlds in the Federation at that point (ten years after Discovery) and other episodes indicated that the races tended to operate ships together (so human-majority crews, Andorian-majority crews, Vulcan-majority crews etc). The TOS Enterprise only had a few non-human crewmembers apart from Spock, and no regular ones. In Star Trek: TMP a Deltan serving on the Enterprise is considered unusual enough that Uhura makes a big deal out of it, and in Star Trek II we get quite a good look at the trainee crewmembers and not a single one of them we see is alien, apart from Saavik and Spock (TAS did add M'Ress and Arex, though).

In the later shows it's more of an issue. The Federation has grown to over 150 member states by TNG, so it feels that the Enterprise-D and Voyager should both have larger alien populations in the crew.

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4 hours ago, Werthead said:

 

In the later shows it's more of an issue. The Federation has grown to over 150 member states by TNG, so it feels that the Enterprise-D and Voyager should both have larger alien populations in the crew.

Is it? I mean, the obvious reasoning is they just weren't spending money on extensive make up work to create the proper background...but the Enterprise-D, while focused on the human characters, had aliens on board.  A half Betazed, a Klingon, an Android were all part of the senior staff...granted two of the three LOOK human...but then there were Bajorans, Vulcans, at least one Bolian...there were efforts to show alien diversity...but again, only as it suited a story, or the aliens required minimal make up...

One really doesn't get the true sense of the alien members of the various crews until you read the non canonical novels, of course.  Hell, Riker's CMO on the Titan us supposed to look like a dinosaur... :P

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5 hours ago, Werthead said:

Not a major problem as early as DiscoveryThe Way to Babel in TOS suggested that there were only 30-40 member worlds in the Federation at that point (ten years after Discovery) and other episodes indicated that the races tended to operate ships together (so human-majority crews, Andorian-majority crews, Vulcan-majority crews etc). The TOS Enterprise only had a few non-human crewmembers apart from Spock, and no regular ones. In Star Trek: TMP a Deltan serving on the Enterprise is considered unusual enough that Uhura makes a big deal out of it, and in Star Trek II we get quite a good look at the trainee crewmembers and not a single one of them we see is alien, apart from Saavik and Spock (TAS did add M'Ress and Arex, though).

In the later shows it's more of an issue. The Federation has grown to over 150 member states by TNG, so it feels that the Enterprise-D and Voyager should both have larger alien populations in the crew.

Yeah, if you go by how TOS established canon Discovery is certainly in line with that. I mean, Spock is pretty much only allowed on the Enterprise in TOS because he is half-Vulcan. Folks even mock him for his blood, his species character traits/culture and the color of his blood. That kind of attitude is canon, so the humans of that era are not exactly all that welcoming as they should be...

However, this idea that the United Federation of Planets would be a political utopia if neither the founding members nor later members were closely working together 90-100 years after the founding is very hard to swallow.

And the way things were set up in Enterprise clearly is that if the show had run its course and included the Romulan War we would have gotten the founding species working very closely together. The entire point of Enterprise was to show how those folks overcame their differences and ended up working together.

That not happening very much shows that ideals/ideology and facts don't go well together in Star Trek. And with the Enterprise of TOS and TNG both being the flagship of the Federation (definitely the case for TNG's Enterprise) it is kind of hilarious that it is effectively only staffed by humans. That ship should represent the Federation as a whole, not just the species of one founding world.

If most of the membership worlds were doing things amongst themselves then the Federation would just be an empty shell or facade. There would be no real cooperation that goes beyond the exchange of technology and goods. They wouldn't need a federation for that.

Not to mention that I don't see how Starfleet could work if basically every planet had their own academy where only folks from that planet were trained - that they there would be little exchange. Of course, not everybody should or woul travel to Earth, but one imagines that you ideally train on multiple planets and definitely with as many different species as possible to be able to later serve with and under officers from different species.

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Sorry. When was Spock mocked for being half human? And he wasn't, "allowed" to serve on the Enterprise because he was half human. Its stated rather clearly that he chose to attend Starfleer Academy, rather than the Vulcan Science Academy, much to his father's chagrin.  (I think that's a plot point behind their rift in the Journey to Babel episode.)

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IIRC, Spock encounters a fair bit of prejudice from a fellow crewman in Balance of Terror at least (and more when the Romulan/Vulcan link becomes clear).

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1 hour ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Sorry. When was Spock mocked for being half human? And he wasn't, "allowed" to serve on the Enterprise because he was half human. Its stated rather clearly that he chose to attend Starfleer Academy, rather than the Vulcan Science Academy, much to his father's chagrin.  (I think that's a plot point behind their rift in the Journey to Babel episode.)

Oh, I may have used too strong words there. The idea is that using a half-blood means that Spock isn't technically a proper Vulcan - meaning the show isn't as inclusive as it would have been if he had been a true Vulcan. In that sense one can interpret Spock being only half-Vulcan as a sign that in the TOS canon only half-Vulcans can serve on the Federation flagship in a Spock-like capacity.

In a sense that's also present in TNG where Deanna had to be half-Betazed rather than being a full alien ... just as Worf had to be a Klingon with Federation foster parents rather than simply a Klingon grewing up in Klingon space who joined Starfleet because he wanted to - like Nog later does in DS9 or Saru in Discovery (his journey is really great in this regard).

And I meant that Bones really uses a lot of racist-like talk with Spock both when referencing his Vulcan physiology as well as the Vulcan logic philosophy. Later in the movies that's mostly friendly bantering but back in TOS I don't think one has to view it as such.

Also, the entire Galileo 7 incident sends the clear message that a Vulcan like Spock - because of his genuine Vulcan characteristics - isn't a fit leader. That's why the show needs Kirk as the captain. That Spock could not possibly replace him is clearly the message of this episode.

Although, of course, not the message of every other episode in the show. There are a lot of episodes where Spock's logical approach to things saves the day.

But I'd have to rewatch the show these days to make a proper judgment on that. In part my view may also somewhat twisted considering I remember many episodes in the German version of the show - the dubbing back then was pretty bad and they inserted all kind of stupid jokes which makes especially McCoy's view on Spock worse than it is in the original. Chekov is ridiculed even more.

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Just finished Enterprise.  The final season was much more what I wanted out of a show leading up to the founding of the Federation.  The Terra Prime arc was not really thought out well though -- kind of a sour note to end the show on.   Create a Vulcan-human hybrid child... in order to what, mock it?  Xenophobic bullies gonna bully i guess.

 

 

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8 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Also, the entire Galileo 7 incident sends the clear message that a Vulcan like Spock - because of his genuine Vulcan characteristics - isn't a fit leader. That's why the show needs Kirk as the captain. That Spock could not possibly replace him is clearly the message of this episode.

God that episode bugs me. They try to paint his actions as some kind of leap of faith, when actually the whole thing is a perfect validation of Spock’s logical approach. If they can’t make it back with the fuel they have anyway, logically, however slim the chances of the Enterprise seeing the fuel they jettison (or whatever it is they did), it’s the correct approach. It’s a terrible example for the point they were trying to make, it makes the exact opposite point.

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I've watched the Motion Picture the first time in many years, really the first time as an adult. I can say that it's probably the worst Trek movie of all, though I suppose Final Frontier comes fairly close.

First, the movie automatically loses points for the godawful costumes. I hope they burned them in a huge bonfire after they finished filming. They are the perfect tools to troll the Space Force with memes if anyone wants to. :P

Then there are the ridiculous silent long shots. I know Below Decks makes fun of the one where Kirk and Scotty silently circle the Enterprise while in dock. And the one where they travel through the V'Ger ship. Stupid 70s filmmaking.

Shatner got better in the later movies, but he is terrible in this movie. And Kirk just sucks in this movie. All Treks make constant use of the "view screen", just a plot device to give the audience cool visuals. But in this one, it's like Kirk can't even function without it. Sensor data is for nerds, he needs his glorified GoPro. There are also mysterious cameras in space. The crew of the Enterprise see on their view screen the complete disintegration of the station Epsilon XI, but the camera still remain active after. lol

Spock isn't great either, all weird and kinda stupid. Decker is the only good character. The rest are just there.

All the criticisms that are rightfully applied to the Abrams movies for ignoring how space works can easily be applied here, too. The cloud produced by V'Ger is 82 AUs, but then we get time of contact with Earth expressed in hours and minutes. What? The Enterprise accidentally creates a wormhole because its warp drive has a glitch, but it's fine, just shoot photon torpedoes at an asteroid? umm... ok. And then they're fine, they don't get catapulted to the other side of the universe. 

I also watched Insurrection, another one of my least favorites, but I can honestly say it's not a bad movie, just not that interesting. It's just an extended Trek episode, but makes good use of the lore and ties it up with other events. The most annoying part for me is the Ba'ku, in that they seem to be just humans who found immortality. Not enough in the budget to actually make them more alien looking, or just lazy filmmaking? 

 

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34 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

I've watched the Motion Picture the first time in many years, really the first time as an adult. I can say that it's probably the worst Trek movie of all, though I suppose Final Frontier comes fairly close.

Nah. Final Frontier and Into Darkness are far worse, and Insurrection is even duller. Nemesis is also even worse-paced, somehow. It's probably the next-worst after those though.

I do think The Motion Picture has several key things in its favour: the vfx, Goldsmith's score (and the way the two work together in synergy), the "harder SF" feel to things (at least by Trek's normal standards) and the epic feel to events. It is - easily - the best "Big Dumb Object" SF movie ever made, and likely to remain so until we get a decent adaptation of Rendezvous with RamaRingworld or Eon (I'm not expecting the Halo TV show to lean into that part of the story).

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Then there are the ridiculous silent long shots. I know Below Decks makes fun of the one where Kirk and Scotty silently circle the Enterprise while in dock. And the one where they travel through the V'Ger ship. Stupid 70s filmmaking.

Jerry Goldsmith, bursting into tears: "Am I a joke to you?"

So, yup, the mega-long shots (most of them sliced to ribbons in the Director's Cut) are...weird, but they're also kind of magnificent for pure spaceship porn, helped by the movie Enterprise/Enterprise-A being possibly the definitive depiction of the ship, and Goldsmith's awesome score being by far the best thing about the movie.

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There are also mysterious cameras in space. The crew of the Enterprise see on their view screen the complete disintegration of the station Epsilon XI, but the camera still remain active after. lol

The station having exterior camera drones is reasonably plausible, and an external backup subspace transceiver not part of the main structure.

My lingering question is what happened to the spacesuited person going EVA at the time? Did V'Ger vapourise them as well or did they just end up floating there afterwards going, "...some help here?"

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Spock isn't great either, all weird and kinda stupid. Decker is the only good character. The rest are just there.

McCoy gets quite a lot of good lines and Chekov gets the funniest line of the film ("absolutely I will not interfere!").

I think Decker is a reasonably good character - maybe Ilia would be alive if Kirk had listened to him - but watching the film knowing the actor has been arrested for paedophilia puts a bit of a sour taste in the film.

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All the criticisms that are rightfully applied to the Abrams movies for ignoring how space works can easily be applied here, too. The cloud produced by V'Ger is 82 AUs, but then we get time of contact with Earth expressed in hours and minutes. What? The Enterprise accidentally creates a wormhole because its warp drive has a glitch, but it's fine, just shoot photon torpedoes at an asteroid? umm... ok. And then they're fine, they don't get catapulted to the other side of the universe. 

Abrams is far worse because his BS is about very basic things (i.e. how the speed of light works, and how close objects appear in the sky). Here the issue with V'Ger's cloud is not too bad because the cloud dissipates as V'Ger enters the Solar system (and in the Director's Cut the cloud size is reduced to a saner 2 AU). I also get the impression that V'Gar is making warp "jumps" rather than staying continuously in warp, or dropping out of warp when other ships approach. It's not proceeding purely at sublight speeds because that would be nonsensical.

Destroying the asteroid doesn't collapse the wormhole. They've already thrown the engines into stall which will result in the Enterprise dropping out of warp automatically once it's coasted down (the malfunction prevented them from simply throwing the engines into reverse and collapsing the warp field immediately). The problem is that they're due to hit the asteroid about 2 seconds before they drop out of warp.

I also get the impression that Gene Roddenberry didn't actually know what a "wormhole" actually was and used the incorrect terminology here. It's a disrupted warp field.

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Just Listened to the opening theme music from the original series music. “ These are the voyages of the Star Ship Enterprise…” It still gives me chills. The movies were so so, and the shows had interesting themes. My later BFF was a full Trekker who went to conventions. I raised my eyebrows at her, just slightly. Her DH possessed fake Vulcan ears, and he worked out. It seemed like fun. 


My DH and I went to an Enterprise bridge mock up in Las Vegas, before it shut down, dressed as regular civilians. We also went to the Beatles show which was excellent, a stand up show, The Blue Man show, A show of Leonardo Da Vinci’s creations, Penn and Teller and we saw Elton John play his red piano and sing live. The food was fantastic. We were treated to an opera singer doing sing a long Christmas Carols for free. I saw chinchilla fur trimmed high heels which I would never buy! We don’t gamble as it’s as much fun for me as flushing money down the toilet, even though  I was good at poker for match sticks. ( underestimated)

George Takei is a good blogger. 

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2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Nah. Final Frontier and Into Darkness are far worse, and Insurrection is even duller. Nemesis is also even worse-paced, somehow. It's probably the next-worst after those though.

I do think The Motion Picture has several key things in its favour: the vfx, Goldsmith's score (and the way the two work together in synergy), the "harder SF" feel to things (at least by Trek's normal standards) and the epic feel to events. It is - easily - the best "Big Dumb Object" SF movie ever made, and likely to remain so until we get a decent adaptation of Rendezvous with RamaRingworld or Eon (I'm not expecting the Halo TV show to lean into that part of the story).

Jerry Goldsmith, bursting into tears: "Am I a joke to you?"

So, yup, the mega-long shots (most of them sliced to ribbons in the Director's Cut) are...weird, but they're also kind of magnificent for pure spaceship porn, helped by the movie Enterprise/Enterprise-A being possibly the definitive depiction of the ship, and Goldsmith's awesome score being by far the best thing about the movie.

By silent moments, I meant no dialogue. Yes, the score is great, but in that category, Goldsmith improved upon his work in later movies. The First Contact main theme is my favorite Trek song of anything Trek.

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

I think Decker is a reasonably good character - maybe Ilia would be alive if Kirk had listened to him - but watching the film knowing the actor has been arrested for paedophilia puts a bit of a sour taste in the film.

Damn, didn't know that. He's been in so many projects.

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Abrams is far worse because his BS is about very basic things (i.e. how the speed of light works, and how close objects appear in the sky). Here the issue with V'Ger's cloud is not too bad because the cloud dissipates as V'Ger enters the Solar system (and in the Director's Cut the cloud size is reduced to a saner 2 AU). I also get the impression that V'Gar is making warp "jumps" rather than staying continuously in warp, or dropping out of warp when other ships approach. It's not proceeding purely at sublight speeds because that would be nonsensical.

Destroying the asteroid doesn't collapse the wormhole. They've already thrown the engines into stall which will result in the Enterprise dropping out of warp automatically once it's coasted down (the malfunction prevented them from simply throwing the engines into reverse and collapsing the warp field immediately). The problem is that they're due to hit the asteroid about 2 seconds before they drop out of warp.

I also get the impression that Gene Roddenberry didn't actually know what a "wormhole" actually was and used the incorrect terminology here. It's a disrupted warp field.

Space distances are part of basic things: at the size of V'Ger it should have been spotted with plenty of warning, especially with 23rd century technology. But I'm glad that they tried to correct that in the Director's Cut.

The asteroid moment was an excuse to remind the audience that the Enterprise has weapons, too.

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I’m missing bits in the first contact score, but it is great to be sure. I need a certain Shakespearean trained actor saying “ Space, the final frontier…” I listened with my DH, miming the swishing, and he exclaimed, “as if there is any swishing in space”. I said there is actually no sound in space, though. We laughed. What do nerd couples talk about:)? 

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5 hours ago, HoodedCrow said:

I’m missing bits in the first contact score, but it is great to be sure. I need a certain Shakespearean trained actor saying “ Space, the final frontier…” I listened with my DH, miming the swishing, and he exclaimed, “as if there is any swishing in space”. I said there is actually no sound in space, though. We laughed. What do nerd couples talk about:)? 

So...William Shatner...?

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William Shatner, indeed! He was born Canadian and Jewish. His stage presence, voice and skill at proclaiming sold the show at the time. Yes, I know, other actors didn’t like that, and it doesn’t work now, so much. The supporting cast were gifted. If people hate on My Fair Lady, well…

Captain Kirk was the main hero, and hero was what people wanted, even if there was a lot of hopeful and ambitious representation on the show. He kept rules, broke them, was sex positive, authoritative (as a Captain seems essential), but consulted. Delegated… though not realistically. Roles of women were somewhat better than usual, and lots of it was groundbreaking. Many of the themes were great, as science fiction can do, and there were wonderful writers.

 

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