It's about time that piece of garbage got the axe!
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Check out the big brain on Somu Icewalker!
If anyone has been watching this season they'd know that the show has gotten much much better from the previous seasons. It actually had potential... well as much as a show can have being this far in.
I'd heard that, but after the previous four seasons, I couldn't be assed to care.
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. - John Kenneth Galbraith
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Ryuujin had this to say about Matthew Broderick:
Shit. I loved Enterprise.
i didn't like what I saw. it may have gotten better, but I will never give it the chance it desrves unless I have a damn good reason to.
to me star trek peaked at deep space five (you know, the one with G'Kar) then went downhill after the series ended.
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diadem attempted to be funny by writing:
to me star trek peaked at deep space five (you know, the one with G'Kar)
Har har! 
First, there was The Original Series. And it was decent.
Then came the movies, which were enjoyable, but still didn't quite GRAB me.
Then came TNG, and TNG was what made me a fan. TNG forever. The best and most beautiful scifi series ever, IMO.
Then came DS9, which showed promise, but slowed down and became crap. Then it got good again, but by then I had lost interest so even the good shit became 'blah' to me.
Voyager was next. Good premise, neat new ship, lots of interesting things possible, but the cast sucked (Janeway blows, sorry), and the series just got seriously bogged down and shitty. 7 of 9 breathed new life into it, but then she got boring and was there mainly to keep the attention of the losers who watched it just because she had huge knockers.
Lastly was Enterprise. After DS9 and Voyager, I didn't trust this series to be any good at all, and from what I hear about it, I didn't miss much at all.
The TNG-based movies, however, were decent. Generations and Nemesis, to be honest, I didn't like. First Contact, I enjoyed THOROUGLY, and Insurrection was kinda neat, for the new ship if nothing else.
What they need is to pick up TNG again... but that would suck too, since now Data's dead, and his 'replacement' blows. They've written themselves into a corner that they can't easily get out from 
.
And the tradition continued in ST:TNG. There was a lot of political commentary, and a lot of philosophical questions. The problem was that DS9 was the same overall flavor of the era, but it lacked as much political commentary. It was divorced more from our real life time period.
By the time it got to Voyager, it was completely fantasy. No real connection to anything. It even got to the point where it was divorcing itself from the anchors of the setting (the Federation, etc), and the writers (who introduced the Borg Queen, even though Roddenberry himself never intended for anything like that) were just sort of telling whatever story they wanted with very little attention to the spirit of the show.
The problem was that it didn't end with Voyager. It went on and you end up with Enterprise, which is so far divorced from the rest of canon that it's actually rewriting the setting's history. Lovely.
sigpic courtesy of This Guy, original modified by me
After DS9 and Voyager I had lost hope that there was nothing good left to the Star Trek name! Then Enterprise came along and all hope was restored!
The show kicked so much ass... now I'm all depressed again... 
Star Trek IS its own gimmick.
ST scriptwriters, stop trying to be new and unique with ST: unless you're really good at it, it's not going to work. You have a ship, you have an interesting and well-written crew, you have a crapload of aliens. That's all you need. Go enjoy it. Make TNG2. Anything more is superfluous.
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Aw, geez, I have Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael all over myself!
I think what made TNG fabulous was the generation difference. Star Trek was in many ways Roddenberry's commentary on society in an idealized fashion. In the original, women were on a military vessel, members of disparate races were all working together, there were even Russians with people of obvious American descent, friends. A lot of it was political commentary.And the tradition continued in ST:TNG. There was a lot of political commentary, and a lot of philosophical questions. The problem was that DS9 was the same overall flavor of the era, but it lacked as much political commentary. It was divorced more from our real life time period.
TOS was rather eclectic in that regard; Roddenberry's own themes later emphasised in TNG (political isolationism, secularism, humanism, gay rights, communism, atheism) were often overshadowed by the other writers' own agendas (Judeo-Christian egocentrism and American jingoism were the big ones, IIRC).
TNG let Roddenberry have total control, so the themes I mentioned above really got hammered in throughout its run. DS9 was lightly influenced by this, but that goofy home-grown Bajoran religion corrupted Roddenberry's particular message, for good or ill.
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By the time it got to Voyager, it was completely fantasy. No real connection to anything. It even got to the point where it was divorcing itself from the anchors of the setting (the Federation, etc), and the writers (who introduced the Borg Queen, even though Roddenberry himself never intended for anything like that) were just sort of telling whatever story they wanted with very little attention to the spirit of the show.The problem was that it didn't end with Voyager. It went on and you end up with Enterprise, which is so far divorced from the rest of canon that it's actually rewriting the setting's history. Lovely.[/QB]
In addition to those problems, Voyager and Enterprise(and ST:I and Nemesis) were all about money and name recognition. Now that the name's been so thoroughly tarnished it's not making money anymore, it's time to let Star Trek rest.
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. - John Kenneth Galbraith
If you just totally divorced this series from the rest of the Trek franchise and just watched it for it's own sake, it was passable.
And Jolene Blalock was pretty darn hot. For a Vulcan.
We need a Babylon 6
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Callalron had this to say about Duck Tales:
I think my main problem with Enterprise (aside from a main theme with LYRICS, fer cryin' out loud)
THAT was the major turnoff for me. It wasn't just the lyrics but also the slow tempo music. I felt like I was being prepped to watch a daytime soap opera.
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Elvish Crack Piper attempted to be funny by writing:
We need a Babylon 6
Amen.
Although ST:TNNG would be fine by me, too.
Thinking about your posts
(and billing you for it) since 2001
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Gydyon had this to say about dark elf butts:
Amen.Although ST:TNNG would be fine by me, too.
So long as a bearded Jonathan Frakes never gets casted, even as a rarely appearing General or something.
I thought the first few Enterprises were pretty decent actually (besides the damned theme song). It went downhill majorly with the whole screw the timeline/temporal cold war thing.
Voyager was a mixed bag for me. There were some really bad episodes, but there were also some pretty decent episodes as well. I would usually watch an episode part way, before deciding whether this would be a good or bad episode.
And as far as Data being dead, remember, they killed off Spock, then brought him back, so anythings possible if the studio thinks it will earn them enough money. Maybe they will find Data downloaded his memory engrams into the ships computer, and can upload most of his personality into his replacement, but with some new personality twist. I'm sure they will come up with a way. 
After seeing Scott Bacula in Quantum Leap, every time I saw him in a star trek uniform, I almost died.
You just cant see some guy as a ST captain once you've seen him in a sundress with a pregnancy belly.
Bacula will always be Sam to me.
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Azakias enlisted the help of an infinite number of monkeys to write:
I love the ST serieseseses... however, I found I couldnt even give Enterprise a fair chance.After seeing Scott Bacula in Quantum Leap, every time I saw him in a star trek uniform, I almost died.
You just cant see some guy as a ST captain once you've seen him in a sundress with a pregnancy belly.
Bacula will always be Sam to me.
Heh, maybe thats how Enterprise will end, with Bakula "leaping" from the Captain's body. 
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Leopold had this to say about (_|_):
According to JMS, there isn't supposed to be any further Babylons after 5. There was some talk about a Babylon 5 movie awhile back, but JMS' desire not to go back+the somewhat dubious performance of the TV movies means there probably won't be another Babylon series anytime soon.
What he always keeps saying is that the story of Babylon 5 and it's characters has been told in the B5 series, that does not mean that there are no other stories to tell in the B5 universe just that he does not want to keep tacking things onto what he basically considers to be a finished novel.
IIRC the movie got put on ice in a large part because Jason Biggs died and they didn't want to go ahead and just ignore his character and do the movie without him.
The problem with a new TNG series would be that they would need another Patrick Stewart, Michel Dorn, Brent Spiner, etc on the job. I love TNG but let's face it some of the episodes are pretty corny and just putting random TV actors into them would not work at all, many of the best TNG episodes were made great not only through good writing but also through pure force of Picard, compare TNGs "Chain of Command" with B5s "Intersections in Real Time", both are well written episodes with similar themes and Bruce Boxleitner isn't a shitty actor by any stretch of the imagination, IiRT was considered a good episode of B5 but Patrick Stewart delivered CoC so memorably that most TNG fans, even those who have only seen the actual episode once, will instantly know what you're talking about if you only mention 'four lights'.
A new TNG would be great but if they just took the TNG formula and filled it up with Voyager / Enterprise level production values it would be bland and boring. I also doubt that they could translate the message of TNG and the entire "What if humans had finally mastered some of their vices and become better than they are today?"-theme into a TV environment where everything has to be as gritty and edgy as possible.
IMO they wasted a tragic amount of potential with Voyager which had an extremely good initial premise but fell flat on it's nose with shoddy episode writing, Paramount's fear of confusing people by introducing ongoing storylines that do not get resolved within the 60 minute episode, 7ofboobs and the medicore level of acting.
Jason Biggs is from American Pie movies and caucasian
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Mod said this about your mom:
The problem with a new TNG series would be that they would need another Patrick Stewart, Michel Dorn, Brent Spiner, etc on the job. I love TNG but let's face it some of the episodes are pretty corny and just putting random TV actors into them would not work at all, many of the best TNG episodes were made great not only through good writing but also through pure force of Picard, compare TNGs "Chain of Command" with B5s "Intersections in Real Time", both are well written episodes with similar themes and Bruce Boxleitner isn't a shitty actor by any stretch of the imagination, IiRT was considered a good episode of B5 but Patrick Stewart delivered CoC so memorably that most TNG fans, even those who have only seen the actual episode once, will instantly know what you're talking about if you only mention 'four lights'.
The problem with a comment like that is that you're failing to take into account what the actors in TNG had done prior to TNG. Granted, they all did voices for Gargoyles, have gone on to screen acting and so forth, but for the most part, they were small time actors who did plays. Levar Burton did "Reading Rainbow" on PBS. Patrick Stewart's big claim to screen fame was that he was in Dune as Gurney Halleck and in Excalibur as Guinevere's Dad. Both of those roles are two decades divorced from Patrick Stewart as we know him now, having had more than a decade of thinking of him as Picard.
And let's not forget that TNG had it's fill of BAD actors too. Frankly I'm glad Denise Crosby had her hissy fit over not enough stories being done with her character. She was a lousy actress. Nothing had changed that when she came back to the show as the half-Romulan commander Sela.
I do think it was a brilliant move to cast people who had careers in theater, though. A lot of what sells you on the TNG characters, from a drama perspective, is their body language. I sometimes have TNG on low volume while writing papers or the like. I look over and there is a LOT being conveyed by even subtle body movements. I see it in DS9 also, but it seems to be missing in Voyager. It's like with Voyager they'd gotten to the point where they were willing to let the special effects emphasize the drama. I think the actors were far too rigid. Tuvok's actor was too rigid, even to play a Vulcan. Janeway's actor was too puppet-like (I've referred to her as a "muppet" before, but frankly she didn't even have that much charm).
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A new TNG would be great but if they just took the TNG formula and filled it up with Voyager / Enterprise level production values it would be bland and boring. I also doubt that they could translate the message of TNG and the entire "What if humans had finally mastered some of their vices and become better than they are today?"-theme into a TV environment where everything has to be as gritty and edgy as possible.IMO they wasted a tragic amount of potential with Voyager which had an extremely good initial premise but fell flat on it's nose with shoddy episode writing, Paramount's fear of confusing people by introducing ongoing storylines that do not get resolved within the 60 minute episode, 7ofboobs and the medicore level of acting.
This I think was a lack of conceptualization on the part of Paramount. Roddenberry's vision was always one of optimism regarding the future. Philosophically, politically, racially, socially; it's all optimism. What happened with Voyager in particular was that they divorced themselves from that optimism. They divorced the story from the concepts that made Star Trek what it was and what it had become. Voyager could've easily been any other story where people are striving to get home on limited means. It didn't add anything to the universe and really only detracted.
DS9 added some perspective to TNG. The goal here wasn't to explore the galaxy; more to the point it was a story about how the Federation maintains what it has, and builds alliances and so forth. The problem was that they painted themselves into an increasingly difficult corner with the Dominion War storyline, and the only way to resolve that in the end was to invoke the power of the wormhole entities, which added this whole degree of mysticism and such to the series that it just ended up feeling desperately tacky. On the whole, however, I'd say DS9 was NOT a bad Star Trek series, war and all. It just ended on a somewhat dissatisfying note.
Enterprise's premise sounded...okay...broadly speaking. The problem was that there were things that should never have been done to continuity. It was long established that Zephram Cochrane wasn't from Earth. They changed that for a TNG movie, which annoyed loyal fans, but then there was this whole continuity in Enterprise built on it. And continuity errors kept cropping up.
One of the greatest things that TNG did was try to establish universal standards. Ever read the ST:TNG Technical Manual? It was written before DVD's and director commentaries. The idea with the Tech Manual is that it gives you an insight into the pseudo-science that the tech and science consultants on the show worked together with Roddenberry. It gave solid rules about what can and can't be done, why the Enterprise's maximum speed is Warp 9.7, etc etc. But it was also written as a fairly rigid "Okay here are things you can't violate, for if you do, you imperil the believability of everything else." Roddenberry was very specific about that being the case for all the series information. There was a skeleton of events that you could fit things in around, but could not violate.
With Enterprise, they more or less ditched it and decided to build from the ground up.
sigpic courtesy of This Guy, original modified by me
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The logic train ran off the tracks when Elvish Crack Piper said:
At the start you could at least hope that it was all a temporal anomaly that would be erased at the seasons ending, but noWe need a Babylon 6
babylon 5 is done, let it die gracefully. it was planned.
what we need is JMS making a new star trek series without being fucked again. JMS can save star trek, not many others can
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A sleep deprived Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael stammered:
I do think it was a brilliant move to cast people who had careers in theater, though. A lot of what sells you on the TNG characters, from a drama perspective, is their body language. I sometimes have TNG on low volume while writing papers or the like. I look over and there is a LOT being conveyed by even subtle body movements. I see it in DS9 also, but it seems to be missing in Voyager. It's like with Voyager they'd gotten to the point where they were willing to let the special effects emphasize the drama. I think the actors were far too rigid. Tuvok's actor was too rigid, even to play a Vulcan. Janeway's actor was too puppet-like (I've referred to her as a "muppet" before, but frankly she didn't even have that much charm).
While I also didn't like Kate Mulgrew as Captain Janeway, (mainly because it felt like the Star Trek Execs were trying to cater to a portray-women-as-leaders base and doing horribly at it) Kate Mulgrew herself is a terrific actress. If you are ever in the Gettysburg area, hop over to Emmitsburg to the National Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton and watch the film where a much younger Kate Mulgrew portrays Saint Elizabeth. Kate pops out on the film. I think the role was written poorly and not the actress acting poorly. Vernaltemptress fucked around with this message on 02-03-2005 at 03:11 PM.
But that excuse only goes so long. At a certain point, Patrick Stewart bled over into Jean-Luc Picard. Avery Brooks bled over into Benjamin Sisko. I never got the feeling that Mulgrew was able to suspend her own disbelief long enough to really sink her teeth into the role.
I have no doubt that Mulgrew in other roles could do excellently. The problem with Voyager was that there's only so far that the puppeteer can be expected to take the blame before the puppet (in this case Mulgrew) has to take some herself.
Though I will agree unequivocably that Voyager seemed to be the Star Trek receptacle for PC characters and actors.
Michael Dorn is black. Did they rely on that when casting him as Worf? No. The guy playing Julian Bashir came from an Indian (as in from India) background (despite being related to Malcolm McDowell apparently). Nana Visitor played Kira Neryse on DS9, but Kira's role could have been filled almost just as adequately by a male character as well as it was a female. Did they rely on that? No. But...the guy playing Chakotay was of Native American descent, so they gave him a facial tattoo (how "primal") and did a couple of episodes where he draws on his Native American Heritage to get through something. It was patronizing and rude and extremely badly done. I felt the same way with Janeway; this wasn't a Captain of a starship who HAPPENED to be a woman (like the other assorted female admirals and other captains we've seen in TNG and DS9). This was a WOMAN CAPTAIN. And they never quite let you forget that she was the WOMAN CAPTAIN. Then there was Seven of Nine. Ugh.
sigpic courtesy of This Guy, original modified by me
He fit the role like a brick to a glove.
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And I was all like 'Oh yeah?' and Cherveny was all like:
Heh, maybe thats how Enterprise will end, with Bakula "leaping" from the Captain's body.
That made me laugh, hard.
I'm an individual. Just like everyone else!
sigpic courtesy of This Guy, original modified by me
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There was much rejoicing when Mod said this:
What he always keeps saying is that the story of Babylon 5 and it's characters has been told in the B5 series, that does not mean that there are no other stories to tell in the B5 universe just that he does not want to keep tacking things onto what he basically considers to be a finished novel.
Oh, I agree. I think there could be plenty more done in the B5 universe, just that the specific 'Babylon 6' idea has been ruled out, seeing as #5 has been defined as the success and end of the Babylon project.
As to the actors-in-TNG ideal, I think Deth hit it on the head. It's a tricky process, but you have time to let your viewers get used to them--and moreover, let the actors get adjusted to the roles. Watch an episode from the first couple seasons of TNG, and then from the last two, and observe how much more believable the actors have become, how strongly they've begun to emote, etc. Hell, it's the difference between straight-laced, emotionless Picard and "THERE AHHH FOUUUUR LIIIGHTS" Picard. You need to find actors who can actually act, yes, but there ARE plenty of those out there. If you throw together a Star Trek with a bunch of truly amazing actors, they'll overshadow the show itself. You need low-key actors with growth potential; the kind the audience can find acceptable at the show's outset, and then gradually grow more attached to with time.
oh, and the irony of our sigpics isn't lost on me
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Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael thought about the meaning of life:
For the record, I never quite got the last episode of Quantum Leap. I know at the end he never got to go home. But what was the deal with that whole diner thing?
Maybe the movie will explain things?
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Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael was listening to Cher while typing:
For the record, I never quite got the last episode of Quantum Leap. I know at the end he never got to go home. But what was the deal with that whole diner thing?
That was heaven, the bartender was God.
No, seriously.
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Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael had this to say about Reading Rainbow:
For the record, I never quite got the last episode of Quantum Leap. I know at the end he never got to go home. But what was the deal with that whole diner thing?
He got pulled into either Heaven or Purgatory and had a face-to-face with God (or if not, whoever was actually controlling his leaps) aka the bartender. It was all fairly confusing but basically at the end it came down to a sort of, "This is a suicide mission Sam. I'm not going to tell you to do it, but you need to decide whether this is worth doing." And Sam decides to go along with God's plan of correcting the past and ends up either failing a mission or dying at some point. Was pretty sad really. But it's been a loooong time since i've seen it so i can't speculate more than that.
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This one time, at diadem camp:
babylon 5 is done, let it die gracefully. it was planned.
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Mod attempted to be funny by writing:
IIRC the movie got put on ice in a large part because Jason Biggs died and they didn't want to go ahead and just ignore his character and do the movie without him.
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Leopold had this to say about Reading Rainbow:
According to JMS, there isn't supposed to be any further Babylons after 5. There was some talk about a Babylon 5 movie awhile back, but JMS' desire not to go back+the somewhat dubious performance of the TV movies means there probably won't be another Babylon series anytime soon.
And well, you are all wrong. Tarquinn fucked around with this message on 02-04-2005 at 03:09 AM.
