Topic: George Lucas makes more changes to the StarWars films on BluRay

[NUMBERZero]

The captain was a horrible captain. He didn't inspire his people. He was an ass. It was a wonder how they ever survived anything. (I like that actor though)

[Scyphi]

Archer was okay (kind of an interesting blend of Picard and Kirk with his own twist to it) until the events at the end of season two turned him bitter, and then, yeah, he was totally unlikeable, because he just seemed to be mad at everything, so much so I truly wondered if that was going to get him in serious trouble and kicked out of Starfleet (but of course that never happened either).

Other than that, IHateHackers nailed it. The idea was to go back and try and show how Trek as we know it all got started, and I think that despite the show's various flaws, they nailed that much.

I fail to see how Porthos (the dog) was ruinous, as the dog was really just kind of there (like Picard's fish) and save very select episodes, never played a major role in the series.

Concurred on them killing off Tucker. Bad move, that was. In fact, that whole last episode was bad, and very half-baked. Baked BAD, in fact.

Though the tie-in with Next Gen in that episode was an okay idea (even though it didn't tie-in too well), and

the last minute

at the very end of the episode was, despite everything else, beautiful, and as it marked the last Trek production of any sort for a number of years until J.J. Abrams came along, remarkably fitting.

[Matthew]

Thank you so much for spoiling the ending -_-

[Scyphi]

Trust me, beyond what I described above, you weren't missing much. It was a lousy ending episode for the series. They didn't even try.

[TechPro]

I think I would have to agree, to a point.  The cast of the Enterprise crew didn't seem to be trying, but both Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis tried (sort of). Marina was just there to provide filler, but Frakes was trying (you could tell) but the script was weak and he was trying to breath a spark back into his acting (too much time behind camera instead of in front of it) while constrained to the TNG role he was re-visiting. ... He just doesn't look young enough anymore (too pasty and ... bulgy) and it just didn't work.  Just wasn't believable.

[Crash]

Problem was though that the technology was just the same even though ENT and TNG were hundreds of years apart.
Archer's enterprise had everything the TNG ships had by the end. It seemed problematic.
The dog had no place on the first ship, I didn't think. You didn't have Kirk with his dog or whatever. It would just never happen on a military-style vessel/organisation.

[Matthew]

Except that Starfleet is not, at this point, a military organization. Not really anyway. Besides, how can we really know what a "Starfleet" would be like in the future? Military codes of conduct evolve over time, just like anything else. 100 years ago, women serving actively in the military as anything but a nurse far from the battlefield was insanity. Maybe in 100 years the captain of the first warp-capable starship would be allowed to have a dog. I mean... Who's going to say no 1000 lightyears from home?

The technology is not identical. I don't think we ever saw grapplers or anything like that in TNG. They just had flashy lights that made things do stuff. And they never hesitated to use the transporters except in a few episodes where it was part of a specific storyline or character. is it similar? Sure, but it's not the same. And I think the point is more their attitude towards certain technologies than it is the actual technologies themselves.

[Crash]

Well, Gene Roddenberry's whole idea of Star Fleet was that it was a navy in space. Everything apart from Enterprise put that point across fairly well.
The original series and films make that a very major theme and even the start of Voyager holds very true to that before it diverges into stupid, repetitive and melodramatic plots about individual characters after 7of9 shows up.
When you watch Star Trek II, Saavik is always called "Mr Saavik", when she's clearly a Vulcan woman and that always causes confusion. It's not because she's a Vulcan or anything like that, it's just that it's old British Navy tradition.
Riker was introduced as First Officer in TNG (a new position that we hadn't seen on a starship previously) because that was an element of old Navy ships that Roddenberry wanted to bring in, where the Captain made the high-level decisions and the First Officer took pride in managing the basics; the ship and the crew.

The grappling hook was about the only exception I could think of when I was writing my previous post.
Everything else - particularly regarding weapons was the same. It was all just what we'd seen before; phase cannons and photonic torpedoes when it should have real missiles with vapour trails, railguns firing streams of tracer for point defence, plasma/laser cannons etc. They also wasted the opportunity to have a ship that didn't need to conform to what starships normally are supposed to look like (with a saucer and two warp engines). They could have escaped from all that but no, they stole the Akira Class from First Contact/DS9/Voyager and flipped it upside down.
And then! after all of that they turned around and criticised the Akira for being an "ugly bow-legged ship" after they'd completely ripped off the design. I have to say that as a Star Trek fan, that makes me genuinely furious that such disingenuous, backbiting people were allowed to take over Gene's TV legacy.

They had all that inspiration from 'real robot' animes where they have semi-realistic space battleships that they could have used to make the show's weapons more credible given the setting and completely different to what we'd seen before.
But of course we had to have the ships flying around firing different-coloured beams at eachother just like every other series of Star Trek. Infact they even managed to spare the expense of animating the shield bubbles because those conveniently didn't exist. The beams just struck the hulls, recording no visible damage to the ships.

Towards the end of the series they seemed to use the transporter for almost everything short of site-to-site transport. Didn't they even beam from one ship to another at warp speed in one episode? ; something that was nigh impossible even for Scotty. Don't quote me on that but I'm pretty sure Enterprise beamed someone to/from its sister ship at warp speed in one episode.

You're right, it wasn't the same but, I was expecting *much* more originality from the creators rather than just rehashing what we'd already seen.
They had such a massive leeway to do new things without breaking any continuity (because we know so little about that far back from the other series anyway) and yet they changed nothing where they would have been entitled to and changed everything where they weren't (by ruining continuity here and there).

[Scyphi]

Well, this is going to give me a lot to talk about...

Gene Roddenberry's whole idea of Star Fleet was that it was a navy in space. Everything apart from Enterprise put that point across fairly well.

I'll give you this one. After the original series, Trek slowly and gradually started to loose more and more of that original militaristic edge, and by the time Enterprise rolled around, it was pretty much gone, although it was already well on it's way to that point well before the series actually started. This is also partly why Abrams's reboot has appealed to me so much, because it brought back the militarism with a vengeance.

even the start of Voyager holds very true to that before it diverges into stupid, repetitive and melodramatic plots about individual characters after 7of9 shows up.

Don't go dissing Voyager on me here. Next to the original series, Voyager was probably the most trekkiest show out of all the others, and was an excellent sci-fi show to boot, that not only explored the alien, but also explored humanity's reactions to the alien (which is, and always has been, a major part of proper, powerful, science fiction). Furthermore, all the other Trek shows had their moments of character development, TNG especially. In fact, TNG in many ways was more melodramatic that Voyager.

Riker was introduced as First Officer in TNG (a new position that we hadn't seen on a starship previously)

Not true. Spock was established as the First Officer in TOS, he just also doubled as the chief science officer. This is partly because when Roddenberry first pitched Trek to studios, his initial version had female first officer, but the studios disliked the idea and asked him to leave that out, so Roddenberry no doubt gave the post to Spock, but also keeping the original science officer role he had been conceived with. The only things Riker really brought to Trek that was new was to be a first officer that served as ONLY the first officer, and got his own chair for it too. Beyond that, Riker didn't really bring anything new to that idea.

They also wasted the opportunity to have a ship that didn't need to conform to what starships normally are supposed to look like...

Except fans would've revolted if they didn't adhere to that trademark appearance, because that's one of the biggest things Trek is known for. Without it, it's not Star Trek. It's something else trying to pass itself off as Star Trek, and with that, then you'd REALLY have fans feeling betrayed. Furthermore, I think you're missing the whole point of the show with this line of thought. It wasn't that the show was meant to be a chance to break away from everything that is Trek, it was to show how everything we know as Trek today came into being, explaining how they came up with the ideas for this tech, why they needed them, and what they had to go through to develop it and/or use it, and their thoughts/issues about said technology.

And for the record, a lot of the technology wasn't that alike, especially in the first two to three seasons. And even when it was, it was severely underpowered to what would appear in later shows. Transporters had half the range, as well as far fewer failsafes, photonic torpedoes were under powered (and for the first two seasons, torpedoes were more literal missiles. In season three onward they were replaced with more iconic photon(ic) torpedoes) the phase cannons as well as their handheld phase pistol counterparts are much more limited in comparison to their 24th century brethren (phase pistols only have two settings (stun and kill) whereas in later centuries they have a whole slew including "disintegrate.") They didn't even have any kind of red alert for a season and a half. And all of the above was given a notable robust feel. The tech may still be the same iconic stuff Trek has always had, but there are still notable differences.

They had all that inspiration from 'real robot' animes where they have semi-realistic space battleships that they could have used to make the show's weapons more credible given the setting and completely different to what we'd seen before.

The day Star Trek takes ideas from animes is the day the franchise dies, put bluntly. That's a bad idea on so many levels, I don't even know where to start with it. And again, to do that would remove everything that makes it "Trek," and then what's the point?

In fact they even managed to spare the expense of animating the shield bubbles because those conveniently didn't exist. The beams just struck the hulls, recording no visible damage to the ships.

Another one I gotta give to you. That didn't really make much sense to me either. Well, the idea to try and and emphasize the time difference by excluding shields does, but not their eventual solution of "polarizing armor."

Towards the end of the series they seemed to use the transporter for almost everything short of site-to-site transport.

Towards the end of the series, fans were accusing the show of not being 'Trekkie' enough, so the producers worked to try and please them by scaling up the similarities to TOS-style trek several notches, so not total blame can be placed on the producers for that. I personally had mixed feelings about it, liking some of the stronger ties to established Trek, but also losing some of the show's original themes.

Didn't they even beam from one ship to another at warp speed in one episode? ; something that was nigh impossible even for Scotty. Don't quote me on that but I'm pretty sure Enterprise beamed someone to/from its sister ship at warp speed in one episode.

I looked this up. Found no reference whatsoever to such an event taking place in Enterprise. I think the episode you're referring to is an instance where the NX-01 and NX-02 physically dock with each other at what I believe were warp speeds in season four. Exactly why they did this though, I can't remember. Along the way, though, I learned that in Trek cannon, it is apparently possible to beam one off another ship at warp speeds so long as the speeds of both ships match. it is generally not an encouraged practice, though, because doing so at warp speeds runs the risk of distorting the matter stream and causing trouble for the subject being transported.

They had such a massive leeway to do new things without breaking any continuity

Not really. One of the biggest standing criticisms for Enterprise fans have is that it doesn't stay true to continuity enough. Most of this is rather little, technical, and sometimes even petty "errors," though (like the fact that they probably shouldn't have viewscreen technology in that time period), but this just proves how annoyingly picky the Trek fanbase can be about continuity.

Something which I could use as a springboard to tie in back with this thread's original topic about George Lucas and Star Wars, but I won't.

Point is that fans wouldn't have allowed the producers to have the leeway with continuity you speak of, or they wouldn't watch it.

You're right, it wasn't the same but, I was expecting *much* more originality from the creators rather than just rehashing what we'd already seen.

And to a certain degree I agree with this as well. The show always was lacking in some kind of hook that it needed to set it apart from the other Trek productions. The Temporal Cold War at times worked kind of well, but they didn't do enough with that until season three with the Xindi storyarc, and then it was going in entirely the wrong direction. Until then, it really did kind of feel like it was just more of the same-old, same-old, and nothing really, truly, new.

But on that point I mean the storytelling, not exactly the setting. The setting was good, but settings alone don't tell stories.

[Crash]

Riker was brought in because Roddenberry wanted a first officer. I'm not claiming that Riker's character brought anything to the show or that he was the first choice as the character to fill that slot. Roddenberry said himself on TV before he died that this was the case.
Spock wasn't a pure first officer with nothing else to do. He was the second in command but he was the science guy. He wasn't responsible for the ship's maintenance or for choosing landing parties etc. This was what Rodd wanted to inject.
I think you've got me a bit wrong there.

Voyager became disastrous shortly after 7 showed up because all the episodes about her became unbearable. They didn't develop seven's character. They were just melodrama and filler about her 'implants' always malfunctioning, lol.
After about a season or two it self-repaired though. I thought the finale was brilliant - better than a lot of 'trekkies' claim.
Voyager started out great and then went extremely variable in terms of quality and sense.

MASSES of things were cribbed from anime as early as Next Generation. Look at Rick Sternbach and the Mammal Engineering section of the Enterprise-D. Geordi says to Ferengi visitors in one episode "have you seen the whales yet". This is a direct theft (admitted by Sternbach) from GunBuster et al. Mammal Engineering is even described in the TNG Technical Manual in one chapter.
Weapons from manga were all recreated in exact detail as props for live action in Star Trek, seriously, because the designers lifted them wholesale.
I'm not saying that we take anime themes either. Just that the Japanese show us what a near-future space battleship would likely resemble. They could have learned so much from such wonderful, realistic, hard-sci-fi ship design but it was a wasted trick that they didn't.
So actually, it's not disastrous on many levels and it won't be the day it dies because it happened far, far more than people realise in TNG. It's subtle but it's *everywhere*.

There's not a lot I haven't read about phasers. I love phasers. They are the best sci-fi weapon of all time.
A TNG type-2 phaser has sixteen settings. The top nine are disrupt settings. Setting 7 is lethal. Setting one stuns for a few seconds only and can inflict neurological damage if used on someone repeatedly. I can read my TNG technical manual too, lol.
The visual effects for 'phasers' and torps were identical to post-TNG series, which was insanely lazy and non-creative. The jump from those conventional torpedoes to photonic torpedoes *within the series* was far too quick to be believable. It was the visual cues that were problematic. The fact that the phase pistol only stunned or killed without disrupt was a logical concession that didn't mitigate the above from an effects perspective.
Getting rid of the shields was fine and polarised hulls are underway in R/L in the form of plasma-reactive-armour for tanks but it just looked like a game without a particle or decal system. The ships pounded away at eachother without having any visible effect on eachother from an effects perspective.

I'm not talking about ripping away from Star Trek. I'm talking about making the show fitting to its supposed era. Star Trek was always supposed to be hard sci-fi to an extent. How is making the weapons fitting to the time taking away from the show? That's the only extent I wanted them to go to. I shoulda made that plainer.

I still think that the ship should have been a logical progression between the Phoenix ship from First Contact and Kirk's original Enterprise, which gives you an enormous leeway for creativity but they lifted a contemporary of the Enterprise-E and made it hideous.

I feel sympathy for the show for being criticised for not using the transporter and bending to stupid pressure.
The temporal cold-war made me feel as though the series was trying to cling in any way it could to the successes of the TNG-era shows by putting in a weak and spurious connection to that time period. That may be quite a bold claim I suppose.
None of the other series say that much about that era of Star Trek lore so it was sheer carelessness that brought them to conflicting with so many of the tidbits of info that were infact given.

I don't see why you couldn't have a viewscreen TBH. It's just a set of cameras on the outside and a big screen TV. It doesn't have to be as clever as TOS viewscreens to do 99.9% of what you want it to.

Another thing that annoyed me was that the only military streak on the ship was the weapons guy and they basically seemed to ridicule him every chance they got. It seemed as though they sort of implied that he was camp and effiminite, they made him devious (probably cos he was a British actor) against and overshadowed by the adolescent-natured captain, who went and sulked in his room and took his problems out on his crew at every opportunity.

[Matthew]

Gotta say that's the first time I've ever seen ANYTHING from japanese entertainment called realistic.

[Crash]

Haha, well, somehow they have a way, don't they...
If you watch Evangelion, the whole Tokyo3 city; train stations, railways, skyscrapers-and-all descends underground and are suspended from the ceiling of a gigantic, underground cavern and the buildings are replaced on the surface by huge barriers, walls, towers of missile launchers, machineguns, artillery and the like.
It's a completely ridiculous notion but when you watch it in Evangelion Rebuild - all you think is "oh my God, that's awesome". The silliness of it is completely ... out of your mind when you watch it because it's just so well done. The scale and detail and 'look' of the CGI is so incredible that you're just in awe. You don't even think about the concept.

With Macross, the Valkyrie is a Fighter plane. It flies in space and works underwater. It transforms into two types of robot in one and it can be expanded with extra equipment which it can keep attached while it transforms all the 3 ways. It's the most overcomplicated thing in the world, right? But watch the show and see if you truly feel that way about it afterwards.

Gundam is pretty tame in comparison. The ships and vehicles are mostly pretty hard-sci-fi stuff.

[Scyphi]

Riker was brought in because Roddenberry wanted a first officer etc...

If you watch the original pilot for Star Trek (TOS), "The Cage," the one that was rejected, you'll see that it already had a first officer that matched Riker's duties. So the idea was clearly there from the beginning, so I think it's more of a case of Roddenberry finally getting to enact upon an idea fully he hadn't gotten to enact upon in it's entirety until then. Beyond that, though, yeah, I think I misunderstood the first time, so apologies.

Voyager became disastrous shortly after 7 showed up blah blah blah...

Obviously we've got no hope of coming to an agreement here, because from my point of view, that's exactly when the show took off for me. So it might just be better to agree to disagree on this subject.

I thought the finale was brilliant - better than a lot of 'trekkies' claim.

Will agree with you on that, though. I though that was an immensely satisfactory finale for the series.

MASSES of things were cribbed from anime as early as Next Generation. Look at Rick Sternbach and the Mammal Engineering section of the Enterprise-D. Geordi says to Ferengi visitors in one episode "have you seen the whales yet". This is a direct theft (admitted by Sternbach) from GunBuster et al. Mammal Engineering is even described in the TNG Technical Manual in one chapter.

Ooh, the TNG Technical Manual...that's going to make things difficult here...

See, it's because one can argue relatively easily that it's not strictly canonical. There are a wide array of in-jokes and gags in there that aren't meant to be taken 100% seriously, not to mention the fact that some of things it describes are described in that book alone, and are never repeated anywhere else in other Trek productions, and are in fact times flat out ignored and changed, at times even in TNG itself no doubt. Like Mammal Engineering. Even I have to concede that, ripped from anime or not, it's a pretty cool idea, but despite that one very vague reference to it, nothing in Trek supports it's actual existence very well, particularly in later shows when they quite clearly have no such thing.

Please don't take that the wrong way, though. I'm just pointing out this is one of those areas that can be seen as...nebulous...to some, and those 'some' aren't going to see it as a valid argument.

As for Trek ripping ideas from anime, no matter how subtle, I stand by what I said before; it's a bad idea, particularly these days when people expect more realism and less convenient and meaningless technobabble, and I have yet to hear of any anime production that meets those standards.

Gotta say that's the first time I've ever seen ANYTHING from japanese entertainment called realistic.

Exactly why I think that statement is so full of win.

Of course, I must admit that I am more than a little bias in this area, as I have never looked upon animes very fondly. But point is that while TNG might have gotten away with it slightly, I'm willing to bet that is the most Trek will ever be able to get away with, and I doubt any future Trek production could match TNG's supposed "success" in that area. Furthermore, and this is probably just me, but those hints of anime in Trek feel alien to me, and not proper "Trek," and now that I think about it, explains a thing or two about TNG to me that has always bugged me (it definitely had it's moments, but admittedly it is not one of my favorite Trek shows). Not to say there's anything wrong with that, it's just not my cup of tea, and doesn't sit well with me.

The visual effects for 'phasers' and torps were identical to post-TNG series, which was insanely lazy and non-creative.

I suppose I can see where you're coming from with that. They probably could've done something to make them seem more...I don't know...backwards, or at least different to the TNG portrayals. Although admittedly, nothing immediately comes to mind that can do that other than obvious stuff like sticking with the original missile-like torpedoes, or changing the color of the phaser beams (which isn't that original an idea either).

The jump from those conventional torpedoes to photonic torpedoes *within the series* was far too quick to be believable.

Agreed wholeheartedly, and it was right about then that the show really started to go downhill for me.

Getting rid of the shields was fine and polarised hulls are underway in R/L in the form of plasma-reactive-armour for tanks but it just looked like a game without a particle or decal system.

As I said before, good idea, but their portrayal of it needed a lot of work.

I still think that the ship should have been a logical progression between the Phoenix ship from First Contact and Kirk's original Enterprise, which gives you an enormous leeway for creativity but they lifted a contemporary of the Enterprise-E and made it hideous.

Technically they show something like that in the intro, so I guess what you're supposed to get from that is that they already hit that point and passed it. At any rate, I have to give the NX-01's design some credit because unlike other Trek ships, it was relatively easy to figure out where everything was and why. Beyond that, I still stand by the fact that straying away too much from the saucer-shape and two-warp-nacelles would've only been asking for more crap from fans than they've already gotten.

The temporal cold-war made me feel as though the series was trying to cling in any way it could to the successes of the TNG-era shows by putting in a weak and spurious connection to that time period.

You're actually partly right. The producers original concept of the show didn't have anything like the Temporal Cold War, but the studio was convinced that the show wasn't going to work unless it had an added twist to it, so despite not really being very comfortable with the idea, the producers threw in the Temporal Cold War idea to please the studio. In the bonus material for the Enterprise DVDs, one even states that the whole idea of the Temporal Cold War probably should've been a whole different show of it's own, and not mixed up with Enterprise, a sentiment I completely agree with. The Temporal Cold War was undoubtedly a cool idea, but when you really get down to it, just didn't mesh well with Enterprise, and I'm frankly kind of amazed the producers were able to get the two to mesh as well as they did.

I don't see why you couldn't have a viewscreen TBH. It's just a set of cameras on the outside and a big screen TV. It doesn't have to be as clever as TOS viewscreens to do 99.9% of what you want it to.

Because in the TOS episode "Balance of Terror" (the same episode the Romulans are first introduced in), it is explicitly stated that at the time of the Earth-Romulan War (which the events of Enterprise precede) that there was no two-way visual communication on starships, meaning no viewscreens.

Personally, I'm with you, having the viewscreen anyway just makes perfect sense and the detail is trivial at best, but the point I was making with that is that there are a fair number of Trek fans (apparently enough to make a difference) that can't forgive the producers of Enterprise for little things like that.

Another thing that annoyed me was that the only military streak on the ship was the weapons guy and they basically seemed to ridicule him every chance they got.

Like I said, the militarism was all but gone by the time Enterprise rolled around, and it just continued that trend when what Trek desperately needed was to bring it back.

This is fun, I've gotten to sit and analyze Star Wars to death and now I'm doing the same for Star Trek What sci-fi franchise are we going to do next?

[VANGUARD]

  beats me, don't really do sci-fi.

[Crash]

Heheh, you liked Voyager because the borg woman with the huge front suddenly showed up, lol.

I can't think of anything in the Tech Manual for TNG that was contradicted. The whole mammal engineering was certainly supported in the show. I think the book may not be completely official but it was written by the people that made the show. So it might not be official but I don't see how it could be more authoritative.

Trust me though that there are tonnes of bits stolen from anime in TNG. Ships, weapons allsorts of things pilfered wholesale. And this was all I was after for Enterprise, where it would have made perfect sense to have seen combat more similar to ship battles from Gundam.

I'd forgotten about the first officer in TOS's Pilot episode. That was yet another role that Majel had.
The viewscreen thing is open to interpretation. Just because there wasn't duplex communication doesn't mean that it didn't exist. I always took it that the Romulans didn't want to chat.

It's interesting and I totally agree with you about the Temp. Cold War
I still think the criticism of their theft of the Akira class holes Enterprise below the waterline. Don't you think a ship like the Sulaco from Aliens with warp engines would have been better? It should have been huge with loads of support craft to compensate for the lack of transporters, rather than a smaller ship with only enough room for two tiny shuttles. It shoulda bristled with real-world weapons, firing swarms of missiles and clouds of bullets at the enemy.