General Star Trek thread

I didn’t have Scott’s manual, but I did have the extremely detailed Enterprise D Technical Manual.

The book contained a full set of A1 drafting sheets that are presented as if you’ve been given a Starfleet document straight from Utopia Planetia. Spent hours pouring over these, trying to find out where everything in the show was placed, and also discovering spaces like the huge saucer-wide Shuttle Bay 1, which would have been awesome to see, but likely too costly to make a set for (we do see it 2 twice in TNG, once as a model, and once again as a reuse of the regular shuttlebay set.)

I’m wondering if this is another issue that made it hard to like Discovery. In TOS, the Movies, TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT…we get enough of the ship / station to form a bond with it. It’s also a character in the show. But Discovery is a bit off…lots of stuff doesn’t seem right. The design is full of gaps and holes, but the interior shots do not seem to reflect this, the corridors are roomy and they seem to have space to waste. This is despite the Saucer Section having a large segment removed around the bridge module. We also never see Main Engineering which is an odd departure for a Trek show. Instead we see the «Spore Drive» room. Arguably DS9 never really showed us the reactor core of the station either, but when Defiant came we got an Engineering room there.

It’s a small thing I guess, but there were so many things off about USS Discovery that I only warmed to it breifly one-time in season 2, and then never again. Annoy cast and characters aside…if you don’t get the ship right it’s never going to be fun. Took me aaaages to get used to USS Voyager, and then in the end I think I only did out of habit.

Similarly, it’s easily my favourite and most listened to podcast. Star Trek or otherwise. Very entertaining, easy to listen to, good natured.

At the moment I’m listening to both Greatest Generation (covering classic Trek, Enterprise at the moment) and Greatest Trek (their sister-show covering new Trek, although actually TOS at the moment until new Trek comes back) each week as episodes are released, as well as listening to older episodes of Greatest Gen. just whenever I’ve got nothing else to put on. And also the bonus feed stuff and their ‘Wholesome’ Patreon podcast.

It’s all Ben & Adam all the time, for this guy who’s just a little bit embarrassed to be listening to so much Ben & Adam.

Had a rare free weekend and did a re-watch of TNG Series 1, my least watched season. It really does have some comical moments (not deliberate) but you can actually feel them trying to capture some of the camp brilliance of TOS and then as you move into Series 2, you can feel them drop that in favour of the modern, and truly excellent, show it became.

Definitely the same with me that it's my least 'watched to death' of any season. Found over the weekend that I had forgotten quite a few of the sub-plots so made for more interesting viewing. With the remaining 6 seasons, I could watch them in the background and still know exactly what's happening next.

I think, if forced to watch only one television series for the rest of my life, it would have to be TNG.

I’d argue along the lines of Jayroc that Conspiracy is actually a pretty classic episode. They manage a lot in this episode and for the very first time in Trek we get a pay-off of a thread they planted earlier in the series. The whole uneasy vibe of the episode is managed well, even starting early on with Picard’s meeting on Ditalix B with the Captains (and the especially unnerving Captain Rix). Plenty of Trek firsts too with the first time we see so many Captains together, the first time we see an alien Starfleet captain on a trek TV show, and the first time a Trek show returns to Earth specifically for a mission that didn’t involve time-travel to 1960’s America. It’s a great episode and together with The Neutral Zone it ended the Season pretty strong.

Season 2 feels like a very different show, but in a good way. There’s a real sense that space is dangerous in this Season.

• Picard nearly kills everyone to stop Nagelum.
• Picard kills everyone in a timeloop and nearly does it again with his creepy time-double.
• Galaxy Class ships can get viruses and kill everyone dramatically.
• People can get trapped in cheesy crime-novels and get stuck there to die of old age.
• Space viruses can make you die of old age…then your ship has to be quarantined before it gets torpedoed
• The F*cking Borg

Season 2 has this special vibe to it that I really enjoyed and works perfectly as a bridge between the Silly Season 1 and the pure gold Season 3.