Star Trek

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JediTricks
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Re: Star Trek

Post by JediTricks »

Sparky Prime wrote:
JediTricks wrote:Voyager was not an exclusive release in that set, only the Ent-E (which was good but not terribly accurate, not unlike the other boxed set exclusives Ent-A and Defiant). I used to have multiple Voyagers, but unfortunately traded them away to my MM crew so everybody could have one.
Oh, I know Voyager wasn't an exclusive to that set, but the Star Trek Micro-Machines had become so difficult to find that I think most stores in my area had stopped carrying them. I only ever saw one Voyager set and that was the one with the Kazon ships. And in order to get the Enterprise E, you had to find the Collector Set, which I figured was my best chance of getting Voyager since that was included as well, but I never saw that set in stores either. :cry:
I see what you mean. It's a real shame things weren't easier for fans.
They assimilate entire worlds, why wouldn't that include the babies? And Seven of Nine said the Borg don't make babies in an episode of Voyager...
I thought she said they didn't procreate, not that they didn't manufacture babies. I can't picture the Borg storming a society and then carefully scooping up all their infants and carrying them delicately back to the ship in their robotic arms. Or do they have nanny-drones?
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Re: Star Trek

Post by Sparky Prime »

JediTricks wrote:I thought she said they didn't procreate, not that they didn't manufacture babies. I can't picture the Borg storming a society and then carefully scooping up all their infants and carrying them delicately back to the ship in their robotic arms. Or do they have nanny-drones?
Right, but she also said the Borg only assimilate. The Borg she named "One" was unusual even having been 'manufactured'. And babies assimilated by the Borg are placed in maturation chambers to accelerate their growth until they are ready to enter service as a fully grown drone.
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Re: Star Trek

Post by Shockwave »

JediTricks wrote:
Sparky Prime wrote:
JediTricks wrote:Voyager was not an exclusive release in that set, only the Ent-E (which was good but not terribly accurate, not unlike the other boxed set exclusives Ent-A and Defiant). I used to have multiple Voyagers, but unfortunately traded them away to my MM crew so everybody could have one.
Oh, I know Voyager wasn't an exclusive to that set, but the Star Trek Micro-Machines had become so difficult to find that I think most stores in my area had stopped carrying them. I only ever saw one Voyager set and that was the one with the Kazon ships. And in order to get the Enterprise E, you had to find the Collector Set, which I figured was my best chance of getting Voyager since that was included as well, but I never saw that set in stores either. :cry:
I see what you mean. It's a real shame things weren't easier for fans.
This. Seriously. I swear Paramount has a standing order that every damned piece of Trek memorabilia has to be limited edition, numbered, collector's edition, exclusive, with a certificate of authenticity. That shit killed the Playmates line for me back then and I'm thoroughly convinced that's why Trek stuff is so monetarily worthless now. I think the fans ultimately just got fed up with everything being so hard to get on a consistent basis that the market bottomed out and never recovered. And Coke Trek (just out of curiosity why are we calling '09 Coke Trek?) didn't do anything to change that. In fact, I think Playmates effectively killed the market further if that's possible. On the upside, that means that if I want to get Picard in his regular season 3 and on togs I can cheaply and easily do so. Right now I have him with the Jacket. Other stuff I'm keeping includes a good smattering of Borgs and the TOS set. And the other thing that they started doing that irritated the hell out of me was this need to put out exclusive hard to find Kirk and Spock sets without having even done the main crew for some of the other shows. I mean, we never did get a Wesley figure in his regular grey outfit. And the 9" line never saw the release of all the DS9 or Voyager crews. Neelix and Kes never saw release and neither did Quark. But if I want a figure of Gangster Kirk or Spock with the wool cap then I'm prefectly set :roll: .

The signed ornaments are signed on the boxes. I'll take pics and post them later this week. Might also post pics of the current playset set up.
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Re: Star Trek

Post by Shockwave »

Tigermegatron wrote:
Shockwave wrote:Actually, that describes Walter Keonig better than it describes Leonard Nimoy..
Dude that's like comparing a gold coin to a zinc coin.

Walter keoning matters ZERO to the star trek francise. Walter comes in dead last as far as the star power of the classics trek actors/actresses. walter was added to the cast in later seasons of the classics trek series,so he matters the least. he's got no real pysical job of importance,like the others do. walter is just their to take up space.

Walter,wasn't important enough like leonard nimroy was to cause a stir,hold up production,cause script re-writes & cause the entire classic trek cast to get written out of the #8 thru #12 trek movies.

Leonard nimroy back in the 1980's was the key star of the star trek movies.

Who cares what walter keoning says or cries about,he wasn't the driving force nor the main attraction. he could have been given the boot/got fired & nobody would have known he was missing.

Leonard nimroy,clearly was the star of the star trek movies. everything revolved around him. the man did cause problems due to his reluctantance to sign up for newer star trek movies in a timely manner. refusal to do particular TF movies like Generations. all the re-writes & having to film without leonard nimoy until he agreed to sign up were huge headaches for the star trek creators,producers,writers,special effects & so forth.

Leonard nimroy was the main reason the classic star trek crew got written out of the #8 thru #12 movies. because it was too much of a hassel to beg,plead,ask & wait for leonard nimroy to agree to sign up for more star trek movies. at one point leaonard nimroy went on TV & at various conventions claiming he was getting overly harassed by the star trek creators to do more movies against his will.
That is some special kind of crack you are on. I wasn't comparing anything. I was saying that what you had described is more consistent with Walter Koenig's attitude to the franchise, not Leonard Nimoy's. Nimoy did have a period where he didn't want to have involvement or association with Trek but never to the level that you are suggesting. That honor still goes to Koenig (which is why he didn't come back for AniTrek while everyone else did). And later, Nimoy is known to have enjoyed his involvement with Trek and I think Sparky pretty much summed up perfectly how that went.

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Re: Star Trek

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Maybe the nanny-drones have cube-carriages? :D

Dom wrote:Playmates' brand management has always been weak. They had a consistent inability to have figures of main characters in their normal/default uniforms. Still, it was better than TMNT. At least the "Star Trek" figures were relevant to a given episode, rather than the completely irrelevant TMNT figures. (When the TMNT relaunch went down that road a few years back, a friend of mine noted that it made him nostalgic for "the first time that kind of thing killed the brand".)
And by "better", you mean "worse"? Yes, Playmates buried the TMNT line with variations of the main characters, but the main characters did get re-releases every few years too, and the variants weren't boring "space heroes in WW2-era costumes" and "old guy wearing hat" figures the way so many of their Trek figures were. Playmates does have a boner for trying to get tons of variants out with a small window for main characters.
Most of those figures were terrible. You are better off without them.
They made me happy at the time, but I just don't have a need for them anymore. To be honest, the 4" Hasbro Marvel figures aren't SO much better - they cost 3 times as much and have fucked up articulation problems or weird sculpt problems and/or distribution problems - while TB's Marvel line you could walk into Kaybee and walk out with regular versions of your main characters, as well as 11 different Wolverines. ;)
I know that they were good toys. I just tended to avoid Micro Machines, (aside from a a few SW sets). Part of it was not wanting tertiary stuff when I could not find a proper analogue. (It felt wrong that I could not get a bigger model of most of those ships.)
Look where we are now though, it's MM or nothing. Johnny Lightning never lived up to the promise of the concept because they spent too much resources trying to milk those first 8 molds too hard. The Japanese companies' releases would do the same ships in nearly the same scales almost on top of each other putting themselves out of business. Corgi didn't even deliver their Defiant. And Mattel's Hot Wheels line is just too toyetic to work for the older audience yet too bland to catch the kid market. So the Micro Machines turned out to be the only way to go, and now it's insane trying to get that stuff.
I would need a picture. I would be using it as a display piece more than a playing piece, ya know?
Then it'd depend on how much customizing you'd want to do. Keep in mind, it'd be useless as a display piece without gutting the mirror because otherwise with its lights off there's nobody in the transporter chamber.
I just could not stand when they wrote in her fanfic grade daughter. The actress pitched a fit and got what she wanted. Mission accomplished. Then, she whined and cried and got back in.
Sela was a more compelling villain than Nemesis' Shinzon, and was tolerable to me considering the potential from that alternate-timeline episode, especially when compared to Tasha's horrible fanfic-grade sister Ishara. At least Denise Crosby found out that nobody wanted her, that she was a star due to Trek, not in spite of it.
Yeah, it pitched higher.
Not higher, just different and some might argue lower. Roddenberry's Trek was about the heights man could reach, DS9 was about deconstructing that into a darker, more "now" mindset.
If you only watch one episode, watch "Shades of Grey". You can live with it.
Uh, which now? DS9 doesn't have an episode with that title or anything like it, TNG does but it's the only Trek clip show ever.
No Gene, I cannot take "Kirk and Spock on NaziWelt" seriously
That is dumb, the nazi planet didn't develop by itself, it was intentionally affected by a human to be a "nice" nazi planet only it turns out you can't seed a planet with just SOME nazi ideals, the bad ones come with them.
They did not have editors to keep track of that stuff? Supplies could have been accounted for with creative use of replicators and throw-away lines about trading/finding stuff as they went.

Dead crewmen are a bit harder to deal with, especially if the ship's attrition was high enough for Janeway to have to use enemy troops in the first place.
They did have editors to deal with it, but that stuff got in the way of Rick Berman running the brand like a machine for the "modern Trek experience" so they just kept ignoring stuff that got in the way of dumber and dumber plots.

Dead crewman should have been a HUGE problem, they only had a 150 folks that survived the trip to the Delta Quadrant in the first place... hell, here's a whole article about Voyager sucking at this issue: http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/incon ... es-voy.htm
How did the movie actually contradict Rodenberry's concept? I have not seen '09 Trek.
I don't want to get into New Coke Trek too much in here, but in that 23rd century humanity is still using money, still has class systems, still has a lot of petty squabbles that escalate into violence (Kirk gets into a bar fight before he joins the academy with a Starfleet officer... who starts it because Kirk is flirting with Uhura), Kirk doesn't put any effort into being the best of the best (TOS called him a walking library from all the books he'd read, NCT just has him sleep with some broad to cheat the Kobiyashi Maru test and he's BLATANT about the way he cheats), there's no exploration, there's no consideration of others, there's no use of real science as foundation (Scotty beams our heroes across several star systems onto a ship that's moving at warp, the Enterprise's engineering deck is a fucking brewery, Sulu has a switchblade SWORD that just keeps flipping tiny blade segments on top of each other), and our "heroes" do nothing but fight with each other and get angsty, it's surprisingly jingoistic and militaristic which is the antithesis of what Roddenberry had in mind for Trek, and it's just a bunch of f/x-laden battle scenes. It's also a cheap ripoff of Star Wars. It's very much studio product, which is why it's been so forgettable - it made big box office, but nobody cares about it a few months after seeing it, nobody is inspired by it. Real Trek inspired people to become scientists and to become responsible leaders in the military, it caught childrens' attentions because of its outlook, not because it was a space war with flash effects.
What I will say is that Rodenberry, besides being dead, does not own Trek. Trek is owned by Paramount, so it is there right to change it.
Roddenberry owned the ideas behind Trek, Desilu the rights, when Desilu got bought by Paramount they tried to sell Roddenberry all the remaining rights and they had paid him so poorly that he couldn't afford the fire-sale pricing they offered. Roddenberry and his estate still hold certain rights to the brand though, I'm not sure but I think Majel divested them to Paramount shortly before her death.
I was going to avoid commenting on this whole sub-topic. But, I wanted to quote that for reading hilariously. "Well, to his credit, he did toss his first wife in favour of his mistress."
He cast Majel in the original pilot because he was banging her, and Nichelle in the series for the same reason. Granted, he chose great ladies to cheat on his wife with and they weren't just flings, so it's not like he just gave them free work, but it's still accurate that he knew they were right for the part because he spent so much personal time with them during extramarital affairs.
I...uh, liked "Generations".
Ok, why? What about it did you like? You can be subjective here, all you're saying is you liked it not that it's something great (that would require a more objective answer), I'm just curious about what. Also, have you checked out the commentary track on the film? Good stuff, the writers explain why they did what they did and how in hindsight they see some of those as mistakes (Kirk's deaths, for example).
The assimilate entire worlds, why would you not wipe them out?
Interesting point, turning existing infants into borgbabies probably would take a lot of extra resources for little gain, while more developed children and teenagers (and of course adults) are independent enough to not need that extra care -- plus, it doesn't seem there's a lot of aging involved once you go Borg.

Sparky wrote:B'elanna did mention once she was sick of having to rebuild shuttles. Although with some shuttles being totally destroyed/left behind, it's hard to swallow they could have totally rebuilt a shuttle from replicated/traded parts.
Heh heh, yeah, they paid lip service there once in a while, and it was so stupid to think a tiny crew could just keep cranking out new warp-capable, Federation-quality shuttles week after week. "Let's build a new warp core out of twigs and weird alien parts from that guy over there who uses negative-dimension energy to power his watch, it only took them years to build the original at a Starfleet drydock facility that has nigh-unlimited resources, we should be done with this one on our ragtag ship in about a week."
The Maquis weren't exactly enemy troops. They were (mostly) civilians who weren't happy the Federation just handed over the planets they lived on to the Cardassians.
The Maquis were being pursued and had spies planted in their ranks by the Federation, that was somewhat "enemy" to Voyager at the beginning of the series. They got over that shit way too quickly too.
Roddenberry wasn't a big fan of "The Wrath of Khan" or "The Undiscovered Country" having objected to various story elements in those movies, which were largely ignored by the studio.
He was very unhappy with the militarism injected into the movies by Nick Meyer and Harve Bennett starting with Wrath of Khan, that is quite true.


Sparky Prime wrote:
JediTricks wrote:I thought she said they didn't procreate, not that they didn't manufacture babies. I can't picture the Borg storming a society and then carefully scooping up all their infants and carrying them delicately back to the ship in their robotic arms. Or do they have nanny-drones?
Right, but she also said the Borg only assimilate. The Borg she named "One" was unusual even having been 'manufactured'. And babies assimilated by the Borg are placed in maturation chambers to accelerate their growth until they are ready to enter service as a fully grown drone.
I don't remember it that clearly, so I'll take your word. I'll discount anything Voyager says though just for being so slapdash in general. ;)

Shockwave wrote:This. Seriously. I swear Paramount has a standing order that every damned piece of Trek memorabilia has to be limited edition, numbered, collector's edition, exclusive, with a certificate of authenticity. That shit killed the Playmates line for me back then and I'm thoroughly convinced that's why Trek stuff is so monetarily worthless now. I think the fans ultimately just got fed up with everything being so hard to get on a consistent basis that the market bottomed out and never recovered. And Coke Trek (just out of curiosity why are we calling '09 Coke Trek?) didn't do anything to change that. In fact, I think Playmates effectively killed the market further if that's possible. On the upside, that means that if I want to get Picard in his regular season 3 and on togs I can cheaply and easily do so. Right now I have him with the Jacket. Other stuff I'm keeping includes a good smattering of Borgs and the TOS set. And the other thing that they started doing that irritated the hell out of me was this need to put out exclusive hard to find Kirk and Spock sets without having even done the main crew for some of the other shows. I mean, we never did get a Wesley figure in his regular grey outfit. And the 9" line never saw the release of all the DS9 or Voyager crews. Neelix and Kes never saw release and neither did Quark. But if I want a figure of Gangster Kirk or Spock with the wool cap then I'm prefectly set :roll: .

The signed ornaments are signed on the boxes. I'll take pics and post them later this week. Might also post pics of the current playset set up.
Paramount probably did, I know all those Galoob boxed sets were numbered editions, although the regular 3packs weren't. And every fucking Playmates figure for the first 4 years or so had that dopey white painted sole with numbers printed on it. They were sure fanboys could only get a collecting boner if they knew it was limited, but we just want our Enterprise A ships and such when they're this hard to get; everything was limited in way higher numbers anyway since it was mass-produced (and the irony was you still couldn't find most of it! Who gives a shit about edition 10,452 out of 50,000 when you have a hard enough time getting ONE?!?).

I'm calling the '09 movie "New Coke Trek" because that's what it is to me, it's New Coke - it's trying to be Pepsi rather than Coke because Pepsi is more popular ("Pepsi" in this case is Star Wars). If you're not familiar with "New Coke", look it up, that'll explain a lot.

Ha! I forgot that they made Picard in the Bomber Jacket, it wasn't my preferred look so I don't remember if I bought that figure or not. I know I never bought the TOS Kirk in his green "casual" duty uniform either.

We didn't get pre-ensign Wesley? I am a little surprised, I personally wouldn't have bought one so that's why I don't remember one way or the other, but they made Deanna Troi in a few of her outfits, so I figured they would with Wes too. Then again, Playmates had hindsight that Galoob didn't because they came in later when fans voiced their displeasure with Wes in season 1 and 2. They made Ensign Wes and Cadet Wes, I have both although I got the Ensign one mainly as a generic crewmember for my Bridge.
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Re: Star Trek

Post by Dominic »

but the main characters did get re-releases every few years too, and the variants weren't boring "space heroes in WW2-era costumes" and "old guy wearing hat" figures the way so many of their Trek figures were.
At least the weird Trek figures had some kind of legitimacy. As much as I hate "A Piece of the Action", it was an episode of the series and the Gangster Kirk references it. That beats the hell out of "Leonardo as a police man".

They made me happy at the time, but I just don't have a need for them anymore. To be honest, the 4" Hasbro Marvel figures aren't SO much better - they cost 3 times as much and have fucked up articulation problems or weird sculpt problems and/or distribution problems
I will agree that the current Marvel figures have problems. The sculpts are generally good. The problem is that they are used inappropriately, such as Captain Marvel's wrist bands being painted rather than sculpted. The Toy Biz line was good if only because of the scarcity we had before hand. Toy Biz half-assed on basics like accessories and scale, along with the still common problem of making incomplete teams.
Then it'd depend on how much customizing you'd want to do. Keep in mind, it'd be useless as a display piece without gutting the mirror because otherwise with its lights off there's nobody in the transporter chamber.
This would be for a TF diorama. It would be a set piece more than an something that would have to work.
DS9 was about deconstructing that into a darker, more "now" mindset.
It was not so much deconstructing the Trek ideal as showing its foundation. As Sisko put it, "It is easy to be a saint in paradise." The Federation was a place where hard choices were rare, and often relatively low consequence. DS9 was about having difficult choices on a regular basis. Picard and Guinan may have had prejudice agaist the Borg. But, they more or less got past it in an episode. O'Brien's far more grounded bigotry against Cardassians was never fully resolved. Sisko's adherence to the Prime Directive of non-interference in a season one episode about sport hunting was far less perfect that something that Kirk of Picard likely would have done.
Uh, which now? DS9 doesn't have an episode with that title or anything like it, TNG does but it's the only Trek clip show ever.
Wasn't that the name of the episode where Sisko privately confesses to using questionable tactics against the Dominion? "This is a victory for the good guys! And, I can live with it." (There was a quote from the episode that was if not that, close it it.)
Dead crewman should have been a HUGE problem, they only had a 150 folks that survived the trip to the Delta Quadrant in the first place... hell, here's a whole article about Voyager sucking at this issue: http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/incon ... es-voy.htm
Every problem that guy listed, (and it is an impressive list), could have been solved at the draft stage. Writers could have been banned from destroying equipment and killing personell unless they really needed to. They could have allowed for creative use of transporter and replicator tech to clone/fabricate new crew members. (They would still require raw organic mass. But, imagine creating transporter clones to augment the crew. Of course, that would have undermined the the logic of using Marquis personell.)

Voyager could have been amazing, Trek to the Nth degree. Instead, it was sloppier than G1 TF.


don't want to get into New Coke Trek too much in here,
To be fair, the idea could be that new Trek would show humanity's progress away from the vices you describe, with Kirk as a microcosm. But, given the brain-trust of Kurtzman and Orci, I doubt that this is the case.

For all of my problems with the franchise, even the worst episodes tended to be idea based. I would disagree with Rodenberry about what our highest potential may be. But, at least he had something to say about it.
Of course, maybe Kurtzman and Orci think that blowing one's way to the top is a high idea. I dunno.
He cast Majel in the original pilot because he was banging her, and Nichelle in the series for the same reason.
I am not sure if I am appalled or impressed. I mean, damn. But, also, damn. Not that I blame him in either case, but for a guy who talked about high ideals.... (But, I guess the hems of their skirts were even higher....)
Ok, why? What about it did you like? You can be subjective here, all you're saying is you liked it not that it's something great (that would require a more objective answer), I'm just curious about what. Also, have you checked out the commentary track on the film? Good stuff, the writers explain why they did what they did and how in hindsight they see some of those as mistakes (Kirk's deaths, for example).
I have not seen it for years. But, I recall thinking it was a good transition between the franchises. And, there was a good "man v/s himself" element, with both Kirk and Picard having to overcome the very real temptation to stay in the nexus.
swear Paramount has a standing order that every damned piece of Trek memorabilia has to be limited edition, numbered, collector's edition, exclusive, with a certificate of authenticity.
Seeing that from the outside when I was ~13 inspired me to keep Trek at arm's length. When I was that age, Toy Biz releasing FAO Schwartz exlusives was daunting enough to make me accept never having a complete set. A whole franchise built on that kind of thinking was enough to put me on the "content-only" track. More than once, I saw a figure that I liked, and while considering it, I factored in what I knew the problems with the franchise were....and opted for a figure from a line that I knew was easier to deal with.


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Re: Star Trek

Post by Shockwave »

I think that's a little harsh on Voyager. For me it's one of my favorite Trek series after TNG (which is my fave). It's certainly not as bad as G1 TF. Not by a long shot.
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Re: Star Trek

Post by Sparky Prime »

JediTricks wrote:it only took them years to build the original at a Starfleet drydock facility that has nigh-unlimited resources, we should be done with this one on our ragtag ship in about a week.
Stafleet engineers always multiply their estimates by four to keep their reputations as miracle workers. :ugeek:
The Maquis were being pursued and had spies planted in their ranks by the Federation, that was somewhat "enemy" to Voyager at the beginning of the series. They got over that shit way too quickly too.
I'd say more like rebels than enemies... The Maquis had been Federation citizens, many of which had attended Starfleet Academy.
Dominic wrote:Wasn't that the name of the episode where Sisko privately confesses to using questionable tactics against the Dominion? "This is a victory for the good guys! And, I can live with it." (There was a quote from the episode that was if not that, close it it.)
Sounds like you're describing the episode where Sisko and Garak get the Romulans to join the war. "In the Pale Moonlight".
Voyager could have been amazing, Trek to the Nth degree. Instead, it was sloppier than G1 TF.
Voyager wasn't that bad. Like Shockwave, it's one of my top favorite Trek series. It wasn't perfect by any means and certainly they should have done some things better, but overall it was still a good show.
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Re: Star Trek

Post by Shockwave »

At least Voyager was sure as hell better than Enterprise.

Also, went to the comic shop last night. I managed to scrape some money together and got most of the current IDW monthlys. But the reason I'm bringing this up here is because I also got a Star Trek figure. "Transmetal" Worf. For lack of a better description. It's Worf in the ritual Klingon attire but instead of silver, it's vaccum metalized chrome. And for only $3 I just couldn't pass it up. They had several other figures from the Playmates run but I wasn't really interested in any of the rest.

And the card on this thing pretty much illustrates everything that's wrong with Trek collecting. The word "Exclusive" appears no less that three times on the packaging. All of the following words are on the front alone: Exclusive, limited edition, collector's edition. WTF? Seriously, if this thing is that rare, why did I just buy it for $4? This is single handedly what killed Trek for me. I just got sick of every damned piece having every one of those words associated with it. It reached a point where it was actually more of a rarity to find something that WASN'T exclusive, or limited edition, or collector's edition. It just didn't exist. Ok, I promise I'll shut up now. /rant.
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Re: Star Trek

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Dominic wrote:At least the weird Trek figures had some kind of legitimacy. As much as I hate "A Piece of the Action", it was an episode of the series and the Gangster Kirk references it. That beats the hell out of "Leonardo as a police man".
You could call Leonardo as cop a disguise, but what's the excuse for the TMNT as Star Trek figures other than Playmates held both licenses? They were infiltrating a Trek convention in disguise? And the Wild West? I actually had Wild West Don and Mike, they were kinda fun figures actually from a design exercise sort of way. There was no excuse for the Supermutant TMNT figures though, not the superhero-themed ones, the taller, thinner, more "exciting" physique figures (I'd argue there was no excuse for the Jim Lee ones either :p).
I will agree that the current Marvel figures have problems. The sculpts are generally good. The problem is that they are used inappropriately, such as Captain Marvel's wrist bands being painted rather than sculpted. The Toy Biz line was good if only because of the scarcity we had before hand. Toy Biz half-assed on basics like accessories and scale, along with the still common problem of making incomplete teams.
They are trying to save money by using buck parts, and it ends up making figures look cheap when they do that. The Toy Biz figures had generally had accessories, not sure what you're thinking of, and I don't remember teams being remotely difficult to complete unless you wanted specific variants like non-clear Iceman. It's been a while though, that's just going off memory.
This would be for a TF diorama. It would be a set piece more than an something that would have to work.
Well, I'll take pics when I dig it out. I can't imagine what you have in mind though. And keep in mind, it's made for Trek figures so there's not a ton of height inside, those figures were less than 5" tall.
It was not so much deconstructing the Trek ideal as showing its foundation. As Sisko put it, "It is easy to be a saint in paradise." The Federation was a place where hard choices were rare, and often relatively low consequence. DS9 was about having difficult choices on a regular basis. Picard and Guinan may have had prejudice agaist the Borg. But, they more or less got past it in an episode. O'Brien's far more grounded bigotry against Cardassians was never fully resolved. Sisko's adherence to the Prime Directive of non-interference in a season one episode about sport hunting was far less perfect that something that Kirk of Picard likely would have done.
Except that wasn't its foundation at all, hence deconstruction. DS9 was great, but it viewed morality from a 20th-century lens, Sisko's line there was ignoring TOS' dealings with morality concerns of the future, when race and money weren't issues to humans anymore there were new problems to deal with, while DS9 stuck with race and money and shadiness. I think the writers didn't have the balls to make Sisko a willing violator on the Prime Directive, they'd let him break it then give him personal justification (TOS would let Kirk break it but for the greater good), but they wouldn't give Sisko any consequences for his choices, he got promoted while they were ignored.
Wasn't that the name of the episode where Sisko privately confesses to using questionable tactics against the Dominion? "This is a victory for the good guys! And, I can live with it." (There was a quote from the episode that was if not that, close it it.)
Not even close title, you're thinking of "In The Pale Moonlight", a great example of DS9's 20th century lens, that the only solution to a problem for the Federation is to violate its ideals a la Garak's sneaky Machiavellian tactics. Good episode too, but definitely a great example of what makes DS9 good television but controversial Trek.
Every problem that guy listed, (and it is an impressive list), could have been solved at the draft stage. Writers could have been banned from destroying equipment and killing personell unless they really needed to. They could have allowed for creative use of transporter and replicator tech to clone/fabricate new crew members. (They would still require raw organic mass. But, imagine creating transporter clones to augment the crew. Of course, that would have undermined the the logic of using Marquis personell.)

Voyager could have been amazing, Trek to the Nth degree. Instead, it was sloppier than G1 TF.
Voyager was Trek without vision, Trek by committee, Rick Berman trying to tread water, and since he didn't have a real vision he just allowed writers to take artistic license (except without the art).

Cloning/fabricating crew members via the transporter is not a good road to go down, TNG abused transporter tech too much, they opened that pandora's box (TOS did once or twice too, but not so egregiously). When Harry Kim got killed and they used his alternate from a different timeline, that was the only really acceptable way to get away with replacing a main character, a transporter clone would be irresponsible because you'd never worry about main characters getting killed - just restore from their last patterns. Luckily, Trek tries to compensate for this by claiming that the energy patterns that make up our transporter streams are specific to each individual (except William/Thomas Riker, where the unique atmospheric condition let him get cloned). Voyager also played with the idea of holographic crewmembers, first with The Doctor, then with the Prometheus' Andy Dick hologram, and a few other episodes.

To be fair, the idea could be that new Trek would show humanity's progress away from the vices you describe, with Kirk as a microcosm. But, given the brain-trust of Kurtzman and Orci, I doubt that this is the case.
Yeah, giving them way too much credit, and also it'd be a pretty cheap retcon to just magically have Kirk be the central timing to humanity getting its shit together. It's humanity getting its shit together that precedes all of Trek, as Roddenberry saw it: we weren't going to be able to get to the stars and use what was out there until we got over our petty bullcrap, but that once we did, the frontiers would be limitless.
For all of my problems with the franchise, even the worst episodes tended to be idea based. I would disagree with Rodenberry about what our highest potential may be. But, at least he had something to say about it.
Of course, maybe Kurtzman and Orci think that blowing one's way to the top is a high idea. I dunno.
Orci & Kurtzman are not about blowing their way to the top, they recorded commentary tracks for the Blu Ray Trek movies (despite having no hand in them) and made their intentions clear, they know they're hacks, just lucky ones. They're trying to make entertainment using the educations they got - the college courses that broke down movies like Star Wars into a simple "3 act system" for O&K to follow, and junk TV like Hercules and Xena which were mainly just about entertainment rather than ideas. They are the imitations of greatness, and unfortunately that's what corporate Hollywood is looking for these days, not vision, not ideas, just the ability to grind up an existing franchise or idea and spew it out into palatable entertainment for the lowest common denominator masses. They followed the "rules" of script-writing, not understanding that those "rules" are handed down not from the successful storytellers but from those who think they are wise enough to interpret them as a specific message. O&K talk about all the "rules" they got from Wrath of Khan, then you listen to Nick Meyer's commentaries and he derides the very same concepts of those "rules" like the writing for the 3-act-system.
I am not sure if I am appalled or impressed. I mean, damn. But, also, damn. Not that I blame him in either case, but for a guy who talked about high ideals.... (But, I guess the hems of their skirts were even higher....)
Majel's "Number One" in the original pilot wore slacks, it was a compromise to use titillation to get the second take on the show onto the air - there's nothing reasonable about the females on a starship wearing micro-skirts, panty-shorts and leggings (TNG tried to address this by having male crewmembers wearing the same uniform skirt that Deanna was wearing in the pilot, but nobody wanted to see that). So Roddenberry's ideals were higher than the realities of making a TV show on air would allow. Still, I think having Uhura wearing her tiny-skirted uniform and still being a fairly no-nonsense gal was a good compromise, even if they are visually cheesecake, they can still be great characters (plus, at least the TOS female uniforms had the dignity to have full-length sleeves to look like adults, Troi's pilot uniform and New Coke Trek's Uhura uniform used baby-t-length-sleeves which IMO is even more demeaning with a mini-skirt-length dress).

On another level, Majel and Nichelle seem like good choices to have relationships with: both are smart and strong yet nurturing feminine personalities, good counterparts to the larger-than-life man that Gene was. I got to meet Majel at a small Trek convention in '87, my mom actually spent hours talking with her (Majel's table was empty, overshadowed when the next room had Shatner and Nimoy together for one of the last times at a convention), Majel was a great lady.
I have not seen it for years. But, I recall thinking it was a good transition between the franchises. And, there was a good "man v/s himself" element, with both Kirk and Picard having to overcome the very real temptation to stay in the nexus.
I'd be curious to hear your take on it if you viewed it again for more specifics.
Seeing that from the outside when I was ~13 inspired me to keep Trek at arm's length. When I was that age, Toy Biz releasing FAO Schwartz exlusives was daunting enough to make me accept never having a complete set. A whole franchise built on that kind of thinking was enough to put me on the "content-only" track. More than once, I saw a figure that I liked, and while considering it, I factored in what I knew the problems with the franchise were....and opted for a figure from a line that I knew was easier to deal with.
Hasbro did FAO Schwartz exclusives, I don't remember Toy Biz or Playmates doing them though, Playmates and TB had a few Kaybee exclusives in the larger-size figures. FAO exclusives were a big burden for collectors, I remember that, they were disgustingly overpriced on exclusives. Playmates' Trek line from what I'm seeing online never had an FAO exclusive.
-amazed at how sloppy "Voyager" was.
While doing a little research writing this post, I came across mentions of Kes, whom I had entirely forgotten about being on Voyager. The way they mishandled that character was atrocious, but the way the blundered her leaving and final return was mind-numbing.

Sparky Prime wrote:
The Maquis were being pursued and had spies planted in their ranks by the Federation, that was somewhat "enemy" to Voyager at the beginning of the series. They got over that shit way too quickly too.
I'd say more like rebels than enemies... The Maquis had been Federation citizens, many of which had attended Starfleet Academy.
Except that the Maquis had escalated from rebels protecting their homes to terrorists running raids on Federation facilities as they became more desperate. The Starfleet officers with them went from sympathizers to traitors by doing so.

Shockwave wrote:At least Voyager was sure as hell better than Enterprise.
On this, I can most heartily agree. Voyager was Trek by an inept committee without vision and without care, but Enterprise was studio garbage trying to cash in on the prequel craze, made by an even worse committee with only lip-service-interest in Trek's ideals and vision.
Also, went to the comic shop last night. I managed to scrape some money together and got most of the current IDW monthlys. But the reason I'm bringing this up here is because I also got a Star Trek figure. "Transmetal" Worf. For lack of a better description. It's Worf in the ritual Klingon attire but instead of silver, it's vaccum metalized chrome. And for only $3 I just couldn't pass it up.
Ha! Supernova Series! (The only other one in that series was Locutus, some "series") I commend that purchase.
And the card on this thing pretty much illustrates everything that's wrong with Trek collecting. The word "Exclusive" appears no less that three times on the packaging. All of the following words are on the front alone: Exclusive, limited edition, collector's edition. WTF? Seriously, if this thing is that rare, why did I just buy it for $4? This is single handedly what killed Trek for me. I just got sick of every damned piece having every one of those words associated with it. It reached a point where it was actually more of a rarity to find something that WASN'T exclusive, or limited edition, or collector's edition. It just didn't exist. Ok, I promise I'll shut up now. /rant.
Awesome! I didn't give a fart about exclusivity, just wanted the toys I wanted. And usually their production numbers were too high for anybody to give a shit about the number (Tapestry Picard excluded). Playmates is one of those toy manufacturers that clings to bad ideas for decades and yet still survives, I don't know how.
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See, that one's a camcorder, that one's a camera, that one's a phone, and they're doing "Speak no evil, See no evil, Hear no evil", get it?
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