Dominic wrote:Never got in to "Star Trek" toys, which is suprising considering how much I liked "Star Trek" in my teens and in to my early 20s.
Trek toys have always had a rocky history, not much product or too much product at once. The '90s figures from Playmates were the strongest outing, especially running concurrently with Galoob's Micro Machines entries, but even that was a relatively short era and really harsh to come in late on.
With the figures, I could never find iterations of characters that I liked. As much as I appreciated the fact that is was possible to get scene/episode specific variants of characters, if I missed "regular" Picard (or who ever) then I was out of luck. While that line has not aged well, at the time, those were some damned good toys. they were far and away better than Marvel figures at the time in terms of sculpt of individual figures and scope of the line. And, while the accessories were often mis-coloured, at least they were there (and could be customized) unlike other lines (*cough* Marvel) which often left out accessories in favour of inane crap that had nothing to do with the source material.
I do have to agree that Playmates was a little tight with main characters, I waited a decade to replace my season 2 Riker with season 3 Riker. Also, the quality of build was way better on Trek than Toy Biz's Marvel figures because the Marvel figures used hollow parts up until around '98 (you don't want to know how many early- to mid-'90s TB Marvel figures I had to toss out to move, it's not lawful to take them as donation anymore thanks to the stupid lead paint scare).
The majority of TNG accessories weren't painted, they were cast in a single color from the rainbow, it was so frustrating as a collector. Early phasers were painted silver on the handle and then had a beam painted orange coming out the front - I hacked them right off every time. But they were all welcome.
I never got in to the Micro Machine ships either, which was also suprising.
Third internet forum I ever joined was the official Galoob Buzz Board, after the Santa Monica PEN (not technically internet, more of a BBS prototype for the internet) and the official Babylon 5 forums. Micro Machines were my life for a decade or so, and when you experience those Trek and SW entries today they still hold up in paint and sculpt.
-always meant to get a transporter for customizing.
I am not sure the beat up one I had made the move, but if it did, you still want? I am not sure it has the door, which is somewhat important to the gimmick, but can be replaced with cardboard.
Shockwave wrote:Fortunately I didn't have to solder the phaser, the light just screws out of it and just snaps into place in the Warp Core. Then I took the light out of my type 1 phaser and moved it to the type II.
Nicely done! Th
Apparently I don't care if the type I lights up or not. Actually, I wouldn't mind trying to track down the Galoob type I at some point.
I never understood why both companies made the type 1 phaser, the one nicknamed the "cricket", so large that it was nearly the size of a type 2, so I never bought either one. I also never got the original Galoob season 1-2 remote control type 2 phaser, but I remember it was a pretty big seller for a while. I was surprised to learn a few years ago Playmates made a phaser rifle, I've been thinking about tracking one down ever since.
The playsets have definitely held up well over the years and my only real complaint with the figures was the v crotch. I used to have so much of the Playmates run. I had the full DS9 and TNG crews, the TOS set, all of the Transporter figures, the various aliens and recurring characters. And especially all of the role play stuff. I had the TOS phaser, tricorder, communicator, TNG Tricorder, Medical tricorder, First Contact phaser, Insurrection phaser, Type I and Type II TNG Phasers, Voyager, Enterprise D, TOS Enterprise, Romulan Warbird, TNG Shuttlecraft. I also had the full run of the 9" figures at one point, but sold a lot of stuff to BBTS when I moved out of my apartment several years ago.
Nice! Those Transporter figures were tough because a few were delayed and shifted to Target exclusives.
The V-crotch looked kinda bad when figures were sitting on the bridge, but it was worth it to have the crew on the bridge.
The Diamond figures I have WoK Kahn and Kirk and I had the WoK Enterprise and the Enterprise D. Man, that D was nice. I think it was the best representation of the ship that I've had.
Unless you had phaaat cash, it was, although Diamond did leave off the windows around the "neck" on the main one (they painted them on the All Good Things variant though, and promised to ship a sticker sheet for the rest of us, but didn't).
And using the magnet as the mechanism to separate the saucer? Brilliant. It really allowed them to incorporate the feature without sacraficing sculpt or detail.
Yeah, totally! And the saucer had its own lights, that was choice.
Man, I hated having to sell that. Y'know, until it went for three times what I paid for it, then I was little more ok with it.
I feel ya. For me it'd be tougher to get rid of my DST ships, they'd probably be among the very last things in my entire collection to go, but it is easy to say yes to that much cash when you really need it.
As for the Hallmark, I have the full run, with a few extras. My original series Enterprise is signed by the entire cast. The TNG Enterprise is still missing a few sigs, most notably Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes.
Damn, that's a hell of a collection. Hallmark collectors go nuts for that stuff too. Are your signed ornaments signed boxes or the actual ships?
BWprowl wrote:Man, reading that back-and-forth over in the comics thread has me wanting to watch through TNG. It's only like a hundred and seventy episodes, how hard could it be? (Please ignore that over the past year I've steamed through over 200 episodes of Kamen Rider, I probably could accomplish this TNG thing fairly easily.)
It's worth it unless you have an HDTV, then it's worth it but not as easy since it's not in HD until later this year. Now that I think about it, it's probably better to just wait until the HD episodes enter syndication this year, although with TOS it was a sloooooow process to wait and there's over twice as many episodes this time around. Still, totally worth doing.
Onslaught Six wrote:I like the new Trek movie. Am I a Godless heathen yet?
Nah, just another sucker.
Shockwave wrote:Onslaught Six wrote:I like the new Trek movie. Am I a Godless heathen yet?
No more than I. I've watched it on tv like 16 times in the last couple weeks. Between that and only having the Trek toys left in my collection is why I started watching TOS again.
2 suckers.
Would it be alright if we kept New Coke Trek talk to a minimum in this thread? The other Trek thread is already brimming with that talk, and it's such a different animal that I'd hate to have it overwhelm this thread as well.
Of all the Trek series, I think my faves have to be TNG, Voyager, DS9, TOS and I really didn't care for Enterprise.
-Will marathon TNG after I'm done with TOS. Does not have DS9 or Voyager.
Netflix and Amazon Prime both have DS9 and Voyager in full (they both have all of the Trek shows in full).
Remember that TNG is getting the HD remastering treatment starting this year.
For me, my favs are now: TOS, TNG, DS9. And then they aired and I watched Voyager and Enterprise, but they're not on my favs list.
Enterprise could have worked if they had lived up to the promise of the concept, but instead they made it a stereotypical cheap prequel AND a Voyager clone.
Sparky Prime wrote:I had the Bridge playset as a kid and Picard, Locutus, Data, Geordi and Westley figures for it. That thing was huge. I had a transforming 'All Good Things' Enterprise that switched between the present and future versions of the ship. The Enterprise E for both Insurrection and First Contact as well as the Borg Sphere and Phoenix. I believe I had two phasers one from the series and one from First Contact and a tricorder. And there were a few micro-playset things I had. The Enterprise D that the saucer opened up to show the bridge, ready room, ten forward and a brig. A commbadge that became a transporter room. And the Defiant that was just its bridge.
The transforming playsets were Innerspace, a line from Playmates that I totally avoided.
When Galoob was making TNG toys before Playmates, I had TNG Galileo shuttlecraft and all of the action figures made for it as well as a phaser.
Another line I didn't get into, but I am jealous that you had the Type 7 shuttlecraft - its packaging photo with the goofy gullwing doors up turned me off, I didn't realize it looked so accurate with them down.
I still have a lot of the Micro-Machines starships. I wish I could have gotten the last collectors set that had the Enterprise E and Voyager in it. Unfortunately I never saw it in stores. Also have a few commbadge pins and Christmas tree ornaments.
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, pins, I forgot that I have owned a number of pins as well! My pins include the very first licensed TNG commbadge pin (so very inaccurate and shiny), 4 solid rank pip pins, a small TNG-era United Federation of Planets emblem (it's oval shaped instead of the movies' circular version), the newer plastic electronic very accurate TNG commbadge pin, one of those unlicensed arrowhead pins with the touch-sensitive LED circuit panel inside, and there was a set of 4 magnetic badges that connected to electronic bases you wore under your clothes which made sounds and voices - TNG, DS9, Bajoran, and Klingon. I also customized one of the Playmates TNG figure stands into a magnetic commbadge because surprisingly those are the best-deco'ed and -sculpted commbadges around (cutting off the footpeg is the hardest part). I loved my pins, I even wore them to work occasionally. I think I'll wear the UFP one to Comic-Con this year!
Sparky Prime wrote:I feel so young all of a sudden... I was only about 3 when The Next Generation premiered.
Shockwave wrote:Still I think if a situation is broken down to kill or be killed I know which one I choose.
The way Star Trek presents humanity though, they look beyond that to defeat the 'no win scenario' as it were.
That's pretty young, I generally judge folks' age groups based on "before or after Ghostbusters", but that's WAY after.
There are no-win scenarios in Trek, but the idea of the entire race being killed, that's something foreign to Trek. It's part of what made Picard's choice so powerful.
Shockwave wrote:Sparky Prime wrote:I feel so young all of a sudden... I was only about 3 when The Next Generation premiered.
Shockwave wrote:Still I think if a situation is broken down to kill or be killed I know which one I choose.
The way Star Trek presents humanity though, they look beyond that to defeat the 'no win scenario' as it were.
As when the world was new? Sorry couldn't resist. Yeah, I'm old. Don't think I mentioned this in the Bday thread but I'm 37. Yep, that's right. I'm old enough to remember when there was only TOS.
Dammit. I can't really argue against the Kobayashi Maru now can I?
Heh, you and me both this year! Awesome quoting there.
I can argue with the Kobayashi Maru, because KIRK argued with it and won!
(Kinda didn't help during the end of WOK, but it was all smiles by the end of ST4 so fuckit.)
138 Scourge wrote:Sparky Prime wrote:I feel so young all of a sudden... I was only about 3 when The Next Generation premiered.
Hey. Hey junior. What have I told you about being on my lawn?
I'm a fogey, I was..eleven or twelve? When did TNG show up, anyway, '88? I loved the original show as a kid, but never got like, crazy into it. I did become a pretty big TNG fan after a friend literally forced me to watch it one night. Although, first episode I saw I decided that Tasha Yar was my favorite character on the show, so of course she was killed off later that episode. Dammit.
To be fair, once Denise Crosby said "I'm outtie!" they were more daring writing her character, but that has to suck getting into a regular cast member's character only to have her offed by a tar-monster.
Dom's told me more than once that DS9's really good. And I know I could watch it on Netflix anytime, or borrow my girlfriend's mom's DVD sets of it, but I just couldn't get into it back in the day and I don't think that I'm likely to change my mind now.
DS9 gets excellent if you don't mind the fact that it plays in the gray area between moral and immoral, and spends a long time in a protracted war, neither of which are what Trek was originally about.
Truthfully, I haven't even been able to watch TNG again recently. I'll try to watch an episode now and again but just can't get into it. Still like the characters and all, but just not into the show anymore. If I'm gonna watch Star Trek, I'll go with original series or with the new movie any day of the week.
Isn't that so funny? What originally felt so amazing now feels so dated, while TOS which felt so horribly dated for a while now is timeless. I suspect TNG will never age quite as well just from its '80s-ness, but I can still watch any episode if it's on when I'm flipping channels.
As for the Borg thing, I was gonna argue that not killing the lot of 'em was the way to go, if people went around genociding every invasive, marauding species when they first showed up, then white people would have been over with long ago. But we've gotten at least a little better, and surely a species that assimilates every other culture and technology is bound to learn and evolve eventually. But if planting the logic-bomb in Hugh's head would've just wiped out one cube, then...I dunno. One less cube to worry about, but if the Borg manage to learn from everything that kills one of 'em, then using that logic-bomb on a ship that's not even a present threat sort of negates a weapon they could use later.
Quoted for good points all around.
Which brings up a point: did they ever say for sure that the Borg are a species? Like, is there pure-blood Borg, or are they all assimilated from other races? I know they had Borg babies, but were they born on the ship, or stolen and assimilated from other species? If they were born on the ship, is the DNA of assimilated people incorporated into the Borg's genetic matrix?
I don't remember if there's anything definitively saying that there were originally folks who BECAME the Borg, that there was a singular original species, but I also doubt they bother stealing babies, the babies on the cube probably aren't representative of the original species, that they are genetically created test-tube babies.
Sparky Prime wrote:138 Scourge wrote:When did TNG show up, anyway, '88?
'87, according to Wiki.
I'm old, I knew it in my heart.
Dom's told me more than once that DS9's really good. And I know I could watch it on Netflix anytime, or borrow my girlfriend's mom's DVD sets of it, but I just couldn't get into it back in the day and I don't think that I'm likely to change my mind now.
I had a hard time getting into DS9 when it began myself but the later seasons really are very good. My advise would be to start with season 3. That's when I felt the show starting picking up.[/quote]IMO, you cannot define Bajor or Sisko without season 2. Season 1 is a little lost, but it's also kinda fun in a lighthearted way, and there's more Quark at his nastiest, and less Jake and Nog as angsty teens. I think season 1 is the right place to start for the foundation you get about Bajor if nothing else, and for giving a more complete arc to the Cardassians.
andersonh1 wrote:The last time I started a Voyager marathon, I started noting how many crew members die in an episode (if any), crew count (if given) how many torpedoes they use up, and how many shuttles are destroyed. I'm curious to see how many of each they go through. It's interesting to see just how consistent the internal continuity of the Trek series are. TOS was making it up as they went to begin with, so there are some oddities early on, while I think the Voyager writers just stopped caring after awhile.
No kidding, they just got so fast and loose with that stuff on Voyager, it was embarrassing to watch Janeway make some impassioned speech about their family and their limited materials and then they're just dropping torpedoes left and right, and everybody's getting shot.
Sparky Prime wrote:This is why I like ex-astris-scientia.org. In their "Investigations" section, they look into all sorts of issues the television series and movies have. It's just interesting to see some of the things they've noticed or point out.
Also the best articles about starship scales and inconsistencies and such. Great site.
Tigermegatron wrote:I think it's a huge insult to loyal star trek fans from decades ago to have everything they love be erased in this new star trek movie.
I'm sure Gene Roddenberry is rolling over in his grave. theirs no doubt they couldn't do this if gene roddenberry was still alive.
This is true, New Coke Trek definitely shit on everything that Roddenberry was trying to say about the future of humanity and about exploring both the universe and ourselves. I was disappointed that Majel Barrett Roddenberry had a part in the film, giving her tacit approval just before she passed away.
I didn't care for the 1980's star trek movie, either it was #5 or #6, that had uhurra & scottie as secret lovers. this made no sense because scottie was a old fat guy. while uhurra was always a young sexy women. my guess is the star trek writters at the time,noticed the guy who played scotties fathered children into his 70's,so this was to play off this factor. theirs no doubt in my mind had scottie not been doing these star trek movies,he wouldn't of had the large sums of cash to date/marry these young women & father children with them. the guy who played scottie was probably a sugar daddy in real life & got used for his money plain & simple,he must of found gold diggers who needed money & houses/stuff. most of these gold diggers were probably escorts,strippers,hookers,etc...
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, 1989.
And wow, just, wow to your whole "old fat guy couldn't get Uhura" thing. She's older in that film too (she's in her late 50s in the film, he's in his late 60s), and she's in decent shape but not as svelte as she was in TOS by a long stretch. And they've worked together for a long time. I thought it was cute, plus it gave Uhura something to do for once. James Doohan married a fan and had 3 children with her, they remained together until his passing in '05, she stayed with him through the painful ailments he suffered. Doohan served in WW2. leading men into battle at Normandy, flying planes, shot snipers, and even lost his finger during that war. If you want to shit on someone for being a playboy, try Roddenberry who cheated on his previous wife with Nichelle "Uhura" Nichols a few years before Trek and then with Majel Barrett (whom to his credit he left his wife for and married), but again, Roddenberry was also a war hero as well as a police officer and a civilian aviation hero stemming from a crash, and he also was an "old fat guy". I don't even want to know what in your past caused you to create this disturbing idea of people like Doohan.
I'm just not a fan of the way the Star trek writters & movies does things. they couldn't have data just die. they needed to cheapen his death by having another robot that looked like him take his place in case they felt the need to pump out another STNG movie or another series/comic/whatever...
Nothing about B4 or Nemesis in general was worth a damn, IMO, but it was blatantly obvious that they were trying to do Spock's death from a post-TNG perspective and had to cram in the hopeful part.
Spock/leondard nimoy,while I like the guys contribution to the TF 1986 & DOTM movie. the guy is a serious cry baby & needs some sort of mental help. leonard nimroy ruined a bunch of 1980's & 1990'S Star trek movies because he refused to do some trek movies. apparently getting paid cash isn't enough motivation for this guy. the man felt he was being overly harrassed by those involved with star trek.
Again, WTF? Nimoy did EVER Trek movie, and every TOS movie is pretty damned good, even the odd-numbered ones, even Shatner's movie (despite its significant and obvious flaws - those flaws were mainly studio promises ripped out from under him in terms of budget and what types of stories he could do, but his movie is also the most like TOS of the movies). Nimoy briefly toyed with the idea of not doing Trek while in pre-production for Star Trek 2, but before the film even finished shooting he and producer Harve Bennett had worked on Nimoy doing the next Trek film both returning as Spock and as director, and it turned out Nimoy was a great Trek director / producer / screenwriter. Seriously, you have some weird ideas about these people.
It's a well known & documented fact in star trek history & on-line. That leonard nimoy blamed the classics star trek series for the reason he couldn't find any acting jobs (other than star trek related stuff) affter the classic trek series ended on TV. Leonard claims he got type cast meaning,no one would hire him because he looked too much like spock & everyone thought viewers couldn't visualize him as another media character other than spock.
You mean like the 2 years he spent on Mission Impossible as The Great Paris, or the many shows and stage parts he got as well during that period?
Spock/Leonard Nimoy,Didn't want to do the 1st star trek movie called "the motion picture. it was a huge struggle for the star trek creators to get leonard nimory to do the first star trek movie. this is why spock appears in the 1st star trek movie half way thru the film. because it was extremly hard to get the man to sign up for the film. the creators couldn't wait any longer,so they filmed the first half of the 1st star trek movie without spock while they were waiting for him to agree to do the 1st movie.
That's not quite accurate, Nimoy didn't want to do the project when it was going to be a TV series, then they took that idea and transformed it during production into a TV movie, back to a show, and finally to a major motion picture. Spock appears in the film very early in the final film on Vulcan, his replacement is killed in a transporter accident (and the actor they got to play the new vulcan on the aborted TV show was cast in the film as the guy in charge of the space station swallowed by V'ger) and Spock shows up on the Enterprise right after its disastrous first jump to warp, which he fixes.
Shockwave wrote:Actually, that describes Walter Keonig better than it describes Leonard Nimoy. I could maaaaaaybe believe that about the first movie because Nimoy was trying to distance himself from the character because he wanted to do different things as an actor. In fact, he even wrote a book titled "I am Not Spock". Later he came to enjoy the association and even wrote another book called "I Am Spock". Personally, I would love to meet him again so I can ask if he is or is not Spock.
Anyway, yeah, I kinda kept going with the series. But I might start over tonight and write down some thoughts as I go along. Hm. If I ever have the G1 TF series on dvd again I might do the same for that. Might be quite amusing to see how many seeker drones are shown in the early episodes.
He wrote a lot of the background material for Spock during TOS, he helped broaden and create large portions of the character - that to me says he IS Spock, he was so heavily invested in making the character what it became that he had to have some personal connection to it. He is as much Spock as anybody could ever be, even over Roddenberry - who just merged his token alien character and his token second-in-command, logical woman character from the first pilot when the network said he couldn't have both.
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.
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.
Koenig is part of why Trek survived, he was the young Beatles-type character for the teen girls to get into during the second season (second of 3 seasons, not exactly "the later seasons" like there's 10 of them and he's only in 8 and 9), and he's also a Russian character on the bridge working hand in hand with the rest of them at a time when the US was fighting heavily in a cold war with Russia. Plus, Chekov is great in the films, except TMP and Generations (Generations isn't very good so it doesn't count here though). He matters to the franchise to me, not as much as Nimoy, but he matters.
Leonard nimroy... refusal to do particular TF movies like Generations.
Generations was awful, Nimoy was right for not doing it. And he was the second TOS castmember to do TNG, and it was an AAAAAWESOME TNG 2-parter as well (McCoy was the first, in the pilot; and Scotty was the last, in Relics).
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.
Ooookay, none of that is remotely true. ST6 was always meant to be the TOS crew sendoff, that's the point of the end of the film when the Enterprise flies into the sunset one last time and then is attacked by the actors' autographs. And ST7 was the hand-off from the TOS era to the TNG era, it was always meant to have Kirk end the TOS reign. Nimoy remained a powerful figure behind-the-scenes during those movies and the subsequent shows as well, and finally got in such a battle with Rick Berman that Berman had Nimoy locked out of the Paramount lot. So the idea that Nimoy was somehow holding up the works because of his refusal to be involved with Trek is ludicrous.
And then I realized I'm on the internet arguing about Trek for the 23rd year in a row!