# How did Trek Become Such a Phenomenon?



## Tequila Sunrise (Jul 16, 2013)

Does it play on some deep sense of optimism for the future of technology and culture? 'Cause Trek is more than a little silly in both regards.


Aside from faster-than-light travel and unlimited clean energy, the Federation utopia strains credulity at the very least. Apparently humanity has overcome its aggressive and expansionist impulses -- even though the Fed supposedly doesn't allow the genetic engineering that'd be required to remove such a genetically ingrained part of our survival instincts -- and now we just want to hug strange aliens.


(To be fair, some of them are pretty hott...but the others are usually ugly _and_ villainous.)


On a related note, why are the captains such a topic of debate? They all do absolutely idiotic things:


Kirk: Khan, the genetically engineering sociopath, attempts and nearly succeeds at taking the Enterprise by force. Kirk's reaction? "Instead of, I dunno...imprisoning or executing your dangerous and unrepentant ass, I'm going to drop you and your traitor girlfriend on the nearest habitable planet. Good luck!" _Really Kirk? I know you're a space cowboy, but that's just moronic. I hope Khan comes back and kills your best friend._


Janeway: Voyager encounters a planet with a humanoid culture in the very early stages of civilization. Two ferengis have already discovered the planet, and are posing as prophets of the local gods in order to take the natives for all they're worth. Janeway, in accordance with the Prime Directive, hatches a scheme to get the ferengis out without freaking out the natives, but of course things get messy. The natives end up deciding to burn both her and the ferengis at the stake, and she figures well, I'll just have Voyager beam us up and the natives will think we're all divine emissaries! _Are you ing kidding me, Janeway? You just created a precedent among these people for burning each other at the stake as a means of moral judgment that might last for EONS. You might very well have just steered this planet's people down the path of blind religious zealotry. I hope you're proud._


Archer: Humanity's first encounter with the klingons occurs when the Enterprise discovers a warbird with a debilitated crew sinking inexorably into a gas giant. After resuscitating the klingon crew, the klingon captain goes into battle mode: Despite being at the Enterprise's debt and mercy (his ship is still largely non-functional), the captain threatens to take the Enterprise by force. Archer's response? Finish rescuing the warbird from the gas giant, and then zoom away before the klingons can repair their weapons! All of this after the klingons have told him how proud they are of having pirated some less-fortunate alien ship before getting caught in the gas giant. _I could understand maybe taking the klingon captain prisoner, and then giving the crew the chance to show a little sense before leaving them to their fate. But rescuing a clearly aggressive and dangerous group of aliens for no other reason than, gee, maybe someday we'll all be friends or something...that's morally reprehensible in addition to being incredibly stupid._


Picard and Sisko: Nothing immediately comes to mind, but I'm sure they both did things equally idiotic during their respective multi-season reigns.


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## sabrinathecat (Jul 16, 2013)

It was also the right show for the right time. It wasn't like there was a lot of Sci-Fi at the time. Doctor Who was only running in England and her colonies, and mostly considered kiddie-fare. Lost in Space--cough cough. Wild Wild West? Star Wars wouldn't be released for another decade.
Here was a show where humans had stepped beyond petty racism, and was working to improve and explore.
Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelly formed a great acting team with well-balanced chemistry. Say what you want about Shatner, but he has shown that A: he can act, B: he has a sense of humor (even if he sometimes comes off as a self-absorbed Richard), C: he was working with a character written by others in an era of massive cardboard characters and Over The Top hams. None of the other shows developed anything like that chemisty combo. Closest was Voyager with Tuvok, Doctor, and 7ofTrippleD.
They may not be impressive now, but those model shots were very expensive.
Why transporters? Because the show didn't have the budget to have the shuttlecraft take off and land every single episode.

Stranding a group of criminals on a primal world where they have no hope of escape, on a world that would have been quarantined and off-limits to all traffic? Giving a chance at redemption is more civilized than killing. Plus it tied into the original Botany Bay penal colony: It was a historical reference.

Burning at the stake was already a part of their religion. Imagine if they'd checked the corpses and found the modern dental work! OK, that was one of many poor scripts.

Saving the klingons: sure, this ship is full of what we would consider criminal scum, but saving people from death is part of the ideals of the future. Maybe the Klingons would learn that they can't just bully everyone--that there is a better way. (Yeah, I know--they're Klingons. But maybe Archer was delusionaly optimistic). Enterprise was on a mission to promote good will and explore, not start/get involved in wars. What was offensive and stupid was changing the opening credits song from meh to folk-rock quasi-country.


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## Hand of Evil (Jul 16, 2013)

Going to answer just on the ST:OS - it was timing.  People wanted, no needed, what the show provided, a window to a better future than they were living in.  It sparked adventure and exploration in the viewer but it also took us away from what was going on in the real world at the time.  

Kirk and Khan, you are the good guy and you are out in the middle of nowhere, you don't kill, you give a fighting chance.  Yea, Kirk could have blown Khan out an air lock but you just did not do that stuff back then.


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## Kaodi (Jul 16, 2013)

I am becoming of the opinion that Star Trek needs a successor, not a reboot or a new series. They may have thought they were recreating the possibilities with the reboot, but I think what is really limiting to Star Trek nowadays is that because nothing like the Eugenics Wars has happened Star Trek has no vision of our _present_. And that is problematic.


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## sabrinathecat (Jul 16, 2013)

Kaodi said:


> I am becoming of the opinion that Star Trek needs a successor, not a reboot or a new series. They may have thought they were recreating the possibilities with the reboot, but I think what is really limiting to Star Trek nowadays is that because nothing like the Eugenics Wars has happened Star Trek has no vision of our _present_. And that is problematic.



Might I suggest Babylon5? Seems to have been pretty well grounded in out present.


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## Janx (Jul 16, 2013)

star trek was fun, and slightly educational.  The morality plays probably informed a good many of us on right and wrong and stuff.

the technology also inspired a good many of us.  Countless tech and science people cite Star Trek as an inspiration.

Sure, not all the stories and actions they took made sense from a modern sensibility.  But then, why doesn't Batman kill the Joker? Same reason Trek doesn't kill Khan and Archer rescues the Klingons.  Because they are trying to be better than taking the deadly option.

I'm a big fan of killing bad guys.  Dead bad guys don't strike back.  Ender's Game taught us that.  But I respect somebody taking the harder road to preserve life, albeit at higher risk.

I'm going to put forward that something is wrong with us and our society, that we don't see anything wrong with every Batman movie resulting in the death of the villain, compared to just about every Batman comic resulting in batman catching the bad guy and taking great pains to establish that Batman doesn't kill.

The same is true of Star Trek and its silly plots.  It'd be trivial for the Enterprise to kill every villain of the week.  The self-imposed constraints they try to follow are what we aspire to.  Aside from stupid writing where they try to avoid breaking the Prime Directive by breaking the Prime Directive.

Anyway, Star trek is great because I like it.  I prefer it over Star Wars.  I don't think of it as some example of Utopia.  Merely a future where we spend more time exploring and solving problems than struggling to screw each other over.

<mention>Kaodi</mention> asked where our present vision is, I suggest that's Firefly and BSG.  Those shows are great, but they wallow in our own bad behaviors.  I think DS9 was aimed to be the trek equivalent, but BSG in particular fine tuned that in a sci-fi show.

What Trek gave us was a setting where we COULD rise above our petty self-absorbed crap.  Being set in the future is the implication that we might not be there now, but we CAN get there.  A show with a modern setting like that would be viewed as hokey and unrealistic because the protagonists are self-absorbed like we are.  A show set in the future can acknowledge that we USED to be self-absorbed, but we got better.

I think Trek had enough flawed characters to show that this ideal hadn't been fully reached, but that the majority society was decent and not like the degenerates we percieve our current world to be comprised of.  A societal evolution still has its throwbacks.

Lastly, what Trek gave us is good memorable characters.  TOS got three seasons, and everybody knows who Kirk, Spock, Bones and Scotty is.  A fair number of people know who Picard is.  The other shows ramp down in "common knowledge" name recognition.  There are zillions of novels written in all the Trek series.  There's even a Eugenics Wars series.

Trek is popular because it got the formula right.


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## Umbran (Jul 16, 2013)

Tequila Sunrise said:


> Does it play on some deep sense of optimism for the future of technology and culture? 'Cause Trek is more than a little silly in both regards.




I will take a bit of an extreme analogy to illustrate a point:  Would you judge a Shakespearean play by how it fails to conform to what is considered reasonable in a 21st century police procedural show?  No, that would be silly.

You seem to be judging Trek on how it fails to be a modern, gritty-minded, supposedly-realistic show, as if it were an exact simulation or depiction of a possible future.  That's not what Trek primarily was, or ever has been.  Trek is more a modern take on a "morality play".  It is allegory, in which the characters meet personifications of various moral ideals that push them this way and that, in an effort to examine morality.  We stack some continuity and longer-term character development in part because that allows us to examine more nuanced positions, and in part because they make the show more "sticky".

Both your points against Kirk and Archer are based in a simple moral point - tactical considerations take a back seat to mercy.

I make no excuses for Janeway.

It became a big thing because, for all that there are plot holes and what seem to our sensibilities to be tactical or strategic errors, we still like morality plays.


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## Ahnehnois (Jul 16, 2013)

What scifi show (or story in any medium) doesn't strain credulity?

We had that scifi vs. fantasy thread a while back and to my mind it's still pretty clear that most of the stuff produced as genre fiction is not remotely plausible and is often lacking even in internal logic.

The biggest reason that Star Trek has been so successful, in my mind, is that it was so ideologically different than everything else at the time it started. Humanism. Optimism. The belief that people will ultimately do the right thing. How many television shows focus on people who are irreligious, free from all the ills of our society, and get along in perfect (or at least decent) harmony? To this day, not many.

And, of course, there's plenty of entertaining characters, intellectual plots, and fun special effects. At its best, it's just good television.

Of course, given the less than harmonious people behind the scenes, and the natural erosion of quality over time, plenty of stupid stuff has been produced under the Trek name as well. Bottom line: all the other TV franchises wish they had as many chances to fail as Trek has.


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## sabrinathecat (Jul 16, 2013)

Roddenbury had a great bit at a convention for how the christian bible would be received by network executives and the kind of feedback it would receive.
And there was an example of how no network/corporate mindset could ever capture what it was that made Trek great into a formula.
This is why Enterprise, Voyager, and Next Gen all ultimately failed to achieve the greatness of the original.


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## Kaodi (Jul 17, 2013)

When I said "present" I meant more "present era" . I should have made it more clear that I was including the near future. I would like to see a show that relates a positive idea of what we could do in the next thirty or fourty years. It does not have to take place during that time, but it does have to say something about it. I do not know if Babylon 5 is quite what I would be looking for in that regard. And while popular in its time, I do not think Babylon 5 really spawned a mainstream following. A new show needs to shoot again for a mainstream following.


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## Umbran (Jul 17, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> This is why Enterprise, Voyager, and Next Gen all ultimately failed to achieve the greatness of the original.




I think you have to work to argue that Next Gen didn't reach the greatness of the original. It was still Roddenberry's work, updated slightly for its era.  And it certainly wasn't influenced by the network mindset - Next Gen was syndicated.


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## trancejeremy (Jul 17, 2013)

The funny thing about the original Star Trek is that it's an extremely blatant copy of _Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea_.

The only major difference is cosmetic. You have a starship in space as opposed to a submarine, and a more multinational crew. But the same plotlines - mysteries, aliens, monsters, espsionage stuff (only not with Klingons or Romulans, but earthly countries)

And _T:NG _steals even more from that show. The split command structure, the separation ability.

But TOS was re-run a heck of a lot, while _Voyage_ wasn't.


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## Umbran (Jul 17, 2013)

trancejeremy said:


> The funny thing about the original Star Trek is that it's an extremely blatant copy of _Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea_.




Well, many of the writers for Voyage also did work on ToS, if I recall correctly.



> The only major difference is cosmetic. You have a starship in space as opposed to a submarine, and a more multinational crew. But the same plotlines - mysteries, aliens, monsters, espsionage stuff (only not with Klingons or Romulans, but earthly countries)




Yes.  But both Voyage and ToS were doing what loads of science fiction was doing at the time - it was the Cold War, for example, so that sort of episode would be topical.  



> And _T:NG _steals even more from that show. The split command structure, the separation ability.




The ship separation for Trek was put forth in the tech manuals for ToS, long before Next Gen.


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## sabrinathecat (Jul 17, 2013)

The big difference, though, was saucer separation was originally an emergency survival system--the saucer would be the lifeboat and could enter an atmosphere to land. But it took a starbase to reunite saucer and stardrive until the Galaxy class.
I disagree: TNG never reached the heights of ToS. And largely this is because it didn't have the trio of characters working off one another. Nothing even close. ToS had 2 really good movies, and two that were OK. TNG had 4 or 5 movies that were at best 'meh' attempts to copy Trek 2.


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## Jhaelen (Jul 17, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> I disagree: TNG never reached the heights of ToS.



I disagree with your disagreement. And pretty much all of the movies were disappointing compared to the TV show. Imho, TNG was definitely the highlight of the franchise.


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## MarkB (Jul 17, 2013)

Kaodi said:


> When I said "present" I meant more "present era" . I should have made it more clear that I was including the near future. I would like to see a show that relates a positive idea of what we could do in the next thirty or fourty years. It does not have to take place during that time, but it does have to say something about it. I do not know if Babylon 5 is quite what I would be looking for in that regard. And while popular in its time, I do not think Babylon 5 really spawned a mainstream following. A new show needs to shoot again for a mainstream following.




Looking at the shows that do gain mainstream popularity, I wonder if that's even possible at this point. The current break-out genre show is Game of Thrones, and that's a series which actively punishes characters who show any signs of conventional heroism.


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## Umbran (Jul 17, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> I disagree: TNG never reached the heights of ToS. And largely this is because it didn't have the trio of characters working off one another. Nothing even close.




I think that we cannot continue debating this one unless you define what you mean by "heights".  Heights of what?


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## ggroy (Jul 17, 2013)

Kaodi said:


> When I said "present" I meant more "present era" . I should have made it more clear that I was including the near future. I would like to see a show that relates a positive idea of what we could do in the next thirty or fourty years. It does not have to take place during that time, but it does have to say something about it.




Person of Interest

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_Interest_(TV_series)

(This show is probably more a "neutral" outlook on the future, than generally a "positive" outlook).


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## Kaodi (Jul 17, 2013)

MarkB said:


> Looking at the shows that do gain mainstream popularity, I wonder if that's even possible at this point. The current break-out genre show is Game of Thrones, and that's a series which actively punishes characters who show any signs of conventional heroism.




Maybe. But I am not sure that the success of one type of show necessarily precludes the success of a show that takes the opposite tack. I mean, ruthlessly murdering main characters is hardly the only reason Game of Thrones does well. In fact, if you look at the Red Wedding episode I think that that almost turned a lot of people off the show, judging from some reactions I saw.


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## Umbran (Jul 17, 2013)

Kaodi said:


> I would like to see a show that relates a positive idea of what we could do in the next thirty or fourty years.




You're unlikely to see one that makes it to the "mainstream" following you'd like to see.  Trek managed to make it work by jumping over current events of the time.  If you want to discuss what good we can do by 30 or 40 years from now, you have to address current problems - and that makes your show political.  Probably very political.


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## ggroy (Jul 17, 2013)

Umbran said:


> You're unlikely to see one that makes it to the "mainstream" following you'd like to see.  Trek managed to make it work by jumping over current events of the time.  If you want to discuss what good we can do by 30 or 40 years from now, you have to address current problems - and that makes your show political.  Probably very political.




One current sci-fi tv show which does this in a clever manner, is Continuum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_(TV_series)


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## sabrinathecat (Jul 17, 2013)

Heights of ToS would be the appeal of the Top Trio of Characters in solving the weekly morality play they were put into. TNG was way too much of the MiniVan generation to make the characters interesting to me. And every time they started to get somewhere interesting, they'd back away at warp speed--especially with 2-parters.

Person of Interest sounds like an update of The Equalizer. Could be good. Will have to see if Netflix has that.


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## Umbran (Jul 17, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Heights of ToS would be the appeal of the Top Trio of Characters in solving the weekly morality play they were put into. TNG was way too much of the MiniVan generation to make the characters interesting to me.




Okay, that's a pretty subjective measure of height.  Based on that sort of notion, I think you'll have quite an argument to get TNG fans to accept that their show wasn't a match for TOS. Because, you see, most of those fans of TNG are of the MiniVan generation, so they find the characters far more interesting than Kirk, who gets all the character development arc of a piece of granite


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## Tequila Sunrise (Jul 17, 2013)

Umbran said:


> I will take a bit of an extreme analogy to illustrate a point:  Would you judge a Shakespearean play by how it fails to conform to what is considered reasonable in a 21st century police procedural show?  No, that would be silly.



I'm not judging; I like Trek...in a lukewarm kind of way. I just don't grok its continuing popularity.

Nor why fans give free passes to some captains, but not others. But hey, c'est la vie.



Umbran said:


> It became a big thing because, for all that there are plot holes and what seem to our sensibilities to be tactical or strategic errors, we still like morality plays.



Trek as a series of morality plays -- that isn't meant to be internally consistent -- I can buy. It's not particularly appealing to me, but I can wrap my head around it.


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## Tequila Sunrise (Jul 17, 2013)

Jhaelen said:


> I disagree with your disagreement. And pretty much all of the movies were disappointing compared to the TV show. Imho, TNG was definitely the highlight of the franchise.



Oddly, I've had much more fun watching the Trek movies (that I've seen) than the shows.


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## Storminator (Jul 17, 2013)

Tequila Sunrise said:


> Trek as a series of morality plays -- that isn't meant to be internally consistent -- I can buy. It's not particularly appealing to me, but I can wrap my head around it.




ToS had a very consistent inconsistency. Every week the Federation was assumed to have solved all of human foibles except the one on display this week. It always isolated one failing and worked its morality play around it. Then next week, that one was solved again and a new failing cropped up.

PS


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## sabrinathecat (Jul 17, 2013)

TNG didn't really do character arcs either. After 7 years, Riker grew a beard, and Picard got to go on away missions. Warf changed shirts, and Troi started to wear a uniform instead of a unitard. The character with the most development was Wesley, the child genius everyone hated.
Kirk and crew only had 3 years, and were working against a network in the 60s.
ToS was a morality play of the week in an era of Westerns.
TNG was a suburban safety net of touchy-feely.
DS9 was crawling around fixing broken machinery.
Voy was a group of explorers whining about wanting to go home.
Ent was hit or miss with no consistency, trying very hard not to step on the future, then trying to create the future.


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## MarkB (Jul 18, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> DS9 was crawling around fixing broken machinery.




DS9 had plentiful character arcs and story arcs, the majority of which were carried off reasonably successfully. Despite its more 'static' location, it told stories with more far-reaching scope than any of the other series.


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## sabrinathecat (Jul 18, 2013)

So I heard. I was quoting a joke about season 1. I gave up after season 3.


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## Umbran (Jul 18, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> So I heard. I was quoting a joke about season 1. I gave up after season 3.




So, you missed more than half the series.  That latter half has a great deal of good stuff in it.  

But, anyway, you're allowed to have your opinions on the series - I just don't agree.  However, I've no desire to change your mind or argue about it with you.  I hope you find something you actually enjoy watching.


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## sabrinathecat (Jul 18, 2013)

Yeah, well... OK, short version: Because everyone was telling me that DS9 was as good (or nearly as good) as Babylon 5, I started to watch from the beginning. Bored 1/2 way through season 1. Asked trekkie friend "when does this get good?" He replied end of season 2. So watched last half of season 2. "So, when does this get good? Half way through season 3. OK. Watched season 3.
1 really good episode (W. Thomas Riker steals the Defiant)
2 good episodes.
Bunch of meh.
3 eps so bad I turned them off when the opening credits began
2 so horrible I'd rather volunteer for experimental bowel surgery than risk watching them again (Quark's klingon marriage, Quark deals with his mother's modern/foreign business practices)
So, when does this show get good?
Oh, season 4.
<Expletive> If it takes more than three years for your show to figure out what it is doing, your show is in serious trouble.
Babylon 5 was amazing from the get go with the pilot episode.


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## Umbran (Jul 18, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Yeah, well... OK, short version: Because everyone was telling me that DS9 was as good (or nearly as good) as Babylon 5, I started to watch from the beginning. Bored 1/2 way through season 1. Asked trekkie friend "when does this get good?"




It sounds like you needed to be rather more specific than "good" if you wanted to get real information before putting time to watching. 



> Babylon 5 was amazing from the get go with the pilot episode.




No, it really wasn't.  It was okay, but not amazing.  At least, I was not amazed.  The first season has long stretches of leaden acting, and a bunch of incidents of just poor writing.  Seasons 2 and 3 were both good.  Season 4 was, of course, rushed, and season 5 suffered because of it.  So, while the show overall was excellent, and is one of my genre favorites, it only had two seasons I'd say were really solid.  The rest were hit-and-miss.


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## Ahnehnois (Jul 18, 2013)

Also, as to why Trek is so popular: music. Star Wars may have a few of the really memorable themes in movie music history, but the overall body of music written for Star Trek is unparalleled. Good and bad movies alike have scores that have stood the test of time after decades, and there has been a recent trend in rereleasing complete score albums for Star Trek movies. The television shows are different, but their use of large-scale orchestral music sets them apart from many other shows that use annoying licensed pop songs or cheap minimalist stuff. The music is what pulls people into it emotionally.


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## sabrinathecat (Jul 19, 2013)

Compared with what else was available, B5's pilot was pretty spiffy. Remember, this was about season 4 or 5 of TNG, Time Trax, Sea Quest, and not much else.
"When does the story get good?" How about that question?
Yes, the soundtracks for the first 3 Trek movies (even the disco version for Trek3) are great. OK, TMP title is now tired after being reused for trek 5 and 7 years of TNG. Trek 2&3 also probably represents the pinnacle of James Horner's career (there's a reason he reused the themes and motifs in Aliens and Enemy at the Gates).


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## Ahnehnois (Jul 19, 2013)

DS9's "Golden Age" was really the fourth, fifth, and early sixth seasons.

The pilot for DS9 was actually quite good, but the rest of the first season was largely lousy knockoffs and crossovers that tried and failed to leverage the popularity of the existing canon. The second and third seasons were more original, but still uneven and sometimes lacking in direction and initiative. The show really got good when it embraced serialization and delved in to the politics of its world (and when the main creative staff stopped paying attention to it and let the DS9 writers and producers do their own thing). The result was a story that did leverage the existing Trek universe, but took it to new intellectual ground (which the other Trek spinoffs have largely failed to do). A lot of the better episodes are really astonishing at _predicting_ post-9/11 social issues, even though they were written in the 1990's. The journeys of all the dozens of side characters were involving. The war was thrilling; something I don't think any television show has ever duplicated.

However, to get DS9, you have to be steeped in Trek and watch a lot of mediocre episodes before you get there. Certainly, only the Star Trek name would allow a show years to find its footing. Because of this, it could only ever be a cult/niche show. But it is good.

As for B5, it may have been well written but the episodes I've seen just bored me. I imagine you'd have to watch it from the beginning, but even then their characters/actors just lacked charisma. I never saw the attraction.



> Yes, the soundtracks for the first 3 Trek movies (even the disco version for Trek3) are great. OK, TMP title is now tired after being reused for trek 5 and 7 years of TNG. Trek 2&3 also probably represents the pinnacle of James Horner's career (there's a reason he reused the themes and motifs in Aliens and Enemy at the Gates).



The original rendering of The Motion Picture theme is still the best. That's why that score has been rereleased repeatedly in increasingly special editions. And I am inclined to agree that, counterintuitively, James Horner's best work was on these early scores, rather than his famous ones later on. There is also plenty of excellent work done for the other Trek series. Goldsmith won an Emmy for the Voyager theme, and I still think DS9's is better. The score for the Next Generation episode Best of Both Worlds was released as its own album. The later Trek movies have plenty of gems (except for the reboots; their music sucks).

We would not still be talking about Star Trek if it weren't for those Goldsmith and Horner scores reaching out for and grabbing the hearts of those audiences.


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## Umbran (Jul 19, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> "When does the story get good?" How about that question?




I think that question may be attempting to forget our TV history a bit.

As I said upthread - Trek has always been first and foremost a series of morality plays.  Rather like an RPG, for the series as a whole, "the story" is only an emergent property, seen only in retrospect.  The Original Series and Next Gen were neither written with one united "the story".  TOS has no long-standing arc or character development to speak of.  Next Gen has a little of it, as writers created episodes that referred back to the canon they'd previously created.  

The genre was, at the time, dominated by anthology and episodic shows (like "Friday the 13th: The Series").  Babylon 5 brought one new thing to the table - a pre-designed arc plot.  This was what set B5 apart from all other major genre shows at the time.  Now, there's some argument as to whether or not the writers and producers for DS9 had always intended to do the same, but the fact of the matter is that B5 beat them to the punch, and was the first genre show to *have* "the story".  

So, if what you're looking for is B5-type story, you really need to look at stuff written and aired after B5 started.  DS9, being poised for it, was able to jump on it fairly quickly, but they couldnt' travel back in time and do it beforehand.

I, personally, don't find, "failed to be ahead of its time" to be much of a criticism.





Ahnehnois said:


> A lot of the better episodes are really astonishing at _predicting_ post-9/11 social issues, even though they were written in the 1990's.




Well, we forget about the world pre-9/11 somtimes. DS9 started in 1993.  The IRA was still an issue.  There was war in Bosnia.  Oklahoma City, the World Trade Center Bombing, and other terrorist actions were going on.


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## sabrinathecat (Jul 19, 2013)

The thing with DS9 was that when JMS was shopping B5 around, one of the places he went was paramount. Paramount turned him down. Then, when they found out WB was actually making his show, they panicked (the idea of another space franchise they didn't control? ack!!!). They took the notes from their meeting with him, and cranked out DS9. They even rushed production so their pilot would air a couple weeks earlier. From the get-go, _DS9_ was a B5 copy, or at least based on the same model.
Now, if you just try watching a couple random episodes of B5, it isn't going to work. You can step into DS9 and maybe get lucky. Or you can get Quark marrying into a Klingon family, or ordering his mother to take off her clothes.


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## billd91 (Jul 19, 2013)

Tequila Sunrise said:


> Trek as a series of morality plays -- that isn't meant to be internally consistent -- I can buy. It's not particularly appealing to me, but I can wrap my head around it.




I don't think it wasn't meant to be internally consistent, rather, that wasn't something they could easily achieve the way shows were planned out at the time. Stories for the season were more or less pitched and then farmed out to a variety of writers all at once. The writers didn't typically have very good cross contact and if one of them developed something new about a character or species, it typically couldn't be reacted to by other writers until the next season. A lot of the consistency would have to have come from writers who managed to work on more than one episode or story editors like DC Fontana.


----------



## Umbran (Jul 19, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> The thing with DS9 was that when JMS was shopping B5 around, one of the places he went was paramount....




Yes, that's the common story.  The counter to it is that Paramount already had ideas for DS9 in motion at the time JMS came to them.  It isn't like, "set a space show on a station" is an incredibly difficult idea to come up with.  I don't think we are ever going to know the real truth of the matter, and I don't think the speculation is of any value to viewers.


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## billd91 (Jul 19, 2013)

Umbran said:


> Yes, that's the common story.  The counter to it is that Paramount already had ideas for DS9 in motion at the time JMS came to them.  It isn't like, "set a space show on a station" is an incredibly difficult idea to come up with.  I don't think we are ever going to know the real truth of the matter, and I don't think the speculation is of any value to viewers.




And for that matter, Berman and Piller flatly deny even knowing about Straczynski's pitch to Paramount (Berman says he didn't even know who Straczynski was at the time). And even Straczynski backed off his claims that they had stolen his plotting ideas. I do think it entirely possible, however, that Straczynski's pitch could have made DS9 more likely. His rejected pitch in 1989 could have planted the idea in the powers that be at Paramount so that when another space station pitch cropped up with their own properties, they were more likely to accept it. It could have been because it was now less of an alien idea or it could have been because they knew someone out there was shopping the Bab5 idea around, may have found backing, and they wanted to make sure they had an answer to it. I'm not sure it entirely matters, at this point.


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## Janx (Jul 19, 2013)

Umbran said:


> Yes, that's the common story.  The counter to it is that Paramount already had ideas for DS9 in motion at the time JMS came to them.  It isn't like, "set a space show on a station" is an incredibly difficult idea to come up with.  I don't think we are ever going to know the real truth of the matter, and I don't think the speculation is of any value to viewers.





True enough.  Hollywoood seems to have a common pattern of 2 movies of the same general concept coming out at the same time.

This year has had 2 White House invasion films.  The End and The World's End are both post apocalyptic films.  The Illusionist and The Prestige were both films about magicians (coming out around the same time).  Pretty much every year, 2 different studios are making variations of the same idea (Dredd and The Tower).

What proves DS9 wasn't a deliberate clone to me was that the fiest 3 seasons were episodic where B5 was always serial.  Then DS9 switched to being serial (and the show got better by most people's opinion).  That switch is when DS9 raised its head, looked at what B5 was doing, and copied it.  Until that point, DS9 was being made in its own little idea bubble.

B5's serialness wasn't an original idea.  JMS has said in interviews, that he wanted to emulate the serial story telling that BBC shows did (I don't recall him naming anything, merely that it was an inspiration that series have a story arc to tell and then end).

What B5's contribution to American television was that nearly every TV show is now serial.  Events from a previous episode carry over to the next.  There's no great reset to status quo ending of every episode that lets you watch them in random order like we had in the 80's.


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## Alzrius (Jul 19, 2013)

Ahnehnois said:
			
		

> A lot of the better episodes are really astonishing at predicting post-9/11 social issues, even though they were written in the 1990's.




I remember watching the pilot episode for the short-lived _X-Files_ spin-off _The Lone Gunmen_ in March of 2001, with the plot being that the U.S. government was trying to fly a plane into the World Trade Center in New York so that it could be blamed on some tin-pot dictator, and ramp up the military-industrial complex in the ensuing American "retaliation" for the attack.

Talk about astonishing.


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## Umbran (Jul 19, 2013)

Janx said:


> B5's serialness wasn't an original idea.  JMS has said in interviews, that he wanted to emulate the serial story telling that BBC shows did (I don't recall him naming anything, merely that it was an inspiration that series have a story arc to tell and then end).




Serial stories have been around since the printing press was invented, so no, it wasn't a new idea.  It was, however, pretty much unheard of in American sci-fi television of the time.


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## Ahnehnois (Jul 19, 2013)

[MENTION=8461]Alzrius[/MENTION]
I watched that too and that one of the strangest but truest examples of TV precognition.

The DS9 episodes Homefront and Paradise Lost actually had an idea like that (government insider stages terrorist attack to induce Starfleet to give him wartime powers) but not nearly the literal similarity.

***

Regarding the B5/DS9 similarities, there probably was at least some stealing of ideas, but I doubt is was any more than that which is de rigeur throughout all creative fields. Shakespeare stole plot ideas too.

Bottom line is DS9 did it better. Better actors, better characters, better design, better effects, better music, and better TV overall.


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## NewJeffCT (Jul 19, 2013)

I watched all of DS9 and B5 when they were aired back in the dark ages.  I think I cared more for the main characters on DS9 more than I did on B5, but I think both were excellent shows at their peaks.  I'd even say that at its best, DS9 was the best Trek show.  However, I don't think DS9 had the overall consistency of TNG over its run on the air, which really took off after a mediocre season 1.   Both B5 and DS9 had longer lasting mediocre starts than TNG and weren't as consistent, IMHO.

In terms of movies, I still like Wrath of Khan best, but I also think First Contact was excellent.  I also liked The Voyage Home/Star Trek saves the whales because of some of the humor ("A double dumb ass on you" or Chekhov and his "nuclear wessels").  The other Trek movies, I think, were "meh" overall.  The reboot had made them more into action movies, so I'm not sure how I like them overall until we get the third part to the trilogy.


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## sabrinathecat (Jul 19, 2013)

Actually, that reminds me of something else: someone was wanting a scifi show more likely to happen in the next 30 years. There was a British show--I think it was something like "Space Island One"--that might come close. Granted, it was made about 15 years ago, so a little dated, but still good.


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## NewJeffCT (Jul 19, 2013)

Tequila Sunrise said:


> Kirk: Khan, the genetically engineering sociopath, attempts and nearly succeeds at taking the Enterprise by force. Kirk's reaction? "Instead of, I dunno...imprisoning or executing your dangerous and unrepentant ass, I'm going to drop you and your traitor girlfriend on the nearest habitable planet. Good luck!" _Really Kirk? I know you're a space cowboy, but that's just moronic. I hope Khan comes back and kills your best friend._




In regards to Khan being exiled, due to Furman v Georgia, the United States temporarily did not have an execution from 1967 through 1976, and most western nations still do not.  At the time, I'm sure the writers figured that the death penalty would not be around as a punishment in the future.  So, Kirk having Khan hung, phasered, gassed, lethally injected, electrocuted, etc would not have been in character at the time for either Kirk or the Federation.

As stated by many before me, I think the popularity of Star Trek was mostly due to timing.  It was a good show and the cast had a good chemistry together, and there was not a lot of far future science fiction on TV or the movies until Star Wars came long in 1977.  I remember the $6 million man, bionic woman, Space 1999, Wonder Woman and maybe one or two others, but none were set hundreds of years in the future like Star Trek until Star Wars (which was a "long time ago" of course) but is still technologically far beyond Space 1999 or the $6 Million Man...   so, young boys like me that were born in 1966 only really had Star Trek reruns and the Star Trek cartoon until Star Wars came out for that giant space battle scenario that so many little boys love.


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## Janx (Jul 19, 2013)

I think there's a simpler reason.

ST appealed to a broad number of people and that is why it is one of the most popular shows ever.

And most people do not hyper-scrutinize a TV show for errors, let alone a show they like.

It is a fruitless task to pick Star Trek apart for all its errors, inconsistencies, etc.  that's like pointing out the mole on the Prom queen after all the votes have been counted and re-counted.

Of course it has flaws.  Nothing in this world is flawless.  Once something has been found to appeal to a lot of people, any naysayers just sound like hypocritical whiners when we find out their preferred candidate also has a mole in the shape of Russia on her arse.


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## sabrinathecat (Jul 20, 2013)

Some copying of ideas? More than just a bit. Both have a warrior from an alien culture join the cast (Marcus Cole/Warf). Both have a lesbian scene the same week! (only difference was Ivonova/Talia was subtle, and JMS had had men holding hands with men and women holding hands with women in the background the whole time, on the theory that by 2258, the human race would have grown up a bit). Both had a unique ship with special advantages join the show in season 3 (first of the White Star fleet/Defiant). Both had a major female character recast/replaced (Ivanova for Lockley/the trill woman for another host). And that's off the top of my head.
And I disagree totally with the notion that DS9 did a better job. But there I think we are back to opinions, which are seldom logical, and highly subjective.

Yeah, timing. Some of us also had StarBlazers/Space Battleship Yamato dub.


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## ggroy (Jul 20, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Actually, that reminds me of something else: someone was wanting a scifi show more likely to happen in the next 30 years.




Another near-future show that comes to mind is Total Recall 2070.  (The show resembles more Blade Runner, than Total Recall).  It's like a police show with Blade Runner style androids, Total Recall style memory modifications, evil corporations resembling Tyrell or Rekall, etc ...


----------



## sabrinathecat (Jul 20, 2013)

Oh yeah. I liked that show. They did a pretty good job with crap budget. Best of all, they finally released it on DVD.


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## Umbran (Jul 20, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Both had a major female character recast/replaced (Ivanova for Lockley/the trill woman for another host).




This has NOTHING to do with stolen ideas.  Neither was planned.  The actresses left the show, which left gaps the writers had to fill.


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## sabrinathecat (Jul 20, 2013)

Yes. Unfortunately, Lockley was no Ivanova. More to the point, whatshername was no Claudia.


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## frankthedm (Jul 20, 2013)

Umbran said:


> If you want to discuss what good we can do by 30 or 40 years from now, you have to address current problems - and that makes your show political.



So was Star Trek. Specific ideologies were being pushed by the show. One only need look at the casting.


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## billd91 (Jul 20, 2013)

frankthedm said:


> One only need look at the casting.




Meaning?


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## sabrinathecat (Jul 20, 2013)

1966: interracial cast ("black", asian, russian, irish, scottish, "american" white, green-blooded half-breed alien, and Southerner)
Space hippies (only Spock, an alien, can understand them)
first interracial kiss
tribbles/rabbits
Anti-imperialism
Anti-communism
Anti-facism
non-interference (if only in lip-service)
Yeah, nothing at all political about TOS. /sarchasm


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## SkidAce (Jul 20, 2013)

Ahnehnois said:


> Bottom line is DS9 did it better. Better actors, better characters, better design, better effects, better music, and better TV overall.




I dispute your assertion Sir (throws glove down on the ground)

Pistols at dawn...


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## Ahnehnois (Jul 20, 2013)

SkidAce said:


> I dispute your assertion Sir (throws glove down on the ground)
> 
> Pistols at dawn...



Pistols? I'll just throw my DS9 DVD cases at you. Those things are quite substantial.

Not backing down off that one.


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## Janx (Jul 20, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Yes. Unfortunately, Lockley was no Ivanova. More to the point, whatshername was no Claudia.




Ivanova the character was fine.  According to legend, Claudia was a major primadonna to work with.


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## sabrinathecat (Jul 20, 2013)

Janx said:


> Ivanova the character was fine.  According to legend, Claudia was a major primadonna to work with.



Not as big a problem as Boxleitner's bratty kids though. They were terrors around the studio.


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## Umbran (Jul 20, 2013)

frankthedm said:


> So was Star Trek. Specific ideologies were being pushed by the show.




There is a difference between pushing an ideology as part of some fanciful distant future, and saying, "This specific policy, here and now, by your group, is wrongity-wrong, with wrong sauce."  Any show addressing how we do in the next 30-40 years will have to address the policies of today pretty directly.


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## billd91 (Jul 20, 2013)

Umbran said:


> There is a difference between pushing an ideology as part of some fanciful distant future, and saying, "This specific policy, here and now, by your group, is wrongity-wrong, with wrong sauce."  Any show addressing how we do in the next 30-40 years will have to address the policies of today pretty directly.




Isn't the one of the great things about science fiction? To address our current social ills by extrapolating them or their alternatives into some kind of distant future? Cold wars, proxy wars, racism, eugenics, all were big issues in the 1960s or shortly before and all were showcased on Star Trek, sometimes quietly, sometimes obliquely, and sometimes loudly and directly.


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## Umbran (Jul 20, 2013)

billd91 said:


> Isn't the one of the great things about science fiction? To address our current social ills by extrapolating them or their alternatives into some kind of distant future?




Yes.  TV sci-fi (Trek, especially) does make some commentary, but with plausible deniability by shifting to the future, thus making it allegory. But, please _remember the original context_ - we were talking about a show that didn't extrapolate to some distant future - we were talking about one that put some focus on the next 30 to 40 years.  This is not distant, and not allegorical.  This would not be the morality play commentary we normally see in TV science fiction, but would be direct critical commentary on actions of today.

In terms of controversy, that's a different kettle of fish.  What sign do we see that today's networks are willing to step up and make such statements?


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## Orius (Jul 21, 2013)

Star Trek just managed to do something right I guess



Janx said:


> What proves DS9 wasn't a deliberate clone to me was that the fiest 3 seasons were episodic where B5 was always serial.  Then DS9 switched to being serial (and the show got better by most people's opinion).  That switch is when DS9 raised its head, looked at what B5 was doing, and copied it.  Until that point, DS9 was being made in its own little idea bubble.




Producer changes I think need to be taken into account too.  Michael Pillar left the franchise around the midpoint of Season Three, and Ira Steven Behr took over as exec.  So it's possible they might have taken a cue from B5 and started digging into more serial episodes, but the writing staff on DS9 had a lot of fans of TOS and Trek in general, and they were interested in digging into the established universe rather than cranking out a new species every week.



Ahnehnois said:


> Bottom line is DS9 did it better. Better actors, better characters, better design, better effects, better music, and better TV overall.




Better budget....



sabrinathecat said:


> Some copying of ideas? More than just a bit. Both have a warrior from an alien culture join the cast (Marcus Cole/Warf). Both have a lesbian scene the same week! (only difference was Ivonova/Talia was subtle, and JMS had had men holding hands with men and women holding hands with women in the background the whole time, on the theory that by 2258, the human race would have grown up a bit). Both had a unique ship with special advantages join the show in season 3 (first of the White Star fleet/Defiant). Both had a major female character recast/replaced (Ivanova for Lockley/the trill woman for another host). And that's off the top of my head.




Some of these are likely coincidences.

Marcus and the White Star were probably part of JMS's long term arc from the start.  Worf was pretty much added as a ratings boost, and he wasn't a character from out of the blue, he was one of the most popular TNG characters.  The Defiant was added because there was at least a perception that viewers weren't really impressed by the runabouts, and because the ship gave them the freedom to do starship-based episodes.  The whole lesbian thing was just fashionable in Hollywood at the time, same week isn't surprisng, it's a sweeps stunt.

And like Umbran said, the Ivanova -> Lockley and Jadzia -> Ezri replacements had nothing to do with the shows' writing, it was because of career choices made by the actresses.  Claudia Christian left B5 because of a contract dispute with WB; they way I understand she was offered a movie role, but WB didn't want her doing the movie while she was still under contract for the show or something.  Terry Farrell was offered a role on the show Becker during the sixth season of DS9; I always assumed she took the role because DS9 was only going to have 1 more season.  Trek is well known as a career killer where actors get typecasted, and she was probably thinking of her career after the show ended.


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## Ahnehnois (Jul 21, 2013)

Orius said:


> Better budget....



No doubt.

To be fair, many of the creative staff of DS9 went on to do BSG, which is better than either show and did not have a big budget.


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## Umbran (Jul 21, 2013)

Ahnehnois said:


> No doubt.
> 
> To be fair, many of the creative staff of DS9 went on to do BSG, which is better than either show and did not have a big budget.




For understanding:

Babylon 5 is reported as having a budget of about $800,000 per episode.

DS9 had a bundget of about $1.6 million per episode.

Battlestar Galactica reportedly had a budget of about $1.5 million per episode.

That last is a double-edged sword.  There's a decade in between the shows, so inflation takes a chunk of that, but CGI has become massively better and more affordable in that decade.  So it is difficult to say how far the budget goes in each case.

As for BSG being "better", I don't know.  I couldn't finish watching BSG - it was so unrelentingly grim that I found it implausible and downright unpleasant to watch.  Now, for some that is better, but I dont' think we can call it universally so.


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## Ahnehnois (Jul 21, 2013)

Umbran said:


> For understanding:
> 
> Babylon 5 is reported as having a budget of about $800,000 per episode.
> 
> ...



Don't know where those figures come from, but assuming they're correct, BSG is still a lot cheaper than DS9, inflation-adjusted. And regardless of what they cost, I still think the bottom line is how enjoyable the show was. DS9 got more money because it had an established brand name and production and creative staff, many of whom came over from what was the #1 show on TV at the time. They earned that budget.

As to quality assessment, I think the "IMO" is implied, but you'll find plenty of critical opinions and review aggregators that support BSG. The point here is that the writers and other staff are legitimately good. They've gone on to numerous other worthwhile endeavors as well.


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## SkidAce (Jul 21, 2013)

Umbran said:


> As for BSG being "better", I don't know.  I couldn't finish watching BSG - it was so unrelentingly grim that I found it implausible and downright unpleasant to watch.  Now, for some that is better, but I dont' think we can call it universally so.




Truth...


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## Umbran (Jul 21, 2013)

Ahnehnois said:


> As to quality assessment, I think the "IMO" is implied, but you'll find plenty of critical opinions and review aggregators that support BSG.




That's nice.  Of course, those people are trying to sell you an opinion - it is what they do for a living.  I prefer to make my own.  I found BSG unwatchable and implausible in its grimness.  Aggregators be darned, if I can't stand watching the thing as enternatinment, it sure isn't as good to me.



> The point here is that the writers and other staff are legitimately good.




As opposed to being illegitimately good?  As if "good" was somehow objectively defined?  



> They've gone on to numerous other worthwhile endeavors as well.




That's true for both shows, so it isn't much of a differentiator.  I mean, Ronald Moore was producer on DS9 before he did Galactica!


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## Kaodi (Jul 21, 2013)

Would Homeland be more controversial if it were on a regular network rather than on Showtime? I am not sure how a show depicting how things turn out in a few decades could be more controversial than a show were an American "hero" is really a sleeper for "Al-Qaeda". I do not mean to dismiss your concerns completely but I think they may be overblown.


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## ggroy (Jul 21, 2013)

Ahnehnois said:


> As to quality assessment, I think the "IMO" is implied, but you'll find plenty of *critical opinions and review aggregators* that support BSG.




More generally, aggregator/critic ratings at best only tells me whether something is really really horrible.  Higher aggregator/critic ratings don't necessarily tell me that something is "good".

In the case of really really horrible stuff, aggregator/critic ratings don't tell me whether something fits into the "it's so bad that it's good" category.


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## The Shadow (Jul 21, 2013)

SkidAce said:


> I dispute your assertion Sir (throws glove down on the ground)
> 
> Pistols at dawn...




I'll be your second!  B5 certainly had its bad moments, but it blows DS9 out of the water.

And BSG?  Great acting, no question there... but terrible plotting.  If they'd had a JMS style arc planned out from the beginning, it would have been SO much better.  They were making everything up as they went along, and it shows.  Oh, does it ever show.


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## Tequila Sunrise (Jul 21, 2013)

I like how this thread has become BSG vs. DS9 vs. B5!



Umbran said:


> As for BSG being "better", I don't know.  I couldn't finish watching BSG - it was so unrelentingly grim that *I found it implausible* and downright unpleasant to watch.  Now, for some that is better, but I dont' think we can call it universally so.



I can totally understand most of your opinions of BSG, but what did you find particularly implausible about it?

...Other than the starships, the jump technology, and the androids, of course.


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## Ahnehnois (Jul 21, 2013)

Tequila Sunrise said:


> I like how this thread has become BSG vs. DS9 vs. B5!



No surprise there.

As to BSG, I think the so-called darkness is a natural product of the early 2000s zeitgeist. The late '80s and '90s did not produce a lot of dark shows, but post-9/11 fiction is different. Taken as a whole, the show has a lot of emotional colors, and the end is far less dark and gritty than the beginning was.


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## Umbran (Jul 22, 2013)

Kaodi said:


> Would Homeland be more controversial if it were on a regular network rather than on Showtime?




Probably.  I think that's on Showtime because no broadcast network would have it.  Remember that showtime is a subscription service, not advertising-driven,a nd that means it has different tolerances for some types of programming (and less for others).



Tequila Sunrise said:


> I can totally understand most of your opinions of BSG, but what did you find particularly implausible about it?




I thought I was clear - the grimness.  As in, after a season and a half, I could not understand why the people on these ships were not committing suicide in droves.

And, if you feel it is plausible, that's fine with me.  I don't really want to argue that point.  I found it *unpleasant*.  There are times in this word when we have to deal with unpleasant things, but my leisure time TV isn't one of them.


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## Tequila Sunrise (Jul 22, 2013)

Umbran said:


> I thought I was clear - the grimness.  As in, after a season and a half, I could not understand why the people on these ships were not committing suicide in droves.
> 
> And, if you feel it is plausible, that's fine with me.  I don't really want to argue that point.  I found it *unpleasant*.  There are times in this word when we have to deal with unpleasant things, but my leisure time TV isn't one of them.



Ah, okay. No, that wasn't clear to me. I guess I just take it for granted that most people will cling to life with their last bloody breath, thanks to that stubborn irrational ol' survival instinct. But then, the only time humanity was in extreme danger even vaguely comparable to that of BSG was the Ice Age, so I'm not going to argue the point either.

For what it's worth, there are suicides here and there in BSG -- the most memorable one was, tragically, in the second-to-last last episode.


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## Tequila Sunrise (Jul 22, 2013)

Ahnehnois said:


> No surprise there.
> 
> As to BSG, I think the so-called darkness is a natural product of the early 2000s zeitgeist. The late '80s and '90s did not produce a lot of dark shows, but post-9/11 fiction is different. Taken as a whole, the show has a lot of emotional colors, and the end is far less dark and gritty than the beginning was.



Indeed. BSG is actually the only scifi show that I ever recommend to non-scifi fans, prefaced by "It starts really dark and gritty, but it's great, and gets lighter as it goes on."

BSG is essentially an action soap opera with a scifi veneer.


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## ggroy (Jul 22, 2013)

Umbran said:


> Probably.  I think that's on Showtime because no broadcast network would have it.  Remember that showtime is a subscription service, not advertising-driven,a nd that means it has different tolerances for some types of programming (and less for others).




Wonder what made the show "24" palatable for network television (for 8 seasons on Fox), while Homeland isn't.  (ie. Besides the sex scenes and bad language in Homeland).


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## billd91 (Jul 22, 2013)

Tequila Sunrise said:


> Ah, okay. No, that wasn't clear to me. I guess I just take it for granted that most people will cling to life with their last bloody breath, thanks to that stubborn irrational ol' survival instinct. But then, the only time humanity was in extreme danger even vaguely comparable to that of BSG was the Ice Age, so I'm not going to argue the point either.




On a macro scale, perhaps the Ice Age was the last time humanity as a whole was somewhat threatened, but there are plenty of much more recent examples of communities living in incredibly grim circumstances for years without suicides in droves. I don't find enduring through grim realities implausible at all.


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## Umbran (Jul 22, 2013)

ggroy said:


> Wonder what made the show "24" palatable for network television (for 8 seasons on Fox), while Homeland isn't.




Didn't watch beyond the first season of 24.  In that season, it does not turn out that the hero was a sleeper agent for a terrorist organization.  That might have something to do with it.  

Not to mention that the sociopolitical climate was a tad different when 24 established itself.


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## sabrinathecat (Jul 22, 2013)

I found the BSG reboot to be... boring. Couldn't give a damn about what happened to any of the characters, and the pan-and-search camera swing to lock onto the vipers made me motion-sick. Gave it a fair chance, then quit. Maybe it got better eventually. Just like maybe DS9 got better during season 4. Don't know. Don't care.
Someone was reviewing DS9 episode by episode on another board I was watching. Made it 1/2 way through season 4 last I looked. Was keeping a running log on what DS9 and B5 had in common.
Why 24 is successful baffles me. Too many people being unbelievably stupid (and only 1 was actually punished for it), and too many coincidences. Managed 4 episodes before giving up on that.
I think the worst reboot I've seen in an effort to be topical was Hawaii 5-0. That show was practically screaming for the institution of a fascist state while trampling on civil liberties.
It seems to me that what most people call "Dramas" or "Soap-operas" are voyeuristic attempts to swim in social or society's sewage. Maybe it is just a sign of how out-of-touch I am, but I do not find those shows interesting or entertaining.


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## Jhaelen (Jul 22, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> I found the BSG reboot to be... boring.



Why am I not surprised?


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## Ahnehnois (Jul 22, 2013)

For all the DS9/B5 stuff, I think on a broader level the latter is one of many shows is derivative of Star Trek as a whole. It copied tropes popularized by Trek about spaceships and quasi-magical technology and conveniently useful "space anomalies" and rubber-headed aliens that act like caricatures of human races. There are a number of sci-fi shows that have a similar baseline, some of which are interesting riffs on it that have their own merits.

It would be nice to see sci-fi get out of that box more often though.


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## Janx (Jul 22, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Maybe it is just a sign of how out-of-touch I am, but I do not find those shows interesting or entertaining.




you don't tend to like anything the rest of us do.  And you constantly jump in to add you four cents to why you don't like what the rest of us do.

And sadly, the one show you do like, is just as guilty of doing dumb and bad things.

Please stop being a Debbie Downer.


----------



## Umbran (Jul 22, 2013)

Janx said:


> you don't tend to like anything the rest of us do.  And you constantly jump in to add you four cents to why you don't like what the rest of us do.




Yes, Janx.  It is called "having an opinion".  It's considered okay around here, and also okay to express opinions, so long as you're within the rules.  It is a discussion board, and you don't get a whole lot of discussion if things are reduced to, "Yeah, I think that's great too!"  If everyone liked the same things, the world would be a very boring place.  

However, there's a lot to be said for talking about the things you *like*, rather than the things you dislike.


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## Umbran (Jul 22, 2013)

Ahnehnois said:


> For all the DS9/B5 stuff, I think on a broader level the latter is one of many shows is derivative of Star Trek as a whole. It copied tropes popularized by Trek about spaceships and quasi-magical technology and conveniently useful "space anomalies" and rubber-headed aliens that act like caricatures of human races. There are a number of sci-fi shows that have a similar baseline, some of which are interesting riffs on it that have their own merits.
> 
> It would be nice to see sci-fi get out of that box more often though.




Well, it is difficult to get out of that box.  Let's look at some of those...

Rubber-headed aliens:  Even today, we are still limited by what can be portrayed by human actors.  CGI is good, and getting better, but is still too expensive to use for recurring characters on a TV show.

Spaceships:  Well, yeah.  How do you get humans an aliens mixing without them?

Aliens that act like humans:  There are two issues behind this trope.  1) You need characters to be accessible/understandable to human viewers.  2) We don't actually have any examples of alien mindsets that we can communicate with to use as examples.  Even the better hard sci-fi writers are rather limited in what they can usefully put forth in books, and that's to an audience that is more willing to explore such.

Pseudo-magical technology:  Real technology is boring, dirty, expensive, and inconvenient.  It doesn't generally do what viewers want to see in a science-fiction show - like, get you to interact with aliens, rubber-headed pseudo-humans or otherwise.   Sufficiently advanced technology, and all that.  To be honest, I'd rather see pseudo-magical technology than see them get real technology wrong.


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## Ahnehnois (Jul 22, 2013)

Umbran said:


> Rubber-headed aliens:  Even today, we are still limited by what can be portrayed by human actors.  CGI is good, and getting better, but is still too expensive to use for recurring characters on a TV show.



Science Fiction does not have to have aliens at all.



> Spaceships:  Well, yeah.  How do you get humans an aliens mixing without them?



Or spaceships (let alone faster than light travel).



> Pseudo-magical technology:  Real technology is boring, dirty, expensive, and inconvenient.  It doesn't generally do what viewers want to see in a science-fiction show - like, get you to interact with aliens, rubber-headed pseudo-humans or otherwise.   Sufficiently advanced technology, and all that.  To be honest, I'd rather see pseudo-magical technology than see them get real technology wrong.



I don't agree that realistic technology is boring. We live in the information age. Innovations are happening rapidly. Reasonable extrapolations are entirely possible.


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## Nagol (Jul 22, 2013)

Umbran said:


> <snip>
> 
> Rubber-headed aliens:  Even today, we are still limited by what can be portrayed by human actors.  CGI is good, and getting better, but is still too expensive to use for recurring characters on a TV show.




Although it had its share of rubber-headed/body-painted aliens, _Farscape_ also had alien main characters that were much less human -- Pilot and Rigel were puppets.  

It can be done, but there are costs involved both in basic operating cost and opportunity cost of restricting what actions the characters can take on screen.


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## Umbran (Jul 22, 2013)

Ahnehnois said:


> Science Fiction does not have to have aliens at all.
> 
> Or spaceships (let alone faster than light travel).




Quite true.  You can turn to Cyberpunk, or to some of the less dystopian works by Bruce Sterling as examples.  But note that even in those worlds, there's tech that's indistinguishable from magic.  

So, I do have to ask a question - is it "pseudo-magical technology" you mind, or is it specific kinds of pseudo-magical technology?  The rest of this assumes that it is *any* pseudo-magic that annoys you.  



> I don't agree that realistic technology is boring. We live in the information age. Innovations are happening rapidly. Reasonable extrapolations are entirely possible.




Oh, on that basis, I'd argue that the shows you're looking for already exist - the modern police procedural is a good example of a show that uses extrapolated access to information and analysis.  Leverage (which I find to be a fun, if somewhat campy show) also fits that bill.  And those are only a couple of examples.  Do you find the technology in those shows to be one of the interesting bits?  I don't.

And therein lies the key.  While in books, we may have pieces that are written for purposes of exploring an intellectual curiosity, for economic reasons modern TV and movies must also satisfy the viewer's need for escapism.  Real technology does not provide escape from the real world, because it is too real.  We recognize it too easily, and it does not make us think much.  While you can have a show with such technology in it, it will not be known for its tech.  It will instead be known for that which provides the escape - basically, it will seem to the viewer like it is in another genre.  Which is a perfectly acceptable thing to do, but it won't look like science fiction.  It'll look like a mystery, or a thriller, or a drama, or what have you, with slightly advanced technology.


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## Umbran (Jul 22, 2013)

Nagol said:


> Although it had its share of rubber-headed/body-painted aliens, _Farscape_ also had alien main characters that were much less human -- Pilot and Rigel were puppets.
> 
> It can be done, but there are costs involved both in basic operating cost and opportunity cost of restricting what actions the characters can take on screen.




Yep - as I said, we are still limited by what can be done by human actors.  Puppeteers included.


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## Nagol (Jul 22, 2013)

Umbran said:


> <snip>
> 
> And therein lies the key.  While in books, we may have pieces that are written for purposes of exploring an intellectual curiosity, for economic reasons modern TV and movies must also satisfy the viewer's need for escapism.  Real technology does not provide escape from the real world, because it is too real.  We recognize it too easily, and it does not make us think much.  While you can have a show with such technology in it, it will not be known for its tech.  It will instead be known for that which provides the escape - basically, it will seem to the viewer like it is in another genre.  Which is a perfectly acceptable thing to do, but it won't look like science fiction.  It'll look like a mystery, or a thriller, or a drama, or what have you, with slightly advanced technology.




_Person of Interest_ shows this concept quite well.  The baseline tech includes effective AI with almost unlimited surveillance capability, pattern detection and recoginition.  But, in effect, it is a basic "people outisde the law out to help others" show.


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## Kaodi (Jul 22, 2013)

Umbran said:


> Aliens that act like humans:  There are two issues behind this trope.  1) You need characters to be accessible/understandable to human viewers.  2) We don't actually have any examples of alien mindsets that we can communicate with to use as examples.  Even the better hard sci-fi writers are rather limited in what they can usefully put forth in books, and that's to an audience that is more willing to explore such.




Do you think it is plausible that there _would_ be advanced alien species with mindsets that we could at least understand the broad strokes of, given convergent evolution?


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## ggroy (Jul 22, 2013)

Nagol said:


> _Person of Interest_ shows this concept quite well.  The baseline tech includes effective AI with almost unlimited surveillance capability, pattern detection and recoginition. * But, in effect, it is a basic "people outisde the law out to help others" show.*




One could also go back several decades for previous precedents, such as the original "Knight Rider" from the early-mid 1980's.  (For example).

Instead of a baseline effective AI with unlimited surveillance capability in "Person of Interset", in the original "Knight Rider" it was a baseline effective AI with limited surveillance capability built into a Firebird Trans-AM car (KITT).

The roles of John Resse and Michael Knight were similar in some ways, while Harold Finch's role appears to be a combination of Devon Miles and Bonnie Barstow (or April Curtis).


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## frankthedm (Jul 22, 2013)

Umbran said:


> There is a difference between pushing an ideology as part of some fanciful distant future, and saying, "This specific policy, here and now, by your group, is wrongity-wrong, with wrong sauce."  Any show addressing how we do in the next 30-40 years will have to address the policies of today pretty directly.



I would argue for its time, the actions they took WERE very direct. Especially the casting choices.


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## sabrinathecat (Jul 22, 2013)

An argument could be made that both the CSI shows and Bones are sci-fi. DNA tests take days if not weeks, yet are almost always performed within hours. And the "Angelator" hologram projector is well beyond current technology, but plausible we would eventually have.
As for aliens all being so similar to humans: several shows have suggested that one race went and seeded other planets with their own DNA into the primordial ooze. TNG had one story about that, and Doctor Who (Big Finish 50) implied that and a great deal more done by Rassilon.
Sorry, just my $.06.


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## Nagol (Jul 22, 2013)

ggroy said:


> One could also go back several decades for previous precedents, such as the original "Knight Rider" from the early-mid 1980's.  (For example).
> 
> Instead of a baseline effective AI with unlimited surveillance capability in "Person of Interset", in the original "Knight Rider" it was a baseline effective AI with limited surveillance capability built into a Firebird Trans-AM car (KITT).
> 
> The roles of John Resse and Michael Knight were similar in some ways, while Harold Finch's role appears to be a combination of Devon Miles and Bonnie Barstow (or April Curtis).




I figure _Knight Rider_ spins off into pseudo-magic with the material that makes KITT (and his big brother KARR) indestructible.


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## ggroy (Jul 22, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> As for aliens all being so similar to humans: several shows have suggested that one race went and seeded other planets with their own DNA into the primordial ooze.




Especially the Stargate franchise.


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## Ahnehnois (Jul 22, 2013)

Umbran said:


> So, I do have to ask a question - is it "pseudo-magical technology" you mind, or is it specific kinds of pseudo-magical technology?  The rest of this assumes that it is *any* pseudo-magic that annoys you.



For the sake of argument, let's say any.



> Oh, on that basis, I'd argue that the shows you're looking for already exist - the modern police procedural is a good example of a show that uses extrapolated access to information and analysis.



Au contraire. Most procedurals, despite not being billed as science fiction, are littered with quasi-magical technology. Real forensic science takes a lot more time to get through, and is far more prone to bureaucratic holdups, budget cuts, and human error than any of the cops shows. Real medicine vs TV medicine, same difference. Extrapolate to your procedural of choice.

I point this out because there are exceptions. Part of the joy of watching The Wire is all the things they have to go through to set up their titular equipment, and how hilariously old and limited it is compared to audience expectations.

It's not impossible to do a sci-fi show in which faster than light travel is impossible and the science is otherwise realistic.



> for economic reasons modern TV and movies must also satisfy the viewer's need for escapism



I don't agree with that. Escapism isn't everything, and today's market for film and TV allows for all kinds of niches to be explored. Fantasy is of course never realistic, but if people are flocking to Game of Thrones I think a sci-fi show with similar tone could work.


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## ggroy (Jul 22, 2013)

^
What would be an example of an extremely realistic procedural show?


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## Umbran (Jul 22, 2013)

frankthedm said:


> I would argue for its time, the actions they took WERE very direct. Especially the casting choices.




There's only so far we can go under the board rules.  I'll just say that I feel the casting choices represented a general statement of human value, not a commentary on specific individual policies.  And it was still buried in an allegory.  

The difference is that between an implication and a direct explicit statement.


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## Janx (Jul 22, 2013)

Kaodi said:


> Do you think it is plausible that there _would_ be advanced alien species with mindsets that we could at least understand the broad strokes of, given convergent evolution?




This is actually a cool question that has nothing to do with what's wrong with a TV show.  I like it.

Let's assume we're talking aliens that use tools, have technology (space ships?) and not alien wild life.  We barely understand cats, why would we assume we could understand 3 legged galumphs of the mountain acid marshes of Xenos Prime?

So I'm envisioning an alien society (more than one alien), that built a ship, and is travelling in space, and our ship, the Enterprise encounters them.

Aside from the problem that I can't envision an alien mindset different from my own, what is the probability that an alien species could achieve all that AND not have some mindset traits in common with humans?

Humans need food, so do aliens
Humans try to reproduce, so do aliens
Humans use tools, so do aliens
Humans develop interstellar space ships, so do aliens

I have no doubt there will be cultural differences, we have that here on earth (Japanese or chinese music is based on a 5 note scale, as opposed to the 8 note octave that everybody else uses).  Clearly, some different ways of evolving in a subject for separate societies.

But I find it unlikely that the alien species would be incomprehensible to us. Psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists would probably study them and identify how they view things and what real earth cultures they are similar to in their beliefs and behaviors.


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## MarkB (Jul 22, 2013)

ggroy said:


> ^
> What would be an example of an extremely realistic procedural show?




I won't claim "extremely realistic", but _Castle_ manages to avoid playing fast-and-loose with forensics most of the time, doesn't use massive computer displays (except in one episode that did it for laughs), and avoids some of the sillier genre cliches - for instance, whilst the show is fond of the last-act villain confrontation, they don't rely on provoking a confession, but go in already possessing the evidence they need.


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## sabrinathecat (Jul 22, 2013)

ggroy said:


> ^
> What would be an example of an extremely realistic procedural show?




The SandBaggers
Original Hawaii 5-O.
Both are dated, and Sandbaggers is more espionage, but both were very realistic and groundbreaking for their time. (Supposedly several US agencies use Sandbaggers to break their agents of the illusion of becoming James Bond.)


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## Tequila Sunrise (Jul 22, 2013)

Janx said:


> So I'm envisioning an alien society (more than one alien), that built a ship, and is travelling in space, and our ship, the Enterprise encounters them.
> 
> Aside from the problem that I can't envision an alien mindset different from my own, what is the probability that an alien species could achieve all that AND not have some mindset traits in common with humans?
> 
> ...



Careful, you're getting dangerously close to critical thought. 

When we finally start communicating with real aliens, I think it'll be surprising to most of us how similar their motivations and mindsets are to ours. And I think the differences will appear in very unexpected aspects, like if we find out that they evolved from a rodent-like species so they have whiskers and tails which they lean on when standing upright. Or maybe their evolutionary path will have been similar to ours, except for different environmental nutrients, which resulted in anime-colored hair.

Should be very interesting for evolution theorizing!


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## Umbran (Jul 23, 2013)

Kaodi said:


> Do you think it is plausible that there _would_ be advanced alien species with mindsets that we could at least understand the broad strokes of, given convergent evolution?




Excellent question. And my answer is Yes.  Here's why:

The Universe is the same everywhere.  Same laws, same physical reality.  So, there must be some base similarities in there, as we are all dealing with the same physical universe.  If we are dealing with intelligent, space-faring civilizations, that implies a lot more - like understanding of higher mathematics and physics, for example.

Will there be cultural differences?  Sure.  Language differences?  Of course.  But, given that both species are dealing with the same universe, we start with a common ground, and can work from there.

In the canonical example of "we meet an alien species we don't understand" (_Ender's Game_), the author has to invoke aliens that use completely unknown physics not just for their technology, but for their most basic of communication between individuals, so that it is impossible to communicate, not based on cultural differences, but a physical barrier.


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## Jhaelen (Jul 23, 2013)

Well, my favorite explorations of encounters with truly 'alien' aliens are the novels by Stanislaw Lem. Apart from the well-known Solaris, there's Fiasko, the Invincible, etc. - all of them highly recommended.

Are they good material for a TV show, though? Probably not. (Although there actually exists a German TV show called 'Ijon Tichy' based on a recurring character from his more humoristic stories!)


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## sabrinathecat (Jul 23, 2013)

Aliens we can understand? Alan Dean Foster made a writing career out of various First Contact novels with different aliens, and what it took for those races and humans to be able to understand each other.


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## Janx (Jul 23, 2013)

Tequila Sunrise said:


> Careful, you're getting dangerously close to critical thought.
> 
> When we finally start communicating with real aliens, I think it'll be surprising to most of us how similar their motivations and mindsets are to ours. And I think the differences will appear in very unexpected aspects, like if we find out that they evolved from a rodent-like species so they have whiskers and tails which they lean on when standing upright. Or maybe their evolutionary path will have been similar to ours, except for different environmental nutrients, which resulted in anime-colored hair.
> 
> Should be very interesting for evolution theorizing!




Well, it's possible for a telekinetic pseudopod that communicates by smell.  they can use their mind to move things (like building a space ship and holding it together in space).  So they won't be used to us vibrating air around to communicate, and we're just going to think they stink.

But we can both probably point at things, which will allow us to start referring to objects and ourselves, which will probably get us somewhere in rudimentary communication.


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## Umbran (Jul 23, 2013)

Janx said:


> Well, it's possible for a telekinetic pseudopod that communicates by smell.  they can use their mind to move things (like building a space ship and holding it together in space).  So they won't be used to us vibrating air around to communicate, and we're just going to think they stink.




Except we already know of some species that communicate chemically - ants, for example.  So, when all else fails, we'll start checking that.

And, maybe they won't be used to vibrating air to communicate, but they are likely to be able to sense air vibrations (because whether or not they talk, knowing when a stinkless slug-eater is sneaking up on them is a good thing).

Remember, even someone who is deaf and blind from birth can figure out how to communicate, if given an option.


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## Tequila Sunrise (Jul 23, 2013)

Janx said:


> Well, it's possible for a telekinetic pseudopod that communicates by smell.  they can use their mind to move things (like building a space ship and holding it together in space).  So they won't be used to us vibrating air around to communicate, and we're just going to think they stink.
> 
> But we can both probably point at things, which will allow us to start referring to objects and ourselves, which will probably get us somewhere in rudimentary communication.



Quite the optimist, aren't you?

I imagine we'll be communicating with them via _very_ long distance radio waves before we ever get close enough to smell or hear each other.


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## Kaodi (Jul 23, 2013)

Yeah, I think that as long as the content of the communication is intelligible to us, figuring out how to give rough translation is inevitable, no matter how different their physical process of thought and "speech" is.


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## Janx (Jul 24, 2013)

Kaodi said:


> Yeah, I think that as long as the content of the communication is intelligible to us, figuring out how to give rough translation is inevitable, no matter how different their physical process of thought and "speech" is.




I suspect that if the alien is corporeal, able to percieve our reality then we probably have some things in common and can muddle our way through figuring out names and identifying some basic objects.  I'm certainly betting that once we misunderstand them and start a war with them, their "alien" mindset will not be so different that we can't fathom their strategy or they'll get themselves annihilated when they employ their unstoppable rear firing pillow cannons while waddling higgledy piggledy towards our moon, because they're mindset is so different they're morons with bad battle strategy.


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## Remus Lupin (Jul 24, 2013)

This last exchange reminds me of Thomas Nagel's philosophical essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"

Here's an excerpt:



> If anyone is inclined to deny that we can believe in the existence of facts like this whose exact nature we cannot possibly conceive, he should reflect that in contemplating the bats we are in much the same position that intelligent bats or Martians7 would occupy if they tried to form a conception of what it was like to be us. The structure of their own minds might make it impossible for them to succeed, but we know they would be wrong to conclude that there is not anything precise that it is like to be us: that only certain general types of mental state could be ascribed to us (perhaps perception and appetite would be concepts common to us both; perhaps not). We know they would be wrong to draw such a skeptical conclusion because we know what it is like to be us. And we know that while it includes an enormous amount of variation and complexity, and while we do not possess the vocabulary to describe it adequately, its subjective character is highly specific, and in some respects describable in terms that can be understood only by creatures like us. The fact that we cannot expect ever to accommodate in our language a detailed description of Martian or bat phenomenology should not lead us to dismiss as meaningless the claim that bats and Martians have experiences fully comparable in richness of detail to our own. It would be fine if someone were to develop concepts and a theory that enabled us to think about those things; but such an understanding may be permanently denied to us by the limits of our nature. And to deny the reality or logical significance of what we can never describe or understand is the crudest form of cognitive dissonance.


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## Janx (Jul 24, 2013)

Remus Lupin said:


> This last exchange reminds me of Thomas Nagel's philosophical essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"




Well, I'm sure we can't fully fathom what it is to be a bat or a martian. But by that same token, I can't fully fathom what it is to be you.  I'm not percieving the world from your containment vessel.

However, where the rubber meets the road is how mindset truly exhibits itself.  In a game of kill or be killed, there's only so many ways for the Gorn's mindset to interact with the environment.  Does he use stealth or direct attack?  Does he use the rock, or make gun powder out of the local elements.

A corporeal critter is going to approach the game of chess in a finite number of ways because the pieces only work a certain way (the rules of the game = the laws of reality).  Once observed, the playing style can be deduced, regardless of whether we can actually know their inner mindset.


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## Remus Lupin (Jul 24, 2013)

Nagel makes that point as well, about not really being able to inhabit another human beings subjective consciousness. It's that capacity to impute the possibility of consciousness to another being that allows us to imagine what it's like to be that kind of creature, and as relates to this discussion, allows for the possibility of communication.


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## Kaodi (Jul 24, 2013)

Oh, Thomas Nagel. Shame that he has kind of gone to crazy town in the last few years. I really appreciated his paper on what is acceptable to do to your enemies in war.


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## Remus Lupin (Jul 24, 2013)

Well, I suspect that any discussion of what it might mean to say he's gone to crazy town would violate the Eric's Grandma rule (PM me if you'd like), but this article is very fine.


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## Umbran (Jul 24, 2013)

Janx said:


> A corporeal critter is going to approach the game of chess in a finite number of ways because the pieces only work a certain way (the rules of the game = the laws of reality).  Once observed, the playing style can be deduced, regardless of whether we can actually know their inner mindset.




Moreover, "grokking in fullness" is not required for communication.  I don't need to be able to understand the entirety of what it is like to be a martian to be able to ask where the bathroom is, and get a useful answer.


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## Janx (Jul 24, 2013)

Umbran said:


> Moreover, "grokking in fullness" is not required for communication.  I don't need to be able to understand the entirety of what it is like to be a martian to be able to ask where the bathroom is, and get a useful answer.




That too.

I just can't see an alien with an alien mindset that values triangles so he plays Chess to make triangle shapes on the board.  His favorite piece is the Knight (because its movement forms a triangle).  He's going to get his butt handed to him when he faces anybody who knows what he's doing because the point of chess is to kill the enemy king, not make triangles.

As such, any alien race that has a mindset that values stupid things over doing the smart thing is an alien race that won't survive the natural predators on its planet, let alone getting off-world and making contact with other species.

Now somebody can chime in with some hippy "all alien cultures should be respected as they are", but that won't save the triangle-loving pseudo-pod people from the tri-legged Eatasaurus Rexes that keep eating them while they form their ritual Dance of the 3 Lines every day.

Just as some science dude insisted that no species would make it to space if they were hyper-warlike, no species that is absolutely lacking in tactics or common sense is going to be able to put 2 sticks together to eventually make a rocket ship either.

So super weird unimaginable alien mindsets may be possible, but it is not probable that they will make it to the StarFleet era of space exploration.  The environment shapes mindset, and at some point adversity comes in the same recurring themes, of which only so many viable solutions are likely.


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## Remus Lupin (Jul 24, 2013)

Hm. I'm not sure. What if at the end of the game you say: "Well, I won, because I took your King," while the alien says, "No, I won, because I clearly made more triangles than you. I don't even know why you messed with those little guys in the front rank, do you know how _hard_ it is to make a triangle with them?


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## Janx (Jul 24, 2013)

Remus Lupin said:


> Hm. I'm not sure. What if at the end of the game you say: "Well, I won, because I took your King," while the alien says, "No, I won, because I clearly made more triangles than you. I don't even know why you messed with those little guys in the front rank, do you know how _hard_ it is to make a triangle with them?




Good point, and I should have been more clear.  Chess is a metaphor for real life problem resolution.

if the aliens are focused on making triangles out of their ship formations, and I'm moving a chunk of my fleet to flank them around Uranus, they are gonna get reamed because their "alien mindset" is incompatible with surviving a hostile force that is doing smart things to kill them.

So, while somebody may literally be playing a different game within the rules and actual context of Chess, when it comes to doing real things, you either take actions to advance your situation and protect yourself or you lose ground and die.

Any alien race who can't puzzle out what to do when "they keep destroying our triangle formations and killing us" is doomed to extinction.  It's one thing to be initially puzzled that the other race does things differently than you (why are their gun ports open, that's a hostile act!).  It's whole 'nother thing to be incompentent in the art of war because of your alien mindset.  

At some point, those alien dudes gotta have a brain that figures out "I don't think they're playing but the same rules of who can make a bigger triangle for conflict resolution.  We need to combat them differently by killing them with our poisonous venom spray instead"


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## Umbran (Jul 24, 2013)

Remus Lupin said:


> Hm. I'm not sure. What if at the end of the game you say: "Well, I won, because I took your King," while the alien says, "No, I won, because I clearly made more triangles than you. I don't even know why you messed with those little guys in the front rank, do you know how _hard_ it is to make a triangle with them?




That's not a question of mindset, though, but a question of understanding the stated rules of the game.  If they fail to comprehend the logic that completely, they wouldn't be moving the pieces in the prescribed manners in the first place.

Though, the triangles example is a little glib.  We could run into difficult to understand mindsets that are not so logically simplistic.


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## Janx (Jul 24, 2013)

Umbran said:


> That's not a question of mindset, though, but a question of understanding the stated rules of the game.  If they fail to comprehend the logic that completely, they wouldn't be moving the pieces in the prescribed manners in the first place.
> 
> Though, the triangles example is a little glib.  We could run into difficult to understand mindsets that are not so logically simplistic.




That's certainly true that the triangle obsession is a silly example.  Chalk it up to my limited brain being unable to invent an alien mindset and trying to be funny.

here in the real world, the closest we have is different human cultures.  The natives of the island that became New York City traded it for some beads.  They had some seriously different views on land and ownership.  That mindset cost the indigenous people of both American continents in that they did not exploit the land, expand scientific and technological advances.  As a result, though having land that had vast resources, they were ill prepared for first contact with Europeans.

Somehow, Europeans had better germs than the natives, and the natives got sick.  At best, they gave Europe some STDs in return.  Trade-wise, they got the short end of the stick more often than not (trading land for beads? WTF!).  Militarily, they had good tactics (the art of war is pretty much the same, regardless of weapons), but being constrained to cave man technology where europeans had better equipment was a good setback.

I would posit that by the time a Federation of Planets would form, the only remaining species are folks that kind of think the same way.  Species that value nature, don't tend to mine and build pollution generating rockets to space.  if they had, and by some fluke had no hostile experiences on their own planet, first contact with the Klingons would beat that out of them.

I suspect, in ST tradition (getting us slightly back on traffic), where the Klingons and Romulans were ST's bullies, the humans were just as prone to violence, but happened to think bullying is wrong, so Earth formed the Federation, recruited all the wussy races (like our triangle loving friends) and flew around beating up bullies and returning their lunch money.

So for wussy mindset aliens to survive the harshness of space, they need Team Starfleet - Space Police to keep the peace.

I'd wonder if there's some psychological profile that indicates someone with bullying tendencies could redirect that to law enforcement in order to avoid "being the bad guy."  Dexter being the most extreme example (psychopath who redirects his urges onto criminals).  Anecdotally, I know police who say that's exactly why many cops join the force.  They think like bad guys, but don't want to get in trouble.

So, StarFleet in ST could merely be a redirection of human violence-tendency to a good cause (beating up bad guys).


----------



## Richards (Jul 25, 2013)

All I know is, you don't go bringing a triangle to a quadrilateral fight.

Johnathan


----------



## MarkB (Jul 25, 2013)

Janx said:


> That's certainly true that the triangle obsession is a silly example.  Chalk it up to my limited brain being unable to invent an alien mindset and trying to be funny.
> 
> here in the real world, the closest we have is different human cultures.  The natives of the island that became New York City traded it for some beads.  They had some seriously different views on land and ownership.  That mindset cost the indigenous people of both American continents in that they did not exploit the land, expand scientific and technological advances.  As a result, though having land that had vast resources, they were ill prepared for first contact with Europeans.




But then again, to them their ways seemed perfectly logical and sensible, and until the Europeans arrived they had no reason to think beyond those constraints or even consider them to be constraints.

Isn't it just as likely that we are operating under similarly universally-held, never-questioned assumptions, and will be similarly utterly unprepared to deal with the wider realities we'd be exposed to by a truly alien spacefaring species?


----------



## Janx (Jul 25, 2013)

MarkB said:


> But then again, to them their ways seemed perfectly logical and sensible, and until the Europeans arrived they had no reason to think beyond those constraints or even consider them to be constraints.
> 
> Isn't it just as likely that we are operating under similarly universally-held, never-questioned assumptions, and will be similarly utterly unprepared to deal with the wider realities we'd be exposed to by a truly alien spacefaring species?




That's certainly true.  our allegedly more conquerful culture may suck totally at space conquest.  I suspect our culture of continual advancement is better suited to it than the ones we took out.  But that doesn't mean they're the best.


----------



## Umbran (Jul 25, 2013)

MarkB said:


> But then again, to them their ways seemed perfectly logical and sensible, and until the Europeans arrived they had no reason to think beyond those constraints or even consider them to be constraints.




Um... those "constraints" are somewhat mythical.  I think they're a remnant of the "manifest destiny" nonsense.  More recent research gives us a different perspective.  

Let us consider, first off, that "sale of Manhattan for beads" bit.  That entire story comes from one document - a letter written by a Dutch trader.  We should note that the letter does not mention who they bought the land *from* - like, we don't know if the Dutch identified that the person they were buying from had any authority to make deals!  In all probability, while the Dutch thought they'd bought the land, the Natives felt they'd made payment to be recognized as having a right to stick around.  Note that the deal itself didn't actually impact things from that point on - it isn't like the Dutch used their "ownership" to evict the natives. 

Note that the concept of "I own this land, and therefore get to exploit it" only helps you if your ownership rights are recognized and respected by others - you need others to recognize and honor your ownership.  Given how frequently Europeans broke agreements, contracts, and treaties when they became inconvenient, I don't see how having the European mindset would have helped.  The natives would have gotten pushed aside even if the Dutch hadn't "bought" the land.

And, the assertion that Native Americans "did not exploit the land, expand scientific and technological advances," is likewise inaccurate.  I'm sorry, but it shows an ignorance of how Europe got its technological advances - by having the luck to be able to build on the advances of Mesopotamia, the Persians, Greece, and China.  It shows an ignorance of how great an impact horses had on European and Asian advancement.  It shows a lack of understanding of the massive agricultural workings of the Central American empires (Not exploiting the land?  Ha!), and that many of our current agricultural products are based on strains originally bred by the Native Americans - corn, potato, tomato, bell pepper, chili pepper, vanilla, tobacco, beans, pumpkin, cassava root, avocado, peanut, pecan , cashew, pineapple, blueberry.  It misses how North American settlers remarked on finding entire forests of fruit and nut trees set up as orchards (which, of course, they cut down and cleared).  It misses how quickly Native Americans adopted and mastered horses.  It also misses how much math you have to know to create something as accurate as the Mayan calendar.  And those are only the big colorful examples that pop to mind.

Basically, the whole "Native Americans didn't have the mindset for advancement" is a myth (and a kind of racist one, I'm afraid to say), based on ignorance of what was going on in the Americas, and of how lucky (dare I say privileged?) the Europeans were.  Europeans were not special in their mindset, but were special in their location and situation.



> Isn't it just as likely that we are operating under similarly universally-held, never-questioned assumptions, and will be similarly utterly unprepared to deal with the wider realities we'd be exposed to by a truly alien spacefaring species?




Given how persistent things like Janx's assessment of indigenous people seems to be, even despite evidence and research to the contrary, I'd say that's an ironic "yes!"


----------



## Janx (Jul 25, 2013)

Umbran said:


> Given how persistent things like Janx's assessment of indigenous people seems to be, even despite evidence and research to the contrary, I'd say that's an ironic "yes!"




I actually already admitted that, but thanks.

You clearly have lots of great info on all the natives accomplishments.  I certainly wasn't clear that just because the Europeans were great at betraying and taking over 2 entire continents, that doesn't mean the natives were inferior.  They merely weren't well suited to resisting the Europeans.  Given the time they had left alone before Columbus showed up, they had plenty of time to invent everything the folks in Africa, Europe/Asia had.  Perhaps, living in the land of plenty didn't ferment a culture of necessity to drive the same tech innovations.

What we do see out of this, is that 2 different mindsets (the natives & the europeans), they both figure out horses just fine (natives once they get them).  People can think and value differently, and still come to comprehensible solutions (let's ride these things!).


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## sabrinathecat (Jul 28, 2013)

OK, I need help.
(Yeah, I'm sure some of you have been thinking that for a while now, but seriously...)
One of my coworkers told me tonight that she's never seen Star Trek. Any of it.
I was stunned.
So, how to introduce someone? Start from "The Cage" and work forward? I was tempted to go with "Space Seed" followed by Trek2, but not sure that's the answer.
Suggestions?


----------



## ggroy (Jul 28, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> OK, I need help.
> (Yeah, I'm sure some of you have been thinking that for a while now, but seriously...)
> One of my coworkers told me tonight that she's never seen Star Trek. Any of it.
> I was stunned.
> ...




The pilot episodes "The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before" appear to be somewhat different than the rest of episodes.  (ie. Different cast, etc ...).

Most of the other episodes seem to be self-contained, and can be watched in just about any order.  (Except the two part episode "The Menagerie").


----------



## Remus Lupin (Jul 28, 2013)

As far at TOS goes, I'd suggest a sampling of the best episodes (for me, episodes like "Mirror, Mirror," "City on the Edge of Forever," "The Trouble With Tribbles," "Amok Time," "The Naked Time," Balance of Terror," and "Space Seed).

Also, this

http://popcultureasylum.com/startrekepisodes.html


----------



## sabrinathecat (Jul 28, 2013)

Top 6 or so episodes sounds like a good plan.
Any other suggestions.

Can't believe that she blames growing up in Kansas as an excuse for never watching any star trek. There are Kansas trekkies, aren't there?


----------



## billd91 (Jul 28, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Can't believe that she blames growing up in Kansas as an excuse for never watching any star trek. There are Kansas trekkies, aren't there?




Well, Kansas has some issues with respect to the credibility of science in its education system. So I really wouldn't be surprised if it leads to a wide-spread disinterest in anything science fiction for kids educated there within the last 15 years.


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## sabrinathecat (Jul 30, 2013)

Fortunately, her husband (also from Kansas) was just as shocked, and is going to step up and fill in her education in this vital aspect of pop culture. Thank you for your help. Now all she needs is a decent history class, because... DAMN!


----------



## gothiccitypress (Jul 31, 2013)

Are you going to introduce her on the original series? Good luck with that.  I'd opt for Voyager - anything before the introduction of 7 of 9 anyway, or the 2009 movie by the same name.


----------



## Orius (Jul 31, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> OK, I need help.
> (Yeah, I'm sure some of you have been thinking that for a while now, but seriously...)
> One of my coworkers told me tonight that she's never seen Star Trek. Any of it.
> I was stunned.
> ...




Don't start with "The Cage", because practically the whole crew is different and the look of the episode is just different from Trek after it got picked up.  Not that it's a bad episode, it's just probably not a good starting point.  However, "The Menagerie" isn't a bad choice for a Trek novice.

Start with a selection of solid TOS episodes, movies II, III, IV  and VI, then move up to a selection of solid TNG episodes.

When picking TOS episodes, remember that they tend to fall into 3 categories:

The classics.  These are the episodes people tend to agree are the best.  They can range from serious dramas like "The City on the Edge of Forever" to funnier stuff like "The Trouble with Tribbles".  Other episodes to include here are "Mirror, Mirror", "Amok Time", "Journey to Babel", "Balance of Terror", "Errand of Mercy", "The Enterprise Incident", "Day of the Dove", "This Side of Paradise", "The Devil in the Dark", "The Doomsday Machine", and "Space Seed".

Fan favorites and goofy camp episodes.  These are probably not as good an introduction for new viewers.  Fan favorites would include something like "Arena", but honestly, that episode features Kirk fighting a guy in a fake-looking rubber lizard suit, so not necessarily a good choice for new fans.  Goofy camp would be something like "The Gamesters of Triskelion".  Sure that's a fun episode, but it's silly as hell, and it's not a great first impression.

Crap.  "Spock's Brain", "And the Children Shall Lead", "The Way to Eden", etc.  'Nuff said.  Obviously, you want to avoid these episodes.

TNG has many more solid episodes.  In general, stuff from seasons 3-6 tend to be good, while seasons 1-2 and 7 are weak. From the first two seasons though, you'll want "Encounter at Farpoint" naturally, and don't forget "The Measure of a Man" and "Q Who" from season 2.  Other episodes that should be included are: "Yesterday's Enterprise", "Sins of the Father", "Sarek", "The Best of Both Worlds" (both parts), "Family", "Reunion", "Data's Day", "The Wounded", "Redemption" (both parts), "Ensign Ro", "Unification I/II", "The Inner Light", "Relics", "Chain of Command, Parts I/II", "Tapestry", "The Chase", and "All Good Things...".  This is by no means a complete list of TNG episodes for a newbie, but it's good starting point that has the best TNG episodes and/or covers most of the few storylines featured in TNG.

From there she can watch other TOS and TNG episodes, and move on to DS9, VOY, ENT, whatever.


----------



## sabrinathecat (Jul 31, 2013)

OH, beginning with TOS. Really, that was all I was interested in. Let her decide from there. Thanks. Leaving it in her hubby's hands. Better that way.
I do like your lists though.
Funny thing (I've said this before): Watching the series on Netflix, which are the cleaned-up, sharpened, full versions, with CGI models and effects, given that I haven't watched the show in 20 years, it is like seeing them for the first time. They are fresh and new. And fun.


----------



## billd91 (Jul 31, 2013)

Orius said:


> TNG has many more solid episodes.  In general, stuff from seasons 3-6 tend to be good, while seasons 1-2 and 7 are weak. From the first two seasons though, you'll want "Encounter at Farpoint" naturally, and don't forget "The Measure of a Man" and "Q Who" from season 2.




I would be more interested in starting a potential TNG fan on season 3 and then, after they say they like it, consider showing them "Encounter at Farpoint". TNG is lucky it survived that episode, it was so terrible. Still is.


----------



## Ahnehnois (Jul 31, 2013)

billd91 said:


> I would be more interested in starting a potential TNG fan on season 3 and then, after they say they like it, consider showing them "Encounter at Farpoint". TNG is lucky it survived that episode, it was so terrible. Still is.



Maybe, but you need "Encounter at Farpoint" to understand the Q episodes, and you need to watch the Q episode that introduces the Borg before "Best of Both Worlds", and BoBW is definitely something that anyone interested in Star Trek needs to watch.


----------



## Remus Lupin (Jul 31, 2013)

There are many worse episodes than "Encounter At Farpoint" (which, I recently found out, also features an early appearance by Peter Dinklege!). If we were to come up with a list of episodes to avoid, I would say a) Anything with Barclay, and b) anything in which Troi and/or her empathic abilities (and their inevitably being lost/manipulated) are good candidates to just not ever bother with.


----------



## Ahnehnois (Jul 31, 2013)

Remus Lupin said:


> (which, I recently found out, also features an early appearance by Peter Dinklege!).



I don't think this is true. There's a guy that looks like him as an extra, but isn't actually him. Unless Memory Alpha missed it.


----------



## Remus Lupin (Jul 31, 2013)

Huh. Well that's disappointing. He really is a dead ringer though.


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## Orius (Aug 5, 2013)

billd91 said:


> I would be more interested in starting a potential TNG fan on season 3 and then, after they say they like it, consider showing them "Encounter at Farpoint". TNG is lucky it survived that episode, it was so terrible. Still is.






Ahnehnois said:


> Maybe, but you need "Encounter at Farpoint" to understand the Q episodes, and you need to watch the Q episode that introduces the Borg before "Best of Both Worlds", and BoBW is definitely something that anyone interested in Star Trek needs to watch.




Right, "Q Who" is one of the three episodes I mentioned from the first two seasons.  It introduced the Borg, and it's one of the episodes where the Borg really are a genuine menace.  It's also one of the good Q episodes as well.  "Farpoint" isn't too bad on its own, it's useful as an introduction to the characters if nothing else, and it's the sort of story you can expect from Trek. 

 The last of the three is "The Measure of a Man".  Now no matter how badly the first two seasons aged, or how poor some of the episodes were to begin with, that is one of THE Data episodes in the series.  Definitely on a must see list.  It's just one of the best episodes of the whole series.

Come to think of it, I possibly should have included "The Big Goodbye" as a decent season 1 episode as well.  Sure, holodeck malfunction episodes got overdone later in Trek as a whole, but this was another good episode.


----------



## sabrinathecat (Aug 5, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> OK, I need help.
> (Yeah, I'm sure some of you have been thinking that for a while now, but seriously...)
> One of my coworkers told me tonight that she's never seen Star Trek. Any of it.
> I was stunned...




Holy smeg! She doesn't know Roger Moore, Anthony Perkins, or James Bond either! I mentioned Hitchcock, and she said "Oh! I remember! That Will Smith movie." Uhg. The pain... The pain...


----------



## Remus Lupin (Aug 5, 2013)

This person needs a full-on intervention!


----------



## NewJeffCT (Aug 5, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Holy smeg! She doesn't know Roger Moore, Anthony Perkins, or James Bond either! I mentioned Hitchcock, and she said "Oh! I remember! That Will Smith movie." Uhg. The pain... The pain...




deleted


----------



## billd91 (Aug 5, 2013)

NewJeffCT said:


> Wow - Did she recently escape from a basement in Ohio after years of captivity?




Yeah, because rape/kidnapping jokes are so funny these days. 

What she escaped, apparently, was Kansas.


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## Bullgrit (Aug 5, 2013)

I once worked with a guy around my own age who had never seen anything Star Wars, and knew nothing of it. He didn't know who the "black robot" was. I can't wrap my mind around how someone can live in this world and be completely ignorant of one of the biggest pop culture icons (Star Wars) that seems ubiquitous around us all.

I've never heard, (to my knowledge), a Justin Beiber song, but I know who he is. I've never seen a single scene from _Sex and the City_, but I know what it is, and even who Carry Bradshaw is.


Not knowing anything about Star Trek? This is sort of like not knowing what country you live it. 

Bullgrit


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## Janx (Aug 5, 2013)

Bullgrit said:


> I once worked with a guy around my own age who had never seen anything Star Wars, and knew nothing of it. He didn't know who the "black robot" was. I can't wrap my mind around how someone can live in this world and be completely ignorant of one of the biggest pop culture icons (Star Wars) that seems ubiquitous around us all.
> 
> I've never heard, (to my knowledge), a Justin Beiber song, but I know who he is. I've never seen a single scene from _Sex and the City_, but I know what it is, and even who Carry Bradshaw is.
> 
> ...




I hate to be the voice of reason and tolerance here, but I think we have to balance that each person's knowledge and exposure to Media elements varies.

At some point, I'd never seen a Doctor Who, or knew what a Bronie was.  And at some point, I've exposed somebody else to Doctor Who and explained what a Bronie was.

I'm not sure if knowing what Star Trek is qualifies as failing a citizenship test.


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## Remus Lupin (Aug 5, 2013)

You clearly aren't a member or the Galactic Federation.


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## sabrinathecat (Aug 6, 2013)

She's a nice kid. I think her husband was a little shocked by these as well.
So now I know what to bring to movie night... ...for the next few months.


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## MarkB (Aug 6, 2013)

Janx said:


> At some point, I'd never seen a Doctor Who, or knew what a Bronie was.  And at some point, I've exposed somebody else to Doctor Who and explained what a Bronie was.




I've never heard of the term "Bronie" before this post.


----------



## Janx (Aug 6, 2013)

MarkB said:


> I've never heard of the term "Bronie" before this post.




A Bronie is a guy who's really into My Little Pony.

The world's a big place.  There's a lot of things to see and hear.  Though it surprises me to meet somebody who hasn't seen Star Wars or Star Trek, it's not impossible for someone to have not seen it.

I'm not wholly sure if lack of knowledge about a pop culture reference is a true indicator of "messed up home school kid" or just didn't see that film.


----------



## billd91 (Aug 6, 2013)

Janx said:


> I'm not wholly sure if lack of knowledge about a pop culture reference is a true indicator of "messed up home school kid" or just didn't see that film.




When it comes to cultural footprint, it's hard to see either Star Trek or Star Wars as being another case of "just didn't see that film." That sort of thing applies to movies like Mean Girls, My Cousin Vinnie, or Turbo. It's like comparing the Harry Potter series of books to a single juvenile novel that sold an average number of copies. 

That said, there is an ebb and flow for these things. Star Wars was primarily a videotape and toy phenomenon between 1984 and 1997. That's approximately a generation of kids who didn't have a chance of seeing the movies on the big screen. And for Star Trek, I can see a longer span for kids who didn't grow up with a decent local TV station playing syndicated Star Trek series and reruns in a decent (not late at night) time slot.


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## sabrinathecat (Aug 9, 2013)

Did we answer the OP's question, do you think?


----------



## Orius (Aug 10, 2013)

MarkB said:


> I've never heard of the term "Bronie" before this post.




ENWorld's userbase is somewhat older than the places where bronies seem to hang out.  Go to a web community that has a lot of teens or maybe people in their early 20s, and you'll see plenty of them. 



sabrinathecat said:


> Did we answer the OP's question, do you think?




I dunno, let's just keep talking about Trek!


----------



## sabrinathecat (Aug 10, 2013)

Making the communicators into the badges may have saved a ton of the props budget for Next Gen, but I really think they missed out of the toy revenue possibilities.


----------



## MarkB (Aug 10, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Making the communicators into the badges may have saved a ton of the props budget for Next Gen, but I really think they missed out of the toy revenue possibilities.




I always thought it was a missed opportunity back in the 90s, when flip-phones were at their most popular, that none of the major manufacturers did a deal and brought out one in the shape of a classic Star Trek communicator.


----------



## Erekose (Aug 10, 2013)

MarkB said:


> I always thought it was a missed opportunity back in the 90s, when flip-phones were at their most popular, that none of the major manufacturers did a deal and brought out one in the shape of a classic Star Trek communicator.




Me too - the design of mobile phones is always credited to communicators but just seems odd that no company decided to bring one out that was exactly the same. May be the licensing fees were just too high. I was going to say it could still happen but now phones have moved on to be touch screen phone/camera/music system/email/web access devices - the boat has probably sailed on this one.


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## sabrinathecat (Aug 10, 2013)

A couple of prototypes were made for JJA Trek, but weren't considered sufficiently advanced for consumers demands.


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## MarkB (Aug 11, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> A couple of prototypes were made for JJA Trek, but weren't considered sufficiently advanced for consumers demands.




Yeah, by that point they'd definitely missed the boat. What would work at this point is smartphone cases (I have a leather one with a Communicator-style vertical-flip front, and I hadn't even noticed the similarity until right now - it'd be easy to make one in plastic and metal with a similar form-factor and Trek-style detailing) combined with a set of free screen customisations and sound effects.


----------



## Umbran (Aug 11, 2013)

Except that most modern smartphones are *way* to big to look like a Trek communicator.


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## Ahnehnois (Aug 12, 2013)

Huge elaborate Trek reference on Breaking Bad!

Though they did mispronounce and misattribute "tulaberry" (intentionally, one imagines).


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## sabrinathecat (Aug 12, 2013)

MarkB said:


> Yeah, by that point they'd definitely missed the boat. What would work at this point is smartphone cases (I have a leather one with a Communicator-style vertical-flip front, and I hadn't even noticed the similarity until right now - it'd be easy to make one in plastic and metal with a similar form-factor and Trek-style detailing) combined with a set of free screen customisations and sound effects.



Yeah, that would have to be the way to go at this point. "way too big"? I don't know about that--my Droid isn't that much bigger, and it is a lot thinner.


----------



## Umbran (Aug 12, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> Yeah, that would have to be the way to go at this point. "way too big"? I don't know about that--my Droid isn't that much bigger, and it is a lot thinner.




A classic Trek communicator is about 4" x 2.5" when closed - almost exactly the size of my Samsung Array dumbphone.  The Droid DNA (picked at random as a smartphone) is closer to 5.5" x 3". 

An inch or two either way may not seem like much, until you put it in the palm of your hand.  My opinion, of course.  But I think putting that flip top on a common smartphone build would look really stupidly big.

The prototype for the Nokia Trek Communicator, btw: http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/16/nokia-star-trek-communicator-is-simply-awesome-sadly-just-a-pro/


----------



## Janx (Aug 12, 2013)

Umbran said:


> A classic Trek communicator is about 4" x 2.5" when closed - almost exactly the size of my Samsung Array dumbphone.  The Droid DNA (picked at random as a smartphone) is closer to 5.5" x 3".
> 
> An inch or two either way may not seem like much, until you put it in the palm of your hand.  My opinion, of course.  But I think putting that flip top on a common smartphone build would look really stupidly big.





I disagree.

We already buy $600-$800 smart phones (discounted by contracts) and then buy $20-$50 clunky cases to protect them

It seems relatively trivial considering the added bulk of the best ones (otterboxes, etc) that less protective, more showy case could have been designed.

Considering the JJA Communicator was basically a smart phone with a flip cover.

Or just as much fun, ThinkGeek has a Communicator toy that makes noise.  If they were smarter, they'd put a Bluetooth chip in and it would act as a the handset for a cellphone via Bluetooth.


----------



## MarkB (Aug 12, 2013)

Umbran said:


> A classic Trek communicator is about 4" x 2.5" when closed - almost exactly the size of my Samsung Array dumbphone.  The Droid DNA (picked at random as a smartphone) is closer to 5.5" x 3".
> 
> An inch or two either way may not seem like much, until you put it in the palm of your hand.




Most of us have never put a Star Trek communicator in the palm of our hand, so there's no tactile basis for comparison. And my Galaxy S-II doesn't look stupidly big in comparison as I hold it now.


----------



## Umbran (Aug 12, 2013)

MarkB said:


> Most of us have never put a Star Trek communicator in the palm of our hand, so there's no tactile basis for comparison.




Anyone who would buy the thing has seen one of these images.  

https://www.google.com/search?q=kir...uOpa54AOs6IHIBA&ved=0CC0QsAQ&biw=1600&bih=775

The Trek communicator really is small - about 10 square inches on that major surface.  The smartphone I noted above is 16.5 square inches, half again as large!  And remember that that antenna grill is going to nearly double the surface area of the phone when open.  

I'm sorry, but the ship has sailed.  The advent of smartphones has driven a stake in the heart of the flip phone form factor.


----------



## Remus Lupin (Aug 12, 2013)

Funny how quickly these things change. It wasn't all that long ago that I was dying for my cellphone company to start supporting the Motorolla Razr that I wanted so badly.


----------



## Janx (Aug 12, 2013)

Umbran said:


> Anyone who would buy the thing has seen one of these images.
> 
> https://www.google.com/search?q=kir...uOpa54AOs6IHIBA&ved=0CC0QsAQ&biw=1600&bih=775
> 
> ...




Those are old pics.

Check this out from GIS:



The JJA Communicator from Into Darkness has a form factor like an iPhone with a flip top

Any vendor making cases for smart phones could license and be all over that.

Instead, we get this:


----------



## Umbran (Aug 12, 2013)

Janx said:


> Those are old pics.




They are also the pics upon which the trope is based.

The pic you give has a lousy angle for judging size.  It looks to me to be thicker but with smaller face than an iPhone, but I can't tell for sure.  And, of course, that flip top would only cover half the phone, which would look kinda weird.


----------



## Janx (Aug 12, 2013)

Umbran said:


> They are also the pics upon which the trope is based.
> 
> The pic you give has a lousy angle for judging size.  It looks to me to be thicker but with smaller face than an iPhone, but I can't tell for sure.  And, of course, that flip top would only cover half the phone, which would look kinda weird.




I chose that angle on purpose. The UI facing side is inherently different than a flat touchscreen on a smart phone.  The angle I chose shows how trivial the shell of a Star Trek themed case can be.


I think you're addressing whether today's world would design a cell phone like a Communicator.  No.  Of course not.  the new Communicator is the closest to practical, in that the flip part acts as a screen protector.

I'm addressing that if you build it, they will come.  A designer can build a case that looks like some variant of a Star Trek Communicator and the Trekkies will buy it.

When Abrams made the new Communicator, he clearly aimed for something iPhone sized.  What seems to have missed is that nobody's selling it as a custom case.  A missed Merchandizing opportunity.


----------



## sabrinathecat (Aug 13, 2013)

Janx said:


> I'm addressing that if you build it, they will come.  A designer can build a case that looks like some variant of a Star Trek Communicator and the Trekkies will buy it.
> 
> When Abrams made the new Communicator, he clearly aimed for something iPhone sized.  What seems to have missed is that nobody's selling it as a custom case.  A missed Merchandizing opportunity.




They missed it twice, since they had the chance with the second JJATrek.
Look how many lightsaber-licensed products there are: Everything from chopsticks to umbrella handles. And even more ridiculous items. Something as obvious as this has somehow failed to materialize? Even Doctor Who now has more marketing sense (the Sonic pen wielded by Ms Foster in one episode was teamed up with a sonic screwdriver and sold as a two-pack).


----------



## Umbran (Aug 13, 2013)

sabrinathecat said:


> They missed it twice, since they had the chance with the second JJATrek.
> Look how many lightsaber-licensed products there are: Everything from chopsticks to umbrella handles. And even more ridiculous items. Something as obvious as this has somehow failed to materialize? Even Doctor Who now has more marketing sense (the Sonic pen wielded by Ms Foster in one episode was teamed up with a sonic screwdriver and sold as a two-pack).




You make it sound as if there's no Trek stuff out there, which is just incorrect:  http://www.thinkgeek.com/interests/startrek/

But on communicators, specifically, it looks like in 2009, Nokia did put together a prototype.  The sense I got from the reviewer in the link I gave upthread, it seems like perhaps Nokia didn't find it economically viable, for some reason.  Note, specifically, that they did a piece off of Original Trek communicators.  Abrams' Trek, unfortunately, have communicators that don't really fit the mold for a phone at all.  They don't have a single screen, but have two separate round elements on the face, one of which gets covered by the flip-cover, the other which doesn't.  I'm guessing they felt the result wold look less thoughtful than not doing one at all.


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## sabrinathecat (Aug 13, 2013)

Oh, I know there is a smeg-load of trekkie stuff out there. It just seems like this should have been something that the pre-smart-phone companies should have been fighting over, not prototyping at the last minute.


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## Umbran (Aug 13, 2013)

Well, they did make special, limited edition phones back for The Matrix Reloaded, which were a critical failure, due to lack of features.  That may have set the stage now.  

On top of that, I think there's a perception that having special tie-in items is okay (nobody blinks at a pair of lightsaber chopsticks), but that few folks are going to want their highly visible, everyday items to be quite so geeky.  Your phone, for example, has to remain appropriate for your workplace.


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## Vyvyan Basterd (Aug 13, 2013)

So wait, are you saying I *shouldn't* have "Your sex is on fire" as my ring tone?!


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## Janx (Aug 13, 2013)

Umbran said:


> You make it sound as if there's no Trek stuff out there, which is just incorrect:  http://www.thinkgeek.com/interests/startrek/
> 
> But on communicators, specifically, it looks like in 2009, Nokia did put together a prototype.  The sense I got from the reviewer in the link I gave upthread, it seems like perhaps Nokia didn't find it economically viable, for some reason.  Note, specifically, that they did a piece off of Original Trek communicators.  Abrams' Trek, unfortunately, have communicators that don't really fit the mold for a phone at all.  They don't have a single screen, but have two separate round elements on the face, one of which gets covered by the flip-cover, the other which doesn't.  I'm guessing they felt the result wold look less thoughtful than not doing one at all.




I think here's where you're missing my thought train.

the existing Trek -> phone products on market are cases for smart phones that look silly (like the trek uniform color skins I posted FROM thinkgeek.com) or only do the back side with something trek-like.

Abrams made the front face of his Communicator have the knobbly bits of the TOS communicator, presumably as an homage to the original.  21st century tech has dispensed with such nonsense and we have touch screens on that surface and tiny microphone/speaker ports.

The market doesn't need or want Nokia to be making cell phones themed like Trek.

the market (Trekkies) does want CASES that look like Trek*. Given the added bulk smart phone owners are accustomed to putting on their precious iPhones to protect them, it is a trivial matter to make a case that has a flip open cover that is reminiscent of the JJA Communicator (or even the TOS grill flip cover Communicator, albeit with some differences.

*Do a GIS on Into Darkness iPhone case and you'll see all the crazy designs out there, and nobody's done anything more than a painted simple case.

The key here is people are happy with CASES that are Trek like, but they don't have to be exact replicas of Trek equipment.

And even in the exact replica, as this is where the Think Geek TOS Communicator toy missed the boat, embed the hardware for bluetooth ear piece in there.  This means your TOS Communicator is BlueTooth paired to your cell phone.  You flip it open, it answers a call or activates SIRI just like pressing the Answer button would on an ear piece.  Other buttons on the communicator do whatever the other buttons do on an ear piece (volume, speakerphone/private mode).

Trekkies would did that for conventions because they can hide the iPhone in their pocket, and whip out their TOS Communicator to answer the phone.


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## Umbran (Aug 13, 2013)

Janx said:


> the market (Trekkies) does want CASES that look like Trek*. Given the added bulk smart phone owners are accustomed to putting on their precious iPhones to protect them, it is a trivial matter to make a case that has a flip open cover that is reminiscent of the JJA Communicator (or even the TOS grill flip cover Communicator, albeit with some differences.
> 
> *Do a GIS on Into Darkness iPhone case and you'll see all the crazy designs out there, and nobody's done anything more than a painted simple case.




Yes, and why is that?

In a technical sense, getting a blank case and printing something on it is what we call a "solved problem".  It is dirt cheap and easy.  You go out and you buy a stock blank case, and put it through a printing process.  There's only a question of graphic design here.  It can be done by many folks as fan-art, and sold on etsy or ebay.

Doing a case with a flip top requires mechanical design and fabrication steps.  In terms of production, that's a whole different kettle of fish.  You need to find someone to manufacture custom parts and assemble them, which is a whole separate supply stream, calling for extra capital expenditure, and thus more risk.



> And even in the exact replica, as this is where the Think Geek TOS Communicator toy missed the boat, embed the hardware for bluetooth ear piece in there.  This means your TOS Communicator is BlueTooth paired to your cell phone.  You flip it open, it answers a call or activates SIRI just like pressing the Answer button would on an ear piece.  Other buttons on the communicator do whatever the other buttons do on an ear piece (volume, speakerphone/private mode).




I believe the license to create replica communicators sits with Playmates and/or Diamond Select.  They make toys and replicas, and aren't in the cell phone business. I wouldn't be surprised if creating such a bluetooth device would infringe upon the existing licenses - which doesn't mean it cannot be done, but it might mean a lot more legal work must be done before they could make it, and maybe the profit margin on such just isn't large enough to justify it.



> Trekkies would did that for conventions because they can hide the iPhone in their pocket, and whip out their TOS Communicator to answer the phone.




Yes, that's cool.  But it'll get old kinda quick.  That limits the number of units you can sell, and what you can charge for them.  We're talking about hardware that usually runs in the area of $100, before you apply the extra cost of licensing (or possibly writing custom software).  Yes, some folks will buy it, but will it be enough to justify the R&D?  I don't think that's so blithely answerable.


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## MarkB (Aug 13, 2013)

Umbran said:


> In a technical sense, getting a blank case and printing something on it is what we call a "solved problem".  It is dirt cheap and easy.  You go out and you buy a stock blank case, and put it through a printing process.  There's only a question of graphic design here.  It can be done by many folks as fan-art, and sold on etsy or ebay.
> 
> Doing a case with a flip top requires mechanical design and fabrication steps.  In terms of production, that's a whole different kettle of fish.  You need to find someone to manufacture custom parts and assemble them, which is a whole separate supply stream, calling for extra capital expenditure, and thus more risk.




As I mentioned upthread, I have a flip-case for my Samsung smartphone. It has a magnetic catch, and flips back in classic Communicator style.

This is one of a similar design.


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## Umbran (Aug 13, 2013)

MarkB said:


> As I mentioned upthread, I have a flip-case for my Samsung smartphone. It has a magnetic catch, and flips back in classic Communicator style.




Let us look at your example.  Note how it flips *down*.  Note that it doesn't look to actually have a hinge, but is instead a continuous piece of flexible leather-like substance that bends around the end of the phone.  Completely unsuitable for this use.  A quick search suggests to me that most flip cases for smartphones are such - leather hinge, and flipping down or to the side, rather than up.  I did see one hard cover with hinge for a Galaxy Note 2, but it opened to the side.

So, not exactly countering the idea that you'd need custom parts and manufacture yet.


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## MarkB (Aug 13, 2013)

Umbran said:


> Let us look at your example.  Note how it flips *down*.  Note that it doesn't look to actually have a hinge, but is instead a continuous piece of flexible leather-like substance that bends around the end of the phone.  Completely unsuitable for this use.  A quick search suggests to me that most flip cases for smartphones are such - leather hinge, and flipping down or to the side, rather than up.  I did see one hard cover with hinge for a Galaxy Note 2, but it opened to the side.
> 
> So, not exactly countering the idea that you'd need custom parts and manufacture yet.




Yeah, I didn't bother spending ten minutes looking for one which flips upwards exactly like mine does - somehow, I thought that merely presenting an example of a similar one would be enough to convey that there are such cases out there. Really, it feels like you're just picking holes for the sake of it at this point.


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## Janx (Aug 13, 2013)

MarkB said:


> Yeah, I didn't bother spending ten minutes looking for one which flips upwards exactly like mine does - somehow, I thought that merely presenting an example of a similar one would be enough to convey that there are such cases out there. Really, it feels like you're just picking holes for the sake of it at this point.




I tend to agree with the sentiment.

Obviously licensing and lawyers has to be dealt with.

But it is trivial to come up with a workable design based on the elements we've found.  A flip-up hinge lid like the example JJA Communicator is a simple design pattern to anybody who's crafted anything.

It's 2 peg holes in the sides of the frame near the top.

The The flip panel is sized to cover the screen in some artful way (maybe put the TOS Grill on it, or make it look like JJA's.

On the sides, near the top, the arms extend which include the pegs that insert into the peg holes on the frame.

The length of the arms, sweep of the arch between the arms controls how far the flip lid will open.  JJA design shows an example of the typical range of motion, much like the classic flip phones.

Once prototypes are built, they can be refined with some time on a 3d printer.  Once that's set, ship it off to China for mass production.

Really, the only barrier is lawyers.  And Paramount is fairly promiscuous with their Trek licensing, so how hard can it be.

Even the TOS Communicator is a cheap mod.  Buy the toy, gut it, install the parts from a $40 Motorola bluetooth ear piece.  Much like the ingenuity of the Steampunkers, I expect that SOMEBODY has already done this in the Trekkie community.


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## sabrinathecat (Aug 13, 2013)

And if you want a bluetooth, get one of the Uhura ear pieces. Another piece of genius marketing that was passed up and ignored...


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## Umbran (Aug 13, 2013)

MarkB said:


> Really, it feels like you're just picking holes for the sake of it at this point.




No, I'm making points because you guys sound like gamers who figure that just because they love games, running a gaming store is easy.  You are very blithe about the complications.  



Janx said:


> Really, the only barrier is lawyers.  And Paramount is fairly promiscuous with their Trek licensing, so how hard can it be.




Fine.  *Then do it.*  If it really is trivially easy, and there's a ready-made market for it, then you can prove me wrong and make a mint for yourself at the same time by actually doing it.

Or, you can make up the list of excuses why you can't, or shouldn't, or don't have time... and then realize that everyone has that list when it comes to taking actual risks.  You may thus learn it takes a bit more than just the idea to get it done.


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## MarkB (Aug 13, 2013)

Seriously? "Do it yourself or admit that it's impossible for an established, experienced company to do it"?

That's a seriously weak argument.


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## sabrinathecat (Aug 13, 2013)

Well, if 3d printers and prototyping gets even easier, I might give it a shot...


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## Janx (Aug 14, 2013)

Umbran said:


> No, I'm making points because you guys sound like gamers who figure that just because they love games, running a gaming store is easy.  You are very blithe about the complications.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




You may forget, I am already in the transforming ideas into solutions business.  I am well aware of the greater value of an Implementation over an unrealized Idea.

You're right, I probably won't start a business making these things.  I've got enough other projects I'm working on. But just as you are more than just a physicist, you presume too much that I am incapable of doing it given that my very trade is designing solutions and determining the resources to do it.

I can fabricate a mockup in my shop.

I know a guy who sculpts minis professionally to build a better prototype that can be reproduced.

Somebody like Danny can be hired to track down the feasibility of getting the rights.

Based on how that goes, we setup up a Kickstarter to buy the license and setup production at a place that can press these out (FoxConn got its start doing that kind of work).

I know people who know people at FoxConn from my past employer.

The problem is not the idea.  Or whether I personally can do it.  There is somebody out there with the interest and means to do it.  Ironically, that person hasn't appeared yet.  But it is very feasible, even as a one shot custom item.

There's no reason to be a double debbie downer man.  We're brainstorming.


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## Janx (Aug 14, 2013)

MarkB said:


> Seriously? "Do it yourself or admit that it's impossible for an established, experienced company to do it"?
> 
> That's a seriously weak argument.




Honestly, I'm a little surprised by Umbran's attitude.  It just doesn't seem like his normal diplomatic self.

It really isn't hard to make ONE of these things.  Like the Steampunkers, Trekkies who are into cosplay are big into making props.  It really is ironic that it doesn't appear that anybody's made something like it yet.  Or at least it hasn't shown up in a GIS.


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## Jason Stewart (Aug 21, 2013)

Love Trek


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