Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier

[projecteddrama]

Does anyone care to possibly explain why the Federation would sign a treaty that specifically forbids them from developing cloaking technology? I cannot think of a single reason why they would agree to that, especially since the Romulans have been the most hostile motherfuckers in the series.

It was an agreement to keep the peace, and to demonstrate the Federation isn't into sneak attacks and spying, etc. Of course, Deep Space Nine gradually throws that all out of the airlock. Hell, even "All Good Things" had a future Enterprise cloaking. Also, The Pegasus is one of Ron Moores best, you can see its influences on DS9.

Production wise, most of the time it just wouldn't be interesting if the crew of a Star Trek ship could cloak and get out of a mess that way, hence why cloaking devices aren't usually around. They had the Defiants cloak breaking all the time on DS9 for this reason.

 

[GeorgeDaMoose]

So I just watched Shockwave and man it's my least favorite time-travel episode. The idea of an advanced faction in the future pulling strings in the past to make things go their way in their time is cool. But fuck, having EVERYONE in the 31st century learn how to contact the past? When Daniels said he learned how to send messages to the past in high school or something all I could think about is why ANYONE would decide it would be a good idea to teach little shits to possibly ruin the future? Dumb, dumb, dumb.

It was an agreement to keep the peace, and to demonstrate the Federation isn't into sneak attacks and spying, etc. Of course, Deep Space Nine gradually throws that all out of the airlock. Hell, even "All Good Things" had a future Enterprise cloaking. Also, The Pegasus is one of Ron Moores best, you can see its influences on DS9.

Production wise, most of the time it just wouldn't be interesting if the crew of a Star Trek ship could cloak and get out of a mess that way, hence why cloaking devices aren't usually around. They had the Defiants cloak breaking all the time on DS9 for this reason.

I get that it was a kind of production choice, but the reasoning for it is just to dumb in my opinion.

 

[Intelligent Calcium]

I watched a few TNG episodes including The Pegasus again.
Does anyone care to possibly explain why the Federation would sign a treaty that specifically forbids them from developing cloaking technology? I cannot think of a single reason why they would agree to that, especially since the Romulans have been the most hostile motherfuckers in the series.

I always liked to think that, aside from the Federation's dedication to peace, this had to do with its arrogance. For one, they like to show everyone how "above" they are of espionage and sneaky tactics (they're not).
Also, they basically DARE Romulans to send their cloaked ships against Federation sensors. They have utter faith in the superiority of their technology, so Romulan cloaking devices are no threat to them anyway. Sure, maybe you can pull off a few operations, but the second a Federation vessel or station gets some "strange readings" and starts actively searching for you, you're fucked.

 

[projecteddrama]

The Temporal Cold War is one of the worst and funniest parts of Trek's massive accumulated production and canon history. But in the end, it's just a symptom of Trek's massive addiction and obsession with time travel. The only thing that rivals that is its obsession with Wrath of Khan.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Time_travel_episodes

Though to be fair, I imagine it got this obsession because many of Trek's most acclaimed stories are time travel stories (City On The Edge Of Forever, Cause And Effect, All Good Things, Star Trek IV, Yesterdays Enterprise) and the most successful Star Trek film, 09 Trek, is about time travel, so I doubt this obsession is going to end any time soon. Expect "epic" time travel plots in Discovery, esp given the writing staff they've hired.

I get that it was a kind of production choice, but the reasoning for it is just to dumb in my opinion.

Eh, not to me. I think it's pretty cool that for the most part, the "good guys" don't use sneak attack technology and that interesting plots like "The Pegasus" came from this choice.

 

[XYZpdq]

When Daniels said he learned how to send messages to the past in high school or something all I could think about is why ANYONE would decide it would be a good idea to teach little shits to possibly ruin the future?

That's why there's so many inconsistencies and stupid shit. The space hippies? Just dang dirty future trolls trying to get that stupid big-ear guy to make an even bigger ass of himself.

The Temporal Cold War is one of the worst and funniest parts of Trek's massive accumulated production and canon history. But in the end, it's just a symptom of Trek's massive addiction and obsession with time travel.

A million years ago when Voyager was still going a nerd buddy at Rocky Horror shared with me a parody "Let's Do The Time Plot Again."

 

[GeorgeDaMoose]

So Carbon Creek and Minefield were good fun. I think Minefield would have been really great if I could figure out why they didn't just use the teleporter to beam Malcom out. I mean they used it for other shit before. They really seem to forget they have a teleporter a lot.
Also I checked out Voyager again. I left off on Lifesigns which was a quality fucking episode for once. I honestly would just keep watching Voyager if they had back-to-back Doctor episodes, he's so much fun. There was also this conflict with Paris and Chakotay during Lifesigns which came from somewhere I guess, but it didn't really go anywhere and it was really fucking boring. I didn't get it.

 

[TheImportantFart]

I think Minefield would have been really great if I could figure out why they didn't just use the teleporter to beam Malcom out. I mean they used it for other shit before. They really seem to forget they have a teleporter a lot.

It's best not to think too much when you're watching Enterprise. Or at all for that matter.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

What did Roddenberry think of time travel in the series?

 

[YankeeTrader]

So Carbon Creek and Minefield were good fun. I think Minefield would have been really great if I could figure out why they didn't just use the teleporter to beam Malcom out. I mean they used it for other shit before. They really seem to forget they have a teleporter a lot.
Also I checked out Voyager again. I left off on Lifesigns which was a quality fucking episode for once. I honestly would just keep watching Voyager if they had back-to-back Doctor episodes, he's so much fun. There was also this conflict with Paris and Chakotay during Lifesigns which came from somewhere I guess, but it didn't really go anywhere and it was really fucking boring. I didn't get it.

Carbon Creek is one of my favorite Enterprise eps. It's a fun fish out of water story, and work in a 3 Stooges reference and I'm sold.

Agreed on the Doctor. Lifesigns played last night and damned if he isn't the breakout star of the show. The conflict between Paris and Chakotay will pay off, they're setting something up that'll be resolved a couple or few eps down the line.


The transporter paradox from Minefield has been debated for well over a decade. No consensus drawn, but if they had, the episode would have been much less interesting. We got some pretty good background on Malcolm, as well as a contrast between his disciplined Navy background and Archers more laid back approach.

 

[GeorgeDaMoose]

It's best not to think too much when you're watching Enterprise. Or at all for that matter.

Really that episode was fine aside from the teleporter thing. It could have taken maybe a minute to explain why they couldn't use it. Like, "Oh no, our teleporter is rudimentary shit, we can't beam him out with that fucking spike in his leg!".
Boom, fucking done. Cool shit man, I can totally understand why you didn't do that thing because technobabble. Other than that one thing, I felt like the episode was pretty fun. Got some nice Reed + Archer interactions and the idea of going out on the hull of the ship to disarm a mine was really cool. It would have been really well done if the CG wasn't god-fucking awful. The way the conflict was solved was also pretty dumb now that I think about it.
"Reed, I'm not going to cut off your leg. The crew will release that section of the hull, I'm going to free your leg by cutting through the spike, and we're going to escape the blast radius by blocking the explosion with a little piece of the hull(?). The force of that blast totally isn't going to shatter every bone in our bodies, we're going to fucking ride the explosion in space like a god damned wave dude."
"Captain, that sounds radical!"

 

[XYZpdq]

What did Roddenberry think of time travel in the series?

Not sure how into it he was or wasn't.

afaik City was mostly Harlan Ellison and Assignment Earth was just an excuse for a pilot for Gene's Spy-Fi Doctor Who knock-off.

Naked Time has some oddly pointless time travel at the end, that one with the space library where Spock and McCoy almost froze did time travel but didn't really care beyond "you can't walk over to Spock and grab him".
The one with the Air Force pilot they pick up is just there and back again and concern about screwing things up.

Off the top of my head I don't recall anything really getting into later Trek style Time Bullshit in TOS. TAS has the follow-up to City. TNG gets Time Bullshit pretty early on, but that one with the other Picard wasn't too stock Trek Time Bullshit iirc.

I forget, was Gene still active for Trek IV?

 

[TheImportantFart]

I forget, was Gene still active for Trek IV?

He'd mostly been shunted back to a Creative Consultant role which is more or less a sentimental credit and doesn't have that much meaning. They learned their lessons from The Motion Picture.

 

[Cynical]

He'd mostly been shunted back to a Creative Consultant role which is more or less a sentimental credit and doesn't have that much meaning. They learned their lessons from The Motion Picture.

After the first movie, they kicked Gene upstairs, and he stayed there ever since. He could make all the suggestions he wanted, but everyone was free to ignore him.

He had some level of control over The Next Generation, but his failing health soon saw to that ending as well.

 

[XYZpdq]

Maybe there's an interview or something with him about his thoughts on time travel in fiction.
I'm not sure there's a solid enough pattern to time travel in Trek while he was around to try to get a bead on his thoughts through the show. Seems like he didn't hate using it or anything.

 

[YankeeTrader]

After the first movie, they kicked Gene upstairs, and he stayed there ever since. He could make all the suggestions he wanted, but everyone was free to ignore him.

He had some level of control over The Next Generation, but his failing health soon saw to that ending as well.

He had control over season 1, which is why it's awful by and large. They kicked him even further up before season 2 got underway.

 

[AnOminous]

When Daniels said he learned how to send messages to the past in high school or something all I could think about is why ANYONE would decide it would be a good idea to teach little shits to possibly ruin the future? Dumb, dumb, dumb.

I think if time travel were possible and ever became widespread knowledge, someone would very rapidly decide it had been a really bad idea and go back in time to stop it, pruning out that alternate universe.

 

[Cynical]

I think if time travel were possible and ever became widespread knowledge, someone would very rapidly decide it had been a really bad idea and go back in time to stop it, pruning out that alternate universe.

The Department of Temporal Investigations miniseries goes out of it's way to agree with you, with the official position of the DTI being that of "any idiot who thinks time travel should be used as casually as a replicator should never be able to touch it AT ALL".

Their official job is to specifically slap the cuffs on any asshole who would admit to doing what Daniels did.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I think I'd like it if the Star Trek writers made time travel either impossible or that any voyages to the past have already happened (the "Self Consistency Principle") instead of all this changing history and Temporal Investigations stuff.

 

[Cynical]

I think I'd like it if the Star Trek writers made time travel either impossible or that any voyages to the past have already happened (the "Self Consistency Principle") instead of all this changing history and Temporal Investigations stuff.

Way too late for that. By the time of Enterprise, time travel had become so much a part of the series lore that there would have been no plausible way to retcon it out.

Here's a breakdown of how it was used per series to give everyone an idea where it broke down.

TOS: Started the whole tradition, generally used time travel effectively and without making it a crap plot device.

TNG: Used it a few times, never to the extent it was used by TOS, but still managed to not wear out that plot device's welcome.

DS9: Used only a few times, but generally it was done well.

VOY: This is the point it started to suck. The time travel episodes of this series lay the ground for the Temporal Cold War crap by establishing the idea of time cops and people who actively dicked with time for their own purposes.

ENT: Built on Voyager's sins, but in fairness to Voyager, they at least managed to maintain a consistent plot, time travel plots and all. The TCW arc was seat of the pants writing imposed on the writers by the executives, and they didn't really have an idea where they'd wind up. Unfortunately, by the time the writers realized they had written themselves a spaghetti bowl worth of tangled mess, they tried to tie it all up and start a new arc, and still couldn't escape all the damage it had done by the time the series was cancelled.

About the only episodes they managed to include time travel in that didn't suck were in Season 4, mostly because they were not artifacts of the TCW crap, and the best use was the Mirror Universe tie-in that explained where the USS Defiant from "The Tholian Web" from TOS wound up, which was a rather intelligent use of time travel given the original series had already established the Defiant had been exposed to a temporal anomaly that had set it to another universe anyway while leaving it vague as to the exact time and place it wound up in what turned out to be the Mirror Universe.

 

[projecteddrama]

So Carbon Creek and Minefield were good fun.

Carbon Creek is a pretty bad one IMO, esp the whole Vulcans invented velcro part. Didn't the writers do five minutes of Google (or Yahoo, whatever people were using in 2002) research? And I've heard it's ripping off some old Trek novel from the 80s, have no idea if that's actually true.

Minefield is typical Enterprise, substandard but not terribly offensive. Though it basically trolls hardcore Trek nerds with the Romulans using cloaking devices when they're not supposed to, and Starfleet having technology to see through it.

Way too late for that. By the time of Enterprise, time travel had become so much a part of the series lore that there would have been no plausible way to retcon it out.

Not only that, when Trek did get rebooted, they intentionally used time travel to reboot it. Time travel is inseparable from Trek apparently.

VOY: This is the point it started to suck. The time travel episodes of this series lay the ground for the Temporal Cold War crap by establishing the idea of time cops and people who actively dicked with time for their own purposes.

This is true, but the "Temporal Cold War" concept actually was an idea Brannon Braga had for an unrelated TV project in the mid 90s and he simply grafted this idea that he apparently thought was so good into Enteprise when executives demanded the show not be a full prequel. Though to his slight defense, he admits it was a terrible idea in hindsight.

TOS: Started the whole tradition, generally used time travel effectively and without making it a crap plot device.

TNG: Used it a few times, never to the extent it was used by TOS, but still managed to not wear out that plot device's welcome.

DS9: Used only a few times, but generally it was done well.

Well that and these time travel stories largely were very popular and acclaimed. People still are talking about "The City On The Edge Of Forever", "All Good Things" is still an incredibly popular episode and I didn't know this until recently but one of DS9's most popular episodes is also time travel related, "The Visitor". It seemed to be a tradition in Trek to use time travel to tell really good stories as a sort of special for fans, but executives got the idea to over saturate the franchise with these stories trying to replicate their success over and over again.

Though TOS had a few stinker time travel stories like "Tommorow is Yesterday" and "Assignment: Earth"

About the only episodes they managed to include time travel in that didn't suck were in Season 4,

Aren't the only ones with time travel the Nazi two parter that's the finale for the TCW plot (if you can call it a "finale") and weren't those horrible?

Edit: Oh yeah the Mirror Universe two parter strangely ties the episode into "The Tholian Web".